The ingredients were gathered with haste. Back at the potions lab, mama was flabbergasted about their lackluster ability to julienne and shave. She demonstrated each technique and then went around to each station crying on the inside about their ineptitude. She knew that yelling at students like Snape had done was not an effective way to teach them potions (and had in fact, been basically the only rule Dumbledore had given her), so she kept her horror inside and instead semi-patiently demonstrated which side of the knife to use again to a particularly stupid student. Maybe it wouldn't be immoral to poison the bottom 10% of her class. It would be doing society a favor, honestly. The two Slytherins in the back row had almost lit themselves on fire (somehow, because their cauldron wasn't even lit?) and they would certainly not be missed. If she turned them into inferi, would their parents even notice? She didn't think the two knew how to read. Dumbledore had not said she couldn't kill any kids.
"Alright, the last ingredient we need to prepare is the eye of newt. I shall show you the best way to filet a frog. We need their eyes but I'll show you how to extract the liver and kidney as well." As the box of frogs was passed around, the faces of the children got paler and paler. "Now," she continued, brandishing her knife, "best to do it quick so they don't hop away. And mind your fingers. Follow the ridge between their eyes and go right down the middle about halfway." Her knife slammed through the frog into the table and with a quick snap of her wrist, the frog was bisected. One of the students squeaked in shock. "Now the eyes are pretty self-explanatory. I like to use the edge of my knife, or you could get a spoon, and just pop them out. Make sure you don't stab into the eye itself, the fluids are the magical bit, we need those." She held one of them up for the class to see, but most of them were looking away. Their still-living frogs ribbited away through the thick silence.
"Oh come now children, don't be cowards. Start stabbing." She cajoled. Harry, her sweet boy, went straight to work as he'd been doing this since he was six. One of the boys in the back started to sniffle, his chubby face screwed in a picture of horror. "Is it that bad?" She asked, taking in their looks. "Have none of you killed anything before? You there -" she pointed to the crying boy. "What's your moral quandary then?"
"I - I have a pet t-toad, I - I can't kill one." He mumbled out between tears.
"Well it's not your pet toad, is it? I got them from Diagon, they've been bred for this. Lived in a little box in the back of the shop until now. I don't even think they have feelings." She picked one of them up by the leg and it dangled without a care in her grip, just ribbeting and vibing, nothing at all happening in its brain. Just like most of her students. When that failed to encourage them, she floundered for a moment. But she had one foolproof way to deal with children.
"Alright, how about this: Behave and murder your frogs, and next class, I'll bring you all a treat. And we'll make Pepper-Up with dehydrated ingredients so you can see how superior this method is."
"I vote for pizza," Harry yelled.
"I'd murder a frog for pizza," another student murmured. There was some chatter as they contemplated the enticing proposal.
"What in Merlin's balls is pizza?" A blonde boy asked.
As previously stated (and of course, is universally acknowledged as absolute fact) Alabasandria was great with children, and so this bribery eventually worked, and most of the students diligently stabbed their frogs and got started on the actual brewing section. Crying toad boy would not budge, however.
"Look, if you're using the dehydrated eye of newt, it still comes from a dead frog. Someone stabbed it." She tried to reason.
"I d-don't want to be the one to h-hurt it," he sniffed.
"Fine," she relented. "Not all children are cut out for killing, I suppose. You may use someone else's spare frog eye for today's lesson. But next class you won't get any pizza." She turned to face the rest of the class and projected her voice for them to hear. "There is a book that should be in the library called The Art of Vegan Potioncraft. If you protest the use of animal products, you may read it and I will test you on it, and if you understand it, you may utilize those techniques in class. You will not get to cherry-pick. If you don't want to gather fresh eye of newt, you won't get access to the graphorn guts or the fish eggs or the raven feathers either. Often this will make the potions much more difficult to complete and will be less stable. If you cannot handle it, you will return to using the traditional recipes, is that clear?"
Crying frog boy nodded frantically and a couple of students made interested noises and jotted the name of the book down.
"Why did you only mention that after we already did it?" One of the students asked.
"Because component substitution is not traditionally covered until after your OWLs. Most of you would have agreed out of cowardice and then failed and we would be right back where we started. It was best you got it over with. If this is something you are truly against, then you need to be willing to put the extra effort in."
The rest of the lesson went smoothly, although again, most of the students were tremendously stupid. Truly, Alabasandria had been blessed with her previous apprentices. At least if they had been dumb, she was allowed to kill them. Harry and his minions were doing fine, as well as most of the Slytherins but everyone else needed loads of help. Crying frog boy almost blew up his cauldron several times, and the brainless Slytherin boys were covered in a poison ivy-type rash from their Phosphorus Pickles. Which was incredibly hard to trigger and meant they had done basically every step wrong.
"Professor Adams," Hermione yelled with urgency as the bell finally rang and the students finished cleaning up their stations. Alabasandria rubbed at her face to force her blooming headache away. "Are you going to assign any homework?" There was a great deal of murmuring and swearing directed at the girl.
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