Use what you Know

Wally had picked up a piece of parchment and a quill, scrawling across the top Potions Ingredients- Lesson One. She numbered it one through ten, trying to buy herself a little time so that she would look as though she had been thoroughly passed over, then she could insist that she could work alone, in fact that would be better, and all would be well..

But things were never that easy for Wally. Ever.

Possibly the worst person to pair Wally with was now assuming they would be a pair. Wally shot the professor a look that said 'do you expect me to accomplish this task without killing her' and then slowly turned her gaze onto the girl, who seemed to be the poster child of positive fricking effervenscnce. There was going to be blood.

Wally stared at the girl. The condescending tone meant nothing to Wally. She could do this task without this girl, and she intended to. She blinked and turned away, ignoring the girl, walking over to the first jar. She leaned forward and stared at the ingredient. It was obviously a type of root and as Wally got closer, she suspected daisy root. It was hard to tell with roots, however, so she leaned over and sniffed. Yes. Daisy roots. She wrote it down. She walked over to the next jar, with a small pool of thick, green liquid at the bottom. "Pfft," she said. "Easy." She scrawled dragon blood.

This was her game.

Sam glanced up at Keith for a moment, a quizzical look on his face, before sighing loudly and muttering something about his brains not being entirely there.

"Fine," he said abruptly, shoving the parchment and quill under Keith's nose and starting to roll up his sleeves. "But you owe me one now," he said threateningly, before grabbing the number six box and pulling it over to his side of the bench, staring at it with a look of intense concentration.

"Right," he said, slamming his hands down on the bench before plunging his hand through the box and immediately cringing.

"Euh," he said, a combination of fear, disgust and angering flickering around his face. "It's... euh, maybe wood lice?" He muttered, hoping that Keith was noting this all down.

"Yeah, probably wood lice, it feels like bits of bark with legs... but It may just be a bettle of some sort, because it feels a little too big for it to be li-- ARHGH" He shouted pulling his hand out of the box and waving it around, a look of horror on his face.

"It bit me!" He yelled incredulously, looking up at the professor with a hurt, reproachful look.

Amelia watched as her students – Merlin, that was an odd phrase to describe the young people in the room – got to work on her task, thankful that they had not put up any notable fight. It seemed that everyone was still testing the waters with the new professor, which Amelia was fine with, as long as she remained in control of the tide. So far, so good.

The room was calm overall as students moved about the boxes, taking notes and grappling with their partners over who was in charge. Some pairings couldn’t seem to find a leader at all, and some had too many cooks in the kitchen. Amelia knew that asking her students to pair off for a task was hypocritical – she had hated partner activities when she was a student – but it was the surest way to be certain they would ask each other before they asked her. It wasn’t that she didn’t know the answers… just that she didn’t particularly want to do any more talking than she absolutely had to.

Looking across the room, Amelia spotted a Slytherin pair that had misidentified boomslang skin as fruit leather, and merely shook her head. This was precisely why this exercise was necessary. Not everything came in little packages with labels, and when it didn’t-

A loud scream from behind her made Amelia whip around to see Samuel waving his hand around with a green tiger beetle clamped hard onto the end of his finger. He shook his hand over and over until the beetle dislodged and went flying to some other unknown place in the room, leaving Samuel to inform his professor of the situation. His look of horror was enough to make Amelia startled, but once she figured out what he was freaking out over, it was hard to suppress a smile and a sarcastic comment.

So, soooo tempting… Amelia thought, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth despite her best intentions.

“Perhaps you should use the more obvious method of looking at the ingredients to identify them instead of jumping straight to ‘do they like the taste of human flesh’, hmm?” Amelia said through tight lips, still trying not to laugh, “The boxes are clear, after all, Mr. Grigori.”

Sam looked blankly up at the professor, blinking several times, before taking a look at the box and thinking for a second.

"Yeah... but," he said, pausing with a frown and opening his mouth as he tried to think of a reply, before giving her that same blank look for several more long, awkward seconds.

"You know," he finally said, turning to look directly at Keith now. "She has a point... I think that, in hindsight, we should have just... y'know," he said, sighing loudly and jotting down some notes on the parchment about the texture of the beetles.

"I mean, they're not woodlice, I don't think," he said thoughtfully, "They just don't look like them," he muttered to himself, wondering if they'd lose marks if they didn't pinpoint it exactly.

A gentle knock on the potions door was the only forewarning Gellert gave before deciding to enter the potions dungeon for a spot inspection.

In all reality, he had to admit, this was just a bit of fun. No matter what he saw (Unless it was blaringly bad) he wouldn't be really making any sort of action against any teachers - that would just threaten productivity - no, instead he'd just enjoy watching them squirm, as they knew nothing about his own intentions.

