Finishing up the hole, Beverly rolled her shoulders and glanced back up at professor Bentley. Even magic work was taking a toll on her. UGH. But now it was time to mature their seedlings and all that fun stuff.

Opting for not going for the wire, since they weren't going to grow the seedlings slowly, Beverly took her wand out and concentrated on the patted soil spot.

"Vitari Boxwood!" she said, then coughed. Ugh, ugh, that hurt! Good thing it didn't affect her plant. Instead it grew up pretty quickly in a big POOF.

Okaaaay. Her magic was acting up. First it was being difficult and now...well...maybe a little too good? Shrug. It got the job done.

....

Had it not been for Bentley reminding them, Beverly would have forgotten to water the plant. Oops. It was quickly fixed with Aguamenti. When it came time to trim and prune, the third year debated on trying her hand with sheers. Magic sounded easy, but she didn't want to just go at this the easy way. She wanted to learn to do it both ways; her own hands and magic.

That decided she wobbled to get some tools and when she returned to her boxwood shrub slipped her gloves on. Right. Those were needed for her delicate wrinkly hands.

Now...how was she going to start this? Start at the top or bottom? Peering at the parchment with her design Beverly decided to square the entire thing out to make it more organized and go from there.

And so the trimming commenced..."Flipnsnipwitit."

Adi put the finishing trims to Superman's torso. He had used the Trimming Charm too after much debate with himself. But to his surprise and relief, it worked out well. Yay!

Now it was time to move on to the hands. Those were going to be very tricky but here goes. Adi decided to start with the left hand. Occasionally standing on tip toes so as to sculpt the upper arms, he began to make progress, feeling at ease with each snip of the shears.

Snippy, snippy, snippy. Sometimes he would make use of the Trimming Charm and even used the Severing Charm once. Phew! He could do this! Keeping his concentration to a maximum, the Puffer shaped the elbow and worked down towards the wrist area. The hand came to a rest on Superman's waist. Adi stood back and looked at the hand. Er...the fist looked way too big for the rest of the hand. More snipping away to fix that then, yes? He did just that, sometimes stepping back to watch his progress.

But finally he managed to get it right. Good. Now the whole hand looked proper. Onto the next one! The Puffer scrambled around to Superman's left side and began his snipping. Now that he had some experience with the first hand, he knew just what he had to do to get it right. Using a combination of the shears, Trimming and Severing Charms, Adi in no time got a passable right hand.

Onto the head and face.

First things first, the hole in the ground. Tobias was one of those people who preferred doing things by hand whenever possible, so he shuffled off to get a shovel. A trowel would have been ideal, but Tobias was pretty certain that if he got down on his hands and knees to dig, he may end up stuck there, because of his back, see?

The shovel was still pretty tricky to use, and Tobias' hands simply weren't cooperating, it seemed. It took him a few shaky minutes, and, as was usual these days, Toby was pretty exhausted afterwards, but the Hufflepuff succeeded in his venture. He now had a hole in the ground.

Now... what had he decided on? A frame? No, Tobias was pretty sure he'd decided against that method, as he had no real experience using one before. Just to be sure, the Hufflepuff rummaged through his notes that he'd put in the pocket of his school robes, as a handy reference. Nope! No frame. Just trim-'n'-hope.

Oh... but now he needed to get down to the ground anyway, to put the seedling in its new home. Uh... hmm.

It took a few moments of thinking through, but the solution was actually pretty obvious. Tobias used the shovel that he still held as a sort of crutch. He knelt down on the ground veeeeeeeeery carefully, wincing when he was finally situated on the ground. He kept one hand on the shovel, but got to work putting his seedling into the hole in the ground he'd made for it. Aaaaaand... yes, watering too.

"Aguamentispritz." Toby preferred this spell 'cause it was still only a seedling, and he didn't want to drown the poor little thing. But he watered it and made sure it was secure in the ground and stuff.

Now to make it BIG.

