Disclaimer: I am making no moral statements in this writing exercise.

I have many fetishes and I've never really expressed them and this story is my exploration of it. Condemn me for being sick all you want, probably everything i wrote in here are things that will stay in my fantasy until my SO suddenly gained 20 new fetishes, But I would appreciate tips and suggestions on how I can improve. Fetish discussions and attempts to recruit me into your fetish groups are welcome.

2nd Disclaimer : I am someone that is very far removed from western culture. I have a very traditional view on everything. If you read something that's offensive feel free to tell me off and insult me, yes i'm a country bumpkin from a rice field who knows nothing about how people and the world work, yes my brain is damaged from all the pesticides i inhaled. No i won't change my mind because you say I'm wrong. Yes i might change my mind if you care enough to have a conversation with me and we had a nice talk over a few weeks or months going through the topic bit by bit. Put some real effective commitment, I'll respect that.

what else, uh, English is my second language, it does not excuse my bad writing and horrible word structure, i write with autocorrect on because spelling is a weakness of mine so corrections are welcome but i work full time and this is a hobby. But i promise to try and stay committed. I hope to improve my writing skills in general cause i want to start a big writing project as soon as i'm satisfied with my own skills.

Edit 1 : I uh, edited. Next chapter might have way more horrible writing in comparison so

Edit 2 : Maybe i should set up your expectation. I'm aiming to end this fic in at least 1 or 2 million words. "At Least". Cheers,

~o~

People are disgusting.

That was what Harry thought of every time he was at school hearing the thoughts of his classmates and teachers. Especially the math teacher Mr Gibson. He was always thinking of molesting the girls and boys in class including him. Mr Gibson thought of Harry as a "prime target". Harry wasn't completely sure why that was the case, but the gist he got from the paedophile teacher's mind was that it probably had something to do with how quiet Harry was and the fact that his family does not seem to like him very much.

That last bit irked the young man to no end. In his mind, he doesn't have a real family. He wished he had no family at all. Harry knew that Aunt Petunia was truly his mother's sister, but he hated thinking about that. He doesn't mind being thought of as a quiet kid. He doesn't have friends and he didn't really care about that too much. It was mostly Dudley's fault for openly bullying him and the fact that his cousin and his gang made it very clear that anyone who tried to get close or even talk to him would be targeted too. 'Dumbley' was what Harry liked to call him in his mind, sometimes out loud. He had been into his cousin's mind countless of times and he just never seemed to really have any real thought in his head beyond "food" or "I need to piss" .

Harry tends to equate thinking with intelligence. The more you talk also means you're dumber even if you think more. To Harry, his cousin was the pinnacle of idiocy.

"Hey Scarhead, catch this!" Dudley's voice rang out in the narrow corridor of the school. He threw a book straight at Harry's head.

It was too sudden and Harry didn't catch Dudley's intention to do that before it was too late. The corridor was full of students and it was hard to pick out any ill will directed at him. The book hit Harry's head hard and his legs gave away. He almost failed to catch himself with his hands before his face slammed into the floor. He didn't feel it at first. He just laid there on the floor. Blood rushed up to his head and the pain and throbbing starts. It's bleeding. He felt a trickle of liquid flowing out of where the book hit. There was no pain yet. Pain in 3, 2, 1, there it is.

Murmurs started to become louder around him as the pain on his head intensified. Don't make a noise. He heard someone calling for a teacher. Harry wasn't unconscious but he didn't want to move. His hands started hurting. This sucks .

"Move away! Give him some space to breathe!" Bloody hell. Out of all the teachers it just has to be the weirdest pedo teacher .

Mr Gibson was pushing the other students away. Harry was still face down. He felt Mr Gibson's pervert hand trying to turn him over. Time to move, I guess .

Harry slowly stood up. He used his hands to push his body up first, going into a crouch before slowly standing up. Then he took a brief look around him. Mr Gibson was beside him so he stared straight into the man's eyes and into his mind. Harry saw an image of himself being taken to the infirmary. That is not happening . He turned his head around, cutting off the connection. The other students still standing and staring at him seemed to mostly be confused or amused, but there are some looks of pity in the midst of all the faces.

"The freak's bleeding," someone said. There was a trickle of blood flowing down the side of Harry's head and Mr Gibson was looking at it concerningly.

