Wednesday afternoon directly after lunch Zach made a beeline for the Care of Magical Creatures classroom. Yesterday he'd been given the opportunity to assist Travis and Ms Murakami with the care of an injured Alicorn and he could not wait to see how it was doing.

Someone had brought it to Ms Murakami's attention last Friday and it had taken her all weekend to capture the grounded and scared winged creature. It had flown into a cell tower in the dead of night and was seriously injured. He had helped Travis hold down the terrifically strong beast while their very knowledgable and talented teacher set the wing.

Alicorns are interesting animals something of a cross between a unicorn and Hercule's horse. If you ever read Percy Jackson, and let's face it who in his generation hadn't, you know that a Pegasus is a larger than life horse with an incredible wing span. Mostly everyone pictures unicorns as white, but this gargantuan beast was its polar opposite; he was as inky black as a moonless night.

And he looked nothing like the My Little Pony version – and don't ask him how he knows what that looks like -- and no, he is not a Brony.

Yesterday, he and Travis helped soothe the beast and bandage its wing. The unicorn like equine had long inky beautiful wings as soft as silk that enabled it to fly. One of which was now terribly mangled. They would be checking the set today and if all went well they would be able to release it in a couple of days. Yesterday he'd run his hand down the animals flank to calm it and had felt its heart race in its chest; he couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor beast.

He was grateful that Ms Murakami had been able to capture it what would've happened to it otherwise? Would the council have put it down like a lame race horse? He shuddered at the thought.

Zach shook off his foreboding thoughts and smiled to himself when he thought that today he might give the big guy a name.

He had been so lost in thought during their travels to the class that he came to the sudden realization that Lauren had been talking at him the entire time and dragging him along behind her in her wake. When they finally got to the correct door, he and Lauren entered the care of magical creature's classroom in the usual manner, not like he had his first day. How was he to know that turning the knob counterclockwise would result in him entering the stable rather than the observatory?

When they entered they found it full of students of all ages. Apparently, he and Lauren were the last to arrive.

Courses in the magical wing are different than his regular high school courses, for more reason than the obvious ones, in that the classes aren't structured along the lines of sophomores or seniors – first year or last. No all different age groups studied together. No doubt due to the small number of halfbloods students in attendance in San Francisco. As an elective, this class was especially eclectic, and resulted in a smaller number of students made up animal lovers and care givers alike.

They got to her class late, but the beautiful Kitsune was far less strict than Knight. She just smiled at him and asked in her melodic voice," Are you ready to assist again today Zach?"

He just nodded his head and followed her out of the classroom and back into the stable.

Kitsunes are magical fox like creatures in the Japanese culture who can be blessed with multiple tails. Lauren had told him after school that Murakami had nine tails and anyone who has ever read manga or watched anime knows how powerful that would make her. You didn't need to be a Naruto fan to know that.

You could sense the magic wafting off her. He didn't know how he'd missed the electric hum of her residual magic before being enlightened but he had. And according to Lauren, Murakami was ancient, at least older than one hundred. She had explained that a Kitsune had to be at least that to take on human form.

But Murakami didn't look older than twenty-five or thirty. Her heart shaped face was unlined making her look barely older than him, but her soft brown eyes held the wisdom of her age, and her bow shaped lips carried the warmest smile he'd ever encountered. She was just a couple of inches taller than Lauren, but just barely. And she was so slight that he could probably wrap just one hand around her waist entirely and lift her easily over his head, but he wouldn't let her size fool him again. Yesterday, she had subdued the Ogre with one hand before unleashing the calming spell.

And his Study of Magical Creatures classroom was almost as interesting as its teacher.

It had a door with a knob that you had to turn to enter just like all the rest, but the difference was: if you if you chose to turn the knob counterclockwise you entered a sort of stable, but if you turned the opposite way clockwise you entered the observatory. A relatively protected area of the classroom where the students could observe the creatures behind partitions of protective glass, but that was only relative to the creature being cared for, take for instance, if it was a Norwegian Ridgeback, no amount of partition would protect you.

Zach had made the mistake of turning the handle the wrong way his first day on this side of the magical barrier and had ended up being groomed repeatedly for about 45 minutes by a brooding griffin. It had been hilarious to watch and apparently even funnier later when he was told that things could have been a lot worse: she might have decided to feed him to her young rather than adopt him as a member of her brood. When he'd turned as white as a sheet everyone had yucked it up, but he'd had only thrown up a little in his mouth at the idea that he could have been turned into baby food.

The teacher broke through his thoughts when she addressed the class.

"Now children, "The Kitsune cautioned, "I'm sure I don't have to remind you that quiet is essential while we examine the Alicorn."

The other members of the class nodded silently to acknowledge they understood.

