At the Sign of the Neon Cat

"I don't know about this," Dumbledore told McGonagall. "I can't imagine even a muggle child of that age coming alone to an area like this."

"How long has it been since you were sixteen, Albus?"

"Err... a hundred and thirty-four years, but they had places like this then, and we didn't go to them." Well, perhaps those places hadn't been exactly like this. One's cider hadn't come in an aluminum tube. Pub signs had not been neon. There had been no jukeboxes to wreak clamor at the behest of tattooed teenagers with metal bits threaded under their skin.

A muggle with a ring in his eyebrow sloshed beer toward them eyed Dumbledore's hand-tailored ministry meeting suit and said "Sorry, Gramps." Minerva's fingers twitched toward her wand. Dumbledore kicked her under the table.

"We do not fit in," she said. "This place is strange."

"We did stranger, more dangerous things in the fifties and sixties, dear, and we weren't on Ministry orders."

"We were young and courting."

"You were young. I was a century old."

"I plan to consider myself immature until I'm at least two hundred and fifty. Albus, is that him?" Dumbledore leaned forward over their table and peered out the pub window. Across the street a close opened, revealing far in its dark depths a neon cat with a cigarette and sunglasses. Now and again a body stepped through the cat's light and then vanished again into the dark.

"I don't see him," he said.

"The fat one, just there."

"Where did he come from?"

"The bus. Honestly, Albus, weren't you watching?"

"I was watching the young man with all the safety pins in his nose and the boy with glitter hair and trying to decide if either of them might be Potter's cousin."

"Bollocks. You were watching the pretty young girls in fingerless gloves and trying to decide if they might have forgotten their brassieres."

"My dear, I have never had any interest in anything that has to do with a brassiere!"

"Yes, I had noticed that."

"Oh, and after forty years of marriage you're going to tell me I've not been...?"

"He's going inside."

"Where?"

"That one, down the close. Come on."

"Dressed like this?"

McGonagall grabbed his hand and led him into a short hallway that stank of the loos. A furtive wave of her wand, and her husband's clothing transformed into black jeans, black tee and long black leather coat. At least there were no metal bits, and she'd left him his hair and his beard. Dumbledore turned to see what his wife was wearing, and his jaw dropped. The tight leather trousers and loose black shirt reminded him of Minerva's wild days, but back then she hadn't hidden her figure under a man's green silk vest and a suit coat draped over her shoulders. With her hair in a tight braid down her back, she looked... well, she didn't look like his wife, or anyone else's. She grinned up at him.

"Swallowed something, Albus?" She spun in place, letting him look. "Well? Will I pass?"

"F... f... for what?"

"For a man, silly. Have you really not noticed what's going on out there?"

Actually Dumbledore hadn't noticed anything. He didn't know why Minerva had dressed as a man. He didn't want to know. He was too busy fighting hormonal twinges and wondering how after four decades she had found yet another unexpected way to reduce him to testosterone pudding.

"I suppose," he stammered, "those trousers might be too tight." He pointed. "They show quite well what you don't have." They also showed what she did have, but Dumbledore was trying not to think about that. A muggle in a football jersey came out of the men's and gave her the eye. Minerva sniffed and turned away, but the man's gaze lingered on her until he left the hall. Dumbledore thought he saw her shiver.

"Perhaps too nice?" he asked.

"You're a pervert, Albus Dumbledore."

"Fix your trousers, then."

"Bother." She tapped her wand against her palm, and tucked the resulting rolled sock down her front. "Better? Albus, is that any better?"

"Oh, yes, it's quite nice indeed." It was. It wasn't Minerva standing there, but some strange gamin of a fellow with an elfin gleam in his eye. Her grin hinted that things might be possible that Dumbledore hadn't even known were desirable.

As he pondered that, the light from the barroom vanished. The hulking form of a London policeman filled the door.

"Everything all right in here?" he asked in a voice far louder than he needed.

"Fine, thank you," said McGonagall. She took Dumbledore's hand again and led him past the glowering bobby and out the front door.

"Where did the boy go?" he asked again.

"There." She nodded toward the neon cat. Closer up, they saw bodies in the darkness, pairs of young men writhing against the wall. Dumbledore looked away, looked at anything but the men in the shadows, and found his eyes on Minerva's leather-clad backside. Gods, she was one of them. Had the spell been more potent than Dumbledore realized? Was she really a man under there? No, then she wouldn't have needed the sock. But what if she were? And if she were, would she let him...? He suppressed the thought and followed Minerva into the bar. This was an entirely different sort of establishment than the first pub. The décor was dark, the music was edgier, and there was a dance floor filled with writhing male bodies. Where, he wondered, were the women?

