Jun nodded. Magical Creatures was defitnitely much farther than Herbology. Like what even?? Seriously, the staff should be a bit considerate seeing as many of them have aged so much, that getting out of bed was a pain in the butt. Basically doing anything, without worrying that you might break a leg next, was exhausting. And now walking thousands of miles to a class was just a big NO. "We'll fly off the astronomy tower since I'm pretty sure of head of houses wouldn't want us breaking anything more but our bones now," Because they healer could fix them right up. Their bones at least.

"I'm pretty sure they have. Doubt it's all the aging. They just want us to [i]exercise[i/] more," Because the torturous stairs weren't enough anymore. Now they had to walk even more to classes. Or so it seemed that way.

.....

Right. Back to his weird looking UFO thing. "Flipnsnipwitit!" That got rid of a little pesky piece. Jun continued trimming until the top was roundish and the bottom as well. "Aguamenti," His plant looked like it needed just a bit more water to survive this project. He cancelled the charm and began to think of a design to make on it. Don't UFOs have like little antennas on them? Whatever. He was just going to work on designing it first then those antennas things later. Might as well get an idea of how to make the antennas in the first place.

Because it felt like it was going to be a long class.

She was tiiiiired. Someone come finish this for heeer.

Beverly sat on the stool and admired her work so far. The end of her sculpture was turning out fine. The tail looked a bit thick, but she was going to leave off trimming too much of it away just yet. It could tie in when she finished the wings. Talking about wings, she should finish the torso before starting on those.

Getting back up and taking the stool with her, she stopped where the midsection of her creature would be. The five-foot (maybe six now) tall beast was going to be awesome. Especially when it started moving and all. Ugh. Beauty.

Snapping out of her daydream, Beverly raised her wand over the shape of the boxwood and began trimming away.

Snip, snip, snip, snip...

Where was Mo going? More importantly, how did he have the effort and joints for moving? She didn't quite understand, but Alice just went back to her ivy winding without another comment. He could go and hobble off to wherever he please, but she had a topiary to make. Mhm.

Her winding continued until her senile partner in all plant crimes returned with... huh? "Is it a snack?" Spaghetti mozz....arella, didn't he say? Personally, she thought parmesan was the best on pasta, but maybe she could be open to new cheeses for a day.

'Cept.. that didn't feel like pasta. Hmm. Alice sniffed it a bit before deciding it smelled like turkey and was probably meant to be some sort of stuffing. What a waste of food, though. Still, she obligingly began shoving bits of the mossy stuff into her frame. It was loosely packed enough as to leave room for her ivy, but it still filled up her ostrich pretty well.

Such a shame she hadn't chosen a turkey instead.

Done. She was done with the torso. There were still the legs, but, once again, she decided to leave that off for later. So for now her topiary looked something like a horse drowned in a shrub square with squares protruding from its side. Weird. But just you wait!

Now, it was time for the fun part. The part she's been waiting for since... Well, she couldn't remember, but she was sure it was for a long time if she was this excited about it. She'd even forget about how tired she was. That's how much she wanted this.

Going to stand on the stool on the creature's right, Beverly began trimming away the large and unnecessary parts of what would be the wings. She almost referred to hacking away at it just to speed up the process, but professor Bentley wouldn't appreciate it that much. Better not test her patience, yeah?

After she was done forming the wings, she got the sheers to start on the design. Feathers is what she was going for, and even if she was old, she still had an eye for art. And she was going to ace this, yes she was!

Mozzarella!moss out of the way, Alice tried moving on to trimming. Before she could break out any spells, though, more weaving had to be done. She spent a couple more minutes winding the ivy vines around the wire until it was totally covered. It had to be admitted that the shape did in fact take after an ostrich, but it was quite misshapen and would most definitely require some trimming.

And it was already decided that clippers were too much work, yes? Drawing her wand from her robe sleeve again, Alice settled for the Trimming Charm. "Flipsnipwitit!"

First time she'd used this spell around Mo, she'd gotten a flower in her laces. Where was her flower now, hm?

It all looked a wooly, bushy mess from where Cutty was standing as he put on his gloves.


He approached the tools and took up a pair of scissors. Beginning with the middle frame, he made large snips letting the bough-like branches fall away. Slowly long spire-like shapes began to manifest, most exhibited a kind of bend in the support. Then roundish, mound-like shapes started to emerge as Cutty continued to cut away at the foliage.

The pesky white blossoms, though. They were ruining the uniform colour of the thing. Something had to be done about them.