He held Harry's left hand. Harry wanted nothing more than to tear his hand away in revulsion and panic but Mr Gibson had a firm grip. "I'll take you to the infirmary, come on" He pushed some students aside and pulled Harry through with him. Harry wanted nothing more than to run away but decided that it was best that he don't. I can just scream if he does anything, and I'll know if he even thinks about it. Mr Gibson had kept a hurried pace which was a bit hard for harry to keep up.

In the end, Harry did not sense anything weird from Mr Gibson's mind even when there were far fewer people around, allowing Harry to focus more on the teacher. Not even any pervy feeling . There was a female teacher and student in the infirmary. The other student was fast asleep with a wet towel on the bedside. Fever? Harry wanted to stand but Mr Gibson held onto his shoulders to make him sit right beside the door. He then walked over to the other teacher, sharing a quiet word between them, and then he simply walked out of the room without a word or glance at Harry. When the door closed, the other teacher walked over to him then she knelt down with a piece of cotton in one hand and a pack of it in the other.

"What happened?" The teacher asked as she dabbed his forehead carefully. Concern, worry . Harry stared into the teacher's eyes. "Can't believe Gibs just left like that!" .

"I fell," he said in a very quiet voice.

She smiled kindly at him. "Ah, he's the quiet kid isn't he?" . "What was that?" She was careful not to touch the wound but she was dabbing rather roughly.

He tried to speak while suppressing all sounds other than his answer. "I. fell." He couldn't suppress his flinch when the teacher pressed the cotton ball a tad closer to the wound.

"I see…" the teacher just continued tending to Harry's wound. She didn't ask any more questions. "Someone must have hit him with a stick or something, this is going to swell a lot"

Harry just sat there quietly, observing the teacher from the corner of his eyes. After she finished cleaning his wound, she told him that it did not look too bad and then she dressed his wound using gauze and tape.

Harry was no longer actively reading the teacher's thoughts, but he received impressions of an action. A call that was to be made. He knew the teacher would be calling Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia afterwards.

He wanted to stop her but the words died before he even felt them in his throat.

Just another painful night.

~LT(Large Transition)~

So, the teacher's name was Amy.

"And stay in there!" Vernon said as he violently pushed the bruised boy into a small cupboard under the stairs. Harry had received his punishment for 'making Dudley look bad. As if that was the real reason .

Harry knew why Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon relentlessly beat him. It doesn't actually matter what the reason was. Sometimes Harry 'overcooked' the sausages, other times he walked around the house too loud. The only thing their 'reasoning' changed was how bad he got beaten. Tonight was pretty bad because 'you were trying to expose us weren't you boy!?'. Heh.

Harry would usually try to distract himself from the pain. Every time. "Beat the 'freakishness' out of him". Just try it. Do it. He had long noticed that the two treacherous adults did not exactly have the same motivations driving them despite their shared goal. Vernon would usually have an image of a man with messy hair and a woman with red hair pointing a fancy stick at him, sometimes he heard from deep within his uncle's mind describing it as 'Wand'. The memory or imagery conjured an intense feeling of helplessness and anger towards whatever made him feel that way. He hates losing control.

His wife, on the other hand, would always have the red-haired woman in mind, but she usually had a younger-looking version of the woman in comparison to her husband. Her emotion was very different. Jealousy to no end. Jealous of her looks, her husband, her happiness, her grades, her… talents. Envy. Grudge.

Harry knew that those two couples in the memories he gleaned from his relatives' minds were his parents. Lily and James Potter. He had read their minds enough to piece out that his parents did not actually die from a car crash. They had only lied to him to make him feel more miserable, he couldn't actually find out anything other than that they died in a 'freak war'.

As much as he hated to admit it, they did succeed in making him feel miserable. He had held out hope at first after piecing out that he was lied to about how his parents had died, but as it became clearer the more he read their minds, the truth was inevitable. They had only lied about how they had died.

It might have felt better if his parents were just a couple of irresponsible drunkards. At least that would have meant that he was never loved.

I wouldn't have cared then.

Harry winced as he shifted to make himself more comfortable. His 'room' had a small pillow that you'd usually put on a couch, and a single 'blanket' with faint stains that simply wouldn't completely fade away no matter how many washings he did. The latter was really just a towel that Harry had swiped. Petunia deemed it too filthy and 'fitting' which was why he was allowed to keep it.

