Set Alight Errand Béatrice a/or Open Finished

Ruthie had never really liked fire; she was more a water person. Her whole life before Hogwarts was defined by the ocean, and even at Hogwarts she found she was spending an awful lot of time down by the Great Lake. Water was how she calmed her mind and her spirit, her soul for lack of a better word. And yet when Professor Lydursdattir proposed an opportunity to work with fire, the young Scottish girl had been intrigued. Always curious, she thought it might be a good opportunity to learn more about it through osmosis. And after all, how hard could candle-making really be?

And so one afternoon when she'd had a gap in her class schedule, she made her way across to the Ancient Runes classroom. It was not a room she frequented often as the subject was not on the first year curriculum. The prospect of adding to her schedule in third year wasn't something she had given very much thought to at all--it was much too early for all of that--but her extremely limited impression was that runes was a challenging discipline, one that required consistent study and rigor. It had rules and language, she imagined, and perhaps these required interpretation from an experienced hand. Still, she tried to keep an open mind when it came to Hogwarts, a place where there always seemed more to learn. She would not close her mind to the discipline, but rather this humble errand from the Professor might, she suspected, be a first glimpse at the subject. From there, she could decide whether she liked it or not.

The stairs up to the classroom were tall and long, but worth it once she reached the classroom. The room itself was different than any other she had visited at Hogwarts: it didn't appear to have desks. Instead, fireplaces lined the floor; each contained by a ring of stones. Were these runes themselves, perhaps? Ruth didn't know and she didn't ask. She was still finding her way around the room. The fireplaces came with a cauldron and above them hung the wax. On a nearby table sat various herbs and a bowl with chocolate frogs. Ruthie's eyes lit up at the sweets. She'd been dying to start her own card collection, and this seemed as good a way as any.

Standing over a cauldron, she wished she'd brought a friend, but then she was still gathering those--it was a work in progress. At least she had managed to pick a good cauldron, or she thought it was a good cauldron. It sat by the window, giving her a view onto the grounds. Not quite the one from the Ravenclaw tower, but it was nice all the same. Ruthie loved having the overcast light dip into the room when it could, and she knew she was messing up the candle, she could look out on the loch for momentary calm. Additionally, the cauldron seemed in good condition, clearly used but not broken or cracked anywhere. This she felt was important because it minimized the high likelihood of her getting wax on the floor--or pretty much everywhere.

But this was enough dawdling. It was time to begin. She picked up a thread from the table and considered the herbs. She picked up of sprig of each herd and held it to her nose, taking in the scent. She was searching, to be quite blunt about it, for a Scottish herb because she wanted the candle she made to smell like home. A small frown began to emerge in the corner of her mouth. The problem was that none of these herbs smelled like home. She longed for Bog Myrtle, Meadowsweet, Hawthorn or even common Heather. She considering asking the Professor for one of these--shouldn't Hogwarts have everything?--but decided against it for the moment.

Picking up a sprig of English Lavender, she decided to make do and walked back across to her cauldron. With her thumbnail, she straightened out the thread she had in her hand before dunking it into the wax that lay in the cauldron below. Ruthie waited about ten seconds before pulling it out, only to reveal a very scrawny thread. The wax had made very little impact at all. The instruction to dunk repeatedly had not been frivolous. The thread truly needed to be dunk a lot and often. Ruthie started to play with intervals: how long the thread stayed in the wax and how long it should be left in the air to dry before it went in for its next dunking. But after awhile counting seconds the would-be candle spent in the air grew tedious.

To break up the time, she reached for the lavender she had procured from the table earlier. The violet color was bright and full; they must have been picked recently. Slowly, she began picking off the petals and dropping them into the wax. She watched as ten or so floated in, but the petals were tiny and fragile. This would be even more tedious than the waxing. After considering it for a moment, she wrapped the sprig in her right hand and clasped her left over it. Then, she started rubbing her hands together as though she were going to start a fire. When she opened them, the lavender petals fell in easily, much more effectively.

But while she had been wrestling with the herb, the thread had been lying idly in the cauldron wax. Picking it up by the cord, Ruthie swirled the thread in the wax to ensure some lavender bits got in. Wanting to check on the development of the shape, she pulled on the thread a bit too hard and the candle-in-progess zipped up into the air with a trail of hot wax following it. As the wax dripped onto the floor, Ruthie reached for the candle, but it was hot to the touch and she dropped it immediately as she clasped her hand in pain. Her back haunched protectively, she just tried to breath through the minor burn. Looking down she saw the lavender candle and the wax. A lot of wax. She had no choice; she'd have to tell the Professor about the mess she'd made.

Summoning some kind of courage, she pipped up, "Professor Lydur..." Her voice trailed off. That last name was too much for someone how had just experienced a small burn. "Professor," she said more clearly this time, "I think I might need some help." This might even be a decent time to ask about some Meadowsweet, provided she'd get a second go at making one of those little lights. It couldn't turn out any worse than this.