13th December, 1888 — The Hogwarts Owlery

This was a feat. This was going to be the biggest damn feat of the year.

Aubrey had tried tactics like these, from time to time. He’d tried harder in the early days, back when he’d had hope. He’d tried in Master Urquart’s first year, but he hadn’t been much good at navigating the castle, in those days. (Given the hedgehog hurdle, obviously.)

Henry Davis

The outside of the parchment read in a scratchy hand. (By Aubrey’s hedgehog hand. He had discovered that quills were rather unwieldy when one was mere inches tall.) He had deposited the little (stolen) Gryffindor lion pin into the parchment, and rolled it up safely in the bottom of it with all his might.

Henry wasn’t a Gryffindor herself, but the moment he had seen it he had known, had remembered the gift she had gotten him for Christmas eleven years ago. She would remember too, she had to. This Christmas surprise would make up for a decade of absence, he was sure. She would figure it out. She would know.

Aubrey was going to explain his situation in full, too, of course, starting with It’s Aubrey. Help me. I’m a hedgehog -

But he had always known this was a risk. The goddamn owlery was in the furthest recesses from the Slytherin bloody dungeon, and he was exhausted from the journey alone, never mind having to wrangle the parchment and the pin and the bottle of ink with his hedgehog paws, in front of a whole host of hooting owls with their wings and beaks and eerie yellow stares that said we’re going to fucking EAT YOU.

Aubrey recognised his chances of getting chewed up and regurgitated into owl pellets were high, and getting higher the longer he spent here in plain sight of the horde. He tried not to think of it, just of Henrietta finally getting the news he was alive and saving him from this existence, just in time to be out of here and home again for Christmas. He was nearly finished scratching out his message on the owlery floor -

Only for a set of loud footsteps coming in the owlery door to give him a heart attack, or near enough, enough that Aubrey upset the whole bottle of ink he’d been dipping his paws in over his carefully-crafted, spindly handwritten message, covering it all in a thick black goop. SHIT FUCK SHITTING FUCK -

NOW WHAT WAS HE GOING TO DO?

Aubrey scuttled out of sight with ink-muddied paws, deciding to hide until they left. Maybe they would see his present, and the name scrawled on the outside, and send it to his sister. Maybe that would be enough.

On the other hand, maybe he’d get eaten by owls for bloody breakfast.

---

Aubrey had scurried under the canopy of the owls' water-basin that stood in the middle of the room, hoping none of the owls would see him there as much as he was concerned about whoever had come in. Hello? A voice came - a girl's voice, a kid's voice - and Aubrey flinched quietly, wondering whether that meant she'd seen the mess of a letter, or maybe a tiny trail of pawprints through the ink. He licked at his front paws to get off the sticky black stuff, and then retched loudly when he got ink on his tongue.

Stupid. His tiny hedgehog brain was making him fucking stupid.  

Giving up on getting the ink off his hands and feet (and probably spattered over his squishy white stomach too, ugh) Aubrey instead decided to focus on the biggest issue here, and inched a little forwards from under the stone water-basin, trying to get more of a look at the student than just their feet. Would she spot him from up there -?

---

She was going for the letter! She was! Was she looking at it? Could she see anything??!? Was there enough left of it to send it????

He wasn't sure there was, but maybe... Maybe if he came out, she would be smart enough to figure it out. That the hedgehog pawprints all over the messed-up parchment was not his only handiwork, but that the rest had been written in his scratchy scrawl. Aubrey had been around enough hedgehogs in his time to be sure that ordinary hedgehogs were not clever enough to do that.

He wasn't sure any unsuspecting student had the smarts to unravel this mystery, though. Still... it was worth a shot, wasn't it?

Besides, even if she didn't, he didn't want to get left up here in the owls' lair.

Aubrey breathed a deep breath, steadied himself, and skittered out from under the water-bath towards the girl. Oi, he declared, squeaking a little to get her attention, over here, then.

