They're precious!! on Care of Magical Creatures

Isis Carter-Xavier

March 09, 2020 7:10 PM

Playing lizard doctor [Beginners] by Isis Carter-Xavier

The thing about filling in regularly for Care of Magical Creatures that Isis had not anticipated was the amount of work outside of class hours. None of the other subjects were like that - sure, Herbology had some plants to feed, but it wasn’t half as bad as this. Tending to Professor Marsh’s creatures. Isis didn’t mind animals, but they weren’t really her “thing”. Especially not the wild, magical kind.

Today’s lesson was partially inspired by this need for outside resources. It occurred to her that instead of just calling in reinforcements, she could pass off some responsibilities to the students in the class. Mind you, these particular students were only eleven, twelve, and maybe thirteen years old, but they were old enough to help. At least, the Pecari Head of House hoped so.

“Greetings, everyone,” she offered once it seemed the bulk of the class had assembled. “Today, we’re going to be working with salamanders. Who can tell me one difference between the creatures Muggles know by this name and their magical counterparts?” The floor was open to many options: the nonmagical creatures were amphibians and the magical lizards, nonmagical were water-inclined while magical came from fire, etc. etc. Isis let a couple people try and awarded each of them five points for their efforts.

“Today we’re going to be working with the magical kind. Professor Marsh has a brood he’s raising, but unfortunately, some of the little guys have come down with scale rot. This is a sickness that affects magical reptiles like salamanders and dragons. For salamanders specifically, if not treated, it can cause their tails to detach. We’d like to prevent that.

“So the lesson today,” Isis went on, “is a practical one on salamander medicine. The best trick to keep a salamander healthy is to rub chili powder on them. I have a few containers up here with one or two each, and some jars of chili powder. Don’t worry, these guys have only been out of their fire for about a half hour, so we have plenty of time before they have to go back. Partner up if you’d like - just be careful. These young ones can only give a slight spark, but that’s still spitting a bit of fire. And keep in mind that these little, fragile things are living creatures. Anyone who is not gentle with have their salamander taken away and receive a zero for participation for the day. Let’s go ahead and get to it!”

OOC: Information on Salamanders taken from this article: https://harry-potter-compendium.fandom.com/wiki/Salamander and permission to mention Marsh’s salamanders given by DH Skies. Have at it!

Subthreads:

I DO NOT LIKE IT by Theo Spurn with Freddie Zauberhexen

They're precious!! by Josephine Clyde with Mara Morales

12 Isis Carter-Xavier Playing lizard doctor [Beginners] 31 1 5

Theo Spurn

March 12, 2020 8:10 AM

I DO NOT LIKE IT by Theo Spurn

Care of Magical Creatures had gone from being mostly nice, to mostly not. Theo had liked Professor Marsh, with his lessons about not being jerks, and his intriguing beard texture. Professor Carter-Xavier was not Professor Marsh. He had observed this fact loudly in her general direction the first time he had walked in and found her there, and then regarded her with a look of mild confusion and deep betrayal for the remainder of the lesson. She was not Professor Marsh and she was not supposed to be there.

She was still here. He took a seat, rubbing the velvet inside his sleeves. There had been two reasons to be unhappy. This was now down to one and a half. It was becoming routine now that she was there. But she still wasn’t Professor Marsh. He wished things had not changed, not when he had liked them perfectly well as they were.

Care of Magical Creatures was normally fine. But there were exceptions. Mostly, it was very soft things, but the squishy things tended to be very squishy, and he wasn’t sure if Professor Marsh had set these lessons or if Professor Carter-Xavier was choosing them, and he felt better about one of those options than the other.

When Professor Carter-Xavier introduced the topic, Theo felt okaaaaay about it, with very hesitant and drawn out intonation. He had touched a snake once. He had felt very worried because he wasn’t sure how it would feel, but everyone else who had touched it had said it was nice and they were all people who didn’t lie, and mum had helped compare it to things he knew, and he had touched it and it had been actually quite good. It was surprisingly cold, and it was slinky, somehow like a cross between silk and a nice smooth rock. He had been told newts were like that. And salamanders were maybe a bit like newts. Most things were not actually slimy.

Flobberworms were. This was not flobberworms. He had survived that class because flobberworms mostly liked to be left alone, and that suited the degree of interaction he wanted with one.

But then she said what they were doing. Theo made an audible sound of disgust. He tried very hard not to picture what rotting scales looked like but it crept up his arms and made him shudder. The thought of nice smooth pebble-silk skin all flaky and turning to putrid uck. He didn’t want to see it.

Then she kept talking. Then she made it worse. Rub. Chilli. Powder. Rub chilli powder which was nasty and dusty and burny into the flaky- no, no NO!

