Side effects of zoning out mid class? You obviously have no idea why everyone was suddenly moving about and touching the plant and feeding it.

Nonetheless, not wanting to be kicked off class just yet - the fifteen year old actually concentrated on what was happening around him and figured out what he had to do. It was just too much work, and nothing that interested him whatsoever.

Sighing, and frowning, he grabbed some dead chizpurfles and walked back to the plant he had been poking with his wand earlier. Still very much in a mood to not take this seriously, he wiggled the dead ones in front of the plant - teasing it - before finally letting it eat. It was amusing, and stupid.

And boring.

Not to mention boring, yeah.

It was also then that he noticed what the head girl was doing beside him. Maybe he had been wrong about her? Maybe she wasn't as uptight? "Feeling rebellious?" he commented more than asked as he scribbled on some notes, before randomly trimming whatever he could of the drowsy plant.

Because lets be honest, he didn't care.

Quote:

Name: Zachary Lowe
House: Slytherin
Year: Fifth

Plant Observation Notes: My plant seems bored, maybe it was already fed because after devouring some dead chizpurfles - it seemed to stay in the state it already was in; bored and low in energy.

Bel wasn't really one to spend too much time dwelling on professors that had moved on, or hold anything against the new ones that replaced them, but she DID find herself missing the clarity of instruction that her former head of house used to give out. If she wasn't already pretty decent with plant related stuff she probably would have a bit of confusion going on about it all like some of the others seemed to. She flipped through her textbook just to double check and clarify things for her own self since all the different things the professor was saying, as well as all the questions and confusion from her classmates was throwing her off a small amount and she just wanted to be sure that if nothing else she knew what she was doing. She wasn't gonna question the task though, she had enough common sense to figure out how to get it all done. The Tentacula (non-venomous, apparently?) was to be fed first, and then they would move on to squeezing it enough to spit its juice out. Sure.

Bel adjusted her dragonhide gloves and then went to grab some of the dead chizpurfles for it.

No drama. Even if it had still been 'dangerous' the Australian girl wouldn't have minded, because lots of things were dangerous back home after all, but you were always fine if you had common sense and stayed calm and armed yourself with information in the first place instead of going at something with ignorance. Also important: the difference between venomous things and poisonous things. Were venomous tentaculas also poisonous then? Maybe she'd ask later when the professor seemed less stressy? Regardless, she wasn't about to eat one herself, and she had her protective gear so if it tried to eat her instead of the chizpurfles, she had that scenario on lock too.

Its not like they were inferi or anything.

Bel fed her plant calmly with several chizpurfles. She kept her attention on the task at hand and then noted when the de-venomed tentacula started being more... sluggish. Not whipping about wildly or anything at any rate. Not that hers had been particularly over the top to begin with since she'd been calm around it and not set it off at all. It actually didn't take long... a few minutes maximum so how she was gonna fill a whole hour was beyond her.

Now for her notes? Yeah. She didn't have much to add just yet though.

Quote:

Name: Bel Macindoe
House: Hufflepuff
Year: 5th

Plant observation notes:
Generally healthy looking - no visible rot or wither.
Soil a bit dry, could use watering.

Rylee giggled nodding at what Dizzy said. "I think so too. Look at it... it keeps trying to reach out for me. Perhaps it just wants a hug." Or to bite or strangle her. Likely the last two. She much preferred a hug though. Not that she would be hugging a Venomous Tentacula anytime soon. "Maybe yours is hungry... or thirsty." She stifled a laugh when Dizzy poked at her plant. "If it's not well taken care of that could be why it's not doing anything."

Speaking of taking care of the plants. Rylee listened as Wisehart explained a bit of what they were meant to be doing next. Observe that current status of her plant and feed it some chizpurfles. Simple enough.

Double checking her dragonhide gloves to ensure that they were on nice and snug, she got up and went to get a nice sized handful of chizpurfles. Meaning as much as she could fit into her small hands. Returning to her table she set the chizpurfles down within reach of her plant before backing away to sit on her chair once more. "Wow.. easy there. Don't eat so fast I can get you more if you need it.." Giggling she watched in fascination at how fast the plant devoured it's meal.

Now that her plant was well fed she could take note of how it was doing. "Stay back.. no grabbing at me or biting me.. I don't want to have to stun you." As if the warning would make it listen to her. Vines were already reaching out for her as she leaned in a little closer to get a better look at the soil and some of the leave. "Hey, I said not to do that," She quickly grabbed up her wand tapping at one of the vines that was trying to wrap around her wrist.

"Quit it... I can't take notes if you keep doing that..." Tap tap. Every time a vine came close she tapped it with her wand. She really didn't want to have to stun it if she didn't need to.

Pushing her chair back even further she quickly jotted down at few notes.

