The weather was cold enough to freeze bones.

Breath hovered like low hanging clouds as it left his lips, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. The sun might have been high in the sky, but its warmth had done little to touch Cooper as he’d walked around the perimeter of the castle and gone through a number of spells and checks. It was simply a regular check up, held at varying points in time by the Corps, to be sure that Hogwarts and its security measures were up to par, and that the school would be prepared in the eventuality of external forces trying to break in with evil deeds on their minds. For the werewolf, it was an excuse to be out on the field, thinking of anything other than his wife’s passing. By now, as his long strides took him along the edge of the lake, Cooper was basically done –having found that everything was in place, and it didn’t seem as if any dark forces would have an easy task getting into the school. Birds chirped, squirrels ran up trees, and everything felt entirely right. As always when he visited the castle, Cooper was reminded of his own days there –some of the darkest, maybe, but he still cherished those times.

The Auror was torn from his train of thought by the sound of a low hoot up ahead. Frowning slightly, Cooper quickened his pace until he reached a tall tree and heard the sound again, this time much closer. Looking at the ground, he found where it was coming from: on the ground, in a small nest of broken twigs, were a number of young, baby owls. The werewolf was not yet at a smiling point, but he did instantly feel warmth inside as he bent down and picked up one of the owls and gingerly held it to his chest. “Where’s your mummy?” He coed as he nestled his chin gently into its feathers.

This. Was. So. Cool.

Okay, so first of all little Lexi McGee thought she was going to have a heart attack when she heard an Auror (Yes a real, live, scarlet-robe clad AUROR!) was going to be doing a checkup on the school's security measures. And then she heard rumors that it was Cooper Evans, who was also a werewolf.

An Auror? Who was a werewolf? Lexi was dreaming.

Not so stealthily, she walked outside and saw Cooper Evans finishing up his patrol by the lake. She was busy making up her mind if she wanted to go up and just talk to him when he bent down, and picked something up gently. What was it? She ran towards him and heard the telltale peep-hoot that baby owls did. "What are those?" Lexi asked as she approached the Auror, "Oh, look at them all!" She said, dropping to her knees near the nest to get a better look at the little puffballs of baby owlness.

It was too cold for this. That's what most would say, she was sure, but conditions being 'too' anything rarely prevented the spirited and unsinkable Kella Carmody from making an attempt. There was no perch too high for balancing on, and no trick too dangerous for attempting, so there was definitely no day too cold for an afternoon romp! She just had to get outside to stretch her legs before she attempted to do anything else. There was no chance she'd ever be able to sit still otherwise. Thus, she'd set herself a task: Run around the lake three times. Was it necessary? Nope. Was it arbitrary? Absolutely! Thus, it seemed like the perfect plan.

Of course, the best laid plans of badgers and owls so often go astray, and it didn't take long for a blinding shock of red moving around the perimeter of the lake to catch the girl's attention. The shock of red she saw wasn't a glimpse of the auror's robes, but of her yearmate Lexi's hair, which seemed particularly vibrant against the pale sky and dull winter landscape. Jamming her mitten covered hands into her empty pockets, Kella jogged a bit in an attempt to catch up with her. What if she was doing something far more interesting than what she had planned? She hadn't even completed one full lap around the lake when she was veering off course, her hair being blown around by the near freezing wind.

“Hi,” the pink cheeked, windblown girl greeted rather boldly, not immediately daunted by the presence of the man in the uniform. “Are you doing something?” It was the sort of question that didn't really need asking. What she really meant was 'Are you doing something COOL?' and, more specifically 'Can I do it, too?

As he held the owl to his chest and rubbed his chin into its feathers, Cooper heard dull footsteps rushing towards him, smacking against damp grass. Without moving his face, he glanced up to watch as a redheaded student jogged towards him, a slightly excited look on her face. “They’re baby owls,” He answered to her question, and then found the softest of smiles dancing across his lips as the girl knelt down to see them closer up. It wasn’t quite the gesture of glee that would have normally passed over his face, but it was much better than the either murderous or tormented look that’d taken to inhabiting it lately. His thumb rubbed against the baby owl in his hands. “They’re cute, aren’t they?” His chin bobbed against the birds head, making it look up and peck at him –though it barely had the strength to sting.

