The Shadow Owl, or

A Bark As Bitter As Any Gall

Chapter 23

Chador explained himself to Lucia about a week later. It was a stark, chilly November day, no snow but plenty of frost and slate-grey skies. She had spent an entire history class period writing a letter to her mother explaining how miserable October had been and how much better it was now and had gone up to the Owlery to find an owl to send it. Chador found her there trying to get one to come to her. All he had to do was stick out a hand and a whole flock of them came. He chose one and tied her letter on for her.

"This one's quite dependable and also discrete. He'll know to deliver the letter when your mother's not around a lot of Muggles." He addressed the owl. "From now on, please do what Lucia asks and stop playing coy."

The owl hooted and flew away.

"Do they really understand what you're saying?"

"Of course they do. Come on. I can't decide if I hate this place or love it."

They went down and, by consent, found warmer robes in their own dormitories, Lucia's soft grey-white and Chador's his House bronze and blue, and met out in the crisp air.

"You don't mind?" Chador asked anxiously. "It's not too cold?"

"Oh, no."

"Good. I love this weather. And it's easier to talk away from the castle."

"Is it about the—the feathers?"

He swept back his hair with a faint smile. There were no feathers now. "I wanted to tell you. I don't know why, except you're good to tell things to."

"That's what Ginny said," Lucia murmured and remembered Astoria confessing with ashamed eyes only a few weeks ago how she loved Draco and despised herself for it. People did tell her things. Maybe it was learning so much about psychology with her mother.

"Luna knows, of course, but only because she found out by accident."

"Knows what?"

"Well—that I'm an Animagus. Only I never wanted to be. I was forced to be."

"What? How—how can that be possible? I thought you had to learn to be, not like being a Metamorphmagus."

"You do. But I have both Animagus and Metamorphmagus ancestors as well as a natural aptitude for Transfigurations, and somehow—well, I became one without ever wanting to be."

Out of all the questions crowding her brain, Lucia grasped at one. "What do you become?"

"Isn't it obvious? An owl." He sat down on a log under a stand of trees some little distance from the school and scrubbed his hands over his pale face. Lucia sat next to him. "It was like this: My grandfather on my father's side was an Animagus—an owl of course—and several relatives on my mother's side were Metamporphmagi. I never seemed to have inherited any of it, but I am good at Transfigurations, and there's a certain similarity to all of them. When Dolores Umbridge came to Hogwarts, she had access to all our records, and she had a perfect genius for horribly appropriate ways to 'punish' us. She seemed to know about me already—my grandfather and her father were enemies in some way. Nobody knows the full tale of that, really. She had no cause to punish me for a long time, because I'm naturally well-behaved, so finally she made up a rule to ban something I'd already done and called me in for detention for having done it."

"That's so…illogical," Lucia blurted out.

She surprised him into a real smile. "I don't think reason was the point. On the first day she did her normal write-with-your-own-blood thing, but I think she was studying me. The next day, when I came in she told me she was going to give me a second chance to be a useful and functioning member of Hogwarts, and then she turned me into an owl."

Lucia gasped and then blushed, because her first thought, after the horror, was to wonder precisely how one could do that.

Chador read her shrewdly and didn't seem offended. "It's perfectly possible, for someone who's good at Transfigurations, though it is illegal. You know Mad-Eye Moody—well, Barty Crouch, really—turned Draco into a ferret once?"

"What?"

"You didn't know that? I wonder if it was as…upsetting…for him as for me. You can't imagine what it feels like to know another person has control over whether you're even human or not. We use animals, you know? They're our servants. So another person turning you into an owl—and then using you—"

"Like being a slave," Lucia said in a low voice.

"Yes…"

"What was it like, being an owl?"

"Well—horribly disorienting at first. I didn't know what I was, not in human terms, but I could feel the owlness, the—the nature of being an owl. When you study to be an Animagus, someone guides you, and you prepare for the disorientation of transforming into something else. I had no preparation, and it was a—a horrible feeling, to be a different thing and not understand it and suddenly have different needs and to see and hear differently—"

"Could you think?"

"Oh, yes. It was a weird, owly kind of thinking—not words at all like I usually think in, but kind of flashes, impressions, sounds and images—but it was still me thinking, a continuation of my real self inside my owlness. I'm not sure if that was a benefit or not." He frowned.