Trimming was very tedious work. Quite a bit of her ivy had been sheared off when Alice started yawning, although it wasn't evident if the tiredness was due to boredom or elderly exhaustion. Either way, she just wanted to get through the pruning bit of the class as quickly as possible.

She continued on with the use of Flipsnipwitit, adding a Diffindo here and there for the particularly difficult bits of vine. The Severing Charm came in handy at those portions, but really, most of it was just careful work. Alice wasn't one with an artistic eye, but she tried her best. Her knack for detail helped a bit with the ostrich's finer parts, and when she began nearing the finish, it looked rather similar to the animal for which she was going.

So when did she get to ride it?

The scissors went down, and the wand went up again and this time Cutty was aiming for the first mound. The sculpture was, by and large, wider than it was tall. The only exception to it's over-all shape was what appeared to be a tail fin of some kind sticking up and at somewhat of a diagonal toward one of the back corners.

"Flipsnipwitit!" He gave the karate-chop-like wand movement as he cleared away the first of many privet blossom clusters. "Flipsnipwitit!" The falling away of another creamy white cluster and the smell of the wiggenbush caused him to involuntarily smile, as well as the spell itself. He hadn't used it since the summer. When he gave his sister that awful haircut that had caused her to rage and cry.

Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.

Accidents were always expected. While the students were - for the most part - capable, the nature of accidents was simply that, they were unintentional. Slip in the need for physical exertion, wands and sharp implements or projectiles... and anything was possible.

The ageing thing, wasn't helping them either and after hearing about Airey's mishap earlier in the term, she had considered scrapping her lesson plans for the term and starting fresh. But curriculum was curriculum. What was the worst that could happen? A back ache? A cut? A gash? ......... she refused to believe loss of limbs were possible, no, thinking it would only be asking for it to happen.

...

And there it was... yelling, moaning, groaning and her name. "Cooooooming," she called, arms up in front of her waving frantically as she meandered through the maze of students and their topiary. Merlin.

"What... happened?!" she asked, eyes on Lex first, then Bay. Oh, Bay. He didn't look so good. "What did you do?"

OOC: Still another 24 hours for this portion of the lesson.

The main tower was basically done now, and Tobias had spent a good while meticulously snipping away at the clump of foliage sticking out of the roof to try and get it like in his design. It was a lot harder than he'd been expected, and Toby had been expecting it to be a tricky task indeed. It was probably because this detail was so small, but it couldn't really be helped, given that his design was based on a real life building.

It was never going to be perfect, and Toby knew that, but it was still an effort to stop himself from trying to get that particular part perfect. The Hufflepuff took a few steps back again and re-evaluated his topiary.

See? From back here, it looked pretty darn good; everything was coming together. The main tower was now completely finished, so Tobias figured he should work on the Great Hall section next. The third year paused for a breather and took out his design again, glimpsing from the parchment to the topiary to sort of mentally plan what he was going to do next.

...

A good few minutes later, Tobias was back again. The shovel had fallen to the floor some time ago and he wasn't quite confident about his ability to grab it and straighten up again, so Tobias merely stepped over it to reach the part of his topiary he was working on next.

With renewed energy and a boost of confidence, Tobias got right back to work.

Great Hall, coming up.

Oh right...gloves.

He slipped them on before he got much further along in the process. Benny was managing well enough to get the ivy to wrap around the lavender stalks, the latter serving as a living topiary form like he had planned in his write up. He just hoped that it worked out well in the long run and didn't fail once things began to grow more or he started pruning his work. The ivy certainly seemed light enough not to bend the sturdier purple plants.

When he was satisfied for the moment with the started arrangement, the Gryffindor briefly glanced around to see what the others were doing. Various forms of pruning it seemed and Ben thought back to what he knew on the subject matter, what they had been taught before. Now what was that spell they used? Snipit...flipwit... Flitsnap

Flipnsnipwitit!

That was it, the second year remembering it just as he heard it being used by a classmate nearby. Flipnsnipwitit. With the incantation in mind and picking up his wand, Ben focused on what he wanted...a little trim off the top where the lanvender extended too far up. With a deep breath, he cast, "Flipnsnipwitit!" Perhaps a little too energetically and he took a little more than he had wanted causing a frown.

Maybe clippers would be better.

