Naya kept up her sweeping until the professor began to speak again. She listened carefully to all of the vine information that was being presented. It seemed that there was more work to be done though, because everyone was then tasked with untangling all of the vines that were caught up in the broken windows. Naya put her broom away and donned her gloves. This was not going to be an easy task.

Naya went over to an unattended broken window and began the job. Grabbing on to random vine, she started pulling and tugging, trying the untangle the mess. It was like trying to get a knot out of a string or a piece of thread, painstaking and occasionally frustrating. At times, it seemed like the vines didn’t want to be rescued, but Naya was determined. It was a battle, but at last the Gryffindor was able to get the vine straightened out. She had begun to break a sweat and wiped her brow with her sleeve. Then she took out her wand, pointed it at the window and said, Reparo”. Relieved that the window was now whole again, Naya moved on to the next tangled vine.

Claudine moved on with her attempts to rescue another vine. She really hoped it wasn’t a troublesome one. It turned out that it was. This one started to loosely wrap around her wrists the moment she touched it. The Slytherin tugged and tugged as she tried to free her wrists but the vine was surprisingly strong. Soon, her fingers were strung together. The girl glared at the vine in annoyance. Didn’t it sense that everyone here was trying help all the plants?

On instinct, Claudine wiggled her fingers. It was difficult but even with the vine wrapped around her fingers, she could still. If only she could poke one of those leaves… with great some degree of difficulty, she fidgeted her right index finger. She fidgeted and wiggled and stretched until she managed to poke a leaf sharply. The vine shook as though giggling and released her hands. “Thank you,’’ Claudine said waspishly, and picked up her wand which she had dropped earlier thanks to the grabbing vine.

A few more tickles/pokes and tugging and the vine was out of harm’s way. “Reparo.’’ Second window fixed.

”Right. That too. I’ve got training to work on mine, mostly for gymnastics. It helps with the bars and the hand springs.” With somewhat less reluctance, Emmerson took the pair of secateurs from the Professor, distracted by her attempts at clueing the woman into how capable she was. “But I don’t wanna work too hard on them or my shoulders will get ugly and I won’t look so cute in a leotard.”

The first year moved over to a set of plants, cutting indiscriminately. Dead branches, live branches, dead leaves, live leaves. They were all the same to her.

She was very sure to stay away from the vines the Professor was trying to get them to help with. The 11 year old had eyes. She could see they weren’t friendly. No thanks. Definite pass. Maybe another time.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

“How do I know when I’m done?” A not so obvious question given she was chopping everything in sight. “Is it when they all look naked?

Because she was already wwwwaaaaayyyyy ahead with that. Not many of the ones she chopped had branches or leaves left.

Violet had been having great success untangling the vines using a combination of gentle tugging and humming to them, but now that they were off the window, they had a tendency to want to curl around her instead. She wished she had a trellis or something else for them to hold onto. Hmm, maybe these were the some of the same vines that had tried to direct her in the right direction in the previous Herbology class and now remembered her.

Finally she gave up discouraging them and stood up, with her wand pointed at the windowpanes and a number of vines curled around her legs and ankles and cast the spell: "Reparo!" on each pane of broken glass. She'd take care of this first and worry what to do with the overly-affectionate vines later.

You'd think the vines would be a little more appreciative of her help, but noooo, they didn't seem to want to be untangled at all. It took her about five whole minutes to get the two apart, fighting with them the WHOLE time. Her hair was a MESS by the time it was done, her brow furrowed, and her mouth turned down in a frown, but at least she'd done it. Now she just needed to fix that window and she could breathe for a second.

"Reparo."

Even if the vines were being the worst, she didn't want them getting cut up on the glass.

Heath continued sweeping, only looking up when he heard Professor Flamsteed speak again. His answer was correct after all… well, that was good to know! He nodded in acknowledgement, returning the professor’s smile with a slight one of his own. Oh, so that’s how they were going to fix the windows? He paid careful attention to the demonstration, if only to learn how to untangle the vines without hurting them. He already knew how to use Reparo!

