"Nope, don't mind at all," Diabolica smiled. She was rubbish at Herbology.

"Heather..." Cassandra said hoping she'd be next.

Xana smiled at Diabolica's comment as she continued working... Soon their first potion was complete. She tested the solution on one segment of stem as the professor had. Each burst was less bright, until at last there was no light. 8 strobe... tolerance of 8.

I wonder... Xana thought. "Do either of you mind if I try something?"

Without waiting for an answer, she took a knife and with deft precision, dissected the stem lengthwise, removing its paper-thin outer layer and exposing the inner structures. Onto this, she dropped another measure of potion... 10 bursts. Not 8. 10.

"Professor -- please come look at this!" Xana cried, excited. "If you isolate the stele and cortex, it actually has tolerances to match the root system-- which means that you'd be able to harvest materials with that yield on the stem system without impacting the root system at all!" The implications of this seemed extraordinary... harvesting the higher-yield materials from the roots would affect the plant's health adversly-- harvesting magically-imbued components from the stems would be far less stressful to the plant's health, and also would have a greater opportunity for yield, as there was more stem than root system on any plant...

Cassandra rolled her eyes at Xana... this was getting ridiculous... She was monopolizing the professor's time. She wanted to throw a wand at her. Maybe Erikson would call her into his office and she'd finally get to spend some time with him... sans Xana... But she ignored it and watched the professor's next steps.

He watched the students a few moments. With a smile, he laid a hand gently on Cassandra's head. "Keep it up, piccola mia."

He got called over by Xana. He squeezed Cassandra's shoulder lightly and made his way over to the older student. "Do not forget, Xana. This is a hypo/hyper effect potion, not a tolerance potion. It determines what the plant can do to a potion or when being used as a ritual ingredient. Next time, please wait for my instruction before using the potion. Alright?"

He looked over the plant and her notes, then nodded. "Very good, however. This could be very potent in use."

She cringed and blushed slightly, nodding. Of course-- he was right. She had been too overzealous and missed that. Idiot., Xana... stupid git. she thought venomously to herself. "Of course... my mistake. I'm sorry."

She brightened at his comments.... at least her zeal and her error weren't useless. At least he didn't think she was a complete moron. "Thank you."

"Yeah."She took the williow and added the leafs.She waved it and a rose appeared.She smiled and wrote down the effects."Whos next,"she aked removing the core.

It was as if Xana did not exist... He'd touched her... and now she was on top of the world. She nodded quickly and turned to Sho and said "I think you are... do you need help?"

"Help? Oh... Uh... well, Heather's taken care of the willow wand so I'm going to try the Pine," he said to Cassandra and Heather.

Weird. She was helping him...

He smiled and carefully put the roots into the wand and gave it a swish. He concentrated on making some red sparks and said sparks came out, but rather lack-lusterly.

"Hmm... Its ok I guess," he shrugged to Heather.

"Well record it and then i think we're done at this station.Wait I didn't do the cherry."She added the core and waved.She smiled as it produced a bouquet of flowers."Well I like this one."She scribbled it down and smiled at5 Sho and then removed the core in the wand.

"I like cherry would anyway, so no wonder it worked well," he chuckled, writing down that the pine and root combination was effective, but not very strong.

"Next station then?"

"Well where do we go next?"She fiddled with her paper and arranged everything back into the neat way it was.

He called over to the wands station."Discuss, Heather. What results did you get? Why do you think you got them? Talk with your group about it. And make sure you have all 16 results."

He looked back to Xana. "Anyway, continue on the rest of the plant. Make sure that you've got a full range. Scale on this potion is -5 to 5."

She nodded, and turned to Diabolica. "Why don't you take the lead on this..." Her confidence had faltered; she didn't want to disappoint Professor Erikson.

"Well,"she said"with the Cherry and the root of the plant I was able to actually roduce the proper bouquet of flowers.Then the pine and the root didn't allow anything.Then the rose and williow each with the root core allowed me to produce one rose."She flipped through her papers"So the root worked best with the Cherry when I used it.What about you Sho?"

Diabolica nodded, sighed, and started working.

"Well, I tried the pine and the roots. I wanted a lot of red sparks, but I only got a trickle. So I can conclude that, while the combination is effective, it isn't very strong. I think adding a flower could work," he said, looking at his notes.

Xana started doing support work and taking copious notes... hoping they were doing it right, but not quite sure and hesitant to ask.

"Well it could.Then there was the stem.It showed almost the same results with each wand except the williow.It didn't allow me to produce anything.Again I used the same spell to compare how they reacted.I don't know what it would do to help it though.I have to admit though the leaf gave me the best results for all the wands."She put the papers down and massaged her temples.Her stress level was rising but she remained focused.

Working with Diabolica and Marco, Xana continued to take notes and assisted in testing until all of the component tests were complete. She created a chart to indicate the varying levels of color shift they had seen for each part of the plant's anatomy.

Amelia looked over to see Willow take the initiative and add the last three ingredients. She smiled at the young Ravenclaw who carefully weighed out the buttercup and added it into their mixture. She knew they also needed some ground mustard seeds, and so she walked over to the ingredients table and picked some up to add to their potion. Finally, she turned back to Willow who had asked her about the water. "Huh? Oh, water. No, it is pre-distilled this time and up there at the supply table. If we had more time, then we might actually have to distill it though..." she said, with a laugh.