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It’s a heart-rending sound, the cry of an Augurey.
But Charlie is rather used to it, all the same.
Out here in Romania, whenever the dragons fall quiet, the mournful birdsong blooms between the cliffs and valleys. It shocked Charlie the first time, but his mentor had just laughed.
“It’s the Augureys,” Tammy had told him, slapping his shoulder. “They migrate here for the rainy season every year. Don’t let ‘em bother you.”
Eleven years later, the piercing cries are little more than background noise, a soundtrack to the rainy summer months. Still, there is something about their calls that reminds him of his family back home, and he can almost imagine that when they arrive from Britain each May, they carry news of his family with them.
And that’s why he listens hard.
“Do you hear that?” he asks Tammy, crouched in one of the nest boxes with a baby Welsh Green draped around his neck. It was subjected to a wing graft only two days ago, but is already boisterous and exuberant again.
“It’s just the Augureys. They’re back early this year,” Tammy says dismissively, but Charlie’s brow furrows.
“It’s different,” he says, as the tiny dragon nips at his ear. “There’s something different.”
Tammy wrestles the squeaking hatchling from his robes while he frowns.
It is going to rain.
That night in his cot, the drizzle loud on the tin roof, he listens again.
It’s still the Augureys’ distinctive call. But there’s something else, an urgency, a message. Something that tugs at him.
And he doesn’t know what he’s hoping to do when he pulls on a cloak and steps out into the cold rain, but he knows that the sound is telling him something. And so he follows it.
About a half-mile down the track, close to where the cliffs drop off into nothing, the birdsong is louder than ever. The dust below his feet is waterlogged, swirling in grimy rivulets around his boots, but he pays it no mind. There is an old barn up ahead, abandoned for decades now, with its withered beams and eroded stone, and Charlie runs work-calloused palms over them while the Augureys’ cries crescendo until he can barely think.
It’s their nest. Hundreds of greenish-black feathers ruffle in shock, a rippling oil spill of large eyes and discontent that turn towards his unwelcome intrusion. And he expects them to flee, to scatter to the skies in shock and alarm, but they only bunch closer together, concealing something in the far right corner of the barn.
He approaches and the birds shuffle closer, keening with even more urgency that before. And he was right, there is something different about it. Because hidden within the chorus is another voice.
And it is here, peering between a forest of lantern-like eyes, almost deafened by birdsong, that he sees her for the first time.
The girl slumps against the wall like a crumpled feather.
Her dark, tangled hair sticks out from her face like dandelion fuzz, lost to the wind at a moment’s notice. Her thin bones protrude from beneath translucent skin, and her eyes plead for help.
And there is sound pouring from her cracked lips, a call of need that mingles with the Augureys’ cries until he can barely tell them apart.
He tries to get closer, but the birds are determined to protect their charge.
“Hello?” Charlie calls above the din. “Are you alright?”
She blinks.
“Do you speak English? Română ?”
There are piercing beaks digging into his thighs, strong wings beating him back, but he has to try. He curses himself for leaving his wand at his bedside.
“Te simți bine ? Can you stand? Do you need me to take you to a hospital? Er, spitalul- ?”
Her neck moves sharply and he panics for a moment, surging forward into the corral of feathered bodies until he realises that she is shaking her head.
And he can’t hear the word she whispers above the noise, but his eyes are trained on her lips, and it is clearly ‘no’.
“You can’t stand?”
Another no.
“And you don’t want to go to a hospital?”
Another shake of her head, but slower.
He considers her for a moment, and once again the birds squeeze closer, sheltering her, staring up at him with mistrustful eyes.
“I’ll be back,” he tells her. “Just - just wait there.”
She blinks at him. Like she doesn’t have a choice.
And Charlie runs.
The moment his hands close around his wand, he Apparates straight back, stumbling through the birds as they shriek in alarm. But this time he has food, water, and a blanket taken straight from his own cot, only slightly singed at one corner. And perhaps the Augureys understand he is trying to help, because they let him approach the strange girl who looks up at him like he is the strange one.
“Hey,” he says, crouching down. “My name is Charlie. What do you need?”
Her eyes - they’re hazel, he notices - are wide with uncertainty. She scans the objects he holds out to her, then motions weakly to the flask.
