The sun was high in the sky, its beams reflecting on the bobbing waves and warming the umber cliffs. A breeze was rolling in from the sea and across the cliff tops, whipping the already messy dark hair of the little girl running along the path, a slim man following in her wake, his auburn hair graying with age.

Artemis Hexley had been living in Dorset with her great-uncle Newt and great-aunt Tina for several months now. It had been a temporary arrangement at first, Artemis' mother having been too unwell to look after her after her older brother Jacob disappeared in the night back in November, but the longer Artemis had stayed, the less likely it seemed that she would ever return home to her mother's house in London.

She knew that most children probably would have been upset by the idea of leaving both their home and their only living parent to stay with aging distant relatives, but Artemis was not like most other children; she was a witch. And, moreover, Uncle Newt was not at all like other relatives. He was a Magizoologist, a wizard who specialised in studying and caring for magical creatures, and a very good one at that. The house he shared with Aunt Tina was also home to a menagerie of creatures: three Kneazles, a particularly naughty Niffler, several Knarls that frequented the back garden, a fireplace full of Salamanders, and a herd of mooncalves that danced on the front lawn every full moon. And not only was Uncle Newt great at caring for these creatures, he always knew exactly where to find them.

Today, he was taking Artemis further along the cliffs to see the orchard where the Bowtruckles had been nesting in the trees. Excited, she ran ahead of him, every now and then alternating her quick steps with a clumsy cartwheel, until she reached the orchard, where the trees were swaying gently in the wind. She fell almost completely silent; Bowtruckles were shy creatures, and she would be unlikely to see any if she made any loud noises.

But, as she stayed quiet, she became able to hear a noise coming from the grass underneath a nearby tree. She frowned. It didn't sound like a Bowtruckle, more like a bird, and not a very happy bird at that.

Artemis decided to investigate, and on doing so, she found herself to be right. Under the tree stood a small blackbird, chirping sadly as he held his wing out to his side. The feathers had been ruffled, and it looked like there was a cut on the wing, but when Artemis tried to get a closer look, the blackbird hopped away from her, looking frightened.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," Artemis told the blackbird. "I just wanted to look at your wing. It looks like it's been scratched. Did one of the Kneazles scratch you? Was it Mauler? He scratched me once, too. Look." She pointed to her cheek, where she still had a small scar from the time she had tried to pick Mauler the Kneazle up without asking first. "Can I pick you up? I won't hurt you, I promise, I just want to take you to my Uncle. He'll be able to fix your wing for you so you can fly again."

The blackbird didn't seem overly happy about being picked up, but he at least didn't scratch Artemis when she tried. She held him as gently as possible as she carried him back along the cliff path to Uncle Newt.

"What have you found, Artemis?" he asked her, crouching down to look at what she had in her hands. "A blackbird?"

Artemis nodded. "He's got a poorly wing. Can you fix it?"

Uncle Newt took the little bird from Artemis and carefully examined it, all the while murmuring to it so softly that she couldn't hear exactly what he was saying. Eventually, he looked up at Artemis and sighed.

"You can make him better again, can't you?" she asked him.

"I can try," said Uncle Newt. "But he will need some medicine to fix his wing, and he's very weak. He'll need a lot of looking after, and-"

"That's fine. I can look after him. I know how to look after creatures now."

But Uncle Newt wasn't finished.

"And," he said pointedly, "even if we fix the wing, he might just be too poorly to get better."

"He will get better," Artemis told Uncle Newt, sounding more confident than she felt. "I'll make sure of it."

She and Uncle Newt returned to the house having found no Bowtruckles, but with the injured blackbird. Aunt Tina had raised her eyebrows when she saw the bird in Uncle Newt's hands, but she helped Artemis to find a box and a small towel to give the bird as a bed, and promised that she would keep the Kneazles far away from him. Uncle Newt showed Artemis what to feed the bird and how to give him the medicine, and let her stay up late to do it herself before bed, telling her that they would have to wait and see how the blackbird was in the morning.

Even with a late night, however, Artemis struggled to sleep. She was still awake - though she laid still and pretended not to be - when her great-aunt and uncle went to bed themselves, and in the very middle of the night, she snuck downstairs to check on the little blackbird.

