Two Things That Shouldn't Mix

Vivianna Varnes was making an amazing potion. She wasn't exactly sure what it was yet, but it was sure to be brilliant. This was her, after all.

Peering into the caldron where a mixture of water, peppermint, and fluxweed was happily simmering away, the girl decreed that she was making some sort of healing potion. Most would me more than a little wary of someone brewing something without having any idea exactly what they were making, but not Vivianna. She had excellent instincts when it came to potions. Her brain would catch up.

Finding herself in desperate need of a distraction the moment classes had ended, the witch had headed straight to her dormitory. Opening the compartment of her trunk where she kept potion ingredients, many of which were not exactly legal, Vivianna had grasped the first two her fingers brushed, decreeing that she'd make a potion containing them both. The two ingredients in question happened to be powdered graphorn horn and shrake spines, two things that any decent brewer knew had a strong tendency to blow up when coming in contact. A skip in her step now that the girl had a challenge difficult enough to take her mind off of... certain things, she'd raced for her usual lab.

Carefully adding the powdered horn to her caldron, the witch smiled as the liquid did nothing but lighten slightly in color. Spinning around to pick up the sugar quill on the desk behind her, Vivianna scribbled down the amount she'd added. The Slytherin had a tendency to spread out when brewing, one of the many reasons why she didn't like experimenting in a room where others were also laboring over caldrons. The girl had set up her caldron in the middle of the room, and placed a chair before it, though she had yet to take a seat. Behind her was a desk covered in ink-filled papers, with a singular blank sheaf of parchment for recording her current experiment. To her left, Vivianna had set up a desk for vials and stirring rods. The redhead's right-hand side was perfectly clear, a direct pathway to the ingredient cupboard.

Frowning down at her caldron, the witch pursed her lips. Wandering over to the cupboard, Vivianna's fingers flitted over the vials for a few moments, before deftly snapping up the honeywater. Prancing back over to her solution, the witch measured out six drops, and set the glass container down on the desk by her side. Choosing a copper stirring rod to gently mix the ingredients together, Vivianna finally sat down with a sigh. There was nothing else she could do until the potion settled and changed color. Until then, she would just have to wait.

Christian had never received a letter from Blaise at school. Not once in seven years. Usually, the owl would fly up to Apollo and he would relay any information necessary to the younger brother. Daphne, of course, would send letters to both, but more frequently to Christian as if it would make up for the ones he missed. The twins weren't typically ones to seek each other out during the day, if only because they had classes together and could explain whatever they needed to during that time. But now, for the first time, he had news from Blaise that he needed to give to Apollo.

The Slytherin had not been down in the greenhouses, nor in his typical part of the grounds for studying. So Christian made his way inside and checked in on the library, wandering around until he decided that his brother simply was not in there. Finally, he decided to make his way down to the dungeons and towards the Potions classroom. He hesitated for a breath, wondering if it was strange that he knew precisely where to search, but then he decided that it wasn't so strange because he assumed Apollo would know the same things about him. He was wrong, of course, but he couldn't have known that.

Similarly, he couldn't have known that his only slightly-older brother would not be in the classroom when he opened the door and stepped inside to take a look around. Instead, he found a Slytherin from his year working on something. He recognized her, of course, if only from classes. But they had not really interacted enough for him to just strike up a conversation with her.

Then again, he had someone he was looking for, and perhaps she would know. So he approached slowly, not wanting to offend in any way - he knew how protective Apollo could be about his potions work. "Hey," he began, completely aware of how uncomfortable he appeared to be. "You haven't seen Apollo, have you? Been searching for him."

After another glance towards her cauldron, though, his curiosity got the better of him. "Um, what are you working on?" Surely Apollo would be curious to know if another student shared his appreciation for working on potions in their spare time? That what he thought his excuse was, anyway. A part of him knew that she had not exactly been the most friendly person in the world - at least, not towards him that he could recall - but he couldn't help but wonder after people like that. From experience, he had found that people who pushed everyone away had something that they were covering up, or had a silent wish that someone would address it and help them out of whatever it was.

Vivianna turned her head, a frown already set into her features. The witch had no idea who could be entering her space at this time of day, but was almost certain that whomever it was wished to nag at her. It was, after all, the only thing that anyone seemed to be doing these days. All except for a certain male Dixon who would never nag, instead preferring to- stop it, Varnes. Don't think of him. Not now.

