The wind whipped the waters of the lake into froth like rows of black lace. The cat who called herself Now-Alone extended her claws reflexively, clinging to the boulder where she crouched while she surveyed the grounds and the castle beyond them for signs of life. A few humans clad in black robes braved the cold. The pitch of their voices, borne briefly to her ears by the fickle wind, told her that they were younglings, older than kittens but not yet full grown. She watched as they turned and dashed back to the nearest door, disappearing inside with a final trill of laughter.
Something rustled in the brush beside and below her. Her ears flattened to her skull. She turned and glared downward, pupils narrowing to slits, and saw only a large water rat. Even as tired as she was, she could take it if she had to, but she was grateful when it sauntered to the edge of the lake and swam away.
Now-Alone had come a long way in the days and nights since the humans who had pampered her since before her eyes opened dumped her by the side of the road. They had a new kitten of their own, and no longer needed or wanted her. She had been willing to share them with the smooth-skin, and had even tried to show them by curling up beside the newborn and purring, but it seemed that they had not understood. The very next day they had driven her out to the country and, barely slowing down, had thrown her from the window of the car.
The blood from slashes caused by broken glass at the bottom of the roadside ditch where she had landed still matted the fur of her head and back. She had done her best to clean it up, but the pain prevented her from putting more than a few minutes at a time into the effort. The areas that she could not reach with her tongue, but rather had to dab at with a moistened paw, had collected dirt and were starting to develop a disturbing tenderness to the touch that extended beyond the wounds themselves. Her body fur, long and gray, was impossible to keep free of debris from her trek across the countryside. Mats were developing, uncomfortably close to her skin, in the crevices where her legs connected to her body and all over her belly, no matter how she gnawed at the roots in her best attempt to remove them. Twigs and dead leaves clung to her softness, tangled beyond her ability to pull them out without yanking out her own fur at the same time.
Ancient feral instincts had asserted themselves in the form of knowledge of how to hunt without training. Even now, hearing another rustle from ground level, Now-Alone sniffed the air, hoping for prey that was easy enough for her to catch and kill without an extensive chase. She was both tired and hungry, a combination not calculated to lead to efficient hunting, but a pounce and neck-breaking bite landed her a mouse. It was gone in a few quick bites, with a drink of lake water to wash it down.
While she made her kill and ate it, the sun had sunk behind the trees. Without its mitigating influence, the wind soon chilled her to the bone. She groomed what she could reach of her fur as best she could, wincing as her moistened paw passed over her wounds. The sensitivity around them was already worse than it had been just that morning. She nibbled at the base of one of the mats on her belly and considered the great stone building that dominated her view. Although leery of approaching strangers after the unexpected betrayal by her own beloved humans, she thought that a cranny tucked in somewhere around the exterior of the structure might provide enough shelter for her to stay warm.
With new determination, Now-Alone leaped off the boulder and trotted across the lawn. She was crouched behind a bush, nearly invisible against the gray wall, when a door a few feet away opened. "Edward! Are you still out here?" A boy stepped out as far as he could without losing his grip on the door. "Edward!"
Seeing her opportunity, the cat dashed by the unobservant human and into the castle. Along the hall she ran, far enough that even if someone caught her, she expected that she would be able to inflict sufficient damage with her claws to force them to release her long before they could carry her to the door and throw her back out. Now that she was inside, she had no plan to return to the great, cold outdoors. Surely a building this large held enough vermin of one sort or another to support more than one cat of her size, so competition for territory need not become an issue.
Strange, still metallic humans stood at intervals along the hallway. Now-Alone sniffed at the feet of one. There was no smell of flesh to go with the metal, and no sound to indicate life within it. She pawed at the leg and was rewarded with a hollow echo. Her head tilted first one way and the other with puzzlement. She batted the leg again, harder this time. The echo was louder, but that was the only response to her blow. She craned her neck and looked up the great distance to the metal head. It would make a good vantage point to see past the live humans who had suddenly flooded the hall. Moving carefully from clawhold to clawhold, she hauled herself up the unforgiving surface to perch on one slippery shoulder. No sooner had she reached her goal than she heard a cry of, "Kitty!" Startled, she lost her balance. Rather than letting herself slide, to land in some random way on the stone floor, she pushed hard with all four paws and launched herself into the air.
