open RP: office hours for Potions

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

The Calming Draught having worn off, Stephen resumed his normal routine, which largely involves researching potions, testing potions, and dissecting things.

However, he did feel a bit negligent of his professorial duties. Perhaps holding office hours would be helpful, as Crowley had done before. Some of Stephen's students did not have as easy a time making bruise balm in the most recently held class as he had hoped. Also, there were new students who had arrived at the school since the class had been held.

So he directed his house-elf to post a notice in the Great Hall and the common rooms, and posted it on his office door himself:

Office hours for Potions are being held. Current and potential students are welcome to drop by Professor Maturin's office to discuss any issue of interest to them.

He thought that putting it in the way Crowley had ("Come by to chat if you have a question about class, your homework assignment, or if you're just really fucking bored, too") was perhaps less than professional, but he did want to make it clear that he was available to discuss anything that a student felt it necessary to discuss, even if it were not related to potions. After all, the recent owl from Dib concerning the Gryffindor boy's run-in with Ichimaru Gin suggested to him that more attention to extracurricular problems might be a good thing.

(( OOC: Whoever stops by Stephen's office will be offered tea, as is his habit. This does not need to be problematic -- so far everyone who's drunk tea in his office has done so without incident. But the potential exists for the clumsy house-elf to have spilled something in your tea, and you're welcome to take advantage of that fact. Available potions include anything in the HP Lexicon that isn't overly perilous, as well as mpreg potion, virility potion, gender-change potion, and a potion that can turn you into a fish or turn a fish into a human.))

Comments

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"That's an entirely different situation, sir. I don't think that the body switch had anything much to do with that."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"Really? I was under the impression that both Valentine's Day and April Fool's Day were orchestrated purposely to inculcate precisely such tendencies in those who would find them abhorrent when returned to their right minds."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"Oh, well, you know gods. Stupid and entirely superficial creatures, really," he remarked dismissively. "Intricacies are lost on them. Anyway, it'd be awful of me to mull over such a silly affair involving a lack of free will when there are so many things going on right now to focus upon."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"Stupid, superficial, and in need of discipline," Stephen agreed. "I have wondered long whether anything could be done about Eros, the miserable scoundrel."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"Of course something could be done about Eros. I could kill him. Well, I could if we weren't on school grounds, anyway."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"Why have you not done so, then? Most of us would acclaim it as no less than heroic."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"Oh, you know the rules. Nil mortifi sine lucre...and the rule here, no killing other students." He shrugged. "And I don't want to be kicked out for eliminating such a minor inconvenience."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen was able to parse out the dog-Latin well enough -- it was not much different than wizarding Latin, really -- but Teatime's evaluation of Eros as a minor inconvenience made him chuckle. "If that was a minor inconvenience to you, I should not like to see a major one."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"Oh, but you already have, sir. Eros can make me act as though I'm insane for a day, but he hasn't killed me yet. Hasn't interrupted me when I'm working, hasn't said things...he's easy enough to ignore for the majority of the time. Now, Susan, on the other hand..."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Now this was interesting. How much did Teatime know? Stephen had been under the impression that Nny would have told Teatime of Stephen's own attachment to Susan, subsequent to the falling-out with River.

"As far as I am aware, Susan neither plans to kill anyone nor designs to throw half the student body into untimely marriages, or one another's bodies, or any such thing," he said, lightly.

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"As far as you are aware. No, I doubt the latter, but I certainly wouldn't put it past her to try the former. If she thought it was necessary. If she thought she'd get away with it. We are not very good friends, she and I."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

This was ... a bizarre conversation to be having. And it had nothing to do with science at all.

"I suppose," he said thoughtfully, "the thing to do is to ensure that neither of you thinks it necessary, then?"

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"That's a silly thing to say, sir. What reason do I have to not think it necessary to kill her? And if I think it's necessary to kill her, she surely will try to get rid of me."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen shrugged. "Whatever draws you together, perhaps, petty gods notwithstanding. A ... friend ... of mine theorizes that the body switch had little to do with what those of us who were switched felt at the time; that it had to do with a concept of the subconscious. He thinks that we subconsciously recognized one another ..."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"Do you really think that that's reasonable, though?"

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Now it was scientific again. "I cannot rightly say. Some of these concepts are, I am given to understand, rather after my time, as it were. It might well be reasonable, following some developments in the science of mind. It might be more reasonable almost than I dare to contemplate." What would it do to his theology? What would it do to his marriage? Stephen's thoughts were not on Teatime at all, which was probably not the wisest thing in the world when one had an Assassin in one's office.

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"It might be entirely possible, I suppose. More research would have to be done, of course."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

Stephen thought of River's suggestion that he experiment further with Lupin. He had the grace not to blush -- barely. "That could be. A research protocol would not be easy to devise, however. If you have any ideas I should very much like to hear them."

(( Fear not, gentle readers. Stephen is not going to try to plant one on Teatime. It's ... Teatime, after all. ))

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"Forcing people who dislike each other into the bodies of those that they love, and vice versa, could easily bring interesting results. Now, in regards to how to achieve this end, I do have a few ideas..."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"I am all ears, as they say, Mr Teatime."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"First, and perhaps easiest, would be getting the god that did this to work for us. That in and of itself would surely be no real challenge, were it not for the fact that that god is apparently popcorn."

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"The god Loki, yes, so I have heard."

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"I've considered setting fire to his kernel. The rules say we can't kill people, but they don't say anything about immolation, do they?"

[estebanmd.livejournal.com]

"I believe the cases in which the popcorn kernels are kept have some sort of magical protection, but there must be a way around that," mused Stephen.

[teatimeassassin.livejournal.com]

"And I'm ever so good at finding ways."