Mandrakes for Medicine Finished

Interacting with Breana, Ivy, Lark, Professor Jensen

The thick voice and dragging enunciation were a far cry from Breana's chipper chirps or excited stammers. When she suggested belaying potions talk until she had the mental faculties to do so, Pericles was certain something was wrong, as it seemed a subject she was previously passionate about. The lad obliged with an especially gentle "Oh... well, we don't have to talk! It might be hard t'do after we start, anyhow." Kindness was a reliable mask for concern. Once he spied an unfamiliar Gryffindor girl (Ivy) waving, he gave a gentle nudge of the elbow to help direct her faulty focus, muttering "I think a friend of yours is trying to say hello." In that same moment, Peri also noticed Lark's entrance, so he stopped to wave and smile her way. They weren't well acquainted, but as Ravenclaws who worked the Headliner and shared other errands, he could appreciate a familiar face.

A frown wavered back into place. Eyes wide with worry, Peri echoed for affirmation, "You were awake all night...?" The young eagle was wary about taking off his earmuffs at all, though he eventually complied, lowering the side closest to his unofficial project partner. He managed to multitask listening to the professor and fretting on the inside. Once thanked, he offered Brea another brittle smile. It hid the fact that mere talk of the hospital wing sent his stomach leaping with a spike of unease. Cautiously keeping his voice low, the boy cleared his throat before continuing to the side. "Speaking of the infirmary, maybe we should harvest one or two more, then we could call it an errand well done...?" He pulled another pot closer, though before wrenching out the sorry screaming plant, Peri pressed: "Could I trouble you to walk back to the common room with me? I'm a bit tired too." It was going to be a long trek up those stairs to the tallest tower. The last thing he wanted was to find one of his Housemates passed out on a moving stairwell later on.

WC: 592+348=940

As Miss Jensen put her finger to her lips, Piérre tipped his head in curiosity and the mandrake he cradled in his arms began to quiet as well, almost like a baby which was too tired to care anymore and decided to fall asleep. Eyes widening in wonder, Piérre smiled and began to bounce the plant a little, encouraging it to fall asleep and stay asleep. He didn't think that this was possible; a Mandrake falling asleep, but it was certainly a welcome surprise, and Piérre grinned a little wider until Miss Jensen took her earmuffs off.

Taking this as a positive sign, Piérre took his own off and listened to what the head of house had to say. Reading lips was something that Piérre had always aspired to do, though he usually ended up misinterpreting and messing up what people said as opposed to successfully understanding what was being mouthed. Huh, so mandrakes could quiet down when unpotted for long enough. It was somewhat funny...

Nodding with Miss Jensen, Piérre happily placed his mandrake in a box and put it aside. From what he could see, it appeared that most of the mandrakes had been unpotted, put away, and now some students were beginning to disperse. Perhaps some more would come in, in which case Piérre would have to cover his ears once again, but as it was, he thought that he was happy enough with what he had done. One mandrake could be just as helpful as one hundred, if they were used correctly. It was a little scary in Piérre's mind, the idea that the baby-like thing would be cut up and used in a potion, but at the same time, Piérre came to understand that it was, after everything was said and done, a plant. Plants could reproduce infinitely faster and more efficiently than any creature. The loss of one plant or a few tens would not scar the ecosystem forever.

"Thank you Miss Jensen!" Piérre whisper-called out to the Head of House as he grabbed his satchel and was about to depart. He wasn't eager to wake up the mandrake plants, just in case they could wake up because of loud noises. With a bright smile and an energetic wave, Piérre closed the greenery door, humming as he made his way back to his own dorm room, not realizing that he was still wearing the green earmuffs around his neck...

Leaving unless interrupted!

~open to interactions~
Interacting with @Crescent Moon

As Ivy continued to unpot the mandrakes, the greenhouse began to fill. She found it curious that so many people arrived later than the offical starting time, but hey, she had been a little late herself. Ivy glanced up, as she wrapped her hand around the stem of her - third mandrake, was it? - to see a blonde girl with dyed tips move to stand across the table. She recognised her as one of her classmates, more specifically, the Hufflepuff girl with dyed pink-and-blue tips and one of the strangest name combinations there was: Crescent Moon. The two girls had never spoken before, despite sharing a few classes. Ivy pondered whether or not to acknowledge her or not before raising a hand in greeting. She doubted that Crescent would be able to hear her if she spoke, but she said, “Hey, Crescent. Fancy seeing you here,” anyway, just for good measure.