As the question left his lips, he heard footsteps once again, this time from the opposite direction. Either the owls were desired by the entire school, or Cooper was a downright celebrity. Glancing up, he watched the second girl approach, but speak mostly to the one kneeling down. “We’re looking at these baby owls,” He offered as an answer, using his free arm to point at the nest. “Feel free to hold one!”

Why was there an abandoned nest of baby owls on the ground? Lexi wondered where their mother was and what would bring her to leave behind this nest of helpless babies. They looked so fragile, so alone but so happy because they didn't know that they were alone. The Auror was cuddling one in his hands, and the rest seemed to hum happily in the warmth of the nest.

Delicately, Lexi reached out towards the owls and rested a finger on top of one of their heads, smoothing out the wild tuft of feathers. They were too adorable for their own good, and too vulnerable to be out here on their own... Lexi looked around after retracting her hand, "Do you see the Momma owl around here?" She asked aloud for either the Auror or Kella to answer.

Then the Auror said that they could hold one, and that was the direction that Lexi was looking for. She smiled, and picked up one of the disgruntled little guys. It cheeped like a baby chick, but there was a weird almost-hooting noise that went along with it. "Oh, it's so tiny!" She said with a grin. When she'd gotten Jethro, her owl had been a few months old and no longer a baby. She thought maybe this is what Jet looked like when he was a baby, a poof of feathers.

Her golden eyes grew wide and sparkled with her innate curiosity. She looked up at the Auror who was still holding his owl in his hands, "What's your name by the way? I'm Lexi."

Kella didn't know very much about owls. Her mother had integrated back into the wizarding world so thoroughly in the years before she was born that the appearance of a post owl at the window was still cause for excitement and wonder – and sometimes, if she were being honest (and why shouldn't she be?), a little bit of fear. Owls were big and mysterious. Their heads turned every which way and their eyes displayed no discernible expression. They swooped like phantoms and tended to nip. All in all, they kind of overwhelmed the first year, who was typically happy to admire them from a safe distance. Never in her life had she seen a baby one, not even in a movie, and as she leaned over the fallen nest and peeked inside, she was surprised by what she saw. “They look like penguins to me,” she remarked. “It would be better if they were penguins. It's cold! So I guess it's a good thing they have feathers, right?” she suggested conversationally, not yet moving to scoop up an owl herself.

“What happened? Did they fall down?” she asked, looking to the auror – she didn't recognize him, but he was an adult, and that immediately suggested to her that he must know more than she did herself. She took a step away from the nest and looked up into the trees. The sky was so white she had to squint, and she raised a mitten-covered hand to shield her eyes, glancing at the nearby trees as if searching for a clue. “Owls sleep during the day and wake up at night,” she recalled as she searched the branches. It was one of those facts that was at the back of her mind, waiting to one day become useful – something she'd learned during primary school, probably, though who knew why. “I guess that means the mum is sleeping,” she reasoned. She didn't see a sleeping mother owl anywhere, though, so she gave up the search, sliding her hands back into her coat pockets.

”What's your name by the way? I'm Lexi.”

“I'm Kella,” the hufflepuff girl piped in, introducing herself to the man. “Do you work here?” she asked him, not recognizing his iconic robes. He looked official, and he was at school, so she guessed he was someone affiliated with the tournament, maybe. Didn't those Durmstrang people wear robes that were similar in color? It didn't really matter. She didn't know him, whoever he was.

