For The Seventh Time, You Are Wrong PV Lizzie

interacting with @Gerald Fawkes
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Quickly gathering her stuff, Lizzie stood up and looked over to the boy who was waving her over. Obviously, it was the person she had been selected to brew the potion with. She sighed and rubbed two fingers against her temple. She knew that

She moved in between the desks and students shoving past her, grumbling to herself. She had, literally, woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Lizzie balanced all of her equip on top of her arms. The shoulders of taller students bumped into the Ravenclaw. She gasped as the bottle of ink [on top of a book] wobbled a bit. Thankfully, it didn't move meaning the girl didn't have to spend most of the lessons wiping up ink of the floor, her robes and possibly some books.

Eventually, she got to the table and dropped her stuff on top of the desk. The contents from her arms spilled along the surface. She sighed yet again and pushed some quills and books to the edge of the area.

She turned to the boy, Gerald, and nodded her head. She wanted to make the potion perfectly but it was something about the Slytherin taking charge making her not feel very happy. Normally, she would be the leader in everything. Even in lessons and talents she absolutely hated.

"Okay." She said while grabbing the flask of quills, "I'm Lizzie. If you hadn't know that already." She grinned hopefully making him a bit comfortable with her. She held out her hand for him to shake but quickly retracted her hand at remembering that he would be handling slugs. Lizzie scrunched her nose up and shook her body.

She really did hate slimy things. It made her squirm and squeal. Lizzie loved animals and little creatures but anything small, slimy and long [in other words snakes, slugs and snails] made her really uncomfortable. Even if she did not like snakes, it didn't mean she had anything against Slytherins.

"Wait, do we have to do everything perfect? Maybe the book says some instructions wrong." She said while picking a quill out of the flask and waving it around. Lizzie looked around the room continuing to wave it like a wand. "What would happen if we added three quills."

She picked up two more quills and waved them all around her head. She smiled. She knew it wasn't how the potion was meant to be made but it wouldn't be bad to become experimental. Maybe they could make a new potion by accident or they could just do a disastrous practical.

The Ravenclaw had defiantly gotten over the annoyance that had been at the start of the lesson. It was pretty obvious that Lizzie had frequent mood swings. Sometimes she could be beaming like the sun and then the next it would be the Great Depression all over again.

"It can't be anything bad. It's just a small experiment." She leaned on the desk waiting for the boys reaction. Potions basically was just a whole big experiment. Why would trying it out in a lesson be any different?

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word count : 516

"And I'm Gerald," mumbled the boy in response, already hunched over the worktop.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Lizzie's hand stretching and, almost immediately, retracting. His own was deep into the canister, a pair of clammy slugs secured around his fingers, and so he thought her hesitation to connect their hands in a shake was only understandable— and slightly amusing, as well.

Stifling a chuckle, Gerald deposited the lifeless worms on the mortar. As he was about to start crushing the things, he heard Lizzie say something about the textbook instructions being wrong and her suggestion to add a third quill to the mixture. Visibly bewildered, Gerald set the pestle down and turned towards the Ravenclaw.

"Are you— no," he said. Schooling his befuddled expression to appear like less of a haughty git, he continued in a gentler tone. "I don't think that'd be a good idea, Lizzie. Let's stick to the recipe, shall we?"

Admittedly, he had not intended that last "shall we" as an actual question in need of an affirmative reply; he simply supposed the girl would agree with him and returned his gaze to the slugs.

He wasn't able to focus entirely on the grinding of the ingredient, though, because his partner had decided the quills she was meant to be preparing worked just fine as hair accessories. Gerald watched Lizzie play around with the quills for what seemed to be a long while— but had probably been no more than an instant, actually. A confused expression splashed his features; crooked lips gave away the smallest hint of a smile.

"It can't be anything bad. It's just a small experiment."

"A small experiment can still have fatal consequences," he informed. "I say we go by the book."

As much as he had wanted his remark to sound final, his voice came out as soft as before. Truth be told, Lizzie's carefree and almost dreamy attitude was managing to weaken his normally serious exterior; the girl was pretty interesting, to put it that way. Giving in and grinning at her antics would certainly not help him come off as the intimidating character he wished to be seen as; he needed her to listen to him, otherwise their potion would soon be ruined by a third quill (and Merlin knows what else).

"Just two quills, alright?" he said eventually, looking into her eyes. It almost felt as if he expected Lizzie to promise she wouldn't be casually sneaking an extra quill into the cauldron behind his back.

@Lizzie Verdine

interacting with @Gerald Fawkes
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Quickly plucking one of the quills out of her hands, Lizzie nodded. "Yeah, your right. Three quills could make it explode and who knows what else." She placed the other two on the table and went to go put the third one back when she hesitated.

It was very pretty and Lizzie had already touched it meaning it could potentially be infected with her germs. So there was no harm in keeping it? "But I'm sure sticking one on my ear won't cause any harm." She grinned and placed it on her left ear.

At first it wouldn't balance, which made Lizzie huff and pout. It wasn't very easy to make it stay. The weight on one side would just make it top off of her ear. Eventually, she placed it very slowly down. It, thankfully, stayed. The Raven sighed and grinned. She pulled out a small mirror to check that it looked alright and then shoved the mirror back in her messenger back.

The blonde looked over at the book. Just like Gerald had said. They should go by the book but Lizzie wouldn't give up that easily. She didn't want to submit to some random Slytherin she had just met. "I'm sure it used to say add Pungous Onions after the fang things had gone into the potion." She said leaning over the book looking for the ingredient.

She could not find it anywhere. It must have been in another book. The volume that was on the table was Magical Drafts and Potions not Book of Potions the one she had at her house. Scrunching her eyebrows together she crossed her arms knowing the boy would not believe her.

