Soon enough, Tobias was at the student gardens. He'd flipped through his potions book briefly to see if there were any easily obtainable ingredients, which of course there were. Plenty. It was just a case of how lucky he'd be in finding them.

An obvious one that Tobias had spotted was ginger, and he had memories, now tainted with homesickness, of his mother giving him gingerbread when he had a stomach upset, and then any other time he was ill. He had warm associations with smell and taste of gingerbread now, so it seemed perfect when he saw it in the potions book.

His first thought had been to retrieve it from the kitchens, but given that the food they'd been fed so far was bland and basically icky, he doubted he'd find any there.

So here he was, uncertainly rummaging around in the dirt for the root he'd seen depicted in his book. Tobias had had to stop off at his dormitory to grab his Herbology things, particularly his gloves (just in case) so he didn't have much time. He also wasn't sure if he was allowed to just take anything from here, but Tobias had heard a few other students talking about coming to get things from the student garden, so figured it must be fine. Still, he wanted to be out of there as soon as possible.

Before too long, he'd encountered the familiar looking root, albeit a very small one, and gave it a slight sniff. The smell of the earth was stronger than anything, but Tobias was confident that it looked exactly the way it was meant to as described in the book, so he stood and brushed the dirt from his knees.

As he was about to take his leave, another plant caught his eye, and this one was something Tobias was SURE would be of use, and he recognised it anywhere. In fact, it was something else that reminded him of home: lavender. Tobias' mother grew loads of it, and more than once she'd joked about giving him a sprig to carry around and sniff so he would calm down. Brilliant.

Without thinking about it a second longer, Tobias snagged a couple of sprigs and hightailed it out of there.

Vial of minty green potiony goodness in hand, Eliza frolicked into the student garden. Yes, frolicked. She swung her bag from her shoulder and sat under a shady tree in the garden. She waited for Minerva to set her things down as well, and then held the vial up to the sun. She squinted at the potion in the light, observing the way it was almost a reflective substance. Strange...but pretty. Hm...now that I think about it, maybe we should have cast lumos on the potion or something involving sunlight at some point to kind of reiterate the whole growth and natural process of green leafy things. Oh well though.

She turned to Min and took a deep breath. "Well...here we g- Oh wait! Do you have that gum just in case this tastes worse than it looks?"

She waited to see if she could find a piece, and then forged ahead. "Okay..." she breathed as she uncapped the vial and drank it in a few quick gulps. The taste was...interesting. Nothing too awful, but...she definitely wouldn't want to be drinking any more than necessary. She squinted as she swallowed the rest of it down and peeked over to Min. "Well...it's not that bad." She dragged her tongue over her teeth, feeling the graininess of it. "It's um, not as minty as the color might suggest. But...really, considering what we - no. No don't consider that. It's fine. Go ahead. Promise." She watched to see how Min would react to the taste of it, because really, it wasn't as horrible as it could have been. That chocolate must've helped a lot.

As she watched Min take her vial full, she glanced down at her feet, and noticed the grass near her shoes and how lush it looked. Is it all like this? she wondered. She hadn't remembered it being so long when she first arrived, but maybe that was just an oversight. Or maybe...

Minerva followed Eliza down to the student garden. Once inside she glanced around. Nothing to special, but she would never say that out loud when certain people were around. Well that was wrong there were the Jacob’s ladder that she would have to check on before they left. Setting her bag down, Minerva pulled the vial out of her pocket. Looking at the green color, Minerva felt like she was going to drink something really gross and tried to prepare herself.

“No.. I said it was in my room, but we didn’t have a long enough wait to run and get it. I guess we have to do this without anything.” gulp That could be horrible. She was not ready for this, not at all, but then she saw Eliza doing it. She eyed the girl, she would have gladly gone first in case the potion would have made her sick or something. She didn’t like that the younger girl did it first, but now that she did Min just watched. Well she wasn’t passed out or sick, so it must be safe.

Taking the vial to her lip, Minerva drank the potion and made a small face, “Not horrible, but not great either.” She was just glad that part was over, she hated drinking potions for the first time it was just like cold medicines at home. “Now what should we do? It has to be something that you aren’t typically able to do.” Which was pretty much everything when it came to this subject. Looking around she noticed that the flutterby bush was needed repruned. She stopped tilting her head, she actually figure that out, was Ethan finally teaching her things or was this potion actually working.

