For the Birds- Part 1 Tom/Luna

[black_hat]

Someday--soon--I will write some darker, more serious, stuff for you all. But today--or tonight rather-- is not the day :-) . 

Luna is once again in captivity, and Tom has a new friend. 

Luna had never been so very restless.

 

The cage was just not a good fit. Usually, in her experience, she was supposed to fly around in her animagus form, not sit on a perch all day. And she couldn’t let go of her form, or she’d be crushed. Then she remembered. She was trapped in her animagus form for good.

 

She chirped impatiently, requiring a good bit of attention for what was lacking in comfort.

 

“Shhh,” Ginny hissed, moving towards the cage. “I wanted some company, not a choir.”

 

Luna let out a series of rapid chirps and flapped her wings, causing even more noise than before. “Shall I let you out? Then transform myself?”

 

Oh dear. She quieted down, and resumed her position on the perch. It just wasn’t the moment.

 

“I thought so,” Ginny said smugly. Luna preened instead of acknowledging her former friend. Friends don’t keep friends in cages, or at the very least, dirty cages. “Now, what dress should I wear for him? The gold or the green?”

 

Luna sang happily at the gold when Ginny held it up to her slender body.

 

“Thanks, I’ll wear the green.”

 

She went back to preening. Her feathers were all ruffled from the captivity, and her mood was increasingly foul. Or fowl. She twittered in pleasure at the word game.

 

“Don’t feel too badly. I’m just as much a prisoner as you are. You keep me from going mad.” Ginny looked quite sad for a moment then brightened. “Perhaps I can bring you to dinner with me.”

 

As long as she wasn’t dinner, she was perfectly fine with the suggestion.

 

 

 

“Can’t you make her be quiet,” he hissed.

She couldn’t help it if he didn’t appreciate dinner music. Ginny tapped sharply on the cage in a gratuitous warning.

 

“She wouldn’t be so loud if you allowed her out,” she pointed out.

 

“There are other ways of letting her out of my home,” Tom said, smiling coldly. “In a shoebox, for instance.”

 

Luna cooed. Tom raised an eyebrow.

 

“There, she likes my suggestion.”

 

“I think she’s just responding to your voice,” Ginny replied quietly.

 

“…Pardon?” He set down his glass sharply.

 

“She always coos when you talk. I’ve noticed.”

 

“Utterly absurd,” he muttered, picking up his fork moodily and stabbing at the plate. Ginny sighed.

 

“I’m going to go get some fresh air.”

 

He looked after Ginny’s departing figure. When he was sure that she was gone, he moved towards the cage.

 

“If you bite me, so help you,” he informed her. He opened the cage door and stuck his hand inside. Luna hopped on his finger and ducked her head as he pulled his hand back. She stretched her wings but did not dare fly.

 

“I don’t see why she’s taken such a ridiculous stance on this. I agreed to let you stay alive. She didn’t specify as what.”

 

Well, this was true, she thought. He sighed and sat down once more, looking rather morose. For him. 

Luna was forced to hop from one hand to another when he moved to rub his temple. She cooed again, and tried to scale his shirt. It was an ambitious aim, and his shirt was very silky in nature. Yet she was determined--up until she got distracted by a button.

 

There were beautiful, green threads in the button, and Luna began to nibble at said button happily. She could use those threads for a nest.

 

“You’re a much better bird than a person, anyway,” he continued, watching her. “I think it worked out perfectly. But no, can’t have that.”

 

Luna rather preferred being a bird. She knew too little as a bird, so she wasn’t loony. Knowing too much was the way to madness, after all.

 

She felt him stroke her head with his finger, and she grew still, finding the whole sensation very pleasant. Then she heard the familiar click of Ginny’s shoes on the stones. Suddenly she was in his fist, but the button! She could not, would not, surrender the button.

 

“Stop that,” he hissed. She tried to hold on to the button with her beak, but alas, he was too strong for her. She was back in her cage, chirping in agitation.

 

“What have you done to her?” Ginny asked, hurrying through the doors at the sound of Luna’s distress.

 

“Nothing,” he said. “Yet.”

 

“Fine then,” the lady responded loftily, picking up the cage. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

 

He shrugged, and she hmphed. That was the way of things. Tom was rather funny at times.

 

 

She awoke to the earth shaking.

 

Luna slid from side to side on the perch, flapping her wings nervously. The cover on her cage kept her in the dark about the goings-on outside her sanctuary.  She heard the footsteps of elephants below her, and could not help but imagine the worst. The cage was set down, and the cover was removed.

 

A serpent stared at her though the bars, its eyes wide in delight. She promptly molted.