By now the Ravenclaw had zoned out into her own world. Her plant was her focus in all the ways she wanted it to be. Despite what she assumed was the plant's protest, Jessa just kept nudging its vines away from her and kept at her work of squeezing. Perhaps it'd grown jealous seeing the other plants being fed when it was not, but she wasn't willing to compromise her experiment. It would have to wait until she was done. When she felt satisfied, she released it at which point it recoiled before trying to get at her again.

Silly thing.

Calmly, the 7th year took a step back to put her just out of reach and began labeling her container, to remind herself it was the one taken before the plant was cared for.

That done, she systematically began going through everything she suspected needed doing. Trimming, check. Fertilizer, check. She even gave the thing two of her chizpurfles for being such a good sport about it--as good a sport as it could've been anyhow. Didn't grab more than usual, only snapped its teeth at her a handful of times. A reasonable little plant baby given the circumstances.

Having done all she cared to do, she looked to the plant again and reached for a second container. Of course, she waited a bit--they DID have a long time to get this done--before beginning again, in case the plant's anatomy needed time to adjust to the changes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Notes

Name: Jessa
House: Ravenclaw
Year: 7th

Plant observation notes:

Whoever was left in charge of this plant didnt really care if it lived long enough to be useful for class. It needs a ton of care, indicative of neglect on the part of the previous carer and you should probably look into finding someone else to take care of these from now on. Just saying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samia

And boring.

Not to mention boring, yeah.

It was also then that he noticed what the head girl was doing beside him. Maybe he had been wrong about her? Maybe she wasn't as uptight? "Feeling rebellious?" he commented more than asked as he scribbled on some notes, before randomly trimming whatever he could of the drowsy plant.

Because lets be honest, he didn't care.

Just as she leaned against the table settled back to wait, the voice just next to her caught her attention. Hmm? Had she been feeling rebellious? It was interesting her actions could’ve been read that way, as it’d been curious how light musing could be mistaken for suggestions of rebellion by a certain Gryffindor.

Jessa shrugged one shoulder, not fussed in the least. “Just terribly curious, I guess, and proactive in getting my answers when Professor won’t give them to me themselves.” Jessa glanced over at his plant, noting it wasn’t putting up much fight either.

“Did yours decide to give up too?”

To be quite honest, Tessa was eager to get more up close and personal with her plant. A couple of times while Professor Wishart was speaking, she had to slap away creeping vines, but she did so playfully. She didn't fear the plant....she had no reason to. It was devenomed after all. Poor thing. Its very nature had been changed. "Sir," she called out once the practical had begun, "is it permanently devenomed now or can its venom, uhh, regenerate over time??" She had momentarily forgotten the right word.

She turned her attention to her plant, readying her quill to take notes. Now, Tessa was no expert, but it looked to her like her plant needed a trim. But she could be mistaken. She looked around at the plants of other students and noticed that hers did seem to be bigger, with longer vines, than the majority. Did you growth of the vines suggest that her plant didn't need more fertiliser?? That was hard to assess without getting closer. And why did all the plants look so different?? It looked like whoever was in charge of caring for the plants wasn't very consistent. Hoooowever, maybe the plants, like people, reacted differently to the same conditions? But wouldn't that make it even harder to look after them???

After taking some notes, Tessa adjusted her dragon hide gloves.

Time to feed it.

The blonde retrieved a dead chizpurfle from the barrel and brought it over to her plant. Professor Wishart hadn't exactly been clear on how to feed the venomous tentacula, so she had to take an educated guess. It seemed like the plant's vines could sense food or something because they were acting way more active than before. In fact, Tessa had to use Diffindo on one of the vines because it nearly knocked over her ink pot. Before any more damage could be almost done, she fed the dead chizpurfle to the plant. "Eat up," she said with a grin.

Quote:

Name: Tessa Roberts
House: Gryffindor
Year: 5

Plant observation notes:
- It looks healthy compared to the other venomous tentaculas
- Quite overgrown, long vines

Could he have missunderstood her? He turned his gazer ponderingly over to look at Jessa as he responded slowly and with a kind tone in his voice. "I apologize if I’ve missunderstood the reason behind all your questions Jessa. They were merely curious and eager to learn a little extra?"

”I said to Derf that if he keeps shooting spells at his tentacula then it will become agitated and stressed and will be more prone to attacking him. Swatting away the vines and not feeding the tentcalua would work Jessa but only if we weren’t going to be trimming and extracting juice from it. So feed your tentacula now and keep clear od the teething mouth."

Hearing Tessa's question Professor Wishart turned his gaze to the lioness with a beam. "Good question Tessa! The venom will regenerate over time just like the juice that we will extract will. I only changed the tentaculas nature for your safety, I will reverse it back to it’s natural state after the lesson is over."