Heath’s dark eyes darted around the greenhouse in search of a vine to help, and he beelined for the tallest one he saw. He’d leave the smaller ones for the younger students who couldn’t reach as high as him. “Uhh… hey, little vine,” he whispered. Merlin, it felt so weird to be talking to a plant! He reached for the vine, but as soon as he got close enough to touch it, it swatted his hand. “Stop that!” he said sternly. The vine drooped, and his tone softened. “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you…”

He tried again, gently tugging at the vine the same way Professor Flamsteed did in her demonstration. It didn’t slap him again (thank Merlin!), but it wasn’t exactly cooperative either! It recoiled, trying to wriggle out of his grasp with every tug. Heath sighed exasperatedly. This would never work! The more the vine struggled, the more likely it was to get cut on the broken glass. But what could he do to calm it? Ugh, he really was not good at this sort of thing! At his wit’s end, he thought of his baby cousin. Singing showtunes always calmed her down when she was fussy (and had worked for Baby Leia during that Muggle Studies assignment a couple of terms ago). If it worked for them, maybe it would soothe the vine too.

Gently petting the vine, Heath sang very quietly so as not to disturb the other students, “Little one, ease your heart, close your eyes and let dreams take you far…” Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best song choice! Obviously the vine didn’t have a heart or eyes - Did it have dreams either? - but that didn’t matter now. To his surprise, the vine swayed contentedly, rubbing its tendrils together as if applauding. While it was calm, he carefully lifted it off the broken glass and aimed a quick “Reparo!” at the window.

“Oh, you like showtunes, do you?” he said with a laugh, watching the vine climb the now fixed window. In that case, he thought of the perfect name for it! Were they allowed to name the vines?

Serena and her vine of choice were not having a good time. She had tugged, pulled, offered bribes and resorted to ominous threats - but her vine just refused to budge. "Pleaaaase" She wailed tiredly at the unmoving plant "Please move" She begged, fully expecting it to fall on deaf ears - similar to her earlier efforts. But, lo and behold, the plant had actually shown a shard of mercy suddenly became pliant on her hands, making it an easy task to move it out of the way of the broken grass.

Serena rolled her eyes. Of course she would get the plant that preferred desperate begs.

Securing the now compliant vine away from the glass, she pointed her wand at the spot of broken greenhouse glass and cast "Reparo" watching as the shards flew back into place, as if nothing had happened.

One done. A million to go.

Cole moved on to stand in front of another so far unattended window. He was still warm and sweaty after the struggle he had only minutes ago with the other vines. Taking a breath he got to work, if anything a Gryffindor never gave up. You pushed on tirelessly until the task was done. Untangling the vines from the window was going to be hard Cole realized just after a few minutes of work. He had to fight like a lion just to untangle the vines from one part of the window. "Come on, let go vines! Can’t you understand that the glass shards can hurt you? Please, I just want to help." Cole exclaimed in frustration. It appeared that the vines actually listened to the boy and released their grip on the window, almost like they understood. If he had paused to consider this he’d would have been creeped out, because he was by no means a plant whisperer.

When the vines were finally gone from the window Cole pulled out his wand again from it's holster and casted. "Reparo!" Seeing within seconds a whole glass window.

Avalon was struggling with a particularly touchy vine. She had just finished repairing a window, but the vine had started to crawl up it again immediately, tangling itself as it grew. She tried to gently coax it back down, but it only wrapped around her wrist, squeezing rather hard. "Ouch!" she exclaimed, trying to pry the twisting vine off her arm. It grabbed her other hand. Avalon tickled the underside of it with her fingers. The vine shook and unlatched itself. "Thank you for finally cooperating," Avalon said, patting the vine as if it were a puppy. "That's a good vine!"

On to the next one. She approached a tangled mess of vines growing out of a broken pot. Rolling up her sleeves, she prepared to begin. Maybe this one would be nicer to her....

Violet had all of her windowpanes repaired by now and stood there admiring them until she looked down and found vines curling around both her ankles and legs. "Professor June," she called out, "what do we do with the vines once we get them off?" Other than wear them, that is.

As Heath turned away to go help another plant, the vine wrapped itself around his wrist. Clearly it wanted an encore! “Let go!” he said, laughing. He tried to wrench himself from the vine’s hold, but it wouldn’t budge. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show, but I have to help your friends now.” The vine drooped as it finally released its hold on him, as if sulking. Poor vine… Heath almost didn’t want to leave it! “I can come back later, if you like.” He’d hate to disappoint a fan, even if that fan was a plant!

