I.... I know what I'm doing on Care of Magical Creatures

Professor Rory Taransay

November 24, 2017 12:12 PM

Getting stuck in [Intermediate lesson] by Professor Rory Taransay

The aim of Care of Magical Creatures was, as the name suggested, to learn how to look after the many different magical animals. Not every part of this was fun and games, or involved cuddling cute animals, and Rory wanted to make sure he presented every aspect of the subject, especially once his students got to intermediate level.

“Welcome, class,” he greeted his students, as they streamed in. “No need for your books today, just a pair of gloves.” He grinned at them as he moved on to taking the register without explaining what task they were going to do.

“Now, for today’s lesson we’re going to be looking at the Fwooper,” he announced, gesturing at the covered cages at the side of the room. “Can anyone tell me what the main danger is with this creature?” He picked on students as necessary until he got the right answer. “Yes. Their cry isn’t the most pleasant of things, which is why you will all need to put a silencing charm on the Fwooper you’re working with. The cry will only be unpleasant for the first few minutes, so you have enough time to get the charm right. Come and get me if you have any problems with the charm.”

Having addressed the safety aspect, he moved on to their task. “These fwoopers have all got a problem: they have ticks in their wings. Your job today is to remove the ticks. I have special tweezers for you all here, which make the task easier – and less disgusting – than if you were to use your fingers. I also have Wiggenweld oil, which is both antibacterial and an anaesthetic. Now, this isn’t the most glamourous of jobs, but things such as this are important for making sure creatures remain healthy and happy.”

Making sure everyone could see, Rory demonstrated the correct technique, first dabbing some Wiggenweld oil on the site of the tick with a cotton bud, before using the tweezers to slowly extract the tick from the bird. “Remember that fwoopers are living creatures, so may feel a bit scared,” he reminded his class. “It’s good to talk to them gently whilst you do this, so they don’t feel threatened.”

With a final reminder to ask him if they were unsure about anything, Rory set his class to work in pairs or small groups. He removed the silencing charms that he had placed on the cages, releasing a grim high-pitched noise and hopefully motivating the students to get cracking. He would be circulating the class, ready to step in if anything was going badly.

OOC:

Details on fwoopers can be found here: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Fwooper

Tick removal is based on this method: https://holistic-hen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/how-to-remove-tick-from-bird-part-two.html#.WhhQhlVl_IV

Usual posting rules apply. Please tag Rory if your student has any questions or problems. Rory wouldn’t let anything get too out of hand without being there.

Subthreads:

I.... I know what I'm doing by Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw with Joe Umland, Teppenpaw

I wholeheartedly object to this! by Arianna Tate, Crotalus with Winston Pierce, Crotalus

9 Professor Rory Taransay Getting stuck in [Intermediate lesson] 33 Professor Rory Taransay 1 5

Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

November 29, 2017 4:19 AM

I.... I know what I'm doing by Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

No need for your books today, was a sentence that always made Raine smile. She was always excited to come to Care of Magical Creatures. It was very easily her best subject. First and foremost, she loved animals, and was very good at taking care of them. Their circus was only human performers, but her family loved animals and travelled with plenty of them, from the abraxans that pulled their carts to her mother’s kneazles - one grumpy old lady, who spent her days curled up on top of the stove, and one younger one, who often had a litter of kittens with her which they gradually sold as they passed through different towns. They also often met other performers on the road who kept animals, either for company or as parts of their acts. She had always been taught to treat animals with respect, to understand their needs, and to get to know their individual personalities. The second reason that she was so good at the subject, was that the written work for Care of Magical Creatures was much easier than most other subjects, as it just involved writing down what they did, or occasionally memorising things about animals that were too dangerous to have in class, or procedures that it was too complicated to allow school children to handle. There were sometimes technical words, and sometimes technical information too, but a lot of the time you could just describe what you did, or what you saw, and most of it was information that seemed worthwhile to Raine, which made it seep into her brain much easier.

Raine kept her hand down for the question. She believed that Fwooper songs drove people insane, but when they’d studied augureys, she had had her suggestion that they foretold death debunked as a ‘folk legend,’ and this seemed to be the comment she got regarding a lot of her family’s beliefs, thus she had learnt to keep them to herself. However, on this occasion, it seemed she would have been right. Or rather, her belief fell in line with the correct school approved list of what was a ‘fact.’

