Well...living mold's more interesting than flobberworms... on Care of Magical Creatures

Professor Kijewski

February 20, 2006 7:09 PM

Second Years, Lesson 1 by Professor Kijewski

Kiva placed the container she used to hold all the puffskeins for her first years aside and made sure the clearing around her didn't have anything left behind from her first class that day. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she went back behind the large container and pulled out a much smaller box that had a smell of decay eminating from it. She set the box out so that when the students arrived, they would be able to see it.

She didn't have to wait long before she heard the students coming down the pathway and even less time when they appeared in the clearning. She waited for them to get comfortable before starting, "Welcome back everyone! I'm so pleased to see that you all have returned. I just want to remind everyone that this class is informal. Feel free to take off your robes if you can't handle something while being confined in them or if it's just too hot and uncomfortable. Also, I do allow small talk, just please keep it down and to not do it while I'm speaking." She glanced around at everyone before clapping her hands together enthusiastically, "Let's get started, shall we?" Kiva smiled at her second years before gesturing to the box. "This is what we will be learning about today." Kiva picked up the box and opened it holding it out for everyone to see. If they hadn't been able to smell the horrid smell, they were sure to now that the box was open.

Inside the box was a piece of damp wood and beside the wood rested a greenish fungus looking creature with eyes. "Can anyone tell me what this is?" She asked her students, eyeing them as she spoke. Her voice caused the creature inside the box to begin scuttling around and knocking into the walls of the box. It was clear that the creature was frightened.

OOC: I'm not expecting anyone to know the answer, so don't feel pressured to answer it, just a general observation of the creature should surffice. There will be a second part to this lesson, so be sure to check back in every so often. Also, make sure to make detailed posts 2 or more paragraphs containing at least 5 sentences each. Have fun!\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Subthreads:

Oh gross! by Bella Santoro, Aladren

Well...living mold's more interesting than flobberworms... by Gwenhwyfar Carey

And back to my easiest class. by Connor Pierce

I really should try to like my Head of House's class... by Anne Wright

Ugh! by Catherine Raines

0 Professor Kijewski Second Years, Lesson 1 0 Professor Kijewski 1 5

Bella Santoro, Aladren

February 20, 2006 10:10 PM

Oh gross! by Bella Santoro, Aladren

Bella practically skipped her way down to the clearing. She was just happy to be back at Sonora and that the weather seemed to have been fixed properly by the end of last year. She hadn't liked the weather at all. Snow was not something she enjoyed. She was raised in Los Angeles, her relatives lived in Mexico and Madrid, snow was not something she lived with. Neither, for that matter, was mud storms or duststorms. Give her an earthquake, and Bella knew what to do, give her a flood and Bella would drown.

At the clearing, Bella jumped down and folded her legs beneath her. Like any good Aladren, she immediately pulled out her Care of Magical Creatures book along with a piece of parchment, quill, and ink. Once she had what she needed (a little harassed that there was no hard surface to write on and so had to substitute her book as a desk), she returned her attention to the Professor...and the box.

Bella examined the box where she could from her seat, her nose wrinkling slightly at the odd stench. As soon as the box was opened though, Bella's hand went directly to her nose, her face scrunching up in disgust. "Oh yuck!" Bella exclaimed. "Those are Bundimuns! Mama always gets an infestation of those in our basement and our attic. She hates them because of the smell they create and they cause holes in our ceiling." Bella exclaimed. Which was true. Sometimes her mom even had to call the Regulation people at the ministry to help her get rid of them.

It was all really quite disgusting to Bella.\n\n

0 Bella Santoro, Aladren Oh gross! 0 Bella Santoro, Aladren 0 5

Gwenhwyfar Carey

February 27, 2006 9:23 PM

Well...living mold's more interesting than flobberworms... by Gwenhwyfar Carey

Gwen tried not to think of herself as too overtly paranoid, but it was a simple fact that a closed box smelling like rot couldn't mean anything good. Quite the opposite, in fact. She had no objection to admitting to herself that she was a self-preservationalist, and had moved futher away from the container holding whatever-it-was before the class formally began. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to consider coming last to classes instead of first. It was easier to hi - blend in when she wasn't among the first things a good part of the class saw, and it wouldn't be as obvious when she was backing away from specimens in this class.