Because he didn't want to risk the spell going wrong and damaging the plant, Tobias took a moment to mutter the incantation under his breath until it sounded right, and going through all the motions of the spell without actually casting it. Then he was ready.

"Vitari Wiggenbush!" Toby stated, tapping his seedling with his wand and leaning back and out of the way as the magical shrub began to grow up and out, thankfully to more or less the size that he needed. Tobias couldn't help but grin to himself; Herbology was easily his best subject, and he had a knack for getting the Herbology spells spot on in the very first try. In fact, he had a knack for the spells in general, and always seemed to get the required result straight away. This was something he could only dream of happening in Transfiguration.

Tobias heaved himself carefully back to his feet (veeeeeeery slowly), using the shovel as a leaning post. When he was properly upright again, Tobias watered the wiggenbush once more, because he guessed now that it was bigger it needed more water and fast, because of growing so quickly.

SO TRIMMING.

If he was going to do this by eye, Tobias had to get out his copy of the design. Once again, he rifled through his notes again, and this time drew out a neatly folded sheaf of parchment with his topiary design on it.

Now, Tobias didn't want to get this wrong. He studied his design closely, squinting from the parchment to the shrubbery, which was as tall as he was. He was trying to decide where to start; once the first trim had been made, it would surely be easier. But Tobias was hesitant, because just one wrong move and it would be ruined.

It was a while before Tobias finally decided on where he'd start. Just a basic general shape at first, and then he'd work on the details. And it was best to start with the easiest part, which would probably be the highest point.

Tobias deliberated for a few moments more on the placement, before nodding to himself. He placed his plans in the hand that still also held the shovel, and pointed his wand at a point at the top of the bush.

"Flipnsnipwitit!"

The first cutting was off, and Tobias breathed a sigh of relief. The success of the first trim gave him the confidence to continue, and he got to work shaping this top section of the topiary.

Maybe later he'd use the sheers, but right now Tobias wasn't prepared to be holding a heavy pair of pruning shears up so high. Even thinking about it was exhausting. Whew!

"Flipnsnipwitit!"

Trimming charm.

It had an incantation...Obviously but it would be really helpful if she could remember what that incantation was. Fuzzy brain was fuzzy. Is this what she had to look forward to when her age caught up with her body? Well, if she survived the rest of the term, that is. At this rate it wasn't looking so good for the Head Girl. Cue the swan song because she was feeling worse everyday. Hopefully someone somewhere was thinking of a cure for this old age thing. Hopefully.

Wait! Words..someone had said the incantation! Flippysnippybit? Was that what she'd heard? Ella shrugged and gave it a try. "Flippysnippybit!" ...Nope. Should have known that something that sounded like a snack food wasn't the right incantation. Man! Now she'd just need to look around and locate the person doing the spe--Toby! Thank Merlin for Toby. Flipnsnipwitit, that's what he'd said. Yes.

Moving on to the body of the dinosaur now, Ella pointed her wand and with a swish, said clearly, "Flipnsnipwitit!" AH-HA! She'd done it. COOL. Only 276217838766329 more parts to trim. /dramatic

And what on earth was going on with Bay? Ella glanced over and was relieved to see Lex handling it because she honestly didn't think she could make it all the way over there to check on him. Sad life.

Working on the arms now, Lux kept snipping unwanted branches off with her shears. This topiary was looking more and more like her Ariel, and that made her happy. Mostly it was her hair that required work, as the other parts were not as big and in need of as much attention.

One arm done, she moved around to the other side, when a loud yell of pain almost made her drop her shears on her feet. Goodness! Looking over, she saw it was Bay, who was jumping around and seeming to be in a lot of pain. Lux did not like that at all, and really hoped that someone would be able to help him with his knee. It made her sad and worried seeing him like that.

Hoping that the Professor would know what to do for him, she picked up her shears and started cutting again, working on the torso and bit of arm that was resting beside it.