He didn’t hear the rest of what she said. His brain was too busy fizzing in a bad way. He wanted a break. He knew that the teachers had been told that he could go out to calm down if he needed to. He decided he would count to ten and if everything was still horrible, he would just leave.

He pulled his knees up, so he could run his hands down his legs, enjoying the soft plush of the pyjamas trousers he was wearing under his robes, and trying to think about how everyone else called those ‘pants’ and that was funny. Except it wasn’t funny right now because he still felt shaky and he didn’t want to be involved in anything outside his little bubble and he had only got down as far as three when someone placed a box on the table near him.

“I DO NOT WANT IT,” he declared loudly, “I DO NOT WANT TO LOOK AT IT.”

13 Theo Spurn I DO NOT LIKE IT 1476 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

March 13, 2020 1:03 PM

Do you want a hug or something? by Freddie Zauberhexen

Freddie rather enjoyed the fact that very little happened to him. He had a happy sister and a fancy bowtie and a pretty friend to go to the ball with and a super adventurous friend to have fun with and that was good enough. He didn't need adventure. But . . . if it happened . . . well he wouldn't say no. Today, that adventure meant rubbing chili powder on a newt. That might have been pretty gross if he hadn't grown up around even grosser humans. People sickness was way nastier than creature sickness. Freddie had made it very clear growing up that he did not feel comfortable helping with the actual aid part - bandaging wounds, cleaning injuries, or . . . he stepped himself from thinking of anything else because it made him feel queasy.

In any case, he had weirdly more sympathy for these poor little newts than for those humans. He thought that it must be really scary to be a little lizard guy and then all of a sudden you were all itchy or whatever and then people were handling you and rubbing weird stuff on you and it probably felt good but also no one could just say, "Hey, here's some medicine. Let's go." They didn't know what was happening to their little bodies, and that made him sad. Of course, it also made him think of a potions lesson Hana had told him about where some of the class had taken newts apart for their ingredients, and that was weird to think about, too.

He was still trying to get through the lecture in his head because he was pretty sure he understood it but his English really wasn't awesome yet (which was the nice thing about classes like Care of Magical Creatures; they were very visual), when he suddenly heard a sad little human instead of just a sad little newt. Deciding that humans probably did need him more than newts and that this human was probably less gross than the newt, Freddie set his box on the table nearest Theo Spurn and cocked his head at him.

The boy was a year younger than he was but he was in Anya's house and that made him cool already. Plus he just seemed like an okay guy, which made it sad that he was so sad. He also very much did not want the box Freddie had put down, so Freddie slid it pointedly away from him. Then he sat on the floor with his legs crossed, looking at Theo with a plain expression, as if this were the most normal thing in the world and the only real difference was that Freddie was a little worried.

"Ich auch," he agreed, wrinkling his nose. "Want you to work together? I can do the rubs and you can notes taken."

Freddie was proud of himself for coming up with a possible solution so fast, but he had lived with Hana long enough to know that sometimes, people didn't want solutions. Sometimes they wanted comforting. "Oder... perhaps you need hug?"

22 Freddie Zauberhexen Do you want a hug or something? 1452 0 5

Josephine Clyde

March 15, 2020 5:41 AM

They're precious!! by Josephine Clyde

Care of Magical Creatures was something that still scared Josie a little bit. There had been a class with Professor Marsh in the Fall term, but today’s class was going to be covered by a different person, Professor Carter-Xavier. Animals were cute, but she didn’t get the chance to raise any. It was something her parents had been talking about before her mother died. Her step-brothers came with memories of a family cat that their dad had taken. It was another topic she thought they could bond over, but quickly found that they didn’t care about.

Josie pushed those thoughts away and collected her hair into a ponytail. Professor Carter-Xavier was telling them about today’s topic and she was not going to be distracted by the could-have-beens of puppies. She listened as the professor informed them about salamanders, both magical and non-magical, but when she casually mentioned dragons Josie’s eyes widened. Dragons? Real dragons? She shouldn’t be so surprised, this was Care of Magical Creatures after all, but to think that dragons were real. Did that mean werewolves and vampires were too?

Josie, distracted by thoughts of more magic in an already magical world, almost missed the professor’s next instructions. Salamander medicine? It wasn’t quite the hands-on approach she’d been expecting, but she was thankful the professor hadn’t thrown the class face first into the unknown.
Salamanders were cute adjacent. She’d grown up in the desert and it was full of lizards, geckos, snakes and turtles. When she was little she’d been playing the backyard and a gecko, a banded gecko she later discovered with the help of her mother, ran past her. She’d watched it attack a spider and devour it. In her eyes, it had saved her life. Salamanders were practically the cousins of lizards, so she knew they had to be good.