She was glad of her position near the back when Professor Kijewski, good-natured as ever, gave them all permission to toss off their robes and chat once she had finished talking, because the look on her face was walking the fine line between a peculiarly-accented neutrality and a rueful smile. All anyone had done in the first lesson of her first year was talk, and she had a feeling that Kijewski hadn't forgotten that, either. It was all but inevitable that it would happen, somewhere between the teacher-to-student ratio and outdoor classroom. By sanctioning it, the professor gave the impression she was in control of it. Impressive. She'd read about such tactics over the summer, and while she hadn't understood half of what her aunt's books on such things were saying, she'd gotten a few of the general ideas.

She inched a little closer to the front when the professor opened the box, hands half lifted to cover her face if it was something too horrendous and more than ready to jump out of harm's way. Never trusting anything you couldn't see the inside of was just common sense, after all. Her initial scan of the specimen didn't show her a specimen, just a batch of mold, but then she saw it moving. A closer, if only slightly slower, look revealed that it had eyes. Of all the things to look like...she heard a girl she didn't know, one of the Aladrens, announce what it was and that her house had been infested with it.

"I told Bertha to clean up in here, but I'm not sure if she did. The staff knows I'm not always on top of things anymore, they know there's no one going to make them do as I say, and Jezie can't be spared for cleaning. Feel free to hex Bertha - she's the dark-haired hussy married to Harold - if anything's amiss with the room, or if you just feel like hexing someone." Rosamund's offhanded explanation of anything wrong with her bedroom suddenly took on a whole new realm of meaning. She suddenly felt a lot more like congradulating Bertha on a job well done than hexing her, but it just wasn't done. Besides, none of the staff were exactly the types that welcomed any attempt to speak to them, even to give them orders. \n\n

0 Gwenhwyfar Carey Well...living mold's more interesting than flobberworms... 63 Gwenhwyfar Carey 0 5

Connor Pierce

March 04, 2006 10:44 PM

And back to my easiest class. by Connor Pierce

Care of Magical Creatures was a welcome break in the schedule. So far, they'd contended with nothing worse than a rope-tailed cat, and while he thought he was doing better with the magical theory stuff than he had last year, easy classes had always been welcome in either world he'd attended school in. Care of Magical Creatures was sort of like gym, really. It didn't require excesses of brain power to pass. That did, though, make it kind of ironic that the teacher was the Aladren Head of House. Somehow, he thought he would always find it easier to associate Aladrens with the harder, more formal classes.

Kijewski seemed as nice and laid-back with her rules as ever, so he ventured to wave at Gwen while Kijewski was occupied with the box when he noticed her at the back trying to avoid people...as ever. He couldn't help but wonder if the scene at the Welcoming Feast had woken her up to the fact her sister was a rich brat with a bad temper, but he doubted it. He knew he wouldn't put up with anyone insulting Beverly, regardless of whether or not the insult was true, and he'd gotten the impression, more than once, that Gwen's devotion to her brother, sister, and concept of her family amounted almost to an obsession.

A truly horrible smell reached the class when Kijewski opened the box. It smelled like something damp in the latter stages of decomposition. Trying to get a good look at the box without getting any closer to it took some doing, but he finally managed to see what was inside it. Some kind of mold and a bit of wood were the first things he registered, and it was while he was trying to search out the magical creature that it hit him...mold didn't have eyes...or the ability to scuttle around...

An Aladren girl confirmed his theory that they were the smart lot when she announced what the thing was. Weird name, a little harmless-sounding for something that, according to the girl, could rot holes in ceilings. The smell alone was enough to keep it from being harmless; it was almost enough to make him want to puke. He made a note for future reference never to trust anything in the mansion that looked like mold if he had a head cold and couldn't smell anything. He wasn't sure if colds were a real danger here in the desert when the weather wasn't losing its mind, but it was always good to remember things.

Either way, he decided he wasn't getting any closer to today's magical creature. The smell would probably be worse the closer he got to it, and it was bad enough right where he was. Trying to write while standing with nothing more than a book to bear down on was a hard job, but that just served to make it look more convincing as he pretended to be deeply absorbed in writing down notes on the bundy-gums or whatever the girl had called them. \n\n

0 Connor Pierce And back to my easiest class. 68 Connor Pierce 0 5

Anne Wright

March 05, 2006 2:42 PM

I really should try to like my Head of House's class... by Anne Wright

Care of Magical Creatures. Why they couldn't just rename it to 'bane of Anne Wright's existence' was beyond her. Living Miracle-Gro worms hadn't been so bad, and cats manageable, but Anne still found herself approaching Kijewski's lesson with a feeling of foreboding not helped by anxiety about that little...incident...on the first night. Her reservations about dealing with the creatures were fully intact when the smell of something decomposing reached her nose. I am not going to look like some kind of peahen twisting up my face like an idiot, she told herself firmly, forcing herself to a spot in the middle of the crowd. If it was rotting, it stood to reason it was already dead and thus couldn't hurt her...unless the fumes of its rotting were poisonous...

