That does sound like good advice on Transfiguration

Selina Skies

December 30, 2022 9:35 PM

Advanced - Don't try this at home by Selina Skies

“Welcome back,” Selina smiled at the assembled sixth (how were these people sixth years already???) and seventh years.

“One of our first units will be medical transfiguration. As you might expect, this is a largely theoretical unit. Our practicals will focus on first aid, as that is something you can be expected to do, but the majority of the healing spells we look at will be covered in theory only. Today is a rare exception, to give you some hands-on experience, to practise your precision vanishment skills, and understand one real world application of that.” Such things often came up in theory papers, and some students would be more likely to remember the things they’d tried themselves rather than just those that they’d read in a book. “That does not mean you should ever attempt this on a live human or animal, unless you become qualified in one of those fields of medicine. Go to a healer. Always.

“Today, we will be working on Grindylow bones. Due to the number of breaks they sustain in their fingers, Grindylow bones often have extra bony growths. This makes them useful practice for the technique of specific and controlled vanishing. You will receive a bone, and should try to remove the growths slowly and steadily. If you go too far and take a chunk out of the bone, you’ll need to come and get a new one. Regrowing bones by magic is a much more complex process than removing them. For your homework, or once you complete two Grindylow bones, you need to research two different magical methods of putting bones back in, and how much they hurt.” The homework assignment, whilst useful in itself, was also designed to curtail any residual enthusiasm for trying these spells out on friends on pets.

“The usual vanishment spell of Evanesco applies. If you want to make it more specific you can add the word ossis but beware that this applies to the bone as well as the extra growth, so it may be a hinderance more than a help.” Different people’s brains worked in different ways, so some of them might find it easier with, some of them might not.

“You may begin.”

Subthreads:

Don't worry, I won't by Bertie Jackson

That does sound like good advice by Valentine Duell with Lavender Brockert

Noted and understood. by Rosalynn Tellerman with Isla Brockert

It's something anyway by Ian Malone

13 Selina Skies Advanced - Don't try this at home 26 1 5

Bertie Jackson

December 31, 2022 6:08 AM

Don't worry, I won't by Bertie Jackson

Bertie took a seat in advanced transfiguration. He was excited for his final year of classes, though not excited that certain loud Pecaris had once again entered the age bracket where he had to endure them in classes. Although given that he was sandwiched between Oz and Billy’s year group versus Leonor and Theo’s… Well, it was almost like there were no good Pecaris to be stuck in class with. Perhaps he should just count himself lucky that his own cohort of them were almost bearable, and that most of them wouldn’t be taking something as cerebral as advanced transfiguration.

The first class of the year was somewhat underwhelming. Healing wasn’t a particular area of interest for him, in either theory or practise. First aid sounded awfully parental, and he didn’t plan on having children—or, if he did, they would be the kind that sat quietly with books, not the kind that went around getting scraped or bumped and needing first aid. And if Zara or Evangeline had any such offspring, he would keep a safe distance from them.

The task they were undertaking, whilst dressed up as being some fancy medical spell that they couldn’t try outside of class, was just vanishing—very precise vanishing, on a lump of bone. Which, once you decontextualised it and took it out of a living creature, wasn’t really any more exciting than practising vanishing on anything else. If they’d had live grindylows, it might have added a bit of spice, but this task felt rather beneath them. He was looking forward to getting into complex mechanical transfgurations, theories, and problem solving. Not scraping finger bones.

Oh well…

He took one of the grindylow fingers, taking the time to gently move it through its articulations, noticing that the bony growths prevented it from doing so smoothly, and fetching a book from the shelf at the back of the room that allowed him to look up their anatomy. If he needed to not overshoot, then an accurate picture of what he was aiming for was a must. The bony growths were smaller than he’d anticipated from Professor Skies’ description. And yet, they did a lot to mess up the movement of the finger joint. This really was going to be fiddly work….

“Evanesco,” he cast. The fewer words the better was always his motto, so he left off the optional extra. He focussed on the biggest of the lumps, trying to imagine it smoothing away to nothingness. He was mostly sure he’d got it without overshooting, though it was hard to tell…

13 Bertie Jackson Don't worry, I won't 1497 0 5

Valentine Duell

December 31, 2022 10:53 AM

That does sound like good advice by Valentine Duell

Valentine was somehow still hanging on to her Transfiguration grades by her fingertips. It was all due to the extra time Professor Skies put in for her and the extra studying help from Bonabelle and everyone else. The Advanced classes had been really rough last year, and she was hopeful that a lot of this year would be review of those things again. The tests at the end of the year scared her quite a bit. But, she had made it this far, and she wasn't going to give up now.

