Year 2: Open Your Mind

Chapter 17: March 2016

Molly knew it was only a matter of time before she got assigned another group project. She dreaded them. Group projects meant having to deal with classmates who were not as smart, not as motivated, and not as dedicated as Molly was towards school. When they were allowed to choose their partners, it wasn't so bad. Usually it was either pairs or groups of four, so Molly and her friends could pair up with each other. But when the Professors made the groups, it was always madness.

Molly was pretty sure her Professors made the worst groups possible on purpose. That, or else it was just always a really bad luck of the draw. For some reason, Molly always got paired with the worst teammates – like that time she and Flora had been partnered together in Potions class, or the time she'd had to write a paper with Jesse Davis from Slytherin.

She wasn't sure whether her Professors were trying to make her fail, or whether they were trying to do that thing where they paired the best students with the worst students in order to get the good students to help the bad students improve. If it was the latter, then it definitely wasn't working.

So when Professor Longbottom announced a group paper on mandrakes in class one afternoon, Molly found herself banging her head on her desk in frustration. She knew before he said so that it would be in assigned groups – she could always tell by the Professor's tone of voice. They always announced it in an almost apologetic voice when they were assigning the groups. It was as if they knew the students hated it, but they were doing it anyway.

Molly's group was announced. The papers were in groups of four and she was assigned to work with Brady Hanson from Hufflepuff, Jordan Bletchley from Slytherin, and to her horror – Amber Macdonald, one of her dormmates. She found herself wishing Professor Longbottom had assigned the teams by house – at least then she'd have a Ravenclaw to work with. As it was, she had a pretty miserable group.

Towards the end of class, Professor Longbottom gave everyone time to confer with their groups. Molly made her way over to Jordan Bletchley's desk, where it seemed the rest of her team was congregating, and immediately took charge.

"So we have two weeks to do the assignment," Molly declared. "Which isn't a lot of time. We should really get started as soon as possible. How about we meet up in the library after last period to get a handle on how we want to do this?"

"Can't," Brady shook his head. "I've got choir practice."

"Dude, you're in the choir?" Jordan asked. "That's totally lame."

Molly ignored Jordan. "Okay, what about the rest of you?" she wondered.

Jordan made a face. "Yeah, I'm busy too," he said.

"Doing what?" Molly demanded.

"Anything but Herbology," Jordan replied.

Molly sighed. "Come on guys, we need to take this seriously."

"It's just a dumb Herbology paper," Amber pointed out. "There's no reason to get so worked up about it. I vote we meet up Sunday afternoon."

"Sunday?" Molly screeched. "But it's only Tuesday! That's five days away! You want us to waste five days doing nothing?"

"It's not like we're going to work on it, even if we met up sooner," Amber said. "We've got that potions essay to write, not to mention all the reading Professor Tonks assigned in transfiguration."

"I'm with Amber," Brady agreed. "We can meet up on Sunday and divide the paper, and then we have a week to do our parts, and we can collate it the following Sunday, and then we have a day for general editing and stuff."

"No," Molly shook her head. "We can't leave it that late, it's crazy!"

"That's hardly leaving it late," Jordan said. "Leaving it late would be if we only put it all together Tuesday morning before class. Sunday is perfectly reasonable, if not a little early for my taste."

"You guys can't be serious," Molly insisted.

Her three teammates all exchanged confused looks.

"Yeah, we are actually," Brady said. "Anyway, we've all agreed, so either deal with it and move on, or else you can argue with yourself. I'm going to lunch."

The other two nodded and followed Brady out of the classroom, leaving Molly completely dumbstruck. How had she ended up with the team of the most epic procrastinators in the whole school?

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That afternoon, Molly tried to focus on her other work. She wrote her potions essay and finished her transfiguration reading. She did her defence assignment, and even practiced charms for a while. But she couldn't help but think about herbology. Her friends were all furiously researching various aspects of mandrakes while Molly slowly ran out of things to do. It was maddening.

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The next afternoon was even worse. She was assigned a short history paper, so she started with that. Then she completed an assignment for transfiguration and did a bit of reading for potions. When she finished with that, she practiced charms some more, but quickly realized that she didn't need it. Her friends were still working on their herbology papers, which Molly couldn't do, so she grabbed her astronomy textbook and started to read ahead, hoping to distract herself.

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On Thursday, Molly was assigned a small paper in charms, and another assignment in defence. She also had some reading to do for history, but she completed that in no time. Meanwhile, her friends were significantly behind Molly in terms of their work for other classes, because almost all their homework time was being devoted to the herbology paper. Molly was jealous and decided that just because her group didn't want to meet yet didn't mean she couldn't start doing some research into the topic. So she chose some books from the library and started reading up on mandrakes.

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On Friday, Molly didn't bother getting her other work out of the way first. She had the whole weekend to do it after all. Instead she spent the whole night researching for herbology and even started making a list of important points they should cover in the paper – an outline of sorts.

