Prompt: "Someone's lost a Patronus." -from a quote tweet by J.K. Rowling on Twitter/X, on a video of an albino (white) deer standing in snow and watching traffic go by.
Wandering
The Patronus roamed, its original cast purpose having faded away. It hadn't been explicitly dismissed, and a quirk in the magic that supported it allowed it to remain manifested. The vast majority of spells had a finite lifetime – for a given spell, it was cast, it interacted with its target, it either worked or didn't, and it dissipated. Most wizards and witches just fired spells off and forgot about them.
However, the Patronus Charm was able to maintain itself in certain situations. It would require that the caster gather his or her own magical energy, will, and intent to initialize and cast the Charm, as with any act of magic. The self-maintenance occurred with the presence of a suitable magical concentration of energy and the need for a Patronus to be present, say, if there were a horde of Dementors or Lethifolds arounds.
In those cases, the Patronus got a bit tetchy. Stubborn, too, when it came to dissipation.
The problem was that magicals didn't often remain in areas with sufficiently high enough amounts of magic. That was easily enough explained by the dearth of those areas, and that was simply because the leylines that conducted energy suitable for magic's flow didn't often get routed close enough to the surface to affect this property. Granted places like Hogwarts, with its magical concentrations imbued into the soil itself by the presence of the students, did have the ability to tap into the deeper reaches of those leylines. In fact, Hogwarts could reach much deeper into the topcrust of the planet for a firm grasp on the currents of magic.
However, that was beside the point when it came to a cast Patronus Charm. Usually, a caster didn't have the magical power to simultaneously cast and anchor into the magic underground if they were not also in one of those aforementioned places.
Exceptions did exist, of course. Past a certain Myrrdin Rating, a magical could do it regardless of their relative location to those again aforementioned places, with some extra thought and effort. Messenger Patronuses were a partial example of this, although it wasn't the whole explanation. Those applications had other considerations that had nothing to do with power and more to do with some of the Arithmancy that described the nuts and bolts of the Charm itself.
What made this interesting that there were those that went past that first Rating in question, and could do it without a conscious thought merely from the exercise of their magical power to cast a Patronus. So long as they were capable of casting a Patronus in the first place, they didn't have to worry about it dissipating at the most inopportune times.
As the Patronus Charm was generally considered a so-called 'Light' Charm, it was understood that those of a Dark persuasion couldn't use it. There were exceptions, of course. That was probably more because of the fact that the Happy Thoughts the Charm required were most likely far from what others would consider to be any kind of happiness.
The Muggleborn witch that was on a road trip with her parents saw the Patronus first, which had taken the form of a white deer. She got very excited, hopping in her seat. The seat belt was having a hell of a time restraining her in her excitement.
"Daddy, pull over. Look!"
Thomas Mearley was a man hard to excite, considering the fact that he'd long gotten used to strange and odd things happening around his daughter. From the excited note in her voice, there wasn't any thing wrong with her. She sounded like she did when she found some new creepy-crawly. He managed to still the almost Pavlovian response to that excited note.
He still hadn't gotten over that huge spider she'd found last year, from God knows where!
His wife spoke up without looking up from her travel guide.
"Pull over, dear. We can at least stretch our legs."
Thomas didn't grumble about being ganged up on, again… much. As the roadway was deserted but for their car, he just slowed and pulled off onto the grass. He heard the door behind him open, then shut quickly.
"Daddy! Mum! Look!"
"…er, at what, Honey?"
Honey Mearley was quite excited, but Thomas didn't see any creepy-crawlies anywhere near where his excitable daughter was pointing. That didn't mean she could find any, but hope sprang eternal. A dim hope, since this was his daughter and he was fairly sure she found things to try to give him a heart attack.
"A Patronus!"
"A what?" he found himself saying. This must be something that she was learning about at that magic school. He'd gotten curious and read a bit of her textbooks for every year that she'd attended. He'd come away with a couple of thoughts, one, that it was surely something different than anything he'd ever expected and two, a textbook was a textbook. Mostly boring and dry. In fact, they were just as boring and dry as his engineering textbooks had been!
He was in the middle of supposing that school was school no matter the subject, and nothing really changed, when Honey grabbed his hand in excitement. His vision suddenly changed as her small hand found his larger hand.