After the professor started the lesson Josie ran up to swipe a serving of chili powder and hurried back to her seat. When Josie received her sick salamander her eyes grew round and her heart practically melted out and onto the ground. Scale rot was not pretty. She made soft noises at her new friend, George, as she scooped up some powder. It stung, but, as she rubbed it on George, it went away. Or maybe it was just obvious comfort she could see on George’s face that made any discomfort she felt go away. She felt sorely tempted to keep him forever, but, she giggled, Mara and Morgan might not like it if they woke up one day and the room was on fire.

44 Josephine Clyde They're precious!! 1477 0 5

Mara Morales

March 18, 2020 3:37 PM

And potentially burny. by Mara Morales

Care of Magical Creatures was a strange class, to Mara's way of thinking. On one hand, it almost seemed normal, in a rural, Abraham-Baldwin kind of way - like 4H or something, dealing with actual livestock. It was not something she had ever planned to be involved with, but she was from Georgia, so it was not something that sounded intrinsically strange for middle schoolers to start fooling with. On the other hand, though, it was Care of Magical Creatures, and sometimes the teacher made comments about dragons as though they were no more or less mundane than elephants, and then Mara again felt out at sea.

Salamanders. Salamanders sounded entirely normal, like something she might have studied in science class at home...but then they weren't. In fact, they were kind of the opposite of what Mara thought of as salamanders - fire rather than water, not even properly reptiles, as far as she could tell, and she was pretty sure that something which was born from fire and would die without it was not an amphibian. She had learned in a mythology unit at her old school that people had once thought fire was a fluid relative, but science now knew that it was not. Fire was just the release of energy in the chemical process of combustion. Water was a totally different chemical reaction - two elements binding in a given configuration. Luckily, their temporary teacher - or replacement teacher - or whatever (Mara wasn't entirely sure of this) did at least acknowledge this dissonance, and asked questions about it; Mara took notes carefully, though she looked up, dark eyes intense, when chili powder came up, wondering if Professor Carter-Xavier was joking.

From the looks of it, she was not joking. There was actually chili powder up there, and people were getting it along with their sick lizards. Chili powder. Chili. Powder.

Maybe...maybe it was special chili powder? Mara knew that the mix of powdered stuff one might pick up in the spice section was often a mix of stuff, not actually made entirely of chili peppers. Plus, she had gathered from earlier classes in this subject and from stuff in her Potions lessons that ordinary things were sometimes magical because of the way they were grown, or the fertilizer used, or the phase of the moon when plants were picked. Special chili powder made so much more sense than just...chili powder.

Mara collected supplies, and noticed that one of her roomates was handling both the chili powder and the lizard with bare hands. Bad form, that. Touching diseased scales (and these did appear quite diseased) with bare skin was not ideal, because while cross-species disease passage was rare, it was not impossible, and what looked like a fungus or something might be particularly able to start growing on human skin too. Touching chili powder with one's own skin was also not a good idea - pepper, Mara knew, was hot. She liked a bit of spice in her food, but Jessica turned the color of a tomato if she so much as ate a jalapeno. This was just when it was consumed as was proper; no one wanted to risk touching their eyes after getting pepper on their hands. This was...not ideal.

She walked over to Josie. "Hey," she said. "Do you want to borrow one of my gloves? If this is anything like normal chili powder, then you'll probably kinda wanna die if you touch your eyes and you have any of it on your hands."

16 Mara Morales And potentially burny. 1472 0 5

Josephine Clyde

March 24, 2020 12:50 AM

They're burning a hole right through my heart...and maybe my skin by Josephine Clyde

George was adorable. She was going to steal him. Lizard-nap him. He might set the room on fire, but it might not be life threatening! He was too little and cute to cause any real damage, right? But…they lived in the library, which meant books, which meant paper, which meant probably a bad idea. Maybe she could ask Professor Carter-Xavier or Professor Marsh if she could come to visit George. It might be silly of her to feel so attached, but he really was so adorable, minus the scale rot.

Speaking of the scale rot she rubbed more powder onto George, but now she was noticing some tingling feeling in her hands. It had only stung a little bit when she first started, but now a burning feeling was taking over. He was her baby, but suddenly and it took all she had not to cry. She must have looked really silly, hunched over a sick lizard while making weird faces. Okay, she might have teared up a little bit. Just a little. Now Josie wasn’t sure if her fingers were red because of the powder or because the skin was going to fall off of her body. Her eyes itched and she went to rub them when Mara offered her some gloves and advice. Lifesaver!

“Hi Mara! I’d love to borrow some. And yeah, wow, this is kind of burning a little bit more than I expected. I almost rubbed my eyes just now. I’m glad you stopped me.”

