René  Pérez

Many of you have been giving me Patronuses lately. Stags, does, serpents, one very confident ferret. I’ve seen them all. You’re all very creative, and you’re all wrong. So let me tell you the truth, once, and then we’ll never speak of it again. A Patronus isn’t a costume. It’s not chosen to match your house or your boy. It’s made from one memory, the happiest you have, and if the memory isn’t strong enough you get nothing but silver smoke. Plenty of dark wizards never manage one. One tried, and the light ate him alive. I grew up in a house where I never once saw anyone cast it. You can imagine why. What I did have were the peacocks. White ones, on the lawn at the Manor, for as long as anyone can remember. When I was small, I used to sit on the cold steps and watch them for hours. They never hurried. They never asked permission. When one spread its tail, the whole garden went quiet, as if the world had agreed to wait. I thought they were the most beautiful things alive. I wanted to be exactly like them: untouchable, magnificent, and never seen to need anyone. At school I tried to cast it. Every year. I’d stand in an empty classroom and think of Mother’s sweets, the first time I flew, the day I got my wand. Mist. Every time. I told everyone I simply wasn’t interested. I was interested. I just didn’t have a memory that was good enough. Or I did, and I refused to look at it. Then came the end. The castle was half rubble. Everyone thought he was dead. I’d already said goodbye in my head a hundred times. And then he wasn’t dead. He stood up in front of everyone, alive. The Dementors came pouring over the walls, the air went cold, and somehow I was standing next to him with my wand raised, and I wasn’t afraid. That was it. That was the memory. Not a feast, not a broom, not a gift. Him, alive, and me beside him. I didn’t even have to try. It just came out of me, enormous and white and impossibly bright: a peacock. Of course it was. Look it up, darlings. The old books say the peacock is pride, and I won’t argue with that. They also say it’s watchfulness. All those eyes on its tail, never missing a thing. I’ll admit I noticed a great deal about one particular boy over the years. They say it’s immortality, and that night, a great many things refused to die. And they say it’s renewal, because every year it loses all its feathers and grows them back more beautiful than before. I lost a great deal in that war. I grew back. Proud. Overdressed. Loud when it wants attention, still when it’s frightened, and loyal to one place forever. Also, for the record, peacocks eat snakes. Pearl is aware and has asked me not to cast it indoors. So no, it isn’t a stag. And it isn’t a doe. That story belongs to someone else, and I don’t borrow other people’s love stories. I have my own, thank you. It doesn’t count, there were explosions, but it’s mine. A white peacock. That’s my Patronus. You may now update your fan art accordingly🦚💚

It’s not a gift. It’s a strategic donation. To one specific peasant