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Harry had always liked songbirds, colourful creatures put in cages for the amusement of others. Maybe it was because he, in part, identified with them, could imagine how they felt – always on display, always watched, never a moment when they weren’t being made into entertainment.
It might have been the cages he identified with, too, the small space they had in which to move around – the songbirds had their cages, and he had his (gilded and metaphorical though it may be). He had rebelled, of course he had, but never outside what the bars of his cage allowed; a specific kind of anger, never casting a curse at anyone on the right side, never saying what he actually thought of politics.
He had won the war because that was his particular melody to sing – win, win, defeat him – and then he had… retired, one could say. Withdrawn best he could from the public eye, pretended he enjoyed living in the large mansion when in fact it was just a different kind of bars keeping him locked away. He didn’t know quite what to do if he didn’t have the bars, so in the end, perhaps he was grateful that they were no longer literal like they once had been.
Maybe that was why he and Sirius had gotten on so well, the few years they knew each other – both of them knew what it was like, being confined by literal and metaphorical bars.
Then came the songbirds, Harry’s big and empty mansion suddenly filled with noise again.
Harry’s first songbird had been an accident, a brown little sparrow that fairly fell into his lap one day. He had kept her for as long as he could, but he found it difficult to figure out what to feed her, and sadly that one didn’t last long.
It woke something in him, though, having a songbird always around, and it lessened the loneliness he hadn’t been aware he was feeling. They did become a bit repetitive after a while, the variation in their song not as big as he would have hoped, but – they were easily replaceable, and as long as he didn’t get too attached to a particular one, well. Songbirds didn’t have that long a lifespan, anyway, and if he happened to make it… shorter, in order to get a new one, he didn’t think he could be judged too harshly on it.
He thought he was a good birdkeeper, every bird kept in her own cage, with some kind of enrichment as well, and he always made sure to talk to them at least once a day. He didn’t get much of a reply of course, no matter what he was talking about, their tune an almost monotonous one on repeat.
“Harry, why?” was the words they sang, over and over. The why why why shrill, none of the birds much of a singer really, not able to carry a tune in a bucket really. He liked them though, liked the companionship, even if it wasn’t exactly mutual.