"By the way, sir, um..."
"What is it, Henry?" Dumbledore asked patiently.
Anthony said somewhat embarrassed: "I know you're very busy, but if you remember the Wraith Chicken I mentioned..."
When chatting about flesh magic, he'd wanted to tell Dumbledore about this. But Professor Flitwick was still sitting beside him dipping bread in soup. Anthony couldn't imagine how to bring it up.
Professor Dumbledore, remember my Wraith Chicken? Yes, Wraith Chicken—oh, Professor Flitwick, forgot to tell you, I'm a necromancer. No, really, it's nothing—you know Professor Quirrell was Voldemort... Ambulance! Ah, I'm truly very sorry.
"Your pet," Dumbledore nodded. "You found a suitable method? I recall you just said you encountered some difficulties with flesh magic."
"Yes, but like we discussed before, Professor Quirrell... Quirrell helped a bit," Anthony said, glanced at Snape, unsure how much he knew.
Snape leisurely cut a small piece of lamb chop. Seemed suddenly not planning to leave.
"I remember. His curse trying to banish you," Dumbledore said. "But, Henry, I'm concerned that scene mixed too many chance factors to guarantee you can recreate it with the Wraith Chicken." His long fingers tapped the table lightly. Thoughtful.
"That's why I wanted to ask your help," Anthony said. "Blame my greed—I hope to find the lowest-risk way to pull the Wraith Chicken from the room's soil, bring it to Hogwarts with me. Of course, ultimately I'll still need to find a living person to curse my chicken."
"You can always send an owl to discuss with me," Dumbledore assured. "In fact, I have several ideas now. How many details do you remember, Henry? Exact wording, tone pauses, blood quantity..."
"I can't guarantee any of them," Anthony said honestly.
"That's fine," Dumbledore said understandingly. "Then the time and place? Ah, we can't guarantee the place matches, can we? But we can know the moon phase through the date, calculate the right moment... Arithmancy's Professor Septima Vector has gone home, but she probably wouldn't refuse Fawkes and a bag of biscuits."
"I really can't remember clearly..." Anthony said hesitantly. "Nighttime? Does that help?"
Snape snorted. "Of course. It eliminates half the day. Tremendous progress."
"Helps us," Dumbledore corrected. "I'm waiting for your suggestions, Severus."
"All right, Headmaster, since you ask," Snape said smoothly. "Just one thing: in Professor Anthony's case, the person providing blood had drunk unicorn blood." He gave Anthony a gleeful smile. "I assume you'd already considered this?"
Voices of house-elves chatting came from the kitchen. They seemed to be discussing whether to add honey mustard to the menu.
Anthony turned to Dumbledore, asked without much hope: "Sir, do you think Quirrell will apply for next year's Defense Against the Dark Arts position?"
"Last century someone tried using potions to simulate unicorn blood," Snape said through gritted teeth, face iron-gray, stopped abruptly. Anthony following behind nearly crashed into him.
They'd just left the kitchen. Snape would go up briefly then back down to the dungeons. Anthony needed to go all the way up to his office.
"Sorry, what?" Anthony asked, snapped out of his thoughts.
"You heard me, Anthony," Snape hissed. "Someone tried. If you really want to release your..." He spat the word disdainfully. "Pet chicken, you'd better see what others attempted."
After Dumbledore praised Snape, he announced blood-related research would be led by Snape. When Snape tried to protest, Dumbledore abruptly declared he needed to prepare for meetings.
"Thank you, Severus," Dumbledore said cheerfully. "By the way, I heard praise yesterday for your article. About researching how basilisk scale grinding particle size affects potions, if I recall correctly?"
Next morning, Anthony woke feeling momentarily dazed.
The room was silent. No cat crouched by his bed. No chicken pecking him awake. No mouse sneaking around under his bed doing something.
Sunlight came through curtains not fully drawn. Anthony sat up, slowly went to the bathroom to wash. He suddenly felt the bedroom and office were much larger than usual.
The castle also seemed much larger. Anthony sat alone at the staff table eating breakfast, felt somewhat awkward. He looked down at the empty house tables, looked up again.
The ceiling's magic had disappeared, waiting for the next batch of first-years before professors controlled it to show outside weather. Today no owls would fly in delivering mail.
Anthony grabbed two pieces of bread, six bacon strips, and two sausages from his plate. Decided to have breakfast with the owls.
Like his last visit, the Owlery was messy. Feathers floated everywhere on the ground. More than one owl perched on each bar. But students' owls had gone home for the holidays. Only Hogwarts' owls remained. Some half-closed eyes dozing. Some fluttered about. Some spread wings concentrating on preening feathers.
The moment Anthony entered, all owls near the door stopped, looked at him.
"Uh, hello," Anthony said carefully, stood by a support pole. The owl beside him flew unhappily to the opposite side.
"Sorry, I'm not very good at identifying birds," Anthony said. "Which of you delivered my letter to the Romanian dragon reserve?"
The owls looked at him with round eyes. Bird faces unreadable. Anthony stood off with them a while. An owl suddenly called softly from above.
"Is that you?" Anthony squinted up a moment. "No, I don't think so..."
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