So his mistake was now the Frogs but so moving back towards where it's face was going to have to be, Bart figured he'd try his luck with the spell again. Lifting his wand at the branches he tried to think about the spell. What was it again? He decided that maybe it would be easier to see what others were doing, but seeing from this far was a bit difficult.

The second year shuffled his feet over towards other students getting really close to them and staring at what they were doing. Nothing seemed to catch his interest so he moved along. Going near someone else , he moved close and stared. "What are you making?" He was curious and he didn't want to admit he had forgotten why he came over in the first place.

Putting his hands on his suspenders under his robes he watched creepily to see what the girl was doing. That's when he realized it was the head girl Ella. "So what are you using to do what you're doing?" Yeah that seemed like the best way to remember what to do.

"Flipnsnipwitit!"

That's it, now she had the hang of things. Still moving slowly, the eighteen year old started making some serious progress on the boxwood. The wire frame was extremely helpful and though she was a fan of coloring outside the lines, this particular situation called for some structure. And trimming was definitely working out nicely. Her hands didn't hurt nearly as bad now that she was using her wand so that was a plus too.

Because she was so into what she was doing, and probably because she was going deaf, Ella didn't notice the younger Gryffindor wander up to her. It was only when he spoke that she looked away from her work and eyed him curiously.



"It's a dinosaur. Brachiosaurus, actually. At least it will be one when I'm done." It sort of looked like a bushy giraffe at this point but she was doing her best. And if he was going to hang around and watch, she could get back to work. "Flipnsnipwitit!"

What was she using? First answer that came to mind was her wand but considering she didn't think that's what he had meant, she went with the second thing that came to mind. "Trimming charm." Should she elaborate? "It works better for smaller bits that need to be cut and it's pretty useful for this sort of thing." Y'know, shaping your topiary. "Incantation is Flipnsnipwitit and you just swish your wand...like this."

Swish! "Flipnsnipwitit!"

Snip, snip, snip...

The Slytherin went at it for a while before she managed to fulfill the image in her head. Some time in between she'd gotten to a point where she couldn't reach certain branches. It called for a stool, and stool she found.

Now that her very large and very tall shrub resembled something close to a square, Beverly started planning. Starting at the bottom would be a bad idea. It would leave weight on top in which her sculpture could collapse. That idea was immediately out. So starting at the top was it. Now...would she start from the back of her design or the front?

Bah!

Too much excitement and so little energy. But that wasn't going to stop her. She could still remember how excited she had been when she planned this out. That helped her decide. She was going to go about this patiently and hope she didn't fall asleep. Starting from the front then.

Dragging her stool to where the topiary-creature's face would be, Bev climbed it and began snipping away at it. She'd use the sheers for the more complex stuff. The face was easy. Sketching it out had been, so this would be too yeah?

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip...

This... this was hard work. Physically, that is. All Toby was doing was casting the spell, but BOY was it taxing. But he kept on with the spell, casting it over and over until, from a point somewhere just below level with his shoulders, part of the topiary sloped up in the vague shape of a tower with that cone type roof. Aware that his design had extra details, he left it slightly bigger than it needed to be, and purposely avoided a particular little clump of foliage that would need extra special attention to detail.

Now that he had that main structure, Tobias shuffled around the wiggenbush, getting rid of every other part of the shrub that went over the roughly 4ft point. He'd need to be careful, because the other parts of his structure had little towers and sticky out details, so Tobias checked and double checked and triple checked to make extra sure he wasn't about to hack off remove a part that he'd later need present.

"Flipnsnipwitit!" the Hufflepuff cast as he shuffled, taking off parts of the bush in his slow and steady way. A few months ago, who would have even believed that Tobias Tempus could even move this slowly? "Flipnsnipwitit!"

... ah.

