Sunday, May the 19th, 1894 — Study Room
Hogwarts Study Week

With every sugary morsel that vanished, she felt a sharp cry from the region of her stomach. The leafy visions that sprouted into being were poor replacements for the cauldron cakes the cabbages had been transfigured from. At least the plants weren't growing tendrils to wrap her in their snare, like in another study session earlier that week. Benign and unappetizing, Millie could at least count the cabbages to tally her successes that evening.

The proximity to actual cauldrons made her a little nervous. There seemed to be no other good seats in the room, however. And, if Millie was willing to admit it, the bubbling of the potions nearby produced something of a companionable hum. Especially when she wasn't the one responsible for brewing it. No, the young witch needed only to focus on her transfiguration spells, something she had never been nervous about before.

Millie didn't think much of the extra gurgle and pop from the cauldron nearby until she waved her wand over the next cauldron cake. It vanished in a glow of light, but what remained drew a noise from the transfiguration adept. The brussels sprout that appeared in its stead was far smaller than a cabbage. What's worse, it flexed a curious set of tiny wings on its back before alighting from her desk to buzz around the room, much too fast for Millie to capture it with another spell.

She let her free hand run along her collar, feeling the comforting necklace that lay beneath it. Trying to ignore the one that got away for the moment, Millie waved her wand again. Instead of just one cake transforming, however, a whole swarm of them became tiny little brussels sprouts with wings. Her concentration must have been so split that her spell struck the rest of her practice cakes, all of them doused with a nearby potion's spittle.

Brussels sprouts took to flight just as her wand flicked a charm at one, which only sent it divebombing into the nearest cauldron with a great splatter. Millie waved at another, buzzing her with its tiny wings to make it fly off to pester another one of her studying classmates. As the cries of alarm rose around the room, she rubbed her necklace more intently, murmuring so quietly that only those near her might hear. "That wasn't supposed to happen..."

Millie had to find a way to reverse her spell, and fast. But how?

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[i]OOC: Open to all Hogwarts students

  

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The annual study week had come together quite smoothly, Sisse had found, grateful as she had been the one in charge of planning it. A fitting task given that it would be her last. Which was hard to consider. So instead she'd set herself to the task of helping other students. She flitted about the room offering tutoring as she could. It helped that she had no tests tomorrow and as such could settle into the task without worry.

She had just finished helping a student with their potion and was straightening up when something flew into her face. Unsure at what the spot of green could have been she blinked before it registered. There. A brussel sprout with green leafy wings unfurling from its body bobbed about her head before diving into the potion before her. Sisse jumped back before the shrinking potion could land on her dress.

Then she looked up, her eyes catching Millie Potts' a few seats away. There was a guilty look on her face that had Sisse rushing over to help. "What happened?" She asked as sympathetically as she could when her attention was being pulled away by the horde of flying vegetation around them.

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   Millie Potts

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Thank you Bee <3 Your magic has made Sisse bloom

Discovery was Millie's persistent fear, her oft-despised guidance that kept her toes in line. Whether among family or her peers, even a simple stroll down the halls, there were eyes and whispers everywhere. She learned to tune it out at the best of times, but this was not one of her best times. Nor could the young witch really expect to escape discovery now, with the whole study room under assault by the winged vegetables.

"Thaumaturgical Interference," she intoned mechanically. Millie knew the essentials of what had gone wrong. A potion spill on her cauldron cakes had changed their fundamental nature, causing the transfiguration to go awry. The young witch could have easily written a two-foot parchment for Professor Foxwood on the subject, covering the basics of the concept and how it might be reversed.

In the moment, however, Millie didn't have a clue.

"The cakes were supposed to become cabbages," Millie explained, pointing to the few heads of success on her desk. "Except..."

She laid her hands on her skirts, holding them together to avoid reaching for her throat. This was no time to abscond with responsibilities on account of nerves. Millie Potts was a fourth year by now, she should have known how to reverse her own errors. Particularly before an exam, next year she might face the very same scenario, and find herself graded on it as well.

