"It certainly seems to be," Kurumi nodded, holding on of the leaves between her fingers and tracing it with her thumb for a moment. She removed her hand from it and held it to her nose to take a quick smell. Nothing like fresh mint...maybe she could ask Professor Bentley if she could take some of this back with her for some baking? "Oh, thanks," Kurumi smiled, putting her quill back to her parchment and filling in her chart while referring to her textbook every now and again.

Kurumi tucked her quill back in the pocket of her robes and looked back at the Slytherin. She looked...so familiar. Almost the same chocolate brown eyes as... Kurumi shook her head and tried to cover up the blush that was forming on her cheeks. "That's right, Kurumi," she nodded, ignoring the title comment for now. "I'm sorry but...I don't think I know your name..."

Kurumi looked back at her chart. Two more...but what other herbs to use. "You want to work together? Help each other identify plants?"

Cora quickly got to work, carefully making a table on her parchment. Plant. Appearance. Usable Parts. Uses. She knew she would like this class, and began to wander around, looking at all the herbs and plants.

She began to think about the herbs in her mother's garden. What were they called again? If only Cora could remember all of that. But no worries, she knew a few of her own, and began to write. Hmm there was lavender, rosemary... She would have to check up in her textbook about some of the details though. She got it out, determined to finish before the twenty minutes were up.

It's a good thing that someone just randomly came up to her about the mint leaves, if no one did, she would have still been looking at it and may have given up and walked to a different area. After filling up the first boxes on mint, Juliet is now more excited to fill all of it. Maybe she should ask Kurumi to be partners with her.

I'm sorry but...I don't think I know your name...

Oh right! Juliet forgot to introduce her name. She is after all new from around here. She smiled at the older Gryffindor "My name is Juliet Kim. Fourth year." adding a nod. And with her uniform, Kurumi can already tell she's in Slytherin too. No need for house introductions.

Just when she's about to ask Kurumi of joining together in finding these herbs, she beat her to it. Juliet grinned when she offered "Yes..." she said in a happy tone. Juliet then walked over to a plant that seemed to be a nettle."I'm sure this is a herb.... Nettle" she said. She has seen her mom use these plants.

Wisteria just noticed the time-frame. She needed to act quick, she wanted to get as many plants as possible. She scramble through her notes for a piece of parchment. It felt so good to start a new year. Things were looking up to her.

She went about the room with a pocket guide as well. Her mum loved giving her new odd things for Christmas...well odd things to her. Usually kids would expect a broom, but Witsy, no. She got books. She pulled out her guide and observed some of the plants. There were so many she didn't know where to begin.

One minute led to the next and she began scribbling to her hearts content.




She was running out of time, she just had one more box to go...

Moving away from the Marjoram, the seventh year walked further into the greenhouse, stopping momentarily before every familiar-looking plant. Some were those that they'd been taught before either in Potions, briefly, or in Herbology as a side-note. Despite it being such a tiring activity, specially for the impatient, Louisa liked it more than the fire-seeds and man-eating plants, which brought some adventurous memories and made her smile subtly.

She was about to move to another row of beds when this parsley-like plant caught her eye. She crouched before it and flipped through the pages of her textbook again until she came upon the picture of the Dill weed. Yep! She knew this one!

Nigel had to find herbs now. Well that sounded easy. If he knew enough about herbs to identify a couple of them. Well maybe if he walked around and looked. He could find a couple he liked and maybe remember a couple names.

He starts to walk around and look. He went around once just to find one that looked cool. But he did not think he had the time for that so He turn and went to the first herb he could find.

He walks in front of it. Looks at it for a couple minutes. Then opens his textbook to identify it. Well it looks like this herb is White sage. Now he just had to find the uses for it.



It was starting to get easier now that he had the first one done.

"It's nice to meet you Juliet ----" Kurumi ended up cutting herself off, not noticeably since that sort of was a complete sentence. However, the look of analysis that had come across Kurumi's face now probably WAS rather noticeable. Kim...no, it was a common last name. Jonathan had even said so himself that it was a very common Korean name, so it probably was nothing. Probably. "I know someone with the same last name," she decided to say after a few moments. "Someone very important to me." Even if she probably wasn't much to him now. She wasn't too sure. She hadn't heard from him since that night in the owlery and she wasn't sure he wanted to hear from her yet.

Nodding in agreement, Kurumi adjusted the hold on her book again and scanned the surrounding area until Juliet mentioned finding something. "My mother used to make tea out of that," Kurumi nodded again. "She would give the tea to my grandfather for his arthritis, I think." Kurumi's eyes scanned the area a bit more and fell on a bush of roses. OH! Roses! Those worked too.

