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

[chanuphis]

Miranda rolls her eggshell gently in paint droplets. "No control group, sample sizes of one..."

[mrwoods]

"Well, it's not a psychology experiment, I'm pretty sure-" Pause. Blink. He raises a hand.

[alicornucopia]

"Mr Woods?"

[mrwoods]

"Are these processes deterministic? Like, if I try the same thing twice, do I always get the same result?"

[alicornucopia]

"If you do, yes. If someone else does, not necessarily, although often."

[mrwoods]

"Hmm, is that a mindset thing? If I try the same thing twice but wanting or thinking of different results do I get different things?"

[alicornucopia]

"It seems not to be anything as ephemeral as that. Although there are occasional reports of someone getting different results if they perform a procedure twice with a few decades between attempts."

[mrwoods]

"That's very interesting," he says, writing it all down. "Thank you."

[alicornucopia]

"You're welcome."

[mrwoods]

He turns to Miranda. "So, as I was saying, this is deterministic so controlled trials aren't really all that necessary."

[chanuphis]

"As you were saying, because you totally knew that."

[mrwoods]

"Well I'd assumed it, and questioned it as soon as it came to my conscious attention and I turned out to be right, so!" He sticks out his tongue at her. "Besides, I'd totally have tried doing the same thing many times."

[chanuphis]

"Really? Exactly the same? Over and over?"

[mrwoods]

"Well, I'd've asked Professor Slughorn before trying the second time, probably."

[chanuphis]

"I'm just not ascribing you quite the patience, when you could instead try radically different things."

[mrwoods]

"I can be patient! I can totally be patient! Just watch me patiently waiting for the paint to dry, here!"

[chanuphis]

"While conducting a conversation..."

[mrwoods]

"If you want me to shut up..."

[chanuphis]

"Not especially. I'm not pretending to be patient."

[mrwoods]

"I'm not pretending!" he protests. "I just don't have a reason to be patient right now, but I could totally be patient for stuff I really wanted. Like making Slytherin nice again! Or making everyone immortal."

[chanuphis]

"There's a difference between being patient and not happening to succeed immediately!"

[mrwoods]

"Yes but both of those things are things I haven't even tried doing yet! The Slytherin thing is an ongoing project that will take yeeeears, and the immortal thing we won't even really try for a good long while."

[chanuphis]

"I still think it's different."

[mrwoods]

The paint is dry! Except under the egg, so he turns it around and paints the rest. "And even if it is I still think I'd be able to do it."

[chanuphis]

"If you say so."