Llewellyn narrowed his eyes at the professor and further narrowed them at Laurasia. In this case it is an eextremely common plant... Hello. Where are we? Oh yes, I remember a magic school! He thought to himself contemptuously, Didn't we just get through asking to discuss the magical properties of plants, considering this is herbology and not botany? Llewellyn sighed and resigned himself to the inevitable boredom he would experience in this class. He quietly took out his quill an dbegan absently writing.

Professor Virohsa nodded. "Very well! 3 pts for Laurasia", she smiled. She didn't give Kay any points because she simply repeated the answer she was trying to get. "Since herbology deals directly with the use of plants and medicine, medicinal purposes/traits is the right answer. But, we aren't going to focus on the different types of medicinal benefits. That will be your homework. Today, we will work carefully with different types of Cherry Blossoms and combinations. I want you to either work in pairs or alone. Please gather only one type of Cherry Blossom. This will be important for your homework, so note which one you grabbed", she told the class in a clear and loud tone.

"The blackboard will illustrate which types you can choose from, so choose carefully. After you have grabbed your plant from the front of the class return to your seat", she smiled.

ooc- Need to make a double post because there are too many pics..

Ooc- You can choose from these ones too

:: Ganymede looked at each, she picked the one she found nicest.



She then sat down and looked closely at her choice. ::

To be quite honest, all looked beautiful. From one to sizx, teh sight was overwelming. Or maybe she just liked pink. Fnially, as if watching 3 and 4 as it this was going to be one difficult decition, she pikde number 4. Only because 3 made her think of that candy, sweet cotton, and it was making her hungry.

Sitting back at her desk with a pot of this flower, Nadia statred ahead waitnig for the professor to give further instructions. On the part of getting a partner - Nadia had no problems working in pair as she had working alone, so she just waited.

Kay selected number 7.

Llewellyn walked to the fornt of the classroom and grabbed the #4 cherry blossom. Walking back to his seat he sighed heavily and sat down.

Dru finally zoned back into the lesson and copied the notes that Ama had written down. "Oh joy, plants." She said quietly to her friend. "Boring."

Laurasia got up to look through the different types of plants that she had to choose from when she noticed the look that Llew was giving her. Her head swam in confusion & this reflected in her face. He looked rather annoyed with her, yet she couldn't imagine why that would be. Not knowing what to think, & feeling suddenly uncomfortable with this seemingly unprovoked reaction from a person that she had begun to consider a friend, she simply mouthed "What did I do?" as she walked past his desk.

When she reached the plants she scanned through them slowly, getting a feel for each of them. Being drawn to the 1st plant (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1.../amanogawa.jpg) the most, she picked one of them up & returned to her desk.

The Cherry tree has been used in symbolism as love, and it is also used in Divination. The wood has been used for wand making, and the fruit even has medicinal properties. For one, it is a natural diuretic and can be used to help those with gout. The acerola cherry is also a source of vitamin C.

Professor Virohsa smiled. "Good, now I want you to decide which of the two exercises you will complete. In one hand, you will brew tea.. Or you will brew a meal of sorts. The reason why I'm having you decide and why we are doing these two is because part of herbology also entails knowing potion-making and common sense. I want you to get a feel for these domains when using plants, so we are using harmless plants today. Next class, however, we will use a tad more dangerous plants", she told the class with a small grin.

"You will find the plates, pots, and such to your left. Remember, pay attention to detail!", she said severely. "I want you pay attention to your book and its instructions. Turn to page 315 on brewing tea from plants and 340 on making meals with plants. Also, the end result should look like this.. but it may vary according to the plant color and type you have chosen", she said as she pointed at a third Blackboard.

Llewellyn raised an eyebrow at the Professor's instructions. Shrugging to himself he turned to his left and gathered a few things, then returned to his station. Llewellyn first grabbed a pair of shears and severed the stems from the flowers, then washed them thouroughly. The boy then set his flowers in a large bowl and covered them with salt then sprinkled a few spoonfuls of plum vinegar over them, covered them, and set them aside. Wondering how she expected them to pickle them within the class period, he sighed and tapped his fingers on his desk. To Llewellyn's amazement however the pickling container he had set his flowers in, within minutes had completely dehydrated his flowers. The boy then waved his wand, creating a small flame, upon which he set a large kettle of water. While waiting for his water to boil, he finished cleaning his now completely dry flowers. When the water came to a boil, the hufflepuff mixed his flowers in with some already available green tea, and prepared his tea, setting it in front o fhim when he was done.

