Miss Holmes, A Harry Potter Fan fiction

Part 15: Owlery

As I folded the letters the first of my fellow students began to wake. Getting back to the dormitories, I got ready for the day. My hands shaking in mild anticipation as I thought of the day ahead.
The other girls were getting changed as I walked in, they seemed curious as to why I wasn't sleeping but didn't mention it. Light chatter filled the room as we all got ready.
Many of the girls seemed to be of Wizard heritage and knew at least a little about Hogwarts. Although I didn't  have this advantage I had read the entirety of all of the books I had bought in Diagon Alley including Hogwarts: A History.
I had practiced a fair few of the spells in the books and memorised the rest of them and their purpose. All of the ones I had tried had worked out fine.

Although the main reason I was learning magic was to understand the universe and all of its intricacies however life would certainly be more efficient with some spells as well.
I finished getting dressed, pulling me out of my thoughts. I had left out the tie from the uniform as it felt unfair to associate with a single house.

Tucking the letters into the pocket of my robes, I walked down the stairs and out of the common room.
It was still fairly early and few students had begun to make their way down for breakfast yet. I figured that I still had plenty of time to get to the owlery and make it to breakfast after.
The owlery, I knew, was at the top of the Castle's West Tower.
There were a total of one hundred and forty two staircases in the castle, many of which contained trick steps. Some of them were narrow and some were wider but all of them seemed to move and change as it seemed fit. I had figured out a rough algorithm of when the stairs changed and when as I walked to my destination. Each set of stairs seemed to change once every 3 and a half minutes (on average), with a small degree of inaccuracy. They seemed to move to the left if they took less than the average time and right if they took more than the average time so if you were paying attention as you walked up those stairs you could never be caught if guard by their movements.

Contently smiling to myself about the deduction I arrived at the owlery. It was a circular stone room that was rather cold and drafty. None of the windows had glass in them, no doubt to let the owls move freely, and the crisp autumn air filled the room. The room appeared to be one that was neglected, the owl droppings and regurgitated skeletons from more than one hundred birds must have been too much of a pain to clean.

I clearly spotted my Ural owl and called her down to collect the letters. I had never been one for naming animals to I simply mimicked the call of its own kind.

Carefully handing the owl the letters I let her fly through the window towards her destination. I hadn't given her directions, as you would do for most animals, but I assumed that if she was a wizard or witches pet she should be able to figure it out herself.
Watching her fly made me crave to do the same myself. Before I learnt I magic I would never thought of such childish fantasies, there was no way they could come true so there was no point thinking about them.
But a world of magic brought a world of possibility and I assumed that many of these 'fantasies' had spells or potions that could fit my needs.

To become an animal,
To fulfil the sense of repressed childish wonder,

That's the next thing on my list.