Eliza looked around some more as Minerva drank her potion. The she watched Min make a face at the initial taste of the mixture, but soon she had consumed it all and what was done was done."Yeah, good thing it's not that bad," she said in reference to the taste. Peppermint would've been nice, but it really hadn't been that awful, so she knew they'd be okay.

She glanced around the garden again. "I'm not sure...I don't know many gardening spells to begin with, so I guess if I was able to do anything I'd be impressed," she said with a laugh. She looked down at her feet again and noticed the grass was definitely greener and longer now. "Hey look at this," she said pointing to her feet. "The grass in this spot keeps getting greener and I'm pretty sure longer too, since we've been standing here." She looked down at Minerva's feet and saw the grass near her was beginning to brighten up as well. Her eyes flashed, excitedly, to her friend and she exclaimed, "It must be doing something! Look! Your feet have it too!" She walked in a circle, slowly, watching the grass turn bold and glossy in her foot prints. "This is so cool! I mean...it would call for a lot more mowing, but look at how nice the color is!"

Now she wanted to see what else she could do. There weren't many spells running through her mind, but she had an idea. She waved for Minerva to follow her to a bush with a few lingering blossoms on it. The colder weather had scared most of the blooms away, but a few still remained. She aimed her wand at the smallest bud and said, "Engorio!" She watched in delight as the bud quivered, opened, and bloomed. It expanded larger and larger, the colors bleeding all the way to the edges of the petals. Bright, vibrant, and beautiful. She turned slowly to her friend and made a face that said "Did you just see that?". "Well, I've done that spell before...and it's worked, but this flower looks a little better than usual, don't you think?" She wasn't sure how this particular flower was supposed to look mind you, but she did think it was especially nice.

She noticed Min eyeing a bush in the garden and followed to watch her try out the potion for herself. While she was deciding what to do, the thirteen year old thought aloud. "So if the incantation was make me mother nature...I'm thinking the easiest thing to call our potion would be the Mother Nature Potion, ya think? And yunno...I bet if we wanted to, we could really tweak the ingredients and brewing procedure to make this a really good potion recipe!" She hadn't taken all that much interest in potions before just because it took so much time and used resources, whereas a spell just took practice and concentration really, but now that she'd helped to actually create a potion, she was starting to see things differently.

"Wouldn't this be a cool graduation gift for Ethan? If we got it down really well, we could make him a lot of it, since he likes Herbology so much you know?" She paused and thought about what all they could change to make it better later. "Not that I want him to graduate you know, but just...it would be a nice idea right?" She hoped she hadn't just spun Minerva into an ocean of separation emotions, but Eliza couldn't help but think about Ethan when plants were involved.

But back to the task at hand. One. We collected our ingredients. Two. We managed to somehow think of a way to make these work in a potion. Three. We consumed said potion, and rather bravely I might add, and hey whaddya know - it sort of works! Pretty snazzy! She went on looking at the various plants, wishing she knew more spells to try and looking forward to trying the potion again once they knew how to draft it a little better.

Minerva listened and watched Eliza, “Are you good with Herbology usually? I’m not horrible at it, but I wouldn’t say I’m great either. “ It wasn’t one of her worst, but it wasn’t a best either. She had done well on her OWL but only because of Ethan’s extra help. She tried to think of a few of the spells that she knew but got distracted by Eliza’s comments looking down she shrugged, “Yeah I guess the grass is looking a bit brighter, like you could really see if it was cut uneven or something.” She still wasn’t sure she believed that the spell was working, mostly from her own self -conscious reasons.


As she was thinking about the grass and back to that bush that was really driving her nuts now, it needed trimmed and she might just have to do it before they left, which normally she didn’t care whether a bush need trimmed, heck she wouldn’t even notice. Was this potion actually working, “You know I wonder if Professor Bentley would let us in Greenhouse Eight, I would really like to take a look at the Venomous Tentacula or the Snargaluff” Minerva froze and her eyes widened. “Eliza.. it works.. This spell, it could use some work to be at it’s best, but I’m telling you it works for the most part. I would have never remembered the names of those horrid plants let alone want near them.” She couldn’t believe her own ears, did she actually want to go look and work near those.

