The Many Musings of Albus Potter

ii. cats

ii. cats

The Burrow has an infestation of cats.

Whenever the Potters drop by for a visit, they are warmly greeted by a new plethora of kittens that paw at these strangers' legs so as to bask in as much of their affection as possible. Having grown quite used to being surrounded by cats of all shapes and sizes, Rose Weasley has become thoroughly immune to their round, deceivingly innocent eyes and simply walks past them, firmly ignoring the reproachful looks they throw at their indifferent mistress. And so the duty of petting these attention-starved kittens rests on anyone who decides to visit the Burrow.

"We should never have bought that new cat," Albus always hears Ron grumble quietly to Harry when he thinks Hermione is sufficiently out of ear-shot. "'Crookshanks needs a friend'." Uncle Ron always sounds uncannily like Aunt Hermione when he's doing a secret impression of her. "Honestly, they've been breeding like crazy. This must be their third batch of kittens in the last two years."

Yet, despite his complaints, it is always Uncle Ron who vehemently argues against even the slightest suggestion of giving any of the kittens away.

"They're still very young," he argues this Christmas, when the whole family are sitting together for some of Gran's famous roast turkey. Albus bites down a smirk when he notices Aunt Hermione and his mother switch exasperated looks.

"I wonder how Crookshanks is still alive after all these years," Harry murmurs and Albus, with a start, realizes his father is talking to him. They haven't spoken - not properly - since Albus came back home for the first time after Hogwarts broke up for the holidays. His father, as expected, tried to probe at first and - upon Ginny's continued insistence - even knocked on Albus's bedroom door later that night.

"Just to have a chat about how things are going," he had said, rather lamely, from outside the locked bedroom. Albus didn't think it worthwhile to reply and watched with some satisfaction as the shadow of his father's figure eventually retreated, having realized he was not wanted there.

There was nothing at all awkward to face the morning after, what with James filling in all of the social cues with his incessant and boastful chatter. Eventually Lily joined in, followed by Ginny, and then finally Harry who occasionally chipped in with a thoughtful answer or two, all the while giving Albus brief, but obvious, glances - all of which Albus pointedly ignored.

Now, sitting next to his father during Christmas dinner, Albus can hardly ignore him without the rest of the Weasleys noticing - which would ultimately lead to annoying and endless questioning. The easiest thing to do would be to answer his father and so, with a weary sigh, he mumbles, "Crookshanks could be a different sort of cat altogether."

Albus notices the flicker of surprise flash very quickly across Harry's face. And then he's smiling - grinning, more like - in an awfully pleased sort of way. This irritates Albus.

"What do you mean by that?" Harry asks him. Albus sighs, deliberately drawing it out, so his father can understand that he thinks it a stupid question.

"The Ancient Egyptians," Albus begins, although he makes no eye contact, "worshipped cats. They respected them so much you could be put to death for accidentally killing one. The Muggle Egyptians worshipped cats for spiritual reasons but all of this was just a twisted evolution of ideas that originally came from Egyptian Wizards, but they had a different reason altogether."

"According to Ancient Wizarding documents, Egyptian Wizards discovered that cats had extraordinary magical properties that could surpass the abilities of even that of the Phoenix. But strangely enough, every cat seemed to possess uniquely different magical characteristics. Some had remarkable healing properties - and a lot of Egyptian wizards even used cat saliva in a lot of their early medicines, while others could live well past the expected age of death of healthy human beings. It really varied depending on the cat and the kind of magical genes that it had inherited. Some cats barely had any magical properties at all. Eventually, interbreeding between different species of cats watered the magic down, although it's still present, and most modern cats are close to being very ordinary Muggle creatures."