AN: This is not to be taken too seriously.
The small animal did not attempt to return to its home until three days after the bright lights and loud screams had driven it out.
The cat, formally known as Tilly, was typically used to the commotion of living with her family, the Potters. She'd been dyed every basic color known to the human race, chased after by a small human on a broom, and been tormented more times than she'd prefer by a large black dog, among other acts.
She was not terribly surprised to find the house in shambles, both because she had witnessed the calamity three days ago and also because it was not the first time something had been utterly destroyed in her home. Her owners had a knack for playing with cards that explode. They frequently changed from humans to a dog or deer and even a rat.
It had taken her quite a while to realize that, yes, she can go after the rats in the attic, but no, that one particular rat is for some unforeseen reason off limits.
And, after singeing her tail at least twice in her inspections, she had come to accept that sometimes her family liked to be engulfed in the flames from the fireplace.
As she approached her home, her neatly groomed hair prickled on her back and a hiss escaped from her mouth. Sneaking through the back door, which had been knocked ajar, she glanced up at the broken window above the kitchen sink. How she loved climbing through the plants on the small window garden. Sometimes, if she lay there long enough, the woman of the house would fuss, pick her up, and hug her close. While Tilly did not often appreciate coddling, she did rather like the redheaded woman.
Her home smelled horrible. Her nose tingled at the strong smell of smoke. There was no trace of the delicious smells of food. And even though it sometimes bothered her, she could no longer smell any trace of perfume or candles, as her humans were accustomed to burning. In place she detected a scent of the terror that had occurred not long ago, although as a cat she could never quite understand what that meant. Just that she should run in the other direction as fast as possible.
Meowing in distress, she sniffed around the cupboards for her favorite meal, but when she did find what seemed to be what she was looking for, it was encased in tin and impenetrable to her sharp claws and teeth. In frustration, she hissed and knocked the can to the floor.
"Oi! What was that?" A voice called from the other room.
Tilly froze for an instant, her senses alert. A human male appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, his scent unfamiliar to Tilly. She bolted from the counter and toward the crumpled door from which she'd entered.
She could hear the man shout once more from behind her as she made her escape, but all it did was propel her forward in her haste to protect herself.
She would try to go home again tomorrow. Perhaps her owners would return by then. In the meantime, she busied herself with sniffing out the trail to a mouse that seemed to be lurking near the neighbor's basement.
Tilly kept vigil of her home over the new few days.
Each time she returned, the house was changed but undeniably destroyed. The scent of her owners remained underneath the scents of those who seemed to be nosing around. The scent of danger, or negative energy, that had warned Tilly off days ago had disappeared.
Using her claws and agility, she climbed up what was left of the staircase and inspected the bedrooms. The redheaded woman and black-haired man's room was nearly untouched, with no fresh scents indicating they had been there recently.
Tilly, for reasons she did not understand, would not go near the baby's room.
The sound of a small explosion caused her to jump and meow loudly in surprise. For an instant, she ran toward the sound, convinced it was her family. And then the unfamiliar voices carried to her ears from down below.
She hid beneath the bed, and did not emerge for hours.
A few days later, when Tilly was sleeping peacefully near the bushes in the front yard, rough hands quite suddenly and rudely grabbed her.
She hissed and clawed, but the man who seized her was unperturbed. He laughed, and managed to grip her in a way that she was forced to comply.
"This is the second time I've seen this cat," he said to another. Tilly swiped out her paw, and scratched his cheek. Instead of releasing her, he simply cursed loudly and rubbed at his wound with his shoulder, refusing to free up his hands by letting her go.
"Feisty," said the other, now laughing as well. Tilly hissed again, but neither of them paid it attention.
"Did the Potters have a cat?" asked the one who was holding her.
"Only one way to find out," said the other.
It was with those words that began a miserable hour of Tilly's life. Although she was quite enraged and desperately plotting to make the humans pay for disturbing her peace and holding her, she found that she was also unnaturally calm, and could not find the energy to carry out her instinctual plans to maim.
"Found this cat wandering around," the man said to numerous neighbors in Godric's Hollow. "Is it yours?"
"No, never seen her."
"No, sorry, sir."
"If you don't find a home for her," said an old lady who lived two streets down from the Potters, "I will take her."
Tilly stared at the line of small dogs in the window, all barking and scratching the glass. A small hiss escaped her, and she felt the man holding her lightly pet her head.
"Er," he said hesitantly, also eyeing the small devils in the window, "I'll keep that in mind."
After parading Tilly around Godric's Hollow for nearly two hours, the man returned to the Potter's home with defeat.
"She's either a stray or she belonged to the Potters," he told his companion. "Poor girl," he murmured, and hugged her closer.
Tilly, who did not appreciate this at all, managed to lash out and bite his ear as he rubbed his face against her.
"Damn it all!" the man shouted, and finally released her.
She managed to run across the yard before the other human inexplicably captured her. She found herself suddenly inside of a cage and floating in the air.
"We'll drop her off at the menagerie in Diagon Alley," said one of them. "She'll be under good care there and someone can adopt her."
And so Tilly was forced to travel by the flames of the fireplace as the men Floo'd her to Diagon Alley and her new home in the Magical Menagerie.
She did not like the Magical Menagerie.
The animals were strange, and proud, and constantly competing for the attention of the owner as well as any of the shoppers. Tilly preferred the quiet, and she did not appreciate how often one of the other cats ate her food or when their hair ended up in her water dish.
