[PV] Double, Double, Toil and Hopefully Nothing Goes Wrong

[June Selwyn]

JUNE SELWYN
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Date: September 4, 2025 | @Raizel Voltrouz | Dialogue: X
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Rejoice! Rejoice this glorious day, this day most cherished! For today was the day June Selwyn well and truly realized that she would never have to take a Potions class ever again.

Now, Alchemy was basically potions, but it was not literally potions, and that was reason enough to constitute a joyous moment.

That joyous moment was quickly dashed when the professor assigned pairs for a practical potions assignment due the following Monday.

It seemed like neither June nor her assigned partner, Raizel, particularly wanted to do a practical assignment over the weekend, so Friday night it was.

"Doesn't seem too difficult," June mused while reading the parchment in front of them. The alchemy classroom was empty for now, June had hurried her supper to be able to start sooner, but time would tell if other classmates trickled in.

"Don't know why the professor wants us to show up to class with a Hiccoughing Solution, though. Think they'll make us drink it and brew an antidote while we suffer the side effects?" It was conversational lubricant more than anything, but June truly was curious. What were the professors at Penwick like? One of each class was hardly enough to get a proper read on the academic atmosphere of a school, maybe her partner could help her out a bit.

She turned toward the wall of ingredients, suddenly feeling very, very lost. Some of the labels had faded over time, and while a first-year class may have received instruction on how the professor organized their supplies, a fifth-year class certainly would not. They'd practically be able to get ingredients with their eyes closed.

Which June used to be able to do. But now everything was wrong. There was dittany where the bubotuber puss was supposed to be, rose oil seemingly with the dried plants instead of the liquids, potato peelings nowhere to be found (!!!). Wrong, all wrong.

But she'd have to grin and bear it unless she suddenly had a desire to become a potions professor. Which she very much did not. June sheepishly turned back to her partner, a meek smile on her face. "You, uh, wouldn't mind showing me around, would you?"

[Raizel Voltrouz]

Interactions ❯❯ @June Selwyn | - | -
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❂《 ⌜ September 4, 2025 ▎ --:-- ⌟

It was too much to ask for a peaceful week. Raizel was hoping for their professors to take it easy on them. First week, lax week, thinking that they would be busy with the first years. Well, maybe they were when they gave them assignments. Normally, she wouldn’t mind, especially if it’s from a subject that she was interested in. It would be done in an instant and she would have a lot of time to laze around, do her own thing, preferably relaxing and sleeping as that is what she needed. This time however, it wasn’t the case.

An annoyance, that’s what it was.

To make it worse… she had a partner assigned with her. Perhaps it was the nearing full moon talking that made her temper rise at the slightest inconvenience for her. That had always been the case. It was, after all, a constant reminder of a tragedy that had changed her life and something that she had to bear for the rest of it. It fills her with emotions, mostly anger for how unfair it was and of course, for the loss that she suffered. Taking out that anger on someone is something that she’d rather avoid while in this current state so being told that the assignment had to be done with a partner had made her curse in her mind. In any case, being calm is her first priority.

Ever since she had arrived and started working on this Hiccoughing Solutions with June Selwyn, Raizel already wanted to leave. But of course she couldn't, they had to finish this now. No, it's not because of the person she was assigned with… okay maybe a bit but it's because of the small talk that she was bad at. “Isn’t that… kind of cruel though?” Raizel asked as she checked the ingredients for the potion and the recipe. Imagine getting Hiccoughs while you brew the antidote. Ugh, that's gotta be so annoying. “Well, maybe just a way to test us if we could still brew something.” That's usually the case isn't it? They throw down the easy ones first to get you interested in brewing with the constant success and then suddenly, you find yourself brewing a more complicated potion like a Wolfsbane Potion or something.

“I don’t mind but… show you around where?” She asked. Surely not the classroom, right? There weren’t a lot of things to see in the classroom. Outside, sure, she doesn’t mind showing her around. Okay, maybe not now nor tomorrow, definitely not on Sunday. Hold on, did she say she wouldn’t mind? What happened to not wanting company during this week?

⌜ Double, Double, Toil and Hopefully Nothing Goes Wrong ⌟ | ⌜ WC: 441/200 ⌟
««««« Dialogue | #000124

[June Selwyn]

JUNE SELWYN
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Date: September 4, 2025 | @Raizel Voltrouz | Dialogue: X
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June tilted her head, blinking owlishly at her partner’s reply. Oh. Right. That hadn’t come out the way she’d meant it. She laughed, a little too quickly, brushing stray hair behind her ear.

“No, not… Of the classroom. I mean,” She gestured vaguely toward the jumble of shelves. “The ingredients. Not sure my guesswork would take us very far.”

She smiled awkwardly while silence fell on the pair. Silence was dangerous. Silence was where June started to remember she was going to face things like this over and over while getting used to Penwick, looking potentially daft while simple things confused her, things she thought were strange practices that made perfect sense to others..