__________________________________

During the duration of the mini practical Professor Wishart walked around among the students and offered tips, jokes and answered questions as needed. When an hour passed he walked back to stand by his desk, brushing his dark beard with a hand. "All right, that’s enough! Excellent work everyone!" Professor Wishart beamed warmly. After a short pause he gestured "Gather around everyone and I’ll show you what we’re doing next." He waited a few minutes for the students to group around in a half circle so that everyone could see without trouble. While they had been regrouping Joshua had fetched a potted tentacula, a watering can, a vial, a bowl, a funnel and as well as his wand.

"By now you should all have enough knowledge about tentaculas for us to continue wih the main practical." As he spoke he grabbed his wand and directed it against his tentacula. "The first step is to trim the leaves of your tentacula because all of them are too bushy looking. To do that I can use either Diffindo (severing charm) or the Flipnsnipit (trimming) charms. You can use whichever of the two charms you are most comfortable with." Joshua demonstrated both spells and their accompanying wand motions in as he trimmed the plant on his desk with an expert hand.

"The second step is a little tricker, harder but I believe you all can manage that easily. We need to extract the juice from our tentaculas, all though it’s not poisonous anymore I still advice against tasting any of the juice. I don’t want anyone’s skin to turn purple or if there is a shred of venom left experience the horrible feeling of your insides burning…."

"Anyway what you need to do is to lift your tentacula from it’s pot and hold it over a bowl while you squeeze it it tightly to get the juice out. When your tentacula has no more juice to give put it back in it’s pot and pack its roots over with the pot’s soil. And then pour the juice with the help of a funnel into the vial with your name on it." While he spoke Joshua had demonstrated each step slowly. "Get to work now everyone you have 2 hours to complete the activity! All materials you need can be found on the shelves lining the back wall of the greenhouse!"

OOC: We made it to the main activity!

What Joshua want's from all the students is in one or more posts that they complete these tasks to complete the activity:

• Trim the leaves of their student tentacula (You can use either Diffindo or Flipnsnipit charms to do this depending on what your student is comfortable with)
• Squeeze out the juice of their student tentacula into a bowl and then pour it into a vial with the help of a funnel.

You can also pour water on the tentaculas and give them some extra fertilizer but that is completley optional and up to your students. Have fun with this! Be creative!

You have until Friday the 14th of September @ roughly 7pm GMT+2 to complete your activities before i wrap up the lesson.

No, Archer hadn't been too busy staring at Professor Hot to participate in class. She'd simply been taking notes on the dangerous plant. She didn't want to be the one who'd inevitably end up being bitten by one of the plants and need first aid. Nope, not her, not today, not ever. She also made note of her Tentacula's condition, seeing that it wasn't in that bad of shape, and fed it the chirzpufles as asked.

Now came the fun part (not). She wasn't really one to trim hedges and that's what trimming this was reminding her of. A really toothy, viney hedge that did not like being trimmed. This she found out rather quickly, as the moment she used the Flipnsnipit (whoever had invented that spell had an interesting sense of humor) Charm, a vine came up and gave her arm a good smack. Which earned the plant a narrowed-eyed stare and a return smack from Archer. Which earned her a return smack from the plant....and it quickly spiraled into a full-on slap fight between the Hufflepuff and the Tentacula.

Oh…wait had she cut too soon? Beth thought for a moment as she twirled her wand in her hand nervously. No, no she was good right? Good. Yep, she had to be. It wasn’t like she was going to mess this class up the way she had practically messed up potions last term? When she heard Daehyun’s voice Beth just grinned. ”does that make me your best friend?” she asked quietly a grin on her face.

This was a sweet day right? A nice day. His question about her tiredness only made her nod, ”yes, very” she whispered as she bit down on the edge of her cheek as she eyed her tentacular plant. She needed to cut this JUST right. ”mmm’not gonna sleep in class though, after…only after” she nodded, as she slowly blinked at the plant.

Not sleeping.

She wasn’t sleeping, nope, just resting her eyes for a moment. Opening them again she muttered a diffindo as she sliced the vine off of the plant. ”flip…” she muttered and stifled a yawn. ”flipns—“ YAWN ”flipnsnipwitit” she finally cast only half of the leaf she was aiming for came off of the plant.

Groaaaan.

I’m not tired she told herself as she squinted at her plant and began using the tripping and cutting charms again until her bine was CLEAN.

Did you hear that Tentacula? It was time to trim those leaves. Rylee eyed the plant sat on on the table in front of her curiously for several long moments as it kept trying to reach out for her.

The sooner she got started the sooner she would be finished. Time to get to work.

Flexing her fingers around her wand she cleared her throat. "Flipnsnipit," she spoke nice and clearly aiming her wand at a leaf that needed a bit of trimming. Several more times she repeated the spell to remove a leaf here and there.

The use of Diffindo was next for the removal of a few extra long vines that needed trimming as well.

SPOILER!!: Mini activity

After Jessa’s question Juni really didn’t see the point of doing this. What was the purpose now? Just for educational reasons. Nah and to lose house points over it well that hardly seems fair. So much for asking questions.

