hatchery

[chanuphis]

The next alchemy class of their second year, they arrive to the lab to discover that each of them has an ordinary chicken's egg (brown) and another box of miscellanea.

Slughorn explains, when everyone is assembled, that alchemy with an egg is actually where phoenixes are speculated to originate; but no one has the recipe any more and there haven't been new phoenixes for centuries. They will not be making living things today. But the eggshell is a good base from which to appear lots of possible objects; alchemy doesn't like to conjure things into existence in plain sight but is quite willing that new things appear inside eggshells, cocoons, geodes, and similar. Their eggs have been pre-drained of their interiors for this purpose, although some recipes use full eggs.

As last week, they are invited to come up with recipes on paper for review by the professor before trying anything. Known possible results available with this set of ingredients include wooden, decorated eggs nested inside the shell; a shellful of small sharp teeth (the commonest source of hens' teeth, as they have encountered once or twice in potions); successively smaller eggshells the smallest of which holds a blob of mercury; and a perfectly hardboiled egg which can be arbitrarily flavored by exact details of the process. But they are welcome to aim at another result as long as their procedure looks safe.

Comments

[peterxy]

Astoria squints at her and says, "Now repeat what I just told you to do."

[mswoods]

"I am to protect all of you against the Bludgers. I am good at predicting where they will be but I am not strong, I am not to be a hero and try to take Burke down or get revenge."

[peterxy]

"Can you generalise from that? What else are you not supposed to do?"

[mswoods]

"I am not supposed to try to take any of them down. I am not supposed to go after the Bludgers no matter how tantalisingly close they are. I should stick to you and make sure you are all covered."

[peterxy]

"Good. Remember, there are two Bludgers and they have two Beaters. And I don't know about Hosterforth but Dearborn will try to take Prince down, and that must not happen under any circumstances, understand?"

[mswoods]

"Yes. What if it happens anyway?"

[peterxy]

"It won't happen."

[mswoods]

"Oh come on, you can't call yourself a Slytherin if you won't come up with contingency plans, you don't just assume everything works out fine!"

[peterxy]

Burberry blinks and looks at her like she's just imparted infinite wisdom on her. Jacob's just used to it. Greengrass is, too, to some extent, but she eyes Sadde appraisingly nonetheless. Prince looks annoyed. "If Prince gets taken down," Astoria says, "you go on the offensive. Use your Bludger-whisperer powers to get them down, Arens is your priority target, but if you can distract the Beaters all the better. Don't bother with Burke unless you're really sure you'll succeed."

[mswoods]

"I have to ask - do people get taken down that often normally?"

[peterxy]

"Not permanently," she admits. "But temporary's good enough. I know you're a muggleborn-" Prince grimaces. "Prince I swear to Merlin I will fuck you up if you let this get in the way of us winning in any way, shape, or form, am I understood?" Prince nods glumly. "Very well, as I was saying, wixen are much sturdier, so are you, don't be afraid to crack some skulls."

[mswoods]

Sadde raises a hand.

[peterxy]

Astoria sighs. "Yes, Woods?"

[mswoods]

"Why aren't you the Captain?"

[peterxy]

She snorts. "I'm content being vice-Captain, suits me better. Now are there any more questions? Of the useful kind, please, Woods."

[mswoods]

She shrugs and shakes her head.

[peterxy]

Jacob's apparently emboldened by Sadde, and he raises his hand.

"Norton?"

"What if you're too far or a Bludger's after you and I can't pass but the other Chasers are too close?"

She grins. "Good, you thought of that. Yeah, no, you're buggered in that case, try to dodge and score if you can, maybe try a feint. Like I said, use your agility." Pause. "So, any other questions?" Everyone shakes their head. "Good, we got a couple of minutes more. Arens is gonna get a handicap by being the one to throw the Quaffle in, Norton to my right, Burberry to my left, Woods behind me." Nods all around. "Good, we'll get along splendidly."

They get in position, and then the other team does, too. Arens shakes Greengrass' hand then floats back down to the Pitch so he can release the Snitch, rerelease the Bludgers, and throw the Quaffle up.

