A New Magical Creature Companion

West stopped in his tracks, straining his ears to hear more.

He certainly knew Jacob Kowalski. The Kowalski and Scamander were close friends with his grandmother, and he had met them a few times when he was a child.

Jacob was a fat old man with a lively smile, which West always thought of him when he was a child.

However, due to geographical reasons, the West family usually interacts more with the Scamander family. Jacob is not a wizard, and frequent use of Portkey and Apparition would put a considerable strain on his body.

After West got older, he rarely saw Jacob anymore.

Not far from him, Newt was whispering something to Professor McGonagall. West strained his ears but didn't get any useful information.

The two were too far apart, and West didn't dare to take out his wand to use magic. It wasn't until Newt hurriedly left that he heard Newt leave a message for Professor McGonagall.

"Minerva, could you please inform Tina and Bunty for me?"

West frowned. What did he need to tell his grandmother?

Suddenly, he had a bad feeling.

Jacob was, after all, Muggle, and at his age, Muggle's vitality was far inferior to that of a wizard...

No way... West bit his lip, trying hard not to think the worst.

But what if it really is the worst-case scenario we've anticipated?

After hesitating for a moment, West made his choice.

He decided to sneak over and check on Jacob. If something was wrong, he would show up directly. The West and Kowalski families were old friends, and it was only right and proper for him to go, whether to help or to pay his respects. If everything was alright, he could slip away again later.

Unfortunately, the Invisibility Cloak was taken by Sean... West pinched the Niffler's bottom in his arms with some annoyance. When Professor McGonagall also hurriedly returned to the castle, he continued to maintain the Disillusionment Charm and walked towards the station.

On the other side, after calling Hermione and saying goodbye to Nagini, Sean returned to the castle.

"So, you just extorted a bunch of stuff from me like this?" Hermione slapped her forehead in exasperation.

"Hermione, although you are my best friend, I must correct your wording. It's not blackmail—" Sean said seriously.

"Compensation, right?" Hermione asked, as if she already knew.

Sean nodded in satisfaction. "You've even learned to answer first, that's great."

"What are you going to do with that egg? Are you going to raise it yourself?"

"Well, I've never seen one before, so I've decided to ask someone for advice, just in case it doesn't hatch—uh?" Sean stopped mid-sentence.

"What's wrong?" Hermione asked, puzzled.

"It seems we don't need to look for anyone anymore..."

Just now, something wriggled inside his robe, right where he had placed the Magical Creatures egg.

Just as I was about to speak, a very distinct sound of an eggshell cracking rang out.

Is it really going to hatch?!

Sean, not having time to go to the Room of Requirement, pulled Hermione to a corner of the corridor and then slipped into the ring.

"Please keep this safe for me, I'll go check on it."

After leaving those words, the entrance shrank rapidly, and the ring fell into Hermione's hand.

As soon as Sean stepped down the stairs from the ring, he took out the Transfigured Lizard Skin Bag.

Pulling open the string at the top of the bag, sure enough, the fist-sized egg inside was shaking, and a small piece of the shell had already peeled off.

Sean fetched a pile of hay and carefully lifted the bird eggs out and placed them in the hay.

Inside the ring, several of Sean's Magical Creatures gathered around.

The golden egg with blue patterns was trembling constantly, but apart from the small piece of shell that had peeled off at the beginning, the rest of the shell remained incredibly hard.

Sean squinted and saw that inside the peeled eggshell was a thin, pale blue membrane with white spots, and inside there was a shadowy shape that seemed to be tearing at the membrane.

Sean waited patiently, but for some reason, the little guy inside became weaker and weaker, and the egg membrane looked thin, but he couldn't tear it no matter what he did.

Sean was getting anxious. He kept flipping through the notes he'd copied from Newt, but couldn't find a good solution. Newt didn't seem to have witnessed the hatching of these Magical Creatures either; there was no record of it in the notes.

The egg's shaking became less and less intense, and the creature inside seemed to have no more strength left.

"Hmm, I've never hatched Magical Creature Egg before— Dave, Naja, you two both hatched from eggs, do you have any experience?" Sean was now in a dilemma.

Dave, who only knows how to eat and fight, knows nothing. He can only tell that the creature inside the eggshell is still alive. His assessment is. "It has very little flavor. It should only be able to fill your teeth."