He seemed like a very much by the book boy, which had defiantly already been confirmed. That wasn't normally how Lizzie rolled. It was either go from her memory, that she could not rely on very well because she only remembered things she wanted to, or wing it. The latter was the option she went for the most.

"Your very adamant that we go by the book. Are you scared that something is going to go wrong and your whole career or reputation will crumble?" She asked leaning forward a bit. It wasn't really like her to get all up and personal but it was really a generic question.

Lizzie did not care what reputation she had. As long as it was there. Whether she was known for her music, the preferred option, or known for ruining potions and doing bad in classes it wouldn't matter. If people knew her name she was fine with it. But she hadn't been getting much luck. It had been three months and only some Professors , her best friends, and her project partners knew her name. It was a real bummer.

She turned to the desk and picked up the two quills she had left. Lizzie didn't really know what to do with them. It didn't say anything in the book and nothing came up about preparing the quills in the other volume [Book of Potions].

Digging threw the pile of stuff that was on the desk, Lizzie scrunched her nose up. There was things in there she had never seen before but here she was picking out pieces of parchment that had love hearts on them. She raised her eyebrows and placed it off to the side. The Ravenclaw went digging again and produced a cloth.

She grinned and picked up onto of the quills. Lizzie started to rub the cloth against the quill while nodding her head and humming. She looked up to Gerald who probably hadn't noticed her yet, "It doesn't say anything in the book so I'm improvising. I'm polishing the quill." She chuckled to herself and continued to polish the quills like it was one of the last things she would do on earth.

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Gerald gave a relieved nod at Lizzie's statement. Three quills could indeed make the potion explode. He was glad she'd displayed some common sense before forcing him to recite the safety guidelines for Potions' class; something which he would have certainly done had she not publicly discarded her intention to alter the ingredients' measurements.

His hopes that she would return her attention to the preparing of the quills were proven wrong fairly quickly, though. After settling one of them on her ear and checking her new acquisition with a hand mirror, all the while seemingly undisturbed by Gerald's confused gaze, she came up with another idea, much to the boy's dismay.

Pungous Onions? The Slytherin took a few seconds to study her expression. Was it a joke or was she being serious? If she was trying to mess with him, it was working; if she intended to ruin the potion for good, well, she was on the right track, too.

“Pungous Onions are not in the recipe, if that's what you're looking for,” Gerald said. Regardless of the confidence in his declaration, he let his own eyes wander about the book for a second; just to make sure the ingredient hadn't magically appeared on the page.

Of course, he was right. There were no Pungous Onions in a Cure for Boils. “Where does this girl get her ideas from?” he thought to himself while beginning to work on the grinding of the slugs.

At Lizzie's next intervention, Gerald struggled to hold back a snort.

"My whole career is not going to crumble if y— we screw the potion," he stated, catching himself just in the right instant to not shift the (very much deserved) blame on the Ravenclaw. "However, it would not be a good start, would it?"

Once the slugs were nothing but a jelly-like, greenish fluid, he set them aside and glanced over the recipe for the fifteenth time. He proceeded to grab the metallic recipient in which the previously ground fangs had been kept. As he added four small spoonfuls of powder into the cauldron, he turned around to check on the quills' progress.

"Are you done with the qui— Oh," he began, but was quickly met with Lizzie's explanation.

She was polishing a porcupine quill. Gerald pondered wether it was worth it or not to try interrupt her efforts, for even though they were most definitely useless, he could not think of a way polishing the quills would harm the potion.

"Alright, sure. You go on with that," he surrendered.

Some of the kids around them were already heating and stirring their cauldrons and a few were about to bottle the final brew. Since Gerald could do virtually nothing until Lizzie was done with her polishing, he decided to sit down on his stool and started to tap his fingers against the countertop. In order to give Lizzie a hint of his urgency to finish up, he let out a soft, but nonetheless noticeable sigh, meant to come off as exasperated. The clock on the wall was about to signal the end of the lesson and he thought he should better express their hurry verbally as well.

"Lizzie, the class is nearly over. We ought to get everything inside the cauldron now," he said. "Not finishing on time equals a fail, you know. Not as spectacular a fail as exploding the thing because of added quills, but still a fail."

@Lizzie Verdine

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@Gerald Fawkes

Lizzie sighed and messed around with the quill once again. Her memory was not helping her at all. She could have sworn that Pungous Onions were in the recipe. The girl had read it somewhere and she wasn't about to just give up on it all because some smart Slytherin said so.

"But, I read it in this other book, volume, thing." The girl sighed and turned around to finishing polishing the quill. Hopefully it would not do any harm to the potion a that would ultimatly be her fault and she did not want to take the blame for anything.

Lizzie grinned and chuckled a bit before retaliating, "We? It looks as though only you are doing the potion and I'm just a tag along. A girl that has intelligence what so ever." It was true. The blonde was not very intelligent at all. It was a wonder she was in Ravenclaw.

The girl continued to polish until both of them were ice and clean. They were good enough to her satisfaction and she nodded her head a little bit. Lizzie stood up from her stool and picked up the quills swiftly turning around back to Gerald.

He had started to complain again. Something about them finishing in time otherwise they would fail. Which wasn't something bad in Lizzie's eyes but apparently to him it could be a big deal.

"A fail is a fail." She grinned passing the quills over, "It's only first year. You still have another six years to redeem yourself again. However, I think we should review that thing about the Pungus Onions."

Lizzie closed her eyes and placed her hands on her hips swaying on her ankles forwards and back. She knew she was pushing his buttons but that wasn't the reason for her to keep going. It was genuinely because she thought she was rigt and should at least have been given a chance.

terribly sorry for the short reply D;