Anyway now they were going to be doing observations on the plants. First and probably the one of the most important things to do was to put on the dragonhide gloves on. Which she did now. She watched her plant for a moment before getting up and getting the chizpurfles. Deciding that maybe she should get a few extra or maybe a handful of the chizpurfles for her plant to eat. Her plant do seem awful restless. So she might need the extra food to chill her plant out.

Heading back to her seat, she fed it a chizpurfle. Still it seem restless and swished it’s vines. She kept feeding the plant chizpurfles. Until finally the plant seem satisfied with the amount of food it had gotten. ”Someone was hungry, huh?” Was she talking to her plant now? Oh Merlin.

SPOILER!!: Parchment

Name: Juniper Primeaux
House: Ravenclaw
Year: 6th

Plant observation notes:
Restless
Very hungry
Dry soil.
Wilted leaves.
In great need of a little TLC
Poor little plant

And moving on now, they had to trim the leaves and squeeze the juice out. Which was probably easier said than done. First off Juni needed to get rid of the wilted, dry and dead leaves. There were so many of them. This plant was in serious need help. It was screaming for food and water. Fertilizer wouldn’t hurt either. Who took care of the these plants over the summer anyway? They should have been fired.

Enough of her rage against mistreatment of plants over the summer. She silently cast diffindo on all of the dead and wilted leaves. Once all of the yucky leaves were gone she could actually get to work on what she was really supposed to be doing.

Time to give this tentacula a trim. And again boy did it need a trim, along with half a dozen other things. Again she silently cast diffindo, being way more confident in her nonverbal spells than she was last term. She stopped tilted her head, cast diffindo here and there. Carefully she turned the pot the tentacula was in around to see it from other angles. How did it look?

In all honesty, Derf was only half paying attention to the words the professor was sharing with others about the nature of the (venomous? poisonous? non-venomous? only-a-little-venomous?) tentacula. He was not keen on getting PHYSICAL with his plant until he absolutely had too when it came to squeezing out the juices. Otherwise, yeah, he was gonna stick to shooting spells when he had to, okay? So thus, the HUfflepuff was somewhat on edge for the full HOUR while it continued to eat the dead chizpurfles from his hand. And an HOUR was a REALLY long time, you know? HE sorta would have rather been running laps around the quidditch pitch for that amount of time.

Thankfully, his plant did begin to droop even stilled as the hour came to a close and the professor spoke once more, moving things along (FINALLY). Nervously, Derf leaned forward a bit and gave the once moving vine a soft poke with his wand and, yup, it was as limp as a piece of over cooked spaghetti. Breathing a sigh of relief, the sixth year glanced around the greenhouse for no particular reason other than he really just...needed to not be looking at the plant.

A few ruffles of his hair later, and he was setting to casting mum's personal favorite herbology related charm, Flipnsnipit, on his tentacula. And, well, even if he was not KEEN on plants in general...he knew how valuable the leaves were -wilted or not maybe? - and gathered them all into a pile on his station to box up at the end of the lesson. Because, surely, they were not just going to go into compost. Maybe he could ask Professor Noble about their usages later and give some of them a whirl in practice since, well, he had a lot of ground to retrace now that he had to continue that subject too.

A little bit of Aguamenti later aaaaaaaaand...well..he reckoned some fertilizer would be needed too - mostly because most everyone else was doing that. But, er, which one? "Uh...Professor?" Derf asked as he raised his hand and honestly felt like he should be tucking his plant in with a nice warm blanket or something. Or maybe that would be what the warm fertilizer was gonna end up being. "Which...base should we use? Mooncalf? Hippogriff? Dragon?"

All the dungs!

Did she hear the professor correctly, he wanted them to touch this plant and squeeze the juice out of them, did one of them squeeze them with their vined making him go looney? These things had spikes and grabby vines and sharp teeth! She was afraid of getting turned into chow meat by these things! Taking a deep breath she pulled out her Gryffindor bravery and looked at the plant biting her lip. "Ok... maybe this won't be bad it was alittle grabby while ago, but you got this Stella!" she thought to herself.

Looking at the plant she seen some of the leaves were indeed dying, something she didn't notice while ago that she needed to fix. "Flipnsnipit!" as a couple of leaves fell off she lookes at it some more. "Alittle bit there, ah ha! there we go little guy! she thought to herself. Looking at the vines she seen the were good, she did that while observing it. Thankfully it was calm and just playful or else she'll be in trouble. Walking around she started looking at every angle of it.

Zachary had honestly thought she hadn't heard him, given how extremely engaged with the task at hand she was. But she did, and his eyes lingered over to her plant. "I don't exactly know how Hogwarts works yet, but so far it seems the professors don't really want the students to be all that proactive" he commented, as he continued casting diffindo and randomly trimming his own plant.