Kijewski laid out the rules, such as they were, first thing, as usual. The speeches got kind of old after the first few classes, so she could just imagine how dull they'd be after the first few years. At least the weather didn't seem to be doing anything too bizarre today. She hadn't been too ruffled about the previous year's situation, herself, but enough people had been for half the staff to up and quit. The replacement she'd personally met wasn't so bad, but there were two she had yet to lay eyes on and it was still nice to see that something was still the same as she remembered it being.

The smell, predictably, grew stronger when the box was opened. Looking over the person in front of her's shoulder cautiously, she saw a bit of wood and a patch of mold that Kijewski's voice set to moving. Stifling a distinctly undignified yelp, she made her way further backwards as fast as possible without actually jumping, almost missing what Bella said it was. She realized she was shivering slightly. If that thing could burn holes through a ceiling, she didn't want to think about what it could do to any part of her anatomy it came into contact with. Bludgers to the head she could deal with, finals stress was, in a slightly less-than-healthy way, welcomed, but big green alive things were another story altogether.

Get a grip, Wright, she thought disgustedly, rubbing her hands up and down her arms absent-mindedly. People'll think you're losing your nerve. The only thing worse than that would be having people think she was one of the Pretty Girls squealing at everything. Though she did quit shaking and fidgeting, she didn't resume her former position. The view really was better from in back, after all. Where was the next class when she needed it?\n\n

16 Anne Wright I really should try to like my Head of House's class... 59 Anne Wright 0 5

Catherine Raines

March 05, 2006 6:19 PM

Ugh! by Catherine Raines

Looking the part she played during Care of Magical Creatures was always hard. Wearing nice clothes was tempting fate, since the first magical creature they'd studied produced copious amounts of mucus and the second had claws, and heels would be ruined by their exposure to actual earth, never mind the fact falling was a real possibility if she needed to back up fast in them and had a run-in with some random pebble. The class necessitated the dowdy, simple-by-necessity ensembles she loathed on principle, but she thought she'd made up for it well enough by curling her hair a little and going for a brighter-than-usual lip gloss. The gold hoops she'd gotten for her birthday didn't hurt, either. It would do until she could go change at lunch, anyway.

She pasted a bright smile on her face as she approached the clearing lessons were held in. It always paid to look as if you were in control of the situation, after all, and looking miserable was a dead giveaway that she wasn't. Besides, it had been an entire summer since she'd seen anyone. Everything could have changed in an entire summer. If her old crowd had suddenly decided to drop her, she was going to have to play innocent, pretend she suspected nothing, and hope it made them feel guilty enough to take her back while still appearing perfect to the general populace. There were times she hated the whole stupid things and almost envied the losers, but those were...rare, to say the least, and quickly repressed. She was exactly where she wanted to be, and she had to stay focused on staying there.

The smile faltered as her nose scrunched up against the smell emanating from a box near Kijewski. She couldn't remember ever smelling anything quite like it, but it was foul, whatever it was. She divided the time Kijewski spent on the opening speech between trying to figure out what on earth it might be and trying to see if anyone was looking at her oddly, or looking at her at all. She instinctively clapped a hand to her nose when the box was opened and the stench intensified. "Ugh," she muttered. "Is she trying to kill us?"

One of the Aladrens, one of those half-bred know-it-alls who would probably take pleasure in calling her stupid to her face if she ever crossed paths with them, announced the greenish thing's name and made it sound like something that infested houses. If she ever found anything like that in her room, she'd probably die before she could call an elf to get rid of it. That was disgusting enough to look at even without the smell. She considered asking if it ate wood, since that was all that was in its box besides itself, but she didn't want people to think she was interested in what was going on. Maybe someone else would make the inquiry. \n\n

0 Catherine Raines Ugh! 66 Catherine Raines 0 5