January 10th, 1894 — First Year Herbology, Hogwarts Greenhouses

Herbology, at least, proved somewhat familiar to Ellen. There was nothing odd at all about a garden. Flesh-eating plants and dragon-dung manure were... unnerving, that was true, but at least the plants worked much the same. Water, soil, sunlight, a strong hand to weed their roots and a gentle one to pinch the dead buds from their branches. It had been, without contest, her best class in her first semester at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She expected it would still be her best as they moved into Spring. Though perhaps this would be the day to prove her wrong...

"Does it always... wriggle like that?" Ellen whispered, half to herself and half to the girl sharing her table. She'd not taken her eyes from the Flitterbloom writhing innocently in its porcelain pot. It wasn't dangerous, they had been assured, but there was something deeply unnerving and undeniably fish-like about the constant swaying fronds. She had shoved her hands behind her back at the very suggestion she ought to help prune it.

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Margaret was beginning to get past her abject terror of being surrounded by witches and wizards all day but was still very unhappy with her unfortunate lot in life, she had though at least decided she needed to make it someone else's problem, she was the victim here after all.

She looked at the plant in front of her and then at the Slytherin girl next to her, she was a little bit concerned about being paired up with one of the bad houses, having found her own house to be generally fairly nice as far as people went, but she hadn't really seen many of the serpents live up to their reputations generally, they just seemed like everyone else.

"I don't know, why do you think it does that? Think we just stab it or something?" The little muggle girl had pruned plants before helping one of her employers prune rose bushes so she wasn't entirely inexperienced with plants, but this was something a little bit different and she pulled the blades back away as the thing on the table seemed to reach towards them.

"Should was ask the teacher how to stop it moving?"

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Ellen Ilkin

  

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