Sophie didn't know there was a fanged version of Puffskeins! Blimey, that sounded a tad bit dangerous. The Hufflepuff also wondered whether Pygmy Puffs were still bouncy and if they minded being thrown about like Puffskeins. She wouldn never try that on a real Pygmy Puff, of course, but at the same time, she wasn't that curious about it and decided not to ask. Especially because she was getting distracted by all of that bouncing the creatures were doing.

Ways they could exercise and not get massive, hm? "We could take them for a walk? Like dogs." Was the first thing that came into her mind, probably because her mother was always going on about her dogs in every letter she sent Sophie now. It sounded like a plausible way as well, so why not? The girl did wonder, though, how on earth they would keep the Puffskeins still or behaving well during the walk, with all that bounciness and stuff.

Hmm. How to keep puffskeins from getting fat? And scaring them into running away was out of the question? Mo scratched his head before realizing how disgusted he was by his own thinning hair. Best not tempt those last strands into jumping ship.

"My bunny got fat, so I made him a little collar with a carrot that was attached out of reach, and he had to chase it around. He really hated it, but he hates lots of things, but it worked. I used his love of carrots against him." Okay, so maybe it was a one time experiment, and Titus had bitten Mo afterwards, but it had worked... one time.

Huh. Caleb didn't know how to control Puffskeins. This is why he liked dogs, they just DID the stuff you wanted them to do. He shrugged but decided to give it a shot anyways.

"Could you maybe provide them with distractions? Like fun toys and stuff. Also, don't feed them a lot. A lot of pets are overweight because their OWNERS overfeed them, so if you just don't give them access to food, they won't gain a ton of weight," he explained. Again, take dogs. They'd eat ALL DAY if they could.

Hmmm. This was rather interesting. Lux was thoughtful for a moment before raising her hand and offering a guess as to how people could motivate Puffskeins to get active. "Maybe make a trail of food for them to get them moving more as they eat along it? But like... use healthier foods so that they don't get super fat. Chocolate tastes nice, but can make you feel chubby. They like boogers, but I wouldn't leave a trail of those, because ewww." Boogers were gross.

Shudder.

"Is there such a thing as puffskein quidditch?" Yeah. It could be a sport, Alice decided. Miniature one, with the little balls on a broomstick held there by like ties and tiny gloves attached to their sides for catching or such. Surely, they'd catch the hang of it soon and would turn into tiny puff-jocks. Mhm. New breed of puffskein, the athletic kind.

... that didn't sound far-fetched, did it?

She would pay to see that, so it couldn't have been.

"I think you should reward them with a little treat and punish them for bad behavior, like give them a treat if they do what you say, hit them lightly if they do the wrong thing. Punishment for bad and award for good always worked fore growing up", Oichi replied with a smirk with her hand raised high.

"Sounds like a great life to me." The boy grinned at the thought of doing nothing but sleeping and eating. Anymore that was all he really wanted to do. It was so much effort getting up to go to classes and quidditch was getting harder and harder with this age thing. He glanced at the animals still thinking they were lame. He'd much rather be studying dragons or Hippogriffs right now.


Watching them bounce around the twelve year old actually felt jealous of them and their energy. He missed that energy and the want to run around like crazy. "Aren't they safe just in a cage like this one, then they can't really get to the extra things to eat, they have room to exercise, and you feed them so you know what they are eating?" Though the charms professor was here for a reason so maybe they would be doing a daydream charm on them, make them believe they were eating grass when they weren't or something.

Bay raised his hand and he hoped that he gave an actual answer this time.. *knocking on his head first* he started to talk "we could always try and get their attention with sparkly and maybe music toys.. and like play fetch with them to get their exercise?" he thought.. why not right.. if those were in front of him right now he would want to play with them for sure. quickly looking around to see if any of those objects were around… he didn't see any… sigh...

Sleeping, eating, and bouncing literally all of the time? Sign her up! That sounded so much better than watching her peers get old. Also you got to be REALLY CUTE! Not that the kid wasn't already. Caelen knew she was stinking adorable. Okay, maybe that was an exageration. But she was at least cute. That was true, right? And you got to be all fluffy. Which meant that the little Ravenclaw would always be nice and warm. Like wearing a bunch of fuzzy socks all over her body. Sometimes her mind felt like it was actually seven years old and she shouldn't be eleben. Like someone was allowing a seven year old to act like an eleven year old.

Anyway, taming the CUUUTE little things. How did that happen? Good question. The only thing she ever tamed was a enchanted garden gnome. And that was only because Rockwell charmed when he was bored one summer. The eleven year old ended up taming it and getting it to play tag one rainy day. Her mother didn't enjoy all of the mud on her clothes and sneakers, but it got her out of Rockwell's hair for the day and the blue eyed girl had fun. A lot of fun. Actually, they kept that garden gnome for a while after that and they always played games in the backyard.