"Of course it was! What could be worse than losing yourself?"

"I don't know—maybe experiencing everything I experienced as an owl, instead of having it all be a blank. She let me flap around in a complete panic in her office—and I think she enjoyed that—and then she let me go, but I had to go back again the next night, and then—" He screwed his eyes tight shut, shuddering.

Lucia put her hand on his arm and squeezed it tight until she knew it hurt. Chador opened his eyes again, and for a second she thought she saw owlness in his eyes instead of Chador-ness. Was it her imagination that his whole eyes had gone entirely black for a moment, like an owl's? He stared at her hand.

"You can do that again, if you think it's necessary. It helped."

"I know. Go on, Chador. What did she do when you went back?"

"She turned me into an owl, and then she transfigured things in her room into cats and let them chase me. For fun."

Lucia could only stare.

"Sometimes she let her Patronus in on the fun, too. You'd think that being chased by a Patronus wouldn't be so bad, but there's a reason Dementors flee from them. And anyway, it was composed out of her happy thoughts, and those are very nasty thoughts indeed."

"Chador—what's a Patronus?"

Chador stared at her. "How can you not know what a Patronus is?"

She shrugged.

"You have had a weird education. It's a spell, sort of defensive, sort of offensive. It drives away Dementors. You know about them, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's caused by happiness, which is the opposite of Dementors, of course. Sometimes it's sparks, sometimes a shield, sometimes it takes the form of an animal that kind of represents you. Harry Potter taught us all to do it when we were in Dumbledore's Army that year, even thought it's considered beyond our level of ability." He rolled his eyes.

"Is yours an owl?"

"Oh, no. Owls aren't exactly part of my happy thoughts." He pulled out his rowan wand and said, "Expecto patronum." Silver erupted from the end of it, spread out around them, and dissipated. "Bother. I've had trouble with this one lately. You have to think of something happy when you say it." He stood up and took a deep breath, looked all around them. His eyes alighted on Lucia's alive, interested face and brightened. "Expecto patronum!" he said, and what came out of his wand was the last thing she expected. It was a long, slender, silvery fish, swimming serenely through the air, eventually disappearing among the tree trunks.

Chador sat back down with a grin. "Don't ask me why a fish. I have no idea what that says about my character. But I rather enjoy surprising people with it."

"I can imagine. I want to try." She pulled out her own wand. "Think of something happy? Where's the fairy dust?"

"Fairy dust?"

"It's a more reliable method for flying than brooms, I'm given to understand," she said mischievously. She thought about what her wand felt like in her hand the first time she ever picked it up and said, "Expecto patronum." Sparks came from her wand, but unlike the flaring fireworks of Chador's, hers sort of dribbled out.

"It takes a lot of work," Chador said reassuringly. "You can't expect a little bunny rabbit to come leaping instantly out."

"Bunny rabbit? Mine's going to be a unicorn. Or something."

He grinned. "I have no doubt. Do you want to try again?"

"No. I want you to tell me the rest. I can try later."

He sighed, tightness in his face again. "Fine." He produced three more fish that wound their way around them for a moment. "That's better. Well, eventually Umbridge got tired of playing with a pet owl and decided to use me like an owl, sending me to carry messages and things, though not very far away, because I couldn't be seen to be gone too often. Sometimes she wouldn't turn me back, and I'd have to sleep in the Owlery and eat mice and things." He shuddered. "But there were some not-so-bad things about it. Flying, for one thing. I thought flying on a broom was amazing, but flying on your own wings—that's breathtaking. Also I think she forgot I was a boy turned into an owl and began thinking of me as an owl she occasionally let be a boy, because she stupidly let me overhear things she wouldn't have done if I'd been a boy sitting in her office. I was able to keep the DA out of trouble several times and cause certain amounts of trouble for her inquisitors. I could always tell when Mrs. Norris was coming. I was the one who helped Fred and George Weasley set up for their big exit, because as a small, thinking, flying creature, I had access to more places in Hogwarts than most people. You get used to most things, you know, and I got used to being an owl half the time.

