Lawrence Marsh
November 18, 2020 9:50 AM
[Advanced] Protection is Key by Lawrence Marsh
Protection is KeyAviaries were not his strong suit, or at least not when he first came to Sonora. It seemed though that they were becoming so. Last year he’d had to charm the whole aviary that he’d built to make it cold and snowy. This year, well, this year was a bit more difficult, and involved a lot more sweat. Magic can do a lot, but elbow grease can do some magic all its own as well. So Lawrence had found himself shirtless moving metal beams around before the students had arrived. He’d spent much less time in his classroom than he’d anticipated and therefore felt rushed to complete his first few weeks lesson plans. But the aviary was now set for his Advanced students class. He’d charmed the inside so it was larger inside the aviary than outside, but more importantly, he’d made sure the whole thing was protected from attack. More so from the inside than from the out, but he’d done the other way in case anyone of nefarious backgrounds found out what he'd been able to bring onto school grounds.
Lawrence sat with his legs folded outside the Aviary waiting for his advanced students to arrive. He started the beginners with soft cute animals, but he knew that the world was not all full of soft, cute animals and thus the lessons for today and the next week. Without their normal DADA teacher, Lawrence figured they should have some sort of protective lesson in his class as well.
He wasn’t sure what parents would think about this lesson, and he was sure that some might be aghast, but then again, there were some that might relish the chance to meet one of these creatures in the feather.
He waited until all the students were there. He smiled at them all and then slowly stood up. He felt a bit like he was unfolding himself, but shook that idea from his mind.
“Afternoon good pupils. In our time together we’ve covered a lot of aspects about Caring for Magical Creatures, everything from feeding and housing, to how to carefully and humanely collect parts of the creature that might be necessary for magical components. We’ve talked about camouflage and mating patterns, anatomy and mimicry. These next few weeks though, will be more focused on you. We’ve talked a bit about safety, and in your Defense class I’m sure you’ve learned some good protective spells, but we are going to talk about how we can protect ourselves against creatures in the wild.”
Lawrence turned around to pull a leather cloak off the hook behind him next to the door.
“I’d like everyone to take a cloak please. Once you’ve put it on we’ll go inside.”
He waited as the students got their cloaks and put them on. Once it was done he opened the door to reveal a small room, around 5 m by 5 m with bars on the opposite side. The bars looked out onto what looked like a large landscape, though it was only 10 hectares really. Lawrence walked in first and gave a whistle and picked up the bucket next to the door. Off in the distance the sound of terrible wind could be heard and what looked like dark clouds came from the far end of the area.
Lawrence walked up close to the bars keeping his body turned so that he could see the Gagana coming and to see his class as well.
“As we’ve discussed, creatures have a variety of defense and offense mechanisms. We must be sure to keep in mind all of the known creatures and even some possibly unknown creatures that we may need to be on the defense about.”
He could hear the Gagana's screech, which sounded like icy wind and the splitting of trees in the cold. Lawrence knew the bird was close and so turned fully towards the bars and pulled a piece of meat out of the bucket.
“Today your going to see a creature most,” he thought about Tatiana and her siblings, they might know this bird, but, hopefully, it was more akin to dragons. Something you read about but never see, “if not all of you, have never seen. You will observe the creature, taking notes on its defensive and offensive attributes. Then with a partner, I want you to think of ways in which you could protect yourself against it. Over the next few weeks we will then work on creating those protective measures and testing them.”
Just then the Gagana swooped down. The large bird’s large copper claws gripped onto the metal bars. It’s almost human looking face contorted in disgust as it saw so many people and it opened its giant iron beak and let out a howl. Starting off sounding a bit like an avalanche it soon rushed into a full blown windstorm. The howl coincided with the creature flapping its wings at the assembled group, an arctic blast of air coming at them.
Lawrence threw the piece of meat in his hands at the Gagana mid-howl. The bird let go of the metal bars and brought the piece of meat down to the ground in front of the bars and began ripping it apart.
Lawrence turned back towards his students, keeping his voice calm to try and calm any startled students. “Ok. This creature you see before you is called a Gagana. It’s natural habitat is the Eurasian steppe and it is extremely, and I can’t emphasize this enough, extremely rare. You will in all likelihood never see another one of these creatures in your lifetime, as they were hunted down for millennia due to their supposed ability to tell the future. Really it’s their intestines that can, maybe. Still the Gagana is a good creature for us to use when creating protective measures because of its multitude of defensive and offensive mechanisms. Please take some time to observe the creature and if you have any questions, I will of course be here.”
OOC: OOC: The Gagana is not HP canon. That being said, the Gagana is a Slavic mythical creature. The author took some liberties with describing it’s different features, but you can learn more about them in the following links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gagana
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Gagana
https://www.ancientpages.com/2018/03/22/sacred-hidden-buyan-island-and-the-mysterious-alatyr-stone-with-healing-powers-may-have-existed/
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
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Lawrence Marsh
[Advanced] Protection is Key
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