Nadia listened and nodded, having present what Lauracia had told her, and eyeing the blackboard3. Nonetheless, Nadia prefered solos and all of it. Just the way she made things when it came to potions. But sadly, it was also true that her potion skills were quite better than her cooking. What happened with cooking is that the intructions were especifics and she always turned to have forgotten the oil over the saucepan, or took the wrong bowl or basin, she really was in need for a common cooking book!

Taking at least one of each, the pots, plates and everything she could find, and went back to her table. Tea couldn't be too difficult. She had made herself tea every so often. Nonetheless.... "Lauracia, would you like to be my partner?" she asked. If there was a person in this room who would know not to make a mistake here, was the first year student.

"Let's do the tea first, then the cooking, right?" she added as she put the water to boil over a bluebell flame. Yes, she wanted to do both, but not at the same time.

Arkee eyed the Hufflepuff boy warily as he dried his cherry blossoms and boiled them in a kettle.

"Something," she muttered to herself, "is not quite right about a person who carries salt and weird liquids to classes, and has them ready at hand. It's convenient, too convenient."

Arkee watched the boy with a suspicious glare, and twitched her nose for good measure.

Peony was, quite frankly, rubbish at Potions. She was impatient, and she had this crazy fear of knives that prevented her from chopping the ingredients up as finely as they needed to be. So she sat there, silently, wincing internally at the thought of the scolding she would no doubt receive at the end of the class.

Serena turned to page 315 to start brewing tea from the flower of the cherry tree. She chose flower number 3 because she liked the hint of pink and the many petals of that particular flower. She gathered a pot, some water and utensils and started brewing her tea.

Dru stood up and grabbed two plants, not noticing or caring what they looked like, and returned to her desk placing one infront of Ama. She listened to the professor talk but when Dru had found out that they were to make tea with the plants, she couldn't help but let out quite an audiable snigger. "She's lost it," Dru said to Ama as she got her herbology book out of her bag. Flicking through the pages she asked, "Flower tea or mush in leaves?"

Amaris snickered and rolled her eyes at Professor Virohsa. This wasn't exactly one of the most interesting classes at Hogwarts and the fact that Virohsa was probable one of her least favorite Professors didn't help boost Ama's interest in the class.

Amaris wrinkled her nose. Neither sounded appetizing.

"How are we supposed to turn this," said Amaris her nose still wrinkled and brow furrowed as she picked up the plant before her. "Into tea? We're not going to drink it are we? I have had enough bad experiences with these Professors making us ingest things..."

Amaris pondered the idea of making a meal but gagged. She figured they were a whole lot safer with tea.

"Tea...I mean how bad can it be? We boil some water, throw the leaves in there. Let it boil for a while."

Ama shrugged and laughed.

Professor Virohsa walked around the class to supervise the students. As she walked around, she heard a student laughing. Turning her attention to the Gryffindor girl, she frowned and walked towars Amaris. "Something particularly important that you want to share with the class, girl?", she asked as she crossed her arms.

Dru looked up and smirked at the professor who had just come over to talk to Ama. "We were debating wether to have pollen infested tea or mush for our evening meal," She said to Virohsa, trying her best not to laugh.

Amaris blinked.

Rats! She thought. Not again.

"Erm..."

Amaris snickered and pretended to be searching for something in her bag.

Professor Virohsa smirked. Dru was certainly a character. "Very well. I am glad you volunteered to try everyone's creations.. including yours", she told her coldly. She knew Dru would do a bad job with hers... and to make sure she did, Professor Virohsa decided to stand right next to Dru. Looking over Dru's shoulder, she made sure she had the perfect view of everything she was doing.

"If you don't hurry fast enough, you will lose Slytherin points, child", she said very matter-of-factly.

Laurasia smiled when she heard what the professor wanted them to do for classwork. She definately shouldn't have any trouble with this assignment. She was getting ready to begin when she heard Nadia ask to be her partner for the class. She looked up & smiled brightly. "Sure, I'd love to."

She gathered her plant & the rest of her supplies & took them over to where Nadia was sitting. "I only ask that we use my Amanogawa plant for the first part, only because i think that it makes a smoother tea." She smirked at Nadia slightly. "I think that this plant has enough blooms on it for us to make a perfectly lovely fresh-blossom tea. Can you please start taking a large sum of the flowers off of the tree please. Since we're going to be using fresh petals we'll need quite a lot of them."