During the day, the animals with the least risk were allowed to wander around the store for a few hours, but to Tilly's annoyance no matter how hard she tried, she could not find a way to go outside on her own.
The owner, an older woman who smelled of tonic and feces, which Tilly detested, let the cats out sometimes at night. But to Tilly's confusion, no matter her intent to wander off, it always seemed that she ended up back at the menagerie in the morning, getting shut up in her cage to prepare for the shop's opening.
"In you go," the woman would say, and Tilly would find herself picked up and in the cage before she could do much about it.
"Now look alive, dearies. Maybe today will be your day!" Their caretaker would tell them.
And so went Tilly's life at the menagerie.
It was one fall morning, nearly a year after she had been taken from her home, that Tilly's life changed forever. It started with an incident in which a Puffskein ate a poisonous orange snail.
In the owner's frantic attempt to see if anything could be done to save either the Puffskein or the snail, she neglected to properly ensure that the magical transforming rabbit was adequately restrained in a viewing area.
The other animals of the menagerie watched unblinkingly as the rabbit hopped up on top of the cage encasing the fire crabs. At the commotion, one of the crabs defended itself, in the only way it knew how, which unfortunately involved shooting fire.
Tilly had luckily been let out of her cage for the time being to stretch her legs and watched the scene with interest. It just so happened that a middle-aged woman, a frequenter of the menagerie whom Tilly remembered, mostly due to her scent (whoever she was, she owned quite a few animals), was shopping that day for a potion that would prevent her cats from contracting rabies.
As the rabbit jumped up onto the fire crabs cage, and the crabs scattered in fright, Tilly knew from experience with the hellish creatures that fire would soon follow. Tilly was familiar with avoiding fire, both from her previous life and her current life in the menagerie. Acting on instinct, she lunged forward and harshly bit the woman's pant leg, effectively making her jump, step back, and completely avoid the flames coming from the cage that had been situated directly behind her.
The woman screeched in surprise and stared at the air that had just been consumed by fire right in front of her.
"Ma'am," the owner cried. "I am so very sorry. Are you all right?"
The woman, eyes wide with surprise, blinked down at Tilly, who sat at her feet. Tilly meowed softly and when it was clear that the woman would not lash out, darted forward quickly to rub against her ankles in apology for biting her.
"Is this cat part-kneazle?" asked the woman. "It just saved me from being scorched by that fire!"
The owner looked bewildered and stared at Tilly with wide eyes as well. "Not that I'm aware of. She's been here for almost a year and while I wouldn't say she's unintelligent, she's never given an indication of being part-kneazle."
"Not unintelligent," murmured the woman. "Of course she's intelligent! Just warned me in the only way she knew how, she did."
The owner nodded in agreement and glanced around the store, still preoccupied by the temporary ruckus that had been caused.
"I'll take her," the woman declared decisively.
Tilly, who did not understand English, was well familiar with what it meant when a cat was put in a cage, picked up, and placed on the front counter. She had observed numerous cat adoptions in her time at the store.
As the woman paid for her and once more recounted the events from the past few minutes, she leaned down to looked at Tilly through the thin bars of the carrying cage.
"My name, darling," she said affectionately, "is Mrs. Figg."
Tilly meowed in response, and was grateful that travel by flames was not used this time around as she was taken to her new home.
As the next few days passed, Tilly adjusted. And even though she had hoped for the better part of nearly a year that she could have her freedom again, she found herself returning to the house, and Mrs. Figg, each and every night.
Although there were other cats in the home, Tilly found that they were quite well behaved and not disrespectful at all as some had been the menagerie.
Sometimes the woman would insist that their feet be cleaned if they came into the house, or connive them into sitting in odd positions to take pictures. Tilly found many things the woman did strange, but above all she was flattered by the attention.
She never wanted for food or water, and to her delight, she was praised each and every time she brought a mouse or rat to the feet of her owner.
Tilly decided rather quickly that she rather liked Mrs. Figg and her new home.
And years later, after so much time had passed that neither of them remembered each other, things came full circle when Tilly's home was visited by Harry Potter.
"Sit down, dear," Mrs. Figg told the boy. "I'm afraid I don't usually entertain children, but I do have something you may be interested in!"
With those words, she sat a photo album filled with pictures of her beloved cats in his lap. As Mrs. Figg went into the kitchen to prepare tea, Harry began looking through the numerous pictures.
After only a moment, he looked up from a photo of the cats at Christmas, all encased in knit sweaters with bells hanging from their collars.
"She's . . ." Harry started, and stopped. He looked up at Tilly, who was sitting on the other side of the room and looking directly at him as well. "She really loves you guys, huh?"
Tilly, of course, hadn't a clue what he'd said, but meowed in response anyway.
When Mrs. Figg returned minutes later, Tilly had been coaxed to sit on the couch with the boy, and it was too much of an opportunity for the woman to pass up.
"Oh Harry, dear! Don't move! We'll take a photo of you for the album!"
Harry sighed in hesitance.
Tilly, accustomed to the practice of posing, perked her head up at the woman's voice.
And so there existed a photograph, in the back of one of Mrs. Figg's albums, documenting the unknown reunion between boy and cat, the only surviving souls of the household they had shared for a brief period of time, when they had both been part of a different family.
AN: I don't know. I'm sure this has been done before. Done purely for my entertainment, which is why I don't care that it's corny. For the record, though, every time Tilly seems to feel/do something despite her instinct, it was the wizards influencing her with magic. Also, the men at the beginning who took her to the menagerie weren't thieves, they were Ministry workers.