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This flight of fantasy is dedicated to all fans of Harry Potter, and to everyone who has accepted and loved Sheetal in this story.
I just couldn't resist this tribute to my other love!
Sheetal had a secret.
A long-held, almost forgotten secret that she had never revealed to another living soul...not since telling him, all those years ago.
The memories of the past brought back a pain in her chest, but she realized that it wasn't nearly as debilitating as it used to be.
She looked out through the bars of her cage, an imprisonment that she had willingly taken on, voluntarily accepted as her destiny.
Her true form would never have been trapped this way...because Sheetal had once been human.
And as a human, she had fallen in love with the one man who had breached the barriers of her heart...Aman Mathur.
She still recalled that heady time of discovering true love, although those memories were getting hazier by the day. She had given him her all, secure in the knowledge that he loved her back just as much.
He had been in college then, and had been feeling increasingly stifled by the expectations and demands of his fabulously wealthy family.
Until one day, when he had met and fallen in love with a feisty, bohemian girl who wore the brightest of clothes and livened up his day like no other.
Sheetal had been equally infatuated with the slim, bespectacled young man who did not even truly belong to her world.
He was human...a muggle, in fact.
But Sheetal had known a far different world, a world of wands and spells and a wonderful school called Hogwarts.
Because Sheetal was a witch.
And as a witch, she had given her all too human heart to this one man she cherished above all others.
Her life had been all she'd ever dreamed of...until the day when he had discovered the truth about her.
The disbelief, anger and horror in his expression was something that she would never forget. He had ignored her pleas, eluded her touch as if she now carried some deadly disease...and had finally left her after categorically stating that he could never ever see her again, not now when he knew that she was a witch.
It had seemed like her entire life was over at that point in time.
Sheetal had broken down completely, her dreams in shards at her feet.
Her life had become one long ,endless bout of despair...until she would have done just about
anything to get away from it all, to escape into an alternate reality where nothing else existed.
And she had found her answer in an ancient, powerful spell...one that would turn her into an animagus.
It had taken her months, but she had finally gained mastery over her new form.
And then, Sheetal had turned into a small, green-feathered bird, one whose entire existence merely revolved around finding the next source of birdseed... a creature whose heart was now immune to the pain of it's past.
The memories of her human life had become blurred and indistinct, and she had welcomed the blankness.
She hadn't even minded when the Animal Protection Society had taken her in to the Pet Center, nor had she done anything when a tall man with sad-looking eyes had walked into the store and bought her immediately as a present for his wife.
Life with the Jhas had not been entirely pleasant at first.
The despair in Anjali's eyes and the mirrored response in her husbands' over their inability to conceive a child reminded her too much about her own past, and Sheetal had taken to uttering anything that came to mind...anything that would help her forget.
Profanity had seemed just as good a choice as anything else.
And so her life had continued from one day to the other...until she had noticed the subtle changes in herself.
The Jhas weren't all that bad, after all.
After a few months, she had discovered that the light was back in Anjali's eyes when she received news of her brothers' hunt for a bride, and his subsequent marriage had changed the entire atmosphere of the house, affecting Sheetal as well.
Sheetal had resisted, of course.
No one knew better than her that happiness was ephemeral...something that could never be trusted.
And so she had ignored it all, but then something had happened, something that had shaken the very foundations of her existence.
Two things, actually.
The first had been the time she had spent with the Raizadas, the newly-wedded couple who were just discovering each other...and falling in love, right before her appalled eyes.
She had been very, very tempted to turn back into her human form, if only to warn them that love was poison, that it would destroy everything that mattered and leave them shattered.
Instead, the transformation had occurred in her.
As the days had passed, she had seen their love grow, even if it was still unacknowledged by the other.
She had seen Khushi's eyes fill with hope until one day, she had blurted out her newest discovery...the fact that she had fallen in love with her husband.
Sheetal hadn't been able to take it anymore.
Determined to make sure that another woman wouldn't suffer as she had, she had echoed those words to Arnav, kick-starting a chain of events that had finally led to their new understanding...even though the journey had been rocky and filled with heartbreak.
But now, seeing them together...Sheetal had found something in herself that she had believed to be utterly destroyed...she had found hope.
And then the second thing had occurred.
Laxmikanth had entered her life.
Sheetal had ignored him at first, turning up her beak in disdain at this common, plain bird who clearly had no special abilities, nothing that could match up to her.
But gradually, she had discovered that he was more...so much more.
She had found herself smiling at his cheery wake-up call in the mornings, and his soft-voiced goodnight when the world turned dark.
She had appreciated the fact that he had given her space, that he had never made any demands or pushed her into accepting him in any way.
No, he wasn't as brilliant as Aman.
Nor was he composed like Shyam, or charismatic like Arnav.
Lakshmikanth was different.
He made her feel things she hadn't felt in a while...made her wish and hope that things could be different...
And then one day, she had realized that the unexpected had happened after all.
Sheetal had fallen in love.
Irrevocably, unconditionally.
And this time, she knew it in her very soul.
Because Lakshmikanth had accomplished that which she had never thought possible...he had made forget her human form entirely.She no longer thought about going back to being a woman, not when her bird form had brought her peace and serenity like never before.
It had now been a year since that revelation and Sheetal was more in love with the serene, unassuming bird than she had ever been before.
She looked around her empty cage, realizing that she was counting the minutes until she would see him again.
He had been taken to the doctor today after Anjali had discovered that he hadn't been eating well, and Sheetal was waiting up for them.
The cage rattled, and Sheetal looked up at the prison that was now a home.
Their home.
Anjali was placing his slender form inside with a smile.
"He's fine, Sheetal. It was just a virus, he'll need a few days to heal."
Sheetal looked up at Anjali, mutely trying to convey her gratitude.
As always, she felt that the other woman could actually hear her and understand what she was trying to convey, even though she had not uttered any words this time.
Anjali smiled again, and turned to Lakshmikanth now.
"Do you see that, Lakshmiji? Sheetal was waiting up for you. Look, she even placed all those leaves in your corner, just the way you like them..."
Anjali closed the door of the cage, then walked away after turning off the light.
In the dim light of the moon streaming in from outside, Lakshmikanth looked over at the leaves and the seed that she had placed there for him, something that she had taken to doing whenever they were separated.
In doing so, she always reassured herself that he would be back, that he would never leave her alone.
It had been a while since they had been apart though, and she knew that this fact accounted for the surprise in his eyes as he looked down at what she had done, and then back up at her.
She read it in his eyes, knowing exactly what he was asking her here.
"After all this time?"
She walked up to him, rubbing herself against his soft feathers before looking up at him...replying with her own eyes...in just one word.
"Always."
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For everyone who is new to Harry Potter:
In the Harry Potter book series, a muggle is a person who lacks any sort of magical ability and was not born into the magical world. Muggles also do not have any magical blood.
An Animagus is a witch or wizard with the rare ability to transform into a particular animal at will. The Animagus spell is very difficult and dangerous to perform, which is one reason that all Animagi are required to be registered by the Ministry of Magic. Another reason is so the Ministry can ensure that an Animagus does not use his or her power for any illegal purpose while in their animal forms.
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