Cat!Harry

As they lay curled together in the dark of their bedroom, Harry yawned.

There was nothing more comforting than sharing a bed with a purring cat, even though said cat tended to sleep with the occasional claw out, and the hairs that found their way under Harry's pyjama top made his skin break out in small itchy bumps. Of course there was something hilarious about the fact that he was allergic to cats, Harry thought, although at least they didn't give him the sneezes like poor Hagrid.

He cuddled his head deeper into the pillow and shifted his hip away a fraction from Crookshanks's furnace of a fur coat.

Professor McGonagall lay flat on Harry's desk, asleep with one green eye open. Her striped tail dangled from the tabletop, hooked, twitching and utterly tempting. Under the chair, Mrs Norris was scooped against Harry's discarded trousers, and mournfully licked at the scratch across her nose. The temptation of the Professor's twitchy tail had become too strong for her half an hour ago, and the ensuing scuffle had not gone well for her. Her yellow eyes beamed out from under the chair like electric torches that seemed to suffer from an occasional short circuit as she grew more sleepy.

Ever since Professor McGonagall had determined in 'Remedial Transfiguration' that Harry's Animagus form was going to be a cat, he'd researched, studied and meditated, but transformation still eluded him. Sharing his nights with a handful of Hogwarts's cats in his Head Boy room in order to 'create an atmosphere conducive to animagition' had been Professor Dumbledore's idea, but so far the only things he'd got out of the arrangement were nightmares of Voldemort chasing him as a Rottweiler, and red spots. Oh, and cat-fights, the most spectacular being when Crookshanks had tried to stick his nose under the Professor's tail.

At least when the bunch finally piped down, Harry had no trouble going to sleep.

He closed his eyes and finished running the last transformantic equations through his mind, hoping beyond hope that perhaps he'd achieve the change in his sleep, the best way, as Professor McGonagall had said. Then he began to drift into sleep on a wave of purrs...

A sudden crash made him jump up with an embarrassing screech. Please, not Mrs Norris and the Professor's tail again, he thought blurrily. Then he saw the door, thrown wide open and half ripped from its hinges. In the doorway, illuminated by flickering torches from the corridor, loomed a black-robed, hooded figure, its face hidden behind a white mask. Its wand was raised in a gloved fist, and already emitted green light around the tip.

Harry gave another screech and struggled frantically to free himself from the bedclothes. His whole body stung as if the Death Eater - how the hell had a Death Eater managed to invade Hogwarts? - had already fired a spell at him. It hurthurthurt! and how could there be so much bedding, and something tickled his nose, and had Crookshanks always smelled this bad?

He finally struggled free and more rolled than rose out of bed, past Crookshanks's back, whose fur was fluffed up to the size of a small tiger, his ears flat against his head as he hissed at the intruder. Harry bumped hard onto the floor and struggled to his feet. Feet... there suddenly seemed to be a lot of them. He stepped onto something soft and squishy, and howled when the outermost extension of his backside began to sting abominably. He looked down, and saw a black paw with nasty claws that stood on an equally night-black tail. Harry gulped as he made the connection.

His paw. His tail. Quickly, he removed the curved little weapons from his appendix. The tail immediately swished back, almost on its own. It still smarted.

Something grey and dust-smelling landed next to him with a soft thud, and Harry jumped again. He got a half-stare out of a large yellow eye, and then Mrs Norris put herself half in front of him, ears just as flat as Crookshanks's, and hissing in a way that made Harry's whole spine shudder. There was quite a lot of spine, too. He could see the ribs under Mrs Norris's short, dirt-coloured fur, and her whipping tail. It was distracting, and Harry only realised he was following the swishing tail with his whole head, left, right, left, right again... when he began to feel dizzy on his paws. He dug his nose into the fur of his chest in shame. Some Animagus he was, ogling the butt of his comrade-in-claws, and in mortal peril to boot. Sirius would be so proud!

Professor McGonagall shot down from the desk in a whoosh of tabby fur and pressed up beside him as if to hide his smaller form. Harry's nose twitched at the sudden presence of her smell: pure aggression, adrenaline and a whiff of tuna casserole from dinner. He gave her side a lick without thinking, and admired the graceful triangle of her chin when she threw him an incredulous glare.

"Which one of you is Harry Potter?"

The figure in the doorway recaptured Harry's fraying attention, and he raised his head all the long way to the man's wand, aiming in an half-circle at the four... inhabitants of the room.

He had a sibilant, low voice that made Harry flatten himself against the floor reflexively.

His associates seemed to be made of sterner stuff. To his left, Professor McGonagall gave a veritable battle-cry of a hiss that made Harry pull his lips back from his teeth and tickled the fur at his neck awake.

The professor launched herself at the man's wand with a graceful, effortless jump, while Crookshanks, heavier and not quite as athletic, twitched his behind once, twice, and then fired himself into the Death Eater's stomach like a spitting, ginger canon ball. The man folded in half like a switchknife for a moment. Mrs Norris assaulted his left leg and began to claw at it, methodically and with bristling satisfaction.

Harry realised that he should perhaps contribute to the battle, and flattened himself for the jump, aiming at the man's unmentionables. Somehow his hind paws left the ground before his front ones, and suddenly he collided with the Death Eater's kneecap after a clumsy somersault. With an aching face - having a nose this short meant there was a lot more face to hurt on impact - he slid down the folds of the Death Eater's robe, and collapsed next to Mrs Norris with a thud. For lack of better target, he began to claw and scratch furiously at the boot in front of him.