She was excited, rather than disgusted, by the day’s subject matter. Having grown up on the road, Raine was used to dealing with the less than clean and perfect side of life, and was not easily grossed out. And she had actually done today’s lesson before! Well, she’d done it on a kneazle kitten, but she hoped it might be similar. It was very rare that Raine got to feel like she was on a level playing field with everyone else, especially the older they got. There had been a few practical lessons for simple spells where she’d already known the spell, as when she’d been younger, her parents hadn’t seen the harm in letting her use their wands and learn simple spells, especially when they were far from any civilisation, wizard or magical, and when those spells were practical things to help out the family. But as they got older, the spellwork had become harder, beyond what she’d done at home, and they’d had more theory expected of them, and she felt most of the time that she was slipping further and further behind. But this, this she actually knew how to do!

Once they were set to work, Raine picked a yellow fwooper which seemed to be feeling rather sorry for itself.

“Hi there,” she greeted it. “I’m sorry. I’m sure your song is really beautiful to your friends but it’s not very good for me,” she explained, before casting the silencing charm on the bird.

“My name is Raine, and I’m going to take your ticks off,” she explained, giving the bird a gentle pat on the head. Although normally not one for idle chatter, Raine was considerably more loquacious when she was with animals, “cos those things are nasty, and they must be bothering you, huh?” she added.

She took the wiggenweld oil, dabbing it on in what she hoped was the same way Professor Taransay had done. She waited for a few moments, knowing that the oil was going to knock the tick out. As she waited, she noticed someone else nearby.

“Hi… Do you want to share this one?” she asked. There weren’t enough Fwoopers for one each, so they’d have to work together on them.

Figuring that the tick was knocked out, she carefully pinched it with the tweezers and pulled, remembering that she had to be careful not to twist, because that could leave the mouth behind. She thought about sharing this information with the person next to her, but decided that - as Professor Taransay hadn’t mentioned it - it was either something everyone knew, or maybe another of those things that other people didn’t believe.

“There,” she said instead to the Fwooper, “That wasn’t too bad, I hope.”

13 Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw I.... I know what I'm doing 327 Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw 0 5

Joe Umland, Teppenpaw

November 29, 2017 4:24 PM

I, on the other hand, definitely do not. by Joe Umland, Teppenpaw

Care of Magical Creatures was not, if he was pushed past bland demurrals about how all knowledge was important and into real conversation, Joe’s favorite subject. He had been to his grandparents’ mountain cabin on holiday with the rest of his family before, but essentially, he was a city boy. Despite his brother’s…well, second-to-main, anyway, hobby being centered around a particular category of them, Joe had spent little of his life outside of this class around any animals except Mrs. Across-the-Street’s cat and did not see their company as overly desirable. He wasn’t afraid of most of them, or even too often repelled – he just wasn’t particularly enchanted on all but the most occasional of days.

Today was not one of those rare days when he was enchanted, but it was at least more interesting than some – at least at first. Living with a bird enthusiast for all but a year of his life meant he knew what a fwooper was and what they could do to people; it was far beyond him why people would take the chance of keeping them as pets, unless said people were crazier than John (a fairly high bar in his mind) to begin with or it was some kind of decadent pureblood empire scheming/threat to the unwanted spouse and/or potentially untrustworthy underling thing. He looked at the rubber erasers in his bag of pencils, pens, and semi-battered quills and wondered if he could reason out how to transfigure them into discreet earplugs, just in case.

As they had to work with another person, though, he supposed that would have to wait. It was sort of hard to hash out the details of a partnership without being able to hear what the other person was saying. Seeing Raine take one of the birds without apparent hesitation, he started to step up, but she cast the Silencing Charm again without any apparent worry and then observed his presence.

“Sure,” he said. “You look like you know what you’re doing a lot better than I do,” he added, remembering how she had admitted to worrying about even getting through the year before the holidays.

His compliment was reinforced when she removed a tick from the yellow bird without it showing any visible distress at his process. Joe looked between the pair of tweezers in his gloved hand and the bird, then back again, then to Raine. “I’m pretty sure this looks simpler than it is,” he observed as he spotted a bug and attempted to put wiggenweld oil on the area. The fwooper did not make it easy on him, twitching and starting to flutter its wings. “Hey, buddy, hold still,” he muttered, figuring Raine had appeared to be talking to it and that it had not tried to peck her eyes out. “Okay, okay – “ he got the tweezers on what he thought was the bug, but supposed he might have been mistaken, because the fwooper abruptly did flutter its wings aggressively, dislodging him, and then took a try at pecking his hand. The potions gloves protected it from the impact, but even he could tell its body language seemed…irked.

“Yep, definitely looked simpler than it was,” he said to Raine, keeping one eye on the fwooper as he went to retrieve the tweezers he’d dropped. “Is there a trick to it, or is it just practice?”

