Swollen to Great Proportions

Potions was one of the subjects Marie-Laure decided was easy. You follow the instructions and the potion turns out as it was supposed to do. That was how she liked it. This was much more worth learning than that silly singing subject. What use was music when learning the serious art of magic and its related subject? The only thing she didn't like was pairing up with another student. That just increased the risk of error.

She read through the instructions in the book carefully and nodded. This was simple. There was no way this potion would turn out to be a disaster. Even if she was paired with Quentin D'Angelo she didn't think it could go wrong. Speaking of which, she turned to him and asked, "are you ready to begin now? I'll put the nettles into the mortar and you can add the pufferfish-eyes. Make sure it is three and only three." She would even watch him closely to make sure he added the right amount. Marie-Laure expected nothing but perfection from whomever she had the misfortune to be paired up with.

There were two types of partners; ones that did absolutely nothing and expected the other to figure things out and do the assignment by themselves, and the ones that took over and gave orders. Quentin was more fond of the latter, being the lazy and unmotivated person he was, and he was probably the more excited of the two to be paired up with that one really smart seeming Montagnard girl.

"You know I never got your name," Quentin started, unraveling his bag and pulling out the things necessary for the assignment. He ran into the girl enough that it seemed odd that they had never exchanged names before. She seemed to be more about business though rather than idle chat, which made Quentin think he was correct in characterizing her as the bossy sort of partner. He hardly had time to answer with a yes before she was rattling off orders.

His arm extending for the jar of pufferfish eyes, Quentin obeyed her orders and looked at her crushing the nettles with curiosity. She seemed pretty good at this sort of stuff, unlike him. "What about heating up the water?" He asked as his fingers slide into the jar and pulled three eyeballs out, one by one, and rested them in the palm of his hand. "Shouldn't it be a bit hotter?" He reached to turn up the heat before adding in the pufferfish eyes.

"You didn't?" she asked. "Odd considering I have mentioned it before. You don't pay attention to much around you do you? If you must know it's Marie-Laure. Now can we focus on the potion?" She really couldn't understand how some people can be so oblivious especially when they were on rival Quidditch teams. Marie-Laure was confident she could name every single student in her year and on both quidditch teams. It was unfortunate she also knew the name of the announcer.

"Wait," she called out. "The eyes are supposed to go into the mortar to be crushed with the nettles. When I said put them in I meant here." She pushed the mortar with the nettles waiting in it in his direction. "Don't touch if you don't know what you are doing." If she had to be paired with someone why couldn't it at least be someone who was half there reading the instructions?

His hands recoiled from the cauldron as if he were putting them in a raging fire as she scolded him. "Alright! Alright!" He said, moving his hand towards the mortar and dropped them in there instead, watching the slimy eyeballs ooze into the crushed nettles. It was pretty gross, but at the same time, Quentin almost wanted to squish it with his hands just to see what the texture felt like.

"Alright smarty pants, just give the orders then," Quentin replied, slightly hurt by her words, but knowing well just how picky potions could be. What bothered him was the way her words made it seem like he was an idiot. He might've not been the brightest crayon in the pack, but he wasnt dull either. "I'll just be over here chopping up some rat tails or whatever," Quentin said, a bit less enthusiastic as he picked up a knife and grabbed some rat tails to get to work on.

Marie-Laure let him cut up his rats tails even though it was completely unneeded for the potion.  That was far better than risking him ruining it.  Considering how easy it was she still didn't understand why they needed partners for this potion.  The girl concentrated on crushing the nettles and eyeballs together before adding the right amount to the cauldron.

She turned down the heat and left it to brew.  "How are your rats tails going?" she asked.  She rested propped her elbow up on the table as she rested her head in her hand.  This part of potion brewing could be a little dull.  The waiting until it was ready for the next stage.  The girl lifted her head as she glanced into the cauldron and nodded.  So far it was looking the way it should. Was it time yet to tell him the truth of the task he was putting himself through?  She hated to lie and she felt like she was lying right now by not saying anything.