He saw Professor McGonagall dislodge from the Death Eater's chest and went cold as she plunged towards the floor. If she had been hit by a spell...

But she landed with a graceful curve of her back, right on top of the Dark Wizard's wand that she had pulled from his grip. She stretched out to her full length and lay right down on the wand, a decidedly cattish grin on her face.

Harry heard the Death Eater grunt as he pulled Crookshanks off himself, and then the ginger tom impacted on the ground like a small meteorite, a considerable piece of robe in his mouth.

"I think that's quite enough now, Minerva!" the Death Eater roared.

Harry's ears twitched in confusion. He'd never imagined Professor McGonagall being on first name basis with a minion of the Dark.

The Death Eater lifted his hands to his mask and pulled it off, revealing the furious face of Professor Snape. His lanky hair stuck out at weird angles, and there were red spots on his usually pale cheeks.

Mrs Norris, who had been busy peeing on the hem of his robe, made a horrible choking noise in her throat and slunk away quickly, taking cover behind Harry's tail. Professor McGonagall seemed to be trembling as she rose to her paws and then re-transformed in a swirl of tartan house robes and long black hair. She spat Snape's wand into her hand and offered it to him with an insidious grin. She was still shaking with soundless laughter.

Snape looked down at his wand with disgust and opened his mouth to let loose what promised to be a foulmouthed tirade when Professor Dumbledore's face appeared behind him in the doorway. Snape's mouth snapped shut with an audible click of teeth.

The headmaster stepped inside Harry's room and beamed down at him.

"Ah, my dear boy, you have managed at last. We thought that sometimes, if the mountain doesn't come to the wizard..." He bent down to scritch Harry's head. "I apologise for the fright we gave you, Harry, but sometimes that will trigger the transformation."

Harry plopped down on his hind paws and stared. Somehow his cat brain didn't seem to deal with surprise as quickly as his human one. He licked the fur on his shoulder blade three, four times in quick succession, without really looking at the headmaster. It would give him a cramped neck if he tried, anyway.

When a hand came down and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, he let out a meow that sounded far too plaintive for his liking. The hand was hidden inside a glove, but still smelled quite bad. Ugh! Eye of Newt. Harry gagged. He tried to struggle as he was lifted up - not helping his roiling stomach any - but the urge to just hang-in-there-and-don't-move was overwhelming. Great! His Animagus form came with an inbuilt genetic Imperius!

He ended up dangling right in front of Snape's huge face, and scrunched up his nose at the oily smell of the man's hair. Snape's teeth were even more yellow from this angle, and tuna casserole smelled much better on Professor McGonagall. Harry buried his nose in his fur.

Snape reached out to Harry's head, and Harry reflexively showed a pointy canine tooth at the thought of being petted by his least favourite teacher. But Snape just brushed his ears back and studied his head. "How predictable."

Harry glared and hissed.

"Accio mirror!" Harry's mirror, a gift from Hermione, flew into Snape's free hand. He stuck it in front of Harry's face, and Harry's ears flattened. He gave the insolent cat that stared at him a swipe with his paw, only to feel cold glass under his pads.

"Honestly, Potter," Snape sneered. "Try to get a grip on your instincts." He angled the mirror for Harry to better study his reflection. Harry saw black fur, the pink-tipped insides of his ears, and, in the middle of his forehead right below Snape's fingers, a white lightning-bolt of fur running down between bright green eyes.

"Well, Severus, I think Harry makes for a very handsome tomcat," Dumbledore threw in cheerfully. He stroked the bridge of his nose. "Although that might not be the best term," he mused. "Now if you would put him down again so that he can transform back? It is quite late already, and I think we're all tired."

Snape lowered Harry down to knee height and dropped him. The impact still reverberated through all four of Harry's paws. He swished his tail angrily, but then sat down to concentrate.

All right, change!

Nothing happened.

With a panicky wail, Harry tried again. Still fur and tail. He stared up at Dumbledore in horror, and licked his paw.

"Oh, how typical, Potter!" Snape's voice grated in Harry's ears and tickled the hair on his back upright. "Merlin forbid that our resident celebrity would care for anyone's convenience as long as he can hog a few more moments in the spotlight."

Harry opened his mouth and let out an eloquent, furious hiss at Snape's knee.

"... you sadistic, greasy, smelly slimeball of a git!" he finished, out loud and staring right into the bastard of a professor's face. He was back in his pyjamas, standing barefoot on his red-golden rug.

Snape lifted an eyebrow, so smug that Harry felt an urge to claw - no, punch - him.

"It seems that with a little bit of incentive you're able to achieve some results after all, doesn't it, Mr Potter?" Snape's silken drawl flowed over Harry, before the git inclined his head to Professor Dumbledore. "Headmaster, if you'll excuse me now?"

"Of course, Severus," the Headmaster replied. "You might want to soak that robe before you go to sleep, though."

Snape snorted in disgust and turned towards the door.

"And twenty points from Gryffindor for insulting a Professor, Potter" he threw over his shoulder before exiting in a swirl of black robes. Harry snickered as Mrs Norris rubbed herself against his heels. He bent down to scritch behind her ears.

Professor McGonagall chuckled softly and ruffled Harry's hair. "And thirty points to Gryffindor for a flawless Animagus transformation. Very well done, Mr Potter."

"Indeed," the Headmaster added, with a smile that included the Professor, Mrs Norris at Harry's foot and Crookshanks, who'd gone back to sleep right there on the rug. "I think we've seen an admirable performance tonight, by our Order of the Felines."

~ finis ~