Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: This ran away with me. I have no other excuse for writing 3K since this morning.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 13); MC4A
Individual Challenges: Shadow HP Bribery (Y); Gryffindor MC; Slytherin MC; Magical MC (x2); Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion (x2); Ethnic & Present (x2); Small Fry; Tiny Terror; Setting Sail; Hold the Mayo; Gender Bender; Lunar Era; Old Shoes (Y); Short Jog; Bucket Listing (Y); Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon; Greatest Gift
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 13 – Assignment 03
Subject (Task No.): n/a
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Insane Prompt Challenge [493](Owl); 365 [98](Extraordinary); Herbology Club [1-5](Crush); Auction [23-2](Cinderella); Back to School Shopping [Other Equipment](Pet & Owner); Pinata [Easy]("I guess this is goodbye.")
Other MC4A Challenges: Hunt [Su Set](Garden/Greenhouse); Chim [Deke](Laughing); Ship (Heoric Shadow)[Sp Mic 2](Dystopia AU); Fire [Hard](The Future); Garden [Chore List](Reading)
Representation(s): Desi Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini; Always Female Harry with Anxiety
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Lyre Liar; Abandoned Ship; Second Verse (Not a Lamp; Found Family; Nontraditional; Spinning Plates; Lovely Coconuts); Chorus (Wabi Sabi; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Vid Tangent; Wind Beneath); Demo 1 (Snow Lemon; Shiver & Shake; Inky Shadow; Casper's House; Under the Bridge); Demo 2 (Lost Llama; Sitting Hummingbird)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Thimble); SN (Rail; Spare); O3 (Orator; Ox); TY (Enfant)
Word Count: 2997

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Owl Together
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Once upon a time, there was a family that lived in a perfectly ordinary house on a perfectly ordinary street in a perfectly ordinary neighborhood in a perfectly ordinary village in Surrey County, England. The couple had met in a perfectly ordinary way. They had courted in a perfectly ordinary way, and after a perfectly ordinary amount of time, they had married in a perfectly ordinary way, too. Then once the perfectly ordinary husband had become established at his perfectly ordinary job, the couple decided to have children, which they did after a perfectly ordinary pregnancy.

Dudley Dursley was born in the same perfectly ordinary way his parents had done everything. To his parents, their perfectly ordinary son was absolutely perfect. Petunia and Vernon Dursley loved their son in a perfectly ordinary way. They contently set about spoiling him in a perfectly ordinary way, too.

Yes, everything about the Dursley family was perfectly ordinary, thank you very much.

Well, everything except for their niece.

You see, Petunia Dursley had once had a very pretty sister named Lily who had once been married to a man named James Potter. Lily and James had met each other at school, which would have been a perfectly ordinary way to meet if that school had been anywhere other than Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Potters had married right after they had graduated their magical school, not even waiting to establish themselves in careers. Not that they had to, of course, since James had come from a very wealthy family. They had started trying for a child soon after.

And after they lost that one, they tried again.

And again.

And again.

And then, after a delicate pregnancy that had them and their close friends walking on eggshells, their daughter was born almost a full two months early. Magic could do many wondrous things, such as create perfect temperature in a space that was kept oxygen-rich for little lungs. But it could not have saved a child who did not have a stubborn determination to live.

Thus the Potters had named their daughter Harini, for her strong will and the beautiful flowering bushes with their thorns waiting to prick the unwary. Her father James would whistle innocently whenever its alternative meaning of deer-like was brought up while his best friends rolled their eyes and tried not to laugh too loudly.

These two families would probably have never interacted after the sisters had parted ways at their parents' funeral if it wasn't for the events of a particular Halloween night when the Potters were killed in their own home. Well, the Potter parents were killed. Something went wrong when the murderer turn his wand on little Harini. No one truly knew what, either. Only that the Killing Curse was cast. Yet Harini lived while the caster was reduced to nothing but a pile of smoldering robes and a slightly singed wand.

For some very unusual and bewildering reasons, Albus Dumbledore (headmaster of Hogwarts and Chief Warlock for the national wizarding government) decided to send Harini to live with her perfectly ordinary relatives instead of any of the people that her parents had listed to care for their precious child if the worst should ever happen to them. Continuing his tend of unusual and baffling decisions, Dumbledore decided that the best way to transfer custody of the then toddler was to leave her sleeping on the doorstep of the Dursleys in the middle of the night. Thankfully, none of the multitude of ways that decision could have ended badly happened.

And the perfectly ordinary Dursleys set about raising their unusually extraordinary niece.

Sort of.

You see, they treated Harini horribly. Their favorite name for her was not a name at all. They just called her girl or if they were really angry, freak. When they weren't having her do the household chores, they had her doing the upkeep on the garden. When they didn't have her doing either of those things, they locked her away in the cupboard under the stairs like a dirty secret.

They let her go to school, but only because to do otherwise would have caused talk. They didn't let the girl do any of the homework that was assigned, not even if it was a group project. When her first year teacher had requested that Harini be tested for a few things that would affect her academically, the Dursleys denied the necessity. When the teacher had tried to explain about how smart Harini was and how she might benefit from an accelerated curriculum, the Dursleys had outright laughed at the idea of their stupid and quiet niece being smarter than their perfect son.