The wound dressing that somehow was still on his head felt silly as he felt the pulsing sting of belt marks on his back that was bleeding and probably turning purple. He needed to lie down on his back because his stomach and ribs hurt more. Belts stings, but Uncle Vernon was fat and his arm was as thick as his legs. He would huff and pant like a horny dog but that doesn't mean his punches were weak. Or maybe it's just because I'm small. Boxing tournaments have weight classes for a reason. Or maybe he is weak? I haven't died yet . Small mercies that Aunt Petunia was thin as twigs but she liked to dig her nails into Harry. His throat has five thin bleeding marks and his cheek stings from slaps and scratches caused by her nails and jewelry.

Harry laid down on the cold wooden floor, putting his pillow and blanket aside. I don't want to wash them . He just has to sleep because he knows that tomorrow, everything will feel better. It's so… hard to breath... I hate everything…

Maybe this pounding in my head will end it all.

~ST(Small Transition)~

He was woken up by familiar sounds.

*Thud*. *Thud*. *Thud* *creak*. *Thud*. *Thud*. *Thud*...

His whole body still hurt but the unbearable headache was gone. His stomach and ribs were still purple but moving doesn't cripple him with pain anymore. He didn't know what time it was at the time, but the heavy footsteps that woke him up meant that its probably early morning.

He could tell exactly where his uncle was with each step he heard. Soon enough, the cupboard door shook as Uncle Vernon pounded on it.

"Boy! Wake your lazy arse up and make breakfast!". The cupboard door was unlocked and Harry painfully crawled out of his 'room'. Vernon grabbed onto the back of his shirt to pull him up, forcing him to stand. He held his chin and then roughly forced Harry's head side to side as he inspected him with disdain. "Hah, I told Tuny there's nothing to worry about" Vernon scoffed. "You'll go to school just fine." He shoved Harry's head back. "If I get a call again today you'll be sorry Boy!" He shouted as he walked into the kitchen. He had to stop himself from openly glaring at his back. No emotion.

Harry followed and then proceeded straight to the kitchen to make breakfast for the Dursleys. Aunt Petunia came down while he was toasting bread. The first thing she did was walk straight toward him. He almost reacted by flinching away but she merely grabbed onto his head. She checked Harry's face similar to how Uncle Vernon did before but she didn't say anything. She just sat down at the round table next to his uncle. Dumbshiteley must still be sleeping . He had gone through many mornings like this, but that day, Harry felt a lot more vindicated over the fact that his cousin was being treated far better than him. And I know that they purposely treat Dumbley better. Especially in front of me. Harry hated it so much.

Because it worked.

Harry finished making breakfast as quickly as he could and then he hurried to the bathroom that was attached to the laundry room beside the door to the backyard after fetching his blanket. His stomach rumbled, but he ignored it. Once in the bathroom, he stripped his clothes off to check over himself and his injuries. His ribs were still purple, there was scarring on his back in addition to the older ones. He took off the taped gauze on his head, running his hand over where the book had hit him down to his neck. There wasn't a single blemish save for the 'z' scar on the right side of his forehead. It was still there.

It has been for as long as he could remember.

He wasn't sure why his body healed his face first, but he thought that it was because, deep inside him, he wishes to go to school no matter what. Harry knew that it wasn't normal to heal that fast. It's not normal to be able to dive into other people's minds or sense their emotions in the first place. He knew he was a 'freak'.

Once when he was five, he remembered wishing he was normal so that his aunt and uncle would love him like they did Dudley. They will pay for everything .

Soon.

Harry concentrated on the bottle of floor cleaner under the sink. He felt the odd sensation in his body. No, not in me. But with me. Not part of me, but… It felt like he was sweating, but his skin was dry. There was sweat, but it was not on him, only in sensation.

It's not 'touch'. But something else. Something I don't have a word for?

He concentrated again, imposing his will onto the world.

Levitate.

After a second of quivering, the bottle floated up.

He smiled.

Soon .

~LT~

Pearce... Dumbley's best friend slash lackey.

Or the other way round, it depends on how you look at it.

Harry was in the toilet surrounded by Dudley and his bullies' group, shirtless. Dudley bragged about Uncle Vernon beating Harry up instead of him and now Dudley was showing them the proof because they didn't believe him. He had dragged him into the boys' bathroom and then forcefully took off his shirt before pushing him into the wall. He didn't react, his face showed them nothing.

