i'm all bite, no bark (lazar)

The majority of classes were exam prep at this late on in the year, so the fifth-years were going over Potions they brewed at the beginning of term. They had been instructed to divide into pairs of groups of three to a cauldron, then try to brew the Draught of Peace: a notoriously difficult and complex potion for them all at this level. The first time they had brewed Draught of Peace, which must have been back in early November, Comarth and his partner at the time hadn't succeeded in getting it exactly the right.

That's why, this time around, he was determined to change that.

Just as he was finishing up writing a list of everything he needed to fetch before looking for a partner, he looked up from his bench and realised the majority of his classmates had already got together. The only one that didn't seem to have one was...

"Afternoon, Lazar." The boy wasn't the first on his preferred list of brewing partners, but at least he was a Ravenclaw. That had to count for something? "If you get the mandrake, I'll get everything else and we'll meet back here." Apparently he didn't want to go through the process of asking him to be his partner, given that their options were extremely limited at this point.

@Lazar Tremlett

As Easter break and then, soon after. OWLS got closer and closer, Lazar had gotten even more afraid of the possibility of flunking all of his exams, especially in potions. It wasn't as if he was bad at it, it just got overwhelming. Every so often, he had to pinch his nose and risk his breathing being affected. There were other times he feared just inhaling some of the fumes would give him a rash. He also couldn't just wear some sort of mask over his face in case something went really wrong with the potion.

Lazar sulked to himself slightly as everyone else in the class had paired up without even considering him as an option. He was sure Wade would partner with Marilyn, so that eliminated the possibility of trying to help him. Shrinking into his seat when he heard a voice, he looked up slightly to see it was one of the Selwyns... Of course he'd end up with one of those scary pureblood Slytherins!

"Huh-huh-hello...."

Although Selwyn seemed rather harmless compared to some of his housemates like Ptolemy or the Burkes, Lazar couldn't help but feel slightly intimidated by him. What if he turned the desk into a large crater just because he wasn't stirring fast enough? Or because he had to cover his mouth and noise with his shirt?

The mandrake? "Oh-oh-okay..." Lazar slowly got up from his seat and walked over to the potions store, nervously eyeing the triangular bottle that held the mandrake. His legs faltered and shook slightly as he cautiously picked up the bottle, afraid he'd somehow awaken the stewed mandrake. He could hardly handle the screams of a mandrake through the earmuffs in Herbology! How was he going to deal with it without that protection? His eardrums would bleed!

Stepping back to the desk, he held onto the bottom of the bottle tightly. Then, he stuck it onto the table surface, feeling sick to his stomach as he got a better look at the mandrake.

@Comarth Selwyn

At least Tremlett was an all-wizard family, as far as he knew. He wasn't muggleborn, and that was all he was concerned with. Working with a muggleborn would have been difficult, he thought, swallowing slowly as his finger ran along the bottom shelf of phials displaying various powdered ingredients. Once he was satisfied that he'd got the best looking powders of the bunch, he stood up and sharply turned, almost falling on top of someone.

His eyes met the surly gaze of Wade MacKenna.

There was a moment where the phials clambered and tinkled in his grasp, threatening to fall, but with a wobbled save he managed to prevent that from happening. There was a small graze on MacKenna's face. Comarth stared at it.

Dirty blood...

He suddenly looked as though he was going to throw up. He couldn't hear what MacKenna was saying to him, although it was more than likely along the lines of Move!, so he staggered past him in a blunder and managed to reach the work bench again, allowing the phials to roll onto the desk. He grasped the desk steadily, took out a handkerchief, and grasped it to his mouth for a moment. As he closed his eyes and his stomach began to settle again, he re-opened them to see Lazar in a similar state of nausea.

"I know," he murmured quietly, taking a seat next to him, "Don't worry. Th- they're under control here. But it does make you feel sick sometimes, doesn't it?" Funnily enough, he could have been talking about Mandrakes, but he wasn't. He thought Lazar was feeling sick for the same reason he was. That improved his perception of him, at least.

@Lazar Tremlett

Lazar gazed at the phials nervously as they rolled onto the desk. What if they fell off? And broke?! He didn't want to get detention for something potions-related! They might make him clean cauldrons without anything to soothe his bodily reactions...

Gulping, he murmured, "Yuh-yuh-yeah..."

He also got sick from seeing some of the ingredients in potions? That was reassuring? At least he wouldn't be judged so harshly for it. Lazar opened up his potions textbook and landed on the page for the potion they were about to brew. "Wuh-wuh-wha-what do we wah-wanna duh-do for th-the steps? All-all-al-tuh-tuh-nate?"