So she filled the air again. Maybe an analogy would help. “This,” she said, waving her hand at the shelves, “this feels exactly like... Have you ever been at someone else's home, and they say, 'Help yourself to some tea'? So you go into their kitchen, and you’re just trying to make a cup of tea, but you can’t for the life of you figure out where the mugs are. You open a cupboard and it’s spices. Next one, plates. Next one, seventeen oddly-shaped jars of honey. You know the mugs exist, you know they’re somewhere obvious, but apparently your host lives in a parallel universe where nothing makes sense.”

Her voice warmed a little.
“Well, that’s me right now. Except instead of tea, it’s..." She glanced at the first ingredient, "Fluxweed. Which is green and leafy. That narrows it down to, oh, half the room.” She tapped the parchment recipe with her wand, then looked at Raizel expectantly. “Care to rescue me before I start taste-testing?”

[Raizel Voltrouz]

Interactions ❯❯ @June Selwyn | - | -
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❂《 ⌜ September 1
4, 2025 ▎ --:-- ⌟

“Ah.” After June explained her situation to her, it made a lot more sense now. It had slipped her mind that she wasn't paired with someone who had been studying in Penwick for years, someone who knows where is where even without the clear labels on each shelf, someone who could practically find anything even when their eyes are closed. Instead, she was paired with the transfer student who was still getting used to the environment. “Right. You were from Hogwarts.” She found it rather amusing and the small remark at the end where she spoke of possibly ending up taste-testing earned her soft chuckle.

“Better get started then before you accidentally poison yourself then.” She had… never explained something towards someone before. She was never the type to be asked about something nor the type to be asking the questions. She either keeps her distance or they kept their distance from her. Her social interactions might be close to zero at this point. Her friends? Well, she sometimes wonder if she ever made any at all throughout her years here in Penwick. She doesn't mind however, she prefers it that way. After all, if they ever find out what she truly is, they’ll just end up leaving anyway. “The herbs should be around here and the liquids are around here.” Raizel started, pointing at the shelves where each ingredients sit, hoping that she was doing it right as she doesn't have any experience when it comes to these things. She was doing that while also picking out some of the ingredients they might need while also letting her companion do the same as soon as she knew where they were located. Could help in her getting used to where they were being kept.

Now, the brewing process wasn't going to be that hard. All ingredients were available, they had complete sets of tools before them and they had the recipe secured along with the steps needed for it. The problem lies on what they could do during the process. If it was her alone, she wouldn't mind working in utter silence but that would be too awkward when there's two of them. “So, what made you transfer here?” She tried starting a conversation but figured that the question might've been too personal. “Err, don't have to answer that.” Raizel mentally started beating herself up for her horrible social skills.

⌜ Double, Double, Toil and Hopefully Nothing Goes Wrong ⌟ | ⌜ WC: 400/200 ⌟
««««« Dialogue | #000124

[June Selwyn]

JUNE SELWYN
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Date: September 4, 2025 | @Raizel Voltrouz | Dialogue: X
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Herbs​‍​‌‍​‍‌ and liquids, well, at least they were separated. Didn't help much though, as most of the labels had been faded by years, maybe decades of use. At least the fluxweed was easy to find. She took the jar, putting it down and pulling over a chopping board.

Her chopping was… adequate. Not good, not terrible. Her slices were a little uneven, but nothing catastrophic.

"It’s not that personal a question, don't worry. Well, at least in my case. It wasn’t anything dramatic that made me leave Hogwarts,” she replied, pushing the chopped pieces into the mortar with the side of the blade. They landed with a quiet rustling, and she started to grind them with her practiced yet slightly stiff movements, like a musician who had memorized the notes of a piece but wasn't playing it with any feeling.

“Hogwarts is a good school,” she said, neutral, factual. “But it is also very… narrow. Not literally, of course. There is only one way to learn, one way to behave, one way to progress. I got tired of feeling like I had to make myself smaller to fit the structure.”

She stopped for a moment, picking up some leaves from the rim and putting them back into the bowl of the morter.

“I love self-study, I love following my topics outside of the syllabus. You know, beyond the basics that professors teach. Instead of encouraging that,” she said, picking her words with more precision than force, “they treated it like a problem that needed to be solved. As if curiosity was a discipline issue.”

June took two pinches of the ground herbs and put them into the cauldron, then lit the fire beneath it.

“I wasn’t trying to be a rebel. I just like… to understand things.” She gave a little shrug. “Apparently, that was a problem.”

She looked around the classroom once more, her shoulders relaxing.

“There was also that time when an attack was made on a broom race I was in, and it was never looked into. We all got pretty injured. I tried investigating it myself and got detention for it.” A very slight, almost bitter, but not quite, kind of exhale came from her. "I’m pretty sure that won’t happen here. At least, the detention part. It looks like any place with a lot of wix is also a place where danger is likely to be found.”

June moved to the liquids shelf, and with a bit more confidence, she was examining the labels. The salamander oil was quite simple to recognize, its signature gloss gave it away, and she checked the number of drops on the parchment, muttering under her breath:

“One, two, three.”

The cauldron responded with a soft swirl of colour that assured her she had done it correctly.

