Run Away ✧ Hogwarts Legacy

chapter eleven

Hot Pink Ice Cubes by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

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It felt dangerous to be walking so openly in the Netherlands' countryside. There was no one around who should recognize his face; this was untouched soil. And still he found himself turning his shoulder against the few that passed by with a sick fear that their eyes might meet and he would be seen.

The original plan was to fly the entire way there. Flying came naturally to Desmond in the crow form. A bit too naturally. When he saw a shiny guilder lost to the wind and thought about picking it up for a nest rather than putting it in his pocket to spend later, that was when he realized that there perhaps was a downside to being an animagus.

Taking on the form of a crow didn't come as a surprise to him. In fact, he had been counting on it. During the long lonely nights aboard the Pilar when he forced himself on keeping that damned bitter leaf in his mouth, he often thought about what he'd become. When Antheia helped with his Patrous Charm, it had been the first time he had seen his own magic take a physical shape. The way its faded wings flapped with ease around them. It seemed pointless to consider any other form after that.

Desmond felt ashamed of asking for her help back then. They had been drifting apart from each other by that point. 

The first time that he read through the journal and realized that she had mastered such a difficult charm before he did made him jealous with envy. If he couldn't stand beside her, then he would only keep falling further behind until he was all alone again. That was why he finally swallowed his pride to ask for help.

Antheia had told him about her happiest memory that night, about how excited her father was when she discovered her magic. It was a story that Desmond had heard before, only with a new context.

He admired the sparkle behind her dark eyes when she spoke, but he knew that wasn't going to work for him. They had very different memories of those events. Antheia's mother was a witch, they had known that it was likely she would be born with magic and knew of what that meant. Desmond's family did not.

It was a late afternoon when he sat in the living room with his sister. One of those days when the air was thick and dry. They were always struck watching the youngest together during the miserable hot summers when both their parents were busy with work. When he stepped outside, there was a large owl sitting on top of the box, in the middle of the day. Amber eyes looked directly toward him. He considered pitching himself to make sure it hadn't been a dream.

Owls were larger in person than in the books. The closer he got, the more startled he became when it didn't fly away. It seemed like it was waiting for him because it had been. A bone-white envelope framed around its peppered feathers. When he took the envelope from its beak and saw his own name written neatly on the outside, no one had any idea what it meant.

Bridget read it first, breaking the seal as soon as it reached her fingertips, then glowing with imaginative pride over the message inside. A story of magic and a new life unfolding with each page. Then Nevan said it was a prank from someone else in the neighborhood and declared magic wasn't real. It was simply the first shot fired in a war of childhood pranks. 

Neither outcome made sense to Desmond, but something about the idea made him feel anxious. As if he had suddenly swallowed something that made him feel terribly ill.

There was no doubt that it had been a sign of chance. Something was happening, and there was an undeniable effect that everything in his young life was about to change. At first, Desmond attempted to hide the letter. That was his way of avoiding this fundamental change toward everything he knew. He considered ridding himself of it entirely, burning it in the fireplace or tearing it into pieces, but he couldn't bring himself to. Whether it was real or not, he wasn't sure. But he couldn't just leave home and go to some alleged school, leaving everyone behind. The idea made him worry, so he shoved the signed letter into a book on his shelf, hoping to find it in a few years when he was wise enough to know it had all been a poor joke and find some humor in it then. How some school yard children found and trained an owl to deliver a letter in the middle of the day could be explained later.