Anyway,time to talk about taming. That was a lot of t's. Since she had no idea, she was going to wing it. And wing it hard. Time to think. Well maybe it was like taming a dog. You just had to be really clear and make sure that you were kind. Hey, just because the redhead never actually tamed a dog didn't mean she had no idea how.

"What if you did it like a dog? Taming I mean. Lots of good reinforcement and continue the commands clearly and firmly?" Like a dog. At least that's how Calen thought you trained a dog. She had no clue if that was even right. "Someone else already said something about treats, which might make sense in that scenairo." Woah, she sounded smart. Cue the adjusting of the nerdy glasses and the snorting. Sterotypical nerd.

Suggestions were bring thrown out faster than she could come up with an answer, and unfortunately one of her ideas was mentioned. Beverly tapped her chin, thinking. If she were a puffskein, how would someone get her to exercise? True, nowadays she was worse than a hibernating bear, but have someone mention dragon-watching she'd be up faster than you could say Chinese Fireball.

Thinking something up, she raised her hand. "Hold a stick with bogeys in front of a puffskein and run with it. I'm sure it'll chase after." OR... "That or put on a dragon mask. M'sure it'll get them running." AND it was legal. A tad on the mean side, but LEGAL.

Cutty's hand went up too quickly when Thompson asked about the different ways of getting a puffskein to do exercise. He had to quickly withdraw it when the Professor gave the limitation of legality, however and that set him back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, other students gave their answers...


Cutty noticed that whenever Mo Branxton spoke about animals it was always recounting an unusual experience. Like the kruppie relieving itself story in Ancient Runes. What Cutty would've given to have been there.

He stared at the Ravenclaw Captain for a minute considering him, before turning his attention elsewhere.

You know, using someone's love for something against them really wasn't a bad idea.



The cute little Puff from Ancient Runes was there and sort of thinking along the same lines as the Ravie Captain.

How many calories were in a bogey?



Cutty's expression brightened when he heard Alice mention puffskein quidditch, but he was not at all imagining anything which even remotely resembled Alice's vision for this. Recalling that his was a fusion class of Care of Magical Creatures and Charms he took a minute whilst the other students answered to deduce that they were looking for a very specific answer and one that was possibly related to charms. Remembering the sound of the rabbits claws from last year as it struggled to get away from him and he Carpe Retracted it back for spell practice, his hand went up again, "You could use charms to provide resistance to motion like."

Brynn did not bother fighting the yawn that suddenly made it's presence, though she did manage to lift her hand to her mouth to cover it. She felt herself distracted yet again, though she really thought that this would be one class that would keep her attention. She really did like animals but she supposed she was just more tired than anything and she realized that she found the bouncing and squealing of the creatures mildly annoying.

It was vaguely reminiscent of how Mimi and Maddox would bark and jump all over people when company would come over.. though she never seemed to be irritated by that. She supposed it was just the mood she was in - tired and cranky. Whatever. She was here now and she supposed she had no choice but to learn about these puffskeins.

Er.. what was the question? How to make them exercise? Or something along those lines.. She hadn't really been paying that much attention. Brown eyes were more fixated on the bouncing. The redhead listened to the other class responses. Wasn't there like a spell or something to make the do what you wanted? Probably.. even though no one was really answering along those lines. Or at least none that she caught during the few minutes here and there that she was paying attention. Eh.. she'd wait for the professor to say the right answer. They always had a funny way of eventually doing that.

Legit ways of making them work off that extra bigness so they didn't grow the size of a castle? Legit ways? That automatically excluded the imperio curse, didn't it? Gosh this made things harder. Her kneazle was obedient and had a mind of his own. She knew from experience that there was very much a lot of work that would be involved in this and it got her bones aching just thinking about it. Whatever happened to naps? She liked those.

"I say you run a puffskein boot camp, get them on a routine and keep them on it. Though that would be time consuming and honestly a little tedious after awhile." But maybe that was just her. She didn't have patience for the more mundane pets. Granted there was nothing mundane about puffskeins but compared to something like say.......a chimaera, they were tame, boring even.

Could they have a class on chimaeras?

Josette listened as the Professor spoke about Puffskeins; which she found to be very interesting creatures & cute...and fat, then asked how they might be to able to prevent them from becoming so fat. Well, the obvious answer was pretty clear wasn't it? Stop feeding them so much food! But how to do it was where Josette faltered briefly taking a moment to to think about it before raising her hand slowly. "Professor? Perhaps, maybe you could just play with them all day by doing tricks & reward them with treats. But use a charm to make healthy snacks look/taster like their usual snack per say? That way, not only are they having fun, they're exercising & eating healthier without even realizing it?"