Ivy pulled upwards and the mandrake came up, loud cries filling the air again. She grimaced - no matter how many mandrakes she pulled, Ivy was sure that she would never get used to the sound of crying (and she certainly hoped not - how morbid would that be?). She glanced across the room and noticed that a few people were cradling their mandrakes in their arms in an attempt to calm them down. Ivy looked at the shrieking mandrake she was holding by the stem and tried to copy her peers’ actions. The mandrake cried even louder, to her alarm, and she dropped it into the box, pale cheeks flushing pink for moment. “Worth a shot,” she announced to Crescent, shaking her head with a rueful grin. Still, annoyance rushed through her for a moment as she watched an unfamiliar Gryffindor boy (Piérre) successfully quiet his mandrake down by cradling it. Why didn’t anything ever work for her?

Whatever. Her mandrake’s cries were slowly but surely fading, and Ivy reached for yet another pot. Wrapping a gloved hand around the mandrake stem, she commenced pulling it up and out of its pot, and into a box. The mandrakes rather reminded her of a baby, and she had never been good with babies. She didn’t know how to hold them, how to talk to them, how to stop them from crying. Perhaps that was the reason she had failed at cradling the mandrakes - it was something done usually with a baby, by its mother.

Unpleasant as this task may be, Ivy was inclined to continue harvesting these mandrakes instead of heading out, as some of her peers were doing. It was a dull and monotonous task, and very loud, but it gave her something to do, something that would keep her mind off the troubling events happening in her life. Of course COVID-19 was very concerning, but there were other things going on too. Her older sister, Lillian, had eloped five years ago, and only last September did she send a letter. Ivy had been angry, and they had exchanged letters for the past few months now, until they just... stopped. No longer angry, Ivy send letter after letter apologising for her cutting words and pleading for a reply, but nothing had become of it. As she thought of this, Ivy’s hands fell to rest on the tabletop and she stared at the pots in front of her without seeing them. What had become of Lillian? Surely she wasn’t... dead?

For a fraction of a second, a look of pure terror and panic flashed across Ivy’s face, reflecting the way her heart broke and stomach dropped. Her hand swept outwards and came into contact with an empty box (afterwards, she would feel grateful that it wasn’t a pot). It landed on the ground with a soft thud. This seemed to snap Ivy out of her trance and her cheeks coloured. The box had not made a noise loud enough to attract the entire greenhouse (thank God for that), but those standing near her would have definitely taken notice. Ivy would mutter a half-hearted “Sorry” in their general direction as she picked it up before glancing at Professor Jensen, hoping that she hadn’t noticed. Jesus, Ivy, you can’t even de-pot mandrakes without making a scene.

Yes, well. Oops.

dang that was dramatic

WC: 741+713=1454/400

Interacting with @Piérre Marchonné and @Ivy Bellamy
Mentioning @Pericles Dralt and @Breana Oliveire

Open to Interaction

COVID-19. She'd heard about it already, about the deadly infection sweeping over the continents to nearly every corner of the world. Not in great detail, however. Her mother had touched upon the subject in recent correspondence, indicating that her work demands had increased and that she thought it would be better — nay, insisting — that Evelynn remain at school for the Easter and Spring holidays.

To say that Evelynn was dismayed would be an understatement. She was livid. Initially, at least. Going home had been the one shred of hope onto which she'd clung for the past months. The thought of being able to return home, to spend some quality time with Cassie and to freely roam her actual bed room without fear of being interrupted or inciting some stupid argument again, had been the only source of hope that had given her strength to rise every morning and face her days with head held aloft. To have that snatched away was just…not fair. Who cared if there was a virus roaming around? Weren't there always? How was this any different than anything else that her mom and the people she worked with had to deal with on a regular basis?

She didn't understand. Not that she'd really been given much of an opportunity to understand. It wasn't as though she had access to the internet to clarify her questions, nor was there any real source of muggle news around the school. And her mother wasn't exactly being candid with answers. Which…worried Evelynn more than she cared to admit. It was unlike her. She could only assume that it meant her mother was either attempting to downplay a situation that was worse than Evelynn could envision, or that she was too busy to sit down to properly write a reply. Neither conclusion sat particularly well with the lioness, leaving her to feel more than a little abandoned. Still, she'd tried to remedy her mood, reminding herself that this would now be two weeks of free reign over the castle to search out clues about Lear's disappearance, scour the library, and get in some additional study time. Not to mention the plans to initiated inter-house Quidditch matches on the down-low had come to fruition.