Almost simultaneous with the secure feeling of pads on the ground came the resounding crash of metal striking that same surface. Again she reacted from startlement, first springing several body-heights into the air and then bounding away from the crowd that was collecting around the fallen metal man. As she reached one corner after another, she allowed herself to be guided first by instinct and then by her nose, which began to pick up the wonderful smells of food.
Someone was eating meat. Beef, she thought, though she could not be certain, nor did she care. It was food, real food. Its aroma was coming from the far side of a door that was open barely a crack – not enough for a human, but plenty for a half-starved cat. She slipped through and looked up. There, on top of a desk with papers poking over its edges, was the source of the scent. She launched herself toward it… and found herself face to face with a human. Her eyes went wide, and so did his.
He was not the most attractive of humans. Far from it. His skin was the pasty white of someone who never went outside for fresh air, and his hair, whose gray was similar to her own, was thin and wispy. In spite of obviously plentiful food, the visible parts of his scrawny body displayed prominent bones. He dropped his fork and knife with a clatter. "Eh? Cat? What are you doing in here? He leaned forward for a closer look. Now-Alone inched away in a direction that took her both farther from his face and closer to his dinner. The attraction of the slices of meat was almost unbearable. Her stomach growled, and she mewed involuntarily.
The man blinked, and he leaned even closer. "Hungry, are you? No wonder, a scruffy thing like you. Nobody'd want to feed you." He snorted. "I know how you feel." With a conspiratorial wink he added, "Nobody wanted to feed me either when I was small, except for one kind lady who took pity on me. And so – " he dumped a collection of oddments out of a small bowl and replaced them with part of his meat – "so I'll take pity on you, in her memory." He deposited the bowl in front of her and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest.
She ate so fast that more than once she almost choked. As she finished the slice of meat, and the one that followed it, the human watched her with strange intentness. From time to time he cackled with laughter, seeming oddly pleased with himself. "They'll hate that you're here, the wizardy children and their fancy familiars. They'll think I don't deserve one of my own, me without any magic. But we'll be together, you and I, and we'll show them. Yes, we will." At last, when she had eaten her fill and licked the bowl clean, he finished off what was left on his plate, along with a dented goblet of something with a smell that made her nose curl.
Then he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small brush and a pair of scissors. "Come here, nice cat." She did not, but neither did she resist when he moved the plate out of the way and reached out to place her gently in the newly-emptied space. When he noticed the wounds on her head and back, he hissed as if in sympathy. From a mottled metal pitcher in the far corner of the desk, he filled her former food bowl with water, and extracted a piece of cloth from another drawer. With hands more gentle than she would have expected, he soaked the clotted blood from her wounds, and then cleaned and brushed her fur, clipping out the mats and twigs that could not be removed otherwise.
As he worked, he talked softly to her, mostly about the unkindness of the children in this place, a school he called Hogwarts – how they treated him like an intruder because he refused to indulge them in their bad behavior, and pushed him until he had to punish them, and then, instead of doing the intelligent thing and learning to behave properly, went back to pushing him harder, leading to more severe punishment… "What do they expect me to do? Let them get away with it?" he demanded, as if he thought that she would answer. She did in her own way, butting her now-clean head against his jaw and purring up into his face. He scritched her under the chin. "You do understand, don't you? So did she, and that's why I'm giving you her name."
When the cleaning and brushing and clipping were done, and she felt almost like her old pampered self, she curled up in the man's lap and went to sleep. The cat who now called herself Not-Alone, soon to be known as Mrs. Norris, had found herself a new home.