The vine seemed to perk up a bit at that offer, and Heath continued on his way. He approached the nearest broken window, cautiously reaching for the vine tangled in it. Unlike the last vine, this one didn’t swat him; it just kept dancing out of reach every time he got close enough to touch it, “Hey, hold still!” he said. “I’m trying to help. Please?” His words had absolutely no effect. Okay, he didn’t have time for this! Hopefully this vine liked showtunes as much as the other one did. “... Far away from the storm, to a summer day, warm and fair…” he sang softly.

The vine finally stopped wiggling; in fact it wasn’t moving at all! Heath blinked confusedly. Wait, was it… asleep? “Hey, vine!” he whispered, gently poking it but nothing happened. Yeah, definitely asleep. So now what? Should he try to move it or wake it up first? He decided to try to move it while it was asleep and not resisting. He tugged, but the dead weight of the sleeping vine made it much more difficult to get it off the glass. He was almost done when the sleeping vine suddenly jerked awake, thrashing about in his grip.

"No, it’s okay… we’re almost done,” he said. “Please calm down!” If it didn’t, he feared it might hurt itself on the glass!

Serena turned to work on her next set of vines, when she heard who was standing near her, call for Professor June - which was weird onto itself because Violet rarely asked for any help in class. She turned in the girl's direction and was horrified to find that she was covered in vines, more wrapping around her ankles and wrists.

"Let's try to get you out of here, yeah?" She offered, inching towards her fellow Slytherin. Her vines seemed particularly...attached to her, so it was probably best to proceed with caution. Reaching for the closest vine, which was the one around Violet's wand hand, Serena pulled gently trying to coax it off her friend "'C'mon little vine" She cooed, attempting a gentle approach "Let's not eat my friend please"

Valencia put the broom back when she was done cleaning up her area and then headed toward a window. She whispered softly to a vine, "Hey there. Let me help you out." she said before tugging lightly on the vine until it was removed from the broken window. She'd heard several times that talking helps plants, so she figured she might as well just in case they were sentient enough to understand they had just experienced trauma.

She then used her wand to repair the broken window and leaned the vine back against now fixed window.

Even though June just wanted to jump in and do it all herself, she had to keep reminding herself it won't help the students. They needed to work things out themselves. It was not easy of course, especially seeing Miss Taylor ROUGHLY pull at the vines like that. Thankfully though, she sooon figured out she needed to try a gentle approach. Thank merlin for common sense. "Good work, Miss Taylor" She smiled at the girl before walking forward to see what Miss Blackthorne was upto. She could tell something was off with the young lady, she was awfully quiet today too - but at least she was trying, so that was good.

Miss Fox was a whole other story, and June had to TRY and not laugh at the girl. It was cute, but she too was getting there. Maybe she needed the same kind of resolve as Miss Blaze. "Good work, girls" she offered to them both before walking forward.

Miss Summers didn't know it but June was smiling WIDE as she watched the girl do her best - June decided to step in, however, when the vine unfortunately whacked her on the cheek, "You know what I do when they are being extra mischievous?" she asked, gently caressing the end of the vine that had whacked the poor girl - "I try to distract them by going along with whatever they want to do" she said, all the while letting her hand follow the vine wherever it wanted to move before carefully guiding it away from the glass, "sometimes, it helps to earn their trust"

A thing older Miss James understood clearly, but younger Miss James did not. Moving toward the girl, she offered her a gentle smile, "it's okay - relax" she told the girl, as she crouched to untangle the vine that was aiming for the girl's leg "sometimes they are difficult because they can sense some an agenda on you" - "when that happens and they act out? try relaxing and letting them trust you" It was not an easy concept to grasp but if understood - can be applied to so many things in life.

Miss Turov and Miss Starson was definitely getting the hang of this concept though and it was just delightful to see. "Good job, girls!" she applauded the girls from behind them. Knowing how to talk to plants was a GIFT.

Speaking of gifts, she turned to look at Mr Miller and smiled, "of course! If you can manage to find them - that'd be great. But try not to use up all your time fixing up pots, you need to come help some vines too"

Giving Mr Simpson a nod next, June walked forward - only to have her eyes go a bit wide hearing Miss Anders. Oh merlin. "Uhh, try to be a little gentle, Miss Anders" she offered as advice before walking over to see what Miss Grantham was up to - only to be even more horrified. DEAR MERLIN. "GENTLE, MISS GRANTHAM. GENTLE." she said, trying not to jump in and do the task for her.

