A/N — beta'd by the wonderful Raven [Raven of the Shadows]
.i.
Jumping up onto her bed, he sits beside her—"Crookshanks! Your tail's in my mouth!"—and keeps guard. She bats at him gently, shifting him until he's off her pillow and sitting on the mattress by her stomach. An arm stretches out, fingers gently running through the fur on his back.
She's a good human, he thinks, though she's clearly not very good at taking care of herself. She can't jump very far or run very fast, and she clearly isn't a hunter, or that whole—
That's it!
He jumps from the bed—"After all that?"—idea already forming, and stalks down the stairs. The Common Room's empty—humans, he's learnt, are not usually nocturnal creatures—but this is not his destination.
Early on, he had discovered that the House-elves were excellent hunters; at the time he had appreciated it for the increasingly rare trait it was, but now it's more of a hinderance than anything. He'll also need to sneak past Mrs. Norris, who fancies herself deputy caretaker of the school.
But that's easily done when you're off the catnip, and he's slipping through a classroom window and jumping onto the grass below without incident.
It doesn't take him long to find a small rodent, a baby mouse, which he toys with for a few moments, but he doesn't think that's going to be good enough so he moves on quickly.
Then, he sees it. Large and twitching, like the other had been, but this one isn't quite the same. He is thankful for that, because for it to be the same would be very bad; he wants to let her know that he will protect her, not scare her or put her in danger.
He hides in the tall grass, watching the creature from afar. It doesn't seem to have sensed any danger. Not overly intelligent then. He briefly contemplates searching for another one—a better one—but the sky will begin to lighten soon and he doesn't have the time.
It runs straight for him, possibly damaged in some way—had he stumbled upon someone else's hunt? sloppy seconds would not be good enough for her—and he easily pins it under his paws. Too easily, considering its size, but after a quick sniff he determines that it hasn't been caught by another cat.
He bites down hard and the creature's squeal of protest is cut short.
Walking proudly through the castle, his most recent kill clutched tightly between his teeth, he makes it back to the Gryffindor Tower in good time.
He hops back up onto the bed, leaving the creature next to her head on the pillow, so it will be the first thing she sees when she wakes up.
Which happens sooner than he expects, as he's just drifting off when she begins to stir.
The scream is unexpected—she doesn't sound excited—and so is the wild thrashing of limbs that knocks him off the bed. He lands on the floor in a disgruntled heap, glaring up at her.
"What the—How—" she finally catches sight of him "—Why?"
Did she not like it? He jumps back onto the bed, nudging the creature with his nose and checking it over. It didn't smell off. In fact, it smelt as good as a dead rat possibly could. He would be happy to eat it.
(It is only later that he will realise she probably didn't want the reminder; that not enough time had passed for her to be entirely comfortable. But he will also remember something she spends a lot of time searching for, and he will be confident he can help her.)
.ii.
He crouches low, ears back. Listening.
The last gift hadn't gone so well, but he was sure this one would be perfect; now he just needs to—
A flash of green—a leg briefly extended from under an armchair only to be quickly pulled back—and Crookshanks stalks closer.
He ducks behind a table leg and peers around the narrow pillar of wood, tail swishing behind him.
Taking a deep breath, he narrows his eyes, focussing entirely on the gap underneath the chair where—
There!
He pounces, leaping forward with a yowl—"That bloody cat! Someone get Granger!"—and lands solidly on top of the creature. It struggles, kicking out, but he lowers himself slowly, gently, until it can no longer move.
The creature stills, and he waits a moment before shuffling back carefully, making sure to keep it pinned to the floor. He stills with it pinned under his chest, thinking. This next part, he'll have to do quickly.
He waits, patiently, lulling the creature into a false sense of security, and then—
It gives a choked off cry of distress, and has a leg extended forwards, but Crookshanks is too fast and it's already held firmly to the floor with his paws, though he'd been careful not to extend his claws.
He gives it an experimental sniff, and draws back in disgust. Definitely not for eating. But he'd seen her hunting this creature before, so she must have some other use for it, unless she really did—
No. She might be strange and lack almost all basic survival instincts, but even she wouldn't want to eat this.
Steeling himself, he gingerly leans his face closer once more, opening his mouth slowly. He hesitates, but the thought of how much she'll love this pushes him forward, and he carefully closes his teeth around the creature.
It's bumpy and weirdly dry and tastes worse than it smelled. It's a lot bigger than he'd expected, too, but that's no matter.
He trots happily through the Common Room—"What's in its mouth? Is it… I'm not dealing with that."—and carefully manoeuvres the stairs. They pose a bit more of a challenge than usual, but it'll all be worth it when—
"Crookshanks!" He looks up at her, eyes wide. That didn't sound like the unbridled joy he'd been expecting, but maybe— "Drop him! Drop him right now!" He opens his mouth quickly, the creature falling spreadeagled to the floor, not moving.
He gives it a gentle nudge with a paw, concerned, and the creature makes an aborted attempt to leap forward, finding itself stuck between them.
