As the full moon rose the owls became nervous. Professor Dumbledore had had the courtesy to inform them of the werewolf, and reassure them of their safety, but they were still chained to perches and unable to escape.

It was a difficult time for them. For years they had been waiting for a sign, and now some believed it had arrived. Those who had taken to praying now increased the volume and frequency, calling to their brothers to join them in waiting for the prophet. Others screeched their condemnation loudly, rejecting the idea of a human saviour. Owls, they claimed, would make their own freedom, and raise their own prophet.

Hedwig was undecided, but knew she would have to choose before long. Already there was a divide in the owlery, and on returning from deliveries the devout would fly to one end of the room to be chained, and the cynics to the other. From her position near the middle Hedwig could hear the sermons of both, and she felt most aligned with the cynics. They already viewed her as one of their own, because her master had so much to fear from the supposed prophet.

Sirius Black, the Dog Man, was a symbol to the owls. They had seen him escape from the castle on the back of a creature with wings, and there were those who said that this was a sign that they were near to the end of the compulsion that forced them to serve the humans. Perhaps, they said, he would be the one to uncast the spell that had held them for over a thousand years, or perhaps he was the herald of another. Either way, they said, now was not the time to be a Bad Owl. Now was the time to pray, to reassure each other and, above all, to remember what it meant to be an Owl.

To be an Owl is to have pride, to keep in mind as you fly that your nature is to kill and to soar and to hoot.
An Owl may be enslaved by magic, but it would never choose to serve.

A true Owl would kill its master if it could.