He waits dumbly for a moment before realising that she needs his help to drink. And embarrassment pulses in his chest as he tips it hesitantly to her lips, fingers clammy. He has no experience with anything like this - whatever this is - and when he accidentally tilts the flask too far and she splutters through the water that dribbles down her chin, shame flares in his stomach.
“I’m so sorry,” he rushes. His hands dart to his wand before realising that he has no idea whether she is magical. And so he fumbles with his blanket instead, presses it to her chin, dries the spill.
She is younger than him, perhaps twenty, but she is tiny, almost emaciated, and so pale that he can trace the line of one vein from her ear to her collarbone. She wears rags that may once have been white, now grimy and smeared with dirt. And though there is no obvious point of injury, her posture just looks… wrong. Like her arms are too long, bent as if in the wrong directions, her shoulders hunched and misshapen, her legs splayed out against the floor as if she cannot hold her own weight. It brings a lump to his throat.
“Are you in pain?” he asks her softly, and her eyes slide shut as she nods.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and the realisation that he has absolutely no idea what to do crashes down around him.
When she is eventually ready to eat, she swallows the bread too quickly, and it sours on her empty stomach. Charlie wants to pull her hair away from her face while she retches, but when he tries, she yanks her body away from him, and the Augureys crow fiercely until he drops his hands again.
They only calm down when they are convinced that he means her no harm, and only then is he allowed to gently wipe the vomit from her chin while her lip trembles with mortification.
“It’s alright,” he murmurs. “Try - try a little bit. Here. Go slow.”
And, eyes lowered, she allows him to feed her, crumb by crumb, until she is able to keep it down.
He is desperate to take her somewhere she can be looked after by a professional, but every time he suggests it, she shakes her head so violently that he drops the subject.
“Who are you?” he asks eventually, when she is too overcome with exhaustion to chew anymore. It is well and truly dark now, and if it weren’t for the warmth of the birds around them, they’d be freezing. “Are you - where did you come from?”
Her eyelids don’t even flicker in response.
“I’ll come back in the morning,” he whispers. He considers his blanket for a moment, whispers a wandless cleaning charm she can’t hear, and tucks it around her body while she sags limply against the wall. “Please…” He knows it’s ridiculous, but he has to say it. “Please don’t die.”
And there is a tiny quirk at the corner of her lips.
He turns to leave.
“Astoria,” she says suddenly, and he pauses. Her voice is as cracked and dusty, but sweet as the fresh summer wind. “My name is Astoria.”
When Charlie returns home, his cot is cold, but he falls asleep too quickly to mind.
Astoria is fast asleep where he left her when he returns, his blanket tucked up around her neck. She is surrounded by the Augureys again, and Charlie hopes that he’s not imagining the improvement in the colour of her cheeks.
“Astoria?” he calls, and she stirs immediately. She looks exhausted, worry etched around her eyes as deeply as the dirt beneath her torn fingernails. “I brought you more food.”
Relief is evident on her features, but she appears too weary to smile. And as Charlie spoons soup into her mouth and sets up a line of water bottles, dizzy desperation aches within his stomach, the fear that this may all be for nothing.
Astoria’s eyes stay almost closed until his spoon splatters soup against the rags around her leg. Cursing his inability to use magic in front of her, he wipes roughly at it, aware that he is only driving the stain further into the fabric.
Her hand catches his.
“You can use your wand,” she says, in a voice that cracks. And then her head drops back against the wall, exhausted once more.
When Charlie leaves that day, her clothes are clean, there is a pillow beneath her head, and his heart flutters in his chest.
He visits her every day.
Every day, he feeds her, gives her water, tries to make her more comfortable. He asks if he can take her to a hospital, and every day she refuses.
Every day, he finds himself a little more desperate for her to recover.
“I liked the soup you made,” she says, one day. “That first time.”
He turns, blinks at her from where he’d been sweeping some fallen feathers into the corner with his wand. It’s the first time she’s initiated conversation since they first met. “The tomato soup?”
She nods, hair falling over her face.
He stows his wand away, wondering if he can keep the conversation going. “It’s my mother’s recipe.”
“Do you see her? Often?” she asks. Her eyes are brighter, her voice, surer.