"Please take a mental note that the less stress you can put the creatures through the sooner they heal. "

Ms Murakami fixed her kind soft brown eyes on him to ask again, "are you sure you're ready, "and she only opened the door, to the Alicorn's stall after he nodded once again to the question already asked. The Kitsune was very careful with her charges.

It's hard to describe the care of creatures classroom; the best way to do it would be to say: picture a horse barn. The long corridors between the stalls would be their enclosed examining room. On one side of it would be a long white washed corridor and on the other side of that large wooden stalls. They stood apart from it all in a long observation room. Like the room in detective shows that contains the two-way mirror.

No one sat down in this class. There weren't even chairs, not even a chalkboard, you took notes where you stood or not at all. This was meant to be a hands-on-class. And he loved it.

Zach looked at Travis, the larger than life Halfblood Mountain Troll, and smiled at him excitedly as they entered the stable. Travis gave him an encouraging smile in return as the footsteps echoed in the enclosed barn like space.

It smelled of hay, dust, and manure. The earthy aroma met his nose, but it wasn't unpleasant; it was kind of soothing.

Zach watched as Travis opened the door to the first stall careful not to make any sudden moves. Lauren had told him yesterday that Travis was officially the class helper and she was certain that he would be doing something just like this after conscription. Which made perfect sense to Zach. the guy was perfect for the job. He'd never met a more chill person. Even he felt calmer in his presence.

He didn't know if he had an affinity for animals or if it just came naturally to him because he wasn't a higher thinker like others, Trav took a lot of remedial classed on the other side of the barrier, did that make it easier for him to get into the head of an animal and guess how they would react to certain things, or maybe it just made him a better caregiver to them.

Zach watched as Trav quieted himself before he slowly approached the timid beast. He did it so slowly that when he finally got to the injured creature it was no surprise to him. He had already sniffed him out and had decided he was no threat; so when he slowly reached out his hand to soothe the beast, he only gave a slight shudder of his flanks, before relaxing and letting Travis stroke his sable mane.

Ms. Murakami strolled up to the animal and crouched down to take a closer look at the wing. And as delicately as she could she extended it. The Alicorn jolted a bit at the pain, but Trav lay his big hand on his flank to soothe him, and to also stop him from bucking and hurting himself should he get startled.

When the Kitsune nodded at him to indicate all looked well, Zach couldn't help but smile in return. He loved that she trusted him enough to have him this close to the animals that she cared so much for and he loved even more that she had faith that he was smart enough to know what to do if something went wrong. He was beginning to think that the magical world wasn't going to be so bad after all.

They then proceeded to look in on an Ogre, a Manticore and a Pixie before the end of the class. The pixie had been well enough to braid the Kitsune black hair. The ogre had to be charmed into a state of calm even before entering the room. He'd looked at Travis like a traitor afterward which made Zach wonder how closely mountain trolls and ogres are related.

The Manticore had been the trickiest.

It's a deadly quick moving beast with the body of a lion and the head of a human, the tail of a scorpion and three rows of teeth like a shark. And If that doesn't scare you, Mr Murakami explained that Manticore actually means man-eater in ancient Persian. So yeah, he approached it with the utmost of caution.

To make it even tougher for them it kept spewing riddles that they needed to answer correctly before they could perform their next task, which was to clean and redress a wound it got from hunting the hunters.

He had tracked and tried to trap three poachers in a park range a few states over, but they turned on him before he could get the upper hand and shot him, which was extremely lucky for them, not so much for the Manticore. They were only alive, because they were able to get the jump on him.

No doubt there are some hillbilly Kentuckians out their telling tall tales to their friends about the beast that haunts the Appalachians.

The last riddle had been really cool, and he had actually gotten it with a little help from his teacher.

The Manticore growled with his weird trumpet like voice, "The more you take the more you leave behind. What am I?"

His kind teacher encouraged him to answer it. They were nearly done; she knew it would be his last chance, "you can do this my child," she intoned in her honeyed voice."The more you take the more you leave behind?" She repeated as she darted her eyes behind them where they had walked across the sand and the hay.

He noticed their foot prints and he suddenly thought the more steps you take the more foot prints you leave behind.

His teacher's face split in a wide grin when he blurted out, "foot prints. Its footprints, right?" He asked.

She just nodded her head in agreement. Travis just chuckled at his excitement. Apparently being around strange magical creatures that not only could talk, but talked only in riddles was old hat for him.

Zach left the class that day feeling so proud of himself for getting it right that he tried to hold on to the riddle to see if Lauren could guess the answer but, holding on to information was more a Lauren thing

He did however float on cloud nine for the rest of the day. At least until training that afternoon, when he had a run in with one of the worst teachers in the school, now of days Knight was making leFay look like an effin' humanitarian.

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From here on out I'll be introducing a lot more about the magic classes.

                                                                              SO stay tuned.

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