Chapter 429: A Harmonious Home
The door of the Room of Requirement shut behind him, and Regulus didn't head back to the dormitory. He turned west along the corridor instead.
At that hour the corridors held nobody. The torches burned quietly, dragging his shadow along the stone.
The Owlery sat at the top of the West Tower. Three winding staircases, then a crooked wooden door, and behind it a strange stench of dead mice and droppings hit him full in the face.
Half past nine, peak hour for owls.
Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, crammed into the rafters and the hollows in the stonework. Some had come back from hunting with field mice still hooked in their talons. Others were launching out through the windows, wings clattering.
Two Barn Owls beat at each other over a stretch of beam. A cluster of tawnies squatted on the highest rafter watching the show, round faces swiveling, producing a flat monotonous hooting.
In one corner an eagle owl dozed until the scops owl beside it clipped it awake with a wing. It glared, huge orange eyes rolling left and right in search of the culprit, found nothing, and shut them again.
Regulus crossed to the stone table by the window, drew parchment from an inner pocket, and picked up a stray feather, transfiguring it into a quill.
Set into the wall above the table stood a communal inkwell, the ink gone grayish. Serviceable enough.