Find a Sheep a Home (Kota)

Since her conversation with Hunter, the only thing that had been on Aoife’s mind was the huge issue of not having anywhere to keep Willow. She’d thought about all the plausible options. The main idea had been one of the empty classrooms. Her idea had been to move the desks to the side to give the sheep loads of space to move around. But in the end she’d decided it was just too risky to keep Willow somewhere where he could be so easily discovered. Because she would not have her baby taken away from her, no matter what. With all the options, she seemed to have the same problem, that anyone innocently walking through could find Willow. It really did seem quite impossible to find a place which fit the criteria for her sheep’s home.

But then she remembered the last possibility. The new groundskeeper. Now she had absolutely no idea what type of person the man was, so once again, there was a risk of the headmaster finding her out. But she’d decided that she really had no choice, and that she had to go and meet the the gameskeeper and see whether he could help at all. She wasn’t sure what groundskeepers typically acted like, since there hadn’t been one at Hogwarts in all the years she’d been here. So if she did go ahead and try this, there was no way to predict the outcome, or what would happen to poor Willow. Oh well. If you weren’t living on the edge, you were taking up too much room.

By mid afternoon, she was absolutely certain that she was going to find Mr Groundskeeper, and was heading through the grounds to the hut. Thinking about it, the Hogwarts grounds were the perfect place for sheep to frolick around, with all the grass and large open spaces and places to explore. All it needed was a rule to make it a recognised sheep habitat, and a shipload of sheep to live here. One day she would have to be the headmistress of Hogwarts so she could put that rule into effect. But for now, she had to find Willow a place to live.

Right now, he was under the disillusionment charm, but every now and then, Aoife felt him brush against her leg. When she reached the hut, she decided to momentarily leave him under the charm, at least until she got a first impression of the groundskeeper based entirely on appearance. Sort of hesitantly, she knocked on the door.

Kota was actually getting slightly tired of carving spears. In the wilderness of Alaska, he could never have enough. He would go through them so quickly that he was always in need of a new one. Here, at Hogwarts, there just wasn't much use for them. Still, Kota carried one with him as he waded through the woods, just in case an opportunity arose. Atka padded along silently beside him as he weaved expertly between trees. Though he had only been working at the school for a few months, Kota was already familiar with the forest. It was quite unlike any of the environments he had encountered in his home country. The trees were all big, and there were many strange looking, most likely magical landmarks. It actually made it quite easy to keep track of where you were. For example, there was a giant, man-sized mushroom that grew two miles due north of his hut. It was, thus far, the only one that he had discovered, and so long as he was able to find it, it made getting lost near impossible. At least, for somebody like him.

Kota's footsteps were light - silent. Like he was one with the ground. But thus far, despite his silence, he had found no worthy game on his venture. Just as Kota was about to turn back, and settle for nothing, Atka began to raise her nose to the air, sniffing at something. Following the dog's gaze, Kota finally caught sight of a hawk settled on a branch ahead. It was far ahead, and they would have to be very careful not to frighten him if Kota was to get close enough to get a clear shot. A slight sense of satisfaction rose in his chest, because regular animals that could be shot for game were hard to find in these woods. It made hunting hard, because he had to make very sure that what he was hunting was in fact, just an animal. There were many protected species, and some which were even half-human. Kota couldn't just kill anything that he came across.

But this seemed to be just an ordinary bird. And, finally, Kota drew close enough to get a good shot. Raising his crossbow, and aiming it expertly, the bird soon fell from it's perch. Perfect. He approached the beast, silently thanking him for his contribution. Then, he grabbed the bird by the legs and beckoned Atka to follow him back toward the castle. It took him very little time to return to the hut, and soon he had broken through the treeline. But, as he rounded his hut, he found that there was somebody standing outside his front door. It was a girl with red hair, and for a moment Kota wondered if it was the same girl that he had encountered before. Ariadne, the redhead with the strange name. But, as he drew closer, he could see that this girl was taller - older. And she seemed to be knocking, which was much more polite than Ariadne, who had barged in. Not that Kota cared about politeness.

"Can I help you with something?" he asked in an even tone as he neared her, the bird still hanging limply in his hand. Kota climbed the steps, calmly walked past the girl and let himself into his hut so that he could set his catch down on the table. Then, he returned to the doorway and looked down at the girl. Why did so many of these girls have red hair? It was very unuseful. Kota glanced past her at Atka for a moment, because the dog hadn't followed him inside. Atka seemed to be interested in something near the girl's legs, but Kota couldn't see what it was. After staring suspiciously at the spot that the Malamute seemed to be eyeing, he returned his attention to the girl.

Being very, very impatient, after a couple of seconds, Aoife wondered if anyone was actually in the house, or whether she should just walk back to the castle and come back later. But she couldn’t, because Willow desperately needed a home. So she waited a couple more seconds, and her endeavour proved to be successful when she heard the voice of a man, who she presumed to be the new groundskeeper, behind her. Good. “Uh…” When she’d thought about this earlier, she imagined words would just come to her and the groundskeeper would immediately agree, but now it didn’t seem to be so easy. She had to try and get him to take Willow without him being annoyed and telling Headmaster Grey.