Only…her attempt not to dwell on the issues facing those on the other side of the magical veil would not be made so easily. The virus had apparently permeated into the wizarding world as well, now. This was made all too clear with the call to arms by the Slytherin Head of House seeking assistance to prepare ingredients for the mass production of potions. There was much that Evelynn had yet to learn about the magical world, but she was absolutely certain about one thing: the Statute of Secrecy. Given her label as a member of the young class of wizards, notoriously irresponsible and loose-handed with spells, this was a concept that had been ground into all of them since day one. Wizards kept to their own. And muggles to their. There was the wizarding world, and then there was the non-magical world. The two, despite often occupying the same physical space, were as separate as the sea and the sky above. Rarely, she was sure, did the magical world ever risk broaching the Statue of Secrecy to aid in muggle affairs. To do this now…Well, Evelynn tried not to think about what it meant for her mother. Or the rest of her family.

What it meant for her, however, was that she found herself among several others in the greenhouses to do her part.

* * *

She had been working nearish to where her Gryffindor peer, Pierre, had been stationed. The sudden eruption of the plant's wailing had made her jump, and she'd wheeled around to see the Britalian looking just as flummoxed as she felt. Even over the shrill cries of the young mandrakes, she could just about make out his muffled shouting through the thick defense of her grey earmuffs.

"Put…it…in…the…box!" Evelynn stated (not yelled), enunciating her words with exaggerated lip movements and gesturing towards the nearest crate.

She needn't have bothered attempting to explain, however. Barely a moment later, Professor Jensen had commanded all of their attention, and provided additional clarification on the matter. It was odd. During that brief period of removing her protective coverings, Evelynn felt as though she had cotton stuff into her ears. The silence in the absence of screaming potato people and floundering students was almost just as deafening.

"See?" Evelynn stated quietly when she'd finished, casting Pierre a mildly amused expressed complete with crinkled half-smile.

With that, she returned her earmuffs back into place, cupping them and speaking aloud, "Testing", before brows knitted with her frown. She'd heard herself loud as day, her voice reverberating in her head as though she hadn't bothered to put protection on at all. Well, that was hardly an indication to whether they were working or not.

Abandoning that strategy, she turned until she spied someone else speaking, preferably before everyone dove right back into their work. She was just adjusting the earmuffs when something someone spoke nearby piqued her attention. She swivelled her head just in time to see the back of the platinum blonde head of one Pericles Dralt. Draught of the Living Dead. She had been quite certain that's what she'd heard just now. Naturally, it sparked a range of thoughts stemming from the last time she had seen the boy in any kind of extracurricular capacity — in the classroom of the first Liberation meeting. Perhaps he'd done some research? Gray eyes followed after him as he went to fetch a crate and bring it back to the tap-dancing girl. Interesting. Taking a leaf from his book, she traipsed after him to fetch a crate of her own, making a mental note to track him down sometime for some light questioning.

"Here," Evelynn said upon her return, once again addressing Pierre.

Of course, he probably couldn't hear her, but nevermind. After waving to catch his attention, she pointed to the box, setting its lid to its side as she arranged it between them at the table. Then, like everyone else, she set her attention on the plant pot before her, dug a little bit of the dirt away from the plant — which immediately started shifting, fingers poking out of the soil and moving as though in an attempt to cover itself back up — and grasped at the base of the stalk, ready to try to yank it free. Only, a nearby commotion of a clattering box snapped her attention. Gaze snapping to the source, she spied a rather flushed and embarrassed looking Bellamy, the girl next to whom Evelynn had sat at the recent Talent Show.

"You alright?" she mouthed, her expression clearly one of concern. As though to emphasize the question, she pointed with her free hand towards Bellamy before making an 'O' and 'K' in ASL with an accompanying questioning look.

Word Count: 1,094

Interacting with @Ivy Bellamy
Open to interactions

Word count: 434+222= 656

Interacting with @Pericles Dralt
Mentioning @Ivy Bellamy

Breana nodded heavily, the last nod making her nod off to sleep before realizing that she is dozing off. "RIGHT!" She belted, trying to force herself to wake up. "I mean... yeah, you're... you right, you right... our... our job..." She shook her head, her brown curly locks bouncing along as she tried to fire herself up. "I can't let my parents down!" She said, patting her cheeks with her hands to lightly smack herself awake. She might look crazy to someone who just saw her yell, but it is a necessary embarrassment to get her to get going with the errand.

