Arven watched those heavenly ladies and lordly gentlemen like he’d watched the musk deer in Mongolia. Night had fallen over Hogsmeade, but many of its highest born inhabitants were still very much awake. A society ball had just ended at a grand home in Wellingtonshire, and the partygoers poured outside like a cavalcade of those charming deer, chattering their way into carriages and cabs, or else apparating into the night.

As for the people-watcher, he was quite within sight, not the type to linger in the dark or peer from the shadows, but comfortably content with his hobby. He leaned on a beautifully carved wall beneath a handsome streetlight, tall and elegant but pointedly rugged next the finery of the partygoers. Tossing a stray lock of hair from his face, Arven smiled slightly at the scene, though nobody thus far had noticed him. Deer did not notice lions when the lion was this tame.