Dudley and Pearce were jeering and laughing but the three other boys seemed nervous. Harry stared into the eyes of one of the boys. "This is fucked up..." . He could feel that the other two boys were also fixated on his scars .

Jake, he sat in the same row as me. His family is rich and he gives Dudley money and bought snacks for him to get on his good side. He likes to bully other kids together with Dudley because it made him feel important unlike when he came home every day to that empty mansion house with only the occasional cleaner around every few days. His parents would always come back home late and they never really talked to him unless it was about his grades when the school called in to talk about his dropping performance in class. They never praised him when his grades were good.

Huh? Harry blinked as his mind processed the implication of what just happened. Did I just read his memories? No… He wasn't thinking- wait, he was. Not directly, but I followed his… thoughts? No…

"See, I told you I was telling the truth!" Dudley giggled at the other three boys. When he saw their faces, he frowned. "What? You guys scared? It's not even the worst he got from daddy."

The three boys stared in horror at Dudley while Pearce's laughter just escalated. The boy next to jake started laughing nervously, prompting the other two to do the same.

Dudley seemed confused. He turned to Pearce. "You done staring? Come on let's leave." Dudley took one last look at Harry. "I don't want to lose my appetite looking at Scarskin!"

Dudley and Pearce laughed as they walked out of the bathroom. The three boys let out nervous laughter. Jake took one last look at Harry before walking out. He almost looked concerned.

~LT~

Two years later.

Harry would turn eleven during the upcoming summer break. He had mostly spent his time fixated on his ability to read memories. He used it on everyone he could and he loved it.

It opened up his world.

It wasn't that he was ignorant, but his life had felt so empty and hopeless. There was no salvation before and he never really understood what lies beyond in the future. His powers taught him of potential. He experienced what happiness could actually be for the first time in his life when he dove into the memories of a girl who sat at the next table in the cafeteria who was staring at him rather intently. Sarah.

She was just rather curious. And she suspected that I was being bullied. Well, everyone knew, but no one does anything. But she seemed to care? Maybe she was even planning to do something.

She grew up in a lovely home, her mother was a housewife and her father ran a marketing agency. Her parents loved her a lot, she was an only child and her parents gave her a large room with a big fluffy bed and many teddy bears. Her happiest memory was on her fifteenth birthday when her parents brought her to France on a holiday to Paris at that time. All her memories brought feelings and a myriad of desires with them that were foreign to Harry. Family… True family. It was addicting to him and he especially liked experiencing her feeling and memories toward her parents. It was so warm. He would dive into her mind fairly often. There were others that came from a good family, but none had feelings and emotion as strong as her. And pure.

But, Harry felt a bit guilty about her. He ended up accidentally stealing her memories away.

It wasn't intentional, but it was the direct effect of his desires. He wanted her life, he wanted to be loved and cared for. He had forgotten what he hoped for before and he desired her memories. He wanted it, he willed for it.

So his 'powers' responded.

He didn't realize what he had done until school ended that day. He saw her on the way back at the car park in front of her parents. She was in tears and crouched on the ground screaming, asking why she couldn't remember anything as her parents tried to calm her down. He did not have to come near her to feel within himself, how distraught she was. He knew by reading the teachers' memories that Sarah ended up going to therapy and counselling to that very day.

It caused a huge scene at the time and somehow his aunt and uncle saw it fit to punish Harry for the incident even when they had no evidence at all that he was actually responsible for it. After all, 'if it's freakish, we just have to beat the freak' . He remembered one time when there was a news panel about a plane that disappeared mysteriously off the coast of some back end of the world in some mountains . I mean, I got beaten that day for it, so I was punished for it.

With that incident, Harry learned that he must use his abilities quietly without causing a scene. He became really good at it. I could just pick and choose what I want. Kinda. And I can steal them away on purpose… Kinda . He discovered that there were what seemed like two types of memories. 'Normal' and 'Knowledge'

Knowledge was harder to steal away. More like impossible. Harry discovered that when he tried to steal Mr. Gibson's understanding of mathematics. He thought that it would have been funny to see the 'poor excuse of a teacher' grovel down in tears and confusion as he realizes what had happened.

There seemed to be a distinction between Memory and Knowledge that he did not fully understand. He could read Knowledge or even copy them to some extent which was partly why Harry had been able to consistently score highly in all of his classes despite the home situation he was in. He got beaten up every time he comes home with grades much higher than Dudley's, but he didn't care. It's worth it . He knew he need good grades to get his independence and later - Or sooner- revenge. He refused to bend even if he usually ended up with a broken arm for 'humiliating Duddikins'.