[mswoods]

And Sadde:

gets in the zone.

Greengrass grabs the Quaffle because of course, and one Bludger comes for each team: one for Jacob and one for Dearborn. Hmmm. She makes her way to Jacob as if to protect him from the Bludger but only clips it with the tip of her bat as she does a 180 to zip towards Greengrass. She doesn't see what becomes of the other Bludger and instead swings at the one that's going after the Chaser with both hands, and it's sent spinning in no particular direction.

Sadde zooms back up and starts watching the dynamics of the game, never staying still or looking at any one place for more than a second, keeping track of the Bludgers. It turns out the first one actually did hit Jacob (Sorry!) but protecting Astoria from that second one got them their first ten points, so yay!

(Hmm, there is no reason she needs to be a puny twelve-year-old, she morphs some more muscle to her arms, that's nice, is it cheating? She doesn't think it's cheating.)

Arens gets the Quaffle and passes it to Fawley who passes it to Shafiq who passes it to Fawley who passes it back to Shafiq who tries to pass to Arens but Burberry intercepts it and starts flying straight towards the hoop. By the time Sadde has consciously registered the Bludger coming his way she's already been moving for a second and a half, and she swings it towards Burke (she misses) so Burberry has a clear shot, but somehow he misses the hoop even without an actual Keeper keeping it, wow, good job Burberry. Astoria doesn't waste time yelling at him or anything, she just gives him a look (Sadde's not sure he caught it) and goes after Fawley, who got the Quaffle.

Sadde notices more evil metal ball movement at the corner of her vision and flies towards Prince, deflecting that Bludger, and Fawley tries the feint again but of course it won't work twice so close together, and Prince grabs the Quaffle. He throws it to Jacob, but Shafiq intercepts it and passes to Arens who tries to score but fails.

She wrenches her eyes away from that and tries going after the Bludger Hosterforth threw at Burberry, but doesn't get to him in time and he's sent spinning off into the distance, which distraction of course only lasts about ten seconds but by then Sadde's already paying attention to something else.

That something else is the fact that Jacob somehow managed to grab the Quaffle and is zigzagging this way and that with it, evading both Arens and Shafiq, except there are two Bludgers going after him, and once again Sadde's moving before she knows she is. She deflects one of the Bludgers (and hits Shafiq with it, yay!) but yells, "Pass the bloody Quaffle!" and either because Jacob had already been planning on it or because he heard her, he passes it to Burberry who grabs it, backs up a bit, then throws it to Astoria, who proceeds to score again.

[peterxy]

The game proceeds more or less at this pace. Sadde's really good at predicting where the Bludger's going to be, even when it uses its limited intelligence to try to feint, and consequently Hosterforth and Dearborn are way less effective than they would otherwise be. Team two only manages to score twice before Burke catches the Snitch, and the final score is 140-170. When they land, they're all panting, sweaty, and more or less exhausted.

Arens doesn't lose his composure, though. "You all did very well," he says diplomatically, not looking at any one of them with particularly meaningful looks. "I will talk to Greengrass, we will both discuss your performance with the rest of the team, and we will be announcing our picks tonight after dinner. Thank you all for coming."

[mswoods]

And it is:

lunch time.

[msmaxwell]

Willow arrives at the Great Hall with Sadde, chattering excitedly.

[pleating]

"How'd it go?"

[msmaxwell]

"It was so cool! They had a mock match, and they had Sadde protecting everyone and she was awesome and the Bludgers were like 'rawr!' but Sadde was like 'nope!' and Arens was like 'gonna score!' but then Greengrass was like 'nope again!' and Sadde's Slytherin friend was really fast and it was awesome you two should've come."

[mswoods]

"Our team had a Keeper and me but no Seeker, they had two Beaters and the Seeker, and we scored fourteen times but they scored twice and got the Snitch and the fact that the Snitch is a thing really annoys me."

[chanuphis]

"It's pretty dumb. You are going to be playing a dumb game. Get used to it."