Just as he was trying to cut off the last chunk of bush that was up this high (apart from his tower) Toby hit a snag. The branch he was trying to cut through was simply not going to budge with the trimming charm. Too thick, see? Of course, there was a simple remedy for this, but the sudden interuption to the flow of his work had jarred the boy, and he stood blinking for a few moments before snapping back to action.

"Diffindo!" Tobias said, pointing his wand at that last stubborn branch and watching as it fell away. Had his reflexes been any better, Toby might have attempted to catch the cutting on its decent, but he didn't even try. It was best to avoid sudden movements at his age. The ol' bones liked to play up.

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a step back, literally, and see how well the overall project was going.

Sander heard the cry of pain and immediately turned around to see who had called out. To his dismay, he realized it was his friend, Bay. He seemed to be holding on to his knee and from the look on his face, Sander could tell that Bay was in a lot of pain. Sander pushed himself up from his sitting position and slowly straightened up before hobbling over to join his friend.

Slow poke that he was, he noticed the Gryffindor prefect had reached Bay first. Yeah maybe that was a good idea, the badged one would know what to do. Wait no! She was now calling for the Professor! Was Bay more seriously injured than he had previously thought?

His first instinct was to help his friend, but seeing that Alexa was already helping him and not wanting to crowd his friend and Alexa, Sander walked back to his plant, all the while keeping a vigilant eye just in case help was needed.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip.

...

This was starting to get boring. Sophie probably wouldn't have enough patience to finish it all using shears...

So when her boxwood was somewhat in the shape she wanted - but drastically lacking details... and the actual shape of her design - the Hufflepuff dropped the shears and pulled out her wand one more time. She was going to get this right. Merlin, how difficult could it be? Everyone was using that Charm! Come ON, Sophie, you're not stupid or anything! Merlin!!

"Flipnsnipwitit!"

o_________________o

SHE HAD DONE IT! Oh wow, she had done itttttttt!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Too bad it hadn't been on the plant. But she was feeling a bit more positive now and she tried hard to hear exactly how the others were pronouncing the spell. Good thing she wasn't aging or anything and her hearing was still perfect. Flipsnipwitit. She mouthed. No. Flipsn- Noooo!! Flipnsnipwitit. THERE! "Flipsn--" ..... "Flipnsnipwitit!" At the plant! YES!! Finally!

Cool, she was going to be able to make it after all! Hopefully. She mouthed the spell once again before saying it out loud. "Flipsn--" UGH! What was WROONNGGGGG with her??? Sigh!!!!!

...The Charms enthusiast eyed her topiary thing for a few seconds, pondering something... hm..... hmmmm....... maybe...

Sophie had a very serious expression on her face as she swished her wand in the plant's direction. The seriousness was quickly replaced by surprise when a little branch fell on the ground. For a fraction of a second Sophie was impressed that it had worked, but felt pleased with her work. Now that was going to be much easier! No more pronouncing that silly incantation. HOORAY!

The girl went on swishing her wand in a few other directions with a pleased smile on her face as the ground around her and her topiary started to get covered with smaller branches as she trimmed the plant away!

Alright, now that he had a PLANT, it was time for Caleb to get started on the actual carving and stuff. First he needed to water it - get it all ready to be made into a snowman and stuff. "Aguamenti," he muttered, watching the water tumble through the air and onto his plant. Alright, that was done, time to move on!

So he needed to make a snowman. He figured he'd start with the bottom, and only take a BIT off the evergreen, because he didn't want to cut off too much to start with and then end up with a really weird, lopsided snowman.

"Diffindo!" he exclaimed, carving a large curve out of the side towards the bottom. Alright, so far so good. And then..."Diffindo!" he exclaimed again, this time on the other side. Ok, looked pretty good, a BIT crooked but overall pretty good.

As Sophie happily trimmed her topiary, the design she had in mind started becoming more obvious by the minute. Now that she had finally found a way to successfully cast that Charm, she was much more pleased with her work, which meant she did things a lot faster and better.