Her mind was blown she couldn’t believe they actually had succeeded at this. Then Eliza brought her out of her own thoughts, “Oh I like that, simple and to the point.” So they had a name to their potion. This was great, “We should work on perfecting it sometime.” Now that they started and what.. a graduation present.. frown “Oh that’s.. umm.. a good idea, but I don’t think he needs it. He’s so great at this stuff as it is. You know he wants to study Herbology and stuff after school. He’s going to be a great herbologist.” Yes she knew he would be.

The grounds were incredibly dead during right before Christmas break rolled around, and Dora had found it nearly impossible to think of a good place for them to do this. But she was stubborn and determined to make this surprise happen, so she kept searching until she found her way into the gardens. They weren't dead.

So here is where they would do it.

She told Mo where to meet her after the lesson, and after a bit of convincing, got Alice to come along with her back outside. "You'll find out soon enough why were here," Her voice drifted as she looked around for Mo, settling for a bench surrounded by bushes when he was yet to be found. She took a seat and motioned for Alice to join her with an mysterious smile. "That was an interesting lesson, yeah?"

Why was she going outside? Alice didn't want to look at dead grounds and bare branches and other outdoors-y stuff right after lessons. Especially not for unknown reasons, because Dora knew she didn't like surprises or unexpected things at all, didn't she? But because she was an excellent friend and everything, she grudgingly took a seat next to her best on the bench, doing a very good job of being cooperative and not complaining.

Even if she did say so herself.

"I guess." Not particularly, no. Bellaire's lessons had gotten awfully boring and tedious ever since she'd taken a chomp out of the professor. Someone was clearly still sour that she'd gotten bitten, but there was no need for her to be all antagonistic all the time. Alice didn't have rabies, okay? She didn't. Really. "I've had better ones. Why are we out here?"

Mo shuffled along toward the student gardens, taking his time in case the girls were running behind. And knowing Alice... they might not be there at all, if Alice decided heading outdoors was more trouble than it was worth. Then again... knowing Dora, Alice had no choice. Girls were extremely complicated creatures.

He had his camera stuffed down into his bag, as well as his collapsible tripod, so Mo turned the corner and spotted the girls with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched a bit. "Hey."

Just hey. He wasn't sure how much Alice knew about what Dora had planned. Hey was safe.

Alice was being uncommunicative and not looking all too happy, but that was okay since she didn't know why they were out here. Just the fact that she was still out here and not complaining (or worse leaving) was enough for Dora. Her best friend would be happy soon enough once she realized why they were out here.

"It's your surprise, remember?" Of course she did. "Got any guesses what it is?" She sat back and played with the braid that was partly hidden by all her free flowing hair, and waited for some wrong guesses when Mo showed up and she got even more excited.

She beckoned him closer and sat up a bit. "Hey, Alice was about to guess what we're doing here." Or try. Maybe not that hard though, since she didn't like surprises and all.

"But it's not Christmas yet." And she didn't like surprises. Her friend got one of her best kicked puppy looks with extra pleading eyes, willing Dora to let them go inside and near a fire or something. Because it was winter and cold, and she hadn't brought a jacket. Alice was going to turn into a human icicle soon if they didn't hurry with whatever kind of things were planned, and there were a lot of things she couldn't do as a human icicle. They weren't at all versatile.

Mo knew what they were doing, too? Was she the only clueless one here? "I don't know." She gave them a few incredulous looks, shivering a little and going on to spout guesses. "Um." They were in a garden. "Are we.. like.. flower picking or something? You're getting me a bouquet for Christmas?" Was that even allowed here? Bentley wouldn't be too happy, especially if they plucked the irises.

Alice glanced at them both blankly again before wrapping her arms around herself and shivering some more. Could they go in yet?

Oh, nope. Alice didn't know yet, so Mo just gave her a cheeky smile and rocked on his heels while he waited. She was guessing, right? Couldn't she tell?