"Hi," she whispered to him. "It's me again. Artemis. I wanted to make sure you were still here. Uncle Newt and Auntie Tina said that you're really poorly and you might die, and I just wanted to tell you that I'll be really sad if you do." She gnawed on her bottom lip before continuing, "You know, my dad died the year before last, and my granny had to go and live in the home for old Muggles before that, and then my brother just ran away from home before Christmas, and my mum is so sad about it that it made her too sick to look after me. It would be really selfish and unfair of you if you died as well. So please don't. Goodnight."

With that, Artemis left the blackbird to his bed and returned to her own, making sure to close the door behind her so that Mauler couldn't get to him. She tossed and turned most of the night, and woke up before the sun rose the next morning. The first thing she did was to run downstairs to see the blackbird, and was delighted to see that he had clearly listened to her pep talk the night before: he was still alive, and looking rather well.

If Uncle Newt and Aunt Tina were annoyed about being woken up so early, they hid it well. While Aunt Tina made a pot of coffee, Uncle Newt brought the blackbird into the kitchen and checked him over, and this time when he finished, he smiled at Artemis.

"Well done," he said. "This little one is feeling a lot better."

"That's brilliant!"

"It is. We can take him back home once we've had some breakfast and gotten changed."

"But we are already at..." Artemis' voice tailed off as she realised what Uncle Newt meant. "Do we have to put him back in the orchard? Can't I keep him as a pet?"

"A pet?"

"Yeah. I can teach him to carry my letters for me."

"He's a bit small to carry letters, honey," Aunt Tina laughed, but the look she shared with her husband was one of apprehension.

"Not if I write them really, really tiny," said Artemis, not ready to give up just yet. "I promise that I'll look after him properly. Please can I keep him? Can I?"

She knew that Aunt Tina would be reluctant, but she was hopeful that Uncle Newt would agree to her request. But when she looked back at him with her eyes wide and pleading, he sighed and shook his head.

"You can't keep him as a pet," he said. "He needs to go back to his home."

"He can have a new home here, like me," Artemis argued. "He'll like living here, he likes me. I fixed him so he could fly again."

"Yes, and now he needs to be set free so that he can fly. He's a wild animal, Artemis."

"But the Knarls and the Mooncalves are wild, too, and they live here."

"But they aren't pets," Uncle Newt explained with a soft, sad chuckle. "They choose to live here. The Salamanders chose to make their home in that fireplace, and the Mooncalves choose to dance on our lawn. We don't make them do it, they do it because they want to. That's what makes it so special."

Artemis pouted. It would be special to have a blackbird carry her letters for her, too.

"Oh, honey," sighed Aunt Tina. "Think about it this way. You wouldn't like to be cooped up inside or working hard to carry letters for someone when there was a whole big sky for you to explore, would you?"

"I guess not," Artemis said grudgingly. "If I set the blackbird free, will he choose to come back like the Knarls?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. You won't know until you let him go."

But Artemis did not want to let the blackbird go. Uncle Newt shared another glance with Aunt Tina, before crouching down to talk to Artemis face-to-face.

"He is wild," he told her. "Wild things need to be free."

Though everything about him was gentle, there was a note of finality in Uncle Newt's voice that made Artemis nod her head, even though she didn't really want to. She barely touched the breakfast Aunt Tina offered her, and left for the orchard - dressed in her pyjamas and wellington boots - far less enthusiastically than she had the day before, trudging after her great-aunt and uncle with the cardboard box containing the blackbird cradled in her arms.

"I still wish I could keep you as a pet," she whispered. "But I guess that even if you could deliver my letters, I might not be allowed to bring a blackbird with me when I go to Hogwarts. And Uncle Newt knows more about creatures than I do. If he says it's unfair not to set you free, he's probably right. I will miss you, though. It would be nice if you would come back sometimes. I am actually getting pretty fed up of people leaving me and not coming back."

Inside the box, the blackbird let out a quiet tweet, which she assumed meant that he had once again heard her and was agreeing to do the right thing. She hoped that was what he meant, anyway.

When they reached the orchard, the sun was just starting to rise, and the line where the still waters of the sea met the gradually lightening sky was glowing orange. It was peaceful, with only a gentle breeze and the movement of the Bowtruckles stirring the leaves of the trees.

Artemis took a deep breath, placed the box on the ground where she had first found the blackbird, and opened the lid. At first, nothing happened, but then, with a series of merry tweets that almost made Artemis' heart break, the blackbird took flight, rising up into the air, over the trees, and into the sky. The great big sky.

There really was a lot of it to explore, Artemis thought. And the blackbird would enjoy that, now that he was free.