"Perhaps a general counterspell would do it," Millie suggested to the air in her immediate vicinity. She didn't quite glance over at Sisse yet, uncertain if the older girl could hear her. Miss Thompsett was both Head Girl and graduating in less than a week, Millie didn't want the witch's lasting impression of her former schoolmate to be that of an inelegant, magical klutz.

Not after how well they had managed to resolve the matter during last year's study week. Oh, how the tables had turned on her.

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"Except?" Sisse gently pressed. There was something here she was missing and her eyes were scanning looking for it. Nearby a cauldron was bubbling and splattering and... "Millie," Sisse started slowly, "Did any potion hit anything?"

Any further inquiry was cut off as a brussel sprout fly right for her face, Sisse batted it away, only to have it return like the most persistent fly. Think. She urged herself mentally. It had been a few years since she had worked on her own transfiguration, but surely she knew how to turn a cabbage back into a cauldron cake? She would have pulled out her wand had the persistent greenage not continued it's barrage of her face. "Perhaps turn it back to a cauldron cake?" She suggested.

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   Millie Potts

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Thank you Bee <3 Your magic has made Sisse bloom

"Yes," she confirmed, refraining to mention the technical term again. That felt needless, as if the young witch was instructing her elder, headgirl and one studying for her NEWTs. Of course Sisse understood the concept of magical interference, a conjunction of spells or enchantments —or potion splatter— that were never meant to mix. Such things could prove deadly at times, merely dangerous at others.

It was with a great sigh, just bitter enough not to be much relief, that Millie's error was only silly instead.

She didn't suppose a solution would present itself so easily. With just a wave of her wand, the young witch might rectify it all, and only the sting of humiliation would remain. She tried it, a bit halfheartedly, muttering an incantation on the nearest brussels sprout to transfigure it back into its pastry origins.

For a moment, Millie found herself stunned into delight. The cake dropped in midair, where she caught it in surprise at both her aim and effectiveness. The cauldron cake was almost perfectly restored, except for a pair of flaky wings that looked rather leafy in design. The flapped once, then twice, before falling still.

"Thank you, Sisse. I suppose that wasn't so difficult after—" Millie stopped short as she felt a stirring in her hand again. She watched with abject horror as the cake shook itself and its layers flaked off like a peeling laminate. Where her restored cake had sat, now remained only a buttery pile of doughy debris, the brussels sprout having already taken to its wings again.

"Merlin's pointy hat!"

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Well that certainly wasn't going to work. At least now they knew that the easy option was not actually an option. "Let's see if we can capture it." Sisse decided. "Just like the cups. But this time perhaps we should grab a container to place it in." She looked around but found nothing that would work. Perhaps one of their satchels? Sisse looked around but she'd left her's in the dorm room today.

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   Millie Potts

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Thank you Bee <3 Your magic has made Sisse bloom

Sometimes she wished the professors would be in attendance for nights such as these, to see their students truly tested. Though the young witch was in a classroom, half the desks were empty and the writing on the board had nothing to do with transfiguration at all. A solution certainly existed for the winged problems darting about the room, but it was up to her to find and put it into action. For the moment, at least, Millie had a simpler way to start.

"Of course," she said, ever grateful to Sisse's presence. She had the more level head in a crisis, something that Millie wished she could summon more often. And there were spells for confidence, but not any that would help her with a flight of mistransfigured cabbages. Pointing her wand at one of the books she had set aside for the night, the young witch performed the spell that would transfigure it into a box.

Millie frowned a moment later, realizing that she had forgotten to give the box a latch. It had a cover, at least, and room enough for all the brussels sprouts that were now attracting the attention of more students in the room. She longed for the comfort of her necklace, though she couldn't hold both the container and her wand at once for this task. One by one, Millie went about the room and zapped each of her flighty subjects back into a cake, and then quickly tossed them into her box —otherwise pressed tightly against her hip— before the effects of her temporary spell wore off.

