Chapter 5: Owl

"A major crisis for the owls".

"Rita Skeeter, our correspondent, reports on the recent spate of missing owls in London, which has resulted in the disappearance of many wizarding letters and the disappearance of many owls from our newspaper, causing untold damage, but the incompetent Ministry of Magic has yet to find any leads.

As we all know, in the period when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has not been eliminated, he and his Death Eaters often committed crimes of intercepting owls. Does this mean that the Dark Lord's power is resurgent?"

"In fact, there were cases of missing owls shortly after the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." said a member of the Ministry of Magic, who wishes to remain anonymous, "Someone had alerted the higher-ups, but Minister Millicent and most of the higher-ups were too immersed in the joy of victory to take it seriously."

"Owls are companions and friends of our wizards, and yet the senior officials at the Ministry of Magic don't seem to care about it.

Now the situation is so serious that when a reporter asked a Ministry official if he could find out the truth in time, he obliged by ending the interview without comment."

In the Daily Prophet, a story about an owl caused a sensation in the wizarding community, especially in London.

However, the initiator of such a story was waking up in a thorn tree.

After waking up with a big yawn, Fish sat down on a branch and began licking his front legs, rubbing them both across his face.

After giving his face a good scrubbing, Fish shook out his fur, stretched and jumped off the thorn tree.

Although Fish had long ago changed his eating schedule to conform to human habits, his main time of activity was still at night.

Taking light steps to the next tree, Fish straightened up, placed his two front paws on the tree trunk and began to sharpen his claws.

In fact, with the shape-shifting spell, he no longer needed to sharpen his claws, but he did it out of habit.

After sharpening his claws and adding numerous new scars to the unfortunate tree, Fish started the day with his tail up, patrolling the territory and seeing if he could come across any humans to get some food from.

He had long since chased the fat bird called an owl away from his birthplace, and Fish had changed territories several times for the same reasons, or different reasons. Basically there was no danger for him anywhere, and the change of territory brought more new things, so Fish had gotten used to it.

As Fish progressed, his body swelled and his shape and fur changed.

In short, he became a half-meter-long, cheetah-furred cat....

In the strange box called a television, he had seen several of his "kind" that were huge, but no matter how hard he tried, he could only change to a size of half a meter, and his appearance was distinctly different from that of a real tiger or lion.

But this was not important to Fish, he was just playing, and half a meter was more than enough for him.

After wandering around the area, Fish got a little bored.

As the temperature has been dropping lately, his have been going out less often.

From past experience, before long there will be a lot of icy white stuff falling from the sky, which humans call snow, and they seem to like this white stuff a lot.

However, Fish and his kind don't like this weather so much, as at this time of year some of them tend to fall asleep and not wake up.

Although his situation was quite special and he wasn't worried about not being able to wake up, Fish still didn't like the weather.

What Fish liked best were warm, sunny days, but unfortunately there weren't many of them.

Just as Fish got bored and started to chase his tail, he suddenly heard a "coo" in the sky.

It was the call of an owl.

Although owls have different calls, they have always had a distinctive and recognizable cooing sound.

Fish lifted his head and saw a familiar plump figure streaking across the sky.

Unconsciously, he licked his tongue, for it had been a long time since he had tasted an owl.

It seems he'd been hunting too much, so the owl frequency had been reduced lately.

Without hesitation, he threw a 'wild tag' at the owl and it returned to its original form, but still half a meter in length, and chased the tagged owl into the distance.

According to Fish's previous experience in owl hunting, owls were usually used by a group of strange humans dressed in robes to help them deliver letters and goods.

So, they would usually fly to a certain place and then return the long way around.

That's why he has become much more efficient at hunting owls over the years: all he has to do is find a place to ambush the owls on their return route.

And if he came across the occasional robed human, he could easily hunt the owls by bedding down in a place close to where they lived.

This time, however, the marked owl was strange, not as a messenger, but hovering over the vicinity and making occasional cooing noises.

As Fish wondered, the owl seemed to tire of flying and perched on the balcony of a house, gathering its wings and resting.

The opportunity was too good to pass up.

Fish immediately withdrew his talons, and with four pads silently and swiftly treading the ground, he came to the corner of the wall like a ghost, and climbed up it without stopping.

[Spider Step: He has acquired the ability to walk on walls and ceilings.]

Silently, Fish crouched behind the owl and approached it slowly.

At the same time, his triangular ears perked up high and his eyes fixed on the owl, his pupils gradually dilated, almost filling with the green color of his eyes.

Just then, the owl seemed to sense danger and turned its head almost 180 degrees, and met Fish's eyes as it crawled forward.

(?∨?)

(=ΦωΦ=)

However, at this moment, the distance between the two was enough for Fish to launch an attack, he shot out like an arrow, pouncing on the owl, knocking it off the balcony and sinking his teeth into the owl's neck.

The cat and bird rolled and tumbled off the balcony.

Just as Fish was about to snap the neck of his prey, he felt a sudden force of repulsion coming from the owl's body, causing him to let go and catapult himself into the air.

Immediately after, the owl swelled up in front of Fish, transforming into a human dressed in a gray robe, with gray hair and beard.

Bouncing off the ground, Fish adjusted his body in the air and landed safely on the ground, as the owl-turned-human waved a wooden stick in his hand and shouted, "Wingardium leviosa!"

The human, who was falling rapidly, stopped abruptly in mid-air, and then landed as light as a feather, just as Fish had done with the Glide skill.