After confirming the Wraith Chicken was fine, Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel soon embarked on their adventure, taking a full bottle of Coke with them.
Anthony hid the Wraith Chicken in his backpack and brought it back to Hogwarts.
Neither the cat nor the rat was in the office. The Wraith Chicken strutted around the room with an air of importance—it gave the cat tree and cat bed a stern look, hopped onto the windowsill to inspect the grown Dittany for a while, curiously pecked at a quill, tilted its head to glance at Anthony's lesson plans, peered into the unlit fireplace—and finally decided to claim the top of Anthony's bookshelf for a nap.
"Alright, you can sleep. I'm going to the library," Anthony said, somewhat worried. "If the cat comes back later, don't fight with it."
The chicken gave a dismissive, soft cluck and closed its eyes again.
…
By the time Anthony finished dinner, the cat and the rat still hadn't returned. The Wraith Rat's steady emotions still drifted faintly in the depths of his mind, so he didn't bother wondering where they were. He just chatted with the Wraith Chicken for a bit, glanced over his lesson plans for tomorrow, and went to wash up.
When he emerged from the bathroom, the Wraith Chicken had already perched on his headboard, tucking its neck in and dozing off just as it did at home. Anthony extinguished the ceiling lamp and slipped under the covers.
In the darkness, he heard a faint rustling. The Wraith Chicken seemed to shake its wings and shift position.
"Goodnight," Anthony said drowsily, suppressing a yawn. "You know when to wake me up."
For once, the moment his head hit the pillow, he was asleep.
In the middle of the night, a loud THUD echoed through the room, as if something had toppled over. Anthony rolled over, trying to cling to sleep, but then came a series of CRASHES and CLATTERS.
Anthony opened his eyes.
By the faint light seeping through the curtains, he could vaguely make out one of his pieces of furniture lying on the floor, sideways like himself. In his mind, the Wraith Chicken radiated waves of irritation, while the Wraith Rat's panic rang like an alarm bell.
Something furry jumped onto his bed, swept past his head like the wind, stepped on his legs over the covers, and leaped onto the windowsill. The Wraith Chicken followed close behind, wings flapping noisily as it flew to the windowsill and began pecking violently at the other creature.
"A wonderful welcome, Cat," Anthony said sleepily, sitting up. "If you'd scheduled this for daytime, I swear I'd appreciate it more."
The Wraith Rat finally found a neglected corner and hid behind the door. The alarm in Anthony's mind slowly quieted. The cat and the chicken were still fighting with a series of thumps and scrapes.
"Fantastic," Anthony grumbled, yawning. "Anyone want to sleep in the office?"
The Wraith Chicken flapped its wings and flew up to the ceiling lamp. Several candle stumps clattered to the floor. The lamp swayed with a CLINK-CLANK, its metal frame emitting a sharp screech under the chicken's gripping claws.
The cat looked up, its head tracking the lamp's swing with intense focus, its tail twitching excitedly. Anthony put on his slippers, gathered his pillow and quilt in his arms, and struggled to his feet.
As he passed, the Wraith Rat suddenly darted out, grabbed his trouser leg, and perched on his slipper, carefully wrapping its tail around his ankle. Anthony looked down at it, took a few careful steps forward, and entered the office. He tossed the pillow and quilt onto the empty visitor's chair, turned back to grab the doorknob, and peeked into the bedroom.
The cat had hooked both front paws onto the lamp. More candles fell. In the darkness, the beautiful ceiling lamp rocked violently like a small boat in a storm.
The chicken flapped its wings to stay balanced, pecking at the cat. The cat twisted its head, dangling mid-air, and looked at Anthony.
"Be my guest," Anthony said. "Have a wonderful night." He closed the door.
He turned to see the Wraith Rat climbing the cat tree, curling itself into a small ball of loose stuffing the cat had clawed out.
Deep in his mind, the Wraith Chicken's fury still burned.