At some point, Harry decided that Knowledge was more addicting than Memories. The satisfaction and superiority he felt by simply knowing more than his peers and proving himself better than them was a joy he was not willing to give up.

Uncle Vernon tried several times to prove that Harry was cheating but after they made Harry do a test in front of the disciplinary teacher and himself in the room, he didn't try again. "I JUST HAVE TO BEAT THE BOY DUMB!" Harry remembered hearing from Vernon as he glared at Harry after the teacher announced his full marks.

He tried.

There were still scars on his right palm from when Uncle Vernon stepped repeatedly on his hand and then crushed it by dragging his feet across the floor.

Growing up is tough, the older I get, the worst the beating it seems. Maybe it was time.

Harry was at the school library doing his homework, taking his time before going back home. His Aunt had ordered him many times to go back home as soon as school ended but Harry kept defying that order no matter how bad she had hurt him. He would usually come home after five or six and only after a nice meal bought with stolen money from other students or on the street. Telekinesis was made for pickpocketing .

He felt guilty about it in some ways, but he usually would only take a pound at most from each person he stole from. It's still wrong? but it doesn't feel like that anymore… so. At first, he would steal on every chance that he saw, but that left him uncomfortable at the end of the day. Now he would usually only take from those that he knew came from a well-off families and brought a lot of money to school. There were about twelve students that he regularly targeted at school but he only took from others when he discovered how much they had through his telepathy.

He stole more than he spent and he kept the extra bits of cash in a container up a tall tree in the park two streets away from the house he lived in. He had carved a hole as high up the tree as he could using his telekinesis. There were about two hundred pounds of single-digit bills and a lot of coins in them. He has been planning his getaway since the start of the year. His plan was to wait till the first day of the next semester and then just take the bus to London.

He planned to kill the Dursleys the night before school, move them over to the pre-dug hole he would have prepared in the nearby shrubbery two streets across. Burying them in the backyard would be too obvious and chances are the bodies might be found anyway. No one would suspect a weak ten-year-old to drag the bodies. I could just say I was kidnapped and then managed to run away or something. It's flawless.

Harry tightened his fist. Soon. Now I need to train up my telekinesis to lift, like, two hundred pounds or so. Maybe three hundred. More? yeah.

Harry also learned that he could influence people with his telepathy up to a certain extent. He exerted his will onto someone's mind to force them to trip or he could also do something more subtle like whispering into someone's mind to make them do something like turn left instead of right. The downside was that there were severe limitations to it.

I could like, briefly take over their body kind of? Well, not take control, but like, give a command so that they just do it and not think about it. Yeah. And with the whispers, that was mostly hit or miss.

His best result was from earlier that year when Harry whispered into Mr Gibson's mind to grope a student. He kept whispering things like 'No one was looking', 'she seemed quiet', or 'She wouldn't even scream' to him. He was already thinking that she was beautiful. Which was why I did that to him . He saw that the teacher was visibly struggling to control himself for a moment before seemingly out of nowhere groping the female student on her arse. The girl froze, but her friend screamed while pointing at the offending hand. Mr Gibson was so shocked at what he had done that he froze and didn't even remove his hand until the student he groped was pulled away by her friend. Because of that, the whole class saw what had happened.

And then it was chaos.

Mr Gibson was fired shortly after the news had spread to the parents and other teachers. He ran away shortly after to another city according to the gossip circle.

Harry knew Mr Gibson had promised himself never to touch a child in his life, and as far as Harry could tell from his memories, he had never even actually ogled any of his students. But Harry was tired of feeling the dirty emotions coming from him and hearing his perverted thoughts. He just found him distasteful and couldn't help but feel repulsed by the former teacher's very existence.

He managed to make Dudley and Pearce fight once by whispering insults into Dudley's mind. He mimicked Pearce's voice mentally and then tried to anchor the whispers permanently into his cousin's mind. However, he found that it disappeared after a day or so.

It didn't take too long before Dudley lost his anger. The look of confusion on Pearce's face when his cousin suddenly punched him was priceless to him. Unfortunately, a teacher noticed and then stopped the fight after calling several other male teachers over. Dumbley and Pearshite had cut lips and bruises all over their faces for two weeks. They didn't suspect a thing.

