I Smell a Rat

Twelve years is a long time for a cat. There was a lot I’d forgotten, including my own name. I’d spent nearly all of these years in the Magical Menagerie, seeing the owls come and go, sniffing hungrily at the shipments of rats, witnessing dozens of cats more winsome and powerful than myself be carted off in children’s arms.

Even our old caretaker, a bitter man with no magic in him, came in for a furry companion one day. The cat he chose was as ugly and ill-tempered as I, but alas, she had powers that I can only dream of. Perhaps it is because I began life as a human, but my senses of hearing and smell are not the best even by alley cat standards, and pathetic by those of the magical beasts coveted by the wizard world. I trust my eyes too much, these eyes with their vast pupils that can see almost no color, and that are drawn to motion rather than detail.

I slept a lot. We all do. It was one of the best things about my new form, I would have said, had I been asked to choose--though memories of my former incarnation grew hazier with each passing day. Sleep. Chase beetles. A nice bowl of Bastet’s Magical Cat Chow. Another nap, a stretch, cleaning burrs from my bottlebrush tail… such was my life.

Until one day I was awakened from my doze by a smell.

I thought it was a dream… or maybe a spell cast by the cageful of magical black rats who were skipping right in front of my nose.

I knew that smell.

It had changed, with the years, as I’m sure mine has. He smelled less magical, somehow; I got the impression that he had been a rat for a long, long time. And he was afraid--horribly afraid, of what I could only dimly guess, since he certainly hadn’t sniffed me yet.

He was on the countertop, being inspected by Hazel, the shop witch. I crouched, treading my back paws, and with a tremendous pounce--

"NO, CROOKSHANKS, NO!"

I landed on a boy’s head instead of my target, and before I could turn myself around for another leap, he was out the door and gone.

Slowly, rusty after so many years, my mind began to work. Nothing and no one was going to stop me from getting him this time. Suddenly I remembered why I hated him--remembered that it was he who was responsible not only for the loss of my human life, but of my only happy home.

I would not let him escape again.

One companion of the boy whose head had intercepted my attack remained in the store.

A bushy-haired girl (I like fluffy people, fluffy sweaters, blankets: all that smooth baldness is too much sometimes); she smelled kind; and if I squinted I could imagine there was something in this girl that recalled her.

I wound myself around her ankles, purring, and she tore herself away from the owls to pet me. I purred louder, even licked her hair as she picked me up, though this was usually beneath my dignity.

"Bad-mannered beast, that one is," said Hazel. "He’s been in here forever, no one wants him."

The girl hugged me to her chest. I purred and purred. "But he’s so sweet," she objected.

This sort of trick didn’t go so far when I was a boy, but a bushy tail will work wonders. Before I knew it, I was back at Platform 9 3/4 for the first time in fifteen years--but this time, curled up in a wickerwork basket with a catnip mouse instead of sitting in a compartment with my friends.

My friends? Well… Let’s just say my fellow students. I didn’t have many real friends; I had, yes, even me, an admirer, though he didn’t remain loyal for long. And funny thing, this admirer was also here in the compartment with me now, and also not what he used to be. I’d forgotten his original name completely, but I’d gathered that he was now called Scabbers--so Scabbers he is and Scabbers he shall remain. Had he gotten stuck, in the same way that he had lured me into getting stuck, that fateful day so very long ago? Had he made a pet of himself, as I considered doing before my mind filled only with thoughts of revenge?

Heedless of what the fluffy girl would think of me, I hissed and spat at my former companion. Scabbers. I will kill you, Scabbers.

The fact that our magical incarnations had made us natural enemies no longer seemed a simple irony but a deep, compelling truth. My rear legs were made to scatter his innards, my teeth to squeeze the life from his throat. I no longer cursed my fate, knowing--or at least hoping--that it was shared by my enemy.

It wasn’t until we were on the train, that magical train whose noises and scents I still recalled, that I was finally free of my basket. I wasn’t going to attack the boy this time: I would try a more casual approach, a yawn and a stretch, and then--

But I was once again repulsed. "Get out of it!" the boy said, and I settled down on a chair to plot my final, well-earned vengeance.

I may look like an ordinary cat, and there are many things I have forgotten, but do not underestimate me. If I cannot read a book, I can at least recognize letters. I can decipher a map--it’s more visual than literary--and I can tell time. I kept track of these twelve years by watching the moon from my window: twelve full moons to the year. One hundred and thirty-six full moons had shone into the Magical Menagerie since my arrival (I marked each with a scratch into the floorboard by the straw where I made my bed). The boy was certain to slip, to misjudge the amount of planning and the single-mindedness of what appeared to be a common house pet. And the instant he did: I would achieve my goal.

