Thinking quickly, Jaren pulled out a small raisin from his pocket (it was actually meant for Alucard, but the bat liked fresh fruit anyways) and stuck it onto the end of the long pink...appendage, while shrugging slightly to stop Edgar from reaching over and eating Puffles' tongue.

Slouching in her chair, Arkee twirled her curly hair with her wand, where it all eventually tangled and stuck. Unable to remove the wand (despite her most valiant efforts), she gave up and complacently let it hang.

She rested her chin on her palm as she observed the Slytherin Prefect, who was sitting in front of her, plucking a pygmy puff from his ear.

"You know," she began with a yawn, "It says a lot about a person who is well-liked to animals. I don't know what 'it' is, or what 'it' says a lot about, but I'm sure it's all very interesting."

Puffles pulled its tongue in again much like a frog, pleased by the small treat and showing it by purring a bit more out of appreciation. The tongue was out again, looming like a teasing menace. It dived again but this time rounding Jaren's face though other shoulder (not where Edgar was perched) and attacked Arkee's face instead. Well, from her angle, it wasn't much her face... more like her open eyeball...

Arkee yelped in horror, jumping up and down and trying to pry the creature off of her face.

"DEAR MERLIN IT'S LICKING MY EYEBALL!" she wailed, "AND IT BURNS! GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!"

Jaren sighed. It was just a tongue, not the entire fuzzy creature...batting an eager Edgar away the Slytherin boy pinched Puffles' tongue lightly and pulled it off and away from Arkee with a kind of a sticky "snap" noise like chewing gum being pulled off of something.

Inhibited not to said scared of the girl screaming about its eyeball, Puffles retrived its tongue immediately, though Jaren's fingers, and jumped off Jaren's hands into his desk, and then onto the rubes of the student before Jaren, aiding itself with the tongue to climb again. But because it didn't find a place to actually grip on, the togue rounded itself like a rope around the student(Erica)'s ear.

Meanwhile, Nadia finally turned around to the source of the commotion. There was Arkee, talking about a burning eyeball, one of her eyes shut which was... a rather musing sign while she tried to actually sound dramatical. she looke around, however, and couldn't understand what she was talking about, who was licking her or what.

Arkee recoiled as the sticky tongue was forcibly removed from her eye. She rubbed her eye and wonderingly regarded her saviour.

"You, sir," she said to Jaren with solemnity, taking his hand into hers, "Are truly a knight in shining armour. I believe I owe you what is known as a wizard's life debt?"

As per usual, Arkee had blown this little incident way out of proportion.

Ozzy took a seat near the front of the class and placed his quill, black ink bottle and a piece of parchment on top of his desk afterward he steepled his fingers and and waited for the lesson to begin.

"Save yourself the trouble," Jaren muttered, rearranging a few of his things that Puffles had knocked about on his desk.

ooc: Okay I think we need to calm down and wait quietly for class to begin.

Nadia frowned at the scene, maybe even glared. It seemed like an excuse to call him that, if you asked her. Her attention was dragged away by a pink stuff on the corner of her eyes that... would get anybody attention when it was climbing up a person's ear.

Eyes wide in surprise and something else, Nadia jumped up from her desk, hitting with her hips said desk with all its content - her eyes retuned to the ink bottle, catching it and a couple other things before it fell on the floor.

"I'm sorry, it's mine - sorry, professor," she appologized all the way to where Erica had been with the pygmy puff tied to its ear with its tongue. It took a little more work to pray the creature off the ear. "I don't know how it reached it up here, ah, sorry." She continued forcing it until grabbing Puffles and taking it with her back to the desk, blushing.

(Let us remember she didn't even realize what Puffles had been doing only minutes before, either.)

Professor Dainsie walks forward to Nadia's desk and places some food on, the puff stopping its roaming and tucking into it.

"Hello everyone! I hope you are all well. Today we shall be talking about the reality of mythical creatures; the existence of beings that are thought to be purely 'fairy-tales'.

For centuries, Muggles have created fantastical stories about animals they claim to have seen. Most of these muggles were thought crazy and were shunned by the Muggle community, and yet the stories still lived on. What they didn't realise, was that the stories, or parts there of, were actually true.

They were usually created by an unsuspecting muggle stumbling upon a stray creature, or the drunken tale of a misguided witch or wizard at the local pub. I can remember reading about Gladys Bogdan, a Scottish witch, who told all the local muggles about her encounter with a dragon, then promptly lead them to it when they refused to believe her. The obliviators had a hard time that day, and she was fined by the Ministry for wilfully exposing the muggles to the magical world, and for leading them to a dangerous creature.

Does anyone know of any similar stories that have happened involving a mythical beast?

[OOC: Make it up and be very specific and creative. The best ones will receive points.]

