Excerpt: Legendary Creatures 101

The class sat, talking loudly and paying very little attention to anything in particular. The barely even noticed when a man of five feet two inches walked in through the door and walked to the front of the lecture hall. He was slim, but muscled, and walked with a gait more graceful than a cat. His hair was shoulder length and naturally silver. His eyes shined in the light, but their color remained a mystery to anyone who bothered to glance his way. The man carried a small laptop carrying case, which he sat near the Audio-Visual set-up to one side of the large blackboard. The class was still obnoxiously loud, but the man in the front didn't seem at all bothered by this. He shook his head, muttered under his breath, and opened his bag. From it he withdrew a very new, shiny looking laptop that was so small that one would think it couldn't survive being held without breaking. He set it up and drew out several cords, hooking each one up carefully and attentively. Then he glanced at the clock, noting that the lecture was not due to start for 3 minutes. Plenty of time, he knew, to quite down the restless crowd. He opened the Macbook Air and turned it on, waiting patiently for it to finish starting up. He logged in, and opened a file labeled "LC101". He removed a remote control from his bag, and walked to the blackboard. There he noisily pulled down a large white projection screen. The class quieted, but not sufficiently for him to begin. He glanced again at the clock, 1 minute left. He walked forward, removing the lens cap from the projector, but standing in front of it so that no one could tell what it was showing.

He cleared his throat and said with a hint of an accent, "Good afternoon, class."

Half the class offered back dull "good afternoons" and "hellos".

The professor bit back a chuckle and started again, "Good afternoon, Class. I am Professor Myrrod and I am going to assume that you are all here to learn about Fictional Beasts and their cultural relevance. If you are not, then get out of my classroom. For approximately the next hour and twenty minutes, your brains belong to me. You will listen to me attentively, you will take notes, and you will find yourselves raptly interested in all that I have to say. You will also ask any questions that you find relevant to the current topic. I will now pass around copies of the syllabus. On it are the dates of every paper due, every presentation day, every test, and every other important date for this course. Read it, remember it, I will NOT be giving you reminders about them. My job is to lecture and teach, not to coddle and baby-sit. If you have a problem with the way I run my classroom, then you should leave as well. Any questions?"

He looked around the room and saw no hands, "Alright then, anyone who wants to leave, please do so now, in an orderly fashion with a quick pace. I will not tolerate you to waste any more time than is absolutely necessary."

As he finished, a few people got up and exited, but by now most have caught a look at his unique looks and unusual accent. His extraordinary appeal and his blunt nature caught everyone off-guard and they were silent, intrigued by what he had to show them. That was the trick, of course, for the man. He loved teach, especially this topic, but he was very careful to draw a line between drawing their interest in the subject and drawing their interest in him. So at that moment, when they were giving him a second look, he stepped to the side.

On the screen was an image that everyone in the room could easily identify. It was a large reptilian creature with wings. Its jaw was large and long, its teeth and claws terrifying.