A/N: Merry Christmas Key of Grey this is for you, bwah bwah ha, I tricked my mom into beta'n it. I do not own Harry Potter or any associated characters, and Mr. Buhest is mine and his name is pronounced funny.

The owl begins to fall with unequaled grace, back twisting, and beak snapping shut with a dignified air. The spells started wrapping in a liquid motion, blue and gold veins flinging the bird to the ground. It lay withering, legs clawing the air, its message forgotten.

Everyday, the prisoner watched as the same bird came to deliver mail, yet the wards surrounding the area would catch it. When would this small tragedy be over? When finally, in death the prisoner would release the animal, or perhaps the bird would fail in its mission and fly away.

I will never give up, as the pain of the spell wears off, I stretch, each feather and muscle straining and aching from the enchantments. It is so close the person that the letter is bound to, I can sense it, feel them, but each time they come close to me, I fall; someone is trying to hold me back.

Soon I will be executed, and then the bird will be free, I can see it, dying, it looks worse and worse each time it visits me. This fate is not mine it belongs to someone else, yet here I am waiting for them to hang me, the dementors have fled so they have chosen the old-fashioned way of death.

Long awaited, the guard opens another cell for the last time. Mr. Buhest, the warden is waiting, hearing a slight clatter as the doors to the grim courtyard are opened. Icicles glisten on the old hinges and cling to the gallows' wood, shadows in sharp relief against the white snow, corners seeming to hold the long-past prisoners' hate and pain, the iron-rich brick a dank orange color, the sky covered by a veil of thin, pregnant clouds.

A ministry official reads out the list of crimes for each prisoner, then pauses and leaves the yard to hack and cough in a more secluded area of the prison, over and over this occurs, until it's my turn, I can see them all, the janitors, Buhest, the cook, all the employees of this place, they who lived breathed within these walls with us all. It seems like an eternity since anyone has left, and our fears lay naked to each other, this blanket of familiarity coats the prison.

I watch and breathe a slow sigh, soon my work, my job, nearly all that I have known is going to die before my very eyes, the official had explained quickly and curtly to me:

There is no use for this place anymore; the horrors of the outside world had finally caused an action to choose our fate. He is sorry and coughs some more, fearful of the outlandish weather.

It is waiting for me, as it always has, but today, it will never await me again, I can see the bird flying overhead, the poor thing.

A lanky prisoner walks to the gallows, and places the rope on their neck with ease; there is not even an executioner in sight, the remaining people say a prayer, and wait for them to say a final prayer for them all.

Gone, I can feel it, fading, the soul, and now what? I can feel it like a heavy weight; even now the letter is calling to another.

The prisoners are all gone, and the winter chill finally gets to the sun, one by one they lift their old friends into graves, far from the prison, in a secluded wood. Mr. Buhest leaves a marker on the trees, it shimmers, an illusion, there for as long as the bodies lay in the soil, words, number, runes, chicken scratch mar the long list.

Mud, it slurs the ground, and the evergreens' fonds dip low with their fruit, the forest is ruled by wolverines, the prison sits, camouflaged against the bright red of the mountains. Elk and deer pass by, never bothering to disturb the untouched snow, the ageless sky watches as the gallows creak and wither, wishing for the fondness of a far winter's eve long before where friends gathered beneath it's gaze, but still it stands, and as a world away, someone's life is harshly ripped away, waiting for a kinder time when a dank cell is welcome.