curfew. "The Aurors include the Owlery in their rounds."
It took only a moment for Hermione to empty the remaining treats into one of many communal food bowls in middle of the Owlery. A pair of beautiful snow-white owls, not unlike Hedwig, immediately swooped down to inspect the offering.
Draco waited for her, muttering something. Something rude, no doubt, but she didn't hear it. They parted ways at the door. "Do try not to get caught on your way back. I'm not keen on being discovered just because you can't walk a flight of steps in silence."
Hermione supposed that would have to do, by way of a good night and good luck.
Chapter Fourteen
Peter Pettigrew was not big fan of nature. The many years he had spent in Animagus form had seen to that. It was a real shame, Peter thought, that the thrill, the sense of wonder and awe, that feeling that you were one step closer to whatever or wherever it was all living this came from tended to wane when you were compelled to live as a rodent for more than a decade.
He had had his fill of living close to the earth, of hiding, scurrying and doing all manner of unattractive yet necessary, rat-like things in order to survive. These days, he liked to walk to get to wherever it was he was going. 'Scurrying' had long become a dirty word.
So he walked whenever possible. It was never a brisk, hurried, walk, but a slow, leisurely stride that to Peter's thinking, was quintessentially human. There were certain aspects of his rat self which had become permanent, however, much to his dismay. There was the slight rounding of his shoulders, the annoying nose-twitch he got whenever he was nervous, and the fact that his nails would never quite lose their yellow tinge or claw-like appearance.
These things he could live with.
What startled him now was the fact that the mere sight of Hogwarts Castle was making him hunch over, twitch like crazy and, to his dismay, scurry.
Old habits were hard to break, and it was apparent that school held too many memories. Peter found himself hurtling along the edge of the forest on feet that were much clumsier than those of his ratself. Transformation would have made things smoother, easier on the whole, but he was in a stubborn mood that evening.
He stumbled over a tree root. This was unavoidable seeing as he was travelling in near darkness. He would not use his wand to light the way until he was well and truly beyond any sign of human habitation. Peter's rat senses, always just on the periphery of his usual (and dull in comparison) human sense, rose to the fore. His nose picked up the distant scent of someone's barbequed dinner and his own stomach, not having experienced a decent feed in several days, began to groan in earnest.
The allotted meeting place remained exactly as Peter remembered it from so many years ago. It was a young Rowan, with small clusters of pretty white flowers and red berries that were a shade lighter than old blood. To the uninformed observer, it was a completely normal, innocuous looking member of the forest community.
But Peter was hardly uninformed, and knew the tree to be much more special. The Rowan had been one of Tom Riddle' s earliest experiments. The tree was magical, of course. Peter's rat senses could detect that unmistakable taint coming from it, curling in the air like invisible smoke, keeping small, furry, forest inhabitants well away. It wasn't Dark or Light Magic, which had more of a bland, metallic scent to his nose, but a type of cloying, old magic smell that was difficult to describe.
The seed that spawned the tree had been sewn during an auspicious time in Tom Riddle's third year. There had been some Divination involved, plenty of chart consulting and very basic Arithmancy to select the ideal spot in the forest on the ideal day. If the fast-growing sapling had been a Herbology project, Riddle would have come away with full marks and then some.
The project soon turned more sinister, however, when Riddle began to nurture the young tree with regular offerings of his own blood, diligently dripped into the dirt at the base of the tree every so often. There were also charms, layers upon layers of simple but potent charms that had aged like vintage wine over the years.
In a way, the Rowan was as much Riddle's creature as Peter himself was.
It