3 Sep 2026, 16:13
Weaving Webs
| xxxxx | The only good thing about being at Hogwarts, thus far, was mostly unrestricted access to being in the Potions classroom. One of the first things Kahira had done was wrangle permission out of the professor, Asthmawhatever, for use of the classroom when lessons weren't being held. After years of having been forced to watch as her parents concocted potions in their workshoppe at home, Kahira finally had it all - her own cauldrons, her own ingredients, an open flame. Here, surrounded by shelves of ingredients and darkness only barely broken by a few flickering candles, could the redhead finally forget about the utter mess that the last few days had been, and she could lose herself in the brew. Setting up at an empty desk in the very front of the classroom, Kahira pulled several of her textbooks from her white designer satchel, some of which fell open on a nearby table; only then could she reach into the bottom and yank out the things she needed. Her cauldron was already here, having been stored in the classroom after her first Potions class earlier in the week; they'd learned about three very basic potions, but Kahira had no desire to cure anyone's boils and she certainly didn't have any of her own, there weren't any weeds in her dormitory she needed to kill (yet), and while dosing the Sorting Hat with Forgetfulness Potion so it would re-Sort her into the proper House sounded very tempting, she wasn't sure that the rip in its ugly brown fabric constituted a mouth that could actually drink things. Plus, if she could not yet prove that she belonged in Slytherin, Kahira could at least prove that she was ahead of the curve, potions-wise. She yanked out her pristine new potions tome, the spine of which had already been cracked from lots of late-night reading (anything to avoid socialising with the Hufflepuffs), and flipped to one of the brews that would be learned much later in the school year: the Dizziness Draught. Despite its complex ingredients, it seemed simple enough: Firewhisky, wood-lice, some skurvy grass, and dried spider legs. Kahira shuddered at the last one; she was very much not an entomophile, or even a casual enjoyer of creatures at all. There was a reason she only planned to take Care of Magical Creatures in her third year if she absolutely had to (e.g., if her parents told her that it would be good for the family business). She hurried to pull the skurvy grass and wood-lice from her bag, then set about wandering the openly available cabinets in the classroom - Merlin, she couldn't wait until she was allowed into the storeroom - so that she could browse for the other two ingredients. Firewhisky was easy to find, and smelled sharp and cinnamon-y when she uncorked it, though she didn't dare taste any; tucking the vial into her pocket, she moved to the next cabinet, murmuring under her breath. "Spider legs, spider legs... ah! Here you are." The young redhead gingerly pinched the glass jar of spider legs, all dried and crumbly, between two fingers and made her way back to her station. When there, she started to eagerly and obediently follow the instructions laid out on the page of her textbook - three measures of firewhisky, boil for half a minute, put back to low, grind four woodlice and two sprigs of grass, scrape that into the cauldron, three clockwise stirs. She was truly in her element here, and as she waved her elderwood wand over the cauldron's contents and eyed the clock so that she would know when thirty-five minutes had passed, Kahira heaved a sigh of relief for perhaps the first time all week. At least here, in the dark of the Potions classroom, no one knew what a disappointment she had become. Here, she could still thrive. This good feeling spreading through her body like a wave was, unfortunately, short-lived. Kahira moved to the jar of spider legs to prep the two that she would need, her small paring knife at the ready to chop the ingredients as finely as necessary, and she reached out hands to unscrew the jar... only to jump backwards and shriek, knocking the open bottle over and sending the lid clattering to the floor, dried legs spilling out all over her workstation. Something had moved inside. One particularly big pile of the legs shifted, and in the low light Kahira squinted just in time to see a real, living spider shake off the crispy limbs of its brethren. Her breath hitched, and she scrambled to grab one of her other textbooks with which she could smush the creature into a flat version of itself on the table; however, her panic dimmed when she realised what it was doing. The eight-legged thing - inordinately small, rather hairy, a light chestnut brown in colour with patches of black - had grabbed two legs and was holding them out to her, braving the touch of its dried brothers to offer her the ingredient she needed. Slowly, Kahira put down the textbook. She reached out and, very delicately, without even touching the legs or the creature with the pad of her fingers but rather just using