She longed to collapse back at her desk once that ordeal was over, too. It would be simple, Millie could keep the transfigured mishaps in the box until after her exam. If she couldn't fix them by then, perhaps Professor Foxwood would help her afterwards. Only, now that the young witch had gone about the room, she felt the eyes of other students lingering on her. Even Sisse seemed to be watching what she might do next, for a problem that, given the brussels sprouts' tiny thumps against the box's leatherbound walls, was not going to go quietly into this good night.

It looked like her transfiguration practice had just turned into a mock exam.

"I suppose perhaps an untransfiguration might have been a better approach," Millie noted softly, though spoke it aloud for the benefit of Miss Thompsett nearby. Perhaps Sisse had another idea or two about it. With the weight of her transfiguration textbook on the lid of her box, Millie quickly drew out one of the sprouts by its wing and set to fixing it.

Whether reparifarge would set the thing back to a cabbage or cake, though, the young witch couldn't yet know.

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Sisse was never one to delegate a task without her too applying herself to it. "Good thinking." She told Millie with an encouraging smile and then set about the room helping Millie freeze the mutated food for the box Millie had created. Honestly it had been silly for her to give up Transfiguration, she was realizing. But there was nothing to help that now.

When the two girls once again met at the back of the room, Millie's box shaking and rattling to try and free itself, Sisse found herself surprised to see Millie take the lead. The girl was going to do wonderfully next year. Perhaps she might even make prefect. "It'll be easier now that they are all in one place." She assured Millie.

The potion, however, seemed to have taken to the brussel sprout and the spell only sent the brussel sprout back into a cauldron cake - albeit one with wings. But the idea of untransfiguration had given her an idea. With a quick whisk Sisse performed a vanishing spell, "Evanesco."

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   Millie Potts

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Thank you Bee <3 Your magic has made Sisse bloom

"Oh, don't vanish them all," Millie pleaded, staring in sudden horror at the space where the winged abomination had once been. She couldn't fathom why she had just demanded so, Sisse's action was the solution to all their problems. And still, the young witch couldn't help but feel the need to learn more, to discover what had possibly occurred to make her spell go awry.

Millie settled in, with the box on her desk, to determine the strange amalgam's secrets. Casting reparifarge made the sprout's wings go limp, and if she touched them with her wand, one even broke off. It was a start, but not nearly enough. She tapped the vegetable with her wand and, like Miss Thompsett a minute ago, vanished it with an "Evanesco. "

The next squirmed and sputtered, which made her hold it down with a finger. The young witch found it particularly harder to manage, with its wings nearly knocking her wand aside. She was grateful that it was magic, and not some measure of intelligence, which drove the flitful vegetable to a panic. Trying several spells, with another dose of untransfiguration, led her to the same conclusion once more.

Millie wished she knew as much as her older counterpart now. There were certainly spells that could deduce the nature of her mishap, but they were kept beyond the knowings of OWL students. A spell to unravel a potion's identity, or remove its effects, would have helped tonight more than a mere vanishing. It was something she might never manage to learn, the young witch realized with a bitter sorrow, as the next brussel sprout vanished under her wand.

"I'm out of ideas," she told the seventh year. There was just one left remaining, its thud echoing a bit every time it bounced around the confines of its empty enclosure. Millie looked up at Sisse, shrugging with a wistful sort of apathy. Here was her chance to show the older girl that she had some real aptitude, and she had blown it. There didn't seem to be any point in studying for tomorrow's exam now, if she couldn't even pass examination by a fellow student.

"Would you care to do the honors?"

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Millie's objection took Sisse by surprise but she acquiesced and stepped back watching the girl. Millie, however, only began to vanish them. Sisse's brow furrowed but who was she to judge, she might not understand but Millie seemed to be up to something so she watched on. At last the girl looked up at her and explained. Sisse gave her a friendly smile and would have said something more when Millie offered her the last winged mutant. "Oh no, it is all yours. Perhaps you shall find another idea." Sisse smiled fondly at the Ravenclaw. "I'll leave you to it. Let me know if you need any more help." And with that she headed back to her seat allowing Millie the peace and quiet to study for her exams tomorrow.

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   Millie Potts

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Thank you Bee <3 Your magic has made Sisse bloom