She took a seat near the front of the class, as had become her custom since last year. It was harder to get distracted and talking to people about unrelated things. Plus Professor Skies could help her out more easily if it was necessary. Val returned the Transfiguration Professor's welcoming smile. She wasn't quite sure how to feel about starting off with a medical unit. On the one hand, as Professor Skies stated, they were mostly theoretical which was good, but they were also largely irrelevant to her plans. That just meant she had to know the material for the tests, but wouldn't use it afterwards. It seemed like a little bit of a waste. Her heart sunk a bit when it turned out that today was going to be a practical lesson after all. The warnings that followed didn't exactly inspire confidence either.

Vanishing bone growths didn't seem to bad though, and precision work was definitely something that she needed to work on. Val shuddered at the Professor's assignment on researching how much it hurt to restore bones. Her flying incident a few years back had given her plenty of 'research' in the area of 'bone repair'. Still, she assumed the Professor would want something a little more academic than personal experience, but adding that in probably wouldn't hurt.

She inspected her first Grindylow bone. It wasn't hard to identify the small bone growths that caused problems. Removing them, and only them... that would be the difficult part. Val thought about how she could best go about doing it. Writing down the differences and changes she wanted made had helped, but that was more for bigger, overall changes to things. It didn't usually help with vanishing. She wasn't trying to change the bone as a whole to be one that didn't have the growths, she was just trying to get rid of the growths and leave the rest of the bone alone. What she needed was something to help her focus on the difference between the growth and the bone.

A thought occurred to her, she dipped her quill into her ink and first traced out a line around one of the growths, making a solid viable boundary between it and the bone. Then for good measure she colored the rest of the growth as well. Now the bone colored bit stayed and the inked bit needed to be vanished. Simple. She smiled, set down the quill and picked up her wand.

"Evanesco!" Val stated while she focused on the inked section of her bone. Her expression drooped when she inspected the results. The growth was gone, but so was a small divot of bone under where it had been. The spell had vanished the curve of the bone under the growth. That wasn't right.

As was Valentine's even longer standing habit, she turned to her neighbor to see how they were doing. "How is yours going?" she offered her first attempt up to them, "Mine's not ideal." Fortunately there were more growths on the bone she could practice upon before getting a new one to try for turning in to the professor.

2 Valentine Duell That does sound like good advice 1490 0 5

Lavender Brockert

January 11, 2023 12:09 AM

Well, who keeps grindylow bones at home anyway? by Lavender Brockert

Lavender still couldn’t believe it, she really couldn’t! She was Head Student! Other people had actually voted for her! Not just Val and herself! The Crotalus figured it was probably pretty hard to win with only two votes. So that meant people actually liked her!

And most importantly, she had finally bested Bonahelle! When Lavender got prefect, the moment of triumph had been ruined by her nemesis getting the same and of course, last year the Challenges had been an absolute disaster considering that Bonahelle’s team won while her own hadn’t done well at all. Which still sickened her to her core.

But Head Student, now that made things a bit better. Because, Head Student, which was voted on by their peers, was pretty much a popularity contest and it meant that people liked her better than Bonahelle even if Val didn’t. Not that she wanted Val to like her that way, but it still sucked that the Aladren got more of Val’s time while the Crotalus got crumbs.

Honestly she was a bit shocked that Val hadn’t won though. Lavender had been sure her friend was a shoe-in. Everyone liked the Teppenpaw and should have obviously won a popularity contest. She would have been ideal and Lavender was a little puzzled as to why people picked her instead. True, she had lots of relatives among the voters, but she was sure Wally had chosen Val and himself. Which did make her feel less bad about voting for Graham along with herself instead of her cousin. But maybe Stanley voted for her? And Graham?

And maybe Val hadn’t won because people thought she was overextended and were concerned about her doing so much. Lavender had to admit that had been a factor as to why she voted for Graham rather than the Teppenpaw,along with the fact that Graham had been there for her and that she still felt that it should be a boy and a girl rather than two of either. So far it had really worked out that way too.

