Nibble had been wheeling aimlessly through the whorls of apparition smoke above the Ministry for more than an hour. True, her feathers were becoming a tad hazy, but she wasn't about to end her favorite childhood game because of that. She remembered the old song. Wind through the wind, wing through the whorls, weave through, and wallow, wane, whisper, waver, O weave through, wind through, wing through the whorls. It was too bad that owls were only musical in their heads.
Oh, well.
Wind through the wind…—
"—Quidditch? All the boys I knew were crazy about it."
Fen looked down at the hands folded in his lap. Adelle's latest attempt at pleasant conversation petered out. She squirmed in the silence, unnerved by the unnatural lack of chatter. "Candy," she finally declared and began to hunt through her desk drawer. "There's not a child who doesn't love candy. What kind do you like best, Fenrir?"
The boy's eyelids shot up. "You don't need to do that, Lady Dubois."
Adelle's hands froze. She spent a long moment studying the strange little boy before her. Appearances, though, revealed no secrets. At last she said, "I haven't been a lady since I was six years old, Fenrir. The title went with my parents."
"You still have their blood, though. You can't change what you are."
She smiled sadly. "Are you from an old family, Fenrir?'
He went quiet. She redirected the dying conversation quickly. "Well, I'm afraid we humans judge people by their appearances, not by their blood."
"Appearances are important."
"Unfortunately," sighed Adelle. "Sometimes I wish that everyone appeared exactly as they were." She smiled, thinking of a certain Ministry toad.
"I don't."
She glanced sharply at Fen and asked, "Why not?"
He looked back down at his hands, and she wanted to groan, but then he said again: "Appearances are important."
She sat back. She was used to dealing with children who had been forced to grow up fast, but this was a little much. Eleven? Her ears were telling her he was twenty, her eyes only eight. But then appearances were deceiving…
Her thoughts were interrupted when a rather irate—she glanced down at the form he had signed—Severus Snape stalked in through the doorway. "Here." He laid on her desk a parchment roughly the size of a postcard. He glared at it and added with a sneer, "In her rush to help me, she somehow neglected to authorize it with her signature and the Ministry seal."
Adelle signed the dotted line without a word. She was a little too preoccupied with biting the inside of her cheek to speak. She then pointed her mass-produced, Ministry-issued wand at the parchment but didn't wave. With an odd pleading look, she warned, "This is for reasonable expenses. They'll read that as absolutely necessary and five Knuts cheaper than the damaged discount."
The words, and anything extravagant will get me sacked passed between them.
"I'll try to resist the lure of the gold-plated cauldrons, Miss Dubois," he remarked dryly.
To avoid snickering she swished her wand. With a gaudy show of crimson sparks—Severus winced purely out of habit—the seal of the British Ministry of Magic appeared alongside her sweeping signature in all its resplendent, lumpy potato-shaped glory.
Severus raised one brow. "Wordless casting? I didn't think the Ministry schools bothered to teach that."
She grimaced briefly before smoothing her face and shrugging. "They don't. But you're supposed to know how to before they tell you any authorization incantations."
"Meaning Fudge hasn't the brains of a Chocolate Frog," he interpreted. He pulled out his pocket watch again. "Hex it. Diagon Alley is going to be murder—where's the nearest Floo?"
She pointed up. "Next floor, right by the elevator, and…thank you."
He nodded back at her, once, curtly, then looked down and put away the watch, the Ministry parchment, and the rare pleasant expression that had mistakenly found its way onto his face. He started to turn away then stopped, unsure what he was forgetting. He is eyes scanned the room, ran over Adelle's desk, and —ah—nearly skipped over a certain ward of the Ministry sitting in a chair a little too quietly.
—
…weave through, and wallow, wane, whisper, waver…
Somewhere along the line, Nibble had ceased to plunge in and out of the smoke and had simply become it. Her wispy gray wings left trails of haze. Behind her, loops and twirls danced in the soft blue sky. Her cares had been shed in the same way. The Forest's call, the constant whispers, all finally drifted away and let her be at peace. Even the ever-present voice of her mother (more of a chicken than an owl) stopped warning her about the gruesome death of her uncle Horus, who had flown through apparition trails one time too many. Not that the old mother hen would know how he had kicked it, as he had never been seen again…
With an aggravated keen, Nibble rolled in the air and shucked off those thoughts as well.