Cool, huh? This earned a big smile and Ella nodded her head in agreement. "I've always liked dinosaurs." So it really hadn't been a hard choice to make. She raised her eyebrows slightly at his reaction to the spell but didn't comment. Perhaps his mind, like hers, wasn't working properly these days. Sort of sad, really. The eighteen year old smiled again upon his farewell and waved a bit. "Later."

But back to the dinosaur, yes? The more she worked on it, the better looking it became. Definitely had the outer shape of a proper dino now, just needed a bit of touching up in the center area. "Flipnsnipwitit!" This was kind of calming work, yeah? Ella had even started to hum quietly while she worked, assessing each bit of the boxwood carefully before decided whether to snip or leave it be. She knew she didn't have ages to get this done but she'd sort of lost track of time so hopefully she wasn't too far behind. "Flipnsnipwitit!" Could she maybe take some time after this to look at everyone else's work? She was curious after talking to Bart. Perhaps she should have asked him what he was making, huh? Maybe later.

Caleb decided he liked the trimming better than severing. It was good for the first part, but not that he was getting into the more intricate details, he needed something finer to get it just right. Now for the snowman's head!

This was going to be tricky. He needed a hat, and it was going to be hard carving out the head and trying to determine where the hat should go, so maybe the hat first? Yes, that worked.

"Flipnsnipwitit!" he exclaimed, trimming off a straight and narrow section to create the top of the hat. Now for the body of the hat..."Flipnsnipwitit!" he cried again.

Now he just needed the brim of the hat. "Flipnsnipwitit!" he exclaimed, watching as he moved his wand in a circle and the trimming followed in suit. Alright, awesome! Just to fine tune the head, and he'd be done with the big carving.

sitting down on the ground Bay started to feel a little better.. most likely because he didn't have to stand on his bad knee.. "I… I… think my knee popped…. i was getting up from digging and i heard POP and just pain" he said while looking down at the crime scene happing with his leg.. ughhhhh why… All Bay wanted to do was to trim his tree.. he's only gotten the first part half way done..

Looking over at Lex… he wondered if there was some what for him to scoot over to near his tree to finish his class work.. and then maybe go see the heeler… thats if Professor Bentley couldn't fix him..

He was getting the hang of this. That was awesome. Yep he was going to be able to do this after all. Going around still trimming off the little branches and trying to shape it fully into a frog, Bart was staying focused which was unbelievable Continuing who movements he moved his wand around, "Flipnsnipwitit" Zaap you're gone "Flipnsnipwitit" Baam you're gone too. The boy got lost in his trimming.

He trimmed the front and tried to shape it to a frogs face. "Flipnsnipwitit" He worked around the eyes. It was going to be a lopsided frog, but he really wasn't going for perfection here.. He just wanted a frog to ride. That's all the really mattered. Getting to a harder looking branch he tried to think about the other spell that was mentioned. His head was starting to hurt from all the thinking.

So the twelve year old did what any twelve year old would do he went to get the sheers. Shuffling his feet back to the frog he began chopping at the harder branches.

Sophie was creating a dragon. It was going to be AMAZING and twenty feet tall and all that jazz! It would be GIGANTIC and tower above the entire school in some places!

...oh. Seven feet tall max? Boo. How was she supposed to have the biggest and best topiary if everybody else had theirs the same height? Boo again. Oh, well. She'd just make it seven feet tall.

With her seedling gathered, Sophie began the process of maturing it so she could continue on with the shaping process. "Vitari Boxwood!" she said, because she'd chosen Japanese Boxwood for her design. Things progressed pretty quickly by that point, and Sophie was ready to move on. She didn't need a pot. She fixed her matured seedling into the ground and watered it.

Now--on to the exciting part!

He had the shape of the snowman down. Awesome. Caleb had to add accessories now! He walked over to one of the nearby bushes and found some that looked like they could use some trimming. Rather than cut them off and risk hurting the plant, he just...SNAPPED two branches off. They were dead looking and couldn't have really damaged the plant, right? If anything Caleb was helping them.

He walked over and realized that he needed a way for these to stick on his snowman. What was the sticking spell again? UGH. Hmmm. Um...he pulled out his charms textbook and flipped through the pages. AHA! Here it was! He pulled out his wand and aimed at the two arms he'd created and muttered "Epoximise!" and watched as they stayed put in the bush. He grabbed them and shook, just to test them, and yup, all stuck! Now to find some flowers and rocks for the face and decoration...

