Complete a thread in which every post is exactly 100 words. The thread must have at least ten posts, and at least three must be your own.
March 21st, 1888 — High Street, Near the Owl Emporium
Open to 1-2 others on High Street!
Taking care of so many large owls was bound to be a difficult task for anyone, let alone a girl that barely reached four and a half feet. Such was the reason she rarely took more the two or three outside at once. Today, however, seemed to be the day that everyone wanted outdoors. After opening the shack's door to let out Prissy and Pixie, the other four decided it was their turn. With screeches loud enough to fill their area of High Street, Prissy and Pixie, followed by Piper, Pinkie, Percy, and Petunia, forced their way outside the shack.
It was one of those days were it was truly undeniable that spring was there. Percy, having left the office for the day had decided on a different route for a stroll. Lily was leashed and following Percy diligently on their path down High Street, apparently quite happy to yap at things other than trees - such as people, other dogs, and owls! Suddenly several owls flew past the man and his dog, soaring free from the nearby alley. Curious as to their sudden exodus, Percy peered down the alley at a young lady. “Are you alright?” He called to her.
Being alert to her surroundings was part and parcel of her vocation in life so Maggie was not overly startled when two owls crossed her path, however odd the sight may have been, but she stopped in her tracks when four more bustled after them, flapping their wings at her ankles like overgrown snitches.
"Where did you come from?!" She asked them pointlessly, glancing up to see a girl in hot pursuit of the noisy bloody things. "Are these yours!?” She shouted, trying to tread in literally any direction without flattering one of the hooting creatures fascinated by her shoes.
She knew her owls wouldn't fly away forever, but that didn't make her any less desperate to catch them! As she trotted past a few other, much taller people, a few made a point to call to her.
She glanced up towards the man at first, her blue eyes wide.
"My owls! My owls!" she responded in somewhat of a panic. "They've gotten lose! Pinky! Percy! All of you, get back here!" she yelled, sounding very pathetic with her squeaky, screeching tone. "Miss, please grab one if you can! They won't bite — I promise!" she called to the nearby woman.
The petite lady went flying past him after the owls, half of whom seemed almost her size. Percy, no stranger to creatures of varying degrees of dangerous, thought nothing of helping her, and hurried after. Only pausing when she called ‘Percy’. He didn’t know the young lady and such familiarity caught him off guard until he realized she meant one of the owls who were pecking at another ladies shoes. Lily followed yapping her way into the crowd of creatures as Percy reached for one of the owls in the mix, the biggest of them so the ladies needn't worry.
The girl's insistence that the owls didn't bite immediately proved a lie when, showing willing, Maggie reached down to grab one of them - pinky? perky? - and received an angry beak wedged in her left hand. Crying out in pain she flicked her hand violently, tossing the owl into the air where it ruffled and righted itself before landing on the ground, and turned to glare at the girl.
"Why did you tell me that?!" Oh Merlin, what if it was serious? It could end her career when it had barely bloody started and then what would she do?
Odette gasped as her owl attacked the woman, shocked by the unusual behavior of one of her more-beloved owls! Pink was always friendly — what was different this time? At least the gentleman seemed to be having more success - er, success-ish.
A squawk broke out in the middle of everything, causing the owl breeder to spin around to see one of her owls hanging by a rope.
"Oh no, no, no. None of this is going right!" she cried, frantically trying to count the owls who just seemed to be everywhere. "Does anyone know a spell that can make them stop?"
It was complete chaos. The small lady - girl? - and increasingly panicked, the other lady was upset, understandably, and the owls were everywhere. Percy had grabbed one, but it struggled in his arms trying to get back to its brothers and sisters. Without knowing where their coops were this was a sisyphean task.
Knowing it was a risk Percy let the owl go, it flocked to the rest of its friends dancing around the ladies in a squawking mass. Percy pulled out his wand and with a wave he cast a variant of petrificus totalus freezing the owls in their places.
The blood trickling down her wrist was drying already underneath the cuff of her robe but Maggie was not even slightly settled: it didn't feel bad at the moment but she knew enough to know that the following day was often when one felt the ramifications of injury. What if she her hand was so damaged she couldn't play again?
The owls froze around her feet and Maggie cut her eyes at them. They would pay for this.
“You couldn’t have done that earlier I suppose?” Maggie spat irritably, squeezing her hand into a fist to feel the cut stretch.
Completely and utterly distressed by the sight of her many owls, frozen and unmoving on the ground, Odette began to feel tears welling up in her eyes. Her babies were always so well-behaved; she couldn't imagine what prompted them to escape! Oh, this was a disaster.
"I - I'm sorry," she hiccuped, beginning to run around a scoop up the smallest of her children. "You see, I'm not very good at magic, and - and I didn't know what to do! Please don't be upset with them. It's my fault," she insisted, not full-on crying at what had occurred outside the shop.
Two upset ladies, great. The little one was clearly more distraught and so he focused on her, “Let us get them back to their cages and see what might have happened.” He directed calmly, looking at the other lady he frowned slightly taking in the blood. “Can you still move your wrist easily?” The hospitals after all were quite adept at taking care of such common day injuries, she needn’t make a fuss. He began waved his wand again and the owls floated, frozen, a foot above the ground. “Can you show me to their cages, miss?” Percy gently asked.
Girls quick to hysterics were Maggie's least favourite kind - hence why she spent as little time as possible with her sister - and she felt the last of her patience go as she was ignored in favour of plucking owls from the ground. Bollocks to her career apparently, she warranted only a brief glance and question!
“I can move it fine, but if I can’t catch a quaffle then it won’t make any difference,” she said through gritted teeth, taking a step towards the smaller woman, nudging one of the owls along as she went. “This is your fault!”
Making sure her owls were safe — especially from the woman who seemed especially perturbed by the turn of events — was her main priority, and as such she was inclined to agree to anything they had to say. She directed the gentleman (who, luckily for Odette, who was polite enough to at least act like her owls' escape hadn't bothered him) to the proper cages, and turned to the woman.
She didn't pay attention to quidditch, but she knew enough to figure out that she must have been a quidditch player.
"I told you I was sorry, Miss," she said, frowning.
The woman did not seem to want to calm down even as Percy guided the owls back into their cages. He had hardly turned around from locking the cages when the woman who had been bitten snapped at the smaller lady. “Let me take a look at it.” He suggested calmly, hoping that perhaps if he paid attention to the woman it might lessen her annoyance with the clearly flustered girl. He was not a healer by any stretch of the imagination, but in the years had his job had gotten pretty good at assessing injuries of the animal variety.
With one last roll of her eyes in the direction of the girl Maggie held her hand out towards the man, assuming him to be a healer of some description and thus of use to her in the moment. If her hand didn’t sting so much she might have been sympathetic towards the girl, would have definitely continued to help, but this was her life! What else was she supposed to do? She didn’t exactly have her sister’s temperament for ingratiation.
“Look out,” Maggie said much more mildly, with a nod of her head towards an owl attempting another escape.
There was nothing more frightening than an ill-tempered person around her owls, she thought as she quickly moved to assure every last owl was where they were supposed to be. She didn't know why they'd even escaped in the first place; her best bet was that something inside her little shack had spooked them. Maybe there had been a boggart hiding in the corner, or maybe one had been spooked by a billywig; nevertheless, she needed to investigate when she got home.
While the gentleman tended to the injured women, Odette smiled softly and swiftly attempted to make her exit.