Detention: Weeding out the Weaklings

Professor Ellis didn't particular enjoy being the detention supervisor, but he did pride himself in being able to come up with activities for the trouble makers that wasn't just writing lines. Today he had a rather large group of students, at least compared to usual. He instantly knew what to have the kids do. Earlier that week he had been walking around the indoor garden, that was mostly under his care as the herbology teacher, and noticed that they were starting to get a lot of weeds among the flowers. That was an easy job by magic, though it would take a few hours just from the shear number of the pesky plants, but why use magic when he has all these trouble makers under his watch for the evening.

The man had sent all of the students that were assigned to his detention a note with the location of detention. He was sure most of them were confused to find that the location wasn't some classroom, in fact some might be liking the idea of coming the garden. Once they were all gathered in the small gazebo in the garden he revealed his idea to them all. "Welcome to detention, I'm sure some of you have been here before while others are here for their first time. For those who haven't had detention with me let me tell you I never tell you to write lines. In fact today you will be working to make your school even prettier, each of you will be pulling weeds out this evening." He announced to them with a grin. Professor Ellis handed them each a card telling them what plants were weeds with a picture of each, so they didn't pull out any flowers, and sent them off.

Malachi was mortified enough when the professor had scowled upon him and stated that his lack of homework earned him a trip to detention, but the discuss he felt was nothing compared to actually going to detention. He did his best to follow the directions on the note he was sent, but somehow ended up lost anyway. The red haired boy finally found the gathered group of delinquents on the grounds and did his best to mold into the group without catching the attention of their supervisor, who was just finishing his speech.

Weeding seemed easy enough, Malachi told himself, as he accepted the paper from the professor and looked at the drawings on it. It was just pulling up plants, right? That couldn't possibly be hard. He moved towards his assigned area and knelt in the grass. Taking one last look at his reference sheet, his hands grabbed the wild plants and pulled them from the earth, however, it wasn't just plants that came from the earth. A brightly colored blue creature hissed as it flew out of the hollow of dirt, right into the German boy's face. Malachi screamed in horror as the pixie grabbed a lock of his red hair and started pulling. "Helfen Sie mir!" He exclaimed, as he swatted at the creature with his reference sheet to no avail. "Help!"

google translate: help me!

Harley had been a troublemaker all her life, she knew what made teachers tick and how to soothe them. One thing that definitely made them mad was "tripping" a student down the stairs and then denying it. It really wasn't her fault, she had leaned over to pick up her stupid hat which kept blowing off her head and leaned up at one of the most unfortunate times. The Professor reminded her of her old principal who constantly reprimanded her for things she swore up and down she didn't do. Exploding beakers and raw chicken muscle hitting someone in the face was her magic acting up, it wasn't like she could control it.

She huffed and snatched the list from him just to make him happy. Elijah had a garden full of the same plants and had her help clean up weekly. She had to bend down on her knees due to the uncomfortable uniform in order to reach the weeds, but as soon as she heard a shout, she popped up and rushed to where the loud noise was coming from. "Malachi! Don't you know that under the blue-brodge weed is where pixies keep their children? You have to pull it out softly!" she scolded.

August was tardy again which resulted a scold and a detention, it truly wasn't his fault! No matter how much he tried, he was almost always late. Either he woke up late, was behind some slow person, or just had terrible luck. He day he had got the detention, he had dropped his homework and other things in the hall on his way to class. He had cursed himself for such the bad luck as he had scrambled to get his things. When he entered his classroom, the professor didn't look pleased, he looked even more unhappy when August pulled his homework from the collection of crumpled and ripped papers.

But he deserved the detention so he had to go to it or else. He never skipped his detentions and had been there so much that some of the professors expected him to be there. The fifth year loved Herbology, it was his favorite subject. He loved plants and animals and just loved nature in general. This would be easy for him, he knew what he was doing. He took the paper from the professor with a small smile and nod. "Thank you," he said softly before going over to the section he was supposed to work with. He had hardly begun when the other boy started to scream, August nearly fell on his bottom at the sound. He scrambled from his crouching position and walked quickly over to where the boy was.

