Advanced Care of Magical Creatures Part I on Care of Magical Creatures

Kerry O'Shaunasey

November 18, 2011 8:34 PM

Advanced Care of Magical Creatures Part I by Kerry O'Shaunasey

Kerry had thought long and hard about what counted as “advanced” Care of Magical Creatures. The obvious answer were the more dangerous animals; griffins, dragons, and so forth. It was true they required more advanced handling but at the end of the day animals were animals. Magic made them more complicated or more dangerous, but from the practical aspect of things the most important take home lesson about caring for animals was knowing the needs of the animal in question, the dangers is posed, and what its normal behaviors were. Kerry felt like ‘advanced’ level classes should involve advanced procedures (say, how to trim a hippogriffs claws) which would only be useful in the long term to students who were looking to go into animal related fields. Alternatively, the “advanced” class could tackle advanced theory, which was the direction Kerry had decided to take this class.

Class was being held in the clearing near the gardens, despite being a class that was more appropriate to a traditional classroom setting. Kerry wasn’t a man of formality though, and had simply brought a free standing chalkboard outside, then conjured a small pile of cushions for his students to sit on. He’d picked an area where students could choose sun or shade to sit on. They’d been blessed with nice weather today, for which Kerry was very grateful.

Kerry sat on a high stool next to the chalkboard, his flaming red hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, he wore muggle clothes, jeans in a dark wash, a button down shirt and a tie, with plain black robes worn open over them. He waited for his students to settle.

“Hello everyone, welcome to Care of Magical Creatures.” Kerry smiled to his students. “I know that you all have had Professor Kiva for several years. She’s a fantastic teacher. She and I have slightly different backgrounds in relation to our experience with magical creatures. So I may take your education in a slightly different direction than she did. If anyone has any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.”

On the chalkboard, the chalk began to write as Kerry spoke. “My name is Kerry O’Shaunasey, and I would ask you to just call me Kerry, and I’ll call you by your first names. Today’s lesson, I’m sorry to say, won’t involve handling of any magical animals. I hope you’re not too terribly disappointed. But if you’re absolutely heartbroken, come see me in my office and we can see about some extra credit in exchange for some help in daily routine animal care, cleaning cages and the like.

Today, we’re going to talk about one of the gray areas in relation to magical “creatures”. As all of you know, there are several creatures who have refused ‘being’ status despite clearly being beings, of human intelligence or beyond, capable of reason, and clearly intellectual equals with wizards. Centaur and Merpeople to be exact. Unicorns also appear to posses superior intelligence, though we have yet to know the extent of it. We’re going to start with werewolves. They are clearly beings, humans, the majority of the time, but depending on the country, and even the year, they are often treated very differently under the law. They occupy a gray area, both being and beast, and unlike Centaurs it isn’t a matter of having a beast like body and a human mind, but of being two distinct creatures.

Its important to understand who werewolves are and how their lives are affected by their, for lack of a better word, disease, and how the law treats them. For those of you who are interested in having a career related to animal care, such as dragon tamer, you won’t have to ever care for a werewolf in the same fashion you care for a dragon, but for those of you who are considering work with the ministry, its fundamental that you fully understand what it means to be a werewolf. For those of you who just enjoy animals, it’s a good exercise in empathy, and empathy helps us understand our animal friends better.” Kerry smiled again to his students.

“Now, I’d like everyone to take a turn sharing what thoughts or experiences you have in relation to werewolves. Some of you may know someone who has lycanthropy personally, others may only know the stereotypes about werewolves. No matter what it is, I encourage you to say something. There are no wrong answers. I understand that not everyone is always comfortable talking, but I’d like to encourage everyone to say something.” He knew it was tough sometimes to speak in class, but this was a small group of kids who had probably known each other say they were first years, and Kerry was hoping they’d be able to talk freely.

((OOC: Part two will be posted on Tuesday))

Subthreads:

I'll blow your house down. by Dulce Garcia, Teppenpaw

0 Kerry O'Shaunasey Advanced Care of Magical Creatures Part I 0 Kerry O'Shaunasey 1 5

Dulce Garcia, Teppenpaw

November 23, 2011 11:40 PM

I'll blow your house down. by Dulce Garcia, Teppenpaw

Dulce already had reservations regarding the new Care of Magical Creatures Professor simply because of how young he was. Youth meant inexperience. She didn’t want to go her last couple of years at Sonora with a Professor who couldn’t teach them what they needed to know because he lacked the knowledge needed to truly teach the Advance class. He might do fine for the younger years, but she had her doubts on his abilities with what he could teach her at this stage of the game. She was hoping that he would prove her wrong, of course. Maybe he wasn’t as young as he looked or maybe in the few short years he had on this Earth had been enough to give him great knowledge in Creatures… she didn’t know or care. She just wanted to not be bored her last couple of years here.