“Not really. She lives in England.” He hesitates a second, then drops to sit down on the old floor. “Where’s your family?”
She is silent for so long that Charlie begins to think she won’t answer. But eventually her lips part.
“Gone,” she says, and that one word contains more meaning than he thinks he will ever understand.
He carefully stretches out a hand. And she does not flinch or pull away, not as she has before. So he lays it gently atop hers.
Her eyelids squeeze so tightly shut that her forehead creases.
It wasn’t his intention, but the touch breaks down some sort of barrier.
She allows him to cast his wand over her body, closing the myriad of gouges and abrasions that have struggled to heal. Several of her ribs are broken, and she whimpers in a voice that cuts Charlie open as he fixes them for her. Her back is still terribly hunched beneath her rags, but she will not allow him to examine the swellings between her shoulder blades. He vows to find her a stronger analgesic potion.
He leaves her with more food, more water, and a sense of hope that flits like a hummingbird in her eyes.
“Tell me about your work.”
Modest pride fills his lungs. “I help rescue injured dragons. We rehabilitate them.”
She raises her eyebrows at the birds around him. “Know anything about birds?” she suggests, weak humour in the twist of her lips, and he grins.
“I know a lot about wings. How different can they be, really?”
And she laughs for the first time.
“The Augureys seem to like you,” he jokes, one day, as a chick chirrups in Astoria’s arms.
She cradles it closer. “I fit in much better here.”
“Better than where?”
Her eyelids lower: a double portcullis, shutting him out. So he doesn't push. And maybe that's why she responds.
“I’m strange,” she whispers, like it’s a secret she can’t hold onto any longer. “I’ve not known anywhere I fit in before.”
It doesn’t answer his question, not really. But Charlie thinks he understands.
She is silent the day he runs a damp cloth over her skin, washing away months’ worth of dirt. But her eyes swim with something so loud it deafens him.
As the days stretch into weeks, her health slowly improves. Her limbs straighten, her heart strengthens, and her features soften, bones no longer pushing at the skin like lacemakers’ bobbins.
She is endlessly curious about him, but her shaky answers to his own questions point to a past she can hardly bear to talk about, so Charlie stops asking her, after a while.
She is one of the Augureys, he thinks; a fragile bird, wings broken, regaining her health in a nest of kindred spirits.
He tries to get her to walk, supporting her with calloused hands, but after a few shaky steps her skin goes ashen and she pulls him to the ground. The possibility of an internal injury occurs very suddenly to him, and he promises not to try again.
She sags back into inertia for another week, but the day he attempts to clean the grimy blanket, she is kindled into animosity, curling fingers into the fabric, clawing it back. “It needs washing,” he protests, but she buries her face in it.
“It smells like you,” she whispers.
And he leaves it be, a warmth in his lungs and a lump in his throat.
The day he combs out the tangles from her hair with his fingers, she weeps.
He does not ask her why.
“You watch the Augureys a lot,” she says quietly, afterwards. She stares out of the window, tears still shimmering on her cheeks. She is beautiful.
He swallows. “They spend more time in England than I do.”
“You miss your family?”
A nod is not enough.
“Me too,” she says, quietly.
“You said they were gone,” he murmurs. Their ankles brush fleetingly from their seated positions. “What did you mean?”
He can see the way she wants to avoid the question, the temptation to brush it off. But there is too much between them, now. The summer winds are changing.
“The people that raised me wouldn’t accept me,” she admits, and her voice is low, the same timbre as the Augureys around them. A feathered head pushes its way into her lap and she strokes it, almost desperately. “I never got the chance to meet my true family. But I… I think I’d fit in with them.”
“You fit in here,” is what he says. With me, is what he doesn’t.
He thinks she hears it anyway.
They sit side by side, watching the Augureys. She is so close, and his heart can’t stop leaping.
“How long have you been here? With the dragons?” she asks.
“Eleven years.”
Her eyes flit down. “Is that not enough?”
And then she is tracing the path of the freckles on his arms, winding towards his neck, to his face.
His cheeks heat, and she reaches out, brushes the warmth.
“Thank you,” she says. “For saving me.”
Charlie thinks his heart has taken flight.
