How terribly kind of you to have looked after Gertrude the way you did! I am quite appreciative (and, you will notice, I took the liberty of ordering a post-office owl to deliver this; I shouldn't want you to be burdened with the task twice. Anyway, it might convince poor Gertrude that your house was the ideal spot for a stop-off whenever she's in the neighborhood, and you might find yourself the recipient of all of my letters to Hogsmeade soon enough...)

I'm afraid Gertrude is rather getting on in years (she was my mother's owl before mine) and she might be due for retirement, but she does have some days where she seems perfectly capable and lithe as she ever was. I wonder, if it isn't too much trouble, if you wouldn't mind sharing the particular address that she found you at last night? I'm trying to determine whether it was on the way to my friend Edith's or not — if it was, perhaps my poor owl was too tired for the trip and needed a rest. If not, then perhaps she simply got lost and it's her antique bird brain that's the matter.

In any case, thank you again for feeding her and letting her stay a bit. She really is a darling bird, whether she delivers mail to the right address or not.

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