"We could pick flowers, sure, but I think we'll get smacked down by Bentley before the first stem is even cut. We could pick weeds, although they aren't nearly as pretty. But if you didn't know the difference, you'd probably be happy to receive a bouquet of weeds, wouldn't you?" Especially dandelions, which were awfully cheerful flowers, even if they were weeds.

But Alice was cold, and Mo gave Dora a concerned look.

"So it's an early Christmas present." She shrugged her shoulders dismissively. Alice would like it either way, and could still enjoy it with her jar that she was getting for Christmas. The look kind of went ignored since.... what was she learning from West or something? He should have told her that look never worked on her. Dora did notice her friend was cold though, and wondered why she hadn't brought an extra jacket for her.

She stood up and unbuttoned her cloak, hazel eyes on Mo thoughtfully. "I don't think she'd physically smack us, but we'd lose points and maybe get detention. Or at least a very long lecture." Which was worse, she wasn't sure. "And weeds aren't a fit gift for Alice." Did he know these things? Gosh.

His look was returned with a knowing nod that said she was already on it, and she removed her cloak and drew out her wand. It took Dora moment to duplicate the item, and then cast the same warming charms on the duplication that were on the original item so that Alice would be just as warm and cozy as she was. Dora was really good at these types of charms, considering how often she used them, so Alice had a good few hours with them, and the cloak.

"Here, you can't be shivering in our pictures. You have to smile." She draped the cloak over Alice's shoulders with an exaggerated flourish, and then beamed cheerfully down at her friend.

West's kicked puppy looks had nothing on Alice's, okay? Even if hers still didn't work on Dora, she was pretty sure that his couldn't compare in the slightest. "I can tell the difference between a flower and a weed. I'm not daft." Did Mo think she was? He got an exasperated glance from her while she shivered some more, turning into more of a human icicle by the second.

A cloak? She didn't bother putting it on properly, drawing it around herself like a shawl or blanket instead until she was bundled up enough to make her teeth stop chattering. "Pictures? Why are we taking pictures?" Alice didn't WANT to smile, though. There was no reason to smile. No happiness, just chilliness. If Dora wanted her smiley, she should have done it somewhere where making human ice cubes wasn't possible.

But she smiled anyway, because it was for her best friend. Pretty forced beam for the camera, which was.. where, exactly?

"You two," Mo shook his head as he pulled out his camera and fiddled with the tripod in the snow. "You are awfully literal. I was obviously asking if weeds are a social construct or an actual fact, but since we apparently all think I have no game and give out weeds to women..." He shook his head again and stepped back from his camera, which was now steady.

And hello... they were both looking a bit blue and Alice's smile was terrifying and toothy. What was with the location? And the attitude, HMM? He took the first picture before glancing around for some inspiration. "I can make a fire, but can we please stop looking like someone is pulling out your teeth? Hmm?"

Harvey walked to the Student Garden and he had brought with him his ice cream cause he just loved it a lot and there was no way that he was going anywhere without it. The ice cream was making him happy again! He hadn’t been happy in so long that he had forgotten how good it felt, it was either the ice cream or the other item that made him happy over the summer. Even though he had some secretly stashed in his common room he was being good and left it there so he didn’t need it anymore! He had found something else, ice cream!! The greatest stuff on the face of the planet! He then sat down and watched all the plants in the student Garden, when he saw a flower that looked like it was calling him over so he went over to it and it seemed like it wanted some of his ice cream. Harvey pulled the bowl away "No! You cannot have my ice cream! Do you know how precious this is to me? This little bowl of sugary goodness is the reason I am this happy in a year and a half!" he said looking at the bowl lovingly "I haven’t been this happy since my breakup with a girl I once loved, but now thanks to this ice cream here I feel like I can do anything! I could even dance with you...whatever plant you are. But I won’t since I’m sure Professor Bentley won’t be too pleased that I am dancing with her plants" he said to it before a thought came to his head "Does the professor dance with you or feed you ice cream?" he asked wondering if the professor really treated these plants like children and danced with them as well as feeding them ice cream. That was an interesting notion, is that why most of her time was spent outdoors? Cause she was busy dancing and feeding the plants ice cream? Well he couldn’t blame the professor for giving them ice cream if it seemed they were sad, because the ice cream was a great pick-me-up! He should know! Because the ice cream had picked him right up making his friends wonder what had caused the sudden change in mood, from downright depressed to high-in-the-sky happy!

