Saturday October 18th 2008- 01:29pm

outfit.

Maddie still hadn’t quite got the hang of all this Wizarding lark, despite being at Hogwarts just over a month already. She was desperate to send a letter back home to her parents, last time one of her friends had done it for her, but, no-one was around today so she had to do it herself. She was really nervous, she’d never sent a letter by owl before and the things terrified her, and they bite! How did wizards cope with having to use those wretched birds to send letters? What on Earth was wrong with normal post? Maddie just didn’t understand it, there were loads of things that were easier than sending ‘owl post’ so why didn’t they use that instead of overcomplicating it all. So, she ventured reluctantly up to the Owlery, a little nervous about venturing inside, after all, only God knew what waited for her behind the door. She’d never been to the Owlery before and didn’t have a clue what to expect, how many owls did they have? Did they bite? Were they friendly? And more importantly, how on Earth did you get one to send a letter?

It was about ten minutes that Maddie spent waiting outside the Owlery before eventually daring to go inside. The twelve year old was initially overwhelmed by the sheer number of owls in the place, hooting away from on top of their perches, staring at her with wide eyes. Maddie nervously shut the door behind her and stared at the owls. She was baffled, how did they do this? In an attempt to summon help, Maddie looked around the owlery, there wasn’t a soul in there, leaving a terrified Maddie to try and work it out for herself.

“How on Earth do I do this?” she mumbled reluctantly as she walked closer to a large, intimidating Barn Owl on a nearby perch. It tipped its head to one side as she approached. Stretching out her hand towards it, Maddie tried to coax the thing closer to her so that she could try and post the letter that was clasped tightly in her right hand.

There were a lot of awesome things about the wizarding world that Keegan enjoyed. Brooms... Magically appearing food... Dragons... Quidditch... to name a few. However, for every awesome thing, there was always at least one weird one. Like using owls to send messages, as far as Keegan knew (since he had paid little attention in his muggle history classes) using birds for mail had gone out of popularity at least... ten years ago. When you had magic at your fingertips... well it should have been easier to send a message then by muggle internet. But nooooo, wizards just HAD to use stinky, bitey birds to send off letters. Why would anyone want to receive a letter with bird poop all over it? Good thing his mother never wrote to him, or he would have to endure her complaining about all the bird feathers his stupid postowl left.

Despite the fact that he had no letters to write to her, Keegan found himself wandering towards the Owlry. Perhaps it was boyish mischief, urging him to feed owls some beans or something that would give them diarrhea all over someones unfortunate letter (or heads), that caused Keegan to stray from his normal route to the quidditch Fields to take a peek at the owls. Maybe, deep inside, there was a secret hope that his mother had sent him a letter, even just a sticky note with hello scribbled on it would have been welcome. Whatever it was, Keegan opened up the doors quietly, lest he start a rampage of birds, and slipped inside.

“How on Earth do I do this?”

He had, against his will, been too enraptured by the nesting birds spiraling to the rafters, to notice the girl there. When she spoke, he nearly jumped out of his skin. She hadn't been talking to him, since she didn't seem to notice his presence either, and Keegan was about to just leave her to her own devices when he saw what she was attempting, and failing, to do. The arrogant little prat that he was, Keegan couldn't help but smirk at her inability to send a simple letter. Even though he himself had never sent one, Keegan was positive he could. When she failed to coax the bird towards her, Keegan couldn't keep his disdain to himself. Rolling his eyes, he strode over to her "Sheesh, can't ye do anything? Let me show ye how it's done."

Without waiting for her permission, Keegan stuck his hand towards the bird, grasping for the legs. He felt the knobby claws briefly, his fingers slipping just short of grasping it, before he felt something completely different... and much more painful. "OW! WHAT THE ELL!" Pulling his hand back, he stared at the large nick on the back of his hand, fascinated for a moment by the slowly ebbing blood. "OH you mangy fecking piece of..." He started to mutter angrily, looking for something to toss it's way.

Maddie was far too busy trying to coax the bird towards her to notice someone else enter the owlery “Come on,” she cooed to the bird anxiously, she really wanted to get the letter posted so that she could just leave and forget about the place, it was filthy and Maddie really didn’t want to stay up their much longer, her mum wouldn’t have let her near the place if she could see what she was doing right now. Despite only recently starting to come into contact with owls, Maddie hated them with a passion, still, at least they weren’t pigeons.