Hours passed. It began to rain. Still I sat, patient in my chair, scheming. A thought flashed into my head: if I were to eat Scabbers, would he change back to human form in my stomach? That would make for an uncomfortably large meal. Best just to kill him, then.

There were footsteps, then voices. "Well, look who it is." The drawl was somehow familiar. "Potty and the Weasel."

No, it wasn’t the voice that was familiar… It was the tone, and the effect on my fluffy girl and her companions: they tensed, shrank back… and muttered a word: Slytherin.

Those syllables, the sneers, the mutual disdain… I began to remember.

I had been a Slytherin.

Too stupid for Ravenclaw, too cowardly for Gryffindor, much too sneaky for Hufflepuff, I was the most despised member of the most despised House.

See how it all comes back to me!

And my name. After years of Fluffy, and Ginger, and finally Crookshanks, I recalled who I had been first.

Terry Trembull.

A hateful name for a hateful boy. Bow-legged, squashed-faced, enormous for my age,  I was the sort of boy who can only win recognition as a bodyguard for the cunning and popular.

That role didn’t appeal to me. I was a loner, preferring to remain aloof and have no friends rather than do the big boys’ bidding. There was only one catch: I was quite possibly the slowest, least talented student in my year, my ineptitude made even more glaring by an extraordinary bunch of Gryffindors, the Potter Gang. (Rather like "Potty," isn’t it, that name? Or am I simply becoming confused? I was never good with names).

I was indifferent to the antics of the Potter Gang, and even to the way our professors made the coursework more difficult to match their quick minds. I never even met them directly--when I was human, at least. What I knew of them came only from the rat… my admirer… Scabbers.

For the first four years he came regularly to my House, as tolerated by the other Slytherins as I myself was. Although my natural tendency was to scorn him, we discovered two things we had in common: ineptitude; and proud pureblood families who would disown us if we failed. Scabbers would borrow completed assignments from his fellows in Gryffindor, and bring them to me so we could copy them together. To this day I would recognize their writing anywhere: the careful, neat hand of Potter himself, and the thick dark scrawl of his best friend, Sirius Black.

Sirius Black! I remember the name better than my own. I clung to this name for twelve years, knowing that while Potter is gone, and she is gone, Black had only disappeared… and I never lost hope that he would return. In the winter, and then again in late summer, I would watch for his star in the sky, saying his name over and over to aid my fading memory: Sirius, the Dog Star; Black, like the night sky.

I had spent the greater part of a year searching for Sirius after she died. I was certain I could make him understand both my predicament and my desire for revenge--for I knew that he was an Animagus, and that he must have been aware by then that I, too, was no ordinary animal. Although I finally gave up, my dreams in the Magical Menagerie often featured the day that Sirius Black would stroll through the door and choose me as a pet.

Yes, Terry Trembull passed his first three years at Hogwarts because of Sirius Black and James Potter.

Then, gradually, Scabbers’ visits to me became rarer. I didn’t know why, nor did I particularly care, any more than I had cared why he had chosen me as a companion to begin with. I resumed my solitary ways, relying on my own meager resources to pass my classes.

Until that fateful day.

I was jerked out of my reverie by the train slowing. Had we arrived? The instant I was in the dormitory, alone with Scabbers--

--But no. The lights dimmed, and the students began to talk in frightened voices. I am impatient with humans’ hopelessness in the face of dim light, and as a clumsy oaf sat on me, I hissed and unsheathed my claws into his fat bottom. I could see them all clearly: the fluffy girl; the boy with Scabbers in his pocket; the man in the corner, who conjured a flickering light that made the compartment as bright as day.

As the man stood up and made for the door, the fur along my back began to prickle. Not because the man was a werewolf--I don’t particularly fear them. Not even because the creature he was approaching was a Dementor; they don’t bother me much, either; how many happy memories does a cat have to feed off, especially a cat like myself?

No--what made my fur stand on end was that I knew this man.

He didn’t know me. I had watched from a tree, less than a week after my fateful transformation, as he and Sirius Black found a secluded spot where the latter could become a dog. I knew that this man was one of the few wizards in the world who could restore me to my human form, if such a thing were possible at all. Did he know what I was? Could I communicate it to him, if not now, perhaps at the full moon, when his instincts would equal mine?

Now he spoke, and at his words my tail puffed to three times its normal size.

"None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go."