Eventually, the teachers stopped asking about homework. They stopped assigning Harini to groups for projects. They stopped asking about doing tests or where Harini's lunch was. They stopped sending letters home about missing assignments or about how Harini would disappear during recess time because otherwise her cousin and his friends would find her and beat her up after chasing her.

They stopped even trying to care and left Harini alone to slip through the cracks.

But then the wizarding world returned to demand that Harini return to them. The Dursleys were reluctant, to say the least. They enjoyed having a live-in servant, even if they did not enjoy having Harini there. The wizarding world gave them no choice in the matter. Harini would attend Hogwarts whether the Dursleys liked it or not. The man who came to take Harini shopping for her school supplies even got her an owl to send messages with.

Harini had never had a pet before. It was a beautiful owl, too, all snowy white feathers and fierce protectiveness of her new human. In fact, Harini had thought that it was a Snowy Owl at first. Then she had sneaked away to the local public library and looked up how to take care of her owl. Hedwig (as Harini had named her owl) was actually a Stygian Owl, despite her white coloring and how the species was native to South America (though considering that Hagrid had gotten her in a shop, Harini supposed both those things made a bit more sense than if he had gotten the owl by taming her out of the wild).

Luckily, the Dursleys had moved Harini to Dudley's second bedroom when the letters from Hogwarts had started arriving. While certainly not the aviary the books suggested as ideal for keeping an owl, at least if Harini kept the window open, Hedwig had access to the outside for hunting. Harini couldn't provide a bath pan in the house for Hedwig, but she did make sure to keep the bird bath in the back garden clean (which was already one of her chores anyway) and full of fresh water.

One of the first letters Harini sent was to the shop where Hagrid had gotten Hedwig to make arrangements for a supply of food for the owl, which they were glad to provide along with a specially charmed box to prevent the bats and rats from going off. Any time the box began to run low, the letter promised, the shop would top it off again and send the bill to Gringotts. Harini had spent most of her life hungry because of the Dursleys' restrictions. She hadn't wanted Hedwig to ever feel that way, not if she could prevent it.

Even after getting to Hogwarts, Hedwig remained Harini's best friend. The owl would often visit Harini in the Great Hall despite only rarely having letters for her. Harini would also visit the owlery just as often. Hedwig seemed to only tolerate the other birds and people around her and Harini, but that was acceptable. Harini knew from her research that owls weren't the type of birds to flock, and thus they weren't prone to bonding with anyone outside of their chosen human.

Life wasn't perfect. Yes, Harini had magic in her life now, and with it came her beautiful companion Hedwig and actual friends, but while magic could do many wondrous things, it could not make the Dursleys love her or even tolerate her.

Nor could it find her a date to this stupid Yule Ball that wasn't her best friend. While she did love the stupid boy, she was still a little mad at him for accusing her of lying about not entering the tournament and then the month long silent treatment, including almost not telling her about Hagrid wanting to show her the dragons. Harini just knew that it would send the wrong message if she chose him to escort her, and not just to other people either. Ron sometimes got really strange and possessive about both her and Hermione. Ever since Hermione had announced that she had a date, Ron had been acting like a jealous prat.

"I just don't know what to do, Hedwig," she said during one of the many visits to the owlery. She sighed and gave the owl another bat from the box when Hedwig gave a demanding cheet. "I don't really want to go with him, but it really does seem like everyone else has dates."

Someone chuckled nearby. Harini jumped in place, nearly knocking the food box off her lap. The boy who had laughed raised both of his hands to show that he was unarmed. Harini thought she recognized him as a Slytherin in her year, but only in the sense that Hogwarts had so few students who were not white that one tended to notice them (like no one would have already noticed Harini for something that wasn't her skin color). She thought his name was Blaise Zabini but she might be mistaken about the first name. Zabini wasn't one of the Slytherins who liked to hang around Draco Malfoy or Pansy Parkinson and cause trouble. Nor was he on the Quidditch team.

"Does your owl gives you good advice?" he asked after she had relaxed back in her seat. He gave a little whistle while holding a hand. A small owl flew down immediately to land on the offered hand. Its markings were lost in the deep darkness of its pitch black coloring, but Harini knew the breed instantly because it was the exact same one as Hedwig. The way that the thing butted its head demandingly against the boy's chin, she figured that he must have a similar relationship with his owl that she did with Hedwig. "Pumpkin tends to give horrible advice, but that just might be him. He gets excited easily. He's a bit of a wreck, to be honest."

"My friend's owl is like that," Harini said with a fond smile. "Pig tends to play keep away with any mail because he's so happy to be delivering something." Hedwig let out an impatient and shrill miah as if in agreement. Harini gently rubbed her knuckles down the owl's chest. "But Hedwig isn't like that. She's very dignified. Aren't you, girl?"

The owl hooted and puffed up a bit at the praise. Then she turned back to tearing chunks off her bat. The boy's owl made a pitiful sound that Harini only recognized because Errol had used to make it as well. Harini shook her head with a small smile.