“Sheesh, can’t ye do anything? Let me show ye how it’s done.” The sound of another person caused Maddie to jump and spin around to face the source of the noise. Without a word, she moved out of the boy’s way slightly and watched him try and grab the bird’s leg  “I don’t think you should do...” she was soon cut off by the sound of his shouting “Well if that’s how it’s done I don’t think I want to post this letter.” She thought to herself as she stepped away from the owl and began to look around for a less intimidating looking owl. Why he thought he’d get away with just grabbing for the poor bird was beyond her “You scared it!” Maddie said, as she stared at the boy’s cut hand, she was glad that she had decided to give up on that owl “That’s why it scratched you!”

“Maybe I should try a different owl.” She eventually thought aloud as she continued to scan the perches for a calmer owl that might be more likely to let her send her letter and less likely to bite her. Maybe she should get her own owl, if an owl got used to her maybe it wouldn’t be scared of her and just send post without scratching her.

Pax had finally got around to writing his thank you letters (he figured it didn't count as too late if less than a month had passed since his birthday) and was now making his way to the owlery to find an owl big enough to take the parcel of filled envelopes to his parents to be redistributed to the rest of his relatives. He stopped short when he heard a familiar voice yelling familiar profanities, then cautiously proceeded forward into the owlery.

Pax pulled a grimace on Keegan's behalf; it didn't take much to guess the source of his frustration, especially as Pax glimpsed the blood. Little as Pax and Keegan got along, he still wasn't exactly thrilled to see the other boy in pain. He noticed Maddie Sinclair was there as well, looking a bit uncertain. Maddie was in the same house as him, but he didn't know a great deal about her yet, other than the fact that she was muggleborn.

'Um, hullo Maddie... Keegan...' he added tentatively. 'Uh, is everything okay?' Realising as he said it that this was a bit of a silly question given Keegan's bleeding hand, he quickly ammended, 'Anything I can do?' He looked more at Maddie than at Keegan as he spoke; Keegan made him a bit nervous so he tended to avoid looking directly at him for too long.

“You scared it! That’s why it scratched you!”

"Don't you think I bloody well know that!" He snapped back, brows furrowed and wounded hand clutched towards his body. Why did she have to go pointing out the obvious and harping on it like... a harpie... He knew well enough that he had made the bird mad! There was a giant, throbbing chuck of his hand missing for gods sake! well ok, perhaps not 'giant', it was mostly a small cut, but Keegan tended to exaggerate when wounded. Glaring at her as she made her way to another owl, Keegan stuck his wound in his mouth and sucked on it angrily.

He was about to tell her where she could shove it, since she obviously didn't need HIS help, and leave when an all too familiar voice came in behind them. 'Um, hullo Maddie... Keegan...Uh, is everything okay?'  Glancing over at the curly haired pacifist, Keegans frown deepened. In all honesty, the two should have gotten along. They were both nice kids, if you could over look all of Keegans prepubescent anger and filthy mouth, and could have been friends if it weren't for two pesky thorns: Spitz and Eeeewfie. Pax had made the wrong decisions siding with those two scangers and even though they had simply gotten off on the wrong foot, Keegan had been running on that wrong foot for so long that he simply could not go back now. He scowled at the other boy.

"No it ain't bloody 'okay'... that damn pigeon over there took a chunk out of me hand fer no fecking reason..." He motioned to the rather ruffled owl, who glared tenfold at him for the insult of 'pigeon'. Grumbling, he sucked on his hand for a moment before adding in a bitter tone "Dunno why ya gotta send a letter anyways... what good do letters do? Just words on paper..." He scoffed, looking away so they didn't see the look of envy in his eyes. At least they HAD people to write letters to.

'Um,' Pax started, not quite sure where to go from there. Since Keegan had not told him if there was anything the Hufflepuff boy could do to help, either because there was nothing he could do, or because Keegan couldn't stand Pax, or somewhere in between, Pax was loath to make anything more of the Gryffindor's scratch. What more caught his attention was Keegan's comment about letters. It sounded like a rhetorical question, a further indication of his frustration with the wizard version of the postal service, but Pax decided to pretend he didn't know that, and take the opening. Just because he was apprehensive about Keegan didn't mean he didn't want to try and get on the other boy's good side. Heck, being a little scared of him was even more of an incentive to get out of his bad books.

'It's a bit of getting used to, huh?' he said in what he hoped was an understanding tone. He glanced at Maddie as well as he said this, since she also seemed to be having a little trouble getting accustomed to the owls. 'I didn't use owls all that much before coming here, I mean except for writing to my grandad's side of the family, 'cause most of them don't have phones, and even then I needed help. Phones are tonnes easier. And, and email, that too.' Pax naively didn't consider that Keegan didn't have anyone to contact even by phone or email. 'It's a bit of a drag not having electricity and stuff, huh?' he ventured as he ambled over towards the school owls, thank you letters still in hand. Missing muggle technology was surely something on which he could relate to Keegan, and Maddie too, for that matter.