Speaking of disaster, she STARED as she finally came around to see what Miss Cambridge had done, "you are done" she said, clearly very very very disappointed. "You were just supposed to chop away the dry bits, not the live ones. Please leave the secateurs and go stand in that corner. You won't be touching any more plants today" Honestly - that was ALL June could do at this point.

At least Mr Vance, Miss Lindsay, Miss Sinclair and Miss Phillips had a different approach, and thank merlin for that - or else June would be getting a headache soon. "Good job," she smiled a little at them all. A small smile which soon turned wider watching Mr Jones. It was heartwarming to see - as was Miss Anders helping Miss Blackthorne. There was hope after all.

"Great effort, everyone!" she called out after a bit, "Now before moving on, I'd like you tell me what do you think is a good environment for any types of vines to thrive in?"


OOC: I AM SO SORRY FOR THE DELAY, GUYS! But my internet was out and I couldn't log in or doing replies on my phone would have been a disaster ;_; Quickly moving things along, here is Question 2 and I'll start the main activity in about 12 hours! <3

Ashley surreptitiously stuck her hand into her pocket. She had gotten a fair amount of vines with only one gash, and she felt that was something to be proud of. Ignoring her slightly bleeding hand, she decided to focus on the question. "Uh, well I guess vines need light and a thing to climb on. Like a wall or a tree. Because the reason they climb on things is because- wait my wand is made of vine -where were we? Oh yeah, um they climb on stuff because they want light but they don't want to spend energy." That seemed like a good answer to her.

At Professor June's remarks, Serena flushed scarlet. She wasn't trying to manhandle the vine, it wasn't her fault it was stubborn! And she did try to be gentle. But, at the very least, at least her vine didn't attempt to absorb her, like Violet's did.

Shaking off her terrible luck with the evil vines, Serena focused on Professor June's question. She raised her hand and answered "It depends on which vine, Professor, and at what stage." She felt proud, her neighbor loved growing plants and flowers, and fortunately for Serena, she also loved talking about said vines whenever they would bump into another "Most newly planted vines require a fair bit of watering, as they need the moisture from the soil. In terms of sunlight meanwhile, most vines are fine with either full sunlight, or partial exposure to the sun, but some variations require full sunlight, or only certain amounts of sunlight." Unfortunately, she had never really listened to Mrs. Hernandez in depth, so she couldn't remember any of the types of vines that the elderly woman prattled on about during their many chats about her plants.

She was done? "Oh!" The little girl was all set to grin and let the professor know she was welcome for the help but when she turned to look at Professor Flamsteed, all she saw was disappointment and....

The corner?

But...but why? What was in the corner? Why couldn't she touch any more plants today? Confused, Emmerson went to a table to place the secateurs down then over to the corner the woman had indicated. Emm blinked a few times over at her, green eyes silently questioning what just happened.

Timidly, the 11 year old lifted her hand. If she was standing in the corner and not meant to touch anything, was she still allowed to answer?

"They're always in jungles with other trees they can climb up on--can I come see the plants later?"

Or was she banned for...like....EVER??

Ivy grinned when the professor praised her work. Oh good! She was doing something right! As she finished untangling the vines, removing the glass, and repairing the windows around where she worked, she dusted off her gloved hands on her robes and turned her attention back tot he Professor who was now asking question. She was still learning about Herbology, but she’d learned a lot about plants at her Muggle school, so she thought she could take a pretty decent stab at this one. ”Well, vines aren’t like people. They don’t stop getting bigger. They just grow and grow and grow until they run out of room or they die. So, they’d need good soil with lots of nutrients, maybe where there are lots of other vegetation or critters because when things die, they go into the ground which is part of how the stuff plants need gets there. Um... also they’d need space - up, down, sideways - wherever. Plants also have to have water and sunlight for photosynthesis! So vines would need those too!”

Yeah, that seemed like an actually intelligent answer for once!

Claudine sent Flamsteed a smile in acknowledgement of the compliment. Really, it was tough work but at least she had been lucky enough to be working on vines that weren’t too stubborn. Still, the Slytherin was sort of relieved when they were moving.

Types of environment for vines to thrive? She thought a bit then raised a hand. “An environment where there are objects for the vines to climb as they grow would be useful,’’ Claudine volunteered. And 'objects' didn't necessarily refer to just trees.

Professor Flamsteed was wrong (no offense). Not that Kinsay would say that to her. She wasn’t brave enough for that. But it wasn’t about the vines not trusting Kinsay! It was about Kinsay not trusting the vines! This distrust is what made it so hard to relax. So she continued to battle them for dominance and as a result entirely missed the awful thing that happened to her best friend.

