Closed Trust Me, Herbology Is Not Fun PV Astra Norrick

Interacting with @Renelle Dalton
Astra speaking: #136323
Thoughts: Italics
Others: Bold

Astra entered the greenhouse with a sigh. She checked the small satchel that held any books she needed for the day, as well as her gloves for the wonderful Herbology. Oh joy.

It wasn't that Astra didn't like plants- ok, it was definitely that Astra didn't like plants. She couldn't keep them alive and they were so boring. Nothing like animals. Animals were quite entertaining, even the old ones like Novem.

She would've preferred Care of Magical Creatures to this any day. Or Charms or Astronomy or Flying. She wanted to do something with magic. Which, maybe Herbology did count, in that respect. It involved magical plants.

But are magical plants that much different than regular plants? She remembered that Mandrakes (which Roderick had said the first years learned about, but she didn't quite trust him) screamed, but she figured that regular plants would probably scream too if someone pulled them out of their soil.

She looked around the room, not feeling people-y but also knowing she was going to have to be near someone. Ugh. She didn't want to accidentally sit beside someone talkative, imagine how painful that would be.

So when Astra spotted none other than Renelle Dalton, she made a beeline for her best friend, sitting on the ground about five feet away. She hoped dearly that she would be able to stay seated, lately it seemed like her body was on strike and refusing to sit still.

"I hope it's an easy lesson..." she muttered basically to herself, but loud enough to where people could hear.

Renelle really ought to start looking into which houses she had her lessons with, because the unexpectedness was only fun for so long before it became too- well, unexpected.

For one, she definitely hasn’t been expecting to see her dear friend Astra of the sneks here in this particular Herbology class, trying to comb back through her memories with some difficulty, Renelle couldn’t help but remember seeing somewhere that it was going o be a Gryffinclaw lesson.

Oh, well. She certainly wasn’t going to complain about not being in the same room with those overly loud and brash ‘lions’, especially if it meant the alternative was her best friend. Almost jumping up in surprise, the Ravenclaw’s head shot toward the redhead who had just plopped herself down next to her, like she was a ghost. Talk about unexpected…

“I swear, every time you sneak up on me like that, it chips away at my life expectancy.” Rolling her eyes, Renelle struggled to stand up from her spot on the floor, as the start of class was singnaled. She looked around, frowning slightly. “Wait- when did so many people get here?”

But that did not matter, for they did, and were now all around the two girls, their chattering and jittering dying down slowly. As the teacher started the lesson, her hopes for a somewhat interesting time was dashed as he started droning on about the millions of rules in his subject. Renelle zoned out. She glanced at Astra beside her, and discreetly whispered, “Plants. Nice, right? Hopefully they’ll be able to survive our hands.”

Interacting with @Astra Norrick

Interacting with @Renelle Dalton
Astra speaking: #136323
Thoughts: Italics
Others: Bold

"You're going to live forever, Renelle. Only the good die young, you know," Astra joked, laughing at her friend's surprised reaction. "And they've been here for a bit. You just weren't on earth to realize it." The two girls seemed to share two major traits: an inability to focus and a penchant for mischief (read: desire for chaos). In regards to the former, they zoned out regularly, often together when they were supposed to be doing something productive. Often brought back with an "Earth to the nerds" by Roderick, or "Earth to the girls" by parents, Astra would often jokingly say "You weren't on earth to see it" if something happened while her friend was zoned out.

Astra stood and brought out a quill and parchment, idly scratching out the rules with her left hand, the one she didn't use for writing but did use for about everything else. She was trying to become completely ambidextrous, a mission of two years now. It was going well so far. What? Muggle school is boring. Might as well do something idly useful.

Astra chuckled when Renelle made the comment about keeping plants alive. "The poor things don't stand a chance with me," she said, messing with the tail of her quill. It seemed this first lesson was only about going over rules and such, but surprisingly she was not anticipating the more practical part of class as she usually did. "I even managed to kill a fake plant. Nothing is safe."

Feigning thoughtfulness, the dark-haired girl cocked her head slightly to the side. “I suppose that is true.” She patted Astra on the back reassuringly. “Looks like you and I shall live forever, my friend!”