One discovery had puzzled Harry. He couldn't do any of his manipulation tricks on his aunt and uncle. It was like there was a block in their head in regards to Harry's ability. It was like I wasn't allowed to touch their mind . When he examined their mind closer and more thoroughly, he discovered that there was already something there whispering to their mind that he couldn't dislodge. The very same thing also somehow prevented him from doing anything else other than diving into their minds. He couldn't even take away their memories or copy anything. What he felt was similar to what Harry could put into the minds of others but it felt rough and not subtle at all. Harry's whispers were light and they blended into the mind of his targets. Sometimes he couldn't even sense his own manipulations.

The obvious conclusion is that there's another telepath out to get me. Well, not necessarily. If I read that 'mind construct' right, it's only telling them to raise me into a meek and weak child... But why? It crossed his mind once that perhaps his guardians were not to be fully blamed for how they treated him, but those thoughts were dismissed as soon as they had passed through his conscious mind. They chose to beat me.

Harry had experimented a lot. He couldn't whisper to someone to make them do something they didn't want. He could take control of their bodily function but they didn't choose to trip. Whispering was just a persistent… nudge. If they really didn't want to do it, then the whisper just disappears. He once tried to make a male teacher take his shirt off during class just to see what happen and discovered that the teacher's mind simply buried his whisper away. He listened to the thoughts of the teacher and he did think about taking his shirt off, but after his mind stored away the whispers, it was as if they didn't exist anymore even though could still sense his mental construct existing in the teacher's mind.

I tried to make Dumbkin get naked in the cafeteria but he ended up just getting more and more confused from what I can tell in his empty head. Maybe I could've taken over his body but that would just mean I get beat. They'll die anyway, so I'll worry about the whole thing after it's all done . Maybe I should leave Dumbkin alive. Maybe that's too cruel. It's pretty tempting to have him suffer through it though.

He closed the textbook in front of him and then stored his homework in his bag. After depositing the book where it belonged, he greeted the librarian. She smiled and bid harry a good day as he left.

The teachers had been one of Harry's long-term projects ever since he started reading and manipulating memories. Most of the teachers had been suspecting that Harry's home life has problems, but none had actually done anything for some reason. Being 'saved' doesn't suit his goals so instead, he had been making sure no one would actually come to investigate. A few whispers here, a few memories taken elsewhere. Aside from knowing that he would probably end up at the orphanage, which from what he could tell, doesn't sound like a likeable improvement to his life if things go that way. he had a strong desire driving him.

I want my revenge.

~LT~

Harry was depositing a few bills into his secret stash. He had a total of almost five hundred pounds which was more than enough 'security' for him to live on the streets of London. He could rely on pickpocketing if he ran out of money and he figured that he could save up a lot more money easily in London with so many people around as long as he was careful enough. School might be an issue, but he was sure he could find a way to register at a school in London with his abilities. Maybe even go to college after that.

Harry's plans were coming together. It was even his birthday that day. Not that anyone cares .

He almost felt like executing his plans during Dudley's birthday a bit over a week ago. The spoiled brat complained about not having enough presents. They forced me to be there cooking their shite food. They wanted me to see them. They want me to stare. Just. To. Mock. Me. The audacity!

He headed home while repeatedly playing out his plan for independence in his head to make sure that he did not miss anything.

First, just force the door open. Take a knife from the kitchen. Then I can float up the stairs cause don't remember which step creaks. I know they don't lock the doors, so I can just enter. Then I just need to hold them down and their mouth. Stab them. Throat first? make them suffer? Just kill. And then Du-

When he walked past the walkway up to the door of Number 4, Privet Drive, an owl hoot caught his attention.

Huh?

It sounded like it came from right behind him.

He turned. There was an owl perched on the loose wooden fencing beside the walkway that he had built to make sure the flower bush grow the way his aunt wanted. Harry couldn't tell what kind of owl it is, but he was more occupied by the fact that it was the first time he'd ever seen an owl so closely. It took him a few moments to realize something bizarre. The owl was pointing one leg at him, and there was a letter with red wax seal in between its talons.

His mind blanked out.

Thoughtlessly, he slowly reached one hand out to grab the letter.

As soon as his fingers touched it, the owl released the letter and then flew off, startling him. He almost dropped the letter.

What the bloody hell…