"Then the Carrows came. She had to have told them how useful I was and how fun it was to control me, because they continued the same thing. Alecto was also very good at transfiguring things, and people. I wasn't quite as…docile for them, not with them working directly for Voldemort. If they gave me messages, I lost them or took so long delivering them that it was too late. Luna helped, until she was kidnapped. She would open messages and read them for me so we could decide what I ought to do. Owl eyes have a difficult time with things like reading."

"How did she find out?"

"Well, she came up to the Owlery one day, even though they made it off-limits to students, and when she saw me she knew me immediately. I was the only nearly-black owl there, but even that's no indication, but in some things it's difficult to fool Luna. She always sees deeper into things than most people—even when there's nothing deeper to be seen. In this case, she saw me, just in the form of an owl. She said, 'Oh, there you are, Chador. I've been wondering where you've been disappearing to.' We'd never been particularly close, but after that we made a lot of plans together. Hers were nearly always impractical, but there was always some element of genius to them. She always suggests impossible things and firmly believes that they can be possible."

"Things are only impossible until they're not," Lucia quoted.

"What's that?"

"Oh—nothing. Just something a fictional character my mother likes said."

"Oh. Luna would probably like that quote. But it was only a couple months later that she was kidnapped."

"And taken to Malfoy Manor," Lucia said, remembering that she had not yet heard the remainder of that tale.

"Yes. And then—well, I suppose I should have told someone, but I was ashamed. But Snape knew, and I've sometimes thought since then that he was trying to protect me. He would say, 'Use a real owl, Amycus, for Salazar's sake,' contemptuously, you know, and he would turn me back into myself, complaining that he was tired of me flapping about overhead. They say he was really protecting us all. If that's true, I shudder to think what it would have been like without him. It was bad enough with him. But then, there's the time he caught Ginny, Luna, and Neville trying to steal the Sword of Gryffindor. If the Carrows had had their way, they would all have been flayed alive, but Snape said it was much more frightening to send them into the Forbidden Forest. Which we all knew was complete nonsense, but we didn't know Snape knew."

"And anyway, it wasn't even the real sword, right? So if they'd managed to get it to Harry Potter, he'd have gone around thinking those Horcrux things were stronger than the sword. Think how discouraging that would have been."

"That's true," Chador said in surprise. "I hadn't thought of that. After all that work I went to to get them the key… Maybe that's how he knew they were going to try, though, and he figured it would be better if he caught them than the Carrows. And he let us be beat up a lot, but I overheard him arguing with Amycus Carrow about whether they should be allowed to use asphyxiation on the members of the DA they caught. He said, very coldly, 'They are still going to have need of what few brain cells they possess, Amycus, when the Dark Lord has finally brought them over to his side. I wish you would come up with less ridiculous and childish forms of punishment.' I wonder what sorts of things we were actually spared because of him."

He was silent a moment, and Lucia, looking at his black eyes, put her fingernails in her arm. The whites of his eyes, the grey irises, and his pupils came quickly back. He rubbed his arm ruefully. "I wish that wasn't necessary. Oh, blast." He stared at his hand. Lucia stared too. Across the back of his hand and along his fingers were tiny, dark feathers speckled with grey. Chador seemed to hold his breath and concentrate hard, and before Lucia's eyes, the feathers disappeared, absorbed into the skin.

"Yeah, that happens now. I found during the second half of last year that I could turn myself back into myself. There was a kind of knack to it that I couldn't always manage, but if I wanted to hard enough, it would happen. I only turned myself into an owl once, though. That was during the Battle of Hogwarts. I was a Fifth Year, and they insisted on evacuating everyone under seventeen, which certainly wasn't fair to those of us who had already proven ourselves, like Ginny. Her family wouldn't believe how powerful she was. But most of us came back on our own—that's how all the Slytherins who fought with us got in, because McGonagall didn't seem to think any of the Slytherins would want to stay and sent them all away. When we all came back, at the second half of the battle, and there were centaurs and house elves fighting, I thought, Why not the owls? I understand owl mentality now, what of it they've got. They weren't like me, much less intelligent than a human, of course, but they're intelligent for animals. They like their jobs and the children, and they have this idea, if you can call it an idea, that without them the wizarding world would simply cease to be. It's not a world of people doing magic: it's a world of letters being sent by people. So I turned myself into an owl for the first time—and it wasn't hard; I scarcely even thought about it but just did it—and I went and got them all. Mrs. Norris already had them all riled up, so some of them went after her first, but she got away. Believe me, a flock of angry owls is a frightening sight to see. A large enough owl can take down a small human, so we went after the young and the women. Which is not the proper English thing to do, but it is the owl thing to do. I gave Bellatrix Lestrange quite a gash across her face, though she almost killed me for it. I was going for her throat."