Sophie had only mentioned two methods of shaping in her homework assignment, but now that she thought about it, sheers seemed like a good tool to use in the beginning. She turned from her project and went to retrieve some sheers. Bringing them back, she circled her plant while she tried to decide on the best way to go about this. She sort of felt like a kid who'd been asked to color in the Mona Lisa at only four-years-old. She just hoped her dragon didn't look like a potato head with sticks for limbs.

She had nothing, though. No good idea on how to do this. When she had imagined it, it had seemed so easy. Now, though, it just seemed like this overwhelming project. She could at least begin by trimming the bush into the shape she imagined the dragon's neck and head to be in. So with the sheers in her hand, she began snipping away at the bush.

Finally the outline was done! Robin took a second to step back and look at her topiary in progress. The general shape of the chipmunk was there and it wasn't TOO bad, it was the best she could do so she smiled. Now for the details! In order to make things like eyes, nails, and spots she figured she needed tocut everything around it down to make it more pronounced

snip snip snip
she experimented with the eyes and cut around where she wanted them to be- and sure enough, there were two (slightly deformed) looking circles. She did her best to make them look a little more even and a little less creepy. She decided to pass on the nails and just do the spots and stripes on the backs mostly because claws freaked her out a bit.

snip snip snip

She cut long strips down the chipmunk's back to make the stripes a bit more visible but not too deep. She was at a loss for what else she could do to this topiary without obsessing- and it looked pretty cute! Not a masterpiece, but it looked healthy at least!
"Aguementi"
There the final touch was nice damp soil. She scratched behind the ears of the chipmunk- which was a bit weird since it wasn't 'alive' yet, but she couldn't help it.
Her first project was over, with okay results.

Sophie stopped using the sheers and stood back to look at her work. Wow. It really did look like a potato with sticks for legs. That was all on purpose, though. Sophie was just trimming away the excess pieces, so she could work on the design next. The front and sides were all trimmed up nicely, so then she moved to the back part and began snipping it away, as well. Soon, she had trimmed away all the excess parts on all sides and was left with nothing but the part she'd need to start shaping.

Sophie returned the sheers then pulled out her wand. She bit her bottom lip as she tried to picture the dragon in her head. Before she could get too nervous about it, she aimed forward and said, "Flipnsnipwitit!" She was working on shaping the dragon's head and neck area. "Flipnsnipwitit!" she said again.

Okay, so it was getting along. Interestingly, if she might add. Caelen was still covered in the leaves and stuff, but at least the topiary didn't look half bad. There was still the tricky middle part that she had to attend to.

Maybe diffindo? But there was the whole issue of blasting away the outer part of her plant. And sh didn't see how cutting the plant was actually going to help. Because she'd have to twist the shears and then work around everything in order to not destroy her bird cage creation. This was tougher than she thought.

And besides the middle, she had to attend to the bottom. Kneeling down with ease -because she wasn't old and her body was STILL thankful for it- she started cutting away until the plant it inside the wire thing she put up before. Names were kind of escaping her now. And the redhead may or may not have a leaf in her mouth somehow.

Back to the middle. There haaaad to be a way to do this. Because the firstie needed the bird cage to LOOK like a bird cage for credit. Which meant that she was back to thinking and not cutting. This was her least favorite part of the whole idea. The Ravenclaw wished she would've listened to the old adage: think twice, cut once. So that may not be toootally it, but it was pretty close. And that was good enough for the redhead.

She thought about the options quickly, putting down the shears so she didn't accidentally maim herself. She was kind of clumsy. Hopefully the professor wouldn't think that she was being lazy. Because she wasn't!

Anyway, Diffindo might work wonders if it didn't blast part anything else. But she wasn't sure how to achieve that. If she could test the spell on a loose piece of branch or something, she might be able to work it out. And diffindo was a CUTTING spell and not a blasting spell. But these things could be powerful and she was kind of afraid of destroying her creation. She didn't have a leaf stuck in her hair for nothing.

But shearing would ensure that nothing went wrong. Unless she cut something wrong. Shearing DID seem like a better option, though it would be subsequently less comfortable for Caelen to complete. For once she was actually taller than something. But she would still have to get on her tip toes for maximum sight. And then there was the matter of holding the shears the way she was going to have to and working on the plant upside down. -well the shears were upside down- Right now, shearing seemed like a better option.

Yep, he was gonna stick to the manual, muggle way.

