The Mysterious Knight 🏹 🔞 |Harry Styles AU| COMPLETED ✔

Chapter 21

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I don't take ant credits to the pictures I used.
All credits goes to the owners.

His feet turned in the direction that he wanted to go before his mind realized his destination, and very shortly, having run all the way up the multitude of stairs leading to it, he arrived at the door to the rooftop hut where he and his brother had kept their birds so many years before.

Breathless, he pushed the door open, his entrance so sudden that the two boys occupying the partly enclosed shelter jumped with surprise.

"What in the-" Harry was just as shocked as they were.

He had expected to find the small shed empty of everything after all these years, including the cages in which he and Marcel had housed their birds, yet the place was remarkably unchanged. Not only were the cages still there, they were filled with birds.

Looking at his nephews, their surprised, questioning faces turned toward him, one of them holding a young sparrow hawk while the other attached a pair of jesses to the bird, Harry could almost look back and see himself and Marcel doing the same thing, in just the same way.

"Hello, Uncle Harry ,"
one of them greeted cautiously. "Did you come to see our birds?"

Embarrassed to have intruded in such a way, and still feeling uncomfortable with them, Harry replied, awkwardly, "Yes, I...guess I have."

"Mother said you and Uncle Marcel used to raise birds," the twin applying the jesses commented. "Uncle Marcel sometimes comes and helps us with ours."

Harry wiped his hands nervously on his chausses and stepped farther into the room. Here was something else that looked smaller to him all of a sudden. There had been a time when this place had seemed big as a barn, yet now the top of his head barely missed scraping the ceiling.

"Well, your Uncle Marcel ," said Harry as he moved about the hut, looking in the various cages, "is one of the finest falconers I've ever known. You couldn't do better than having his help."

"That's odd," the twin holding the bird said.
"Uncle Marcel says the same of you. That you're very good with birds. He tells us lots of stories about the things you used to do when you were boys."

"Does he?" Harry smiled at the thought.
"All good stories, I hope, about how well behaved and obedient we were."

The twins laughed.
"No, he's not told us any like that. The stories he tells us are the kind that Father says gave him all his gray hairs."

"Father says that if we ever try some of the things that you and Uncle Marcel did," one of the boys said, grinning,
"he'll make us rue the day we were born."

Harry laughed, and the boys, finished with the bird, presented it for their uncle's inspection.

"Let's see, now," he said thoughtfully.
"You've done a fine job with her talons. They've been nicely trimmed. The jesses are correctly placed, and you've belled her properly. Are her eyes seeled beneath her hood?"

The boys nodded.

"Father's head falconer sewed them shut for us," one of the twins admitted.
"We've not learned how to do that yet."

"'Tis well," Harry said.
"It's always best to let a skilled man do the job rather than attempt it yourself before you're ready. You'd not want to hurt her pretty eyes, would you? She'd be of no use to you then."
Carefully, he took the bird to his own wrist and bounced her gently up and down.
"She's unsteady yet, but that won't take long to change. You've done well, lads,"
he said approvingly.
"All she needs now is her leash and a perch and she'll be ready for training. She looks to be a fine bird once she's done. You'll be wanting to house her in the mews now, of course."