Challenge # 53 The Familiar Tail Challenge

Title: Here, Kitty, Kitty...
Rating: PG
Pairings: None
Author's notes: This plot bunny belongs to scatteredlogic , she told me that I could play with it though. :) It took me a bit beyond 35 minutes, with another minute to spell check. I know that's pushing the envelope, and I apologize.

The child hummed happily to herself as she played with the cute kitty. Such a lovely little thing, and she had no collar or tag so she must not belong to anyone…until now. When she’d come to Hogwarts, a month ago, her parents hadn’t been able to afford to buy a pet for her to bring with her. Now, she’d managed to find one all on her own.

A minor frown crossed her face as she remembered. No, they didn’t call them pets here. They called them familiars though no one had been willing to explain what the difference was. She sighed. Would she ever get it all straight in her mind? Magic was turning out to be so much more complicated than she’d thought it would be.

At least, now that she’d found the kitty, she wouldn’t be as lonely. Now, she’d have something of her very own to love. At that happy thought, the girl pulled the Tabby into her arms once more and gave her a big hug.

The cat yowled out its displeasure at being squeezed so tightly and squirmed around in the first-year’s arms seeking escape, but there didn’t seem to be any. The girl had been very careful to tie a strong black cord around the cat’s neck and secure it to the leg of a chair in the Charms classroom where she’d managed to corner the stray after a spirited chase. Now, with a happy sigh, the girl went back to work tying narrow yellow ribbons into the Tabby’s lovely plush fur.

“What shall I call you?” she asked the Tabby as she worked.

The cat gave her a glare from her black framed eyes and meowed rather indignantly.

“I know. I shall call you Mrs. Puddipaws. There was a kitty in one of my favorite bedtime stories with that name. It’ll be perfect. You’ll like that, won’t you? And we’ll be best friends forever and ever.”

Finishing up the last bow, she gathered the cat into her arms once more totally oblivious to the angry expression on her furry little face. Faced with yet another bone crushing squeeze, the Tabby, howled even louder than before and twisted around to bat roughly at the girl’s face with claws carefully sheathed.

Just then the door to the classroom opened, and the girl swiveled around on the floor to look up and up at the fearsome black form of the Potions master as he loomed menacingly in the doorway.

“What is all the noise coming from in here? When class isn’t in session, students are not to be in the classrooms without permission. Do you have Professor Flitwick’s permission to be in his classroom, Miss…Hilbert?” His icy tone of voice drove the ability to speak clear out of the girl’s mind, and she jumped to her feet in fear completely forgetting that her cat’s neck was tied to the nearby desk.

As she stood, the black cord tightened and almost pulled the Tabby out of her arms. She grabbed for the strangling cat and dropped back to her knees, scrambling to untie the animal from the desk as she did so. Then she scooped the ball of rumpled fur up into her arms and turned back to face the Potions master once more.

“Well, Miss Hilbert? Are you going to answer me or are you going to continue to toy with that animal instead? Ten points from Hufflepuff…shall we try for twenty?”

The girl shook her head. “No, Professor Snape,” she said in a small and whispery voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I shouldn’t be in here outside of class time. I just found this kitty, and we were playing.”

“Playing. Is that what you call it?…” Snape’s voice drifted off as he took a good look at the furious animal that was being tightly held in the girl’s arms. It couldn’t be? Could it?

With a curious expression on his face, the Potions master moved closer to the nervous girl, causing her to back up an involuntary step and squeeze her captive even tighter. The Tabby yowled pitifully and turned a pleading face towards the tall man in black.

Snape’s eyes gleamed. “You say you found this cat? She doesn’t belong to you?”

The girl shook her head sorrowfully. “Yes, sir. No, sir…she didn’t have a collar though so I thought that if she didn’t belong to anyone else, maybe I could keep her.”

Her hopeful look was firmly squashed by the man’s next words. “Not all familiars will have a collar. Collars and tags are much more common amongst Muggles.” The edge of disdain in Snape’s voice caused the girl’s heart to drop into her shoes. “Most witches and wizards can manage their animals without having to resort to such mundane means of identification. This particular animal happens to be mine, actually.”

The girl’s face lost all of its color. “Oh,” she whispered softly. Then she stepped forward and reluctantly dumped the Tabby into Snape’s arms. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have tried to take her if I’d realized that she belonged to anyone.”

Snape straightened up as the cat settled into his arms with a sense of relief. He held her securely and turned back to the woeful Miss Hilbert, giving the girl a stiff nod.

“I would suggest that you leave any animals that you find within the school alone. I would wager that almost all of them belong to someone. Now, surely you have somewhere that you are supposed to be, and do not let me catch you in the empty classrooms again or you’ll be serving detention with me.” The girl nodded and slid around the tall forbidding form on her way to the door, then, with a final longing look at the cat, vanished into the corridor.

Once the girl was gone, Snape picked apart the knot that held the black cord tightly around the Tabby’s neck and set the cat down on the floor, highly amused at the raft of yellow ribbons that adorned various tufts of her fur.

“Why on earth didn’t you simply transform, Minerva? Wouldn’t that have been the sensible course of action?” he asked the cat with a smile of amusement.

The cat hurled him an annoyed look and turned and headed for the door as quickly as possible. Just as she reached it, it slammed shut in her face, and though she clawed at it angrily, it wouldn’t open for her paws.

“Oh, no. You aren’t leaving until I get an answer,” drawled the Potions master from behind her. “By the way, I love the ribbons…yellow suits you.”

With a frustrated hiss, the Tabby turned and ran back towards the tall wizard moving around behind him. When he turned to keep her in sight, she just kept moving, yowling at him loudly. It finally dawned on him why she kept trying to get behind him, and he stopped and stood still waiting to see what would happen next.

As he figured, once she was out of his sight, she transformed and suddenly he could feel two hands settling onto his shoulders keeping him from turning around.

“What happened, Minerva? Did you tire of teaching and decide that being someone’s pet would be a nice career change?”

“Very funny. Give me your robe.” Her highly disgruntled voice demanded.

“My robe? This is so sudden. Shouldn’t there be flowers or candy exchanged first?” He smirked as he tried to get a glance at her. If she needed his robe then what she was wearing…or more likely…not wearing, must be worth a look.

Before he could manage to see anything though, he was faced with her naked arm thrust over his shoulder instead, the hand waiting for the requested item.

“Your robe, Severus. Now.” That tone of voice took him straight back into her classroom.

Without another word, he removed his robe and held it up. She snatched it from his hand, and he could hear the sounds of the slick material sliding over her skin.

Then without another word, a furious Minerva McGonagall brushed by him on her way to the classroom door apparently wearing nothing but his robe and an assortment of oddly placed narrow yellow ribbons in her wildly disarranged hair.

“Really, Minerva, you can’t leave me without an explanation for this,” he called after her.

She paused in the doorway and glared at him over her spectacles. “I will return your robe to you later, Severus. I have a Poltergeist to murder first.” With that, she whirled around and, clutching the flimsy fabric around her as best she could, she vanished up the hallway.

Snape crossed to the doorway and watched her stalk away with a smirk on his face. “I can hardly wait to hear the explanation for this one,” he murmured softly.