It also meant that Kinsay was stuck in a tangle of vines, even as they moved on to the next question. One that she could only think of answering with the basic stuff like water and sunlight. Mostly everyone else had already said that stuff though so she decided to stay quiet. This time around she wouldn’t be asking any questions of her own because they always got ignored.

......

Except when one of the older Slytherin’s mentioned the need for objects to climb… Kizzy’s hand shot into the air before she even had time to think about it. ”Can vines grow on people?” It was a question half born from curiosity, and half from concern. Aka, would the vines that had tangled her stay like that FOREVER?!

…. Was she a plant now?

"I was humming to them to try to coax them off the window," Violet explained as Professor June came over and started to try to get some of the vines off of her. "They seemed to like it, because they let me tug them right off, but then they wanted to find something else to climb on and I didn't have anything handy. So they started curling around me. I guess they liked the humming a little too much," Violet finished sheepishly. "Is there a trellis or something they could climb on instead? I think they'd come off if they had somewhere else to go."

Heath was so busy trying to soothe the wriggling vine that he didn't notice Professor Flamsteed's smile. He had barely enough time to get the window repaired before they moved on to the second question. He thought for several moments. It appeared that the kind of environment a vine needed would vary with the type of vine, but someone already pointed that out. All the other things he thought of - water, light, good soil, a safe place to climb ( as in not on broken glass shards) had been said too. Now what could he say?

As he racked his brains for something new to add, his thoughts turned to the tall vine he'd helped earlier, the one that seemed to like showtunes… or maybe it wasn't the song it responded to. What if it responded to him because he treated it with kindness? Was that something that made a good environment for vines, a place where they'd be loved and cared for? Maybe they were like humans in that way… Or not. There were plenty of vines that grew just fine in the wild, so that was probably wrong. And even so, there was no way in Hoth that he was saying that answer out loud! He shook his head, unable to believe he'd come up with something that sappy!

After a lot of careful consideration, Heath remembered something he read in the textbook, and his hand went up. "Some vines, like grapevines for example, are prone to mildew and fungus, so they need an environment with good air circulation."

Cecelia smiled a bit sheepishly when the Professor intervened, watching as the woman handled the vine with WAY more ease than she had. "They're like creatures that way, then." It made sense you had to earn their trust, she supposed. They were living things, after all. "Promise I'll keep that in mind for next time." She crossed her heart and everything.

Shaking off the minor fail that was her vine handling skills, Cecelia couldn't help but notice that Emmerson had been made to stand in the corner, which was-well, it was embarrassing, wasn't it? And Cece couldn't help but feel bad for Emm, who looked pretty confused about her current position. Wondering if she could help somehow, the fourth year looked between the younger girl and the professor, thinking.

"It's probably helpful if the vines have lots of room to grow? So maybe somewhere spacious. Somewhere safe, too. Ideally without broken glass." That much she'd learned just a few minutes ago. Also.. "Professor, I wouldn't mind if Emm worked with me on whatever we do next. If that's okay, I mean."

Naya kept working on untangling the vines. It was hard work, but she kept at it. She had just finished freeing another vine from a broken window when the professor said it was time to move on. Naya quickly aimed a “Reparo” at the broken window, fixing it just in time.

Turning her attention to the professor, Naya listened to the question that was posed. A good environment for vines to grow? After thinking about it for a moment, she raised her hand. “I think most vines need to grow in soil that is well drained. The roots need to breathe and like Heath said, they need air circulating around them.....so the water needs to keep flowing down into the soil and away from the roots.” As soon as Naya stopped talking, she wondered her answer sounded right. In her head it made sense but... when she said it out loud.....not so much.

Cole was grateful for the compliment from Professor Flamsteed on how he handled the hard task of untanging vines. Not everyone was as fortunate. He felt bad for Emmerson and Cece. Cole refocused on the vines he was working with, freeing the last vine from an extra pointy glass shard. "Reparo!" he mumbled as he casted the spell to repair the last window.

Glad that they we're moving on Cole took a few moments to consider his answer. He didn't want to repeat other peoples answers. Raising his hand eventually he said "All though water is important you shouldn't water too often and in the mornings if i remember right? Vines also need a very big space to grow on and it's also pertinent that the soil is nutrious. You should put composted earth around the vine plant for good growing potential."