That seemed somewhat reasonable? Right?

Whoa..

Could the puffskeins really get to be the size of the castle? Because as much as she didn't like the creatures now, she was sure if they got to be that big, there would be a small chance her opinion on the things would change. A gigantic sized creature that ate everything and anything? The possibilities were endless!

Rhodes was just thinking about all those possibilities, too, when from the corner of her eye, she noticed Michael whateverhislastnamewas waving at her. Or.. at least, she thought it was to her. She was kind of standing off on her own so.. not wanting to go through that whole ignoring him thing like the train ride, she wiggled her fingers in his direction before turning back to the Professor and raising her hand.

She couldn't look at Mikey for too long. That pink scarf wrapped around his forehead was not working for him.

"You could have puffskein races! Get a whole bunch of fatty puffskeins, line them up and make them race." Maybe use that dragon mask that her dorm mate mentioned for motivation. "It'll be like exercise. And if you're the betting type, you might even win a bunch of galleons." It would be a win-win!

Sophie raised her hand. "Pygmy Puffs supposedly don't object to being thrown about, so maybe all that throwing around keeps them in shape," she suggested. "Either that or they get so nauseated from being thrown around that they don't feel like eating." Made sense to her.

Then about that other question... "Maybe they're raised in different environments, away from other Puffskeins, so they adapt and have different traits over time," she said. "Maybe they develop traits of their own then pass them on to other Pygmy Puffs."

"Mo basically stole my idea." Mo and his rabbit. Schuyler narrowed her eyes at him, but it didn't appear very convincing.

Or at least her train of thought had been along those lines. She had never owned a bunny.

"You could put them in a hamster ball....." LAME. Lame answer, and she blamed thought-stealing Mo. Not really. Kinda. Schuyler was feeling very scatter-brained today.

Puffskeins

So that was what they were. Alright now Nigel knew what these very kick-able creatures were called. Did not change anything. Nigel listened to Professor Awesome beard and hair talk about these things and heard the question asked.

"Kick Them"

Though that might be animal cruelty. Meh. It looked like it would not hurt them anyway.

"So we have many different ways. They not only work well for Puffskeins to learn but other creatures as well." A small smile appeared, "But there are even more ways as some of you had briefly touched on... any ideas on the least time consuming... Professor Fuller?" Turning to his neighbor whilst the remaining squealing Puffskeins stopped to hum and snore away asleep. Tired little things. He stepped away from the board to begin moving some into a corner together. Nice and organised.

As the students filed in, Piers responded to each with a greeting of some sort. Whether it was a “hello”, “hey”, “hi”, “yo”, or a simple nod varied between each student. It was fun to see their old little faces light up at the two of them up here. Because Piers was pretty sure that walking into class and seeing the two bestestest professors all decked out in hot pink was THE coolest thing ever.

Then, as class started and Javy started doing his thing, Piers stood off to the side and watched his friend as he got the lesson going. He would let Javy do the talking since animals were his thing. The discussion was directed towards ways to make the little puffskeins listen to their owners and eat just like they needed to.

At Javy’s words, Piers nodded and took that as his cue. He unfolded his arms and walked up to the front where Javy was.

”Yes, in fact, I do have an idea. And a couple of you,” he said, looking towards the students, ”actually mentioned it. There just so happens to be a handy-dandy charm to use.” That’s why he was here, after all. He was the Charms guy. Piers the Charms Guy.

Turning to the chalkboard behind him and Javy, Piers picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down an incantation for them.

Animalis Fidelis
(ANI-MAL-IS - FID-EL-US)

”Animalis Fidelis,” he said, introducing the charm. ”This charm creates a temporary bond of loyalty between the animal and the owner. In this case, the puffskein. Once you cast this charm on your puffskein, or any pet, they will be completely loyal to you. They’ll follow you around, they’ll do what you want, but only temporarily. It will wear off, but point of loyalty between an animal and their owner is to create that bond naturally, right? This only helps initiate the process. But what do I know about animals, eh?” That was Javy’s job.

Speaking of Javy.... Piers had an idea. ”To demonstrate, I’ll give you an example.” Piers took out his wand, and while Javy was looking away, he flicked it towards him and said, ”Animalis Fidelis” Ahem.

”Go ahead and just practice the incantation for now, don’t worry about the wand movement just yet.” Piers nodded, letting them know that they could start practicing the words. And he was going to watch Javy. Heh.

