His bewilderment at the creature had been very real, but a side effect of it was that Gemma had started talking, or at least enough to grant him an actual explanation. Because opossum had meant precisely nothing to him until right now.
Theo pulled a face at she’s harmless, because he hadn’t been afraid of her; she was tiny, and certainly still sleeping in that basket, and if she was always like that it made sense that Gemma would have managed to travel all the way back from America with her without trouble. He didn’t know what opossums usually looked like, but... “No offence to Petal, but it – sorry, she – looks like a rat with overgrown ears,” Theo quipped, since she did look a little ridiculous, with a tiny head and giant whiskers and misfit ears. Cute, maybe – but she was asleep and hopefully didn’t understand humans making fun of her, so make fun of her he would. And if it made Gemma laugh or enraged in Petal’s defense, so much the better. Sombre quietness simply didn’t suit her.
He had had to chuckle at her comment about ists. So she had found her own crowd of misfits on her expeditions – that was a good thing. She had always seemed to like where her life had taken her – she had a new adventure to tell every time – but Theo was glad it wasn’t necessarily lonely out there. He had been grinning faintly at picturing the scenario, a bunch of nerds out there and odd little creatures like Petal snoozing around them, but had to leave, and her being here in Skeeter’s garden, brought him back to earth. “I’m sorry about –” Theo nodded his head at the house to say the professor; he wasn’t sure how close Gemma had been to him (obviously, they had Herbology in common, and she was helping out here) but he had been sorry to hear about Professor Skeeter’s death too.
Theo pulled a face at she’s harmless, because he hadn’t been afraid of her; she was tiny, and certainly still sleeping in that basket, and if she was always like that it made sense that Gemma would have managed to travel all the way back from America with her without trouble. He didn’t know what opossums usually looked like, but... “No offence to Petal, but it – sorry, she – looks like a rat with overgrown ears,” Theo quipped, since she did look a little ridiculous, with a tiny head and giant whiskers and misfit ears. Cute, maybe – but she was asleep and hopefully didn’t understand humans making fun of her, so make fun of her he would. And if it made Gemma laugh or enraged in Petal’s defense, so much the better. Sombre quietness simply didn’t suit her.
He had had to chuckle at her comment about ists. So she had found her own crowd of misfits on her expeditions – that was a good thing. She had always seemed to like where her life had taken her – she had a new adventure to tell every time – but Theo was glad it wasn’t necessarily lonely out there. He had been grinning faintly at picturing the scenario, a bunch of nerds out there and odd little creatures like Petal snoozing around them, but had to leave, and her being here in Skeeter’s garden, brought him back to earth. “I’m sorry about –” Theo nodded his head at the house to say the professor; he wasn’t sure how close Gemma had been to him (obviously, they had Herbology in common, and she was helping out here) but he had been sorry to hear about Professor Skeeter’s death too.