He smiled grimly in a way Lucia didn't quite like. Then he shuddered. "Ugg. Owls are such bloodthirsty creatures sometimes. I was more owl than human that day. I don't like it—it makes me afraid sometimes. You know how werewolves can't help turning into wolves? Sometimes I'm afraid I'm the owl version. Nobody's quite sure if I'm an Animagus or a Metamorphmagus or a—were-owl. Because I can't quite control it now. It started in summer, after the war was over. I'd have nightmares, and then I'd wake up and I wouldn't be sure if I was human or owl. And sometimes I was owl—and sometimes I was only partly owl, like my arms would be wings, or my back would be all feathers, or I'd look human but I'd want mice for breakfast. I think—I think that might have been worse than what Umbridge and the Carrows did. My parents took me to St. Mungo's, and they sent me to Animagi and Metamorphmagi, and now I'm taking Animagus lessons with Professor McGonagall. It's better than it was. I can control it better, but it still will burst out without my causing it. Especially when I have nightmares. I still wake up and I'm an owl, though now I can make myself go back to human—mostly. There are few enough of us older Ravenclaws left that I have my own room—I think McGonagall arranged that. Otherwise the whole school would know. I never wanted to be an Animagus, and the fact that I can't control whether I'm owl or human makes me crazy. It's like the stupid war is still haunting me." His hair was turning into feathers.

"It is," Lucia said. "Leave it to wizards to throw magic at psychological problems. What you've got is a nice case of post-traumatic stress, not a nice case of uncontrolled Metamorphmagism."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look, when you go through something horrible, even after it stops it keeps coming back in your mind. Your mind replays it over and over. In your case, you were enslaved in owl form, so your owl form keeps coming back. There's always a physical reaction in these things, and yours happens to be a magical physical reaction. If wizards didn't despise Muggle wisdom so much, they would know this."

"How do you know this?"

"It's my mum's job to know all the reasons why people disappear. Post-traumatic stress is a big one. And I was homeschooled, largely. My tutor taught me history of magic, while my mother taught me psychology." She shrugged.

"Muggle psychology can't make me stop being an Animagus, or whatever I am." Now there was a line of grey and black feathers around his eyes, making him look like he was wearing a mask.

"No, but it'll help you deal with what happened to you, so maybe you'll be able to control it. So you can be an owl if you want, not the owl being you."

"So what am I supposed to do, then?"

"I don't know. Find a therapist? You know, I could ask my mum. She'd know."

He hesitated. "Well…I don't think I'd mind your mum knowing. I like her."

"So do I. Chador…"

She pointed to his hand. His fingertips had disappeared into wingtips. He stared at it as if he wasn't quite sure whether to let it happen or not.

"I suppose you want to see what I look like," he said gloomily.

Lucia shook her head. "Of course I do, but not until you can choose whether to show me or not. It's not fair for me to use your…condition to satisfy my curiosity."

Chador gave her a surprised smile. "Alright, then, I won't. Look." His fingers were reappearing. "It seems like a Patronus charm. A more cheerful mood helps me control it."

"Well, then, maybe you should take me flying. On your broom. And—concentrate on your hair and eyebrows."

He put his hand up to them. "Expecto patronum," he murmured, and his black hair was back.

With a raised eyebrow, Lucia made a motion with her hand like a fish, and he laughed.

"Accio broom!" he called and mounted it when it came. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be for flying," she muttered and got on behind him.

"You don't have to hold on quite that tight. We haven't even left the ground yet."

"Sorry."

He kicked off, and after a while she decided that maybe flying wasn't so bad, when the pilot knew what he was doing.

Author's note: "Everything's impossible until it's not!" was said by Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.