Austin entered the CoMC classroom, sitting down. He waited for the class to start.

"Good day!.. Alright settle down in order to commence the lesson, if you haven't opened your book yet. Then please do so for reference" he sat on his desk to face the class.

"Today we will cover Dark Magical Creatures. I dearly hope you won't encounter any until you fully contain the knowledge of handling them. Hopefully this lesson will help you. Can someone please define the term 'Dark Creatures' for me and everyone in the class? What makes a creature so dark?".



Reminder: Class duration is 24-48 hours so it will be intermittent occasionally to try and cover all time zones.

"Dark Creatures are naturally magic animals that seek to harm people without being provoked in anyway. They are all considered to be evil and embodiment of dark magic." Austin said.

Punzel raised her hand to respond.

"A dark creature is...er, don't they usually intentionally seek to harm anyone who crosses their path?" she answered hesitantly. "Or, dark creatures could have been bred for malicious intents and purposes..."

"A dark creature is one that has dark connections, but are not neccessarily evil," Marco said, raising his hand

"A creature is classified as a 'Dark creature' by the Ministry when the creature can do considerable damage in ways other magical creatures cannot--for instance, dementors are Dark creatures, and they are capable of sucking out their victims' souls after making anyone in the area vividly remember their worst memories. The trade of Dark creatures is usually forbidden by the Ministry as well. Dark creatures also often do not have a complete life cycle the way a typical animal would but exist simply as a physical extension of an evil intention."

Ems raised her hand "Dark creatues are magical in nature. Some often do not have a complete life cycle the way a typical animal would but exist simply as a physical extension of an evil intention. And they seek actively to harm, often for no other reason than that's what they do."

"A dark creature is called dark, because they basically live to do harm." Savannah responded to the question, hand raised.

"But not all dark creatures seek to do harm," Marco tried to say, "The Thestral is said to be a dark creature. But it does no harm what so ever. But it is dark because of its death connection."

Dia smiled toward Marco. "Exactly so."

Ems raised her hand. “Are Thestrals dark, sir?” Ems asked Professor Clark a bit puzzled. "I thought their dark creature classification was a myth, based on the fact that they are associated with death.

Alexis raised her hand " A dark creature, seeks to harm for the sake of harm, not for its own survival."

"These are all good answers, 2 points each!" Fabian murmured with a smile, "Marco proves a fairly good point. Not all dark creatures are evil, but caution is always necessary.




"I'm afraid so" Fabian murmured, "its superstition that started many years ago due to the fact one can only see thestrals once they see a person die. Which started off as a bad omen i believe.. quite untrue of course. But, we cannot deny that they are attracted to the scent of blood and that what classifies them as dark.. just as Vampires" he said the last work with attempted spookiness.

"How can you differentiate a dark creature from a milder or regular creature if you encounter one?"

ooc: Feel free to be creative with your answer =)

"Dark creatures can be differentiated by their intent. For instance, a kappa is fond of strangling people in the water. The Banshee's screams will kill a person. Red cap bludgeon unususpecting travellers so that they can use their blood to stain their cloth caps red... and of course, dementors will suck your happiness and even your soul." Xana said.

"There are many ways you could, sir--I personally know most Dark creatures' appearences by heart, but someone who has not memorized them could always tell by means of the fact that most have a slightly 'disquieting' look to them if you please--a dementor is practically a skeleton, a chimaera is a mixture of creatures, really, a boggart takes shape of your worst fear, etc." Dia answered. "As these creatures mostly live for harming other living things, some might have some special adaptation that allows them to harm, like talons, sharp fangs, venom, et cetera. Also if you encountered one, you may recognize it as it may be attempting to harm you as normal magical creatures wouldn't." she added dryly.

" a milder or regular creature won't try to kill or hurt you."

"A dark creature..." Austin began saying, before he realized that he really did not know the answer. "...dont have complete life cycles, but you could only discover that be observation and not just if you encountered and dark creature" Austin hoped that he was making sense, althought he doubted it.

Marco raised his hand, "Sir are you suggesting that vampires are bad? Because I know for a fact that not all are bad. Some decide against it. I only know one that is controlled by the blood lust."

"A milder creature won't try to bite your arm off. That is why I am classing snakes as dark creatures. Especially basilisks. They are are bad. They will kill you. Also a dark creature will eat a steak if you hand them one."

"Snakes don't bite your arm off, Marco, if anything they swallow you whole," Dia smiled evilly.

"A snake tried to eat my hand off. I wouldn't put it past it to have eaten my arm as well," Marco said, eyeing Dia. "If it was big enough it would eat me whole."

"with the up coming quidditch match would that have been a bad thing?"

"Ah, please, Marco. It was more afraid of you than you were of it. Merely defending itself. Imagine if someone one hundred times your size picked you up and was jostling you around, observing you." Dia shook her head, looking back up to the front of class. She didn't want to lose Slytherin points, after all.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. Marco and Dia were being a childish... great.

"I do not like the classification of dark professor, I think it is the way a creature is brought up. You can find the tamest, more sweetest occamy, but there are chihuahuas that will chew your ankles to threads.

The way I would distinguish the creatures is looking in their eyes. They are the window to their soul and I believe you can tell if the creature is dark that way..."

Then Cassandra rolled her eyes and added "If you were looking at Ministry classification, then any creature who isn't small, soft and cuddly, then they are dark."

Dia listened to this and rolled her eyes. What about a cerberus? If a cerberus was advancing upon you, would you really be looking into its eyes to find out if it was truly Dark or not? No!

"Trelawney makes an interesting point. Is it nurture or nature that determines a creature's traits? Should we assume every hinkypunk is dark and therefore bad? And vampires-- what of those? I know of some nice ones... Is the label really a fair one? Though... I wouldn't want to stare down a creature just to determine its intent, that's just flat-out foolish. " She rolled her eyes at the idea. "But there has to be a better way... is casting the label of 'dark creatures' across all these species really the right thing to do?"