16 Joe Umland, Teppenpaw I, on the other hand, definitely do not. 329 Joe Umland, Teppenpaw 0 5

Raine

December 06, 2017 7:06 AM

Are... Are you sure? by Raine

Raine was glad it was Joe who had come to join her, as she counted him amongst her friends. Or at least… She felt comfortable with Joe. Sometimes even good. She wasn’t sure they were friends in the same way that she was with the girls, but Joe was a… a trustworthy person. He was gentle and didn’t laugh or say mean things. She wasn’t quite sure how to take him saying an actively nice thing though, especially a slightly confusing one. You look like you know what you’re doing a lot better than I do She was pretty sure that Joe knew how to cast a silencing charm, and Raine wasn’t great at accepting compliments even when she thought them to be true, like Nevaeh saying she was sweet or talented for the embossed cards she’d made her. She found it hard to believe that her skills really were remarkable or useful, with the exception of her circus skills. They were the thing that she found special about herself, although she still tended to blush and stumble her thanks, or be overly modest when complimented on those. In reaction to Joe’s comment, she just gave a minute, almost imperceptible shrug, and her eye gaze suggested that it was more directed at the Fwooper’s wings, in which she suddenly seemed to be very interested, than at him.

She watched surreptitiously as Joe had a try, although the bird’s reaction told her enough. She shushed it gently, stroking it, as Joe did likewise and it seemed to settle down. She was a little confused by Joe’s inability to do it. She could do it. Surely then, it had to be easy. Another possible explanation might have been that Joe was doing it deliberately badly to make her feel better - after all, he knew how bad she had been feeling. However, Raine was guileless enough not to entertain this notion, and could also not conceive of someone drawing the negative attention of doing badly on purpose, much less doing so for her sake. Although the thought that he was faking his inexpertise didn’t cross her mind, she still found it hard to be the one charged with explaining to someone. It was so rare that someone needed that from her.

“I-I don’t know,” she replied almost automatically, when he asked her whether there was a trick or whether it was just practise. “Don’t twist them,” she added, figuring that, as Joe didn’t seem to know this, that was one of the most important bits. “You have to pull them straight or it can leave the mouth behind. Um, I think,” she added, suddenly uncertain. So many of the things her parents taught her were contradicted or devalued in school. She didn’t want Joe’s homework or exams to be marked down because of anything she said. “Um, the oil is meant to make them sleepy,” she added, not having recognised that this information had already been imparted by Professor Taransay under the guise of the word ‘anaesthetic’ which was unfamiliar to her. “So… you could try a little more oil or leaving it a little longer if it isn’t easy?” she suggested, although her tone sought confirmation from Joe that this seemed like a reasonable suggestion.

Unsure what else to say, she took up the oil again, ready to dab it onto the wing and begin the process again. It didn’t occur to her to offer for Joe to come and watch how she did it.

13 Raine Are... Are you sure? 327 Raine 0 5

Joe

December 12, 2017 11:42 PM

Very much so. by Joe

“I think you’re right,” said Joe slowly when Raine seemed to doubt her own thought about the mouths of ticks, thinking back through a lot of years. He’d never been as into survival skills and all that as John had, but he’d been there where they learned them and so remembered a few things. “I think they might have told us that in – these outdoorsy classes Mom put us in when I was little.”

The bit about the oil making the ticks sleepy surprised him, as he’d assumed ‘anesthetic’ had meant making the bird not notice or mind the pain of having the tick removed, but it made sense that having the stuff applied directly to it would knock the tick a bit loopy, too. Further, it made sense that a loopy tick would be easier to remove than a conscious one, which probably dug in deeper when it realized some idiot was trying to separate it from its host. Knocking it out was a win-win for everyone, assuming the tick wasn’t smashed in the process of being removed – which, his hands being decidedly less deft with tweezers than Raine’s were, was a real possibility. He hoped she was not the sort to feel sorry for ticks, because otherwise, he might end up upsetting her by accident….

That was the funny thing about Raine – they’d known each other five years, more or less, and yet she often seemed nearly as shy as she had been in their first year. Of course, some people were just very soft-spoken, without the…excesses of personality his family tended toward even in its less noisy members, but for a while he’d wondered if something completely and utterly awful had happened to her. The funny thing, though, wasn’t that – it was that Joe felt oddly protective toward her. He occasionally felt compelled at home to do this or that to prevent John or Julian from putting their feet in it or keep Mom and Paul from taking some of their disputes a touch too close to home, but he didn’t think of that so much as being protective - that was just management. With Raine, he had nothing to gain as such – if something was upsetting her, he didn’t necessarily have to hear about it, because being in the same House here wasn’t the same as being in the same house at home, unable to avoid listening to arguments or feeling tensions bubbling just beneath the surface when something went wrong, and yet, talking to her and trying to help out if he could didn’t feel like doing charity work, either. He knew exactly what that was like and had worried that was a complete monster until Julian had admitted she hated it too – not doing good, they were both in favor of doing good things, but neither of them felt comfortable doing good in person, openly, without any convenient motive to hide behind. That wasn’t what he felt like with Raine, but he worried sometimes about her thinking he did - or possibly even worse, that he just thought she’d eventually fool around with him if he was nice to her - because he didn’t really have a word for their relationship.

