[ttd] [owlery] said I'm a night owl, honey

Classes had finished for the day and Pixie had a letter to send home. She didn't write home as often as other students, mostly because of her difficulties with writing, and she was glad that she had a little brother who actually liked writing letters home. Whatever her reasons, she had realised it had been almost three weeks since she'd written to either her parents or her grandmother, who hadn't been weel recently. So it was that she headed up to the owlery with not one but two letters to send. Admittedly, the one to her parents was little more than a paragraph long, the one to her grandmother about twice that length, but they'd taken her the best part of an hour the previous evening to write.

She tied the first letter to the leg of the nearest tawny owl, gave it an owl treat, and it went on it's way. As she was tying the second one she heard footsteps on the stone stairs and was distracted momentarily. The owl nipped her finger and she flinched, then finished tying the second letter, giving this second owl a smaller treat because frankly, who wants to reward a biting owl? It didn't seem to realise though, and as it followed it's fellow out of the window Pixie stood watching them retreat into the distance.

The footsteps were getting closer but Pixie was more interested in a parcel that was being conveyed to the castle, carried by two large eagle owls. Something that needed two owls of that size was likely to be heavy, so she thought she might hang around for a few minutes and see if she could find out who it was being sent to. Closer...closer... the owls flews in through the largest window and suddenly everything happened at once.

Firstly an older boy who she knew by face but not name appeared in the owlery. At almost the exact same moment the owls dropped the parcel and it burst open, releasing a dozen or more bright blue, shrieking winged creatures which immediately started grabbing anything that wasn't nailed down and causing havoc. At least half the owls had the sense to make a quick exit but for Pixie or the newcomer there was no such good fortune. "Watch out!" she yelped unnecessarily to the older boy as she grabbed her wand and prepared to defend herself.

@Benjamin Danvers

It was sort of hard to believe that term had ended and Ben was feeling a bit ... melancholic, actually. This would be the last year he could look forward to another Hogwarts year in the horizon and that was sort of ridiculously strange. It seemed to him that all of the things he'd worked so hard for throughout the years were slowly coming together and coalescing into this odd fulfillment that didn't quite feel like much of anything. He still wasn't sure what he wanted to do right after graduation because a large part of him wanted to actually use his brain for something worthwhile but the other part of him just wanted to play Quidditch.

One seemed like the responsible thing and the other seemed like a bit of a frivolity. But didn't he deserve some frivolity before he took over managing the vineyards? He supposed he still had plenty of time to figure that out, even past his graduation, which he noted wasn't the case for most.

So consumed his own thoughts that he didn't realize he'd made it to the Owlry with no intention of actually mailing anything. Attracted as he was to the higher towers at Hogwarts, Ben tended to avoid the Owlry pretty frequently on account of all the... owl dung. It was a literal shitter, actually, and he didn't fancy being around the mess. Birds were bloody dirty and he absolutely despised messy rooms. (Thank Merlin for house elves because he was pretty sure he'd murder his dormates otherwise).

He caught glimpse of a vageuly familiar figure (he was pretty sure she was a Trickett, Hogwarts tended to be infested with them on any given day, actually, though he was pretty sure this one was in Baylen's year). The tall Slytherin made it further into the room once he noticed the large crate making its way inside. That seemed... strange, actually, and with a bit of a sigh, he stepped fully into his least favorite room. Might as well make sure everything was alright, it was, afterall the prefect thing to do. Only he regretted it instantly once the crate burst open. "Bloody fuck-" he cursed, only moment after the girl yelled her own warning.

It did nothing to deter one particularly wretched cornish pixie from floating up and trying to grab his ear. He feeling bad about it but deciding he did not feel like flying about and being abducted he instinctively swatted it away with his hand before flicking his wand out and casting a repairing charm on the blasted crate. He sidestepped another electric blue pixie, glancing around, before casting a strong freezing charm in quick succession. "If you see any movement cast another freezing charm." he instructed, feeling sort of bad for his own show of violence to a creature as deceptively small. He knew what they were capable of, though, and didn't fancy death by pixie in the even they managed to kidnap him and then accidentally dropped him outside the tower.

He preferred being alive, actually. In the chaotic mess he didn't even notice the sheer change in the gathering rain clouds.

"Stupefy!" Pixie yelled, pointing her wand almost at random. It was more by luck than judgement than a small blue blur crashed to the ground, bounced a couple of times and remained where it was. One of its companions was excited enough by its sudden fall that it whizzed down to take a look and she was able to get that one as well, but by then one had grabbed her wand and was trying to pull it out of her hand and another was tying knots in her hair. Pixie yelled something that would have caused her mother to blush but in the next instant realised she was no longer fighting alone.

Or fighting at all, actually. The rest of the pixies were sort of floating around, blinking stupidly and letting out the occasional giggle, but no longer rioting. "Freezing charm?" she asked stupidly (and unnecessarily) as she reached up to pull one of the creatures out of her hair. Somehow the crate was whole again - "did you do that?" she said admiringly as she dropped the immobile pixie back inside and levitated the two she'd stunned inside as well.

"Thanks. What sort of idiot sends pixies through the mail?" she wondered out loud, vaguely looking for an address label that would give them some idea of who the intended recipient had been. Then she stopped; if she knew who was responsible she wouldn't be able to tell anyone anyway for fear of getting them into trouble, instead summoning another immobile pixie and dumping that one (none too gently) back into the crate as well.

