Violet realized she had been in a blue funk for most of the class discussion, so she hastily pulled out a piece or parchment and tried to make some headway with the assignment.

Pollution...she remembered last summer with her father, looking down at the city from that high building and seeing that ugly, rust-brown ring surrounding everything. She remembered how reluctant she had been go back down to the street once she realized that that was the air she had been breathing.

There she paused, quill in hand. Poster...hmm....she had been vaguely embarrassed in her first year by the childishness of her attempt at a poster...She started by drawing an all-too-accurate picture of actual human lungs and looked at the poster. No, that just looked kind of morbid, she thought, vanishing the picture with a flick of her wand. Something more cheerful. Ah, more cartoony looking lungs would be better (that was about as good as she could draw, too). A pair of happy, happy lungs...

Eeeee!!

"Do you really like it?" Emm squealed, her eyes shimmering in delight at the compliment. He said it was nice, it meant he liked it. Translation: Schmoe was absolutely floored by her work and was so amazed that he was reduced to simple compliments.

Emmerson hopped up from her seat. "I'll go do it now! Make sure everyone gets to see it." She skipped across the room to get the tape then continued skipping all the way out of the classroom. Had to pick the perfect spot on the wall. Near the door was the best because it meant you couldn't get into the room without seeing it.

The little Gryffindor got up on her tippy toes to get it as high as possible before applying the tape.

Back inside, she looked to the professor. "Will you duplicate it for me so I can send a copy home to mummy?"

Nemesis Upstead simply did not care. Muggle Studies was a bit of a whatever subject for them anyway, their only motivation for turning up being to put the Noodle Man on edge as much as they could, as often as they could. Throw pollution into the lesson equation and it became death by ennui. They had made a good show at appearing moderately engaged up until the activity, but that was about it.

Not a problem. Nem could just claim an off day, the 'having a hard time of it' defence. Wasn't like anyone could prove otherwise.

It wasn't like they hadn't put together a poster, even though this sort of thing wasn't their style at all. Well. The poster itself was. A bit. Some facts, some not-so-facts, and a healthy dose of missing out important elements. Never strikes twice in the same place? Not relevant to the narrative, goodbye. Nem hadn't messed about with poster board either. It was all scrawled out on a regular piece of parchment.

Maybe Schmoe should have specified it was supposed to be a poster aimed at muggles. Sure, it was sort of implied, but that left a lot of room for interpretation. This should be a helpful reminder. Not bothering to wait for Schmoe feedback, Nem grabbed the tape and headed for the hallway to put up the poster.

But really, what was that smell? As they went, Nem wrinkled their nose and scanned the room for the possible source.

Miller?

SPOILER!!: raw text

STOP MAGIC POLLUTION

magic in the atmosphere builds up and causes magical storms that will endanger your children

studies show excess magic may one day suffocate the earth

hand in your wands and let only the best among you use magic before it's too late

#TheEndIsStillNigh #RheticusWillReturn #YouAreAllJustAsBad

Dooooooododoodoo... hang on... they only had FIVE MORE MINUTES?!!



In a panic, Bernie hurried to finish her meme, which was rough and lazy and also the only kind of drawing she knew how to draw. She hurried out to the hallway to tape it up and then slouched against the wall next to a photo of.... Josh? Wow, was that him?!

SPOILER!!: LAME LAME I'M LAME

She was just relieved to be done in time.

AnYwAy.

With all the students trickling back into the SMELLY room, Finneas thought it was a good time to go back to the STINKY storage closet and pull out the supplies necessary for this last portion of class. The BIG, STINKY reveal. This meant that there were a whole bunch of bags filled with rubbish sat at the front of the classroom now. So THAAAAT'S why the room smells so bad. It was all starting to make sense. Finneas, however, was immune to the smell for some odd reason. You are what you can't smell. Badda bing badda boom.

He cleared his throat and attempted to call attention to the front of the room again with a desperate wave of his noodle arms. "Something that came up quite a number of times is an errr easy way to contribute to the lessening of pollution! That would be reducing, reusing, and recycling!" Were people taking notes? He paused just in case. "In our next few lessons we'll really dive into the topic of pollution further and discuss the BIG, BAD AND UGLY. We'll hopefully refine and gain an understanding of what a carbon footprint is and its role in the grand scheme of things... BUT! For now, we're looking at RECYCLING and waste!" He paused to take a great, deep breath. As one does. And then gulp a big sip of water. Because he was a thirsty man.