Suddenly pretending to shudder, she added, “Hopefully that doesn’t mean Roderick is going to be immortal too, I don’t think I could find that many spiders.” Oh dear Roderick- the bane of her existence. She couldn’t pretend to feel sorrow even if he got eaten by a giant arachnid; she would even help weave the web to trap him. It was truly a wonder how he could be related to her delightful red-headed friend.

As the teacher continued the lesson, Renelle completely zoned out once more, more out of necessity than anything: if she had to endure hours of useless facts about plants she couldn’t care less about, there was no doubt in the girl’s mind that she would go crazy and throw a pot at the teacher, or attempt to strangle some random student with a lovely green vine, which would not be very helpful to anyone.

Really, her not paying attention was for the fate of the entire school. She really was noble, wasn’t she? Always keeping the well-being of others in mind. If there were a prize for noble behaviour, she would so win it, no competition.

Thinking through all of this, Renelle couldn’t help but fight back a smirk. Oh, how she loved her mind. Always useful when wanting to justify poor and at times, downright chaotic behaviour. And she had a feeling this would come in handy only too much the following years.

“Haha, yes.” At her friend’s comment about killing fake plants (which was surprisingly true, Renelle had actually been there to witness the horrific incident), the Ravenclaw nodded seriously. “I still have dreams about that poor plant, you know. How it met its end so tragically.” Somehow keeping a straight face, she continued her sad tale. “I lay flowers on its grave every day, as a reminder of its story.” She paused. “Real ones, of course.”

Interacting with @Astra Norrick

Interacting with @Renelle Dalton
Astra speaking: #136323
Thoughts: Italics
Others: Bold

Astra nodded solemnly. "Mortals beware of the gods of chaos," she said with a mischievous, nigh on evil, smile.

An eyeroll at the mention of Renelle and Roderick's rivalry. Honestly, sometimes those two acted more like stereotypical siblings than Astra and he did. He, her Gryffindor older brother, who now had double, nay, triple the reason for a rivalry with his little sister. "You know he only does those things to annoy you, right?" she told her friend. "Around everyone else he's not so bad."

She would, of course, later retract this statement as her older brother decided to ghost her, but that had not yet happened and she was still certain of a good-standing relationship between them.

The rules of Herbology were simple. Easy. Facile. In the immortal words of Sherlock Holmes, "elementary." Astra had read them on the way in, and the professor was not at all long-winded, explaining each with simplicity and straighforwardness.

At the mention of the poor plant's grave, dug by both girls in the backyard of one of their houses, Astra couldn't quite remember whose, she cracked a smile. It had been a summer get together between the Dalton and Norrick families, meaning there were four kids racing around the backyard as Morella and Mr. Dalton prepared food and Hyperion and Mrs. Dalton discussed the happenings at the Ministry.

Meaning the aforementioned four children were unsupervised. At the time, Roderick was nine, going on ten later that month. Astra and Renelle were eight, and little Arien was likely four. On a whim, they had started playing catch, but not with a ball. With a fake plant. Oh the minds of children.

To be fair, it was Roderick's idea. Perhaps heavily supported by both girls, but still his fault.

And what had Astra done to kill the thing, you might ask? Well, nothing, right then. Right then, her little plant was living its best fake-life. But not half a minute later, a screech that sounded like a dying woman would sound from the nearest wooded area, and all eyes would turn there. Hyperion stood protectively, scanning the area and taking out his wand. At his feet, a loud bang resounded. Astra looked, and saw her poor plant among the remains of its pot. She had missed the throw from Arien, drawn by the screaming noise (the families would later discover it was just a fox expressing its thoughts to another fox, who ran away and did not respond, thankfully).

And one of the shards had pierced her little plant, severing the top of the main stalk from its roots. It was dead. Mostly because Morella would not let her fix in, denying her ownership to any sort of living thing ever again. How lucky it was her mother did not know about Uncle Ray's gift, still with Elliot and Jesse for the time being.

"We should really write an epic poem about the poor thing," she said. "It deserves to be immortalized."

OOC: I had far too much fun writing the Demise of the Plant. I think my writing privileges
may need to be put up for review.