"Mine .. seems very compliant, almost too compliant actually" he added before actually listening to the professor for the first time since the lesson started - and then glanced at the head girl again. "seems like you will be done soon" Since she was a step or two ahead than most of the class already.

He was almost tempted to ask her to do his too at this point because ugh, the next step just seemed disgusting and messy. Nonetheless, he proceeded to lift the lethargic plant from it's pot.

The students got to work with the tentaculas and Joshua stood and observed them from a far for a bit. When he was about to move around among the students Derf poised a question. Heading over towards the badger Professor Wishart answered. "I'd prefer it if you used dragon dung fertilizer Derf to sprinkle over your tentacula. It is most potent and nutritious and what i've found is best to use on growing plants. Mooncalf and Hippogriff dung is better to use on adult plants since they don't require as much potency and nutrition."

Having watered, and fertilised her plant, as well as trim the other leaves and runaway vines, it was time to juice them. But not a potions method of juicing. This was a much more hands on, herbology version.

Hanna certainly didn't want to turn purple. Nor did she want to experience any internal burning. So, the obvious choice there was to not taste it. That was easy. Rather than just jump into the activity, Hanna organised her station. The bowl was placed on the left of her plant, and the funnel with her vial next to it. She got enough spare fertiliser, ready for when she re-potted it.

Now was the time to do what she didn't want to do. She grasped the plant and lifted it out with her right hand, and tipped it over the bowl. It still didn't move much, besides a gentle sway that could have been mistaken for deep breathing. She found the right bits and SQUEEEEEEEEZED, watching as the juice emptied into the bowl. Once that bit was all juiced, she moved on to another bit, SQUEEZING it into the bowl until that, too, was empty. And on and on until her bowl was almost full to the brim, and her plant looked well juiced.

The pot was fairly empty now, even of dirt. Hanna packed the dirt that remained in the pot fairly firmly and placed the plant back in. The rest of the dirt went back in the sides between the plant roots and the pot, which was also pat down firmly. And sprinkling it with some fertiliser, she topped it up with a bit of water, poured a sample of the juice into a vial, which she labeled; Hanna Newton, Third Year, Ravenclaw

Still with plenty of juice in her bowl, Hanna raised her hand for Professor Wishart. "What did you want done with the rest of the juice?" Did he have uses for it in Herbology?

The demonstration was very useful but it did leave Lucas feeling a little on edge. Taking out his wand, he glanced at it, a small frown forming on his face. It sounded simple, especially when the Professor put it like that, but what happened if he couldn't do the spells properly? Or if something went wrong? Or if he was overenthusiastic with the spell and cut off half of the plant?

It could happen!

The second part sounded a lot worse, given that they had to touch the plant and its tentacles - and even worse, extracting its JUICE?! - but...... he'll come to that. Later. He'll deal with it later. Right now, he was just going to concentrate on trying not to cut the plant in half with one of the two spells he'd mentioned.

So, Lucas turned his attention back to the plant he was working on. First things first: trimming. With his wand clutched tightly in his hand, the first year started nosing around and picking out any parts that needed to be trimmed off. It was a difficult process because guess what? This was a very active plant. How was he meant to get anything done if he kept having to duck??

What was the spell? Flipnsnipit? "Flipnsnipit..... flipnsnipit....." It took a few slow chants of the word before he finally aimed his wand at a particularly yellow part of the plant and, "Flipnsnipit!" And off went that leaf. A single leaf but it was off! Another "Flipnsnipit!" and off went...... uh, half a leaf. But that was okay because he could just easily take out the rest using the spell again.

It was slow process but he was getting there. Slowly.

Having finished the task after only a few minutes, Bel had been left completely zoning out for the allotted time. A whooole hour just to feed a plant and look at it. Like they were on island time or something like that. She added a few more notes and then spent the hour alternately zoning out and flipping through her textbook, half looking for more clarification about the venomous vs poisonous thing in relation to the tentacula (rather than in general since she knew about that) and half just seeing if there was anything else of interest to jump out and grab her attention.

Quote:

Name: Bel Macindoe
House: Hufflepuff
Year: 5th

Plant observation notes:
Generally healthy looking - no visible rot or wither.
Soil a bit dry, could use watering.
Probably a bit too leafy. Or viney. Could do with some cutting back so that it doesn't have to compete with itself for resources and energy.

When they were finally moving on, Bel eagerly got up as directed and went over to observe things. It wasn't so much the specific task that was making her eager as just something to do in general. It was just too slow for her thus far. She took her notebook with her to scribble down some of the instructions and then watched the professor closely during the demonstration.... though.... she was going to opt to do the trimming by hand. Charms weren't really her thing and she'd do a better job if she did the trimming without her wand.