"Not all materials can be recycled! You CAN recycle newspapers, magazines, papers, glass bottles and jars, plastics, cardboard, and aluminum cans. But you cannot recycle disposable wrappers, foam, food and liquid, items with food waste residue, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera..." That was a reference to The King and I! "When in doubt, check the product and see if it has a recycling symbol on it and errr... that will be a good bet that it can be recycled." He rummaged through his pile of things and stuff before finding the poster with the recycling logo on it. Could everyone see it??? Bet.

"Mr. Miller's poster was right on the money today!" He motioned to the poster that the sixth year had drawn. It was front and center on the front board for ALL to see. "Today we will be doing our own trash dash of sorts... Er... But we will be competing. I will be splitting everyone into TWO distinct teams. One team will be TEAM POLLUTANTS and the other will be TEAM OZONE." Was he making sense? "For those of you who choose to be on team pollutant, you will come to the front and grab a bag filled with rubbish." Rubbish including empty plastic bottles, old clothes, drink cans, used tissues, rotten fruit, newspapers, YOU NAME IT! "Your task is to run around the room and pollute it with as much rubbish as possible." Maybe he ought to have provided gloves for this... OH WELL! Nothing like getting your hands dirty to prove a point.

"Team Ozone, your mission is to save the classroom from pollution! You will either receive a bag for the collection of rubbish OR for the collection of recyclable items. Recalling our discussion on recyclable items (and using the helpful poster behind your professor), your mission is to collect as much of the displaced rubbish as possible. If you have a recycling bag, please be sure to ONLY pick up recycling items. And if you have a RUBBISH bag, stick to the rubbish!" He paused for questions.

"Come up and grab what you need from the front. There will be a prize for the winning team!!! And then........ LET THE TRASH DASH, BEGIN!"

OOC: Omg y'all, these posters were incredible and the catchphrases were so creative! Thanks for all your patience as we trudged along. We've made it to the final activity. And you'll have at least 65 hours!

Things to keep in mind:
1. Specify whether you are Team Pollutant or Team Ozone in your post title, let's try to keep numbers relatively even. So if the person above you is Team Pollutant, then you'd be Team Ozone and vice versa.
2. Interact with one another! Remember, there are desks everywhere and people will be running this way and that. Lots of opportunity for chaos! You're also competing against the other team, so act accordingly!

Team Pollutant: Your mission is to place as much trash around the room as possible
- Grab a bag filled with garbage (empty plastic bottles, old clothes, drink cans, tissues, etc etc etc)
- Run around the room and place the trash everywhere

Team O-Zone: Your mission is to collect as much of the garbage as possible
+ You will either receive a bag that says RECYCLE or one that says RUBBISH
+ Run around the room and pick up recyclable items or rubbish items according to which bag you have been given

Hang on. Hold the snitch. Stop the owls. Schmoe was giving them permission to make a mess?

She didn't need to be told twice. "DIBS ON POLLUTANTS!!" She screamed, barreling to the front and grabbing a bag of trash. The Professor had spoken a lot but what it really came down to was "one set gets to have fun making a mess, the other has to clean up after them". Emmerson Nicole Justine Cambridge was no one's house elf and that wouldn't be changing today.

"So...we just...." She reached into her bag for a plastic bottle and dropped it at her feet. "Toss these wherever and however we want? Like decorating? I'm super at decorating." And even better at making messes as it so happened.

"That's eeeaasssyyyy."

Cue crumpling an old newspaper and tossing it across the room. "Piece o' cake."

Ashley sighed. She hated picking up other people's trash. But she didn't want other people to pick up her trash either. "I'll be on team Ozone or whatever we called it." She decided to just follow one pollutant around. She picked Emmerson. Thankfully, she was good at running and ports so she just ran around picking up trash as fast as Emmerson could throw it.

Claudine spent a brief moment out in the hallway admiring the work that others had done. Truth be told, she was quite impressed with a lot of them. Such were her thoughts as she moved back into the horrible smelling classroom. Ugh. Her nose was wrinkled as she wandered back to her seat. Only then did she realise what Schmoe had unveiled. “I knew it,’’ she told the man. “Hoarding garbage, are you, Professor?” With a smirk, she quietened down. Schmoe knew that she was just being silly, right?

Anyway. There was a recycling symbol? Claudine had not known this and quickly made a rough sketch of it to join her notes. Also, she was so right about the stinkiness having to do something with the activity. Did she know which team she wanted to be on? Yes. Nose still wrinkled, the girl snagged a bag of thrash.

Pollution, here she came.

