The Lady and Her Cats
The thing was, Dolores had always wanted to have a cat. There was something about their holier-than-thou attitude, their soft fur hiding sharp claws and fangs, their eyes full of intelligence, that echoed somewhere deep within her soul.
It wasn't really logical, she knew, but she felt like those animals, at least, wouldn't judge her the way the rest of the world did.
They thought she didn't know, that she couldn't hear the whispers – but oh, how she heard them: the mocking words, the insults, like she was lesser than them because her parents weren't as rich as theirs, because she wasn't as pretty as the other girls.
(well, she'd just have to show them, wouldn't she?)
But a pet wouldn't judge her, she thought. A pet would be loyal to her first, wouldn't betray her the way everyone seemed to end up doing, and in return she'd protect them too.
Of course, it wasn't as easy as that. Her parents refused to get her any kind of pet. In fact, Dolores thought spitefully, now that they knew she wanted a cat, they might very well buy her an owl, if they ever bought her anything, because, as her father had said with a sneer, 'at least an owl was useful for something'.
"There'll never be one of those horrible fur balls in my house for as long as I'm in this world, you hear me?" Her mother had yelled, face red in anger, and Dolores had understood that she shouldn't bring up the subject again.
It didn't matter though. In two years, she'd be free of them and ale to live on her own, and there she'd get all the cats she wanted and no one would be able to stop her.
Besides, just because she couldn't officially own a cat didn't mean she couldn't take care of one.
.x.
His name was Minty. Well, that's what she called him, since the first time she had stumbled on the poor thing he had been sick from ingesting one of those terrible minty sweets.
Minty's fur was a dark grey spotted with white and black patches. He was clearly a wild one, spitting and clawing her way even as sick as he had been then, but Dolores wasn't a witch for nothing.
Immobilizing the cat so she could take care of him had been easy, and from that day on, Dolores had had a little shadow whenever she left her home to wander the streets during the holidays.
She missed him when she was at school, and she knew he did too – the way he hurried her way as soon as she came back told her that much. She had found a way to keep in touch with him though – Hogwarts' owls were impossibly clever sometimes, and finding one willing to take portions of fish to a cat living in the London's streets had been only a matter of time.
When she was there though, there was no need to use an owl to bring him food.
"Here," Dolores said to the cat as she handed him small strips of fish she had snatched at lunch.
Minty snapped up the fish like he hadn't eaten in days, and Dolores moved to sit on the nearby bench that marked the spot where they usually spent their afternoons.
"I'm sorry, Minty," she sighed, drawing her knees to her chest, "but I still can't bring you home. I just don't understand why they can't see how wonderful you are. My mother even said that you were a fur ball, you know – but don't worry, I'm not like her. I can see how special you are, and it doesn't matter that she's so stubborn and stupid," Dolores raged, her fists tight in anger.
Minty mewled, and jumped on the bench to rub his head against her arms.
Dolores moved to caress his back. "Merlin, they make me so mad," she confessed in a harsh whisper, burying her head in his fur. "And my father just stood there, agreeing with her, like he couldn't see anything wrong with what was happening.
"Merlin, I just wish…" they weren't here anymore to bother me, she didn't add, but there, in that darkened alley, on that wooden bench on a cloudy summer's afternoon, she thought that Minty, at least, understood her without any further words needed.
Two days later, someone ripped her mother's throat out as she left the house to Apparate to Diagon's Alley.
The Aurors concluded that it had been a random attack, that someone had used a butchered version of a severing spell, and that was it.
Dolores and her father accepted those conclusions with all the grace they could in those circumstances, and kept on living their lives.
(the seed was planted though, and in some far off and dark corner of Dolores' mind the thought that she knew who – or rather what – might be responsible took root)
.x.
Random events kept happening over the years. Not always deaths, of course, but curiously those events only happened to the people Dolores truly hated or those who stood in her way.
Her father was first, tumbling down the stairs – St Mungo's had fixed him up quickly, but something had changed in him.
"Something tripped me!" He cried out whenever someone tried to talk about his fall. "It's that demon, he was there – I saw his eyes, those bright eyes, staring at me in the darkness as I laid there, like it was happy to see me laid down so!"
On a completely unrelated note, Dolores adopted more cats, this time with her father's permission.
"There's something wrong in this house," he muttered, his hands shaking. "Something rotten. Ever since your mother died, I've felt it, this presence… I want you to be careful, Dolores, you hear me? Maybe those cats of yours will be good for something and rid us of this vermin," he added, still muttering, as he grabbed her tightly by the shoulders.
"You be careful," he repeated, breathing deep and visibly trying to calm himself.
It didn't work for long. Only hours later, Dolores found her father wandering their house, his wand out, muttering detections spells with every step he took.