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On Saturday, Molly was getting antsy. She knew her group was meeting the next day, so she decided to get all her other work out of the way beforehand. There wasn't much. She did some reading, completed a couple of assignments, and wrote another very short paper, but she had finished it all before lunch.

After lunch, Molly decided that it couldn't hurt to expand her outline a bit. After all, it was pretty sparse and her teammates would probably need more to go on than what she'd written. Especially since they weren't top students – not even close. So Molly expanded from just listing the topics that needed to be covered and also outlined the arguments that should be explored in each of the sections of the paper. She named the authors of the chapters and articles that would be most helpful, all of which she'd read over the past two days. As the afternoon wore on, she found herself filling out the arguments further, explaining them in her own words so that her teammates would understand them – who knew whether they would understand just by reading directly from the library books?

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Sunday morning, Molly had nothing to do but work on the herbology paper. She looked at what she had so far and saw that she had quite a bit. In fact, if she just added in a few transition words and some formal citations, the body of the essay was pretty much written. It still needed an introduction and a conclusion though, and Molly knew she didn't trust any of her teammates to write those – they were arguably two of the most important paragraphs in the whole essay. The introduction had to be compelling enough, and informative enough to give an idea of what was to come, and also to interest the reader to read further. The conclusion had to sum the arguments up succinctly without simply repeating them in a synthetic fashion. So Molly wrote them out, wording them so that they were a good representation of what was in the paper itself.

"What's that?" Sarah wondered, looking over at Molly's desk.

"My Herbology paper," Molly replied.

"I thought you weren't meeting your group until this afternoon," Sarah frowned.

Molly shrugged sheepishly. "I guess I got carried away."

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That afternoon, Molly went to the library to meet up with her group and show them her work. She was sure they would appreciate what she'd done. After all, they hadn't seemed to want to do the paper anyway, and now they wouldn't have to. Molly had written the whole thing.

When they finally did arrive, Molly was happy to find that they were all on board with using the paper Molly had already written.

"You rock Molly," Jordan said, patting Molly on the back. "I should always partner with you."

Molly wasn't so sure about that, but she was glad that she wouldn't have to deal with her group any longer. They agreed to have Molly recopy the paper, since her penmanship was the best, and made plans to meet up at breakfast on Tuesday morning so they could all sign their names at the top.

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The day the assignment was due came and went. Molly happily handed it in on behalf of her group, confident that they would get an O. Her research had been sound, and she'd fixed all her typos and grammatical errors before recopying it, so she knew there would be no mistakes in that department. All they had to do now was wait for their results, which could sometimes take as long or even longer than the length of the assignment.

One day, as Professor Longbottom wrapped up the lesson, he made a surprising announcement.

"And before you all go to lunch, if Molly, Brady, Amber, and Jordan could just stay behind, I have something I want to talk to you about."

Molly wondered what this could be about. Had their essay been that good? Was he going to commend them on a job well done? Was he perhaps going to ask permission to read their paper out loud to the class, as an example of the level he expected the rest of the class to be at in their writing?

Molly's teammates seemed nervous and Molly wondered why. Didn't they know she had written them a good paper? It wasn't as if Professor Longbottom was holding them back because they'd failed.

"Ladies, gentlemen," Professor Longbottom said once the rest of the students had left. "I have something very serious I want to discuss with you."

The tone of her professor's voice seemed off. He didn't sound proud or impressed. He sounded almost… disappointed. Had their essay somehow gotten mixed up with another group's essay? An less good essay maybe? An essay that had received a D or even a T?

"I've read through your essay, and I've reviewed some of your previous work, and something very glaring came to my attention," Professor Longbottom said. "The entire paper had a very uniform style to it – a style reminiscent of only one of you."

Molly didn't understand. Professor Longbottom was mad because their essay flowed well?

"I don't believe that all four of you wrote this essay," Professor Longbottom declared. "I think it was written by only one of you."

Molly felt her teammates' eyes on her and she felt her spirits sink. Professor Longbottom made it sound like it was a bad thing. Was she going to get in trouble for this?

"It's only because Molly was in charge of editing all our parts," Brady invented. "So maybe it ended up sounding a bit more like her because of it. But we all contributed."

"I'd like to believe that, Mr. Hanson, I really would," Professor Longbottom said. "But just by reading the essay I can tell that there was very little, if any, contribution from the three of you."

Brady had nothing to say to this, and Molly peeked at her teammates to see that they were hanging their heads in shame.

"This assignment was meant to be a group effort," Professor Longbottom said. "It was about cooperation and teamwork and learning to share responsibilities. But you did none of that. And by signing your names on an essay that you didn't contribute to, you've committed plagiarism. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you detention."

Molly looked up at this. Did that mean she was exempt? Since she actually had written the paper, she wasn't guilty of plagiarism at all.