Still swishing her wand at the plant, the badger reckoned it would be easier to work on the details of the spiral part first before focusing on the straighter bit in the middle. In fact, she had to give in and use the shears once again to have a better control over the details of the spiral, but not a problem. She was quite happy she had found a way to cast the Trimming Charm all right, even though she knew she had to work on precision and all that still. But she could do that later, when she didn't have a proper design to finish in a real plant.

After several minutes of swaping between her wand and the shears, bending over, kneeling down and walking in circles around the topiary, Sophie took a step back and took a better look at what she was doing. Ooooooo, that actually looked pretty cool! The seventeen year-old immediately thought of her cousin and how she was trying to get her to do set decoration and stuff like that. Sophie had to admit that did sound pretty fun, but she still had to think about that a bit more. But hey! Her design was in the correct shape now! Gahhh, she couldn't WAIT to be able to use the Charm she had found on it and see what happenedddd!!!

Hmmmmm... it was pretty difficult to decide now if this was going well, because Tobias still had a very basic shape. There was a lot more to do, but Toby was ready to really go for it. The main thing was that he'd kept as much foliage as he was likely to need.

Tobias figured that now he'd done most of the trimming from the top of the hedge, he could switch to using the shears, because he wouldn't have to lift them up too high. It was times like this he was glad for a mixture of magic and manual work in this task. The third year took a long moment to shuffle over to where the shears were kept, and carefully deliberated over which would be the best ones to use.

After perhaps a little TOO long obsessing over that (picking the right gardening tools is important, sonny jim!) Tobias returned to his topiary once again. He nudged some of the bush cuttings off out of the way a bit, but too much of that made his hip ache, so he stopped.

Okay then, first things first... Tobias started carefully clipping and trimming away at the tower, trying to smooth out the outer wall was well as he could. Carefully, oh so very carefully, he worked his way around, half dreading and half looking forward to the fiddly three towers that would jut out from this one.

Bay couldn't see where he was going.. everything was all blurry.. from the tears in his eyes..

hop…hop….hop….hop…

oh he heard a voice and he knew who it was… "Lex!!!!" he said.. while trying to listen to her.. "my knee… i think it popped??" he said … oh she was telling him to sit down.. errrrr how was he---- oh and just then he felt her arm and hand… Trying not to put all his weight on her….

"maybe… i can just sit down and use my wand to trim?" he asked when a sharp pain went through his leg.. "ahhhhhhh" trying to hold it in.. he was grinding his teeth even more now… "i'm okay" he lied.

Popped knee?

Yeah..........Sounded like something she could easily to botch up if given half a chance and here she was given the whole thing! Not the best idea, not at all but she'd already walked over and the least she could do for now was help him sit. Good thing she had some firm balance about her otherwise she would have gone toppling down too! The life of someone that tried to be helpful. Man.

Lex didn't even consider what he was saying, not for a second. Did he NOT see how far away from his own shrub he had hopped. "You're likely to trim someone's head right off taking shots from down there." Flailing in pain, the angle of elevation and the distance from his plant; none played in his favour. "If it slipped out I reckon we can knock it right back in. Should hurt like Circe knows what but you'll be able to stand after."

A necessary suggestion because despite was he was saying, it was obvious he was NOT fine. Lex fished the small mirror from her pocket and held it to his face. "This look like the face of someone fine to you?" Of course not. She let him look for like a minute before pocketing it again.

"Now then, ready?" For the Professor to do it...not her...never her...no.

Alright, he had gotten the base of the snowman down. Now Caleb had to start working up the body and getting that all fixed as well. He wasn't going to use the Severing Charm though, he was afraid he'd mess up. Time to do something smaller...

"Flipnsnipwitit!" he exclaimed, waving his wand and aiming for the large part of untrimmed evergreen plant above the bottom of his snowman. He carefully circled his wand, tongue between his teeth in concentration, and watched as the second snowball of his snowman's body was taking shape. Still a bit crooked but it was hard to get these things totally perfect! He couldn't even do that making a REAL snowman.