@Comarth Selwyn

Rearranging the phials into the rack so they wouldn't roll off the table, Comarth lit the gas lighter underneath the cauldron with his wand and settled it at a low heat to start with, so the water inside of there could warm and not boil. He'd done all that, but Lazar still hadn't completed his sentence. He sat back down slowly and watched him struggle, causing a slight rise of his brow.

"Is your stammer really that bad?" It was a rhetorical question, but he wanted to emphasise how interfering it might be. "The next thing you'll say is you're colour blind..." Sighing, he pulled his hair back with a ribbon so it wouldn't get in his way. "That may impede us further, if you are. Oh well - just try and... imagine someone who doesn't stammer and copy how they'd talk," he suggested dismissively, waving his hand at him.

"Perhaps we could split it between someone stirring and adjusting temperature, and someone else adding the ingredients. We'll both need to keep our eye on things though, for the exact moment the mixture starts changing colour. Sometimes one person can identify the changing quicker than the other," he explained, looking over him. "I think you'd be better at the stirring. It's more of a constant. Just make sure we communicate what we're doing at all times... clearly."

@Lazar Tremlett

"I-I-I'm nuh-not cuh-cuh-color blind...."

He always saw colors well enough that it wasn't a problem in potions! If he was colorblind, he didn't know what he'd do. Would he have to seek accomodations from the professors?

Lazar scratched his head and then the inside of his sleeve nervously; okay, maybe he was scarier than he initially thought. "Okay..."

He could stir, he could stir! He was less likely to mess up that way...

Pulling out his wand, Lazar glanced over at Selwyn and stuck it into the cauldron.

"Wuh-what duh-duh-rection do I stir fuh-first..?"

Clockwise and counterclockwise tripped him up a lot of times in this class.

@Comarth Selwyn

He glanced over the instructions. There was no direction - it just said stir. That usually meant clockwise, if memory served him correctly: particularly in you were making a draught or an elixir. Or was that just with antidotes? He brushed his fingers across his lips. No wonder he couldn't get his own, personal projects to go right!

"Clockwise all the way through, I should think."

The best thing about this pairing was that he always had a scapegoat to fall back on...

"Just go carefully. Then it's the powdered moonstone first. Hmm..." Perhaps he'd given himself the role that was most likely to be accountable for an incorrect draught. Damn. "I'll go very light - so keep your head down and watch."

Gingerly tapping the phial in the centre over the cauldron, a small amount dropped inside of there. "Why do we have to do these blasted things? They're so fiddly. Just to pass a silly exam..."

@Lazar Tremlett

"Guh-guh-got it..."

Even with a two-word sentence, Lazar still managed to fumble it. Why couldn't he talk more smoothly like Lien? Lien never struggled with words the way he did!

He glanced down at the cauldron and began to stir clockwise. How many times did he need to stir? He couldn't just briefly glance at his book as someone had to pay attention while Selwyn added ingredients! "We guh-gotta shuh-show we cuh-can make potions fuh-for a juh-job..."

And that was a whole other thing he needed to figure out over the next few years... He lacked the confidence his father had with playing instruments, so a music career wasn't in his future anytime soon.

"Wuh-what color duh-do I need to luh-look for..?"

@Comarth Selwyn

"Perhaps if you wanted to be a healer, you'd have to make this draught. Other than that, though. Most here are unambitious and can hardly think for themselves -- ah, that colour."

He pointed inside the cauldron as it started to turn from clear to an emerald green, then he quickly flipped back a few pages to the start of his book. There was a colour chart there: how to differentiate between certain shades of blue or pink that occurred in common potions.

"Keep stirring. We need it to change to blue. I'd say this colour." He pointed out a colour in the book that was similar to ultramarine. "As soon as that happens it's... moonstone." He flicked back. "Wait - were we supposed to be stirring? Urgh. Confound it! Start again, Lazar."

He made the mixture vanish. At least they had only been a few steps in.

"For the first part we're not stirring. I think I made that mistake last time."

Apparently one of Comarth's biggest weaknesses was following instructions...

"And keep the book open for yourself. Don't just rely on me - we need to work together."

@Lazar Tremlett

Lazar frowned slightly hearing how Selwyn described some of their schoolmates. Yet, he couldn't argue against it. He was afraid he fell under that category as he wasn't ambitious enough to plan every step of his life.

"I-I-I thuh-thuh-think it muh-might be better duh-doing one at a tuh-time..."

They seemed to be confusing each other doing it simultaneously like that. On the other hand, it would get done quicker if they continued this route... The less time he had to spend suffering around some of the ingredients, the better.