Truthfully, when they’d changed it to be “genderless” elections, Lavender had been less than thrilled. For both her and Gabriel, they were in year groups where they didn’t have much competition and in her cousin’s case, given who the other boys were, he’d had an excellent chance. In hers, well, there had been Val, regardless of there only being three girls.

And Lavender and Gabriel both won anyway, instead of them picking two girls last year or two boys this year. And somehow she’d beaten her friend. She felt a little bad about it, but was still honestly happy that she got to feel liked and good about herself. And, obviously, better liked than Bonahelle.

Which, logically speaking, Lavender should be. Now, she didn’t think she was a better ,more likable person than others in general but she knew she was that compared to the Aladren. Some people were just awful, like Aunt Jillian and just about anyone was better than they were. And Bonahelle fit into that category. She was generally not that nice to anyone other than Val. She had been horrendously rude to Stanley when he was with the Teppenpaw and that, as much as anything else, made Lavender worry for Wally. It wasn’t simply she didn’t see how it was fair on him for his girlfriend to have another romantic partner when he deserved someone all his own and not have to worry about competing with someone else-and Lavender knew from personal experience that there was no competing with Bonahelle. (Except when it came to Head Student,of course) It was also that the Aladren was rude, demanding, selfish and would probably treat Wally the same way she had his brother, making sure that she always came first with Val while he had to beg for scraps. Lavender was sure that Val would want to spend time with him but that Bonahelle would monopolize her. As always.

Speaking of spending time with the Teppenpaw though, Lavender had gotten to Transfiguration today to find that Val had an open spot next to her, so the Crotalus was able to sit with her friend, which was always a special treat. Lavender often spent more time with Graham, who to be honest, she felt closer to than Val sometimes, because he actually had time for her.

She knew part of the reason that she didn’t get to spend time with Val as often was that she supposedly studied so much. Lavender really felt that Val was too hard on herself about her capabilities in that area. And even if she wasn’t the best academically, she still was kind and had an easy time with people.

Something that the Crotalus did not. Sure, she did better than some people- and apparently better than she’d thought, given she got Head Studentlike some of her cousins, such as Kira and Ryan,although they actually did have friends, but both were even more shy about talking to people and afraid of rejection so therefore struggled to talk to people more than Lavender did. Still, until the ball and making friends with Graham, she’d been alone most of the time. She wasn’t like Val who could strike up a conversation with anyone and be friends with them. The seventh year sort of envied that, and would trade academic success for friends anyway. Especially since some of her academic success had been based on having nothing to do without friends while Bonahelle hogged Val.

At least though, Lavender got to spend time with the Teppenpaw over the summer. Which had been fun.

Also, part of her really wasn’t sure that being a wandmaker was the right thing for the other seventh year. She hated that her friend was stretching herself so thin, knowing what that had done to Chaslyn. Even though it wasn’t exactly the same thing because her cousin was trying to meet Aunt Jillian’s unreasonable expectations while Val was choosing to do this to herself. Regardless, it was unhealthy and Lavender did not want her friend to make herself sick physically or mentally.

However, she was not going to tell Val of her concerns about this. Not after the last time that the seventh year had given her friend an opinion on her life choices.It was best to keep silent,so she didn’t risk losing a friend.

Before Lavender could really talk to the other seventh year, class started. Medical transfiguration was not likely something she would actually use in life much, beyond some basic first aid so she could fix her childrens’ small injuries. She was probably not actually going to be vanishing bone growths and fixing broken bones. For one thing, she would hopefully never have to deal with that. Lavender had never had a broken bone and she hoped her children wouldn’t either. And if they did, she would take them to an actual Healer.

Still, it was the assignment and it was Transfiguration and she wanted to be able to learn the magic for its own sake, and have the ability to do more complicated spells. Lavender looked at her bone, which had a fair amount of growths, she noted three. She started off on the first one, which was the smallest. “Evanesco.” The growth vanished and she turned to the medium sized one and did the spell again. This time, however, Lavender only managed to vanish half of it, to basically shrink it a little. Before she could try again, Val spoke to her. “Mine is..well, I had a good start. I vanished the smallest growth completely but this medium one only became smaller. Which might be a good thing, because apparently I can get rid of small ones easily.”

