To make matters worse, not only had he tumbled out of the sky, the person he had hit was unexpectedly strong, so that it felt as though he was smacking into a brick wall – but he had knocked the man down with him. Jude lay there in a dazed mass of feather for a moment, but as he righted himself onto webbed feet, the person’s features became clear.

“Monty?!” he exclaimed, or meant to – it came out in a braying kind of squawk. In the past couple of years, Jude had seen him less and less... whether it was because it hadn’t done to look too close to friends of a certain, suspect, occupation during his campaign for Minister, or because Monty had become a vampire and had disappeared for some time because of it, Jude couldn’t say.

But, no matter that he and Monty had never been the best of friends, Jude was pleased to see Monty looking so well. Or, as well as an undead man could. He nudged him in the chest with the end of his bill in some attempt to ask how are you?, before remembering that he was still a bird.

Hurriedly, he hopped off him and, hoping he wasn’t too dizzy to manage it, transformed back to human form.

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