Now I knew that my presence on this train was not a simple twist of fate that had brought me, at last, to Scabbers. Something larger was at work. My heart pounded, and a soft hiss came to my lips as I squeezed between the sweaty, shaking students to take a good look at the third member of our generation to occupy this compartment.

My back bristled again. This man had been a boy when I saw him last, and though I have grown unaccustomed to human faces, he now he appeared much, much older than twelve years would explain.

Had I been miscounting the years all this time? Perhaps it wasn’t twelve full moons to the year, but six… or three…?

With a sense of irony--cats are good at irony--I recalled that this man, as a boy, had been the top student in our Astronomy class. What little I know I doubtless learned from copying his homework, and now I wished I had paid closer attention. Or that I could speak, to ask him this question: If by some miracle I were restored to my human form, would I be a young man of thirty? A middle-aged man of forty-five? Or an old man of sixty?

(Forgive my arithmetic, gentle reader, I am a cat!)

I hadn’t searched for this man after it all happened. Part of it was that I feared werewolves in those days--it is only in the past few years that I have come to appreciate that rodents are the true enemy, not my proud cousins of the order Carnivora. Also, I didn’t know his name (you have probably realized my weakness in that area by now).

But it didn’t matter. I hadn’t found them, but they had found me. We were all here now: me… this man… Scabbers… and somewhere nearby, Sirius Black.

Three of us on the train from a generation long ago. None of us were human, though all of us, at some point, had been. If what my nose told me about Scabbers was correct, none of us would be again.

An irony so great can only be appreciated by a cat. Curling up in my basket for the trip to the castle, I waited for events to unfold.
 

__________________________
 
 
 

"Hey, Terry!" The small, plump boy entered the Slytherin common room, earning some wary looks from the assembled students.

"Hello, Peter." The boy who responded was large, ginger-haired, and mean-looking; he didn’t seem particularly pleased to see his friend. "Haven’t seen you in a while."

"He’s been hanging out with the Gryffindors," sneered a third boy from somewhere else in the room. "Finally decided the Potter Gang is better than we are."

The plump boy lowered his voice, bringing his mouth to Terry’s ear. "It’s about the Potter Gang. But you know I don’t really like them!" He drew himself up to his full height, looking down his nose as he drawled in mediocre imitation, "I am James Pottah, the greatest Seekah in woooohhrrlld…." When this at least brought a smile from Terry, he lowered his voice again. "They’ve been doing something illegal. Something that can help us. Come with me, and I’ll show you."

"Toying with the Dark Arts, are you, Peter?" Terry drawled. He patted the small boy condescendingly on the head. "What a cute little servant of Voldemort you’d make."

"I could be if I wanted to," Peter shot back.

Terry was always a curious boy. It was one of his only virtues, though many times it also got him into trouble. It didn’t take much more wheedling before he was following Peter up out of the dungeons, down the stone steps of the castle, and to a well-trampled spot on the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Looking around, making sure they weren’t going to be seen, Peter swiftly turned himself into a fat gray rat and back again.

Terry’s interest was piqued, but he merely drawled, "Potter teach you that, Peter?"

Petter spluttered, turning red, trying to deny it--but he finally confessed that, yes, Potter and Black had taught him everything he knew. "But we don’t need him! I can show you how!"

"Nah," said Terry. "That’s gotta be dangerous."

"It’s not dangerous!" Peter objected. "What can go wrong?" He lowered his voice. "If their side can do it, and ours can’t--"

Driven more by curiosity than pride, Terry eventually allowed himself to be convinced. Less than two months after Peter had told the secret, in this same spot, he transformed with a "pop" into a large orange cat.

"See, I told you!" Peter crowed. "It’s so easy! I can’t believe it’s illegal, or that they make such a fuss--"

But the cat sat there, quivering slightly, and Terry didn’t come back.

It took more than an hour for the seriousness of the situation to sink in to Peter’s brain. When it finally did, he panicked and ran back to the castle as fast as his chubby legs would carry him.
 
 

The cat spent the next few days living around the forest, learning how to survive. He caught a few mice, though he was hopeless with birds, and discovered that the spiders that strung their webs across the bushes at dusk made a fine meal. He continued to frequent the spot where he had gotten stuck, as if the memory of his human form would be strongest there and might help him recover what he had lost.

One day, as he squatted in the clearing, he heard voices. He quickly climbed the nearest tree, watching as two boys approached: members of the Potter Gang, though not Potter himself. One of them, who was unusually tall and had a remarkable amount of wild black hair, was talking.

"I’m almost comfortable coming out here and doing it by myself, Moony, but I don’t want to have to barge in on you in the Gryffindor common room if I get stuck."