"Oh-oh-okay..."

Taking his wand out of the cauldron, he moved his eyes toward his textbook and realized his glasses needed cleaned. Taking them off, Lazar began using his tie to try to get some flakes off the lens.

@Comarth Selwyn

Doing one at a time? Comarth blinked at him.

"What do you mean by that?"

He didn't have so much pride that he wasn't open to valid input. As Lazar was as sickened by the sight of Wade MacKenna as much as he was, they must have been on a similar level together. He could take suggestions from him.

When he took off his glasses briefly, Comarth watched in intrigue. All of a sudden his eyes were a brighter shade of blue, and he'd never actually considered the colour of his eyes before. They were wider set than he'd thought. He was quite good-looking, actually.

"Tell me if you think we should do this a different way."

@Lazar Tremlett

"Steh-steh-step by step..."

Then he lightly slapped himself in the face, nearly poking himself with his glasses, realizing how stupid that was. Every potion was done step by step!

"Nuh-nuh-never-muh-mind..."

Lazar put his glasses back on, opting to wait until after class to properly clean them. No way he'd be responsible for one of the likely explosions in class today! Then he looked at the instructions in the book and gulped.

"Thuh-there's a luh-lot of duh-dur-rections..."

@Comarth Selwyn

It was very peculiar to see someone actually slap themselves in the face. Peculiar, and quite funny. Comarth chuckled.

"Perhaps we should both familiarise ourselves with the steps first and try to memorise them? Then, if it helps..."

Using his wand, he flicked it upward with a muttered incantation to suspend Lazar's volume midair. It was high enough for him to take reference from, but low enough for him to see over the cauldron. Comarth did the same to his. That way, they only had to move their eyes and not think about their hands having to mark the page.

"We have a double period. At least we'll have time to do this, rather than falling in blindly..."

Casting a gaze around the room, he saw that a lot of their peers had elected the 'go first, think later' approach. Perhaps that wasn't the best strategy.

Propping his elbows onto the table, Comarth leaned closely into the book and inspected the procedure.

"It all seems so straight forward when it's written down. But when you take several factors into account: the timing, the practicality of colour change verses the deftness of adding more ingredients, it's actually very complex. This is a draught that requires close attention and swift response, so the eyes of two are fundemental..."

In the practical potions exam, they would be working alone. Therefore...

"I don't think this draught will come up in the practical of our OWLs. It will only appear in the theory part. Memorising the steps is more prudent than getting this right."

He felt as though he'd cracked it.

@Lazar Tremlett

Oh, that made multitasking a lot simpler. Why didn't he just do that to begin with? It would make all of his grinding to try and do well at the OWLs a breeze!

"Yuh-yuh-yes... We guh-got lots oh-of tuh-time to guh-get th-this done..."

As he checked both the textbook and the desk to ensure they had all ingredients required, Lazar felt queasy yet again once he got to the mandrake. Was it going to attack them when it was time to put it in the cauldron????

Then, he focused his eyes onto the cauldron, loudly swallowing. He couldn't afford to get sick when they had an extremely arduous potion to brew! "We cuh-cuh-could muh-make some suh-suh-sort of saying t-to ruh-remem-mem-ber the colors?"

That was one studying tip that got him through some Herbology quizzes.

Lazar snapped his head back to his book and caught a whiff of nearby fumes from a neighboring pair's cauldron. He pinched his nose.

@Comarth Selwyn

He was getting used to his stammer. It may have been a source of comfort to him actually, as there was always someone who sounded more tremulous than he felt. Comarth watched him, whilst hunched close to the book. It wasn't just his stammer: there were a lot of indicators in his mannerisms that he had anxiety about their situation.

"A saying? Like an association?"

Dragons.

"Welsh are green, Swedish are blue, Vipers are purple, and the Torch is lighter too..." he muttered to himself, wondering if Lazar would comprehend. Perhaps he wouldn't, but he repeated the rhyme to him. "A Swedish-Welsh then Viper once more, Chinese red and Hungarian umber, yellow then back to Welsh again."

He grinned over at him.

"Perhaps this would be easiest with me, but with you it could be different. Flowers? Leaves? Numbers of the rainbow if you put them one through seven? It's whatever works best for you." His eyes softened slightly, particuarly when he pinched his nose. MacKenna was nearby, so he could see why. "This is useful, thank you."

@Lazar Tremlett

Lazar nodded, pushing up his glasses with his other hand. Had the stench gone away? Some smells always managed to make him gag. If it were combined with other sensory nightmares, it may as well make him feel as if it was acid reflux.