"There's something there, I know there is… Come out, you little demon, come out," he kept muttering.
Wisely, Dolores stepped back and retreated to her room, where Minty was waiting for her, sprawled out on her bed.
"I think my father's going crazy," she admitted, nonplussed.
Minty raised his head and threw her a truly condescending look.
"I know, I know, nothing unusual there," she laughed. "Only something's different, I can feel it. I just don't know what it is."
Minty's head butted against her hand. "You're right, of course," Dolores replied, nodding. "It doesn't really matter. At least I have you now, and soon, you'll get new companions. Brothers and sisters, that'd be nice now, wouldn't it?"
Minty purred in agreement, and with that Dolores put her father's odd behavior out of her mind.
After all, she would be going back to Hogwarts in just a few days, and she needed a companion there. She's have taken Minty, but he was still a bit too wild around people who weren't her, and Hogwarts was full of those.
Besides, she had a feeling her father would need some looking after, and what better candidate than her faithful cat?
.x.
The newcomer was a tiny thing – fur a thick maroon color and small beady eyes the color of the ground in the park when it was night.
Minty eyed it with suspicious eyes. If this tiny intruder thought it could replace him, it had another thing coming.
He was the Mistress' first guard, her first line of defense, and while it would be good to get some help – the Mistress' father was a stupid human, unworthy of being related to the Mistress, but his traps were growing more complex and difficult to evade with every passing week – Minty wouldn't accept anyone.
Besides, the newcomer would accompany the Mistress to the far-off place, and tiny as it was, Minty couldn't be sure it would know what to do to the humans getting in the Mistress' way.
'Who are you?' Minty mewled, prowling around the kitten.
For a moment, Minty thought the newcomer wouldn't answer, and he prepared himself to take care of things. After all, the Mistress couldn't have such an unworthy underling.
Just as he was about to strike though, the kitten mewled back. 'The Great Lady calls me Twinkles. Who are you?'
The admiration in the dark eyes facing him convinced him, more than anything the other cat could have said, that this Twinkles would be a good addition to their ranks.
'The Mistress calls me Minty,' he replied, 'and if you are serious about serving the Mistress, there are some things you should know.'
'I'm listening,' Twinkles said, and listen he did.
(to any outsider, it would have looked like two pets getting the measure of each other – finding out if they could live together)
(in truth, it was the start of so much more)
.x.
Minty died seven years after she had finally gotten Twinkles. He had been a simple cat, after all, and quite old by the time Dolores had stumbled upon him.
Still, as unsurprising as his death was, she mourned him more than she had ever mourned a human being.
Her cats, Twinkles and the three others she had officially adopted in the last few years – all part-Kneazle on some degree, all guaranteed to live longer than normal lives – were quieted in the following days, and she knew they missed the old cat too.
Even the cats she didn't own, the ones that she, like had once been the case with Minty, she found on the streets and helped out from time to time, behaved differently for a while.
But in the end, life moved on, as it always did, and everything went back to normal, odd incidents happening around Dolores and all.
.x.
Dolores wasn't allowed to bring any of her cats to Hogwarts. Instead, she brought the numerous plates she had had made of them when they had only been small kittens who fit in the palm of her hands.
It felt like a piece of home, to hear their angry hissing and spitting whenever a particularly unruly student was brought to her office.
She didn't even notice the lack of odd incidents happening to those students, the way incidents had happened to people at the Ministry, or even at Hogwarts, during her last couple of years.
(Betty Sallinsky had never looked the same after she had been attacked, apparently by a rampaging beast escaped from the Creatures' course – and who would, with an ear missing?)
.x.
She didn't realize that there was a patter until later still, and even then, only because it was finally too obvious to miss.
She found the body in front of her fireplace. It looked like it had been dragged there - the corpse's face was frozen in fear and pain, its last moments immortalized by the cold embrace of death.
Dolores didn't understand at first. She screamed, dropping all her belongings and whipping out her wand, reading to face the intruder who would dare come into her home to do this.
It was then that she saw them. The two kittens she had adopted just last month, one black and the other his fur a blue so deep it almost looked purple, standing by Twinkles, the first cat she had ever owned.
They just stood there, looking almost... expectant. Their little eyes shone bright in the dark room, but what little light the fireplace cast was enough for Dolores to see the blood on their claws and muzzles. It glistened, like a gory parody of glitter.
"Did you-did you do this?" she asked her beloved pets, taking a small step toward them, bending her knees.
The cats only kept staring at her, but their eyes seemed to whisper, yes, we did, aren't you proud of us?. Twinkles mewled, and as one the two kittens moved, their claws digging into the flesh of their victim until its dead eyes were staring straight into Dolores'.