"A dinosaur? That's so cool Ella." He squinted towards the bush. It didn't look like a dinosaur yet, but she was working so it probably would soon. He listened to the girl as she explained the spell. Flipnsnipwitit right that was it.. "Yeah.. yeah of course.. That's what I thought you would use." Mmmhmm totally was not going to admit he had no clue what he was talking about because he forgot the spell he had just been using. "Whelp talk to you later." and as quickly as the boy shuffled over he shuffled back to his own bush.

Pointing his wand he started, "Flipnsnipwitit" grinning seeing the limbs fall, "Flipnsnipwitit" more falling. This was so cool he would have his awesome amazing frog soon. He couldn't wait to ride around on it. Maybe he'd be allowed to ride it to classes, since Leo the Lion wasn't allowed out of the common room or at least he hadn't tried to ride him to a class yet. Maybe he should.

Thoughts distracting him, he finally came back to the misshapen bush in front of him. Oh right he was to be working. Moving around he started trimming some more.

Hey, not okay. Mo made grumpy faces at Alice as she stole his dirt, and when she wasn't paying attention, he stole some of it back, getting his hands all muddy in the process. Merlin, she'd gone and watered it and now it was mud. He didn't need mud. He needed DIRT.

After wiping a muddy hand print across his chest, Mo returned his attention to his bottom form. He was supposed to fill the sphere with something or other, right? He'd done plenty of reading on this when he was researching how to make a topiary using a form, but now he'd gone and forgotten to bring something for stuffing.

"Oi, Fischer. What're you stuffing that bird thing with?" Mo made a point of returning all her mud, just as a show of good faith. Maybe she had some of that, what was it called? Spaghetti moss? He needed spaghetti moss.

In the meantime, Mo picked up one of the trailing ends of his ivy vine and began to weave up the form, careful not to pull off any leaves as he tucked the ends over and around the mesh making up his sphere. When he got to the end of the vine, he tucked it around before pointing his wand at the hanging-over-bit. "Flipnsnipwitit." There... perfect. Now on to the next vine.

"We have to stuff it?" Er... what? Stuffing was for turkeys. She, being a good student and focusing all her attention on watering, had missed the dirt stealing. And Mo would have gotten away with it too if he'd been more tactful and not had his muddy hands as a dead give away. Alice gave him the evil eye as she took the dirt, more than he'd already returned, back once again.

But stuffing. "Um... mine's getting stuffed with... ivy." Yeah. There was enough of her plant to go on the inside and out of the frame, right? That was the point of growing the plant right underneath of it, she thought. Letting it grow around the wire itself and all.

Plus she hadn't brought anything to stuff with and wasn't keen on moving. With these joints? No thank you.

Eyeing up her disheveled topiary, she reached for some vines and began winding them around the form in a tidier way. Much better.

Adi had to now stand on tip toes all the time to work on Superman's face. He wouldn't have minded this if his knees didn't ache. Darn aches and shortness! But he was done with snipping out the Superhero's hair and was adding the finishing touches to the nose. He had also done a bit of trimming around so that eyes were formed. The last feature he added was the mouth. Superman was smiling.

Cape. Superman could not be without his cape, could he? Of all the features he had to create for this topiary, the cape was by far the easiest. In no time, there was a flowing one. Adi had trimmed it out so that it looked like it was blowing in the wind. And now there was just one thing left to do in the way of trimming. The famous hexagon shape with the "S" inscribed within it. Only thing this hexagon would have "SA" as it's inscription.

This time Adi used the Trimming Charm to work with. He didn't think the shears would do a good job with letters and Diffindo just wasn't the right spell. Carefully, Adi repeated the incantation and trimmed out a hexagon. Meh. It was a little crooked on one side but no one would mind, right? Next, the "S" was trimmed followed by the "A". SA for Super Alec. Hehe. He hoped Alec would like this. The only thing left to do now was to cast his chosen charm but for now he had to wait for grumpy Professor Bentley to give them instructions.