 

Then Tom appeared, sitting down at the desk. He smiled at her politely. “I see you two haven’t been properly introduced. Nagini, Luna. Luna, Nagini.”

The serpent wrapped itself around the base of the cage in a ghastly hug, and Luna cowered near her mirror, her little heart beating incredibly fast.

 

“Ah, yes. You need to stretch your wings, right?”

 

He opened the door. She ducked her head under her wing, trembling. But her terror did not move him. He wrapped his fingers around her, and she was caught. Properly caught. He set her down in a world of giants, of looming inkwells, and books that looked as if they were about to cascade down towards her in a moment. Sharp quills with---feathers!—on the ends, and rolled of parchment. And the serpent, a proper Jormungand, descending upon her.

 

She hurried towards safety, her talons clicking against the wood in her haste, and huddled against the crook of his arm.

 

“You know, I was thinking just the other day…you’re so eager to sing at the most inopportune moments. Do you feel like singing now?”

 

Truth be told, she didn’t. She didn’t think she could even squeak at the moment.

 

“I’m in the mood for some music, myself.” He pushed her back in the middle of the desk with his palm, which was similar to a tidal wave. The serpent coiled up. “So sing.”

 

Luna thought about her position. She didn’t know how to fly, and never had a chance to practice. The best she could muster was to flutter a few inches off the ground. Her heart was now about to break out of her chest.

 

She let out a quivering note.

 

“Hmm. I thought I heard something. It must have been a mouse.” The serpent’s head bobbed.

 

He cupped his chin in the palm of his hand and waited. Nagini waited, posed to strike.

 

Luna glared at the serpent, thinking of the many ways birds had preyed upon snakes. Oh, if she were an eagle instead of a sparrow. She caught on to the mood of being generally bigger and better than the two of them. Luna started with a few low notes, then crescendo-ed into spiraling chirps and twitters, bursting into a proper song of victory. She added a Grecian tune she had remembered as a child, of the eagle sent by Zeus to devour a serpent as part of a great prophecy.

 

She then began to hop to the tune. Her legs were not made for kicking but she could make do. After a bit, when the main slaying of the serpent was to commence, she fluttered upwards, going in circles. Nagini’s head followed her progress, but she ignored the imminent threat of a permanent eclipse.

 

Thus, she ended her song on a high note, hopping up at him for emphasis. Then she finished. He smirked and clapped. It was deafening, and she clicked away, cooing sadly.

 

Tom hissed at the serpent, and she thought that Nagini—if it were possible—looked both disgusted and disappointed. Her death on scales uncoiled itself and slithered down the side of the desk.

 

“It’s a good start. Not quite as annoying as it was before.”

 

Luna wanted to go back into her cage, and moved near it, looking up at him expectantly.

 

“But I’ve never seen you fly.”

 

And she was seized…and held out an open window that was by his desk. She started to tremble again, looking down at the ground and the world that was suddenly much too large.

 

“You do well under pressure,” he commented. “Who knows? You may actually survive if I let you go.”

 

She was silent

 

“Too soon? What use are you then?”

 

He brought her back inside and dumped her onto the desk. “Very well. We will find out if you fall like a rock tomorrow.”

 

He uncurled some parchment and began to write. There were some highly interesting lights in a vessel near her, and she pecked at the glass in curiosity.

 

“Spirits. Boring spirits. No-nothing spirits. But spirits just the same,” he muttered, and Luna realized he was talking to her. Unless he was talking to himself. If it was the former, she was charmed. If it was the latter, then it was none of her business.

 

She twittered.

 

“Whatever you said, I’ve probably tried it.”

 

Indeed. She jumped over to his parchment and nibbled the sides of it. “That’s not very sanitary,” he commented, and shooed her away with the tip of his quill. So then she played a game of hopping in the O’s of another missive. It was great fun.

 

She heard the sound of someone shouting down the halls, and stopped her game abruptly. He lifted his head to stare.

 

“Tom!” Ginny was outside the door, sounding as if she were in tears. “The-the cage door was open, and-th-there’s just feathers left!”

 

He looked perfectly innocent. It would have fooled her if she had not been the party in question. Without warning, he pressed his finger against her beak, effectively silencing her.

 

“I told you to keep a close watch on her. Pity. What a horrible way to die.”

 

“W-what?!”

 

“Well, I imagine it is. A slow, suffocating, painful death. She probably thought you’d save her as well. But you slept through the entire ordeal.”

 

Luna heard Ginny walk away from the door, silent. The silence was much worse than the sound of her crying.

 

She tilted her head at him, ruffling her feathers.