It was the face of Arnold Pimplebutton, her fiercest opponent in the matter of Muggleborn rights (filthy creatures, who thought they could steal the magic of proper wizarding folks), and Dolores felt a rush of love warm her cold, charred heart.
"Thank you my dears," she whispered sweetly to her cats, reaching out to pet their soft fur.
"Yes, thank you," she repeated as she considered a future free of Arnold's relentless arguments for the rights of people who shouldn't have any.
(oh, the possibilities – she had thought those incidents random, but if they were not)
(of, if they weren't)
.x.
Her cats were discreet – silent shadows in the night, stalking their preys during the day, leaving no traces of their actions in the night.
Rumors spread, of a menace worse than You-Know-Who's had ever been. People talked about eyes glowing in the dark, about wards that were unable to protect anyone and in truth only preserved the starch smell of death until someone stumbled upon a disfigured body.
That was another common point, people whispered.
The disfigurations. Long and thin cuts marking the bodies, bits of flesh ripped out by what looked like sharp teeth. Sometimes the eyes were missing too, people said. Others, blood had pooled around the body and it looked like something small had stood there, in the spaces between the droplets of blood that had sprayed the walls and floor.
It was only too easy to use the public unrest to bring back up concern on the beasts that were werewolves.
"Surely those… creatures would be the only ones able to cause such damage to a body," Dolores proclaimed at a press' conference, smiling interiorly when she found many head nodding along.
"But what about the dates?" A particularly brave reporter asked, causing a spike of anger in Dolores' heart. This reporter wouldn't last much longer. "Those attacks didn't all happen on full moons. Aren't you afraid of condemning innocent people?"
Dolores painted a concerned look on her face before replying. "Of course, I am. This is obviously a very valid concern, and one we've considered at length. Unfortunately, werewolves still remain our best lead. After all, the beast Fenrir Greyback was known for being able to transform at will – what's to say that he's the only one to know this unholy secret.
"It is the Ministry's duty, my duty, to keep you safe, and right now this means investigating werewolves. And well, if they have nothing to hide, they will be perfectly safe," she concluded.
It was a lie, of course. Not only would the Aurors find proof of the werewolves alleged crimes – horrible proof too: jars of eyeballs, preserved in liquid, cloth soaked in blood and pieces of flesh – but no werewolf would be safe.
Not with the laws that would be presented to the Wizengamot in the next few sessions.
And once the werewolves were taken care of, it was only a matter of time before she dealt with vampires, and all the other so-called sentient creatures who dared consider themselves as good as wizards.
For now though, she thought as she called the press conference to an end, a warm bath as she considered where to point her cats next would be the perfect end to this long day.
The reporter would have to go, of course, but he couldn't be the only one. There had to be other pro-werewolves types that she could target.
"I'm doing this for this society's own good," she told her cats that evening, her hands tangle dup in their fur. "Without me, without us to point them in the right direction they would let half-breed lead this country to ruin. Well, not one my watch. Not on my watch."
All around her, tiny eyes glowed like so many pinpricks of light, a dark promise of what was to come.
.x.
Her plans worked. One after the other, her opponents toppled down like so many dominos, only with more blood and gore.
Before she knew it, Dolores found herself on top of the world: ruling magical Britain as its Minister, the first one to have been elected by such a landslide majority.
Life was good. Too good to be true, in fact, and that's when things started to go down, her empire built on death and blood crumbling down around her.
It started with little things: stuff being moved around when she wasn't there, odd incidents befalling people who were loyal to her and her ideals instead of to her opponents.
Oh, these happened too, of course, but now they weren't the only ones.
In fact, it seemed like no one was safe.
Many wizards and witches tried to flee Britain. Some of them made it out, regaling the neighboring countries with tales of a society killing itself, an unseen evil hunting them down.
None of them believed them. Not at first.
But the testimonies kept piling up, until one undeniable truth was revealed: there was something rotten going on in magical Britain.
But of course, by then it was much too late for anyone there.
The French and German authorities gathered up a force and stormed Britain, only to find it deserted, not a single living human magical soul left.
Not one?
No, that wasn't quite true.
Someone had remained, among the piles of corpses. A little lady, more than halfway out of her mind, muttering to herself in what remained of the Ministry.
"They did this, but I showed them," she kept repeating, her hushed whispers only interrupted by impromptu bouts of mad laughter as she rocked on herself.
That lady was dressed entirely in pink, and cradled in her arms laid the broken body of a cat, its neck snapped in two.
"They did this, but I showed them," the lady repeated, and laughed. "Oh look, there they are! My precious little babies!"
And then she smiled, a mad thing full of teeth.
The foreign Aurors never even saw the cats coming.