“That’s a good idea,” he said when she suggested leaving the oil a little longer next time. “Do you mind if I watch how you – uh, remove the thing?” he asked, as Raine was the sort of person who it seemed important to ask before getting too close to her personal space.

16 Joe Very much so. 329 Joe 0 5

Arianna Tate, Crotalus

December 15, 2017 7:03 AM

I wholeheartedly object to this! by Arianna Tate, Crotalus

Arianna had never really been a fan of Care of Magical Creatures. She wasn't a big animal person-they might get her clothing dirty-nor was she really the caring nurturing type. Sure, there were animals she found beautiful such as unicorns and animals she admired such as dragons and rattlesnakes, but on a one on one basis, not really her thing.

Professor Taransay began the lesson. As animals went, Arianna supposed Fwoopers weren't that bad. They were at least pretty and she could definitely see the benefits of one as their cries drove people crazy. That was something that could definitely be utilized for one's benefit by making an enemy listen to them. Locking her brother in a room with one that hadn't been silenced had been a thought on more than one occasion. Especially if Arianna put the silencing charm on Beau instead!

He'd be coming to school next year and the Crotalus was not looking forward to it one little bit. Her brother was stupid and irritating. Many times, more times even than she'd wished to lock him in a room with a non-silenced Fwooper, she'd wished she could trade him forJasmine. Of course, that wouldn't be all that fair to Aunt Holly. She had enough to deal with regarding Anya's resistance to being a lady. Beau would only be a bad influence.

Hopefully he'd stay out of her way, like Connor. Her cousin was a dork of the highest order, but at least he didn't seem interested in annoying her.

However, when Arianna heard what they were going to being doing with the Fwoopers, which was most definitely not torturing annoying little brothers, she was utterly horrified. She didn't want to be anywhere near a tick! What if one got on her? They weren't just disgusting, they carried disease. How was this an acceptable lesson?

She turned to the person next to her. "This is utterly revolting. How can we be expected to not only touch those things but risk Lyme disease if one of them gets on us?"

11 Arianna Tate, Crotalus I wholeheartedly object to this! 353 Arianna Tate, Crotalus 0 5

Winston Pierce, Crotalus

December 21, 2017 3:08 PM

May I assist you, milady? by Winston Pierce, Crotalus

Winston didn’t mind Care of Magical Creatures too much. Uncle Duesius ran a magical creature respite care center on the mountain, so he had an edge over the other students who may have never seen a crup or a hippogryff up close and in person before. And if he had any questions, he could just owl his uncle, and he’d basically get his unit essay back a few days later. Duesius didn’t like to talk or write much, since he was quite slow at it, but if you asked about animals, he’d put in the effort to tell you about them at length. They were the one topic Duesius was really passionate about.

Winston was considering continuing with the class, once it came time for him to make that decision (as he was merely a third year, he had a long time before then, but now that he was in intermediates, it did seem much closer than it had only the year before), if only to continue having something worthwhile to correspond with his uncle about.

Today’s lesson involved fwoopers, which he had seen before, through they had already been silenced by the time he’d been introduced to them. A fact which he quickly came to appreciate as he approached one of them to detick it.

“It is unpleasant,” he agreed with Arianna, as she observed the worst drawbacks to the assignment and, in a general sense, the subject as a whole. “Do you wand to silence it before we all go mad,” in this one case, that particular request was literal rather than hyperbole, “and I’ll handle the ticks?” he asked gallantly. He didn’t really want to tweezer out any disease ridden bugs, either, but it was better than forcing Arianna to do so. She was a Respectable Lady.

“Hopefully Professor Taransay has some kind of detection spell to make sure none of them got on us before we leave.” He wasn’t entirely sure such a spell existed, but it would be useful if it did, so somebody in magizoology had probably invented it by now. If not, Winston had an idea to send home to Father to see if he could maybe invest in the development of one.

1 Winston Pierce, Crotalus May I assist you, milady? 370 Winston Pierce, Crotalus 0 5