And then the juicing.... again the venom vs poison thing. Was it both? Completely? And they'd have two hours? Another internal groan from Bel. This class was so long and with so little to do. She was absolutely confident she could have got all of the tasks done in thirty minutes. Maybe rounding it out to an hour if you counted all the note taking and reviewing, but three hours for such a small amount of work? She was pretty good at herbo but Bel was sure she wasn't so advanced that she was the only one who felt that way. Before she'd get started though, she just had to ask in case she missed it and for her own clarification. Bel stuck her hand up.

"Excuse me professor, I might have missed it but is the Venomous Tentacula both poisonous and venomous? Because I noticed you using both terms kinda interchangeably? But I dunno if its because its both or not or if I missed something, but I wanted to check for my own notes because the difference can be life or death in some situations and all that." Hopefully she wouldn't get in trouble for the question, because it was a pretty important one, something she knew very well as a person who came from a country where there were a LOT of venomous things that could kill you with a bite.... but you could eat them just fine with no drama whatsoever.

Now that she had given her Tentacula a little trim it was time to squeeze all the juice out of it. Getting to her feet Rylee went and got a bowl, funnel and vial to pour the juices into. Returning to her table with the items she set everything down carefully still keeping an eye on the vines of her plant.

Rylee adjusted her dragonhide gloves to ensure they were on nice and snug before doing anything else. Grabbing hold of the tentacula she lifted it firmly but carefully out of the pot and held it over the bowl. Right away it wrapped one of it's vines around her wrist which she did her best to ignore while she used her other hand she squeeze the juice from it into the bowl.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Sqeeeeeeze. How much juice did this thing have?!

In all honesty the teen was rather surprise with the amount of juice that was filling up her bowl. After what felt like an eternity nothing more was coming from the tentacula and Rylee let out a relived breath.

"Time to ge- Ouch! Hey! Don't you- Ow! Quit it!" Yep. It had bit it her. More than once. After she had been so nice to it too. Rude!

Very quickly she replaced the tentacula into it's pot and repacked the soil over it's roots. She went and got some fresh fertilizer to sprinkle over the top of the dirt as well and even gave it a little water.

Using the funnel she poured the contents of the bowl into the vial and closed it with the stopper before labeling it. Rylee Prichard, Third Year, Gryffindor.

Once she was finished she pushed her chair back as far away from the table as possible. When the lesson was over she would tend to her Tentacula bites.

Passing by Hanna’s desk just as she asked a question Professor Wishart stopped to take a peek down into her bowl at the excess juice. There was quite a lot of it. In response he said kindly. "Go pour your excess juice into the bowl on my desk Hanna. I will be filling it in bottles after the lesson is over and will experiment and see if it can help with plant growth or even be used as a slug repellant." If that failed then he’d give some to Professor Noble and some to Healer McMillan. It was possible that the juice could have use in other fields.

Professor Wishart was heading back towards his desk to take a gander at his closure notes when Bel stopped him with another question. Maybe the venomous and poisonous terms were kinda confusing to a young learner to get especially when the plant was called venomous tentacula too? Turning his attention to the badgerette he answered with a smile. "Good Bel, good that you aren’t afraid to ask questions. Venomous and Poisonous are two terms that I have used interchangeably today because they mean the same thing; they’re synonyms. The tentacula we’ve been working is called the Venomous tentacula and as the name implies it’s venomous which is another word for poisonous. If i were you Bel I’d look up all the synonyms for venomous so that you will know what plants, creatures and so on are deadly." Hopefully that made sense.

OOC: You have roughly 24 hours left to finish up your activites. I will wrap up the lesson tomorrow night @ approx 7pm GMT+2.

Looking at her tentacula she nodded in approval at how it now looked. It looked alot better then it did, maybe after some more loving and care it'll be ok. Stella knew that plants had feelings like people too, they needed feeding and affection as well. "There you go little guy all nice and trimmed up!" she said softly.

Now it was time to get the juice from it, but she had to be careful she didn't want to hurt the plant or herself. She wondered if she could hurt it by squeezing too hard, but then again she wasn't that strong. Stella raised her hand. " Professor what happens if you by chance squeeze it to hard will it hurt them?" Stella asked him curiously. She didn't want to hurt the poor thing, it looked like it had enough with neglect from being left alone.


Adjusting herself so she could get her tentqcula out of the pot, she grabbed it lifting it firmly out of the pot. Using her left hand she started squeezing the juice from it as she jumped and let out a little squeal in surprise as a vine went around her right wrist. Ok... no big deal, as long as it didn't bite her or so, as long as it was playful it was ok. Blushing alittle at her squealing she went back to work.

Squeeze....Squeeze... Squeeze!

After what spent like an eternity of squeezing, she put the tentacula back into the pot repacking the soil over it's roots before putting some fertilizer on it before water it.

Grabbing the funnel she poured the juice from her bowl carefully into the vial before putting the stopper on the top before she labeled it.
Wiping the sweat from her forehead she sat down in her seat waiting for whatever else she had to do.

Dragon it was!