Dumbledore felt like an idiot. Of course there were no women. What about it? He certainly wasn't a homophobe. For heaven's sake, he'd just been fantasizing about his wife being a man! Best not to think of that in public. Dumbledore took a deep breath and stepped closer to Minerva, whose progress across the floor was being followed by dozens of young male eyes. Men were staring at his wife, wanting to do things to her--no, not to her, but to *him.* Albus was suddenly having a great deal of trouble walking straight. Minerva frowned and punched him in the ribs.

"Oi, you! Do you see the boy?" she asked. "It's hard for me."

"Oh, Gods, it is that!"

"Pervert. The Dursley boy, Albus, do you see him? I can't from down here."

"Wonder what he's doing in a place like this, anyway?"

"He's here to meet boys, you great ninny. It would seem that young Dudley likes boys."

"Yes, but why a place like this? Why couldn't he meet a nice boy in church, or at the library? This place is...."

"There," she said. Dudley Dursley, in fishnet shirt and vinyl trousers, sat at a table talking to three older boys. No, they were three grown men, and they were plying Dudley with one drink after another.

"Excuse me," said Dumbledore to the barkeep, "but that young man lives in our street, and I know for a fact that he's fifteen years old. What is he doing in here?"

"If it was me, mate, I think I'd keep my nose in my own affairs, or you might find that someone's nosed in on you." The barkeep leered at McGonagall. Dumbledore bristled until Minerva laid her hand on his arm.

"It's all right, Albus," she said. "Come let's go speak to that nice policeman we met in the pub across the way."

The barman snarled a curse and threw down his towel. He crossed the floor in three steps and ejected the protesting Dudley without bothering to check his ID. Dudley's three companions followed.

"I don't know that that's any improvement," McGonagall said, "given what they're about out there." Dumbledore tossed some muggle money on the bar and led the way out the door, but there was only the glow of the neon cat, which seemed to be quite amused with them.

"Now what?" Dumbledore growled as they reached the street end of the close. He looked both ways, just in case, but saw no sign of Dudley.

"They've not got out of the close," said McGonagall.

"So we're going to interrupt each of these couples and see which one is young Dudley and a friend? They'll be gone before we're within a yard, assuming some of these young toughs don't flatten us first!"

"Come here," she said, and pulled him up against her, against the wall.

"Now?" he hissed. She grinned up at him and pulled him into a lingering kiss. As always, the taste of her brought him to a point of not knowing who or where he was and not caring. He pressed his hands against the green vest, feeling for the bits she'd complained he'd been neglecting, only to have the fabric under his hands turn to fur. A tabby cat darted out from under the hem of his coat.

Dumbledore leaned against the wall, cursing his wife for a teasing animagus, as McGonagall padded down the alley, sniffing at the shoes of each couple in turn. He wondered what he was meant to be doing leaning against this wall alone if anyone should ask. He wondered where Minerva had come up with this particular persona, and what he'd have to agree to get her to wear it again in private. He was lingering over that last thought when he heard a shout from down the close.

"Here! Get away!"

"What is it?"

"Damned cat was climbing my pants leg!"

A pair of young men stumbled into the light. Dumbledore recognized Dudley Dursley and one of the men he'd been drinking with. The other two joined them, laughing at their colleague as McGonagall wound herself around his legs.

It was time to play headmaster. Dumbledore strode toward them.

"What are you doing to that poor cat?" he asked. The animal in question disappeared down the close.

"Hey, he's the one that got us thrown out!"

"Get him!" All four boys lunged toward Dumbledore, hindered a general rush toward the street. Not only was no one helping, no one was even hanging around to watch. Well, at least that meant there were no witnesses. Dumbledore reached for his wand. Playing fair with muggles was one thing, but this was four against one.

The wand wasn't there.

Albus ducked away from his first assailant and made for the end of the alley, cursing Minerva's obsession with accuracy. She could have turned the silly wand into something! Ah, well, perhaps the policeman with the loud voice was still....

Minerva's voice rang from the shadows: "Petrificus totalus!"