The sounds of the cat and chicken's battle seeped faintly through the door and walls.
Anthony yawned again, took out his wand, and tapped the chair to transfigure it into a small bed. He climbed in and fell into a perfectly peaceful sleep until broad daylight.
…
With the precedent of the transparent rat, students quickly identified the transparent chicken as Anthony's pet.
At first, they were somewhat puzzled by his choice of pet ("Is he doing magical experiments on cat treats and calling them pets?"), but it didn't take long for the Wraith Chicken to earn its own reputation through sheer combat prowess.
According to students, Mrs. Norris had been meowing, intent on turning the chicken into her afternoon snack. However, by the time Anthony arrived, she was fleeing under the Wraith Chicken's furious pecks. Peeves cackled hideously in the air, pelting her back with chalk, even temporarily ignoring the students who were watching from under their bookbags.
"Stop chasing, chick," Anthony said, crouching and extending his arm.
The Wraith Chicken hesitated, then stopped. It puffed out its chest triumphantly and slowly strutted back under the curious gazes of students lining both ends of the corridor. It hopped onto Anthony's arm and gracefully folded its wings.
Anthony heard a student say enviously, "So cool."
The Wraith Chicken clearly heard it too. Anthony felt a wave of restrained delight from it. It held its head high, turning to survey the watching students.
Peeves gave a gleeful shriek, broke a piece of chalk in two, and accurately hit the back of Anthony's head and the chicken's comb.
The Wraith Chicken erupted in rage and took flight—"Chickens can fly!" someone exclaimed—pecking and kicking at Peeves's head. Anthony tried to call the chicken back, but it was determined to defend its dignity.
Peeves giggled, reaching out to grab the chicken but only managing to pull out a few feathers.
"Ooh!" he said with delight, mischief sparkling in his eyes.
Anthony held his head. His mind was already filled with the Wraith Chicken's fury, threatening to spill out of his ears. As a wraith, the chicken had never had its feathers pulled out by anyone—or anything—before.
"Chick—" Anthony began.
The Wraith Chicken flapped furiously in mid-air, suddenly snatched Peeves's hat in its beak, and yanked it off. The students cheered, only to be showered by ink that erupted from the hat, frantically checking the essays in their bookbags.
Anthony raised his arm to block the spray. When he lowered it, the Wraith Chicken had become a pitch-black chicken.
"Hello there, crow!" Peeves said. "Haha, what a big crow!"
He snatched his hat back from the Wraith Chicken's beak, bowed with a theatrical flourish to the chaotic students, and vanished. The Wraith Chicken, absolutely livid, also vanished while no one had the focus to notice.
When Anthony returned to his office, he found it sulking in the sink.
The ginger cat was rubbing against it, getting its own fur messy. The Wraith Rat was dragging a towel around, trying to get them to clean up, resulting in black rat footprints and dirty streaks from the towel all over the bathroom floor.
When he turned the doorknob, all the pets froze. The cat gave a soft meow.
Anthony sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and started filling the bathtub.
"You all need a bath," he said, then glanced at the ink stains on his hand that Scourgify hadn't removed. "We all do," he corrected.
Half an hour later, he finally understood that one should never try to bathe a chicken and a cat at the same time. The Wraith Rat clung pitifully to the slippery edge of the tub, bobbing up and down in the waves created by the chicken and cat's antics.
Anthony fished the rat out, wrapped it in a small piece of tissue, and looked at the two pets having the time of their lives in the water. For the first time, he began to wonder if he'd brought the Wraith Chicken to school too early.
"I have to go to the Ministry this Saturday to observe Pettigrew's interrogation—that's Scabbers, the Weasleys' rat, the one you don't like," he told the Wraith Rat. "If those two are about to turn my office into ruins, please remember to send me a warning."
The rat lifted its dark little eyes, looked at him skeptically, then at the cat and chicken.
"Yeah, I know," Anthony promised. "I'll bring you three more apples."
The Wraith Rat was satisfied.
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