"Would Pumpkin like a bat?" she asked him. Zabini blinked his dark purple eyes at her as if she had surprised him. Harini swallowed in sudden nerves. Not everyone liked approved of people they didn't know well feeding their pets. "I don't—I don't have anything else. The shop used to send rats , but Ron had one as a pet for a while, so I, I asked them to stop sending them. It's okay if you don't, don't want me to offer anything. I know it's a weird thing to share—I didn't mean to offend you or anything."

"I'm not offended at all," Zabini hurried to reassure her. Even Pumpkin gave a little series of hops as if he was just as anxious. "I was just surprised. It's not something a lot of people think about. Pumpkin can handle a bat just fine, if you think that Hedwig would be willing to share."

"She's used to it," Harini answered as she pulled out another bat and held it out. Sure enough, Hedwig didn't even look up from her own meal, not even to clack her beak as the boy came closer to take it. That was certainly a first. Hedwig wasn't even that accepting of Hermione and Ron being that close to Harini.

"You never answered," Zabini commented once Pumpkin had been settled with his meal. It was Harini who blinked in confusion this time. He smiled at her just like how the Gryffindor Chasers tended to do to each other. "Does Hedwig give good advice?"

"Oh, well," Harini stammered, "usually she just scolds me for not eating. I suppose that can be taken as good advice. I get the feeling that she thinks people problems are rather silly."

"She's not wrong," Zabini agreed readily. "People do tend to overthink things, making them more complicated than they probably need to be." The boy took a deep breath and straightened his back as if he was preparing to do something that required a lot of bravery. "Take our current situation, for example. I've been trying to think of ways to ask you out for the last year, but when the ball was announced, I hesitated to ask you if I could escort you because I was certain you would have a date immediately. Yet here you are, asking your owl about who to take."

"Well, it's not like a lot of people would be asking me, is it?" Harini replied with just a touch of self-deprecation. She looked down at her hands clenching each other on her lap. "No one wants to be sucked into my life. I honestly surprised that Hermione and Ron have stuck around as long as they had."

"I wouldn't mind being sucked in," Zabini declared. Harini was so startled that she looked directly in his eyes. He looked so serious as he continued. "You're amazing, you know, and not just because you're the Girl-Who-Lived or whatever. I've seen you in the library, sneaking around to read the books. You've got to have read at least half the public collection by now, but you're never pushy about knowing things. You offered Pumpkin a full meal, even though the whiner could easily hunt for his own and probably finished hunting not even an hour ago. You don't rush into danger, no matter what the rumor mill says about your adventures, but at the same time, I've never seen you hesitate to defend everyone who needs it, no matter their House."

"Everyone should do that," Harini protested weakly, still caught in his gaze. Careful not to break eye contact, Zabini shook his head.

"Everyone should," he argued gently but firmly, "but not everyone does. You are kind, intelligent, and beautiful. Being allowed to be beside you would be nothing but an honor." He took another deep breath before bursting out. "Would let me take you to the Yule Ball?"

"You really want to?" Harini asked, her stomach squirming with her nerves. Zabini nodded, just as carefully as he had shaken his head before. Unable to stand it any longer, she looked away only to find Hedwig watching her. "What do you think, girl? Should I give him a chance?"

The owl turned to examine Zabini as if she was considering his worthiness as a mate for her human. For his part, Zabini seemed to take the idea of the owl's opinion matter as seriously as Harini had seen other people treat the friends of their partners. Finally, Hedwig gave a bob of her head and hooted her permission. Zabini turned back to Harini with a hopeful expression on his handsome face.

"Hedwig says it's okay," she said. A huge grin blossomed brightly over Zabini's face. Harini answered it with one of her own, warming before his honest pleasure like a flower in the sun. Her heart gave a little flutter in her chest like it was a trapped butterfly. Unable to think of anything else to say, she said, "Breakfast starts soon."

"Oh, yeah," Zabini replied as if just noticing the way the owlry had brightened as they had talked. "I guess this is goodbye? At least for now?"

"Yeah," Harini agreed awkwardly. She could feel her cheeks heating up. She stood up, holding Hedwig's food box against her stomach like she would her books.

"Can I—" he started before breaking off to take another of those deep breaths that he kept doing. "Can I walk you to class after breakfast? I understand if you want to keep it quiet for a bit, given the whole house rivalry thing, so no pressure, but I would really like it."

"Yes," Harini agreed immediately, not thinking about everything that could go wrong. At the very least, Ron would probably have an Opinion to share about her date. But Harini had a good feeling about Blaise and his ability to hold his own against the infamous Weasley temper. Besides, Hermione was still peeved about how Ron was acting about her mysterious date and thus she wasn't likely to let Ron get away with being too rude about it.

Harini thought that she could actually things lasting longer than a simple date to a school dance. Especially when Blaise kept her company on the way back to Gryffindor tower to drop off the food box and pick up her school bag. Before she lost her nerve, she entered into his personal space to press a kiss to his cheek before darting through the portrait door.

Maybe he was her Prince Charming and they would get married before growing old together alongside their owls. It would be nice to get a happily ever after.