Three bodies tumbled to the ground and lay still. Dudley Dursley shrank back against the wall.

"We wasn't doing nothing!" he wailed.

McGonagall stepped into the light, back in her robes and hat, and tapped Dumbledore with her wand to put him back in his normal attire. They both turned to Dudley.

"We are going to do considerably less," said Dumbledore, "than this lot were planning."

"They weren't doing anything. They're my friends! They were taking me to get a tattoo!"

"Like this one?" McGonagall knelt by one of the petrified men and pulled his sleeve back, exposing a flaming skull on his arm.

"Maybe," stammered the boy.

"I think not," said Dumbledore. "These people have nothing but contempt for the likes of you. I think they had something far more sinister in mind."

"Wh...what's it to you?"

McGonagall stood up.

"What you don't seem to realize, young man, is that this is not about you. The fate of several worlds is in jeopardy and you prance around like a drag queen in training as if you cared nothing at all for the danger you bring to others!"

"You mean Harry."

"Yes, Harry Potter, for one! Do you truly believe he wouldn't have come after you, and sacrificed himself for you? Do you not know that he would have spent the rest of his life running this day over in his mind, trying to find the one thing he could have done differently, so as to save you?"

"It's always about Harry. We can't go on outings, 'cause Harry would have to come. We can't tell anyone where he goes to school or what he studies. We can't talk about him at all, because if we did somebody might see how special he is, how much better...."

"Gods," said McGonagall, "you sound like your mother!"

"Is that why you come here," asked Dumbledore, "because this is a place that Harry Potter cannot touch?"

"But he has, hasn't he?" said Dudley. "I mean, you're here, and you've spoiled it. It's all Harry's fault."

"Has it even occurred to you that this lot only wanted you to use against your cousin?"

It was that that finally brought Dudley to blubbering tears. McGonagall gave him her lace-trimmed handkerchief to blow his nose.

"Do your parents know where you are?" asked Dumbledore.

"They've gone to France," said the boy. "My dad was after a big order of drills, and Mum wouldn't let him go alone. It's just me at home."

"Just you and Harry, you mean?" said McGonagall.

"He doesn't count."

"Perhaps not," said Dumbledore. "At any rate, what is your father going to think when we tell him where we found you?"

"You're going to TELL?"

"How else are we to keep young Potter safe from your indiscretions?" asked McGonagall.

"Please don't. Please don't tell them. I promise I won't do it again."

"Won't do what again?"

"I won't take any chances," he whispered. "I won't let them... whoever they are... I won't let them get me involved in wizarding stuff. I just won't. Just please don't tell them I... I was with boys... we weren't doing nothing...."

"Young man, no one here cares with whom you choose to sleep," said Dumbledore.

"Although," said McGonagall, "it might be better if it weren't your cousin."

"No fear," said Dudley. "He wouldn't touch me, anyway. I mean, I wouldn't... what do you mean, you don't care?"

"He means that sex is not the issue. That lot would have been just as dangerous if you'd been playing dominos."

"I mean," said Dumbledore," that you should be careful, for your own sake."

"You guys really are different."

"Yes," said Dumbledore, "and we're going to be watching, to make sure that you're behaving differently, as well."

"What do you care?"

"Isn't it enough that we do care?" said McGonagall. "Come on, give us your hands and we'll take you home."

---

His chamber door closed behind them, and Dumbledore pulled McGonagall into his arms, tossing her hat aside and pulling her hair down so that he could run his fingers through it.

"Now, wench," he said, "what have you done with my wand?"

"Oh, that old thing!"

"Yes, that old thing without which I almost got pummeled! Give it up, or I'll tickle you until you shriek and the house elves come to check on us and see you in the altogether again!"

"Worse than dementors, you are!"

Dumbledore pushed her down on his bed, pinned her beneath him and applied his fingers to her most ticklish places.

"Albus! Stop that! Stop it. Here, I'll give you the silly wand!" From the front of her bodice she extracted a rolled sock and dropped it into his hand. Before it hit his palm, it had transformed into his wand.

"This... you...."

"I wanted something of you near me, when.... They were looking at me, Albus, as if.... I just needed to touch a bit of you, to remind myself of who I was. I knew you couldn't use it in front of the muggles, and I thought...."

"You wanted to be near me?"

She nodded at him, and he smiled and pressed her back down to the bed.

"I think I can manage that," he said. "I think we can get very close indeed."