By the time the near-relentless drizzle begins to peter out towards the end of August, she is strong enough to walk without help. He watches from the doorframe, his fingertips aching with want. His rough hands are there, just in case, but she does not need them.
She spots him and pauses. Her back is still hunched, bowed over, and Charlie wonders whether perhaps it is not an injury, but something present since birth.
“You’re beautiful,” he says helplessly.
Her eyes are wide. But they crinkle in the corners when she smiles.
When she spots one of his tattoos, she insists he take his shirt off to show her the rest. And she traces the outlines of the wings that flutter across his torso, as if they hold secrets.
He wants to kiss her so much it hurts.
Charlie pretends it isn’t happening, but the summer is coming to an end. He can feel it in the air.
And the dragons can sense it too. They become restless, fidgety. The tiny Welsh Green who received the graft so long ago is the size of a large dog now, and its playful breath singes Charlie’s shirtsleeves when he hoists it onto his shoulder.
He and Tammy walk into the valley, and it doesn’t take long for the youngling to flap its perfectly healed wings, soaring into the sky.
“Good timing,” says Tammy, pleased. She tilts her face upwards. “It’s migration season.”
And dread seizes at Charlie’s heart.
He leaves work early for the first time in eleven years to race down to the barn, Astoria’s name on his lips.
She is mercifully there.
But not for long.
She teeters at the cliff face a little way down the path, fingers outstretched behind her.
“Astoria,” he says, and she turns. There is a smile on her face, but the rest of her is boundless energy, unfulfilled potential. She has never looked so strong. “What are you doing?”
The wind whips her dress around her knees. “It’s time for me to go,” she tells him.
And it’s like he’s always known.
He swallows. “Are you sure you’re ready?”
Worry flits minutely across her brow, and then she takes a breath so deep it is like she is drinking in the air, and all traces of awkward posture melt from her form, legs aligning, arms rolling back, chin lifting. And something rises from her shoulders.
“Astoria…”
Two somethings.
Her dress tears at the back. Greenish-black feathers fan out behind her. And as Charlie watches, a pair of crumpled wings rise into shape.
They ripple with the breeze, filling with air, and she stretches out onto flighty tiptoes until she is so precarious he fears she could float away with one breath of wind.
He rushes to her, and his hands are there to catch her, as they always are. But she squeezes them instead. “I have one last favour to ask of you.”
“I don’t understand,” he rasps.
She guides his tentative hand to the bridge of one wing, and his breath explodes in his throat at the feel of it, so foreign and yet real and warm beneath his palm. And then his weathered fingers find the fractured bone, the adjacent tear; not through leathery scales, but across flight feathers.
“Please,” she whispers, but she doesn’t need to; he already has his wand, and he’s already murmuring the incantation, watching the wound grow smaller, the blood recede.
Their eyes lock.
“Charlie,” she breathes, and when he leans forward, she meets him halfway. She is warm and soft in his arms, and she kisses him with the freedom of someone who knows that nothing can change her mind about leaving. And he kisses her back with the desperation of someone who has to try.
“I’m going to find my true family,” she murmurs, when he rests his forehead against hers. “And I have you to thank. For giving me that chance.”
He is untethered. “What do I do now?”
“I think you know,” she replies. Her fingers are feather-light against his skin. “You’ve been here long enough.”
And then, they are surrounded.
The Augureys fill the skies, a gust of wings flapping and diving in a chaotic final tribute to their summer home, cries swelling so loud that Charlie can barely think, barely see past the maelstrom of greenish-black feathers swirling around them.
Astoria smiles.
And the birds begin to clear, drawing onwards and upwards, fleeing back to England, to their home. To Charlie’s home.
The winds have changed.
“Goodbye, Charlie,” she says, her eyes swimming.
And she takes one tiny step, and then another, and his hands slip from hers like water. She pitches backwards, and he lunges for her even as those dark, beautiful wings snap outwards and catch her, and then she is twisting up into the skies, surrounded by the birds, her hair tangling once more around her face.
“Thank you.”
She is indistinguishable from the birds.
Their song ebbs away.
And she is gone.
Romania is silent.
So when Charlie catches a portkey and birdsong welcomes him back to the English countryside, he weeps with relief.
He is home.
And it is going to rain.
