Nat had taken off her earmuffs, she knew there were other people working with Fwoopers, but her's was silenced. So she should be okay.. should at least. Walking over to her Fwooper she reached up to touch it. They were friendly right? Okay maybe this one was a bit sassy since it just snapped at her before going back to singing. Just as she was about to look to see what else she could do she heard a voice and turned.

A smile grew as she moved closer to the first year. He had been in a few of her classes but she hadn't talked to him much. "Hi, sure I can help you." Slipping her earmuffs back on, she lifted her wand, "Now the Silenco isn't hard if you get the jab right. To soft isn't going to work, but to hard could silence someone near the bird instead of the bird." As she did the movement for him she said the words and the bird kept singing but the sound did not touch their ears.

"Finte" The birds sound came back to their ears. "Your turn."

Miranda listened and watched as the professor revealed to the class the fwoopers they had on each of their tables... They were a pretty enough bird... As birds go... But time was of the essence... Randa didn't want to get caught without the pair of earmuffs when these things started to sing.. So, she got up and made her way up to the front of the class area and took a pair of sky blue muffs... She had always liked that color so obviously when she saw them she grabbed them before anyone else could.

She went back to her desk and looked the fwooper over more closely. Miranda had the feeling that the bird before her was a female so she decided to name it gertrude... Why that name of all names?... Miranda didn't quite know.. She just looked like a Gertie so , whynot , yeah?


Gertie was very pretty the longer she examined her... She reached out to see if Gertie would let her pet her and to her great surprise Gertie pushed her head into Miranda's hand as if to say , " Pet me" So... Randa with a smile on her face stroked the creatures head and made a new friend with her Magical creature for the day...

Azura dared to lift her ear muffs to see if her spell had worked.. It hadn't.. which Az didn't really think it would have.. Trying out an OWL level spell non verbally? It would have been amazing if she HAD got it.

She readjusted her earmuffs and smiled again at the Fwooper. "Well that didn't work now did it?" She said with a nod as she watched the Fwooper sing and chatter at her for a moment.. Thankfully her earmuffs were keeping her brain sane enough to think and what not..

All right.. Azura closed her eyes and focused on the spell. Visualizing the Fwooper going silent. She opened her eyes and then did the jabbing motion with her want towards the Fwooper as she said "Silencio!"

She tilted her head for a moment as she watched the bird.. she could still see it's mouth moving but had the spell worked?

She cautiously lifted a bit of her ear muff...

Ackkkkkk! Still singing out louddddd!

She hurriedly flattened the ear muff down and then took a deep breath.. she needed to try it again!

She closed her eyes and stilled her mind, focusing on her intent and then opened her purple orbs and jabbed her wand towards the Fwooper again..

"Silencio!"

Azura tilted her head to the side as she slowly lifted her ear muff and she grinned..

Silence!

Yayyyyyyy! She had done it!

She smiled as she started to play with her Fwooper.. "Look how pretty you are! " The fourteen year old cooed as she moved her fingers towards the cage..

Yessssss, it was time to begin. Despite not putting much effort at all into her practice, Aoife had nothing but confidence flowing through her bones as she faced her Fwooper. She tapped her earmuffs, making sure they were still there, and gawped at the creature. Actually, she didn't really trust these earmuffs to keep her from going insane at all. But after giving the professor one final glance, she decided to put all faith into him.

It didn't take much of her staring to set the bird off with its song. Her head tilted to the side briefly as she watched it in awe.

You know... it really didn't sound that bad.

It was kinda.... nice.

...............

Aoife held her hands against both ends of her earmuffs and she was half tempted to take them off to hear the song fully, but a sudden blink snapped her out of it. Uhhh, what was the spell again? She pointed her wand at the bird and racked her brain quickly before trying. Silencio. Silencio. Silence-something.

"Silenc-iooh!!" She jabbed, with slight exaggeration on the end of the incantation.

Charlotte's fwooper still wasn't singing, was it? Unless it was doing a heretofore undiscovered closed beak variety of singing. Also she realised that testing it would be hard anyway cos if anyone close to her messed up she'd hear THEIR bird and they'd all go a bit crazy wouldn't they? This was just more material to convince her that listening to the baby fwoopers was the fun option. Way more fun than doing the charms.

But, motivation! Duels! She could do this! Just to be sure, Char practiced a few more jabs with her wand. Still nothing from the fwooper....

.... she jabbed it very very very gently with her wand tip. Come on! Come on fwooper! Do something!

Aaaaaaand... it hadn't worked. The Fwooper didn't even flinch, not even phased by her mad jabbing, so she knew it was definitely not going to plan. Aoife lowered her wand for a second and tapped her chin with a spare finger. Jab. Silenciooooooh. But less 'oh'. It sounded much easier when going over it in her head. After glancing around at the room, she felt comfort that her classmates weren't all getting it first time either. It wasn't the end of the world for a second year, perhaps.

