A/n Thanks for all the love guys! Those reviews were amazing! I'm so glad to see no flamerz! I spent all afternoon writing this next chapter for you! Thank you to my bestie Becky for proofreading this during lunch today - you're awesome!

Hooty x Duolingo owl - Hooty's "oral" spanish exam

Hooty never was, as Eda had put it, "the sharpest tool in the shed". It was a sad fact of life on the boiling isles that house demons had a tendency to be slower than many and as a fledgling Hooty had realized early on that if he wanted to achieve his dreams he had to work twice as hard.

Eda never had much time for him growing up, and king didn't arrive until much later, so hooty spent most of his childhood trying to learn to read. At first it was arduous and difficult – the books Eda left around the house were complex, cryptic, often sentient and on at least two occasions hooty had accidentally casted spells. Something Eda called a "new chapter in the book of her disappointment".

Over about seven years, Hooty eventually succeeded however. Infatuated by books, or perhaps just out of a need to make friends, he soon found himself reading books of all genres. Often, books would leave the house before he could finish them – either because Eda no longer needed them or because they walked out themselves. Recipe books were among the first things he could read properly. Simple words and phrases, accompanied on occasion with pictures, made great reference for simple words and phrases. Eda herself often read aloud when focusing on her cookery too which made the whole ordeal somewhat easier.

One of his earliest childhood memories, in fact, was of another owl Hooty saw at the front of a recipe book. He'd been bought up to be territorial around others – something Eda called an "The only part of your one job" and for years he had thought that was just how things were. Owls were territorial, it's just... nature. Right?

Looking at the owl on the picture was different, though, Hooty felt something different when he looked at him that he didn't know how to express. At first he thought it was anger, or perhaps disgust, but as time went on he found he was looking at the picture more and more – to the point when he removed it from the book to keep on a windowsill.

Of course, Eda noticed instantly but instead of the instant scolding Hooty expected instead she sat down and talked to him explaining that some owls didn't fly that way. It had taken many months for Hooty to understand what Eda had meant by that – and just a few seconds for him to figure what that meant for his chances with the owl in the picture.

Being the owl house wasn't all bad, of course. People would come to visit on occasion and once king came into the house Hooty finally had someone to talk to during the long trips Eda would take to the city.

One time, Hooty found a local merchant that was selling a weather vane that he felt would make him look cooler. For a few days, Hooty searched around the woods looking for money dropped by tourists but – upon searching for the local merchant again - it turned out that the weather vane had already been sold to someone else. When Hooty told Eda what had happened she wasn't very sympathetic. "Let that be a lesson to you. This is all the good that comes from wanting something." Eda was very good at dispensing life lessons that circled round to everything being Hooty's fault. Then, one day, after a particularly nasty encounter with the Emperor's coven, Eda – as a method of saying thanks – gave the weather vane to Hooty and even though she didn't say it Hooty knew, deep down, that it meant that some small part of her did actually love, and appreciate him.

Totally made up, of course. Hooty had read the story in one his many books but he always figured that if he ever had to tell someone about what growing up with the famous owl lady was like... He'd want to be able to tell a story like that.

A lot of his social skills, hell a lot of his life in general, actually came from books. Works of fiction proved to be a better guide than anyone else and over time hooty accepted that maybe this was the way things were.

For his 20th birthday, Hooty asked Eda to teach him more than just English – to help him enjoy books in all the languages there were – but she was reluctant. "House demons that think for themselves are a problem unto themselves" was the excuse she gave, nonchalantly dismissing any hope Hooty had of reading any of the fine dialects from around the world and so, the cycle continued with Hooty trying desperately to read other languages and not getting anywhere.

Then, one day, Eda told Hooty she had a surprise for him. That she had hired someone to take care of his language problems so he would stop complaining while she was trying to work on more important things... and so began a new chapter in Hooty's life.