"And Molly," Professor Longbottom turned to her. "You will join your teammates in detention. You may not have plagiarized, but you were complicit, and that's just as bad."

Molly hung her head in shame. She'd never had a detention before. Her father would be so disappointed in her. And her friends – she didn't know how she would face her friends after this.

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The day of detention came, and Molly was subdued all day. She drifted from class to class, diligently taking notes and keeping quiet. She spoke little at meals, and when classes were over she retreated to her study room with her friends and silently completed her homework.

Detention was scheduled for after dinner. Molly ate her meal, forgoing dessert as a form of self-inflicted punishment, and when it was time she rose and dismissed herself, making her way slowly to the greenhouses where detention would be taking place.

Molly was the first one there. She was a little early, but in her experience it was better to be early than late. She took a seat at one of the tables and waited for the rest of her group to arrive.

When they did, they sat away from Molly, glaring daggers at her. They blamed her for what had happened. If she hadn't gotten carried away and written the whole paper before they'd even met, they wouldn't be in this mess. In their eyes, they'd only gone along with the plan because it seemed silly to re-write a paper when a perfectly good paper had already been written.

Professor Longbottom arrived with a bunch of giant bags of dung. As soon as they passed through the door to the room, Molly had to cover her nose with her hand, the smell was so strong. Professor Longbottom explained that their detention activity was going to be mixing fertilizer for him to use in his various classes. He put the recipe up on the board. The main ingredient was of course the dung, and then there were some other things that needed to be added as well. They would increase the effectiveness of the fertilizer and also reduce the pungency of the smell.

"Can we have nose plugs?" Amber requested.

Professor Longbottom denied her request. "I'll be in my office if any of you need anything, and I'll be checking in periodically. I expect you all to work – I'll know if you don't."

He left, and Molly resigned herself to her work. She dragged one of the bags to her workstation and collected some of the other ingredients, and then got to work mixing. The professor hadn't provided them with any kind of mixing utensil, and Molly looked over to see Jordan already elbow deep in the dung, mixing it around manually.

"You don't mean he expects us to use our hands?" Molly cried, disgusted.

"That's just unsanitary!" Amber agreed.

Jordan shrugged, not seeming to care, and Brady reluctantly followed suit. The girls spent a good twenty minutes scouring the room for something to use for mixing, but when they found nothing, they had to resign themselves to doing what the boys were doing.

Molly rolled up her sleeves, hoping to avoid getting any of it on her clothes, but it was no use. Soon she was covered with the stuff. If the shame of people knowing she'd gotten a detention wasn't enough to deter her from making this mistake again, mixing the fertilizer definitely was. Molly couldn't understand how some people got detention after detention through all their years at Hogwarts. Wasn't one enough to make you never want to receive another one ever again?

After what seemed like an eternity, Professor Longbottom returned to check their progress. Satisfied that they'd been punished enough, he let them go.

Molly and Amber hurried straight for the nearest girls' bathroom to wash as much of the dung off themselves as they could. The did pretty well with their hands and arms, but their robes were another matter. They could wipe at them all they wanted, but the smell just wouldn't leave. Eventually, they realized that they would have to return to the dorm smelling like this, and with a sigh they exited back into the hall.

When they arrived in the common room, everyone immediately started yelling at them and covering their noses, insisting that they get out of there. Molly and Amber hurried up to their dorm, dismayed to find all three of their dormmates waiting for them.

"Why do you smell like that?" Flora cried, pinching her nose and making a face.

"Detention with Professor Longbottom," Amber explained. "We were mixing manure."

"That's gross," Flora muttered. "Go and shower right now – both of you."

Molly did as she was told. She grabbed her pyjamas and retreated to the bathroom, where she stripped out of her smelly robes and tossed them down the laundry chute. She'd never been so glad to see her robes disappear. Then she took a nice long shower, scrubbing herself three times over, just to make sure she got it all, and lathering her hair with shampoo twice.

By the time Molly exited the shower, she smelled of her lavender soap and her skin was soft and smooth.

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The following day, a howler came for Molly. It was from her father, and it came in the middle of breakfast, exploding in front of everyone.

"Molly, what were you thinking?" it demanded. "Plagiarism? I thought you were above that sort of thing. I thought you were intelligent, but this goes to show that you're no better than anyone else. That you could stoop to a level such as this – Your mother and I are very disappointed in you Molly. Very disappointed."

It wasn't the yelling and screaming kind of howler – Percy wasn't really a yeller. Neither was Audrey. But for Molly it was so much worse. Her cheeks heated up in shame as the whole of Gryffindor as well as some of Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin stared at her openly.

Trying to ignore it all, she became very focused on her pancakes, spreading butter on them and then pouring syrup over them. To say she regretted what she'd done would be an understatement. Writing that paper had been the worst mistake of her life. Molly knew she was never going to mess up like this ever again.