Kicked puppies, were kicked puppies. None of the looks worked on Isidora who's soft spot was so clearly for jarveys only. Her eyes flicked from her freezing friend to the one always speaking in metaphors. "I'm always literal, Marcus Orion. And if you must know I think they're a bit of both." She was pretty sure he didn't give out weeds to women though, so why were they talking about this again?

She didn't notice the first picture snapping as she was looking on at Alice with some concern since the warming charm and extra jacket were not working. "A fire would be nice. And here, have my gloves." She took her gloves off her gloves and handed them over to her best friend, making a mental note that she and Alice would stay indoors should she ever come visit her in Siberia.

Weeds were social constructs or actual facts? Or both? Or.. what?

Why did she talk to Ravenclaws again?

Ignoring the conversation about weeds because it was making her all sorts of confused and skeptical, Alice slipped on her friend's gloves and flexed her fingers. They were stiff from the cold already, see? This had obviously not been well thought out, she would have expected more from two of the smartest people in the school. "Fires would be nice. And then I'll stop making faces like I'm being detoothed, promise."

She began attempting to give Mo a brighter look and stop looking so grimace-y. Was it working?

A fire, a fire. Mo rummaged in his bag until he found his thermos. After dumping out the tea inside onto the path, he cast one of those funny blue fire spells into the thermos and handed it over without a word. He was thinking about pictures and framing and lighting and why in the world he still felt broken sometimes when Alice was so mean.

Dora was mean too, though. It was part of their charm, and it was probably why they only liked boys who were Slytherin.

"You're the only one who calls me that, you know?" He looked into the viewfinder again and reframed the girls, who were currently taken up by each other's company and looking much less self-conscious. "You know... the two of you aren't bad looking, but you somehow photograph as if you've forgotten what all the muscles in your faces do. Just... do that girl thing where you pretend I'm not here and I'll get some pictures eventually."

And he pointedly turned his back on them and took a picture of the ground. A bush. Oh, a flower. Was it working?

Alice was not fit for cold weather. Or she was being dramatic. Dora couldn't tell just yet, but she wasn't gonna test out which was more true right now. If Alice WAS actually cold, she would feel terrible about making her freeze when it wasn't necessary.

"I only call you that when necessary." Like right now, when a point needed to be made. But she didn't know she was the only one to call him that, interesting fact that. She let out a huff of air, a small steam cloud accumulating in front of her as she accepted the mug from Mo and handed it over to Alice. "Okay, we're pretending you're not here." However that was done. Same as ignoring, right? "I tried to get part of your Thor gift, we sorta have to work out a challenge for it though." Since they were pretending Mo wasn't there, she figured now would be a good time to bring this up.

Nerida strolled through the gardens every now and again snipping off the branches of bushes that needed to be trimmed. She had came to look for any golden ratio in nature. She had found tons of examples inside of Hogwarts but none outside, really except for the snail that she had found inside of the greenhouses.

She bent down to snip another branch when she looked down at a flower...It was beautiful and it reminded her of what the other students had said and what she had read up on about the Golden Ratio.

The rose held the golden ratio. She smiled, it was easier than she thought it was going to be.

"Thanks." Finally, she was beginning to feel a little less icicle-y and a little more Alice-y. "Marcus Orion is too long for my tongue. Lots of syllables. I like Cactus better." When he was Marcus, he was too serious and sad and acting like she hated him all the time. Cactus was a much happier person, he was the one who was her favorite.

Pretend he's not there? "I can't do that, I can see him." Alice pointedly waved at his back, even if he couldn't see her. How was this supposed to work? "Challenge? What kinda challenge? What does it do? Is it a hammer? Can I squash stuff with it? If you want, when you come over for Christmas and bring me a hammer, I can ask Selina and Vivi to get watermelons and we can break some and eat them outside of the Tremaine. Want to do that? I want to do that."

Mo was still there. She could still see him.