As he watched one of the students pick up one of the baby owls, and the other pondering the question of where the Mother Owl was, he couldn’t help but be somewhat reminded of what Bella had been like at their age. It was happy memories, though, thoughts of an easier time –when he hadn’t yet officially met his wife, but shared a few classes with her. For the first time since she’d died, he found himself honestly smiling, as he curved his wrist around the baby owl in his hand, and nodded. “The mother can’t be far,” He commented, risking a glance towards the branches of the tree –but, non surprisingly, there were no sleeping birds in it. “Maybe she’s in the owlrey?” He suggested, though he couldn’t mange to understand why she would have left her babies behind.

“I’m Auror Evans,” He answered, his tone tending towards being official for a second, before becoming soft once again. “I work for the Ministry of Magic, keeping bad guys at bay,” He said kindly, giving the most simple explanation he could for what he did. “What about you guys? What house are you in?” He hadn’t been expecting to speak with any students during his brief visit to Hogwarts, but perhaps it wasn’t the worst idea to take a walk down memory lane to his own days at the school.

The baby owl was really soft and just reminded her of a little ball of poof, or like a dandelion right before all the seeds blew away. It was childish of her to be so obsessed over this itty bitty little fuzzball of cuteness, but hey, she was twelve; she had an excuse to fawn over the baby. She listened as Kella introduced herself and then asked if the Auror worked here. Merlin's pants.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Auror Evans." Lexi said with a grin. "I'm a Gryffindor!" She piped up. A whole ninety-two pounds of ferocious and silly twelve-year old werewolf-ness, yup, a Gryffindor. "What house were you in when you were here? You went here right? Because there's a whole bunch of big kids and they don't go here. They're just here for the tournament."

“Are there bad guys here?” Kella asked the auror, now that she knew that he was an auror. She didn't seem worried about the prospect, only curious, deferring to the man's authority with her full trust. She hadn't heard any rumors about anything fishy going on, and rumors tended to spread quickly at school, which either meant she was the first to find out, or nothing was actually going on. Kella hadn't given much thought to the idea that there could be people with ill intentions at her school, because, well... what was there besides a bunch of kids? There were jewels, she supposed, in the hourglasses, but she thought someone might notice if they got stolen. And then how would they keep track of house points? Those were important! Nobody would steal those. Feeling pretty secure in the thought that there was no danger – or at least no danger anymore – Kella crouched down near the nest, balancing on her toes as she looked down at the remaining baby bird.

”What about you guys? What house are you in?”
”I'm a Gryffindor!”

“Hufflepuff,” Kella responded instantly, but without quite as much enthusiasm as Lexi had. She couldn't have gotten a word in edgewise after that even if she'd wanted to, because Lexi was asking about the auror, and telling him about the tournament. Meanwhile, Kella was involved with the remaining owlet, listening to the two others chat while she stretched one tentative, mitten sheathed hand toward the baby, then withdrawing it. She wanted to pick it up, but she was a little bit afraid to, unsure if she might hurt it, or drop it, or scare it. She didn't have anything against animals – she just didn't have much experience with them, having never owned a pet before. Baby birds were far more fragile than any dog she'd stopped to pet in the street back home, and she still wasn't entirely convinced she was allowed to just scoop one up like that.  Yanking off one of her bulky knitted mittens, she extended two fingers toward the little bird's head, stroking its downy feathers gently. “Can I really hold this one?” she asked again, just to make sure.

The innocence of the two girls as they blurted out their House was the clearest indication so far that they were both obviously first years –he remembered those times as well: his awe at being in the castle, even though he’d been aware of its existence his entire life, the proud way his heart had beat each time he’d defended his House, the amazing excitement of it all and the simple and childish belief that there could be nothing better than this. Childhood was a time of wonders and discoveries, of believing everything was perfection and nothing could ever go wrong. It was the part of life when everyone believed they were safe, because there were adults out to protect them and nobody could therefore harm them; it was the idealist portion of life, when one was full of utopias about what was to come. As an adult, one realized how silly it had all been –but Cooper was certain he was not the only one who wished he could go back.