Grinning at the professor, Derf offered the man two thumbs up before standing. Happily distracted now in thinking of ways, using a dragon's biology, that made it's dung particularly potent and useful for these plants rather than thinking about them tearing his skin right off his bones...the Hufflepuff scampered over to collect some fertilizer in a bucket and was on his way back to his station when he heard what Professor Wishart was saying to Bel about poisonous and venomous and how they were..........synonymous?

Um.

Clutching his bucket a bit more tightly in his hands, the budding magizoologist within him would not permit him to keep quiet. It was a very distinct type of classification when speaking about creatures - particularly his favorite sort of them: reptiles and amphibians. "Um...excuse me, professor," Derf said softly as he stopped by the man. An attempt not to speak too loudly or draw too much attention to the situation. "...but...um...isn't it a bit...dangerous to say that venomous and poisonous are synonymous? Snakes...most of them anyway... are, you know, venomous because they bite to inject their toxins...but if something ate them the toxins wouldn't cause damage because snakes aren't poisonous...save for the garter snake which can bite you no big deal but you run the risk of consuming toxins because their bodies body absorbs and stores the toxins of its prey. Prey like newts and salamanders...who are poisonous but not venomous because their toxins get unloaded when you eat them..or touch them...because they SECRETE!" Always a joy when he could use his favorite word. If you bite it and die, it is poisonous. If it bites you and you die, it is venomous. The quick and dirty catch phrase he had picked up from one of his creature books.

Honestly...he could go on and on about this. He hadn't even TOUCHED on lizards and frogs yet...or spiders... cnidarians...but he was trying to stay in the world of Herbology at the moment.Though it didn't help that his mind had already been wandering to creatures when thinking about dragon dung. Did the professor know which kind of dragon had produced this dung? He....really wanted to ask that now.

"....so...this plant...the, er, Venomous Tentacula...can kill us with its bite, right? And the...er...juice that was are extracting can't actually kill us when we drink it...right? Just...well..it's unpleasant will hurt LOADS..." And now he was reminded of those cursed objects from a few terms back, the burning from the inside ones, and gave a bit of an uncomfortable shudder. "...but really just turns our skin permanently purple, right? So...I reckon that's why you Herbologists call it a Venomous Tentacula and not a Poisonous Tentacula? Kinda, you know, a nice sort of warning label that HEY! This plant's bite is deadly! Yeah?" Woah, Herbology was actually making sense to him right now? Maybe. He could only hope since, well, biology was biology, right?

And this bucket of dragon dung WAS potent - as the smell was a sure indication of. Which...was why his mind once again turned around back to his earlier wondering. ".....also...you wouldn't happen to know which dragon produced the dung for this fertilizer, would you?" he asked while sprinkling a bit of it into his pot containing his still sleeping plant. Probably not since the labels were always just DRAGON DUNG and not something like...CHINESE FIREBALL BASED DRAGON DUNG. But these were things he wanted to know.

Squeezing the venom out of a Venomous Tentacula was pretty much the last thing in the world Nettie wanted to do. Still, she had no choice unless she wanted to lose points, and since every point looked like it was going to count this year, she couldn't afford that. So it looked like she was going to be milking some plants. EWWWW.

Gloves on, Nettie took her wand and looked at her tentacula. "Sorry, plant," she told the plant before she waved her wand, shouting "Diffindo!" as she did so. She aimed for the extra leaves blocking her from properly getting the venom out of the tentacles. A few more waves of her wand and that step was finished.

Now for the super gross part. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she carefully picked up the plant and held it over the bowl. She took the tentacle and squeezed it carefully, watching with disgust as the venom started to leak out into the bowl. UGH. SOOO GROSSSSSS. Thankfully, that had been easier than she anticipated and before she realized it, she was done.

She took the bowl and an empty vial, pouring the liquid into the vial using her funnel and then setting it aside. Perfect. She was DONE and could look forward to never having to do that again!!

And...... snip went the last dead-looking leaf.

Lucas straightened up, a proud smile on his face as he looked down at his wand. Maybe this wasn't so bad, after all. Sure, it took a LONG time and some people were already..... putting..... the juices into vials? Uh. Okay, he needed to hurry up with this process. He wasn't staying here all day! No way.

Although, the next part of the process sounded a lot worse than the first part. Because in the first part, he could wave his wand and snip a leaf and not have to go too near the plant and now he had to touch it?? Even though it was a dangerous plant????

Right. Yeah.

A bit of time was spent making sure that the bowl and the pot that the tentacula was in were near each other so he didn't have to move it too much. You know, preparing. Being ready. And speaking of, the last part of this being ready process included shaking his hands and taking some very deep breaths. It was just a little squeezing but this was pretty important to him.