the tips of her long nails, pinched the two dried sprigs and pulled them back out of the spider's grip. She didn't bother to thank it; Kahira wasn't in the habit of thanking people, much less animals, and the fact that she hadn't crushed it beneath The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection was thanks enough. She dropped the two on her cutting board and turned back to the spider, only to find it sweeping the legs back into the jar which had been knocked akimbo. Okay. So a helpful spider...? Keeping an eye on the creature, Kahira carefully chopped the two spider legs that she needed, watching as the living version cleaned up her potions station for her. When she had prepped the legs as necessary, still with just under half an hour left to go on waiting, Kahira found her table completely clean of spilled limbs; she reached out and carefully screwed the lid back onto the jar, the spider stepping cautiously aside as she did so. "You're lucky that your limbs aren't dry enough for use in this yet," she muttered to it, though her usual vitriol was, somehow, nowhere to be found in the sentence. "Otherwise I'd have just used you." Though it didn't actually make any noise, the spider seemed to titter. And somehow, with it, Kahira actually cracked a smile. "You know, someone actually will use you if you keep hanging around here," she told it, eyeing it as it scrambled to the edge of the desk and made an actually quite impressive death-defying leap to the next table, whereupon all of her extra textbooks lay. "This is quite nearly the stupidest, most asinine place for a spider to be. Though I suppose there aren't any predators in here. But if the professor catches you, you shall become an ingredient for sure." The creature paused, then leapt onto the strap of her satchel, scrambling up to perch on the golden clasp and waiting patiently as if to say, Great, then I'll leave with you! Kahira wrinkled her nose at it. "Absolutely not. I wasn't offering my services as some sort of... spider courier; simply stating a fact. Anyway, if I took you with me, you would be a sort of pet, and pets are bought properly from the Menagerie, not adopted from the classroom. Plus," she added as a sort of afterthought, "they have names. Proper ones." Once again, the arachnid found itself on the move as it scrabbled back down the satchel strap and over to some of the textbooks. A few had fallen open, like A History of Magic and, nearby, her astronomy text; the spider ignored the former and went straight for the latter, clambering onto a picture of an old man and tapping one leg, almost impatiently, on his face. Kahira snorted in a very unladylike manner. "What, you want his name?" she taunted, leaning over to peer down at the description underneath the picture. "Some Muggle astronomer from hundreds of years ago? Ptolemy..." (pronouncing it horribly incorrectly, of course). "Why, what sort of a name is that? Ridiculous. Look at me," she said, shaking her head in disappointment. "I'm talking to a spider. Ugh! Leave me alone, you horrid creature, before I change my mind about smashing you with a book." The spider crawled away, almost shamefully, and Kahira could blissfully return to brewing her potion. When the time finished, she scraped the chopped legs into the cauldron, stirred four long, counterclockwise circles, and set herself a mental timer for five minutes as she moved about the classroom, replacing the ingredients she had borrowed and shoving her textbooks back in her satchel. A beautiful orange Dizziness Draught went into some corked vials a moment later, pride sweeping through her, and she tucked them into her bag, making a mental note to show the professor at the beginning of her class tomorrow. She turned to leave, her free period before her afternoon classes almost over, and only then did she notice the spider still lurking on the side of the nearest workstation. Its big, black, beady eyes were simply regarding her, as if waiting. Watching. Longing to be included. Kahira grumbled under her breath. I can't believe I'm doing this. "Well?" she said, almost impatiently, casting an annoyed glance down at the creature. "Are you coming?" Ptolemy clicked with glee, leaping onto her satchel and clinging to its strap for dear life. Kahira sighed, beginning to move almost as soon as three of his eight legs had found their place, towards the door to the corridor. "If this is going to happen, we shall need to set some ground rules," she said down to the arachnid she had just somehow adopted, navigating her way around the maze of stations to the exit. "For one, I shan't have you riding in public on my satchel; I do not need any of my peers thinking that I have an insect problem, so you'll stay out of sight when we are around others. Also, you'll continue to be helpful, lest I really do use you in a potion... hmm... what else? Oh, yes..." |
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| kahira valerian second gen | _____________________ | shop | ___________________ |