Potion Disasters

Kayla hadn't thought she could deal with younger kids, but she ended up helping a group of them during class anyway. They weren't much younger than her and turned out to be fun. Several had heard of her before and greeted her enthusiastically. Some were even friends with her former classmates, now second years. She went back and forth between them, but they often all hung out together. What would normally be dull Potions was much more interesting being able to interact with people. She still remembered most of the potions from the year before and her potion was currently well in the later stages. She stirred it leisurely while laughing along at how obnoxiously green Jacob's potion had turned and helping him fix it.

"Miss Miller, would you help Miss Green?" called Professor Belyakov, whose hands were literally full with various supplies. Kayla's eyes fell on the girl next to the Professor. She'd heard things about her from Cameron, making Kayla unusually wary. Perhaps it was just her imagination. "Sure," she called back, dropping one last leaf in Jacob's potion and jumping her way over to Isobel's table. Her potion was supposed to simmer for five minutes anyway. "Hello," Kayla greeted Isobel neutrally. "What happened?"

Isobel hated Potions. It didn't even have anything to do with Ryan not liking it, either. Isobel simply had no patience. Five minutes meant more like, a minute and twenty seconds. Half an hour meant five-ish minutes. If that.

Apparently, this was wrong. Isobel didn't really care. She was more of a book learner. The hands-on stuff murdered her grades.

And she also didn't like her professor. He was a total asshole, in her opinion. So whenever she tried to help her she'd snap at him. It was any wonder how she was passing.

And she was even more angry when he sent some girl over to help her. "Nothing happened," she spat. "Go away. I don't need any help," she insisted, getting more frustrated. Not really at the other girl, but at the situation.

Kayla strongly disliked inefficiency and that was what she saw in the cauldron. "You're giving up like that?" she let slip impatiently. "All right." She turned around and went back to the coherence of her group. Her potion still wasn't done simmering although it was a good shade of orange. Others seemed fine. Some people were experimenting, adding different ingredients to small samples of their batch. That was fun. Kayla tried to recreate her friend's momentarily fizzy rainbow-colored potion, forgetting about Isobel. She was dropping in some tiny newt spleens and watching them dissolve when Professor Belyakov called her name again. "Kayla, please help Miss Green." He looked frazzled. 

Reluctantly, she stood tall and strode back over to Isobel's desk. She was very close to telling the professor how Isobel was being stubbornly lazy, but she had to make the best of the situation. "Just tell me what you did," she said in a calmer tone. Coming up with a strategy shouldn't have been too hard, but she needed the basics. "We don't need Professor Belyakov's pantaloons in a twist," Kayla remarked in a lower voice.

Isobel was glad that the girl had left. She stuck her tongue out at the girl as she walked away.

Isobel was ready to just get up and leave the classroom. She'd go straight down (actually, up) to Madame Leblanc's office and would refuse to go back to class. It was a stupid class anyway. When would she ever need to make this stuff?

But the girl, Kayla, came back and demanded to know what Isobel had done. "I don't know," she answered. "I mixed this gross stuff with this gross stuff to make this most gross stuff of all," she explained.

Isobel smirked. "Pantaloons? Really? That's the word you're going with?"

Kayla wanted to help her, but she wasn't worth losing her temper or getting worked up over. If she wanted to fail the class, that was her choice. "Ah, I wonder how you got the gross stuff," she smirked with sarcasm. From across the room, back in her happy group, her friend shot her a glance she interpreted as a I'm-so-sorry-you-have-to-deal-with-her look. She appreciated the gesture, but she didn't need to be reminded of her predicament. She just had to deal with the girl through the rest of class and not lose her mind. 

"Why don't you just walk out of class?" Kayla suggested genuinely. It wasn't a move she herself would do, but it was better than wasting time. If not, then she needed a Plan B. "Yes, pantaloons. We really don't need to know what's under there," she tittered.

Isobel scowled. She saw all of the other girl's friends shooting sympathetic glances at the girl. But Isobel knew of this other girl. She was a twelve-year-old. She was supposed to be a second year, but she had been held back. Isobel knew it was because of some illness, but it didn't matter to her. This girl was going down. "Don't make fun of me. I am not the one repeating my first year. That's pathetic and it's the only reason why the professor asked you to come over here," Isobel spat. "And that's not funny, English trash."

Isobel was done. Done with this class and this day. She didn't need some dumb older girl telling her what to do.

Inwardly, Kayla rolled her eyes. The girl needed to learn to chill and take a joke. Part of her wondered if the girl really was hurt, but she knew that wasn't the case and didn't care anymore. She could handle her stupid remarks and laziness, but she wasn't going to tolerate being called the bully in that situation. That made it hard for her to keep her cool. "I didn't ask for this either. And if you keep going like this, you will be." She held her head higher, looking more collected than she felt. She hated when her brain was muddled with venomous emotion, it was stupid. She wanted to leave and slam the girl out of her mind. 

She laughed at what Isobel had resorted to. "That's rudely ethnocentric, and I'm assuming that includes my brother." The last bit slipped out and she regretted it. She didn't want to bring Cameron into the mess. But if Isobel was going to insult him, she was fully prepared to defend him. And she was sick of her manipulating him. She started to clean up the potion supplies around her. Kayla at least needed to do something useful.

"I'm not going to fail the grade by getting shitty marks in one class."

Isobel got quiet and started to feel bad when Kayla mentioned Cameron. Isobel had a soft spot for him. She did feel bad for flirting with him for no apparent reason the day she had met him. That was a malicious act on her part. But her compliments had become genuine after a few conversations with him.

She really didn't know what to say, so she started helping Kayla clean up the useless supplies. Isobel knew her potion was beyond saving. It was probably a goner already. It was definitely not going to resurrect itself.