When he was ready, the first year grabbed onto the tentacula with one hand..... and then both hands..... and gave a great big PULL upwards until it came free of the soil it was packed in. It wasn't a lot of force because he wasn't a very strong boy but to him, it felt as though he'd used all the force in the world. Maybe that could explain the smile that was currently on his face as he lifted the tentacula over the bowl and started squeezing.

Squeeeze....... squeeeeze...... squeeeeeeeeeeze......

It was a very long process, or that's what it felt like. There were a lot of pauses and a lot of deep breaths taken during all of this squeezing. But not, the deep breaths weren't to prepare himself but because he was getting more and more tired the more he squeezed the plant. And the more he squeezed, the harder it was becoming to get more juice out of the plant, which..... was the point, right?

Soon enough, there were only a few drops dripping down from the plant when he gave it a squeeze. One final, huge squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze later and.....

....... nothing. Not even a drop.

Huh. Lucas wiped the sweat off his forehead before placing the plant back in its pot again. So that wasn't..... bad, right? At least he hadn't had his skin turn purple. Smiling slightly, he started packing the tentacula back into the pot, complete with adding extra fertiliser in case the plant needed it. Oh, and water. Water was important too! But because he didn't really know the spell, he was just going to use a watering can and regular tap water. Surely, the Professor won't mind, right?

When that was done, he grabbed a vial and a funnel and started to pour the contents of the bowl into the vial through the funnel. Looking at the juice extract properly, he..... couldn't really tell if he had enough. But it had come out of the plant and he had more than a few drops so..... yeah. It was okay. He would be okay.

Once he'd filled in as much as he could, Lucas placed the bowl and the funnel down and placed a stopper on the vial. The label part was probably the easiest part and so, he did it with no hesitation. Lucas Dakest, First Year, Gryffindor, a label he was very proud of.

There. Done.

Could he relax? He wanted to relax.

Patting down the soil and adding a bit more water via Aguamenti, Derf opted to use his hands to gently tug off a few more wilted looking leaves. And he felt confident enough doing so since, well, his plant was still completely sedated from that hour of feeding. He may also be, you know, testing things out a bit to see how it responded to this sort of stimulus since what came next was gonna be a whoooooooole lot more intrusive.

So, carefully lifting the Venomous Tentacula out of the pot, Derf cradled it in his arms like he did his baby sister. Well, his baby sister when she was an actual baby, and then used one of his strong hands to begin the whole squeezing process into the bowl provided. He didn't have to squeeze too terribly hard either, or perhaps he was underestimating his own strength, as copious amounts began squirting out of it. Moving his hand much like he did when milking cows, which was not TOO often and only when visiting dad's side of the family, it wasn't too long before his cup was all the way filled. But it still seemed like his Venomous Tentacula had more to give...though for now he returned it to its pot, watched as its vines lazily drooped over the sides, and then retrieved some phials and a funnel to fill up. One filled to the brim....and stopper stuck in...a second filled to the brim and stopped...and a third...half filled.

Grabbing his quill next, Derf quickly scribbled his name, house, and year down on the labels and stuck them to the glass.

Quote:

HUFFLEPUFF; SIXTH YEAR

Glancing back at the plant, Derf grabbed the bucket he has used earlier to get more of the dragon dung based fertilizer and then returned to his station to repack the soil. He reckoned that this had been, well, more than enough on the plant for one day and his super inexperienced hands would be better suited for other endevours. Like jotting down a few more notes and observations...making sure his label was neat and adding the date to the bottom right corner as well.

So they needed to trim more leaves off of their plants?

Madison had worked to get off all the dead ones, but it still seemed to be a little too full for what they needed to do. With a shrug, she grabbed her wand again and started working on severing more leaves using diffindo. As she worked, she smiled and hummed a little bit of a tune quietly to herself so as not to disturb anyone else. Diffindo... Diffindo... Diffindo... Diffindo... Exactly HOW many leaves was she supposed to get rid of?? She had no real idea, but figured that it would be good enough when hers looked just like the professor's. He was the expert. Clearly he knew what he was doing.

After one last use of the spell, she was satisfied. Time to move on to the next part, extracting the juice.

That sounded like fun... Not.

Would anyone REALLY try to drink the juice??? It boggled her mind, but still she thought that it would be interesting to be purple. NOT that she would try anything because she wasn't stupid.

Instead, Madison grabbed a bowl, vial, and a funnel from the back wall of the greenhouse and then carefully removed her venomous tentacula from its pot. Squeeeeeeeeeze, squeeeze, squeeze. She squeezed every bit that she could out from it and into the bowl in front of her. Really she didn't think that there was anything else that she could extract from it, though she did try one more time just to check; a few drops came out, but that was it. Right. Back into the pot went the plant. The roots were packed with the soil, and that was it.

Using a funnel, she slowly poured the juice from the bowl into a vial so that it could be handed in. Quickly she worked on the label:

Quote:

Originally Posted by label

Madison Valentine
Fourth Year
Gryffindor

There. Done.