“Coloured tissue goes well with decorating,” the fourth year informed Emmerson and threw a few wads of pink, soiled napkins in the general area of the recently tossed newspaper.

Seeing that Ashley had grabbed a recyle bag, Blake thought he would go with the pollutants, Schmoe wanted the teams kept even, though Blake did feel a little bad for ditching his earlier partner. But moving on ...

"Emmerson, I'll go this way." He added toward the girl who was also on his team, pointing to opposite way in which she was. The could cover more ground if they went in different directions. So taking off at a run and sticking his hand into a rather smelly and gross bag he pulled out some chip bags and a banana peel and tossed them on the floor quickly reaching in again.

Bernie's nose was wrinkling ALREADY at all the stuff being thrown around, and as soon as she saw Claudine start tossing garbage on the floor, she knew which team she was going to be on.

"Team OZONE," the fourth-year declared, making SURE Schmoe handed her a recycling bag.

It figured that Claudine was on the trash team, right? Because, y'know, it suited her.

Oh great, a group exercise, just what she needed in the morning.

But Violet always preferred cleaning up problems rather than starting them, especially after last year, so she volunteered, "Team Ozone, please!"

Then she grabbed a bag and started methodically going around the room behind the trashiest people she could find, picking up their trash as fast as they could drop it.

Kale had killed it with his rhyme. Even the Professor had been amused. Which was the truest test of comedy genius and innovation. Kale Trent-- maybe stand-up? Who knew. He was keepin' his options open. He had so many talents to share with the people.

The fourth year was so involved in his own genius that he nearly missed the next set of instructions. LUCKILY FOR HIM HE HEARD THROWING THINGS AND HE WAS BACK. 'Zoned in on the lesson. Mind the pun, son.

He dashed to the front of the room, after shouting, "Pollute the Earth!!!!!", and snatched up some trash. After that, like a beautiful dance number, he started to frolic around the room and toss stuff around. Lots of spins. Poses. A tap section in the middle there.

It was all fab.

Aboli did indeed h8 straws. Schmoe would have to remember that for the rest of his life. She often wondered if Schmoe would live very long - he was very nervous, and she often could not sense his future when she tried to read him. Hmph. She wondered if she should warn him.

Anyway.

Death would consume them all at some point, hence why THEY NEEDED TO FIX THE EARTH FOR THEIR CHILDREN SO DEATH DIDN'T CONSUME THINGS BEFORE THEY WERE MEANT TO BE CONSUMEDDDDD!

"I call TEAM OZONE because we're the PROTAGONISTS and you guys are the BAD GUYS!" she gestured at the pollutants. Aboli would NOT be on the wrong side of history, thanks. She grabbed a bag with a recycle symbol on it and IMMEDIATELY began to run around the room, grabbing anything plastic she could see. She "accidentally" bumped into Little Trent, hoping to trip him, honestly, BECAUSE HE WAS THE GARBAGE AND GARBAGE WAS BAD.

Their numbers were growing!! Pollution would D O M I N A T E!

"You're absolutely right!" Emm said with a gasp for the sake of dramatics. Seeing Claudine throw the coloured tissue down like that, next to her own papers, it was the perfect mixture. "It's like confetti, but bigger!" She squealed in delight, tossing out more and more trash. "We can decorate, like Christmas!"

The little girl whirled around at the sound of her name, in time to see Blake pointing to the other side of the room. "Aye aye!" She grinned before hurling an empty box of coloured pencils off into the corner of the room.

"Yeeessssss!!" Pollute the Earth! What Kale said!!!

Wait, what did Aboli say? Bad guys?

Well then.

Emmerson climbed atop one of the desks, kicking over the chair after. It was garbage, too. She was doing what she was told. More to the point. "We ARE the bad guys! WE'RE THE RULERS OF ANARCHY!!! MWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!"

DESTROY EVERYTHING!! Schmoe said they could. Emm kicked a loose can that had been on the table, sending it flying some distance. She tossed more and more paper. "All the garbage. Stop us if you can!" You get garbage! And YOU get garbage!! Garbage for all!

Mwehehehehehehe!!

Ashley took advantage of Emmerson yelling and making declarations to pick up more trash. She decided to create a distraction to pick up trash without people throwing it. "Soooo, Emmerson... what are your ideas about how to pollute the world? You just seem like such a smart person, so I know you must have some great ideas." She smiled. "You should really tell me all about them. It's just so interesting." Flattery was worth a shot here, in Ashley's opinion.