A glowing white doe popped out of nowhere, her ears flicking from side to side and her head still as her eyes regarded him calmly. Obviously, she didn't think he was a threat and wasn't bounding off like a normal deer would undoubtedly done by now.
"Honey? What… what is that?" He gasped.
She turned to him.
"You can see it now?"
"I couldn't, but when you grabbed my hand I could."
She hopped up and down a bit, her excitement kindled anew. Thomas swore the deer looked at his daughter with distinct and sure amusement.
"Mum! Come look!"
"I'm coming, dear."
Betty Mearley's hand was taken by her daughter, and Thomas was a bit put-out that all she did in reaction was to raise an eyebrow. He never could surprise her or get her to jump in shock of any kind. She was almost supernaturally calm.
Well, the time she was in labor and giving birth was different, of course. The nurses had thought what his darling wife was saying during that was hilarious, and had been nodding in agreement. However, maybe there was a reason Honey was an only child. He didn't really want to find out if his darling wife was actually capable of putting words to deeds.
Still, wouldn't it have been too much to get a gasp of surprise?
He broke off from his meandering thoughts as he listened to his daughter.
"They're made to fight off Dementors and Lethifolds," she stopped suddenly to look around, "which aren't here now."
Well, that was a relief, if you thought about the 'dement' part of that name. Some of the things described in her Creatures textbook gave him the shivers and made her creepy-crawlies look like puppies and kittens.
"I don't know what this one is doing here, though. I thought they dissipated after a certain about of time," she pondered with a slight frown.
Thomas and Betty looked at each other and shrugged. They didn't know.
"Maybe look at your textbooks? I doubt your Professor Flitwick would be available over the summer to ask him. Such a cheery little man," Betty suggested. She and Flitwick had gotten on like a house on fire, bonding over poker games while he had visited a week ago. The Professor had wanted to sponsor her for Mastery-level study in his subject. Thomas had wanted to somehow win back the money he'd lost.
The Patronus ambled over to where they were watching and Thomas tensed a little.
"Er… sweetheart, are they dangerous? No stags about to gore us or something?"
Honey smiled. "No, daddy. They're purely Light. They're only dangerous to certain evil beings."
He could hear the capitals on the word, but didn't know what that meant specifically. His daughter didn't seem worried and reached out for the glowing doe. Thomas watched her smile get bigger and, wonder of wonders, his little girl started giggling.
Giggling?
"Here, daddy, feel!"
He had no idea what to expect. The doe regarded him calmly, and finally stepped forward to brush up again his hand.
Feelings of warmth, safety, and good cheer gently enveloped him, and he found himself smiling. He looked over at his wife, and Betty was smiling the widest he'd ever seen.
Would wonders never cease? His wife wasn't a sourpuss, by any means. Still, there was a reason she had that poker face.
"Betty?"
"It's… amazing. Do you feel that, too?"
"I do. I don't know how to explain it!"
Honey laughed.
"I do! It's magic."
Thomas rolled his eyes. "I walked right into that," he grumbled.
The glowing doe snorted, as if it found it funny too. He narrowed his eyes at her, not realizing that he was stroking her ethereal fur.
Betty glanced at their daughter.
"Can you do this, dear?"
Honey frowned. "No. It's a very hard charm to do and many adults go their whole lives without being able to do it."
"Can Professor Flitwick? For example?"
"Yes. He's a Charms Master, remember? Well, he's a master of more than that. He's got a lot of knowledge. He was born in 1895, you know?"
What? That cheery, bouncy little man was that old?
Thomas didn't dwell on that too much, but allowed that maybe it made sense that the Professor had much knowledge. He looked at the glowing doe, now being petted by his wife.
The doe shook herself and walked off without any further interaction.
"Where's she going?"
"I don't know, Daddy. Maybe there's something else calling her to do something."
From the look on Honey's face, it was a real poser and like him, she didn't like mysteries.
"Well, when you get back to school you can ask Professor Flitwick."
Honey started bouncing up and down on her toes again. Thomas sighed, knowing that she was going to say something else that would rearrange his day.
"If we can find an Owl Post somewhere, I can just send a letter!"
And just like that, he was back in the car with his family, looking for an owl to carry a letter.
Would wonders never cease?
The End