"Oh! I'm Pixie Clarke-Trickett" she said, and then laughed. At the age of four she had been called after the mischievous creatures following a particularly naughty session at her magical daycare, and since then had clung to the nickname so joyfully that few people even knew her real name "and I..." she jumped and flinched slightly at a huge crack of thunder that sounded like it had come from directly outside the tower. She glanced around uneasily. The clouds had rolled in quickly and now it looked like they were in for a storm. Normally the windows up here were closed when there was heavy rain or wind, just leaving a couple of slots for the owls to come and go. Pixie assumed the professors or house elves were responsible for that task but as a strong gust of wind rattled the open shutters, she suspected that the weather had changed so quickly they had all been taken by surprise.

Well, she was here so she should probably do something about it, she thought as lightning cracked down, bringing with it a torrent of rain. "Are you okay putting them back in their box?" she asked, not implying that the older boy might not be capable but apologising for not helping as she crossed to the nearest shutters and closed them with a careful flick of her wand. She put the bolt across by hand, not wanting to risk dropping it at the bottom of the tower and needing to summon it back. As she reached the next window a gust of wind blew the rain inside and she got a faceful. Coughing and spluttering, she raised her wand to close that one as well.

"Yes, to both." he managed, grinning a little, even as he felt an embarrassed flush warm up his ears. He was such a sucker for a compliment, especially in the form of localized admiration. He flicked another pixie into the crate snorting a bit as the girl spoke. "You said it. A bloody idiot." he agreed, sighing, as he noted his ripped shirt. Blasted things were menaces. "Who even wants these many? Merlin who even wants one." he muttered with a shake of his head.

"A Pixie attacked by pixies. The luck of a Trickett." he said, amused, despite the situation. Only Pixie was jumping up and he felt a sense of responsibility. "Here let me just-" he trailed off as he got closer towards the windows only to stop. He was, thankfully, tall enough to pull the shutters back closed but that would do little to mask the sound of thunder or the flash of lightning lighting up the sky and before he could help the younger girl had taken care of it. "Alright, then." he said, amused, as he worked on putting the rest of the pixie's away gently.

Once he was done he looked back up, only to smother his laughter with his hand. "Want me to dry you off?" he asked, blue eyes glinting, as he shot the younger girl a smile. She was oddly endearing. For a Gryffindor, anyway.

"I hadn't thought of that..." Pixie said cheerfully, a new mystery now forming in her mind. She'd assumed the pixies had been sent by someone who wanted to play a prank, or maybe they'd somehow crawled into the crate and got themselves delivered by accident, but the idea that someone might have actually ordered them...like the boy said, who wanted pixies anyway? "Maybe they were for Care of Magical Creatures..." she said, shrugging.

The sudden rain distracted her from thinking too much more about that though, and she was glad to have help with the rest of the shutters. Just a couple of narrow window slots remained open now so the owls could come and go as they pleased, but their perches were strategically placed so the rain or wind wasn't going to bother the birds. Already those that had been disturbed by the pixies were settling back down, ruffling their feathers and blinking as they studiously ignored the crashing storm outside. Pixie doubted many of them would be flying out to catch mice this evening now. Hopefully the owls she'd sent had got well on their way and found shelter before the storm had struck.

When the rain hit her in the face she recovered quickly, wiping the water out of her eyes and grinning when she caught the Slytherin's eye. Pixie didn't mind being laughed under these circumstances and she knew it must have looked pretty funny. "Yeah. Please" she said, crossing to stand next to him and hoping he intended to use a sensible spell and not conjure an indoor hurricane. That would be funny too, but a waste of a good prank when there was nobody else around to see it.

Once she wasy dry she said thanks and headed for the stairs, then belatedly remembered the pixies, crossing to look at the crate. If there had been a label, that had been the first thing the little blue menaces had destroyed. "One of us should tell a professor" she said, showing a rare flash of good sense "I'll do it, if you want? Thanks again for...well, drying me off!" then with a grin and a wave she turned and disappeared down the staircase.

[out]

He supposed the girl wasn't actually.. bad. They'd managed to skip over the whole 'You hate my house I hate your house' awkward shuffling that usually happened when a lone Slytherin encountered a lone Gryffindor. Then again he'd probably become desensitized to it a bit, with his prefect duties. He took a moment before casting the hot air charm, trying to moderate how much he put into it, so it didn't make her hair stick in odd clumps.

The thought itself amused him, and maybe if he knew her better he would've, but he figured she didn't know him well enough to laugh at something like that and while he didn't mind angry girls (some were cute when they were angry and the rest were hot when they were angry) he wanted to avoid any and all possibilities of making one cry. Shudder. Yea, best to not actually. A soft jet of warm air burst through his wand, drying the girl effectively before he tucked his wand away.

"I'll take are of it Trickett, I'm fairly sure it falls within those prefect responsibilities of mine. You're welcome. Do try not to get mauled on your way back to the Gryffindor tower, yea? Wintersteen is bound to get uppity with me otherwise." he said wryly, huffing out a sigh, as he turned back towards the crate. Part of him was tempted to take them to the Slytherin dorms, just to enjoy Alex's outrage but he figured the momentary entertainment wasn't worth chancing his prefect badge.

No best to just get it all sorted with a Professor. He wondered if Bevins was busy...

{out!}