Looking back over to where Bay and Alexa were, Lux again wished that she could help him out. But she had no idea how to deal with popped knees or any other kind of Healing. Why wasn't anyone helping him? Would the Professor know what to do?

Sighing, she went back to her topiary, figuring if there was anything she could do, she would go over right away to assist. But as it was, she would probably just get in the way.

Putting her shears down and grabbing her wand, she decided that it was time for her to use magic to work on the higher parts. Noticing Sander, Ella, and a few others using a spell called 'Flipnsnipwitit', she figured she would give it a go. Swish. "Flipnsnipwitit." Swish. "Flipnsnipwitit." Cutting away all the branches that were needing it, she soon had her entire topiary trimmed.

That out of the way, she went back to watching how things were going with Bay.

Oh, ivy. That was unhelpful, really, since Mo wanted spaghetti moss. Perhaps ivy would work... it probably would, but it wasn't what he wanted. Other options, then. He waved Alice off without comment. Mo shoved to his feet in slow increments, rolling upwards until he was fully standing, and then he headed back to the shed from which he'd first found his pot. It was a common enough gardening supply, and after ransacking the shelves and forgetting what he was looking for (twice), Mo finally found some.

Oh, not spaghetti moss. Sphagnum moss. Perfect.

He brought enough back to stuff all his frames and to share with Alice, if she wanted it. Did she want it? "I brought you some spaghetti moss." No wait... that wasn't it, was it? Spatula moss? Regardless.

Mo stuffed his spherical frame full of the moss, loosely enough that he could still wind his ivy around the mesh but not so loose that it wasn't filling the frame. And now back to weaving a pretty covering of ivy, mmk? Mo picked up more loose strands and began to wind and tuck and wind the ivy up and over the top of the sphere. Pretty.

Turns out shaping the front of her topiary wasn't as simple as sketching it out. At some point she stopped with the magic and used the sheers to get the features of the face right. As well as the neck and chest. Now that she was at the torso bit, Beverly paused to think of the next steps she'd be talking. And 'cause she needed a break.

Breaks were great.

Sitting on the stool, her index finger swished about, as if designing the topiary creature by pointing. She could leave the front and start from the rear - HEHE REAR - that way she'd meet at the middle, and have the topiary balanced.

OR...she could continue from where she left off. Decisions. She didn't like them much. Yeah. She was going to go start from the rear - OMG REAR HAHA - so it was well balanced.

Standing up, the third year dragged the stool to the other end of her plant. Okay. Start!

"Flipnsnipwitit...Flipnsnipwitit!" This was going to turn out awesome.

After having collected his privet seedling, Cutty grabbed a shovel and set to digging up a spot in which to plant the seedling for his odd topiary...er, masterpiece? That's how he thought of it anyway. A masterpiece. The ground seemed to have been pre-softened as it wasn't too hard to break ground. Using the tip of his wand to measure the depth, he recalled how much depth was ideal for the privet and plopped the seedling in, securing it with the excess earth.

He had watched as the other students took to the vitaris charm. To warm up, he had opted to water his plant first with the water summoning spell, "Aguamenti.". Following this, Cutty unfastened the closure to his school bag and pulled out the wire frames he'd been working on in the common room. They looked rather abstract on their own, green wires overlapping and wrapping about in what could've been taken for a roller coaster design at first glance. In an apparently planned succession, Cutty anchored each wire frame to the ground, studied it over then removed and reanchored some of the frames until he thought he was satisfied.


Cutty took up his wand again and just for triezeez, spoke the incantation to himself, "Vitari Privet." With the second attempt, however, he tapped the seedling with the tip of his wand lightly, "Vitari Privet.". He'd wished he'd known about this spell a lot sooner as he watched it spread out and haplessly fill the designated empty spaces of the wire frames.