---

Now that he was out in the open, he could see up to the student's face better, and recognised her as one of the Gryffindors, in whose common room he sheltered more often than any other (Slytherin's didn't count: that was a dungeon in more than one way). And this girl was Small But Loud, a combination that did well enough to catch his attention, even before the opportunity of being fed things. And sometimes her hair changed colours.

If only she could figure out enough that he would give anything to change into something else, too.

With a little sigh, Aubrey balanced as best he could and lifted an ink-blackened front paw in his best approximation of a human-style wave - before the ominous owl hooting around him became too much, and he scurried forwards with a snuffle into the safety of the girl's hand.

(One thing he had learned as a hedgehog was that all owls were part of a conspiracy - an evil, predatory cult. They might have bewitched the rest of wizardkind into thinking they were soft and smart and useful birds, but oh no, not him. Owls were from hell itself, and Aubrey knew the truth.)

---

Aubrey nodded his head vigorously, though he didn't think she could see the motion, never mind take it for what it was. Any attempt to explain further was disrupted by her movements -

Flobberchops! Aubrey always forgot what a strange sensation it was to be on a shoulder: more so than a pocket-ride or squirming tight in hand, it gave a wobbly illusion of being human again, seeing the world from great heights. "Great heights", as if this tiny lass was part-giant, psht.

Grateful as he was to be escaping this kankedort - bloody owls and their malversations - Aubrey was more than a little exasperated by her following questions. You're not taking this seriously, kiddo, he put in, with a little hedgehoggy huff in her ear. Don't be daft, he snuffled on, always mildly pleased when a human presented him with the opportunity of a little feigned conversation, as frustrating as it was for his eloquence to go uncomprehended. Hedgehogs are dumb buggers, they can't write. (He puffed up his spines a little at that: he had to take his opportunities for superiority as they came.) He had had limited success in conversing with hedgehogkind, still an awkward foreigner among them after all these years, so he wasn't even sure what they'd make of love... though he supposed even hedgehogs could suffer a little satyriasis here and there. Not that Aubrey would, ahem, know anything about that. (He'd been lion-drunk on overripe fruit a time or two before, and...) Nevermind.  

Maybe they'd write letters about the man trapped in their midst, Aubrey put in pointedly. So where are you taking me, scamp?

---

Coming down, terrifying as it was perched on a shoulder and descending the steep, slippery steps, was mildly more enjoyable than hauling himself up them on foot - paws - so although he dug his claws in a little more than usual, Aubrey was feeling quite self-satisfied, all of a sudden.

Still exasperated, too, of course, at the thought that this lass didn’t know the half of his adventures, however hard he tried. He tried his best to pull a Serious Expression and incline his head in a nod to say that yeeEEEEeeesssss of course his letter had been important, he hadn’t meant to trek all the way up here for nothing! -

but Aubrey was rather beyond hope at this point, so he gave up and just nuzzled her ear emphatically at the mention of a snack. Indeed! (He so did like being served! He had always done the serving, as a footman.) But where was she going to find a snack, halfway down the Owlery Tower? Where were they going next?

---

Aubrey and the girl were having quite a companionable conversation, he decided, as they descended the stairs together, the young lass doing most of the work. He listened to her logic with his ears pricked, delighted to hear he would not be abandoned back at the Slytherin Common Room. He had seen enough of that room for the rest of his life, thank you very much.

So he waited, on his best behaviour, on her shoulder until they got to the kitchens, aiming rather for a biscuit himself, and sure he could pounce upon one of hers to explain that desire if given half the chance. In order to show off his intellect properly, Aubrey made a scratching movement at her shoulder to get her attention, and then positioned himself - precariously, trying not slip off her shoulder - so as to deliberately scratch the pear on the painting with his spiney back, knowing tickling was the way to open the portrait door. (He’d known that since his schooldays; one of the most salient things he had learnt in his only year here.)

And ordinary hedgehogs? They damn well couldn’t do that. Hah.

---