As cold air grazed his cheek, he found himself peacefully looking down at the two girls. “I was a Ravenclaw,” He answered, nodding at the redhead’s comment that there were students from other schools present this year. “I wish the Tournament would have been more peaceful in my time,” But, in Coop’s time the tournament had ended in death and the revival of Lord Voldemort –not quite the happy, exciting memories it should be. Cooper had even put his name in, perhaps secretly harboring a death wish or maybe just crossing his fingers he could prove he was more than just a lycanthrope. However, he had not been chosen, and perhaps that was a blessing. Glancing down at the second girl, Cooper nodded contentedly. “Pick him up, by all means!” He again rubbed his own owl on the head. “So, are you girls enjoying the tournament so far?”

After Kella pointed it out, Lexi realized that maybe the Auror was here for bad guys. But why would there be bad guys at Hogwarts? If they thought there was anything remotely bad to do at Hogwarts, then they were seriously mistaken. What could they do? Steal some parchment, terrorize a Hufflepuff. Seriously. But then again, people did try to attack Hogwarts a few years ago, right? When Lexi was little there had basically been an entire battle fought here, rightfully named the Battle of Hogwarts of course. Now those guys were really bad bad guys.

She watched as Kella stroked the top of the owl's head, and wondered why her classmate was so darn shy around the owls - the adorable baby owls who were just begging to be picked up. She looked back up at Auror Evans, who said he was a Ravenclaw. That was cool, it probably meant he was really super smart. But then again... Lexi knew some pretty bossy and mean Ravenclaw's, Evans didn't seem bossy and mean. He was an Auror! He had to be strong and protective and awesome.

"I think it's alright, I mean, we're just first years... you know? We kind of sit there and watch these people we don't know do things we don't know how to do." Lexi said with a shrug, it made sense in her mind, even if the words came out all jumbled up. "It's different than what I thought it would be." She stated as an afterthought. And it was much different. She wasn't expecting the champions to have to do things that were so hard or dangerous. But she guessed that was what made them champions.

Kella could do a handstand high up on a balance beam. She could stick a back handspring dismount. She could throw her body through the air and trust that the higher of the two uneven bars would be there when she needed to catch it in her two chalked up hands. There were people out there who thought the tiny gymnast fearless, and some days, when everything was coming up Kella and she landed all of her tricks, she could be convinced it was true. When faced with the prospect of lifting a tiny baby owl up into her hands, however, she was slightly dumbfounded, floundering each time she reached out for it, certain that she was approaching things incorrectly. She had to remove her other mitten, tugging it off from the top and dropping it onto the ground next to its mate, before she tried again. She brought her hands close, closer, closest... and then seemed to chicken out or give up. It was easier to disorient herself, chuck her entire body through space, contort herself every which way, and land on her feet than it was to lift this tiny baby creature. She kept trying, though. Kella was a trier.

As she made her little attempts, the conversation turned to the tournament. “I think it's quite cool,” Kella remarked as her fingertips grazed the sides of the fluffy owlet's body for the millionth time. “We'll probably learn how to do all of that when we're older, right?” she asked, though she was fairly certain that it was true. Otherwise how would the older kids know how to do it? “Mostly it just makes me excited, because once we start learning all of that hard stuff, school will be much more fun,” she explained, her head popping up briefly before she went right back to her feeble attempt at owl handling. Right now classes were sort of the pits, but they couldn't possibly do foundation work forever! If they did she'd probably just die! Mum and dad said that if after one year she didn't like Hogwarts then she would be allowed to come home and go to comprehensive, but as badly as she wanted to go back to training at the gym, and as uncomfortable as the wizarding world sometimes made her, it seemed like a waste to quit now. Besides, they didn't have owls at any of the comprehensive schools in Crawley, or lakes - and they definitely didn't have quidditch!