11 Lavender Brockert Well, who keeps grindylow bones at home anyway? 1504 0 5

Valentine Duell

January 13, 2023 6:49 PM

They might be good ingredients for something by Valentine Duell

Valentine gave Lavender a smile when she sat down, but there wasn't time for much more than that. Which as much as she hated to admit might be for the best. Lavender was one of her oldest friends, but she got the feeling that things just weren't quite 'right' between them, like there was a wall or something in the way. Val knew that Lavender was not a big Bonabelle fan, and that was some of it, but she didn't think it was everything. Valentine had learned not to talk about her girlfriend around Lavender. But there was so much else that seemed to go with it. Lavender didn't seem to want to talk about future plans much at all of nearly any sort. At least, not at any level of depth. It was like the girl was staying at arm's reach, they usually didn't get to spend a lot of time together and when they did... the talk seemed so shallow to Val. The whole summer together had been like that, it had been beautiful and there had been lots of things to do, and she'd had fun, but... she really didn't feel any closer to her friend after it was all done.

Valentine looked at the bone that Lavender was working with. The small one she indicated at having shrunk was still a bit bigger than the one Val had managed to mess up on her own. She sighed. It must be nice to be able to accomplish this stuff 'easily'. School, life, Val thought it seemed like Lavender just drifted through it all without a care in the world. She didn't have to worry about a job after school, which meant school wasn't something to be overly concerned about, she claimed prefect and head girl... Val slammed that line of thought to a fast stop. Was she jealous of Lavender? The summer had been a lesson in the Brockert lifestyle and... and what? It was very different from her own, would she like it over her own? It did have it's attractive parts, but at the same time she couldn't imagine that sort of life with Mama and Papa and Aunt Giselle. Definitely not with Bonabelle either. No, she was happy with her life, although being better at school would be nice. Having her peers vote for her would have been nice as well. Maybe some did. Was it really that important?

That question gave Val pause for a moment. She wanted it because Mama had gotten it, at least that's what she had told herself. She'd also told herself that it would be okay if she didn't win it, turns out she lied to herself. If she had gotten it, she would have known that people had thought about her and what she'd done around the school the past few years, and thought she would be a good head girl. That would have been really nice. Instead... now she didn't know any of that. Had anyone thought about her at all? Had they just thought she wouldn't be good at the job? Had they just voted for better friends and relatives? She'd told Lavender that she would vote for her; and if she had to guess, she wouldn't be surprised if Lavender hadn't voted for her in return. That hurt a bit, but to use a rash generalization, Lavender was a Crotalus not a Teppenpaw. It was fine though, her apprenticeship wasn't dependent upon getting head girl, it was on getting the best grades she was capable of.

Vale knew there was something she really needed to do, and if she didn't do it now, she probably wouldn't ever be able to do it. She had to do it right as well. She mentally shook off the melancholy mood that had settled over her and gave her friend a proper smile. "Oh Lavender," she began cheerily, "Congratulations on getting head student!" She gestured at the new badge decorating Lavender's robe. "I know you'll do a great job."

2 Valentine Duell They might be good ingredients for something 1490 0 5

Rosalynn Tellerman

February 11, 2023 8:49 AM

Noted and understood. by Rosalynn Tellerman

Rosalynn was a sixth year, which meant advanced classes. She was looking forward to the step up in difficulty - and the absence of CATS review, though now she supposed RATS would become the frequent topic of encouragement to try harder.

It had been a tough choice, deciding which classes to keep and which to drop. She had enjoyed all of her classes during her intermediate years, and none of them were ones she particularly wanted to abandon, but she knew the importance of not overloading herself. It was one of the reasons she was handing off the Visual Arts club, and it was now also why she was dropping Astronomy, Divinations and Herbology. Divinations was the hardest of those to give up, and she debated dropping Potions instead, but ultimately decided Potions would probably be more relevant to her future life.

She wasn't quite sure what she was going to do with her future life yet, but Potions was a core subject for a reason, so she'd held onto it just in case what she decided to study needed a RATS in it as a prerequisite.

She'd never considered dropping Transfiguration. Not only was it obviously useful if you ever found yourself with the wrong supplies on hand, and also a core subject that was needed for a lot of future careers, but it was one she had a bit of natural talent for. She was hardly a Brockert, but Dad was good at the subject, too, and it just made sense to her. Of course, she'd grown up with a father who dramatically turned things into other things, or made them vanish all together (often with a puff of smoke - which was a more difficult effect to add to a vanishing than you might think), for a living, so . . . it just felt natural and normal to her that things could and should transition between different states of being.