She cleared her throat, and suddenly wondered if she was allowed to pet the Fwooper. Maybe if she befriended it, it would hush and do what she wanted.

Distracted, Aoife dropped her wand to her feet and reached out to slooooooowly pet the cute little bird on its cute little head.

Paige's spell ended up blasting her fwooper right in the face and practically down its through thanks to its curiosity about her wand...so there was very little doubt that it had hit its target. The earmuffs, of course, prevented her from knowing whether or not it had actually worked...and a few glances around the classroom and nearby desks made Paige reluctant to remove her earmuffs in case she were to catch the song of a nearby fwooper and get second hand insanity - or first hand?

It was this glance around that caused her blue eyes to fall on Tenacius - who she STILL had not thanked for the chocolate frog rain on the train - and...his panic? Insanity? The Hufflepuff wasn't sure which at this point but her eyes had honed in and focused on him intently.

Given their somewhat close proximity, Paige leaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaned over and jabbed him in the side with her wand. "O K A Y?" she mouthed slowly - earmuffs and all - while giving a questioning look while her finger circled round to touch her thumb in an open circle.

Meanwhile her own fwooper had taken into a panic now that its voice was gone and was hoping around it's cage frantically while flapping its wings...and there may have been a slight wobble to the cage because of it. Quite the strong magical bird despite its deceptively small size.

Still observing the young fwooper observing herself, Brooklyn kept her wand at the ready. She wasn’t about to make any mistakes that might rend her acting, well, not like herself. She hadn’t had any luck when not acting like herself before, and therefore she absolutely wasn’t going to suddenly decide to do so now. It was a matter of self-preservation, kept up by her having kept her earmuffs solidly on her ears. Even if she hadn’t seen any evidence of her fwooper wanting to sing, she wasn’t going to give it the honor of singing to her. Instead, she was just going to wait until it stopped giving her that curious look.

Plus, she still hadn’t abandoned her idea of trying to do the entire activity completely silently. Silencio was honestly much too simple to do the easy way. She merely raised an eyebrow at the bird, continuing to watch it even as it had opened its beak. Apparently now was as good a time as any to see how her nonverbal spellcasting was going. Raising her wand, she performed a single jabbing motion toward the small fwooper. Silencio!, she thought, focusing all her intentions on the spell.

Eeepp! The fwooper baby turned and nipped at her wand then started its song. Yay! Char pulled her wand away and readjusted her earmuffs. Now it was time to try and do the spell.

.... if she could. Maybe.

Of course she could! A fifth year spell wasn't beyond her, especially not one that was useful in duels!

She focused as hard as she could. All the intent. She wanted to silence the baby fwooper. Silence. It was important. People couldn't be driven insane after all, they wouldn't be able to look after their pet fwoopers if they were! This was good motivation!

Okay.

"Silencio!" Char jabbed her wand.

The Fwooper baby birds were pretty stinking cute, which made up for the fact that the earmuffs were just NOT. Katy wasn't excited about snugging those monsters down over her ear and potentially smushing her hair. But... anything for science. Or whatever.

She slipped on the earmuffs to get them out of the way and then picked up her wand. The thing was... she wouldn't know if her spell worked until she removed the earmuffs, but if she removed them too soon, she'd regret it. As in 'Katy the Crazypants' kind of regret.

"Silencio." Katy practiced the incantation, laughing quietly at herself as she realized she couldn't hear herself at all. "Silencio. Silencio. Silencio."

Ohh, there was a baby bird on her desk now! And it was SO cute! And pretty! Rula definitely enjoyed the bright colors. It was a shame that the fwoopers grew up to have such a dangerous sound - such pretty birds ought to have pretty songs to sing to go along with it.

But she supposed it was a way for them to protect themselves, and that was understandable. She couldn't fault them for that.

"Hi, pretty little bird," she said to the baby fwooper, adjusting the earmuffs on her head as the bird tilted its head at her. Was it...?

Oh, yep, there was the singing. She watched it open its mouth a few times, slightly curious about what it would sound like if she took off her earmuffs.

Not curious enough to actually risk it though, not even for just a couple hours.

All the jabbing and pointing with her wand could only get Katy so far, and she had to actually cast the spell to keep her tiny baby bird thing from making people go all cray. Much as it made her uncomfortable to point a wand at an animal (not like people, she loved pointing wands at people), it seemed safe enough.

Worst case scenario, her spell didn't work and she got to try it again.

Worster case... she set the baby on fire. So that was what she was NOT going to do.

Wand flick and "Silencio," and Katy felt pretty confident that her spell had worked. How could she tell, though? Again, if she pulled off her earmuffs and the bird was still singing, she'd be feeling the pain for a long long time.

Not to mention her classmates might not be as adept at spell casting as she was. She'd cast it again for good measure. "Silencio. Silencio."