Instead of one of her vapid dorm mates, or perhaps even a prefect, the redhead registered a male in her year. She recognized him, of course, if one didn't know the names of their housemates by the time they reached their seventh year of schooling there was no hope for them at all. He was a Zabini, the twin of one of her own housemates. Vivianna had never had any problems with Apollo, and they got on well enough. This was probably due to the two of them staying out of each other's way more than anything else, but it was true all this same. The girl had never had much reason to talk to Christian, however, even after all these years. Then again, Vivianna didn't regularly make practice of conversing with Hufflepuffs.

"I saw him not too long ago, chatting with some girl," the witch stated blandly. It wasn't her business who the wizard consorted with, so she'd walked right by the pair. The two students could have been flirting or getting ready to fight for all Vivanna knew. The girl was usually far more observant than this, but her mind had hardly been functioning at optimal capacity as of late.

"A healing potion," the Slytherin replied, surprised that this relative stranger would take an instead in the contents of her caldron.

Content with the color the liquid had turned, Vivianna stood in order to grasp a small container of ground cinnamon. Tapping out around ten grams into her palm, the girl tipped her hand so the powder fell into the mixture. Setting that back down, Vivianna quickly reached out to snag some jewelweed and toss that in as well in order to counteract the cinnamon's more fiery properties.

"Of my own invention, by the way, never made this before. If you aren't a fan of cauldrons blowing up in your face, I wouldn't get too much closer. Tends to happen on the first try or two," Vivianna continued, smirk as audible as the words that had been spoken through it.

Christian nodded, hardly even surprised by the idea of Apollo chatting up some girl in his free time. However, it was slightly odd that this redhead was down here on her own as his brother would have been. Perhaps Apollo was not the only one who was working on their future. As he considered the possibility, he had to refrain from smirking a bit. Wasn't that just what he had expected of Apollo? A healing potion. How interesting.

A part of Christian almost wondered after whether or not she was doing it for the sake of helping and healing, or if she had decided on it just to try something new. Apollo, the Hufflepuff knew, was doing it for the former. But this girl - something about her seemed almost dark, and it made Christian all the more curious and concerned. He had the habit of trying to help those he could, and - to be absurdly optimistic - bring them into the light. It didn't always work, but he did try.

Unfortunately for him, he also had a tendency to care too much, and convince himself that the feeling of caring... well, he always felt that it went beyond just sympathy and concern. He convinced himself that he truly cared for them beyond friendship, too.

"Interesting," he offered, pausing to let her continue. When she suggested he move away, Christian nodded and did as she said he should. He was not one who excelled in potions, unlike his uncanny abilities in maths and in other elective subjects. Well, those and perhaps Charms. So he did, indeed, do as she said. He moved away. But sat down on the desk right next to her, his gaze focused on the cauldron despite the fact that he could so easily see the Slytherin out of his peripheral vision.

"So you're doing this for laughs? To see if it blows up or not? Or because you actually want to help someone with it?"

"Is none of the above an option?" Vivianna quipped, corners of her lips turning upwards. They were all decent possibilities, really, so the girl didn't know why she was so amused. It wasn't like the wizard knew her well enough to know that she spent a large amount of her time in this very lab, let alone why she did so.

"The very definition of potion creation is to see if it blows up or not," the girl said with a smirk, "if you're reading the right texts, at least." That was true enough, practically all the published journals of famous brewers had at least a few comments, sarcastic or otherwise, about caldrons exploding scribbled into the margins. A nice boom was not her intention in this particular endeavor, no. If something so destructive had been her goal, the witch wouldn't have added that last stabilizing agent, nor would she be using one of her nicer caldrons. As much as Vivianna loved the wand shop at which she worked, the girl sometimes wondered if working at potions supply store would not be a better idea. Her pay would not be nearly as good, she was sure, but the employee discount she was sure to get might just out-way the decrease in wages.

"I'd hardly complain if I managed to creating something that helped people, but no, I was bored," Vivianna stated simply, as if it was completely normal for people to lock themselves in the dungeons and play around with highly hazardous ingredients when they didn't have anything to do. Then again, in her world, it was. It had really been the search of a distraction that led the girl here, more than any type of boredom. Still, there was a hint of truth to the statement, so the witch felt no guilt at the lie. Not that she normally did feel such a thing when telling untruths to strangers.

Tapping on the side of her caldron, deep in thought with lists of ingredients and reactions running through her head faster than Vivianna could properly register, the girl's eyes lit up. Rushing back over to the cupboard of ingredients, the witch grabbed both the murtlap essence, and tentacles. Screwing open the jar of tentacles, the girl plucked four from the container and tossed them into the caldron one by one. Closing the jar and setting it down, the redhead grabbed the stained cloth that was draped over the back of her chair and wiped her slick hands clean on the fabric.