"Anyway," said the second boy in a serious tone, "if that happens, you don’t have much time. Half an hour at best; even after ten minutes the rescue charms become harder. Don’t take foolish risks, Sirius, please: you know this is one of magic’s most dangerous spells."

Hearing these words, the cat dug his claws into a branch and hissed.

Still, he didn’t lose hope: what were these charms the boy was talking about? There had to be some chance that they would work, if only the boys would realize who and what the cat was.

When the tall boy suddenly turned into an enormous black dog, the cat hesitated briefly. He’d been hoping for another rat, or a squirrel--something he could pin with his paw and intimidate. His human as well as his feline instincts rebelled at approaching such a creature, but it was his only hope.

Descending the tree, he discovered two things. One, cat claws are made for going up, not down. Two, the second boy, now sitting under the tree with a book in his lap, was a werewolf.

Terry was an inexperienced cat, and if he hadn’t once met a werewolf as a small child, he never would have known--but he had and he did. With yowls of terror, he fell from the tree onto a patch of pine needles.

The werewolf scarcely looked up from his reading. The dog, however, came bounding over, delighted at his chance to have real doggy fun. He was as inexperienced a dog as the cat was a cat, and so enthralled by his successful transformation that he never saw Terry as anything but a playmate.

"Meow!" cried Terry, meaning, "Help! Peter got me stuck!"

"Woof!" cried Sirius, meaning, "woof!"

He chased Terry back up into the tree, barking, wagging his tail, his slobbery tongue hanging over a terrifying array of teeth.

Terry had always hated dogs.

Still, he was so desperate that he stood by Sirius in the clearing as the dog regained his human form, trying hopelessly to see how he did it. When the two boys headed back to the castle, the cat continued to follow at a polite distance, giving an occasional plaintive mew.

They waved to someone standing on the castle steps. "Hi, Lily."

She didn’t respond, but looked right past them at the woebegone animal tailing after them. "Hi there, kitty! You guys, what’s that cat doing?"

"Dunno," Sirius laughed. "I chased him up a tree."

Lily didn’t follow the boys into the castle. Cautiously, she approached Terry, who crawled into her arms with a grateful purring chirp.

"Oh, you poor nice kitty! Where do you live?"

"Meow," said Terry, meaning, "Slytherin House, just like you."

The irony was not lost on him that if Lily knew she was holding Terry Trembull in her arms, she would probably spend the next week performing Purification Charms on herself.

So Terry returned to his House. He got to see his own parents come, disturbed but not devastated at the loss of the slowest of their four children. He saw Slytherin turned upside down, Dumbledore suspicious that the boy’s disappearance had something to do with the growing loyalty to the Dark Lord. Three students were expelled when their links to the Dark Side were uncovered--but of course they couldn’t bring back Terry.

It occurred to the cat off and on that he would be a Slytherin hero if he could talk: the secrets he’d heard! But he didn’t have much time to rejoice at that, since no one seemed to be able to help him.

Terry--or Fluffy, as Lily called him--even tried approaching Albus Dumbledore once, mewing plaintively and hoping his features would trigger something in the great wizard’s mind.

They didn’t. Animagi were simply too rare, as Fluffy had learned from overheard conversations between Sirius Black and his friends. The cat continued to follow Sirius, but he never saw him become a dog again--and in human form, Sirius had no way of sensing Fluffy for what he really was.

Slowly, he began to give up, letting his animal nature take over as he neglected to exercise his mind. He got back at Peter whenever he could, in small ways--mice on his pillow (inside the pillowcase was best), using his shoes for a litterbox, shredding his robes so his butt stuck out in class. Just before final exams, Fluffy sneaked into the boys’ dorm and removed every piece of parchment he could carry from Peter’s bedside table.

Peter still passed that year. Fluffy knew that he had cheated.

At term’s end, Lily packed him up in a cardboard box and took him home.

And he met her.

Lily’s mother. She wasn’t magic, but she yearned for magic in the same way Fluffy (now Ginger) yearned for his lost life. She knew immediately that he was no ordinary cat, and she treated him like a prince: asked his advice (he managed, with mews and growls and purrs, to come up with dozens of distinct words); brushed his fur for hours on end; read stories to him at night.

When it was time to return to Hogwarts, he hissed and spat so much that Lily left him behind. He didn’t see much of Lily after that.

Years passed. He didn’t know how many; he didn’t care. He was content to sit in the sun and be adored by his mistress, his brain freed from the torment of learning charms he’d never do right, potions that would explode, and historical facts that were no use to him. The only thing he occasionally missed was tormenting Peter.