She pulled a very small pair of what looked like pinking-shears out from her bag. "Here, use these on the flowers delicate stems. You want to make a clean cut, without tearing the blossom from the plant. It may damage the plant if you don't."

While Nadia began to gather the blossoms Laurasia grabbed a clean pitcher from one of the shelves & filled it with water. She placed the end of her wand into the pitcher of water and stated firmly "Relashio". Immediately the water began to boil. She then pulled out a medium-sized pestal & mortar while turning towards Nadia. Seeing that she had already collected quite a number of blossoms she let out a little chuckle. "Oh goodness, thank you Nadia. We didn't need quite that many, but we can always make some scented spritz-water with the rest of them." She smiled & put a couple of handfuls of the blossoms into the pestal. She very gently used the mortar to just barely bruise the petals. Looking over at Nadia's curious expression she replied, "This will help them to release their beneficial oils. You just have to be sure not to bruise them too much." She then placed the blossoms into the pitcher of boiling water & covered it with a larger dish. "Keeping the tea covered while it brews stops it from losing its beneficial oils during the steeping. The steam, containing the oils will gather on the bottom of the dish & end up returning to the tea."

After about 10 minutes, Laurasia uncovered the pitcher & a strong, pleasant floral smell came from the water. She smiled at Nadia. "Okay, now we need to remove the steeped blossoms." She grabbed a sifted from the shelf, along with another clean pitcher. She placed the sifter above the new pitcher & poured the contents of the tea into it, while the sifter caught all of the excessive plant matter. "Okay, now we can pour some out." She poured two glasses of the tea & added some fresh flower blossoms to float on top of the tea. Smiling, she handed Nadia her glass of tea. "Enjoy. If you prefer a sweet tea, you can always add a bit of honey to it." She clanked her glass against Nadia's in a toast & sipped her own tea slowly.

"Oh, before I forget." She waved her wand at the pitcher of tea & stated the incantation "Relashio Infinitae". The water began to steam, as it would now until the tea was gone.

Nadia nodded at the first request, having no objections to it - Lauracia was the expert. At the second, she started taking the flowers off, considering that it may be a more humane way if the only took the petals... but then again that could be just the contrary. Gardeners cut it all off for a reason, right? Right it was, and this girl was on her element when she pulled out a pair of special scissors.

Wondering what was too much and what too little, she placed a small pile of flowers over the table as Lauracia spoke more intructions. Indeed, she seemed to have taken a bit over needed. Oh well. She was already wondering what they would need spritz-water for and how that was made.

The rest looked like potions. The petals were to be crushed, it seemed, not only left to rest in the water. Nadia was curious, principally because she had never done this ever and the prospect of drinking scented water looked like a different experience. Her mother never cooked (as if she had the time) and most of the food she ate was bought as if already made. She wasn't complaining, the cook did put a lot into the meals. But well. That included tea, which she always made with tea bags and barely wondered how they got its scent. In all honest Nadia drank of the common type, her preference.

Back to pay attention to the actual proceeding (Well, needless to say, if this was potions her distraction could have caused a bit of a problem here. She needed to stop with the daydreaming. Not even sure where these thoughts came from anyways.) Seemed it wasn't tyhat needed, her attention. Lauracia had covered and uncovered the tea and took care of most of the steps, allowing Nadia to watch. Less probabilities I mess up, Nadia thought.

Lauracia even took care of the arrangements. Nadia was surprised to find herself holding a cup of tea with a Cherry three blossom floating in the drink and even tended to keep it warm. Not for the first time, Lauracia made Nadia blush. "Thanks," she managed to say. The most she had said in all the proceedings. She was starting to feel a bit dumb.

The best talent Dru had was to block out annoying people and that is exactly what she did when it came to the Professor. She read the instructions for making tea and then started following them by the letter.

Once the tea was boiling, almost finished, she started clearing away the small bit of mess that she had created. She looked over at Ama's creation and gave her a small smile that said 'I'm glad I'm good at potions'.

Only then did she turn around to acknowledge Virohsa. "Anything else professor?" She asked in a sarcastically sweet voice with a smile that matched, knowing that she was going to get an unpleasent job seeing as she hadn't made a single mistake making her tea.


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