Page 40 of Monster's Pet

“Which we definitely don’t want,” I agreed. “Pair up. We need as many options as possible. Rhiannon’s going to be making the generators, since she helped Professor Wright make the original ones.”

“We should switch up the pairs after each toy is designed. Get fresh ideas,” Lilia said.

Brom pouted.

“Oh, love, you know I adore working with you,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “But it’ll be better for everyone to shake things up a bit.”

“It’s a great idea,” Aiden said. “Shall we get to work?”

Half the team left his room to work in mine in the other hallway, due to the lack of space.

At the end of an hour, we had twelve interactive toys built out of different materials when we met back in Aiden’s room.

“We’ll only give her two at a time,” Rhiannon said. “She shouldn’t eat more magic than that, or she’ll grow too quickly. The second one is a safety measure. She should sleep after the first. Aiden, you’ll have to keep checking on her between classes, just to make sure she doesn’t go through another learning leap.”

I giggled. “That makes her sound like a human.”

Rhiannon smiled. “Babies are babies, no matter their form. This one is ‘aging’ at a rapid rate. I wish I could have gotten a look at her mother.”

“She was massive,” I said, stretching my arms out. “This was the size of her head alone.”

“Bigger,” Aiden disagreed.

“It was dark and she was lying down. How can you be sure?”

“Her head was taller than you,” he pointed out.

“I meant her age,” Rhiannon interrupted us with a chuckle. “Even though Moonbeam is growing quickly, I can tell magically that she’s only a couple weeks old. She can’t age her bones.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “How can you tell?”

“I can teach you the spell. Professor Wright taught it last year in Care of Magical Creatures. It’s a combination sight spell and one of the medical examination ones. But you need to know what you’re looking for first. Do you have the textbook?”

“In my room.”

“Let’s go then.”

“We still on for skating?” Bruce asked.

“For sure,” I agreed. “Give us twenty minutes to learn this spell and get changed.”

“The slow way,” Una said with a groan. “I miss waving my hand and transfiguring my clothing.”

“I miss being able to add warmth spells into my layers,” Hazel added with a little shiver.

“We’ll be plenty warm while we skate,” I said, amused.

“And if you need extra warmth, I can give you a big hug,” Aiden added, a twinkle in his eye.

Hazel swallowed nervously. “Sure,” she said shakily.

As much as my best friend approved of Aiden, the dryad was anxious about his fire. Even though she’d been living with twelve fire beasts at the beginning of our third year while she helped Bruce figure out how to heal his wife from her curse, she still hadn’t gotten over her fear of fire.

After saying goodbye to our friends, we headed down the hall to my room once more.

“Thank you,” I said to Rhiannon.

“For teaching you how to x-ray animals?”

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