What? WHAT? Josh had given Professor Schmoe a bit of a deer in headlights kind of look at the question before ultimately nodding his head because it wasn't that much of an unusual request and his classmates were hanging theirs up anyway. He was just pleased he had been able to produce something considering how utterly clueless he felt in this class right now.

Leaning back in his seat, it was impossible NOT to hear the exchange between Thing 1 and the professor...and see her handwork considering they were sitting beside one another. What WAS it with this school and him and posters? Hogwarts posture culture was absolutely insane, though Skeet still took the pie on that one with his Tentacle Boy poster right after this native Bostonian transferred.

Or so he thought.

With some time on his hands and trying to look everywhere but the front of the room at his own poster, the Gyffindor's eyes meandered over to a certain Ravenclaw who was looking entirely too pleased with herself. And, in his experience, that was never a good thing. Leaning around his desk, Josh stole a glance at her poster as she carried it up front .... and the noise that came out of his mouth was a little inhuman. A cross between a Scooby-Doo 'ruuuuh' and a gasp and a chortle and a strangled kneazle, to be precise. FIRST, that was a really nice drawing of himself. Second....WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY?!

His mouth was still agape as she made her way back, though thankfully no longer making THAT noise, and he would have said something proper were it not for Professor Schmoe moving things along..........and saying his name.......and talking about his own poster. Redemption or mortified? He could not decide which was the more prominent sensation but he was grinning and bearing the entire explanation before getting up to participate in the main activity.

CoNsIdErInG tHiNgS...it really only seemed fitting that he be on the pollutant side of things riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, Miss Olivia Caffery?! But that wasn't Josh's style and instead he went up to retrieve a bag to COLLECT trash bEcAuSe He WaS dOiNg BeTtEr!

Though he really could have done without Aboli's proclamation...which earned another grimace from the sixth year.

So once he had his bag in hand, Josh jogged his way over to his little lioness buddy of Bernie. "Want to double team?"

You know. Perhaps this was a bad idea.

A very. Very. Bad idea.

Schmoe backed himself into the corner, covering his mouth and nodding real slow at everything that was going down. Did he see this activity turning into--Did someone say ANARCHY???

Did he need to interject? Should he interject?

Probably. Would he interject? Maybe not. This was fine. Right?

....... Right?

Er.

So that's what the stench was. Avalon was wondering why she had felt slightly nauseous ever since Professor Schmoe opened that closet. It was quite counterproductive to her nature to throw rubbish around. Which was exactly why she picked up a trash bag and got to work. This might be one of the only times in her life when she could make a huge mess and not even feel bad about it!

She started with a rotten banana peel, flinging it across the classroom, before she found herself wishing that she had a pair of gloves. Was it really safe to touch all this stuff with her bare hands? Yuck. And then there was the first year Gryffindor, maniacally laughing and screaming about anarchy. Some people were getting wayyy too into this. But Avalon couldn't deny that she still wanted to win. That was the competitive streak in her that was talking.

Team Ozone was doing a pretty good job of picking up, so she'd have to step it up a notch. Avalon crumpled up a few old newspapers, tossing them into various corners of the room. A dirty tissue followed, but the Ravenclaw wrinkled her nose in disgust as her hand came into contact with something incredibly sticky. Was that.....snot?! On the tissue?!

Yep. She was rethinking her choice of joining the trash team.

Heath smiled slightly at the praise from Professor Schmoe. “Thank you, sir,” he replied. He didn’t think his poster was that great himself, but the praise was nice all the same. As he hung his poster outside, he admired the other students’ work. They were all nice, with maybe one or two exceptions. He returned to his seat only moments before the professor started speaking again, and he focused his attention on the front of the room.

Blink, blink. Wait, they were doing what now? Heath’s heart sank as he heard the details. This activity was two of his least favorite things combined, teamwork and competition. Seriously, what was it with the professors pitting everyone against each other this term? First DADA, now this… Well, at least Schmoe would probably not throw the losing team in detention. That was something, he supposed. Speaking of teams, which one should he pick? Frankly, he didn’t find either option particularly appealing, but if he had a recycling bag, he probably wouldn’t have to touch anything too nasty. He’d lost track of the numbers for each team, so Team Ozone it was!

Heath retrieved a recycling bag and set to work picking up the plastic bottles and newspapers he saw. Unlike some people in the room, trading verbal barbs with the other side was not his style! Talk was cheap; he would let his actions speak for themselves. As he silently wandered the room looking for more recyclables to pick up, he saw the Slytherin prefect bump into the headmaster’s son. Did she do that on purpose? He couldn’t tell from where he stood, which was the only reason he didn’t say anything about it. He had no tolerance for that nonsense! As far as he was concerned, anyone who wanted to play dirty should join the other team!