Jaren raised his hand. "There was one incident in the winter of 2030 which involved a man who claimed to have seen a group of four-footed bird-Martians dancing in his field...he even took tour groups of regulars from the local bar to his field at night whenever he felt that it was 'the night' for the Martians to land. It turned out that his tour guided group was either too drunk to provide reliable witness or he mis-estimated the date. It turned out to be a few Hyppogriffs grazing."

Noel watched the pygmy puff incidents and stiffled a laugh, then she raised her hand, "I happen to know of a classic muggle novel written about the phoenix. It's called The Phoenix and the Carpet and is written by E. Nesbit."

She nodded. "Yes Jaren, but be more specific, like names and dates etc."

Turning to Noel she said, "Yes, that's a good one, but a mooncalf isn't really a mythical creature... Come on everyone! What about stories about dragons and unicorns, or griffins and phoenix, or even centaurs! There have been many sightings by muggles, so you should have heard atleast 1 story."

Ozzy looked up at the Professor. He took his quill and loaded it up with ink. He scribbled down some notes then pondered about whether he had ever heard of a tale involving a mythical beast. When nothing came to mind he simply decided to listen rather than present one.

"I heard of a unicorn that ran wild in a muggle town, trampling cabbage and such. The ministry had a large amount of memory to modify. And the cabbages had to be replaced, as well. I think it was sometime in the 1400's."

Nadia thought for a moment, wanting to redeen herself of what happened while Puffles tucked in. She raised her hand, "There was this incident of the Department of Magical Creatures that was quite famous, a couple of years ago.

"They were trying out new people for staff at a muggle yard, real-life experience kind of thing. Because the man in charge of an evaluation of a newcomer started flirting with her, instead of watching gnomes at the place, they never realized there was a growing group of muggles watching what was described as 'little men running from an overgrown up chicken', a Hippogriff.

"The catch-phrase the wizard used, "Does 'care of magical creatures' includes magical humans?" became famous after that incident."

She pondered for a bit, "But to be quite honest I don't remember the name of the man. Mr Hopper? I think it was."

Linnea raised her hand. "My uncle told me the story of the time he met a red dragon and was able to communicate with it. He promised to save her egg, and she promised not to eat him. My grandfather also encountered a dragon, though his wasn't so friendly. It had been torturing a villiage, they had to go off and pretend to slay the animal while the local ministry, knowing it was too big of an area, started to just spin about other decent sized 'normal' creatures that they just mistook for a dragon."

Kali remembered a story she heard once. She raised her hand and answered, "When I was visiting my aunt one summer a couple years ago, she told us a story about a muggle who swore they saw a baby unicorn. It was a friend of a friend of my uncle's, Kenneth Hark I think his name was, and he said that while he was drving he saw one peering out of a nearby forest. The man ran and told everybody that would listen how he saw the unicorn. Predictably, his muggle aquaintances didn't believe him, he was after all a drunk. Later the police heard about him and hauled him away, to one of the psych wards at the local hospital."

Noel wrote down some of the answers.

ooc: Dainsie read my edit.

Her hand still raised up, she went on, "Well, there was also this winged horse... It got temporarily blind after a spell accident at the farm it was being raised, at St. Ottery Catchpole, and it soared though the city sky one evening, wearing a couple of things it didn't realized to be carrying along, including as pair of old woman knickers." Well, she shoudn't tell... "Its journey ended when it crashed into a building face first and landed on a building roof. They never quite erased all of the muggles' memories."

"Likewise, there's this muggle story... maybe a legend... about an unicorn transfigured into an human not to be caught by treasure hunters. Judging by the records, no name was registered, this woman's. It occurred on the island of Drear, though, contemporary times.

"Oppossitely, I heard of this farse about a woman turning as phoenix into a violin. He became a famous person, this... Dora Folk-- no, Follicle. Made it look the music came from her and made touching music from her abilities but, well, it turned to be a cheat. This was recent and she last performed on a presentation at the Louvre where the magic failed and the phoenix escaped.

"And... " Could she tell about her own experience with Sparky? No. Probably not a good idea, besides it wasn't that interesting. She shook her head, "no, nothing."

Lacie walked in the classroom, and found a seat in front row. She grabbed her notebook with her quill and ink bottle. She thought to herself, "I am so ready." She heard what Linnea said, "That is better than my story; My Middle Ages grandfather which who was a muggle, He fought off a dragon but almost died to save my grandmother. If he died I wouldn't be here today. He fought the dragon by 10 inch silver sword by I seem to forget the type of dragon. He struck it a couple of thousand times till it fell to it's grave. Now that is how to slay the dragon. Even muggles maybe at that time could fight off a dragon on his own." She smiled after her grandfather's story.

5 points to Nadia, cooki and Kali.

Ok, we're going to talk about Dragon's first. They are probably the most famous of all mythical creatures, but are also highly useful by magical terms. Can anyone name 2 parts of a dragon that have highly magical properties?

"Dragon blood has twelve uses," Jaren offered after raising his hand.

"The heartstring is commonly used in wands," Anila supplied, smiling slightly. Her own wand core was that of a dragon heartstring.