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]

"Well, not everyone, but the ones who currently think I'm scum are the Slytherins, being generally awesome's good but being specifically awesome at something they care about in particular is better."

[pleating]

"You'll probably make Gryffindors mad at you. Maybe some of the other houses too. But less as a Beater than if you were a Seeker, probably."

[mswoods]

"Yeah, and I'm trying to get Slytherins to not hate me and be less horrible, I'm definitely not equipped to fix whatever Gryffindor's problems are."

[chanuphis]

"Good luck."

[mswoods]

"Thanks!"

[msmaxwell]

Willow shrugs. "I just wanna play, even if the game's dumb it's still fun."

[chanuphis]

"I can't claim to understand the sentiment. Flying around is fun, but you can just do that without the evil balls and the mad scoring system."

[msmaxwell]

"Flying around is fun, but flying around chasing evil balls is more. Chasing evil balls without the flying would already be fun, so it's only fair that they compound!"

[pleating]

"I think you two and Miranda just have different ideas of fun!"

[msmaxwell]

"Probably!"

[mswoods]

"I think that's been clear for about a year now."

[pleating]

"But I can see both sides because I'm so great."

[mswoods]

"So great," she nods.

[chanuphis]

"I'll just have to console myself with being right."

[mswoods]

"Of course, because this is a factual, objective matter."

[chanuphis]

"I'm glad we can agree on that much."

[msmaxwell]

"Riiiight, anyway my tryout's at 3, and they need a Beater and a Keeper."

[mswoods]

"I'll be there!"

[chanuphis]

"Have fun."

[pleating]

"I might actually go watch. But I'll probably have a book."

[mswoods]

"The first parts are actually kinda boring," she admits.

[pleating]

"Well, they might not all do the tryouts the same way. But yeah."

[mswoods]

"Probably won't, but I can't imagine spending however long watching people try to be good Keepers will be the most engrossing of activities."

[msmaxwell]

"I liked watching you guys try to score with a Bludger."

[mswoods]

"Yeah but the other part with Prince wasn't nearly as much fun."