Sander laughed to himself as he heard the various possiblities one could convince a Puffskein to exercise. He frowned at the mention of kick them by a Ravenclaw 6th year and hoped that the boy had been joking. Because if not....

Anyway, Professor Thompson had handed over the portion of the class to the Charms Professor. Hah! so there WAS a charm to get them to do things. Sander hadn't doubted that for a second.

When he saw Professor Fuller demonstrating the spell on Professor Thompson, Sander eyes blinked double time. Did Professor Fuller just charm the Professor into following him around?

it was practice time and even while Sander practiced saying the incantation to the spell, he surreptitiously glanced over at both Professors waiting to see what was going to happen next. Was Professor Thompson going to be on his knees, fawning all over Professor Fuller.

"Ani-Mal-Is...Fid-el-us....Ani-Mal-Is...Fid-el-us...Animalis Fidelis...Animal Fidelis...Animalis Fidelis" Sander repeated the incantation over and over again.

Had the spell worked on Professor Thompson? ...."Animalis Fidelis....Animalis...Fidelis..." Sander continued practicing.

Was this charm a cuter, less painful version of the Imperius Curse? Sander hoped it had no connection whatsoever...except for the 'do anything you want part'....hmmm...

Adi knew a Charm would have been the answer. Why else was Professor Fuller there? But his classmates' answers were very interesting to hear. Though he didn't like Prefect Nigel's one. Tut tut.

The Puffer watched in amusement as Fuller cast the charm of Thompson. Hehe. This should be fun! In the meanwhile... it was time to try out the incantation.

"Animalis Fidelis...Animalis Fidelis...Animalis Fidelis...Animalis Fidelis...Animalis Fidelis,'' the Puffer repeated to himself. "Animalis Fidelis...Animalis Fidelis...''

So... Puffskeins. They were going to be creating a temporary bond between themselves and the furry creatures?

Grey-blue eyes landed on the Puffskeins. Bond of loyalty. And had Fuller mentioned something about... other pets as well? Interesting. Not that Chip needed any more ounce of loyalty in him but his owl was a different matter; the bird only seemed to be loyal to him when he had food nearby. A small smile flitted across his face before he realised... something. It would be easier to cast the spell on a smaller creature that was an invertebrate than... larger ones, right? He looked over at Fuller. Should he ask or...?

... No. Not now. Practice first.

Curious looks were shot over at Thompson. Curious. Because Alec was curious to see if this worked on another human and how well it worked. Maybe that would answer the questions he had. ... And what did that say on the board? Ani... Ani... "Ani... ma... mal... malis..." Right? "Ani... mal... is... Animalis... Animalis... Animalis..." Animalis.

The second word was a little harder to make out. Lots of squinting took place and maybe even some eye rubbing. "Fi... Fi... Fide..." ... Yeah? No? "Fidel... Fidelis... Fid... el... is... Fid... el... is... Fidelis!" Nodnod. "Animalis Fidelis... Animalis Fidelis... Animalis Fidelis!"

Temporary bond...loyalty...

Beverly tapped her chin, her brows furrowing while her eyes stared intently at professor Fuller. This...she was interested in this for several reasons: World Domination and Dragon Taming.

Ugh. She could already imagine it...

*__________*

She snapped out of it when Fuller cast on professor Thompson. Did that mean Thompson was going to start following Fuller around like a lost puppy? WAIT. HOLD UP. The charm could indeed be used on another wizard? Oh. OHHH. World domination became a real thing all of a sudden. Beverly wrote that bit down: Charm may be usable on wizards.

INNER LITTLE OLD WOMAN-CHILD CACKLE.

That done, she glanced up just as instructions were given. Practice the incantation, okay. She could do that. "Ani-mal-is..." Yeah, yeah, "Fid-el-us." She was such an ace. "Animalis Fidelis--"

Oh wait! Beverly raised her hand, wincing. Stupid bones and stuff. "Professors, does this charm work on - oh, I don't know - dragons...perhaps?" DID IT? HUH HUUH?

Bay watched as everyone else started to practice the spell.. while eyeballing the Professors… "were they really going to charm each other??" thinking that this class was going to end up very weird….. yup thats exactly what he thought..

now this was what Bay always had trouble with… pronunciation ughhhhhh "ANI-MAL-IS - FID-EL-US…..ANI-MAL-IS - FID-EL-US….ANI-MAL-IS - FID-EL-US…ANI-MAL-IS - FID-EL-US" he said over and over in his head.. now time to try it to him self but out loud..


"Animalis Fidelis" he practiced.. it sounded good to him but hey you never know he could be saying it completely wrong.. "Animalis Fidelis" alrighty… everything seemed like it was in order… just now starring at the cute creatures waiting for more instructions..