Kurumi decided that she would count roses as her fourth herb on her chart instead of nettle, mostly so that her and Juliet offered Professor Bentley some more variety in the herbs present in the garden.

Ira listened and nodded at Professor Bentley as she explained about herbs. Jotting down quickly with her quill, she worked to take down notes. Her fellow classmates had given some interesting perspectives too! And she certainly didn't wanna miss those!

And now they needed to look around and identify herbs and note down in the list as shown on the blackboard. Ira first copied down the table on her parchment carefully:



The, she got up, taking her quill and parchment, and started walking around the greenhouse, to identify some herbs. But she had nearly no previous experience about plants or herbs, let alone identify them from a bunch of potted plants. How was she supposed to do this?

She decided to first mentally list down the names of herbs that she knew. Ginger, Holy Basil, Turmeric, Saffron, Thyme, Lavender, Mint.. these were herbs right? They were used some way or another in medicines. But how did they look? Tapping her chin, Ira tried to remember..

The herb Cassia was looking for had a lemony scent. So she unfortunately had to smell. Though she had breathing through her mouth since she got here just to avoid not-so-very pleasant smells. However ,now she had to breath through her nose in order to recognize the herb.

Taking a deep breath through the mouth first, Cassia started to get closer to the plants and taking small amount of air. In…out…in..is that it? Nah.

After she passed a couple of plants ,a familiar scent caught her attention. Following the smell, Cassia stood in front of her herb and grinned, "There you are Lemon Balm!" Oh she FOUND IT!

She scribbled down on the chart grateful for her grandmother for using this herb more often.


Now, Cassia had to give her memory a squeeze to remember more plants.

Annabelle heard the professor instructions. She got out her textbook to use to help identify some herbs. She got out the sheet to use to help keep her thoughts organized. She knew some of her classmates were already ahead of her but that doesn't mean anything. Slow and steady usually finishes the race from what her father told her. She went around with her sheet and quill and started to identify the plants first and get a feel for them. Then she would write all the information at her desk when she identified them.

Louisa closed the textbook and temporarily leaned it on one of the shelves, doing some neck exercises because looking down at plants with a huge book in hands was indeed a somewhat physical challenge to this particular bookworm. Not an extreme one but yeah, one that required her to take a break for two minutes before going on with the herb hunt. It took her only few steps though to notice the bush with the pale-blue flowers that distinctly refers to Rosemary bush. Another one that the Ravenclaw knew, she looked around to see if anyone had claimed it before but couldn't really say who was here. So she re-grabbed her quill and started scribbling it down...

Wondering how to identify five herbs in the greenhouse, in the midst of so many similar looking plants, Ira continued walking around. Ah! There was her first herb. She knew that very well, maybe everyone knew it very well. It was so common and easy to identify.

Aloe Vera! Yup, it was a herb definitely. So quickly, she jotted down its name on her parchment. Appearance? Fleshy leaves with thorns, blunt thorns to be specific. Check. Parts useful? Well, Ira couldn't see that many parts on an Aloe Vera plant. There was just the leaves and thorns, so she wrote it down accordingly. There, her table was now updated.



One down, four more to go!

Four more! Ira thought with wide eyes. How was she supposed to identify FOUR more herbs?

Juliet stared at Kurumi. Her eyes blinked in confusion. She noticed that she didn't finished her sentence with her last name. Why? Maybe she doesn't like to call people in their complete names? Maybe. And Juliet didn't mind that, it's absolutely normal. One of her awkward classmate before was kind of like that, she doesn't like calling people by their complete names.

Juliet took out her parchment and looked at it, yeah he still needed more herbs to fill this thing up and Kurumi was already half way through. She should definitely catch up. I know someone with the same last name, Juliet glanced to her once more. Well, Kim is a common last name, it could be anyone or unless she's talking about her cousin. He's probably the only Kim in this school? Maybe yes? Someone very important to me. Juliet's eyes moved towards the ground. Biting her lower lip she finally realizes where she's heard of her. Of course... She suddenly smiled and looked back to her, NO. No awkwardness, she hoped there won't be. "My cousin graduated last year." she shared, obviously Kurumi already knows that but then she wanted to act oblivious to this. "He's a Slytherin. Goes by the name of Jonathan" cue, smile. "Or as people call him JonJon or whatever it is" she heard that once or twice from people he knew.