Having read something about plants and its link to the Golden Ratio, Alec decided to head down towards the Student Garden to do a bit of measuring. He was allowed to come here and measure around, yeah? Rulers didn't hurt plants, right?

... Gulp.

Alec slowed down his pace as he neared the archway that marked the entrance to the Student Garden. Okay... journal, check! Quill, check! Ruler, check! Protective gloves, check! ... Except... the last item was there as a sort of precaution. He was pretty sure he wouldn't need it to measure the length of some petals on a normal plant but who knew what kind of plants were here. Plus, plants were scary. Man eating plant, hello? Shudder.

Moving on... he needed to find a flower. One that wasn't nearly dead or stringy. He didn't know how he could find the Golden Ratio thing from that. ... Okay... plants. He needed... to FIND certain flowers... The only problem was that there were a LOT of flowers here. How was he meant to know which flower to choose?

Okay... pick. Random flower. ... THAT one! Because it looked particularly happy.

Grinning widely, the boy headed over and knelt down on the ground. He placed his journal and quill down on the ground before holding up the ruler. "Erm... okay, hey!" ... Plant. "I'm just going to measure your petals, yeah? And this ruler... it doesn't hurt, I don't think. If it does and I end up poking you, I'm sorry. I'll come back with ice cream and we'll have a talk about Quidditch and plant things, yeah?" Okay? Was that good enough?

Also, ice cream. When could he have some of that?

The Hufflepuff held up the ruler and started measuring the petals, occasionally jotting down various bits of information as he went. This was bad... he was practically jabbing at the plant's face-part. He was pretty sure there was some sort of bad karma linked in with that.

ANYWAYS. He was done now. And after some calculations... scribble... scribble... scribble... well HEY! "Hey, plant? You're golden, keep it up!" He gave it a thumbs up before grabbing hold of his things and heading out.

Okay. ICE CREAM! He was VERY hungry for a big bowl of some of that deliciousness.

Next stop. The Student Gardens. Dylan figured if he could get lucky, he'd find a flower that had the ratio in its petals...or something.

The Captain waded through all the colorful plants, trying to decide on the best one to use for this homework. Yea, he was being a bit more particular than he probably should have been...but some flowers just weren't made the same. Even if they were the same type of flower...they wouldn't look the same.

Until he came across some flowers with that poofy yellow thing in the center. Dylan didn't know flower-parts, okay? He just knew how to give them as gifts...but anyway, he'd come across them. The yellow parts in the center could be a part of the ratio, surely. They were circles...and all circles, when actual circles and not ovals...or whatever...were proportionate to each other. So...whipping out his handy dandy notebook again, Dylan jotted that down.

...and he picked one...just because. He'd owl it to Beezus...because he missed her terribly.

Plants were an example of the ratio, too, so Alice went to the student garden right away to look for some. Positioning her quill in between her teeth thoughtfully and setting the piece of parchment down, she began looking for a patch of flowers that were the same so she could measure them. Because the ratio would definitely be harder to find if the plant type wasn't the same, that much was obvious, even to her.

Stamen measured. One more item to go, yeah?

This was another place that was totally legit on her muggle farmer mission thingy. There were bound to be lots of plants all over the student garden and she was meant to be looking around for gardens anyway!

"Look alive Felix! The sooner we get this dung out of the burrow is the faster you can get to riding in it!" GRIN. But the kneazle scoffed at her and walked further into the gardens. He didn't fancy riding in something that was carrying dung and she hadn't promised to scourgify it for him. Pffft, he was asking for too much.

Lex parked the burrow in a nice convenient spot beneath some shade (fertilized the ground by the tree too while she was at it) then got to work.

She really should have thought it through more thoroughly before entering an actual garden. There would be SO MUCH ground to cover with dung and honestly, she didn't have that much dung in the first place; not to waste here. There were plenty of other places that would also require her attention.

Pat. Pat. Pat." She bet these would start looking healthy by the very next day. Doo dee doo dee doo~

Felix curled up close by and watched as she patted dung all snug like, sprinking it occasionally were necessary and just fertilizing overall. Naturally she didn't cover the whole garden but she got a good amount done and rose. "I think that's it. Let's go." She grabbed the wheel burrow and headed from the gardens. Let's see...where too next?