Whatever she ended up doing though, she was reasonably certain medical uses of transfiguration would not be called for. She much preferred the more showy kinds of magic, and medical healers were, as a rule, far too serious and practical for her taste. Declaring "Ta-Da!" as you vanished a bone growth with a puff of smoke would be not only unprofessional but probably dangerous and she wanted no part in it.

Rosalynn did enjoy the extra precision of helper words in the incantation, and the warning that it might be a hinderance more than a help as there was bone that needed to stay where it was only made her feel she was being challenged in a way that made her more determined to try it and succeed.

Pointing her wand at the Grindlylow bone she'd been given to start with, Rosalynn cast, "Evanesco ossis!" and imagined one of the bumps smoothing out. The bone growth did vanish in it entirety, and she picked up the bone to inspect it closer, using her finger to prod at it and make sure she hadn't taken too much. It felt like there might be a slight indent in the bone now, and she frowned, and held it out to her neighbor. "Does that feel like I took too much to you, or is it okay?" She rubbed the spot in question. "Right here." It wasn't a deep depression, but she was pretty sure it was not entirely as straight as it could be. She just wasn't sure if it was bad enough to be considered a failed attempt.

1 Rosalynn Tellerman Noted and understood. 1520 0 5

Isla Brockert

February 14, 2023 1:31 AM

Indeed by Isla Brockert

Last year had been amazing for Isla. She’d really enjoyed the Challenges and bonding with most of her teammates. Winning had felt pretty good too. Plus, at the end of the year, there had been the Concert which, of course, meant doing a puppet show with the Performing Arts club. Both of these events had involved successful group collaborations and had been immensely satisfying

It was just unfortunate that it was over now. Isla was pretty sure she wouldn’t be spending much time with her Challenge teammates now. The two closest to age were Bonabelle and Hans, the former of whom didn’t seem to think anyone other than Val was worth her time-actually, all three of the seventh year Aladrens seemed to think they were better than everyone, she had to admit-and while maybe Hans would, Isla would feel weird about doing so without Liesl, and sort of like a third wheel hanging out with the two Tepps together.

Still, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. In fact, now that the Challenges were over, she could resume spending time with Rosalynn and Lorena. As much as she’d had fun and been proud of herself last year, she had missed hanging out with them as much as she usually did. And while it wasn’t quite the same as putting on a puppet show-or a production with both human and puppet parts-the Bonfire was pretty fun too. At least Isla wouldn’t have to worry about finding people to share a tent with, something she knew could be difficult for some. She doubted Olaf would have an especially easy time with it, for example. Although, that would be more due to the second year’s misanthropic ways than rejection by others.

Besides, Isla only had two more years at Sonora with her friends before she went off to the dreary dull world of society parties which had been every bit as boring as she had expected them to be. Regardless of whether or not this year had been as good as last year-and she would do all she could for it not to be a let down-it was an improvement over summer break. Okay, there were nice parts of vacation too, like seeing family that wasn’t at school with her-although that also unfortunately meant seeing Topaz and Uncle Eustace-the parties had been…mind numbingly uninteresting. Isla didn’t have quite the same loathing and impatience for small talk as Olaf or Grandfather, but she still felt like, in addition to being exceedingly dull, was much too superficial for her liking.

And some of the people were so… mean , being catty and gossiping behind people’s backs. The Aladren knew people would not dare say things to her face, but she couldn’t help but wonder what they were saying about her behind her back or even just thinking about her. Maybe, much like a few people here at Sonora that were not that nice, she did not need their approval, but she didn’t want to be around them either.

Plus, Isla was sort of…alone at these parties. Esme and Amethyst actually liked these things. Allegra didn’t, but she had Josh now. Maybe when Liesl attended them, they could just be miserable together. At the same time, the sixth year was afraid it would be even worse for her cousin than it was for her. She was currently picturing the younger girl being forced into attire that did not suit her. The Teppenpaw’s parents, her mother in particular, were not especially understanding people.