Nettle it is for her. Kurumi picked roses though. Juliet never knew roses were herbs.... She should definitely read more Herbology stuff once this lesson will be over. "Nettle tea is very healthy." she agreed.

SPOILER!!: table

Now, she needs to find more herbs.Her eyes scanned the place for more and stopped beside the nettle plant. That looks familiar, really. Sage is it? She opened her book for reference and upon reading it, she's correct. "Yes" she muttered under her breath, feeling so accomplished with it too. "Kurumi, you can use sage for your table to be filled" and she could be the first one to be finished. Juliet hasn't seen anyone yet passing right?

SPOILER!!: table

After writing down his first answer, Daichi walked away from the herb and looked around. He did not know any herbs on his own but he was sure he would recognize a few when he saw them.

Walking around, the Slytherin decided to not go to the plants the other students were already looking at. He didn't like copying others work unless he REALLY did not know what to do.

Coming to an halt in front of a plant , Daichi examined it and read that it was a patchouli plant. It looked so cuuuute~!

After writing down his answer he began to walk around again. At least this task got his mind off of the missing duck pond for a moment.

Now that she had found her first herb, Alyssa went searching for the next one. She walked around the rows of plants, trying to use her nose to sniff out some of them, as well as, to see whether she recognize the herb from its leaves and flowers.

Then she noticed a flowering plant that looked familiar. It had purple flowers. Alyssa quickly checked through her textbook to verify whether the plant she had found was the Lavender. Once she confirmed that it was, she studied the plant before including the information. She decided that since she had more information to add, that she would use the table format that the Professor has instructed they use.

Picking up her quill, Alyssa quickly drew out the table, named the categories and then inserted the information into their respective columns.

Elise wrote quickly, copying down her classmates answers and eventually stopped a moment to rest before Professor Bentley gave the instructions for the activity. Her eyes widened when Professor Bentley said they'd be identifying 4 herbs in 20 minutes but continued writing.

She drew the table carefully, and then clipped her pencil to the page before setting off to search for an herb. Rosemary was an herb. She remembered that much.

So, she decided to look for that one first. Rooooosemary? Where are you?

Of all the things they had done in Herbology in the past, this actually seemed pleasant. No gloves, no dung, no replanting, just observing and taking notes. So far, so good. Ariadne drew a table quickly on a piece of parchment and started to look for herbs. First of all, she noticed the one she had been thinking about earlier. The mandrake.




Yes. That was kind of everything she knew about mandrakes. Well, except that their cry was fatal when they matured but only made you doze off for a while if they were still in infancy. Nevertheless, there wasn't anywhere in the table that she could fit such information. Now, to find another herb then...

Ira took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Nothing was going o be done if she panicked. Deep breath. One in, two out, three in.. alright. Okay. back to herbs.

Clutching her parchemnt and quill in her hand tightly and slighly chewing on her lips, Ira continues wandering around. Come on she urged herself, looking over the plants kept there.

She spotted the potted plants, and moved closer to get a better look. Yep, that was Holy Basil. She was sure of that. She would recognize those small purplish flowers grouped together on the end part of the stem anywhere. They were kinda beautiful.

Elated at being successful in identifying her second herb, Ira grinned, and wrote down its appearance as she could see. Parts which would be useful? Leaves for sure. She wrote it down, and then thought, maybe ifleaves were pressed, some juice would come out, which too, would definitely be useful, right? And maybe flowers too.. were Basil flowers useful? Ira didn't know it, so decided better not to mention it. Then for the usefulness, Ira remembered some like fever and cold and cough.

So she updated her table:

Woot! Two down, three to go!

She wasn't finished only one herb down and four more. Cassia dragged her feet around the greenhouse hoping for a memory to pop up in her mind reminding her of a herb or something. Other students seems to be knowing what they were doing. Was it only Cassia who felt defeated?

Hopefully by the end of term and with help of the club ,Cassia will get better in Herbology. Hmmm..

Darting her eyes between herbs, Cassia stopped near one. She squinted her eyes at it and murmured, "Do I know you herb?" Um..do they speak to plants or was it against the rules or something. Hopefully, it was fine. Peering at the herb closer, Cassia's face brightened remembering this particular herb.

She scribbled down what she knew about this herb which she knew about from her father who tends to tell his daughter any information he could .

Hannah paid close attention to everything the professor as well as the students were saying. Good thing too because they were just informed that they would have to go and hunt down the different herbs and identify them. Gulp. Her mind instantly went to her friend Jezz that she hadn't see at all this term. Jezz loved plants and she was sure that she would be able to help her identify everything in the greenhouse.

