Heri had taken to long stretches of silence since she got back; not too different from the lack of things she had to say to her relatives before except for the fact that they could now almost feel the weight of those silences. Aunt Petunia had been the most unnerved, she being the one that spent the most time with Heri, and had demanded that Heri stay out of Petunia's presence as much as Heri could. Considering that Heri couldn't think any less lowly of her aunt, such a request was not a bother. She had been feeling conflicted since she had woken up after that horrible evening with Quirrell. On one hand, he had endangered a school full of children, abducted her, tied her up, and eventually tried to kill her. She was well within her rights to defend herself even if it was to the point of offing him. She had absolutely no reason to feel guilty. On the other hand, she didn't feel guilty and she wasn't pretty certain that a normal person would even if there was no reason to. She was stuck between what was good and what was right. Heri knew killing Quirrell had been the right thing to do; he had purposefully set a dangerous creature on the school he was supposed to be taking care of, he had tried to steal a powerful artefact and gift it to a genocidal maniac, and he had attacked her with full intention of killing her. Heri was in the right! But she was certain that killing anybody wasn't what good people did. Heri tried very hard to be good despite what people said about her, and she was very unhappy that she had fallen to doing something that went against what she strove for. Add on top of that that she wasn't feeling bad in the least bit about taking Quirrell out, and Heri was wondering if she was just somehow an inherently bad person. She had always believed that no one was born naturally good or bad, but what if she was wrong and she was bad? Had she been a criminal in a past life and had been reborn with wicked tendencies? The stories said that memories were washed away in the River Lethe, but memories weren't habits or personality traits, were they? Maybe Heri had been a serial killer that cheated the system somehow to be sent to the Fields of Asphodel instead of Punishment and had then gone on to drink from the Lethe to be reincarnated; maybe she was Jack the Ripper, version 2.0. She had depressed herself into pieces over such thoughts. It was only Hedwig being her flamboyant self that brought Heri any joy lately. One couldn't tell at first glance, but if Hedwig was human, she would be a drag queen. Well, maybe the flamingly homosexual best friend that television seemed to believe every girl should have, but definitely a cross-dressing one. There Heri was with her heart almost turning to stone the first time she saw the flesh-eating predator the year before, staring at her with the eyes of a cannibal, and it turned out the bird was as fruity as a flamingo. It was too big a discrepancy between impressions and Heri had considered the possibility that Hedwig had some sort of multiple-personality disorder. Heri watched as Hedwig waddled after a harassed looking drake, his wings raised as if he was considering flying away. Hedwig was having nothing of the sort and clamped her beak down on the poor animal's tail-feathers. He honked in alarm and really did take flight, leaving several of his feathers in Hedwig's beak. Heri snorted when Hedwig looked heavily offended. "And what exactly did you plan on doing with that duck, Your Eminence? They're not in season and I don't think you're his type anyway." Hedwig quacked derisively as if to say, "What would you know?" "Well, I'm no expert on the mating habits of ducks, but I think I know enough about men in general to say that if they're literally running away, they're not interested." "Quack." "I don't need to know about your worldly experience; I have enough social awareness to know that people trying to flee from you aren't trying to get friendly with you." "Quack!" "It doesn't matter if you were going to eat him afterwards, you're still doing it wrong!" For the third time since Heri came back from school, an argument had broken out at the breakfast table. This time around, Uncle Vernon had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from Heri's room and had been as pleased as he would have been had his dentist declared that he needed all his teeth pulled out "Third time this week!" he roared across the table. "If you can't control that owl, it'll have to go!" As if anyone could control Hedwig or do anything to her that she didn't want! Heri tried, yet again, to explain. "She's bored," Heri said. "She's used to flying around outside whenever she wants! If I could just let her out at night —" "Do I look stupid?" snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy moustache. Hell, yeah, he did. "I know what'll happen if that owl's let out." He exchanged dark looks with Aunt Petunia. Heri was ready to tell the lump exactly what would happen if he didn't stop being such a paranoid prick but her words were drowned out by a long, loud belch from Dudley. She wrinkled her nose at him. Disgusting boy. "I want more bacon," the smaller lump said. "There's more in the frying pan, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia, turning misty eyes on her massive son. "We must build you up while we've got the chance." Was the woman blind? Dudley could literally be rolled down the street. "I don't like the sound of that school food." "Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when I was at Smeltings," said Uncle Vernon heartily. "Dudley gets enough, don't you, son?"
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