So now she should probably get to the silencing. Which wasn't too hard of a task since Rula had learned and practiced the spell quite a bit for OWLs and, technically, dueling, although she hadn't actually used it yet in a duel. Maybe a strategy to consider for a future duel? Hmmm...

Okay, but first, focus on this bird. Right.

She pointed her wand at the baby fwooper. "Sorry, birdie." It seemed like the polite thing to do first, even if the creature didn't really understand her. Then she jabbed her wand and cast, "Silencio."

... had it worked? The baby fwooper was quiet again but did that mean that the spell had worked? Charlotte gently nudged it again with her wand and it opened its beak. She didn't hear anything through her earmuffs.... but maybe it was tricking her, maybe the silencing spell hadn't worked and the baby fwooper was just waiting for her to take off the earmuffs and then drive her crazy for a couple of hours.

...... time to be brave and try anyway! Char cautiously lifted up on side of the earmuffs and waited in anticipation.

WASSHECRAZYYET?

See the trouble with silencing something with earmuffs on was that you could never be to sure it was actually silenced. Sure she could lift the flap of her earmuff for a brief second in time to test that it had worked but in a classroom of students all doing the same was it worth that risk? Not to her. She didn't fancy hearing the song of her Fwooper or anyone else's for that matter. Baby or no baby.

Having full confidence in herself Hady wouldn't be testing it out. Nope. Aiming her wand at the young caged Fwooper on her desk. Casting a quiet 'finite' she went ahead to recast 'silencio' gently jabbing her wand in the direction of the bird.

The only proof it had worked at all was the birds opening and closing of it's mouth in what appeared to be a confused fashion. Like someone trying to speak but realizing they could no longer hear themselves. "Sorry little one it's just for a little while," she whispered reaching forward with her free hand and sticking a finger through the slots of the cage to gentle stroke it's feathers. It really was a quite pretty bird.

Making sure her earmuffs were in place, because um.... THIS WAS TERRIBLY EXCITING, okay?? Olivia readied her wand. With Silencio! being a charm, the probability of her having marked success was much higher than if it were to be a transfiguration spell, so she had practiced with confidence, going through it's awkward motion several times over to familiarize herself. Side note, this was probably a strategy she could implement in dueling, as they weren't doing non!verbals yet. Not in her age group, anyway.... Something to consider for later, yas!

Hmmm.... And the Silencio! incantation was simple. So, there would more than likely be no terrible mix-ups or mistakes.

HMMMM.

The professor had mentioned them being younger, as well, and that was apparently meant to make a difference. Probably as it did with mandrakes, too... like the infant mandrake's cries were less lethal than an adult mandrake's...

Anyway, yes.... moving forward to select one of the babies for herself, so she could have her very own fwooper to work with, yay!....Olivia eyed it for a moment. It had yet to try and start its song, but she was tempted to let it? Um, because Gryffindor curiosity was definitely a real thing. But that would probably be bad for her... and anyone around her, and she couldn't be selfish in that way.

"I'm sorry, bby!fwooper." Aiming her wand, Liv deliberately muttered Silencio!

Soooooooooooo close............. to touching.......... the prettttttty fwooper...

In fact, she did touch the fwooper. For one split second before realising - EW... she didn't want to touch a smelly bird that didn't look particularly well groomed at all. What was WRONG with her?! Her hand snapped back and she quickly picked up her wand before anyone noticed her moment of weakness. Annoyed that the bird had gotten the better of her, Aoife frowned hard at it, jabbed her wand right in its face and said, "Silencio!" But the song went on. And on. And on, on, on...

To a point where it actually was becoming annoying instead of nice.

Aoife was struggling. And she hated struggling, but more than that, she hated to admit that she was struggling. Fighting back angsty tears, Aoife decided she would have one more go before giving up entirely. "Silencio!" She jabbed but as expected, nothing changed.

"Will you be quiet?!?! Silencio!"

"Silencio!"

JAB. "SILENCIO!!" The last one was with FEELING. She would've kept going but she felt a sudden silence from in front of her. With her mouth half open to say it again, Aoife suddenly GAWPED at her handiwork. She had just SILENCED a CREATURE with MAGIC. Was the professor witnessing this???

Jonas nodded and took out his wand and cleared his throte.
"Silencio" Jonas said making his jab a bit more prominent. But not too hard. The bird kept singing but it was silent.
"Hey,thanks. I'm Jonas by the way" he said.

Kitty gasped in awe as her Fwooper was revealed right in front of her. Hers was bright pink and reminded her very much of cotton candy. It stared right back at, silent and still except for blinking with its golden eyes.

"Um...okay, let's do this..." The Fwooper was actually pretty cool, just she didn't want to alarm it by making sudden movements. Her earmuffs probably worked, but sometimes she got paranoid about such things.