"Good day," he said loudly, his voice rising above the din of the class to travel with ease to the teacher.

"This is the... er... basic potions class, is it not?" He asked, shooting a sidelong glance at one boy who was clutching his hand with a look of immense pain on his face, and then glancing at the teacher herself who seemed on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

"I'll assume you received my note," he added casually, knowing all too well that he did not send one, and that he didn't intend on doing so.

Try as he might, Samuel didn’t seem to be able to come up with any logical or witty response to Amelia’s somewhat snarky comment, for which the new professor was grateful. She didn’t doubt she could match wits with him, but the idea of having to keep up a steady stream of responses that didn’t cross the student/professor boundary line, while simultaneously being watched by a room full of students would not have been easy.

And speaking of getting nervous in front of an audience…

The knock on the door could not be heard over the discussion in the classroom, which Amelia had intentionally designed to take the pressure off of herself. If they were all focused on the task at hand and the contents of the boxes, she would be able to breathe, at least for a little while. What she hadn’t anticipated, however, was that all this chatter would also cause her to lose the only forewarning that she was going to get before Gellert Grindelwald himself walked into her classroom.

Amelia wasn’t facing the door when the older (much older, actually, though he didn’t look his actual age) man entered the classroom, but she knew his voice well enough from having been to the ministry announcement ceremony with her father over the summer. His greeting was not in itself threatening, but the voice alone was enough to make any of the tension that may have been ebbing out of the former Ravenclaw girl draw back to her as though the tide had shifted in a split second. Swallowing hard, Amelia turned slowly to face the greying gentleman who she knew had more power than she could ever dream of.

Don’t screw up, don’t screw up, don’t screw up… Amelia mentally repeated, trying to keep her gaze level as Grindelwald walked toward her. The automatic respect for authority that Amelia had been taught growing up made Amelia inherently deferential to the older man, but she was also fearful. He was already making so many changes to Hogwarts, and what she had read in the paper about him made her nervous, though she couldn’t pinpoint just why. He said all the right things, and yet… but, no. He was a figure of authority and therefore Amelia would give him her utmost respect and attention.

And hopefully she wouldn’t faint.

“G-good morning,” Amelia replied as Gellert drew close to her, cursing herself internally for the stutter. She had really tried to get better at disguising her nerves in social situations this summer, but old habits die hard. When he mentioned the note he had sent, Amelia had a moment of panic, not remembering any note, but also not wanting to seem as though she were unorganized either.

“Ye-yes of course, your note. Yes, I received it,” Amelia lied, racking her brain for any mail she might have failed to pick up or a memo she had scanned instead of reading fully. Aurora was diligent about getting Amelia’s mail to her, and her memory had never, ever failed her. But there wasn’t enough time to dwell on that question, because Gellert followed it up with another one that made Amelia hasten to respond.

“Yes, sir. Basic potions,” Amelia replied nervously, blushing profusely as she caught him looking over to Samuel, who was still recovering from his unfortunate run in with the beetle, “The students are trying to self-identify the ingredients in the boxes, though their tactics… their tactics might be a little less refined than I had hoped for,” the redhead admitted, looking down at her shoes as though hoping Grindelwald might find the top of her head appealing enough the he would overlook any problems she was having.

And I thought I was doing so well… Amelia thought, mentally berating herself though only minutes before she had been feeling confident enough to be snide with Samuel. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Keith had to work to stop himself from laughing when Sam got himself bitten, but managed to hold it in. "Yeah, not wood lice," Keith said with a grin, peering into the box. A large green beetle stared back at him, and he frowned. "That's something...big cat beetle? Cheetah Beetle? Panther beetle!" He exclaimed with a triumphant smirk. "Or something along those lines. "Although I really don't know any potions that require a live panther beetle. Maybe we can just set it on fire..." he said, experimentally poking his wand into the box.

And then Grindlewald walked in. With a low curse, Keith quickly withdrew his wand from the box and began scribbling frantically in his notebook - he wasn't writing anything in particular, but appearing busy was better than appearing...not...busy. Grindlewald was a scary dude.

Apparently Amelia agreed. She wasn't holding up so well, but Keith wasn't about to stick his neck out to help her. Instead he reached into his box and withdrew a vial of blood with a slightly silver sheen. "Pixie blood," he whispered to Sam, jotting it down in his notebook. "Belladonna leaves, snake scales," he said, pointing at more ingredients. "Uh...crocodile heart?" He said, pointing at a particularly disgusting mass of red stuff. "That's weird. Why would they have that?"

Keith was attempting to get the easy stuff out of the way first - these were all the vital ingredients in Spice, and he could've identified them with his eyes closed. Plus, it looked impressive just in case Grindlewald looked this way.