Anyway, for now, Isla was at Sonora, determined to enjoy and appreciate it while she could.Currently, she listened to Professor Skies give them their lesson for the day. While medical transfig was not something that she felt particularly enthused about, not, for example, how Ian seemed to be, it was interesting enough and a lot more so than small talk at parties. Today, they were even having a practical lesson. Isla was unlikely to ever need to remove growths from a grindylow bone specifically, but she was pretty sure that this was a way of practicing vanishing skills more generally. Which was one of those things that was probably considered a life skill even if it wasn’t readily apparent how.

She received her bone and looked it over. There were two fairly large growths on it and one pretty small one that she almost did not spot at first. Isla decided to start with the biggest of the three and pictured it disappearing. “ Evanesco ”. It appeared to vanish, or at significantly shrink. She ran a finger over the spot where it had been, feeling just a small bump now.

Isla was just about to start on the next one, when Rosalynn spoke. She looked at her friend’s bone. “I mean, it’s not perfect,but it’s not a complete failure. Mine is sort of the opposite, I didn’t take quite enough.” Almost, but she was not going to brag.

After all, people bragging was another thing she didn’t like about attending parties.

11 Isla Brockert Indeed 1521 0 5

Ian Malone

February 15, 2023 4:49 AM

It's something anyway by Ian Malone

It had been a tremendous relief when Ian received his CATS scores. Just because he had not had a difficult time with the actual test and had known the answers-and learned that test examiners weren’t necessarily horrible soul-sucking creatures on par with dementors-did not mean he hadn’t still been worried that he’d still not done well enough to continue with every subject that he needed in order to be a Healer.

Especially when it came to DADA. Ian had passed his CATS, but he was sort of dreading taking Advanced classes in it. He understood that he needed to be able to recognize and treat wounds and conditions that were caused by dark creatures and dark magic, but he dreaded things that he was not as good at such as fighting against said things, and dueling against his much more capable classmates.

What if, because Ian couldn’t do those things well, he ended up flunking Advanced DADA and his DADA RATS, and then could not be a Healer? Nothing would be worse than doing everything else right and then not being able to fulfill his lifelong dream of helping people with immune deficiencies because he wasn’t athletic enough to be good at dueling and did not want to hurt people. The idea that Ian’s life could be ruined because of something that wasn’t even important or necessary for what he wanted to do, not to mention the fact that people could die ,

People who could possibly leave behind children like him and his sister. The Teppenpaw had grown up being completely terrified of something happening to his mom, that she’d catch some horrible disease and die. He still worried about this frequently and it bothered him immensely to think about someone going through that. So, Ian wanted to do whatever he could to prevent that from happening. He certainly did not want that spoiled because of something as irrelevant to his future as dueling skills.

Actually, even if it wasn’t a potential matter of life and death to someone, it would still be pretty awful to be kept from your goals because of a lack of skill in something that you would never actually need to use in achieving them. Ian was never going to be tough or fast or in any way athletic, nor would he ever be comfortable with using a harmful spell on someone. It did not mean he wouldn’t be a good Healer.

On the other hand, Transfiguration was a class where the sixth year felt fairly confident. Which might be why he did not worry as much about it. He was even happy to hear that they would be doing a medical unit, although he was a bit disappointed that it would be mostly theoretical. While it was important for Ian to know that too, it did make him just a little…annoyed that he had to suffer through all the completely irrelevant to his future things in DADA that he did not like doing, did not want to do, and wasn’t good at, but would get very little practice doing things he actually needed to know how to do. True, as far as Ian knew, nobody else wanted to be a Healer so medical transfiguration wasn’t especially useful to them,that the professors could not tailor lessons to the needs of individual students, because that would be incredibly unfair to everyone else but…he had to do things that wouldn’t be useful to him. And, again, they included things that he sucked at. Which was also unfair.

He supposed that he should just be glad that they were actually going to do a practical lesson today. Maybe removing bone growths wouldn’t be his specialty, but that was fine because Ian certainly had never expected that -and now he really really didn’t-but that did not mean he wasn’t interested in learning how to do it. It was still medically related after all. The Teppenpaw might actually use it.

Ian examined his bone which had two nice sized growths on it. He drew his wand and pictured it as a nice smooth growth free bone-which was fairly easy, given that he knew what a bone was supposed to look like. “ Evanesco ” He targeted one of the growths. It shrunk significantly but did not quite disappear. He frowned and was just about to try again when the person next to him spoke to him.

11 Ian Malone It's something anyway 1522 0 5