“I got it!” she exclaimed brightly just moments later, having scooped the little bird up into her chapped palms, her eyes wide and looking a fair bit shocked to actually find the bird sitting there. It was clear that she was nervous from the unsteady, awkward way she held her hands up and a little bit away from her, like she wasn't sure what to do with it now that she had it. “Look!” she urged, “Look!” Kella was excited to have mastered the deceptively complex art of scooping up a baby owl without murdering it. It moved a tiny bit in her hands, causing her to jump the slightest bit, looking momentarily panicked. Always quick thinking when it came to physical responses, Kella drew her palms toward her chest, holding the tiny thing up against her body. “I am not going to drop this bird,” she declared, speaking as much to herself as to anybody around her.

It was amusing to hear the two girls speak about the Tournament: their inability to understand how it was all done, their shock at some of the danger the students were put through, and even the slight boredom at simply there watching strangers act all silly. But, truth was, they were lucky: despite some minor hitches, everything was going smoothly this time around, unlike when the TriWizard Tournament had been held back in his days. He could only hope everything continued to go along quite fine, in order for these two girls –and all the rest at the school- to be able to simply move along with their innocence. Evil had already grasped their world enough times –one could only hope it wouldn’t happen once again. “Oh, but it’s amazing,” He commented, looking down at the two with a hint of an excited smile. “Don’t you feel excited cheering Hogwarts on and all?”

And then, one of the two had managed to pick up her owl after much work, and Cooper found himself smiling contentedly at her, nodding in approval at her achievement. “Good job!” He exclaimed, as he patted his own baby bird in his hands.

The baby owl in Lexi's hand made a weird nose, and it shocked the girl. It... sneezed? Or something like that. But it was a high-pitched little squeaky toy noise and Lexi had been afraid that she'd squished it until the owl did it again, twice. Could owls sneeze? Lexi could sneeze, and she was pretty sure Jethro, her own owl, could sneeze as well. If people could sneeze, and if adult owls could sneeze, then surely baby owls could sneeze.

Or maybe Lexi was just imagining things.

"I love cheering!" She exclaimed, and it was so much fun. People would paint stripes on their faces, you could wear as much crimson and gold as you wanted... it was phenomenal! She got to pick her favorite champion and root them on. Even if Hogwarts wasn't doing too good at the moment, it was still exciting to watch and see them compete. And whenever they did something good, or when she finally heard about the champions doing something right, it made her feel all warm and bubbly with pride.

"Kella! It looks so snuggly," Lexi commented. This was so different for her, Lexi that is. Full moons left her with wild mood swings and irritability, but being out here made her feel happy. She definitely needed to do this more often, meet new people, snuggle baby owls. Just normal everyday things, but especially snuggling baby owls.

“I just like screaming!” Kella contributed enthusiastically – perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, because the loud, sudden exclamation seemed to frighten the little bird she was cuddling against her belly. The tiny creature bristled and produced a strained little peep!, and Kella bristled in return, pressing it closer to her abdomen with a guilty, wide-eyed look on her face. She glanced down at the baby, half terrified that she'd murdered it, but it actually seemed perfectly happy to be snuggling so close to her warm coat on this frigid day. Maybe she'd just scared it for a second? She could understand that. She always shrieked in terror whenever any of her brothers came up behind her and tossed her over their shoulder, but in the end she always enjoyed being flung around and manhandled. The owlet was probably just excited! Kella laughed, half out of amusement, half out of nerves. Animals were pretty tricky.

”Kella! It looks so snuggly.”

“Is this good?” she asked, arching backward a bit to show the baby in its cuddly spot between her palms and her stomach. That little comment was enough to convince Kella that she wasn't likely to murder it – at least not if she kept up what she was currently doing. Straightening back up, she looked down at the now empty nest. It was just laying there, a little bit dilapidated, out in the open for anyone to stumble across. “Are we supposed to put this back in a tree?” she asked curiously. “If we put them back in someone could step on them.” She'd learned that these little friends were heartier than they looked, but she didn't think they could survive being trodden on. “Or they might freeze. Their feathers are quite small, aren't they?”