Ahh, spring.

[melannen]

Q: What do politicians and primitive echinoids have in common?
A: They're bottom-feeders with their anuses in their heads.

Courtesy Dr. Holtz. *grin*

mctabby is doing another Blame Each Other Day. It scares me that I already have good scenarios ready for all the listed pairings. Well, except the squid one.


Right then. Yesterday was Easter. Went to my grandfather's house in Salisbury for dinner and company. Charlie stole my book *all day*. Also the car broke down on the way home and we were stranded at a gas station. Other than that, was very fun day. The sort of beautiful spring day that Easter always should be; we spent a lot of time walking around the countryside and looking at feral flowers.

The Easter Bunny brought me a HP:SS DVD and a CoS soundrack CD! And my sister a CoS DVD which she says I can watch! *And* two fountain pens! And massive amounts of chocolate! Does she know what I like, or what?


In an astounding coincidence, speakerenderfinished reading PoA today, just as I finished chapter two of a MWPP fic I've been dawdling over.

Cookie cookie cookie starts with C!

Trevor Nott, the Hogwarts Potions master, was a lumpish old man who resembled nothing so much as a crabby, overgrown toad. His classes were long stretches of boredom punctuated by intervals of sheer terror. Peter would have hated the class except that Hufflepuff always had double Potions with Ravenclaw, and he and Moony had been partners since first year.

Moony, in fact, did hate Potions. His natural lack of skill in the subject had been increased by the fact that he had trouble handling certain ingredients (such as aconite); and it was impossible to predict how even a properly brewed potion would affect his not-quite-human physiology. They had long ago decided that Moony's difficulty with potions transcended incompetence and was, in fact, a talent in its own right. He had a preternatural ability to make precisely the worst possible mistake. During especially boring stretches, Peter would have Moony pick a random ingredient from their student kits, and slip it in some other student's cauldron when no one was looking. The results were never predictable but always exciting.

Today, since they had a particular bit of mayhem in mind, they'd grabbed the table nearest the professor's desk, and, coincidentally, nearest the door into Nott's office, where the potions ingredients were stored. The first three-quarters of the class were as usual occupied by Professor Nott droning on about theory and ingredient quality, made worse by the fact that, in the front row, they had to stay alert to avoid his wand smacking down on their hands, which was the professor's standard remedy for students dozing off in class. Peter administered several surreptitious Upanatem Charms to each of them before Nott finally closed his notes and peered down at the students.

"Very well," he said, "Let's get on with it. Special ingredients are up on my desk. It is probably a vain hope, but I would prefer you wreak as little destruction as possible." And he sat down and started shuffling through last week's Restorative Draught essays, ignoring the class as they began preparing for today's potion.

Moony and Peter worked quietly over their cauldron until nearly the end of class, and then Peter winked at his friend. "All right. Which one do you think, this time?"

Moony closed his eyes, his hand roving over the neat rack of bottled ingredients, and pulled one out. Peter palmed it. They nodded at each other. Peter headed nonchalantly toward the back of the classroom to ask Allis Croaker, a Ravenclaw, if they could borrow some of her daisy root. He gave no sign that he noticed that he'd just slipped the contents of the chosen vial into Ricky Andrews' half-brewed potion. And he certainly didn't watch as Moony crawled under the table to retrieve a dropped pestle and never reappeared.

No, he was innocently chatting with Allis and her Hufflepuff brother Attis, and was as shocked as anyone when Ricky's cauldron started erupting giant red bubbles full of purple smoke. So that's what happens if you add pufferfish eyes to a half-finished Lightness Elixir, he thought to himself.

It was really a much better diversion than they could have hoped for. Ricky and his friends, once they'd gotten over their surprise, couldn't resist popping the bubbles, and visibility was rapidly dropping as the dungeon filled with thick smoke. By the time Professor Nott noticed the commotion and looked up from his papers, the room was a chaos of running children and multicolored fumes.

"Incompetents!" he shouted. "Imbeciles! Out! Out of my classroom, all of you! Back to your common rooms before you make a worse mess of things!"

The students were not particularly unhappy to flee. They left Professor Nott mumbling to himself as he tried to corral the wayward bubbles, which had begun orbiting his head as they emerged from the cauldron. Peter managed to duck away from the rest of the Hufflepuffs, stopping in a deserted corridor to catch his breath. Moony's head appeared next to him as he pulled off James's invisibility cloak.

"Did you get all the ingredients?"

"I think so." Moony was rapidly pulling packets out of the lumpy front of his robes. "Here-- you take these-- I was afraid I was going to start dropping them before we got away. Catch up to the rest of your house before they notice."

Peter nodded, gave him the thumbs-up, and they ran off in opposite directions toward their respective common rooms.


I've been working on this story so long that I'm completely unable to read it anymore, and thus have no idea whether it's brilliant or horrid, and am afraid to post it anywhere. If anyone in the fandom would like to judge for me, all you need do is ask!