A retracing of his footsteps through the classes he had earlier in the day lead him back to the Herbology greenhouses where he hoped to find the cufflink he lost earlier in the day. Naturally, of the places he could have lost the rather understated but still important to him cufflink was the Herbology greenhouse. Yes, he had class in the greenhouse earlier in the day. However, he'd been wearing an older sweater and an apron over his dress shirt so it shouldn't have slipped off. Still he looked around shifting things until he saw a shimmer of silver from a pile of tossed plant material.

His eyes widened as he realized that he found something better then the cufflink he’d been searching for - though he did quickly pull that from the dirty rubbish and put it back not he sleeve of his shirt. He found a mandrake seemingly tossed from its pot and silently not screaming. An indication that as he grabbed for it and felt nothing movement wise meant the mandrake was likely dead.

This was it. This was the day he’d been theorizing and dreaming about.


Out of breath he returned to the greenhouse. His best notebook put on the table so he could write his observations made of the dissection of the mandrake, followed by a serving plate he got from the kitchens and finally both his potions ingredient tools and the few muggle surgical instruments he had from his older brother. Once that was set up he fetched the dead mandrake he hid underneath things and washed throughly before putting it on the serving tray.

It was important to always have the cleanest preparations for a dissection as he ran his hands down the front of his apron that was meant to protect his clothes from the mess that could occur. Then he grabbed his scalpel and made his first cut into the mandrake letting out a sigh of relief as it didn’t move or show any signs of life.

As if it hadn’t been dead the cut that went from just below its neck to most of the way down its belly and was a couple of centimeters deep would have killed it. Then he did a lighter cross cut at about what would have been the center of the chest if it were a human.

The scalpel put down as he leaned over and started peeling the layers of skin back with his face getting ever closer to help him see what was inside the layers of the mandrake as he said “ Butter upon bacon you’re wicked.“ with more excitement and loudness than he realized to the dead mandrake.

Mason Skeeter