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

[mswoods]

"The game may be badly designed but I get to throw evil metal balls at people, it's almost as if someone decided in advance to invent a position with me in mind!"

[pleating]

"I don't like playing enough to do it enough to get good," Karen asserts. "A little pickup every once in a while is okay. What's so great about batting Bludgers at people?"

[msmaxwell]

Willow and-

[mswoods]

-Sadde look at her like she's insane. "What's not great about it? You're the only player who can actually do something about the evil metal balls and you get to like strategise and protect your teammates and take everyone else out and the look on everyone's faces must be hilarious!"

[chanuphis]

"I'm sort of worried by your enthusiasm for violence."

[mswoods]

"It's controlled violence! No one's gonna get seriously hurt with this much magic being thrown around, and it's a more direct outlet than psychologically pranking blood purists."

[chanuphis]

"People do get seriously hurt. They can get fixed after, but they do get seriously hurt."

[mswoods]

"But they can get fixed after," she insists. "And being on a team selects for being willing to get seriously hurt to actually win. People get seriously hurt playing rugby, too!"

[chanuphis]

Miranda just looks disconcerted.

[mswoods]

"Anywho," she says, "tryouts for Slytherin are tomorrow at nine, I think each House gets two hours on the Pitch. Dunno if you guys can come watch mine, or," she looks at Miranda, "if you'd want to."

[msmaxwell]

"I'll see when ours is, and I'll try to come watch yours!"

[chanuphis]

"If you desperately want to be supervised, I can make time, but I wouldn't go on its merits."

[pleating]

"Tryouts are probably not as interesting as games."

[mswoods]

"I think the Captains and Madam Hooch will be there supervising us."

[chanuphis]

"Cheered, then, whatever benefit you might derive from us attending." Shrug.

[mswoods]

Shrug. "I like you guys, so I like it when we do stuff together."

[chanuphis]

"I'm not sure there's many affordances for interaction between Quidditch players and people in the stands."

[mswoods]

"Well, no, but it's... Eh, nevermind me."

[chanuphis]

"Okay. Well, have fun, anyway."

[mswoods]

The following morning, Sadde's up at 8 and in the Pitch at 8:45. It turns out other people can watch tryouts, regardless of House affiliation, though they can't watch future practices.

[msmaxwell]

Slytherin has the 9AM slot and Ravenclaw has the 3PM, so Willow shows up to cheer on her friend.

[peterxy]

And the Slytherin team captain turns out to be someone whose underwear drawer Sadde's familiar with. "Woods," Nyle Arens greets Sadde with pursed lips.

[mswoods]

"Arens," she greets him with a smile, and sits cross-legged on the grass.

[peterxy]

He then proceeds to summarily ignore her until nine. One other person - a rather large fourth-year boy - arrives to try out for Beater, and four other people - Sadde's friend Jacob, a third-year, and two fourth-years - for Chaser.

At 9AM sharp he says, "As you all know, one of our Chasers and one of our Beaters graduated last year, and the Chaser - Urquhart, to those who've heard of him - was the previous captain. I'm captain now, and will be for the next three years. He was nice on you - I won't be. Which of you are trying out for Beater?"

[mswoods]

Sadde and the fourth-year raise their hands.