She glanced at him, trying to get the first impression to decide whether or not he was worthy of having Willow stay outside his house. He was… tall. With a dog. And he was carrying a dead bird. She didn’t like that. If he’d just found a dead bird in the forest and decided to take it home to bury it, then fair enough, but in the situation, him having a crossbow with him, she didn’t really feel as though that was likely to be the case. But who killed birds? Was it for fun? Couldn’t be for food, there was plenty of food at the castle, and a bird couldn’t be very good food, could it? Didn’t matter. As long as she could be certain that he wouldn’t mind taking poor homeless, alone-in-this-cruel-hard-world, Willow, a sweet and innocent sheep who just wanted to eat grass and enjoy life.

Alright, she better get this over with. “Hi, I’m Aoife,” she said quickly, deciding to cover that before she moved on to what actually mattered. “And I was wondering, you know, for a… survey, how do you feel about homeless sheep who have nowhere to go?” This way, she could find out whether he would slaughter Willow for lamb, that horrible meat that so many bloodthirsty people liked. Or whether he would try and turn the poor baby in to the headmaster, who was just a boring old man, and who certainly wouldn’t have the expertise to look after a sheep properly. “And if someone brought you a sheep like that, would you take it in or cast it away to take its chances in the cold, hard wild?”

Kota stared at the red haired girl as she started to speak. She was very short. She also had a strange name, like the other red haired girl. Eefah. What kind of a name was that? Though, Kota's name was worse. "I am Kota," he said simply, not stating his full name because it had instigated too long of a conversation with the last red headed girl. But this one kept talking anyway, and Kota couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at her in surprise. "Homeless sheep?" he repeated, unsure what exactly she meant by it. Sheep didn't just roam around, homeless. "Is this something they teach you in school?" he asked, still unsure how this was relevant to anything in anyone's life, ever. Maybe there were some sort of magical sheep here that Kota was unaware of, and this was for a class about all of the strange magical animals that resided in the forest that Kota was not allowed to hunt.

"Atka, enough," he said sharply as the girl paused for a breath, because the dog was still sniffing around this Eefah girl's leg. As expected, Atka retreated to his side, and Kota stared once more at the spot with a suspicious glance. He could almost swear that he saw something move there, but he couldn't be certain. This was a strange survey. But Kota figured that if he answered it swiftly, maybe this girl would leave him be. "Sheep are not meant to be pets," he said simply. "They are also not meant to wander in the wild. They can be useful." Sheep weren't plentiful in Alaska. It was very cold there, and they were hard to care for. But here, in this climate, he imagined there were many of them. "I would keep it, and shear it for wool," he decided finally. "Sheep can only be butchered for meat once, but can be harvested for wool many times." There. He'd answered her. Now she could leave.

Kota? That was a great name. Better than hers, anyway. Hers was too common, at least at home. But she'd never heard of a person called Kota before. But for all she knew, maybe it was more popular wherever he came from. She was pretty sure he wasn't British, or even Scottish, so she could deduce that he was from somewhere different, where it was normal to have hair like that and kill birds for the sake of it and be called Kota. It got her wondering what is surname was though. Probably equally cool and unique. Ten million times better than O'Donnell. Oh well. Didn't matter. She could always change her indentity, wear heels, dye her hair and move to somewhere far away if it was so awful being herself.

"Er...yes," she decided to reply casually. "Care of Magical Creatures, you know? Our teacher, and all British witches and wizards for that matter, are very fond of sheep." Ha. She wished. Poor sheep got little to no respect in wizarding Britain. "Magical sheep are an...endangered species." As far as she knew, magical sheep didn't exist. But maybe they did. After all, Willow had been able to see Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, which only magical humans could see in all its beauty and stuff. So that could mean normal sheep were just incredibly clever, which she already knew, or there was a species of magical sheep with awesome powers. Perhaps similar to those of human wizards. She would have to do research on that in the future. If magical sheep did exist, she would be the happiest girl in the world. Definitely.

That dog seemed to be able to sense Willow's presence. She bit her lip nervously, feeling the sheep shuffle closer towards her leg in its own fear. His answer was a pretty good one, and she felt as though he was more trustworthy because of it. As long as a person knew exactly what they were doing, shearing a sheep wouldnt hurt it at all. So if Kota took Willow, he got the wool, and she got the knowledge that her sheep was completely safe. Okay then. She paused, but the got out her wand and muttered the counter charm for the disillusionment charm. And sure enough, Willow appeared, seeming to pop out of nowhere. "This is Willow," Aoife introduced. "Willow is homeless. And Willow has no chance of surviving unless you take him in and let him live in the pen in your garden."