He had to think of something on the spot, he had to help the boy out. He rattled his brain for an answer before pulling his wand out and pointing it towards the pixies. "Immobulus!" He said in bit of a rush, he truly hoped it worked. He sighed in relief when the pixie froze in place. "No more pixies, okay?" He had no clue how to unfreeze the blue creature but he didn't say that out loud. He just hoped he wouldn't get in more trouble for using magic.

Fiona was used to being in trouble. Every so often one of her pranks would be found out. The latest one being frightening a couple of first years with a fake wand she substituted with her real one. She just wanted to know how they'd react if the saw her wand turn into a rubber chicken. It was quite an interesting experiment which might have gone down better if she'd checked where the professors had been lurking.

The professor's warning reminded her of past detentions and she was almost tempted to point out he wasn't he only professor to choose something other than lines in the way of punishment. However, her sense of self preservation prevailed and she kept her mouth shut. No point in adding another detention on top of this one.

Weed pulling wasn't exactly the most interesting of tasks but Fiona could think of worse. Something like cutting up eel...Actually that was fun. Cleaning up her dorm when her dormmate dropped hints about her mess. That was it. The task did get a little bit better thanks to that weird first year but then Gus had to ruin it all. "Did you have to do that?" Fiona asked him in the middle of her own weeding. "It would have made detention more interesting if that pixie kept it up."

Professor Ellis stood in the center of the gazebo off the indoor garden and watched the students begin their work. He had been sure to assign the students to a separate part of the room so that there would be no talking while the students worked. For a few moments that worked until one of the students called out and suddenly all of his detention students were in the same area. Ellis calmly walked over to the area that all of the students were gathered to find the young boy with red hair had a pixie in his face, one of the girls told him not to pull up that weed too roughly or that happens, and another boy immobilized the creature while the other student complained that it was more fun with the boy being attacked. The herbology master sighed before grabbing the limp blue creature. "Get back to you weeding everyone, learn from this one that when pulling up the blue-brodge pull it carefully or you will all have a pixie attacking you." He said before going to deposit the pixie in another part of the garden.

Once the pixie was taken care of he watched to be sure the students went back to their assigned areas with no more problems. Once they were all in the spots he started walking around to make sure they were all pulling out weeds and not the plants and flowers that belonged in the garden.

Gus didn't know what else to do, freezing the creature sounded like a good option at the time. He thought it was a good move on his part, it had been on the spot and very helpful to the poor first year. He sighed in relief when the professor didn't get angry with him, he was just trying to help after all. He nodded towards the younger boy, a way of asking if he was alright without saying something. The professor already seemed a bit ticked off and he didn't want him to yell at him for talking.

August went back over to his sport and began to carefully pull out the weeds. Hopefully nothing surprising happened again because he didn't think he could go through something surprising like that again. He could only take one surprise at a time and he didn't know if he could come up with another plan on the spot like he had before.

An imp of an idea popped into Fiona's brain at the professor's warning and she looked around her area for more of that blue-brodge stuff.  Anything to make detention that little more interesting.  She reached out for a blue plant which looked like it might be it and yelped.  It wasn't the one she thought it was but it sure did pack a sting.  Fiona looked back at the card whilst shaking out her stinging hand in an effort to stop it hurting.  Oops.  "Sorry," she whispered to it and moved on.

Forgetting her previous idea, Fiona went back to the card she'd been handed and looked at the plants in front of her.  "They all look alike to me," she complained.  That was the last time she would pull the chicken wand prank.  It wasn't worth the effort if they were expected to interpret what was and was not a weed from a piece of card.

Tears stung at Malachi's eyes as a natural response to hair being tugged out of his skull. He whimpered slightly as a girl pointed out he shouldn't have pulled out that weed, an idea made clear to him due to the consequences, and was about to plead her for help when help came from elsewhere.

Suddenly the pixie laid limp and Malachi smiled appreciatively at the older boy whom had helped him. His eyes widened as another older student said that he should've let the pixie go and rubbed his throbbing skull tenderly. "You wouldn't be saying that if it was your hair being pulled by a pixie," Malachi said softly to himself.

The Professor didn't seem too pleased with the commotion but separated the students again and left them to do their work without any threats. Malachi obeyed, taking extra care to avoid pulling up the blue-brodge plant. He heard a yelp from across the greenhouse and saw that the older girl from before grabbed a wrong plant and how it hurt her hand. Malachi swallowed hard. Plants were hard to take care of, weren't they?