Oh well it seemed like she was going to be on her own for this one. She set off to find something that looked somewhat familiar. She passed a whole lot of them and was drawing nothing but blanks. Then she came across Angelica. Yup she knew that tall plant with the yellow and green flowers. She knew that they used the stem and roots for drinks, jellies, candy and frangrances. A girl did like to smell good!

Slipping the quill back into her hair bun, Louisa closed the textbook with her thumb between the pages and moved away from the Dill weed. She needed something more original, you know. Her eyes wandered around the place quickly attempting to catch a glimpse of a lemon-yellow flowers, or phosphorus green leafy bush - in short, anything that could pretty much shout "HEY I AM AN INTERESTING HERB" but no such thing happened. The Head Girl just strolled from row to row, from table to table, avoiding the crowded ones and going for the more neglected far ones.

That was how she spotted the Ginseng herb just as she rounded a table-corner. Louisa halted, stared down at the textbook and then up at the herb.. re-checked a couple of times before happily taking the quill and writing it down.

So herbs....

Welll..well...well...even though the activity sounded like it was for 'Hufflepuffs', Richard did not think it could be all boring since herbs were used in potions too. Yeah, and since Potions was his favourite subject, he was so going to find herbs and study them. Herbology was useful, after all, he could not deny the fact.

After wearing his dragonhide gloves, the Slytherin started to walk around and among the greens of the greenhouse to find herbs. Herbs...hmmm. This should not be difficult to deal with as there were Hufflepuffs in the classroom. The professor probably considered them when giving out the activity. He stopped when he though he found one.

Hmmm...he eyed the plant a bit and took some of it then he took out a piece of parchment and a self-inked quill from his bag. It was time to write down the information.

SPOILER!!: Info Parchment

My cousin graduated last year.

Nothing else needed to be said after the word cousin. Kurumi already knew that her suspicions had been confirmed right there and the wave of emotions that came crashing down on the seventh year were almost enough to make her tear the rose blossom she was currently playing with right off the plant. Only she didn't - not to worry, professor. Kurumi now thought that she had seen this girl's face before. Perhaps at one of the dinner parties she had attended while staying with Jonathan over the summer or perhaps from pictures.

Frowning for a moment, Kurumi's hand instinctively went to her chest...where the necklace wasn't at. It had been there for so long that gripping it was still a subconscious habit. But she didn't have that anymore. He had taken it. "Yeah...I know Jonathan," she said, her lips curling into a smile now. "I never called him that though, we both preferred to call each other by our names instead of nicknames. It was more...personal that way."

By now Kurumi's eyes had somewhat lost focus on the task at hand, but Juliet pulled her back in after a few minutes. "Hmmm? OH! Thank you for pointing it out," Kurumi said with a nod and a small bow. "There is some aconite over there that you can use for your chart," Kurumi pointed out just to Juliet's right.

Hand back on her quill, Kurumi placed the tip against her parchment and began to fill in the last bit of her chart. Hopefully...all this was right. She knew that the uses were but her mind had been a little, erm, distracted by other things.

Ira was a bit happy seeing that she had succeeded in identifying two herbs. Two herbs out of a thousand almost similar looking green plant, of course it wasn't easy. At least that was what Ira thought.

Now what? Clutching her parchment and quill, she continued walking around, taking a glance here and there, stopping at some plant, but realizing she had no idea what it was. Seriously, what was she supposed to do now? Copy from others? A bit unlikely, seeing no one would share their work. Why should they?

Sighing, Ira continued wandering. Then she thought of the list she had made of the herbs she knew in her mind. Ginger! Yeah, she knew about its uses and all. But what she didn't know was, how the plant looked. Did it have broad leaves or tiny ones? Did it even have flowers? She could identify the rhizome, but not the plant.

Maybe she could just pull out a few plants a little by roots without Professor Bentley seeing her? Yeah, that would help. But no, she didn't dare do it. She didn't wanna upset her head of house. No way! So what to do now?

Cassia glanced down at her chart, aren’t two herbs enough. Hmm…clearly not. She yet had to do more sniffling and touching weird looking plants. Urgh..what did she do to deserve this…..let's not think of this right now because the list is quite long.

The second-year girl moved to the other side of the green house hoping that she'll find more familiar herbs here. It was a wise decision she thought as she glanced a familiar one. She strode towards it as if afraid that the familiar herb was going to flee. Who knows herbs could be mean too.
Her quill clutched in her hand, Cassia started to write down info about this one. "Dittany….small…green.." she trailed off writing them down.