Thank you to raspberry_rave for fast beta work.
Wind Beneath
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Even seven months after the End, it never seems to take much. Persephone can never be sure what the causes will be - a parchment delivered by one of her sisters, bearing spiteful voices and unintelligible screams; a light reflected off a window in the wrong angle, enticing a flinch; an innocuous sound; an innocently mumbled word.
It matters little what else occurs on those days. Hours can go by with her chargeling conducting research, attending meetings, running errands. While she flies to and fro with his correspondence, the Fear has already taken hold of her chargeling's mind, is already waiting for the night to come.
Her chargeling never sleeps on those nights. During these otherwise peaceful months, she has watched him learn to put off going to bed for as long as he can. There's always something he can find to do around this nest-place that is so much smaller than any other nest-place they have lived in since her chargeling's mother found Persephone for her fledgling. Smaller, and yet it is the first one that only stinks of her chargeling's own terror.
At least four nights a week, the spices in the special cupboard are re-organized, and the potion her chargeling drinks to get through the following day is changed so that it takes longer and longer to brew.
Every time those tasks are finished, Persephone can tell from the way he fusses with her nest-cage, from the treats he feeds her, from the finger he strokes along her beak, that he wants to call on someone. During those last hours before dawn, he sometimes will grab for parchment and quill, will start to write, Dear Mother, Dear Millicent, Dear Gregory. Digesting her chocolate-covered mice feet, she will know that he could never bear the thought of showing his weakness to fellow nestlings.
The Harmful Times have left hundreds of fearful charges using Persephone's sisters to get help every night. Those men and women have someone to reach out to, someone who can understand what horrors they have witnessed, have committed and, as in her chargeling's case, not had the courage to prevent.
The only fellow nestling Persephone can imagine her chargeling truly reaching out to is dead. The dark professor's replies would likely be belittling, but Persephone has listened to him use nothing but derogatory words, and she imagines that no matter how heartless they might appear, her chargeling would find them comforting.
Recently, a growing number of letters have begun with Lovegood, foregoing the Dear, and Longbottom. One name she associates with bewilderment, respect and guilt, the other with confused loathing, grudging respect, and sheer astonishment. Those two are from different nests, and after she flies by their nest-places a few times, she begins to think they might offer her chargeling great comfort.
These are also the letters that, sleepless night after sleepless night, steadily become longer. As with those of barely a few words, none are ever tied to Persephone's leg. She imagines that he likes to hang on to the hope that the girl called Luna or the boy called Neville might answer, rather than risk the cold knowledge that they will not.
The despair at her chargeling's desolation grows. Over months and months, she watches as he starts and discards letter after letter, burns parchment after parchment until one night, one addressed to Longbottom lands short of the fire, and she decides that enough is enough.
It is not a whole letter, but it is a paragraph. Its weight in her beak makes flying difficult, but she is Persephone, hatched from the fifth egg of Demeter, and she will deliver her chargeling's plea in time.
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If you want to know what Persephone looks like, google "Laughing Owl". The species is supposed to be extinct, but I doubt Narcissa would see that as a hindrance.