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

[pleating]

"Yes."

[mswoods]

"I don't mind it much, but that might be a better idea, I should've thought of it."

[pleating]

"It's not too late to start."

[mswoods]

"Yeah, no, I definitely will." She squints at the Pitch. "They're probably about to start. There's Willow," she says, pointing.

[msmaxwell]

Willow is, indeed, there! There are three groups: one containing Willow and two other people, one containing another two people, and one being the actual current team.

[pleating]

Karen puts her book down to see if they're going to do anything interesting.

[peterxy]

For the first few minutes, they'll be talking.

After that, the three prospective Beaters will mount on their brooms and start trying to bat a Bludger to each other in order. A second Bludger is added to the little game at one point, and then hits start becoming common. Willow's strategy of hitting everything with a bat really fast does mean she's the one who's hit the least and who hits the others the most.

[mswoods]

"Ouch," Sadde says after one time Willow misses and is unseated from her broom. The three of them are barely hovering above the ground, so it's not a huge fall, but still.

[pleating]

"She looks okay..."

[mswoods]

"Yeah, she probably is."

[msmaxwell]

From the way she dusts herself off and is promptly back on her broom, apparently!

The little game lasts ten minutes, and then the prospective Keepers take turns defending one of the trio of hoops. Finally, the three prospective Beaters are added to that game, alternating between defending the Keeper and attacking the Chasers and the other way around. The whole thing lasts an hour, and Willow is very clearly best at the offensive.

[mswoods]

And then they're done! The Ravenclaws start making her way out of the Pitch.

"I think that's our cue."

[pleating]

Karen puts her book away and gets up.

[msmaxwell]

Willow's waiting for them on the way back to the Castle, looking antsy. "What did you think? Slytherin's was much cooler than ours. I dunno if I made it, I dunno what they wanted."

[pleating]

"Well, I don't know either, but you looked pretty good to me!"

[mswoods]

"Yeah, you did great! You definitely have more reach than I do."

[msmaxwell]

"Yeah. Well, I had fun, anyway."

[pleating]

"Good!"

[mswoods]

"When do you find out if you made the team?"

[msmaxwell]

"Tomorrow morning!"

[pleating]

"I wonder why they need that long to decide."

[msmaxwell]

"I think it's just to mess with us."

[mswoods]

She giggles. "I dunno, maybe they're trying to figure out fit, or whether the person's style fits the team, or something?"

[pleating]

"I'd still think they could have that conversation in time to post the results in the common rooms after dinner."

[mswoods]

"Mine will be posted after dinner."