"Yuhs, luh-like Woy G. Biv," he responded, sounding almost Squidward-like as he continued to pinch his nose. It suppressed his stutter just slightly.

Then he began to worry that he was affecting his breathing. There was one time there was such a strong sulfur odor coming from sewage when he visited the muggle side of his family that he almost fainted from pinching his nose too long. Finally, Lazar removed his fingers from his nose and sniffled.

"I duh-duh-don't knuh-knuh-know what t-to muh-make an association wuh-with it..."

He stared at the colors once again before settling on associating them with shapes in his mind. Circles for purple as it's mentioned so many times...

'Yuh-yuh-you're welcome..."

Weird. An upperclass pureblood was being kind to him. This was even weirder than Wade wanting to study with him.

His classmates were odd people.

@Comarth Selwyn

"Just think," was his advice, but he was already preoccupied with something else.

The sight of dragon breeds flashed across his mind. He stared transfixedly at the book and its colours, but all he was seeing was wings and scaly skin. Perhaps he had grasped the association in a matter of minutes, but time was ticking by and he hadn't realised: the potions class seemed very far away, and he only remembered where he was when somebody coughed at the smoking fumes of their over-stewed cauldron.

"What do you think about dragons?" came his awakening question to him, his eyes switching down and down then back up again as he gauged each colour with an associative dragon.

@Lazar Tremlett

Lazar squinted at the textbook some more and decided to use his quill to mark a symbol for each color change. A simple little dot. That simple little dot ended up being more numerous than he had anticipated. Gulping in fear, he glanced over at the cauldron then back at the text.

How were they supposed to not mess up???? What if the color changed every millisecond????

Lazar was ready to have one of his occasionally academic-related panics when Selwyn asked him a strange question. What did dragons have to do with the potion they're supposed to be working on?

"They scuh-scuh-scare me..."

They were huge and destructive. Two traits that could easily cause him harm. He liked to avoid those.

@Comarth Selwyn

"So they should," he said ominously, grinning.

It was probably a good thing that he was afraid of them. Then again, Lazar would probably find some reason to be shaken by his own reflection.

"Let's start again. Just remember to stir only when it explicitly says to. I'll call out to you if you forget. Are you ready?"

He moved his hand to indicate the tipping of the first ingredient into the cauldron.

"You only want to start stirring when it turns Welsh-- I mean, green. Understand?"

@Lazar Tremlett

"I-I-I thuh-thuh-think so..."

He stared down at the contents of the cauldron when one question popped into his head.

"What shuh-shade of gruh-green?"

@Comarth Selwyn

"Don't think, know," he said darkly.

Grumbling, he cleaning tore out the pages showing colour indicators with his wand, and set it between them. He'd repair the book after class.

"There," he said firmly, pointing at the emerald green colour with his pinky finger. On that finger was a silver ring that looked too large for his bony fingers, but inside the setting where a gem should have been was something swirling ominously: turning from scarlet to a darker red.

He took the phial of moonstone and tapped some inside of there gradually. The potion was already beginning to show signs of changing colour. "Now. Stir. Wait for blue - then stop immediately." He was more focused now.

@Lazar Tremlett

Making some sort of frightened noise, Lazar felt himself becoming even more afraid of messing the potion up. He didn't want to taste mud again! He had to make sure that didn't happen!

Lazar began to stir the potion, doing his best to concentrate and not get distracted by anything else in the classroom. To his luck, there was a loud explosion and a hint of smoke a few rows behind them.

Spooked by it, he froze, trying to stop himself from coughing.

@Comarth Selwyn

"Lazar!" he said sharply, "Stop stirring!"

The potion had turned to blue while he seemed preoccupied with something else. He put his hand on Lazar's wrist to stop the movement, feeling as though he had no choice. Lazar looked like he was going to sneeze, or cough, or be sick - perhaps all three!

@Lazar Tremlett

Once his hand was stopped from making idle movements, Lazar finally let out a huge sneeze. Ooft. He hoped none of his snot had gotten into the cauldron. He forgot to take his antihistamine before leaving for class.

"Suh-suh-suh-sor-ree," he sniffled lightly, using his other thumb to wipe under his nose.

@Comarth Selwyn

Comarth sighed.

"It's okay. Let's just carry on - we haven't got enough time to start again. Now I need to add more moonstone..."

The slightest indicator of purple began to show, and Comarth adjusted the heat a little bit.

"Now it needs to simmer until it's pink."

Looking over at him, Comarth actually began to chuckle.

"If we end up doing this right, I'll buy you lunch in Hogsmeade," he said amusedly, having a feeling that they probably wouldn't. "Which food is your favourite?"

@Lazar Tremlett