Oh, look.

Blake Ryan had joined in the fray. Claudine would ignore the big baby. As for Grantham, the Snakette was having one of those days where the Lion’s presence did nothing to move her. It was if Grantham was a part of the walls of the classroom; she did not exist in Claudine’s eyes.

Emmerson though. Claudine loved that enthusiasm being displayed for the activity. “That’s right,’’ she said, catching a bit of the younger girl’s bubbliness. She quickly dug around to find more coloured tissue. “Christmas is the best time of the year,’’ the Snakette added randomly and tossing the tissue after Emmerson’s thrash. Indeed Claudine also randomly threw crumpled newspapers randomly, and unknowingly in Bernadette’s direction. She’d want the papers to hit Bernadette on the big head of hers had she known.

Or maybe in the face.

Throwing, throwing, throwing thrash like there was not a care in the world.

Okay so....... watching Emmerson throw stuff around the room was almost as much fun as it was to do his own throwing! Grabbing another handful of Merlin know's what he chucked it around the room. It appeared the the polluters were doing a better just than ozone! Ha!! for the win!

And that's when he noticed Claudine was on his team .... if she got hit with some garbage from behind would she notice it came from friendly fire?? Blake kind of wanted to try it ........ That girl needed a reality check .. she was rude to everyone .... okay not everyone .. just him and that bothered him. So grabbing what ever was next his sack he threw it in her direction ... hoping it nailed her in the back or face .. or whatever it hit ....

It was good to see Blake really getting into the throwing. All they had to do was toss carelessly to the wind and they'd win. Team Ozone was the one with the real problem, they had to take the time to get it all clean AND recycled right.

"Sure is!" Emmerson admitted with little thought. No need to convince her, Christmas was AH-MA-ZING. "You think the professor will let us do this more often?" She asked the Slytherin as she jumped onto another desk and kicked that chair away as well. It wasn't everyday that Schmoe let chaos reign. Honestly, she was a little surprised.

But not surprised enough to stop.

Emm continued tossing the trash about, skipping merrily from desk top to desk top until she heard her name. Oh, it was Ashley. "I have a lot of great ideas." The little Gryffindor boasted, not stopping for a second. She could multi-task. It was easy to create a mess while receiving compliments. Just watch.

The 11 year old hopped over to another desk and over turned her bag of garbage completely. There, a whole pile of garbage for whoever to sift through and recycle. HAHAHAAHHAHA!!

Not her problem.

"Right now, I'm just making messes." Which reminded her. Emmerson jumped down from the desk top and went to get herself another pile of garbage. Back up on the desk top, she began throwing again. "Gotta work harder if you wanna save this world! MWAHAHAAHA!" Being the bad guys was more fun than her mummy let on.

Ashley's attempts to distract Emmerson had sorta failed, but Emmerson just dumped her bag of trash in one spot and then paused to get a new one. HA. Not a total loss. She had all the stuff in one spot to easily clean it up. "I'm sure you're very good at that," Ashley said, in a bit of a backhanded way. Yes, Emmerson was very good at making messes for others to clean up. Suffice to say, Ashley did not have a very high opinion of her. Fortunately, she was a very hard worker and had no problems with cleaning up faster. Especially if it meant that they could save the world.

Violet paused for a moment, exhausted, sweating, and with a...was that a banana peel on her head?!??

This was hopeless. The polluters could throw out trash much faster than the cleaners could pick it up. And that was pretty much the way it was in the world, too--it was always easier to mess things up than to fix them.

Still, she pressed on, because, really, what else can you do but keep on trying?

Kale Trent was not a bad guy. If anything, in this narrative, he was the anti-hero. He was throwing things to disrupt the status quo. So all of the naysayers could jot that down.

He was living his most lyrical, his most beautiful dancer life when he was rudely checked by Aboli. The force of her shoulder sent Kale tumbling out of a spin and all of the garbage he had in his arms, for gorgeous tossing, cascaded out of his hands like an avalanche.

………………….

He was not in the mood to be messed with. He was living his best life. All term, day after day, he had been dealing with upsetting things. Namely DAD STUFF. His jaw tightened. Sorry. Headmaster Trent or whatever.

So something in him, something small and fragile, got twisted up when he was confronted with a physical aggression on his dancing person. Very unlike himself-- for Kale Trent was a sweet boy, albeit dramatic, he could confess-- Kale snapped, "What the HECK is your problem, hUH!?!??!"