Thinking about it now she might have gone blind if she had rubbed them. Accepting the gloves Josie wiped her hands clean of the powder as best she could with a towel. They were definitely red, but maybe it would go away? She shoved her no longer quite as burny, but still red hands into the gloves and wiggled her fingers. It was her imagination for sure, but she really did feel better. COMC was going to be a ‘bring your own gloves’ class from now on. She’d have to ask Mara where the other girl had gotten hers. If future COMC classes were anything spice related it would be a good idea to have some. Plus, if she was going to visit George in the future and he got sick again she’d definitely need some gloves. Otherwise, next time, she’d forget, rub her eyes and really go blind.

“Thanks for that. I definitely feel a lot better now.”
Josie looked around for Mara’s lizard, “Where’s your lizard? I’ve named mine George. Isn't he just adorable?”

44 Josephine Clyde They're burning a hole right through my heart...and maybe my skin 1477 0 5

Theo Spurn

March 26, 2020 7:53 AM

Sort of by Theo Spurn

Oh no, he’d forgotten how to words. That was Theo’s first thought as abrupt, discordant noises clashed against his ears. It happened sometimes. When something was all wrong all over his skin, it just made it so hard to focus that he couldn’t really take in what other people were saying. But then the words shifted, and though they were said with a strong filter on them, they made sense. They were the offer of a plan to help him out. He appreciated the offer of the boy doing the rubs, but he wasn’t quite ready to accept note taking duties about something he didn’t want to be in the same room as. This was followed by a more alarming suggestion.

“No,” he said, quite sharply and abruptly when the boy offered him a hug, afraid that he was about to put his hands on him. The boy had picked up the box, and that meant his hands were wrong right now. They possibly even had chilli on them. There was just no way of knowing. That did, however, remind him that a hug might be helpful. He just didn’t want it from this person.

“I will hug myself. Thank you,” Theo informed him stiffly, shifting his hands so he could cross his arms over his chest and add some pressure. He could feel his robes pressing his softer clothes against his body. He tried to focus on that, and not imagine the scratchy parts of them breaking through. He wanted to go and wash the feeling of the very horrid thing that he hadn’t even touched off his hands and his arms right now because it was prickling all over his skin.

“I need to count down from ten,” he informed the boy. “Then I can think about notes and rubs and things.” That had been interrupted, so he needed to start again. He might not have bothered saying anything but he’d learnt that people who interrupted once tended to interrupt multiple times if told not to. Sometimes even then. He hoped this boy wasn’t an Interrupter. That was the last thing he needed right now. He squeezed his own arms, gradually beginning his countdown again in his head.

He got to zero without the boy saying anything, which was a good sign. If he could just sit here and look at this boy and squeeze his arms, he thought he could manage class. The boy had shiny hair and he had seen him smile in other classes and he had a nice smile.

“I like soft things,” he stated. He sort of was trying to explain about the newt and why it was bad but he didn’t want those words in his mouth, so he tried coming at it from what he did like instead of what he didn’t.

13 Theo Spurn Sort of 1476 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

March 27, 2020 3:30 PM

Big mood. by Freddie Zauberhexen

Freddie thought he was extremely lucky to have finally found the first student in this whole stinking school that said things straight. Anya was pretty close, but Freddie never really knew what she was actually thinking. Still, he'd almost resigned himself to that being just a necessary part of life until now. Maybe it was a Pecari thing? Freddie thought that that was a good possibility.

Theo needed to think, so Freddie waited it out. He had never thought of hugging himself before. He wasn't really a big hugger, not nearly as much as Hana was, but he wasn't opposed and sometimes they were nice. Self-hugging seemed like a really convenient way to get a hug without having to track someone down to ask for one. It was like those wooden backscratcher things, except the itch to be scratched as the need for a hug. That was sort of fun to think about, so that's what Freddie thought about while he waited for Theo to count. He also tried to count in his own head because he wanted to see how well he knew his English numbers. As it turned out, not very well. Or else Theo counted much faster, because Freddie was only on six by the time Theo got done.

So he liked soft things. That made a lot of sense. "Ich auch," Freddie said again. "Me too. My Mama has soft hairs," he added, remembering the first thing that came to mind when he thought of hugs and soft things together. "And my bed is soft thing. Sleep is nice." He yawned, not aware that he was underscoring his own point by doing so.

"How feels you? We do stuff?" Freddie was pretty sure there were more specific words than 'stuff' but if it got the job done, then it was going to be just fine. That was basically the whole reason anyone learned another language anyway, was to get through communication. If he could communicate with half of a language, then why should he learn the rest of it? "Or we do more sits?"

22 Freddie Zauberhexen Big mood. 1452 0 5