More confident, she went for the vial beside the salamander oil that she thought was horklump juice. Similar size, similar bottle type same shelf. She didn’t check the label as she uncorked it. June raised the vial over the cauldron, poised to add a neat drop of what she believed was horklump juice.

The label, if Raizel had glanced at it, read in clean looping script:

Shrieking Thistle Resin: Add only after the mixture has cooled.
Danger: Extremely heat-reactive.

June tilted her wrist, completely unaware.

[Raizel Voltrouz]

Interactions ❯❯ @June Selwyn | - | -
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❂《 ⌜ September 1, 2025 ▎ --:-- ⌟

“Hogwarts sounds stressful…” What can you expect from an Elite (?) Wizarding School. She can't imagine herself going there. She'll probably go insane after a year or two. Maybe that was an over exaggeration but like June, she was the type who would let her own curiosity drive her, seek knowledge and spells or even skills that she finds useful and interesting. She could understand why June would feel restricted in that kind of environment where seeking knowledge seems like a crime.

“Wait, you all got hurt in a sports event and no one even followed up on that?” Injured students weren't a joke and there was no way parents didn't react to that after knowing their children had suffered from a dangerous situation and that none of Hogwarts’ staff even tried investigating what had happened. Maybe they did but shouldn't they be transparent on what they had found to give ease to the mind of those that were involved? While she hasn't heard of major incidents like that around Penwick yet, she just hopes that they were more active in figuring things out and keeping those involved informed.

Looking at how June was handling things on her end, she could say that she was good at this whole potion making stuff, enough to at least get the work done. If this keeps up, then they’ll probably finish this potion in a couple of hours or so. That is… if everything goes smooth. She was so confident that June would be alright on her own for a bit, taking her eyes off of her as she went to pick up more ingredients, thinking that she had quickly gotten used to where the vials and herbs were. Raizel did her part of the tasks and only when June came back did she take a glance at her. In that moment, she felt like her heart skipped a beat and time had slowed down.

Is that…?

Oh… oh no…

There were a couple things that could go wrong while making a potion. The potion could be a failure, it could be weaker and the worst of them all was, during the brewing process, it could cause an explosion. To what extent, she doesn't want to find out. Small, big, whatever it was, it was something she would want to avoid as it’ll result in a messy classroom that she doesn't want to spend her whole time cleaning and injuries that might take time to heal. Now, the hundred thousand galleon question, will Raizel be quick enough to prevent a disaster from happening right before her eyes? Should she just save herself and prepare for the worse? Or try to save them both from whatever was gonna happen? “Wait! Stop!” Of course, she chose the latter, reaching towards the vial that June was holding in an attempt to prevent a disaster from happening.

⌜ Double, Double, Toil and Hopefully Nothing Goes Wrong ⌟ | ⌜ WC: 479/200 ⌟
««««« Dialogue | #000124

[June Selwyn]

JUNE SELWYN
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Date: September 4, 2025 | @Raizel Voltrouz | Dialogue: X
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June did not have time to process the warning, only the urgency in Raizel's voice and the flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye. Reflexes kicked in where thoughts had failed her. Her fingers clenched.

The drop fell.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the cauldron screamed.

The surface of the potion buckled inward, folding as if punched from below, before erupting in a violent plume of light and heat. June let out a scream, stumbling backward onto the ground as a shockwave of force slammed into her chest, stealing the breath from her lungs. The cauldron tilted, rattling ominously against the stone as greenish mist billowed outward, metal screeching and cracking as if alive.

June threw her arms up in instinct, her hair flying as the blast sent sparks, fumes, and bits of half-vaporized potion flying across the workbench. Something splashed against her sleeve and began to smoke where it hit. The air was thick with the smell of burned resin and copper, and a bitter, choking reek that made June's eyes water instantly.

When the noise finally died down, the cauldron rested warped and partly blackened, its contents churning in a disturbing, hiccough-like pattern all its own.

June stood frozen, her chest heaving, her heart pounding so loudly that she was sure Raizel could hear it. Her fingers trembled as she slowly lowered her arms. Smoke curled lazily through the air, catching the enchanted classroom lights in sickly green ribbons.

"…That was," she said huskily, her eyes blinking away the fog, "that was not the next step."

She turned to Raizel, her face pale but her eyes wide with horrified awe, a thin trace of green residue smearing her cheek.

"I am so sorry," she continued in a rush, her words spilling over one another. "I honestly believed, I mean, I didn't even think to check because it looked right, and I just, I didn't think it would-" She waved weakly at the smoking cauldron. "-do that."

Another hiccough erupted from the potion, punctuating the silence.

June winced.

"…On the bright side," she continued, still gasping for air, "I'm fairly certain we've conclusively proven why they didn't want us doing this alone."

She glanced at Raizel, a pang of guilt now that the shock was wearing off. "Are you alright?" she asked, standing up, holding out a hand to Raizel if she too had been pushed to the floor. "Because if I've injured you and destroyed the classroom, I might actually have to transfer again."

Maybe she shouldn't have celebrated her freedom from potions just yet.