Naja the Occamy was also inexperienced; she had been smuggled in, and her mother Occamy wasn't around when she hatched.

Instead, it was the Basilisk that offered advice.

The Basilisk's enormous body was coiled outside the wooden house, with only its two huge nostrils blocking the door.

"There should be bird-like Magical Creatures inside, I have a feeling," the Basilisk hissed.

"The person who gave me the egg said the same thing, but knowing what kind it is is useless," Sean said anxiously.

The Basilisk's enormous body swayed across the ground for a moment, then it continued, "It has emerged."

"Huh?" Sean didn't understand what the Basilisk meant.

The Basilisk's tongue reached into the house, the tip of its enormous tongue pointing to the crack in the eggshell.

"That's not the egg membrane, it's part of the bird. I can feel it with my tongue."

"Isn't that the egg membrane?" Sean looked down and indeed found something strange. The egg was shaking very little, but the membrane inside the opening was strangely expanding and contracting.

Upon closer inspection, one can see that the membrane appears to be constantly expanding and contracting, with the white spots on it continuously enlarging and shrinking.

This is part of that bird...

"Then why can't it get out..." Sean wondered. As he was thinking, he suddenly remembered the notes he had just looked at.

Newt recorded a Magical Creatures in it: the Aero-Wing Bird.

This Magical Creatures, though a bird, has smooth, scaleless skin, a platypus-like beak, and a body resembling that of a dragon. The most distinctive feature of the Aero-Wing Bird is its ability to display different postures depending on its function.

When this creature wants to take off, it inflates the skin on its neck to become a giant hot air balloon, and then uses the wind power at high altitude to fly quickly.

Newt writes here, "The skin on the neck of the Aero-Wing Bird bulges out like a frog inflating its vocal sac, and is pale blue in color with white spots on the surface that expand as the skin stretches..."

Sean looked down and compared them. Sure enough, the membrane he thought it was was exactly the same as Newt's description.

He quickly continued reading.

Newt once owned a Aero-Wing Bird, but he never saw the Aero-Wing Bird eggs hatch. He only mentioned that "Aero-Wing Bird sometimes help the weak chicks hatch when they hatch their eggs..."

Do you need help...? Sean looked at the egg whose shaking was getting smaller and smaller. He didn't know if interfering with the birth of Magical Creatures was a good thing, because the process of many Magical Creatures hatching was a process of growth, and rashly interfering might cause the chick to die.

However, the egg has almost stopped shaking now, and if we don't help it soon, it seems it will die...

Without further hesitation, Sean put on a pair of Dragon-hide gloves, picked up his tools, and started cracking the eggshells.

The egg was about the size of a fist, but the shell was much harder than Sean had imagined. He was worried about hurting the little creature inside, so he had to be very careful and it took him quite a while to break a small hole.

The egg was completely still.

"It's too late..." Sean frowned. The membrane was stuck tightly to the eggshell, so he couldn't use the Petrification Charm or loosening spells.

At this moment, Naja, sensing Sean's anxiety, let out a cry.

Sean, whose speech was somewhat like that of animals, immediately understood what the other person meant. He was overjoyed. "Naja, do you have a way?"

Naja the Occamy nodded, gently nuzzled Sean's cheek with its beak, and then its body rapidly shrank.

The Occamy, which was originally one meter in diameter, shrank to the size of a loach. It let out a low cry and then clung to the eggshell, sticking its head inside through the opening.

"Dot dot dot dot!" A crisp knocking sound rang out, and the sharp beak, which had shrunk in size, began to pound against the hard eggshell like a miniature impact drill.

The eggshell was peeling off at a speed visible to the naked eye.

A non-electric impact drill? Occamy has this ability?! Sean's eyes lit up, and he didn't stop there, continuing to chisel from another direction.

With Naja's help, the eggshell peeling project progressed much faster. Before long, the upper half of the eggshell had been completely peeled off, and the creature inside was revealed to Sean.

Just like Newt's drawing, it was a small Aero-Wing Bird, except that the skin on its neck was bulging so hard that it was completely pressed against the eggshell, and its duck-billed head was stuck inside its own 'hot air balloon'.

Sean reached out to try and grab it, but the Aero-Wing Bird's 'hot air balloon' was slippery and covered with a layer of mucus from the eggshell. Sean, who dared not exert any force, could not get a firm grip.