She slowly turned to Pericles, a bit embarrassed with what she did. he lightly chuckled, trying to keep her face, but thankfully their conversation quickly brushed it aside to something else as he pointed out a Gryffindor girl to her. "Huh?" She looked over, recognizing her easily. "Oh, that's Ivy..." Breana said, a slur of her sleepiness still evident in her voice. She nodded towards her and nodded back, just thinking that the long-haired girl was in a haste to meet with her friend. Breana didn't mind, of course. Her brain is too tired to try to build a relationship with her just yet. "We met while I was cry--yyyyiiiiickets! I was.... erhm... yeah, looking at... crickets...?" Her sentence ending in a question, not even trying to hide what she was about to say. She cleared her throat, turning to focus on a mandrake and pulled it out of the pot. She winced at its cry before dropping it over to the box Pericles brought.

Breana turned to Peri as he asked her about her all-nighter. "Hm...? O-oh, uh yeah... Yeah?" The last "yeah" being directed to herself, pausing to look up and remember before nodding to her friend. "Yep, yeah... But it's fine! I'm..." The tiny girl yawned, her freckled face stretching as her body took in the longer breath. "F-fine... I just wanted to do some advanced reading... and poof! It became Koko Krunch-- I mean... It was already four in the morning..." She chuckled a bit at her joke. Breana looked over at Pericles, who was currently sporting a look of concern. To her, however, her mind registered it as her making jokes in the middle of a serious situation. She cleared her throat, pulling back another mandrake before Pericles spoke again. "Wha...? You and me... walking back to the commons... together...?" Though her thought process was admittedly slower than normal, it did finally register what that meant for the zombie of a Ravenclaw. That would mean she'd be seen walking with him. At a glance, it'd be harmless. For Breana, it would be a MASSIVE hint of her inner feelings, given how she's acted towards him in the past.

"AHH! No! Nooooo I'm fine... honest!" She said, huffing up her chest. She pulled off a rather forced smile to him, that can only be described as something from a clown painting, "See? I'm fine-- GAH!" She stumbled on her footing, however, but caught herself and shifted her balance properly. "Heh, erhm... maybe I should take a break for a few minutes..." Breana chuckled sheepishly, before sighing. "I still wanna go to the lake for the other stuff... the octopus, I think? I just..." She looked down before looking up at Peri. "I don't want to... just sit back when I can be doing something to this already. I don't wanna do that to my parents... my family..." She sighed. She shook her head, feeling like she spilled a bit too much to her bespectacled friend. She pulled out a mandrake, now getting used to the muffled cries and throwing it unto the pot. " Sorry... the whole situation has been doing my head in... We can still walk together, but I'm still heading to the lake and stuff... I'm not stopping you from going to the commons or anything like that..."

WC: 1,004/400
Mentioning: @Ethen Emrys
**Ethen allowed me to minimally god-mode him and told me what he would be doing**

( Interacting with @Breana Oliveire )

Pericles' query was met with drooping- no, closing eyes... a bowing head... the stillness of sleep.... He leaned in ever so slightly, voice just loud enough to reach through those earmuffs. "Breana?" Came the concerned call. She shouted awake, causing him to flinch away, typically placid expression twisted with shock and concern in equal measure. "Your parents...?" he echoed absently. His housemate went from fading, to slapping her cheeks, and even babbled something about "Crickets? Breana, I-" she was even yawning "-I'm sorry, I dunno what Koko Krunch is, but are you sure you're really -...."

The last word was meant to be Alright, though that abrupt stumble was answer enough, let alone the disturbing smile which suggested the witch was lacking control over her facial expressions. Her passing consideration of a break had him offering a soft "Yeah" and a weak smile. Yet his brow was marked with a worried furrow, expression just as vague and lacking as his voice. As soon as she spoke of heading to the lake errand however, the lad looked away. He frowned uneasily at the next pot, plucking his mandrake free with deft precision. Pericles was horrible at telling people when they should or shouldn't do something. As worried as he may be, he struggled to try and sway his peer from potential danger, mulling over the matter in fretful silence. Maybe the icy waters would wake her up? Yet perhaps she would mishandle some unforgiving tentacles, or plant face-first into said waters instead, or fall asleep on the walk....

"I suppose one more errand couldn't hurt," Pericles pressed himself to admit, adding in a furtive half-smile, glancing to and from Breana with a reluctance which would have been blatant to someone actually awake. He waited until the next bout of screeching died down before asserting, "If you're sure you wouldn't rather take your break at the Tower, I'll walk with you to the lake instead, if that's alright." While the young wizard wasn't at ease trying to change the minds of others, his own mind was made up. He would help with a few more mandrake pots, then continue on to the tentacle harvest, whether with the half-conscious housemate or at a protective pace not too far behind.

( Leaving thread unless stopped! )