Author's note: This must be my shortest chapter ever - but it just didn't seem quite right tagged onto the end of the previous one. And I'm fond of this Bonxie -I think he deserves a chapter in his own right!
DECK THE HALLS
By Bellegeste
CHAPTER 9: THE MESSENGER
Monday 23rd December
Azkaban
White, trembling claws were attaching another scrap to his leg. The Bonxie submitted without a struggle, waiting for the touch which he knew, dimly, would follow: the touch of emaciated fingers poking out through the bars, wrapping themselves around his sinewy neck, stroking and soothing, stroking and soothing… a soft, persuasive, hypnotic caress.
And afterwards? He was a new gull! A gull with a mission… a gull ready to dive for the deepest, slipperiest sardines; to bombard the greediest guillemot… he was Super-Skua! And though every sea-bird instinct screeched that this went against the call of the wild, against the laws of the sun and the seasons, he was feather-down, unable to resist the compulsion to fly south, overland…
The bemused Bonxie, whose cliff-top dreams were now peopled with strange, shouting humans; who had grown inconveniently loath to fly in all but the clearest weather conditions; whose bird-brain was invaded by a squawking colony of meaningless, human phrases; who was haunted by the notion of a vertical, stone stack where moon-eyed night birds sat silently blinking, where fish was plentiful and free… …launched himself yet again from the ledge.
End of Chapter. END OF PART 1 (Did I say this story was in two parts?)
In part 2 things start to get rather busy on Christmas Eve, because, believe it or not, Malfoy's spying was not all in vain.
Next chapter: TRIM THAT TREE. Hermione braces herself for Christmas with Snape and Harry. Yes, we actually get back to the Christmas part of the story - but it's not all turkey and cake...