Slowly she raised her wand. The Fwooper watched in silence.

"Silencio!" she shouted, jabbing her wand the way the professor had showed them.

.... So, the bad news was that.... um, perhaps a bit more practice wouldn't have gone amiss.

As soon as her fwooper got it into his mind to actually open it's small mouth, there was noticeable, audible sound coming from it. So, CLEARLY.... her Silencio! had been unsuccessful. UM.... Well, she had these wonderful earphones on, so... that was something at least?

"Silenco!" Olivia was refocusing her wand, not rushing herself so much...but definitely feeling the pressure of getting it right as quickly as possible. Not for herself, but for those around her that may not have had their earmuffs properly in place. The professor has mentioned that a fwooper's song could drive a person insane..... Merlin, could you imagine being the culprit?? If your failed spell was the one responsible?

"SILENCIO!" Liv finally had to shout the spell, which immediately shut the dangerous songbird up. Merlin's hair..... What was wrong with her today?! She was just having a crap magic experience. Charms were supposed to be easier...

"You're definitely more trouble than your worth, little buddy. No matter how precious and ickle you look."

The thought that it would be nearly impossible to tell if her spell had worked had occurred to Brooklyn. She still wasn’t planning on taking her earmuffs off in any case. No matter her determination not to fail when spells were involved, her sanity was more important. She decided she was just going to need to depend on her earlier observation of her baby fwooper, the little things it had been doing before she’d cast the charm. In some ways, it wasn’t that different from her gyrfalcon, although Cat was much less risky when it came to psychological effects.

Lowering her wand just the slightest little bit, she watched the bird as it continued opening and closing its beak. It looked like it was still singing, but then in some ways, it looked like it wasn’t. She leaned closer, as if that would help her tell which one was the right answer, and the fwooper gave her the most pathetic look possible. “Okay,” she said softly to herself, even though she couldn’t really hear her voice. “I guess that means I’m safe.” She still wasn’t removing her earmuffs, though.

Did it work?

Rula watched as the baby fwooper opened its mouth again...then abruptly closed it. It stared at her for a few moments then started looking around its cage, as if searching for something. So that...meant her spell worked, yes?

It seemed like it!

"I'm sure the spell will be canceled soon, don't worry," she said, reaching a finger into the cage to pet it. The fwooper moved away from her and eyed her finger intensely.

Okay, no petting then. Apparently it wasn't very happy about not being able to sing. Which was understandable. Rula would probably be upset too if she were in its shoes - er...feathers?

The cage continued to wobble a bit, but Paige's attention was elsewhere...which was a mistake as in the next instant the lime green fwooper had knocked the cage's center of balance off and sent itself tumbling off the desk and too the ground. CRASH...and the door was ajar. Thankfully, the Hufflepuff's spell HAD worked and the magical bird was silenced...but that did nothing to its instinct of fight or flight which, in this situation, was flight.

Off it went, vibrant green wings glistening in the sunlight and swooping around with fantastic agility.

EEEEEEEEEEEP!

Stumbling to her feet, Paige began chasing after the silent fwooper all the while apologizing for any desk or person she happened to knock into while doing so.

Help? How did one catch a fwooper?!

It felt like her spell-casting should have worked, especially since Silencio wasn't a super tricky spell. To Katy, at least, although she knew it was an OWL level and she ought to consider it more advanced. Charms were easy peasy, though, especially ones like this, where was motivated to be successful and her 'intent' was spot-on.

She'd just... give it a try, then, and hope that her baby Fwooper didn't make her totally short term crazy. Katy lifted one side of her earmuffs and cringed as baby Fwooper opened its beak to squeak at her. When nothing happened, Katy opened her eyes and peered at the bird, who was very obviously singing its heart out without a single sound emerging.

Charms Genius in the house!

Annnnnnyway, since her fwooper was now efficiently silenced, the Gryffindor could take a few relaxed moments to appreciate the birds unique look. You know, it reminded her of the muggle Looney Tune cartoons.... but funsized. The ones that looked like cousin It from the Addams Family movies.

Needless to say, it was VERY funny looking...and Liv was laughing at it's expense.

Out of all the Creature lessons they'd had so far this term, it was safe to say that this was not among one of her favorites. But then again, how could one top winged horses? One couldn't, that's how. Unless they were going to get dragons here somehow. That would probably be the only thing that could top the aforementioned creatures.

....and suddenly, her fwooper was vocal again. What in the heck?! Liv eyed her wand suspiciously. "What is going on with you?!" Talk about having an off day...

"Silencio!"........"Silencio!"

.

.

"Professor, these birds are frustrating."..........That was said just before an older Hufflepuff girl......Paige Skeeter, specifically, knocked her aside. O.O........ Hitting the ground, the Gryffindor OOMF'd! "Oi!".... What the heck was she doing, anyway?