It was not Herring’s usual practice to address any stranger that came tromping in between the trees like they owned the place. Ordinarily, she spoke not a word to them until they hadn’t the strength to argue. Get them turned around and blundering about and, though she hated the mess they made, once she separated them (if they came in a group, at any rate) they were inclined towards starvation or making their own way out and never coming back. Many a fool hadn’t the good sense of even a sparrow, and ate the least likeliest things to keep them alive. Turned out the wrong way round, but ended it all the quicker, leastways, though it often amounted to even more mess and greater stench, but wasn’t as though the forest was so small she couldn’t wander wide of the place for a year or so without bother. Some days, she thought it might make a better deterrent if she gathered all the skulls and set them around the borders to glare at anyone thinking the same as their previous owners. 

But this fellow hadn’t come swaggering, or tromping, or blundering anywhere. He wasn’t looking to play hero. He had the shape and manner more of the huntsmen who had their look around and decided whatever had been here wasn’t anymore. Or was impossible to find. They were the ones who left of their own volition, and the ones best able to make her work all the harder in keeping track of where they wandered. They weren’t meant to go just any old where. But if they were well-mannered in their visit—and she couldn’t care less how gruff or surly a man was if he knew how to clean up after himself—sometimes she’d send them a parting gift. Nothing special, just a bit of keeping the magic alive so they wouldn’t go blabbing about that it was a perfectly ordinary forest with fine wood for logging, or great hunting for boars.

He hadn’t the least bit of preparedness about him though. So, she was of a mind to think he’d actually lost his way without her help, and the faster they fixed that, the sooner she could get back to acorn gathering. So, she spoke up, and promptly bounced off her heels when he spun so quickly, startling herself by frightening him with his leaping like a rabbit, and only scowled all the harder as he stared back. Pity it was too dim under the trees to let her see his expression, might have been a sight worth her trouble. Though not by any means comparable to forgetting the colour of her mother’s eyes.

It was strange though, she thought, as they stared each at the other, that he truly had been frightened by her. Not merely startled into reaction, but spinning into stepping back and crouching down, reaching for whatever weapon wasn’t there… And, she realized a moment later, it wasn’t the light keeping her from seeing his face, but the depth of his cowl. Her eyes narrowed even farther at the gloves… If she’d known he thought of her only as a screeching alarm to be silenced, she’d likely have thrown her basket at him and given him a proper lecture on minding his manners in someone else’s home if he wasn’t even brave enough to show his face. As it was, his first angry croak had her about to explain that sure and common sense ought to be enough for that, if he did know the stories, when he followed up with a line she’d never heard before. 

Head tilting slightly, Herring couldn’t help herself. She laughed. Deep, full-throated, raucous merriment that lasted a good minute as she struggled to regain her breath and composure. “Ah, mercy. Mercy, Merry Maudlin, no. I cain breathe.” She was leaning against the tree, whooping and wheezing, as she gasped the words. Finally, she ended it with a snort, still bracing herself upright and shaking her head at this surprising fellow. “Isnit never as I 'eard th’like! Y’do be thinkin’ what grimauld minds itself a forest ‘as better manners’n th’lot as come round no knockin’? Well, Rabbit, there’s a pretty thought, only it were true.”