The magpie perched on a branch high above the street, watching and occasionally preening its feathers. Muggles passing by underneath hardly gave it a second look; Eurasian magpies were not out of place in England, although it was odd to see one so familiar with the houses around.

She'd taken to stealing and playing with the shiny loot for a while before giving the items back, preferably before the owners shut the windows. Despite the cold weather, some people did open their windows for fresh air for a while, and given that she regularly scouted out places in London where Muggles did do that, she knew which house would have a good selection of pickings.

Back then, she hadn't been so intent on being a magpie all the time, mostly because she kept trying to preen non-existent feathers as a human. But now this was her form of respite, giving in to her basest desires as a magpie. It was better than giving in to her basest desire as a human, which was to drink. It was too early to drink, anyway.

A faint glimmer caught her eye. One of her scouted houses had indeed left the window open. The glitter came from a pair of silver earrings with red roses. The magpie hopped along her branch, flapping her wings a little to get ready to dive for it.

Bertie's evening had been quite eventful. First, he had pciked up some leftover pastries from his father's bakery, visited with his kinda-stepfather, and walked his two precious dogs. The weather wasn't too awfully cold, and it had been awhile since he had the opportunity to stretch his wings outside. He opened the window to his flat slightly before transfiguring into a chickadee. Among the local birds, he stood out. He was not native at all-- but he had seen them a few times, while visiting America.

He was rather chubby in chickadee form, his beak larger than the average chickadee's and his eyes were blue.

Bert fluttered from rooftop to rooftop, every now and then stopping to examine any objects that caught his eye-- usually they were brightly colored, or shiny. Rarely, they were anything that was  remotely useful.

As he landed on one of the rooftops, examining what looked to be a stolen ring, he heard an angry cawing noise. He turned his head warily to see an angry bird. Behind her was a nest. He didn't get a close enough look to see if there were any eggs or live chicks-- and he didn't want to.

He fled, ring in mouth, and she followed close behind him until he was safely out of her territory. The encounter had made his heart beat a little too quickly, and he wanted to take a rest when he saw a familiar little magpie. On her breast was a white teardrop shape.

Yes, it was definitely Adrianna Xin.

With a gleeful, muffled chirp, he landed next to her and carefully balanced the ring on the branch before nudging it closer to her.

It fell to the ground pathetically.

Bertie shrugged as apologetically as one could with wings instead of arms.

Her dive interrupted by a fat chickadee. Really? Adrianna glared at it, her wings starting to open to scare it off, and then realised that she'd never even seen a chickadee in the British Isles. Not once in her flights. So what was a chickadee doing here? A chickadee with a rather pronounced beak and very oddly blue eyes.

Animagus?

Suddenly she realised who it was. She tucked her wings closed and turned around, waggling her tail as if to ask him to follow her. The shiny ring could wait - both of them. She fluttered off, checking to see if he was following her, slowing down occasionally so that he could catch up. She was a much bigger bird compared to him, and honestly she was somewhat impressed that he recognised her enough to confront her given their size difference.

Finding a place to land was easy, finding one hidden from Muggles not so much. She finally found a narrow alley that had no windows that looked into it and with a flurry of black and white feathers changed back, smoothing out her similarly coloured clothes. There was not much space left in the area, but she was petite enough to think that they could fit.[1]

1.	Not really.

His tiny, pathetic wings flapped laboriously  as he struggled to keep up with her. Being a bird animagus was, arguably, one of the better choices. When he had first started trying to become an animagus,he hoped that he would be something cool... Like a boar or a horse. At first he had been disappointed at becoming some random bird. However, boars and horses could not fly.

Bertie landed on the ground in front of Adrianna, tweeting at her skeptically. The space was tiny! However, it was also private-- with very little chance that anyone would actually see him transform. There were probably other places, more spacious places... But he didn't want to inconvenience her.

So he transformed back to his human form. Having arms where his wings used to be was always a strange thing to get used to. And he would have to resist the urge to pick random things up with his mouth for the next hour.

"Happy Halloween." He grinned anxiously, feeling a bit cramped and like the walls were pushing in on them. "Can we-- can we move out of here?"

Bertie's quick transformation back made her realise that, no, she'd forgotten to account for him and suddenly the walls were much more claustrophobic than they had appeared to be. Scale often made no difference to a bird unless it was a cage; it was a very different story as a human. She conceded Bertie had a point.

Once outside it was a little more refreshing, despite being surrounded by Muggle areas. There weren't many of them here, thankfully. She turned back to Bertie and smiled a little apprehensively, still unsure if she'd managed to get them into a good situation or not.

"I...I know a wizarding café around here somewhere," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. "It's been a long time since I've seen you around, so why don't we go there and catch up? And you tell me what you're doing for Halloween, because I'm not really doing anything. I've been a bit too long away from people and Halloween gets on my nerves. Sorry for not keeping in contact with you. Love your animagus form, by the way, and I promise I'm not making fun of you."

At least the afternoon was bright and conducive to getting her mood back up, enough to talk to a coworker with more sincerity than her past  months of forced smiles and distant greetings.