One November morning, he was awakened from his nap by a wail of grief. His mistress was inconsolable, pushing her favorite pet away, her words coming in broken gasps. Only after more than an hour did Ginger figure out that Lily had died.

Cats are selfish. Ginger had forgotten Lily entirely, and he only regretted her death because he wanted his happy, loving mistress back. He clung to her, trying purrs, chirps, and all those other noises she loved so much, but nothing helped.

When she got in her car to go visit the remains of Lily’s house, she reluctantly let Ginger join her, though he was relegated to the back seat with the surviving daughter.

This one he didn’t like. He could sense her hostility both to magic and to animals, and she was constantly telling his mistress that Ginger was "only a cat." He sat as far away from her on the seat as he could, his eyes glued to the window.

It wasn’t sight that told him what had happened. Ginger was an enchanted creature, and this made him sensitive to anything magical… but even the dullest of senses could have felt what hung over the ruins of Lily and James’ house. A green, toxic cloud of pure evil assaulted the cat’s eyes and nostrils as if he’d stepped into an active volcano. Snarling, claws out, he leapt--

--Right onto the face of his mistress’ elder daughter.

She screamed. "Get out, you hideous thing! I hate you!"

Kicking the door open, she shoved Ginger from the car right onto the smoking crater.

Paws burning from the evil miasma, all senses on alert, Ginger stood rooted to the spot. He wasn’t worried about finding his way home if they left him here--and he thought he’d sensed movement in the trees. Belly low to the ground as if stalking a mouse, the cat slunk around the worst of the green cloud and towards what he thought he’d seen.

He’d had a lot of practice at being a cat now, so when the man showed his face, Ginger didn’t hiss or yelp, but pressed himself against a tree and became very still.

A narrow face, with small beady eyes. A man not much taller than a 13-year-old boy, though very fat.

He couldn’t have said why, but Ginger hated this man.

Suddenly, where the man had stood, there was a rat: and Ginger knew. Swiftly, noiselessly, the cat pounced--but the rat was too quick, and they tore through the garden and down the street, the rodent always one step ahead of his pursuer.

Through the streets, over and under hedges, between trees, Ginger chased Peter, and finally between the legs of a wizard at a portal to the Muggle world.

The Muggle streets were much more crowded, and noisy, and they stank. Both from wizard families, Ginger and Peter hadn’t learned to be wary of cars, and they were nearly flattened as they raced down the busy street in single-minded pursuit. Wormtail then discovered he had an advantage on the busy sidewalk, where he could weave between pedestrians’ legs, heedless of their cries of disgust at being jostled by a rat. He swiftly gained a lead on his enemy, enough so he could duck into an alley, where he stood trembling.

Peter had always been slow with his transformation; he needed at least two minutes of absolute stillness in order to be able to summon his powers. It was even worse when he was nervous. He leapt on top of a trash can, so at least if he failed to become human in time, he had a hiding place.

But Ginger had been caught in someone’s feet, tearing her pantyhose and provoking cries of "Mad cat!" By the time he managed to disentangle himself and sniff along the trail into the alley, the rat had become Peter.

Ginger came to a halt with a yowl of dismay. He couldn’t attack Peter now; he couldn’t even scare him. He watched in mute rage as the small man stepped out into the busy street…

…And came face to face with Sirius Black.

Few things are humorous to a cat, and Ginger’s pride was so wounded by his failed hunt that he couldn’t even gloat. He just wanted the rat dead. As Peter tried to be inconspicuous, edging away, the cat approached him from behind. Peter was trapped: as a human, he had an apparently enraged Sirius Black to contend with. If he transformed, the cat was ready.

Peter looked back and forth between his two pursuers. Sweat poured from his face--from the efforts of the chase and the transformation, and his sheer terror at being cornered. Finally he drew himself up haughtily, a mannerism Ginger knew all too well.

"Lily and James," he said, in a voice that shook with all the wrong emotions, "Sirius, how could you?" Holding his wand behind his back, he expelled a stream of silver from its tip that severed his index finger.

Then the street exploded.

Looking across the pile od bodies and debris, from which water and sewage and rats were pouring, Sirius met the yellow eyes of the horrified cat.

And they both laughed.
 
 

Ginger returned to his home later that day to find that his mistress was dead. The doctors called it grief, and a weak heart--but the cat knew it was the evil green cloud, which still polluted his fur and made him reluctant to bathe himself. He bade her goodbye with as much sadness as he could express; then, before the daughter could shove him into a box for a trip to the RSPCA, he slipped out the window and out into the world to look for Sirius Black.

After twelve years, he found him.