Quentin felt bad for almost ruining the potion. He also felt quite incompetent, or at least that Marie-Laure thought he was. He wanted to prove her wrong and so that's why he decided to chop up rat tails, nice and evenly as possible. He could've sworn he saw it written in the list of needed ingredients on the page of the opened book, but little did he know that he was looking at the wrong potion.

Taking extreme care, he managed to get each chunk of rat tail about the same size and chopped up straight. Marie-Laure seemed to have been finished with her portion of work and was seemingly waiting on him. He decided, rather than just add in the tails, to show them to her first so she would know how good at cutting rat tails he was.

"What do you think?" He asked, grinning toothily and lifting up the cutting board with the tiny chunks of rat tails on them for her to see. His sleeve snagged on the cauldron and tipped it, pouring out the liquid onto the table. It quenched the flame that heated it and got over much of the potion's textbook. "I'm sorry!" He apologized quickly and moved to help clean it up. He picked up the potion's book and tried to shake it dry, while with his other hand, he mopped up the potion with a handkerchief. The potion was still very much all over their workspace and also on his hands. The Cerisier grimaced as he found the movements of his fingers to be stilted. Looking down at his hands, he found that they were thicker than usual. "Ummmm, hey, at least we know it works," He tried, absentmindedly brushing his bangs out of his face, only to spread the potion there as well.

Marie-Laure stirred in the bat spleen and nodded as the potion turned the correct colour. This was going well. Very well and it was all thanks to her doing all the work. All Quentin had contributed was lighting the cauldron's flame. The Professor should have let her work on her own. This recipe didn't need more than one person to work on it.

She looked over at the superfluous rat's tails with little interest. That was until he managed to knock over the cauldron. Marie-Laure jumped back but failed to avoid the splash of the contents on her shoes. "You idiot!" she shouted. "Look what you've done. It worked? Is that all you've got to say? I'm standing here with oversized feet and a swollen text book and that's all you've got to say." She moved further back as Quentin spread the potion further afield.

Quentin shouldn't have brushed his hair from his face, for suddenly his brow was swelling up and he was starting to resemble the troll that everyone said lived in the dungeon. He really didn't know what else to say besides 'sorry' and sort of stared at her dumbly for a moment, before looking down at her clown-sized feet and added, "Big feet are totally in this year!" He wasn't sure if Marie-Laure was the sort of girl to care about appearances, but he supposed it always helped to butter people up when they gave you the you-would-be-dead-if-murder-wasn't-illegal look.

He tried to mop up the potion on the table, which had it's positives and short comings. The positive, hey! The potion worked on the handkerchief and made it bigger! The downside, it didn't seem to do so well with actually absorbing the potion then. Quentin sighed. "I'll just tell the professor it's all my fault," He gave in. He didn't want to fail but it was all thanks to Marie-Laure that the potion was actually working in the first place and all thanks to him that they discovered that the potion worked by dumping it all over themselves and their workspace.

"No they aren't," Marie-Laure snapped. "I may be stuck in this school but I still know what's in and what's out. Unless you're a clown then big feet have never been in." Though now she thought about it Quentin was a clown. He should be the one with the big feet. That just showed how unfair life really was. She got stuck with freckles and big feet whilst he still managed to pull off the large fingers and hair when they were out of proportion with the rest of his body.

"Good," she replied shortly, "because it certain was completely your fault." Next time she would beg and plead with the professor to allow her to work on her own. It was far safer than being stuck with someone who didn't even know how to read directions. The second year did take a moment to pause and note there was still a small amount of potion left at the bottom of the cauldron. Just enough for them to hand in? Silently she picked up the vial and scooped the remains up into hit. "I wonder why this doesn't swell?" she mused allowed. Was it possible that it didn't work on glass? She hadn't read anything about it.