Fortunately, Naja was still working diligently, and most of the eggshell had fallen off. Sean gathered most of the 'balloon' and pulled it with a little force.

With a "pop," the Aero-Wing Bird finally broke free of its eggshell completely.

However, the Aero-Wing Bird rolled its eyes back and lay motionless on the haystack.

"Still alive, but very weak." Dave, who was good at sensing biological signs, sent out his thoughts.

"Pudding," Sean called out.

Pudding nimbly darted over, then pressed its eyes close to the Aero-Wing Bird's head, swiftly activating its Legilimency Wampus Cat.

Then it turned to Sean and meowed. (It couldn't breathe, it couldn't breathe—that's what it was thinking.)

Sean: "..."

He circled the Aero-Wing Bird, which was still inflated like a hot air balloon, and finally noticed something was wrong.

The other creature's long tail lay close to its back, and because it was the same color and exceptionally small, Sean didn't notice at all—this guy's own tail was wrapped around its own neck...

Sean quickly and carefully reached out his hands to untangle it. The tail wrapped around its neck was loosened, and the Aero-Wing Bird immediately began to pant heavily, its swollen skin heaving back and forth, and its white pupils returned to their original positions.

"Wah-woo..." The Aero-Wing Bird let out a weak cry, which sounded like a hoarse frog croak mixed with the sound of a mammal.

"It's all over now..." Sean breathed a sigh of relief.

The Aero-Wing Bird finally caught its breath. The skin on its neck rapidly contracted, returning it to its original form, looking like a duck-billed Fire Dragon, and then it grew a pair of very small fleshy wings.

Ugly-cute.

"Waaah, waaah..." the Aero-Wing Bird continued to call weakly.

A strange group consisting of a human, a Swooping Evil, a Wampus Cat, a Occamy, and a Basilisk surrounded a small, fist-sized Aero-Wing Bird in an odd posture.

"It must be hungry," Sean said, unable to understand the chirping of a newborn bird.

"I'm hungry," Pudding gave the correct answer.

Sean squatted down beside the haystack and looked at the broken eggshell. "After birds hatch, the eggshell seems to be used to supplement the female bird's nutrition. So what do the chicks eat?"

The Basilisk carefully pushed the eggshell toward the Aero-Wing Bird and hissed, "I ate a little eggshell when I was born, and then I had the strength to hunt on my own—but I can't eat too much, it doesn't taste good, it's hard on the teeth."

Naja, now the size of a scarf, clung to Sean, casually brushing the eggshell aside. "Occamy don't eat eggshells."

A pure silver eggshell, that's definitely not edible...

Dave, who was happily devouring a Sheep Brain, glanced at it, hesitated for a moment, and then slowly approached. He opened his white mouth, and a few bits of Sheep Brain oozed from between his teeth.

"That's all we can do..." Dave's words carried a heavy weight, and Sean could almost feel his inner pain...

Sean: "..."

He picked up the notes and started reading.

Newt notes in his book that the Aero-Wing Bird's favorite food is lake fish.

"Oh, I see... Pudding, go catch a fish," Sean ordered.

Pudding meowed and darted quickly to the lakeside, where Sean had already put many fish in, in preparation for the Magical Creatures he might be able to tame in the future.

Pudding ran to the lakeside, glanced at it, then quickly poked it with its front paw. When it lifted its paw, a small fish was already skewered on it.

Sean took the small fish, tore off a piece, and then brought the fish meat to the Aero-Wing Bird's beak.

"Woo-woo-woo-woo-ah-ah-" The Aero-Wing Bird twitched its nose and then opened its mouth as wide as it could.

Sean smiled and fed the fish.

The Aero-Wing Bird merely trembled its throat before the fish meat slid directly down its throat. Only then did it stand up and open its mouth wide again, staring at Sean.

"Ah--"

Sean tore the small fish apart and fed it to the bird little by little. Before long, the whole fish was inside the Aero-Wing Bird's belly, and the bird was still starving.

"Such a big appetite?" Sean asked Pudding to catch another small fish, and then fed it all to the Aero-Wing Bird.

After eating the two birds, the Aero-Wing Bird habitually opened its mouth wide, but just as it opened it halfway, it suddenly collapsed in pain and jumped like a fish.

Sean was shocked and quickly looked at Pudding.

Pudding leaned closer and looked. "Meow meow meow (I ate too much, my stomach hurts.)"

Sean: "..."