O weave through, wind through, wing through the whorls! Wind through—wind through…
Her mind wouldn't let her be, though. Something was beginning to feel off, and it was an odd batch of feelings: disbelief, heartbreak—unworthiness? What in Archimedes's butt feathers? She drifted over the Ministry building, unable to understand this sudden sense of abandonment.
Her wing motion stalled. She glanced down with a sharpened gaze. That little…
—
With the lunch hour over, the queue for the outgoing Floo was mercifully short. Severus soon found himself reaching into a pot of acid-green powder. He paused for a moment with his hand griping the gritty stuff and wondered why he was nagged by the feeling that he had forgotten something he would regret. Of course, the thought to apologize for his rudeness to Department Head Umbridge had conveniently slipped his mind, but he somehow doubted that would ever come back to haunt him.
He eventually shrugged it off and led Fen onto the hearth. Technically, children over the age of eight were supposed to Floo by themselves. There was also a complicated formula involving height and weight classes that was designed to make brain matter ooze out of the parent's ears. Thank Merlin he'd never had children. He looked down at the small child beside him. For some reason, he didn't think the Ministry would call him on it.
He called out "Diagon Alley." Then, as he was about to throw the powder, he heard an odd rush of air and a screech. He looked up to watch a livid, literally smoking owl appear from nowhere and swoop in on him, talons first. The Floo powder dropped from his hand as he raised his arm instinctively. The bird's wicked feet dug into his robe's sleeve right as there was an explosion of green.
By the time the spots had left the startle onlookers' eyes, the hearth was empty, and the dark wizard, the small child, and the homicidal owl were all long gone.
—
"Well, that's something—"
"—I thought I'd never see."
Arthur Weasley's head whipped away from his sandwich and towards the speakers fast enough to catch a Snitch. The twins? Here! Merlin, please, oh—Oh.
Rick Abrack and Michael Curio grinned at him. "Should have been there, Arthur," Rick told him. "The whole fifth floor's in chaos."
The twins wormed their way back into Arthur's mind. "What happened?"
Michael shrugged as though to say it wasn't important. "Something got through the apparition wards—and you'll never guess what."
Oh. Something that could break through Ministry wards designed to keep out the darkest of dark wizards wasn't important. Right. "I don't think I want to know," he replied edgily. Their mother was going to murder them. Was it possible for a Howler to swallow two fifth years whole?
"An owl!" laughed Rick suddenly, throwing him for a loop. "It just exploded into the main hall and dive-bombed some schmuck trying to Floo out. "They're still trying to clear out all the smoke!" He sobered briefly. "Hope the kid'll be okay."
Not Ron, not Ron, Arthur's brain was pleading. "Kid?" he asked with a deceptive calm.
"Yeah. The wizard in the Floo had his little boy with him. The powder fell when the thing snatched his arm, and all three of them got transported. Owl's big, too. Had a wingspan almost bigger than the kid."
Michael cut in with a snicker, "And in the meantime, the Ministry's running around with its head chopped off—" He glared when his friend suddenly cuffed him.
"Hey," Rick frowned, "show a little concern. There's a kid trapped in a fireplace somewhere with a crazed owl big enough to eat him."
He shrugged again. "I'm more concerned about the owl. Did you see the guy it latched on to? Dark looming fellow, greasy hair, hooked nose, killing curse eyes? Hell, he scared me from twenty feet—and you think that some barn owl is going to stand a chance against that guy when his little kid's in danger?" He was too busy laughing to notice that Arthur was staring at him, dumbstruck, slack-jawed and bug-eyed.
No, Arthur thought. Snape has a—? Merlin, no. Never in a million years, no…
—
The Owl Apparition incident would later be debunked as a fraud—with a tiny shattered window two floors up on the opposite end of the heavily warded building used as evidence of the enormous bird's perfectly normal entry—and the Ministry would calmly return to the status quo. Arthur Weasley, however, would never quite be the same ever again.
In the meantime...
Heh.
Thanks again for reviewing duj.