Sure it was more effort and technically more pain but Ben was feeling more secure about it. With the sounds of an injured Bay being heard within the garden, the second year didn't trust himself to protect against his own injuries should a spell go ary. At least with clippers, they were in his hand, secure in his hold and had more direct control. So returning his wand to his pocket for safe keeping and searched in the stuff he had brought back from the shed for the clippers. "Come on...come on...I know I brought you," he murmered almost to himself as he looked, finally spotting it and feeling relieved. No second trip for him.

A snip snip here.

A snip snip there.

That was better.

Okay, so she was going to test the cutting spell on something to see what happened. Because even though it was highly illogical, Caelen was currently afraid that it was going to go wrong and take out half of her creation. But if this went right, it might save her time and her bird cage. And her hair.

Plucking a leaf from her shirt, she knelt down and propped it up against some grass. Again, she wasn't DISTRACTED or anything, this was real science-y type stuff. See, the redhead was being an intellectual. And wasn't school all about making intellectuals? Though she guessed that people who knelt on the ground and tried to cut leaves with a spell weren't considered intellectuals.

Anyway.....

"Diffindo!" No blast -she knew that was stupid-. No drama. Just a clean cut leaf and a new perfect plan of action. Standing up with a triumphant smile, Caelen reached to the middle of her creation and picked out one branch in particular that was horridly in the way. Without that branch there, things would be twice as easy for her.

"Diffindo!" She cut the branch and pulled it out. Now she just had to repeat this process over a millliiion tiimes.

"Diffindo!" Cut and clean. This might be easier than she thought. She might even be done soon. Depending on this stupid middle part. Why did she think the spell would blast again? It was known as the cutting spell. Maybe she meant blast as in a violent or harsh cut? Another one of her not so bright moments.

"Diffindo!" More cutting and cleaning. More and more and more and more and more. She continued to do the spell and clean the mess, actually working fairly quickly now that she had a full base on which to do things.

"Diffindo!" It was actually kind of fun doing this. It was like making an art project. A very sensitive art project. A few more diffindo spells and she would be about halfway done with the middle. It took a lot of energy to not do a little victory clap. She had gotten so far.


But the soil was getting dry. It wasn't really wet to begin with and all of the work wasn't helping matters. The redhead knew that you needed nice and wet soil to take care of the plant.

"Aguementi." So maybe she learned it because someone said it like five minutes ago and it vaguely sounded like the word water. Whatever. Semantics aren't important.

After toootally not copying off of the other student, she continued to do the spell and ct down the middle. The bird cage had almost taken place!

Lex was doing a good Prefect job standing there with Bay until the Professor came but truthfully there was nothing left for her to do once the Professor joined them. Bay would have been better at explaining his problem to her so she let him speak, nodding at the appropriate times. A popped knee that left the guy on the ground.

Was that it then? The Professor could handle this now and Lex would have only made it worse. "I don't think it's broken or he'd still be screaming so that's a good sign. You can just give it a couple whacks til it pops back into place, yeah?" Juuuuuust a suggestion while she slinked back to her plant just a few steps away. She loved helping others as much as the next Slytherin but she had her own creation to get back to. Most people were finishing up and she still had a bit of work to do on it.

Even while she got back to clipping and snipping she kept glancing over at the two in case the Professor needed her help some more. Of course if she did then the Gryffindor would be needing more time after. Ahem.

The underbelly was the next to be shaped and the legs after that. Because of the Diffindo she'd done earlier she found that most of her work was already done for her. Good. Meant she wouldn't have to spend as much time on them when she still had a head and the tail to get nicely shaped out. Could Bay maybe be wounded a bit longer? Win her some extra time as thanks for helping him just now? It'd really be appreciated.

Lex walked to the front of the plant again and began cutting away at the edges first to give it a rounder look. The ears were one of the easiest bits to fill in but the 'fur' to the side presented a little more challenge.

........almost there..........and the nose.......uh-huh.....clip some more there....and a little from there.........done!

Compared to everything else the tail was cake. Thin and pole like only with a curve. Nothing tremendously hard there. And that was it? Could she say she was done?

Popping? Popping? It popped?....

Seren pursed her lips in thoughts, her brows knitting together. Hhmmmmmm.

"I'm... not a healer," she started, still processing the issue, "but if it popped, then perhaps popping it again will do the trick," she added, nodding at Lex. The girl might be onto something, though perhaps not with the whacking.. "Thanks," she offered as an after thought. You know, for her Prefectly help.

"Shall we try wiggling it back in? See if that works?" ... otherwise it was to the hospital wing with him. She just did not do healing. Not unless he was green and sprouting flowers out his head.