Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,
Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
Too fair
For credibility's temerity
To dare.
-- Emily Dickinson
Author's Note:
This is my very first fan fiction story so don't expect much! Also, I am not saying this is REALLY what happened. I was just wandering about Crookshanks and thought it would be interesting if this is what had happened. If your confused, this is Crookshanks the cat telling his story. There WILL be a part two!
I'm Crookshanks, the cat, and I'm sixty years old. Yes, sixty. Don't be surprised; magical cats live long. One who has full magical blood may live to be eighty.
When I was young, just born, that idiotic son of the shopkeeper of the Magical Menagerie put me in a cage marked, "Poisonous cat. Warning: one scratch from his claws may kill you". And furthermore, he sold me to a sixteen year old boy!
I was, of coarse, not poisonous, but I couldn't tell him that. So he took to his home. Home, however was a muggle orphanage. I was most unpleasantly surprised. But not for long.
The boy, by the name of Tom Riddle, was a sixth year Slytherin at Hogwarts, the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Once again I was surprised but this time happily, for Hogwarts was the best school. I found this out by riding in the backest compartment on the Hogwarts Express with all the other animals. Cats, rats, owls, and toads told me all about the feasts and the Quidditch matches and the school itself--where if your owner permits you, there are thousands of rooms to explore. It sounded a lot like paradise to me!
And it was.......for a few months. Yes, the food was good and Tom was quite nice to me. But then something quite awful began happening. You see, there was this legend about the Chamber of Secrets. It was said that Salzar Slytherin, one of the founders of Hogwarts, built a secret chamber that no one else knew about. In it, they say, he put a horror to be used purify the school of those unworthy of studying magic. Only the heir of Slytherin himself could open it.
Only a legend, they said, when students all over the school became petrified, frozen, as if dead. Only a legend, they said, when one student was killed. Who could be doing this? Everyone wondered. Everyone but me.
And Tom wasn't the nice boy he seemed. Once I spent more time with him, I noticed there was something mean, even evil, about him. I really didn't suspect him truly evil, until one night. You see, Tom had this horrible weakness. He talked in his sleep. One might laugh, but it was quite serious. If he was particularly worried about something or had a big secret, he would talk about it in his sleep. You can see how this could be destructive. So Tom performed a simple spell, where anyone outside his bed could not hear him talk. Thus he could keep his secrets.
Of coarse, I slept at the foot of his bed. And I could hear what he said. But usually I never really listened. I mean, I was usually asleep before him. But one night he said something particularly frightening.
He talked all about the Chamber of Secrets, the topic of everyone's conversation. But Tom had a different story. He was the heir of Slytherin! He was the one who had set the monster on those poor muggleborns!
From that night on, I listened most intently to what he said at night and when he was around his friends. Tom talked about becoming the greatest, most evil wizard the worlds had ever seen. He and his closest friends talked about have enormous powers and about changing his name. He took his name--Tom Marvolo Riddle--to something more evil--Lord Voldemort.
The rest of Tom's sixth and seventh year went most peacefully. He was head boy and everyone except his intermost friends thought he was a nice, smart boy. We almost everyone-there was this teacher-Dumbledore who almost saw Tom for who he was. Not almost, did. I am positive. True, in the later years he was Tom's greatest enemy, but more about that later.
When he graduated, Tom started another type of learning-learning the dark arts. He sank very deeply into the Dark Arts...consorted with the very worst of his kind....underwent so many dangerous, painful magical transformations, that when he resurfaced around fifteen years later as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. His skin had turned nearly chalk white and his eyes red, and......oh its scares me to even think of it.
But what scared me most was when Voldemort started killing people. At first small groups and then more and more.....he was demonstrating his power. Around ten years later he had not only killed off most of his enemies but he was so feared by the wizards and witches they feared to even speak his name. They called him you-know-who or he-who-must-not-be-named. And I could see why. He killed so many.....telling me everything.
Oh, how horrible it was for me. Voldemort say he was going to kill so-and-so and come back less than an hour, his evil deed accomplished. And I could do nothing! I couldn't talk, nor stop him. If I attacked him he would kill me and I was determined to stay alive because I knew someday I could help someone defeat him, I knew his weaknesses. He dare not kill me because he knew that someday I would come in handy. But there was something else I think, a bond, between us.
But there was one, no two, deaths that affected me most greatly. Voldemort was very eager to get rid of this family, the Potters, but he wouldn't even tell me why. He was brooding over how could find them because you see, they had used the Fidelius charm which only one living sole knew where they were. The secret keeper.
One day when Voldemort had sent aside an entire day to meet with his strongest follows to discuss the Potters. It was near dusk when there was a knock on the door. "It's me," murmured a voice I could barely hear.
"Pettigrew!" Voldemort thundered,"Get in here. You said you had some big news!" In came Peter Pettigrew, one of Voldemort's more weaker followers. He was perhaps of twenty, and had been a spy for little under a year.
"The Potters have made me their secret keeper," Pettigrew announced.
"You?" They gasped and muttered, but Voldemort commanded silence.
"Why would they make you their secret keeper?" He roared. Voldemort was very dramatic; he never talked, he always thundered or roared. He never walked, he always swept.
"Sirius Black suggested it. I was one of James Potter's close friends." They spent an hour debating it. Had the Potters caught on, was this a trick, and so on? But in the end Voldemort flew from the room to Godric Hollow, his followers leaving to do whatever tasks he had assigned them.
I never saw him again. Usually his killings only took an hour; he didn't come back all night. I knew something was wrong. I impatiently awaited The Daily Prophet because I knew it would have news. Voldemort had subscribed to it because he loved seeing his name in the paper, even if it was only you-know-who.
When the news owl came, I looked at the front page. Usually the headlines read, You-know-who kills twenty or Another great wizard gone, you-know-who behind it. But today there was a different sort. It read You-know-who seems to have vanished without a trace! The article went on to say that he went to the Potters house and killed the parents, but he couldn't kill the child. Somehow his powers failed him and he lost everything including his form......
I couldn't believe it. The most evil wizard defeated by a baby! His followers broke up, some saying they had been hypnotized, others landed in Azakban. I knew that what was left of his people would come here, to get some of his things before the Ministry came. So I raced out the door, leaving my role as Voldemort's cat finally.
Disclaimer:
All the characters, places and things named are property of JK Rowling.