She did not enjoy sitting on the ground, pillows or not. She missed the days of Cohen and his small shack with actual desks to take notes on. On top of that, Dulce only ever wore dresses, she hated having to sit with her legs off to the side to maintain some form of dignity. Saying nothing and portraying nothing, Dulce tucked her dress under her and took a seat on a pillow that was in the sun. She placed a light cooling charm on her robes to keep her from breaking into a sweat. She could have just sat in the shade, but the sun was one of the few things that Dulce enjoyed.

Already she was sure she didn’t like him. She held little respect from those who were ‘authority’ figures but refused to hold that title and instead wanted to be ‘one of them’ by using first names. Still, she did and said nothing. She simply sat and listened quietly while he began the lesson. Well, at least the lesson was interesting. Lectures were normal at this school as much as practicals were, so this sort of lesson did not bother her at all. She didn’t agree with using the term ‘animal’ with regards to werewolves, but that was neither here nor there. She understood the point of the lesson. And this seemed less of a ‘Care’ lesson as it did a political one.

Dulce spoke up first, mainly because she didn’t think anyone else would, “I know that when a human transforms into a werewolf, they lose all of their humanity in the transformation. They are simply a beast during those hours, controlled by the moon.” She said lightly, her hazel eyes staring without emotion at the professor. “But with the use of wolfsbane, they can maintain some of their humanity after the transformation. They’re still beast, but they have some control.”

0 Dulce Garcia, Teppenpaw I'll blow your house down. 0 Dulce Garcia, Teppenpaw 0 5

Edmond Carey, Aladren

November 26, 2011 8:18 PM

I'm going to run out of estates soon, then by Edmond Carey, Aladren

One of the things Edmond had noticed first about the new Care of Magical Creatures professor, even before the man’s youth, was his hair. It was red as anything, redder even than Edmond’s, and at least as long as Jane’s in the bargain. That, Edmond kept looking at askance; he had heard he had his by way of his birth mother, but he had never known her and had so never seen anyone else with red hair before he came to school and was used to the idea that anyone with it would do as much as they could to keep it looking more subdued and proper than it was, even more than someone with the brown shades more common in the family had to. Certainly Julia would have been scandalized if he’d ever let his grow out any further than it would have by midterm.

Beyond that, there was the fact that the professor was very young – something Edmond was prepared to be indifferent to, since he’d had a few rather young tutors before, young people who excelled in their chosen fields beyond even normal standards of excellence, though he’d heard nothing from Robert, who might have heard it through the family’s information-gathering network, about this new professor being one of those, so….

Of course, it had always been Julia who collected that kind of information, finding out what they needed to know about professors and telling them about it, but even she couldn’t do such things from her grave. So Edmond was still going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Edmond was also prepared to be cautious if he needed to, especially after the professor told them to call him by his given name. That could be an eccentricity, or it could be a lack of professionalism. He’d just have to see.

The lesson was about werewolves. Edmond wasn’t overly fond of lessons where he was expected to say what he already knew about the subject, but he shrugged that aside and looked up at the professor, shading his eyes and feeling all out of place after Dulce Garcia finished covering the main points. It was nothing for him and Jane to sit on the grass at home – sometimes, when he was feeling well, Robert might even join them, and they’d have lunch outdoors from a basket and pass around something to read from – but this was school, and…well, he very seldom looked up at anyone, and hadn’t for several years. He’d been about as tall as Robert when he was fourteen and hadn’t stopped there.

“As Miss Garcia said,” he said, with a slight nod to her, “the Wolfsbane Potion is only partially effective. There is no full cure for the condition that anyone knows of. Every now and again, some charlatan will try to say he’s affected a cure, but no proven cases have been found.” He bit his lip. “At least, if there have been, I haven’t heard, read anything about it.” He and Jane were expected to be aware of what was going on in the world, of new things in all sorts of different fields, so that he might be well-informed and Jane might make wonderful conversation once she was married and a hostess, but he was sure there were things that got past them anyway. Nothing that big, though. That would be a cure to something that…well, he couldn’t name a case off the top of his head, but he rather suspected that in his family, as things were, it was one of those things that would make you die of Vanishing Sickness. Morgaine often wrote about medical things in her letters, and he was sure she would have mentioned anything quite as big as that happening.

0 Edmond Carey, Aladren I'm going to run out of estates soon, then 0 Edmond Carey, Aladren 0 5