Pot
*Anos's POV*
"Ok class now don't touch any plants unless I tell you to. Some of them bite and I don't want to carry a severed finger in an ice pack to the medical ward for reattachment." Professor Sprout said as we entered the herbology classroom.
She was a plump woman with grey hair, baggy clothes, and wrinkly skin.
"Today we'll all be working with these mandrakes. Now there's a pot in front of each of you so the first thing you need to do is drop a water bead on the plant's leaves by hand. Now which one of you can tell me which leaf should we start with?" Professor Sprout asked and Hermione was the first one to raise her hand.
"Yes, Granger."
"The topmost one," Hermione answered.
"Excellent." Professor Sprout said with a smile.
"Now someone other than Hermione tell me what you should do if you can't tell which leaf is higher."
"If you can't identify one clearly then go with the one that looks older." A Ravenclaw girl with dark circles under her eyes answered.
" Marvelous. And why do we care which leaf we start with?"
This time three hands were raised. Hermione, the Ravenclaw, and mine.
" Yes, Snape." Professor Sprout nodded at me to answer.
" We can't expect to wake up a human suddenly and not expect it to panic. The Mandrakes get more time to adjust to consciousness which halves the likelihood of them screeching as loud as they possibly can and making your ears bleed as soon as you take them out of their pots for replantation." I answered.
" Wonderful. 5 points to Ravenclaw and 10 points to Dragon." Professor Sprout said cheerily.
I heard a faint 'Yes!' coming from Hermione.
My answer was thanks to Dad teaching me how to handle ingredients properly and since ManDrake is a harmful type ingredient that I was just lucky to have already read about.
"Okay, now it's better to not take chances so before watering your plants all of you put these earmuffs on. There're plenty so put them on tight. These ones aren't fully grown yet so their screams don't kill." Professor Sprout handed each of us ear muffs and Neville hearing the last part of her sentence gave a nervous 'What?' that was ignored.
All of us put on the ear muffs and started to drop little drops of water using our fingers.
*15 minutes later*
"Okay, class you can stop now. Good no screaming. Now just pull the plants out and put them in the empty pots beside you. After putting them down cover them with soil fast." Professor Sprout said before pulling out a ManDrake as the plant gave a horrible scream.
In the next five seconds, all of us were holding a baby Mandrake by its shoot as the grotesque plants screamed their lungs out.
All of us managed to successfully drop the plants into their new pots for the next six months without much resistance and covered them with soil. Everyone except Neville who screamed as loudly as all the Mandrakes combined before going offline and plopping on the ground.
Finally with the last handful of soil the last of the Mandrake's screams were muffled enough for us to take our earmuffs off.
"You okay dude?" I asked a dazed Alucard.
" Yes, I'm fine. I should've brought my own earplugs. These aren't equipped enough for vampire senses." Alucard replied rubbing his ears.
Neville's Mandrake was buried by the Ravenclaw girl who answered Professor Sprout's question. Though it didn't seem she did for charity by her face.
After Herbology it was Potions and DDA again.
Potions was spent with every Gryffindor that forgot his homework getting the verbal lashing of a lifetime and Harriet being asked harder questions than the last time so it was business as usual there.
Defense against the Dark Arts seemed like a lost cause with the way Quirrell was teaching. I was honestly hoping for him to faceplant into the ground or something. Anything but his boring lecture.
Lan just spent that class sleeping as Quirrell tried to scare us with mystical appearances of so-called 'Dark and Vile' creatures and looking more scared than the students the whole time.
I was now beginning to understand why Voldemort lost. If this was his recruiting talent then I've got better chances of inventing a time machine in a month then he has of taking over the Wizarding world on this part of the world.
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Author's Note: A bit of a filler chapter since I was having a fever while writing this.
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