She picks it up carefully, cupping her palms and holding it close to her chest—maybe she'd wanted to hunt it herself?—and Crookshanks follows her down the stairs and up another flight, wondering where she's—
"Neville, you need to keep better track of Trevor," she says, handing the creature over. Crookshanks bristles—a regift?—and stalks out of the room.
(Later, when he's had a chance to calm down, he will realise that perhaps it hadn't been the best gift for her, anyway. Too jumpy. He will think of something better, something he knows she likes.)
.iii.
Admittedly, it takes Hermione an embarrassingly long time to realise what is up with her cat. But well, she's busy—between the SPEW, Umbridge's witch hunt (ah! she snorts to herself at the thought, even if it fits better than anything else) for anything Voldemort-related, the DA and the OWLs coming up, it's a wonder she has any time to even notice Crookshanks' odd behavior.
And it starts small, too, something so innocuous she couldn't have not missed it.
In fact, at first Crookshanks' behavior isn't that odd at all. He just plays with the yarn she uses to knit, which, she's told, is a thing cats like to do. It's a bit annoying, because sometimes the yarn knots when it's not supposed to because her cat decided to play, but it's nothing a couple of spells can't fix (Mrs. Weasley was delighted to finally have someone interested in knitting, even if Hermione prefers to do it the Muggle way most of the time) and anyway, she finds the way Crookshanks keeps pouncing on the coloured balls of yarn both adorable and hilarious.
And that's probably why she doesn't notice when it changes from him simply playing with the yarn to him playing with the stuff she's knitted. It's not like he's being obvious about it too, and for all she knows it could have been the House-Elves themselves, leaving her gifts back on her bed.
(Clearly her efforts to free them aren't going well, but that doesn't mean she's giving up anytime soon—slavery is wrong and if anyone in the magical world thinks otherwise then they're going to have to deal with her, because there is going to be a problem.)
The weird thing is that not all the little outfits she knits end up back on her bed. Maybe that's why it takes her so long to recognize the pattern.
Because there is a pattern. Only the most colourful pieces return to her room, only the softest outfits are brought back to her. It would be adorable if it wasn't also completely destroying the purpose of her knitting stuff she could leave around the Common Room for the House-Elves.
But she can't stop him until she catches him in the act, so one evening she forces herself to stay up even after her roommates fall asleep, the sound of their breathing muffled by the drapes hanging from their beds.
It's no hardship. In fact, it is oddly peaceful. If Hogwarts is always like this at night, Hermione thinks she knows why the boys like sneaking out so much. She reads for a while—she'd knit but her hands are a little too cramped for that—as she hasn't had the chance to read purely for pleasure in a while. So screw it, she's going to savor this even if it means that tomorrow she'll have the sleep-deprivation headache from hell. She's careful to keep her light low and to not make too much noise. And, while she tries to keep an ear out for the moment Crookshanks will undoubtedly try to deliver one of her knitted hats back to her, she inevitably fails.
Then again, Crookshanks is a cat, and cats are sneaky by nature. She should have expected the surprise. It's not even like it's the first (or second, or tenth) time her cat scares her half to death. At least she knows better than to scream now, even if the sound of padded paws on the stone floor, followed closely by glowing eyes appearing right in front of her face still make her heart skip a beat in fright.
"Crookshanks!" she hisses in a harsh whisper. "What are you doing? You scared me half to death, you know I don't like that!"
Her cat suddenly looks very contrite as he headbutts her hands, but Hermione suspects he's mostly trying to get her to put the book away. Crookshanks often does this when he thinks she's not paying him enough attention, and because Hermione is weak when it comes to adorable animals (like her cat, no matter what anyone else thinks) she puts her book away and scratches his ears.
Crookshanks drops a red and gold knitted hat on her lap. It is slightly wet with saliva now, and his teeth have pulled at the thread a little, but it's not like the hat was perfect in the first place so Hermione doesn't… well, she doesn't mind exactly, but she's still not that happy about this situation.
But Crookshanks looks oddly proud of himself, so Hermione can't bring herself to be too harsh about this.
"This," she says, holding the little hat in front of Crookshanks' eyes, "is not for me. It's not for you; you don't have to bring it back to me—in fact, don't bring it back to me, please, it's important that this stays right where it was put…" She trails off, huffing slowly. She is terrible at this, and Crookshanks just keeps staring at her with big glowing eyes, which definitely isn't helping her any. She has no idea if he understands anything of what she's saying, because Crookshanks isn't really reacting the way he usually does when Hermione tells him the rules he has to follow.
She sighs and then tries to adopt a sterner tone—even though it's difficult to convey that properly when she has to stick to whispers—as she slowly gets up from her bed. She hisses as the chill hits her bare legs but she pads her way out of the room and down the stairs, toward the Common Room anyway, confident that her cat is following her.
She stops beside the fireplace, as she's pretty sure that's where the hat Crookshanks presented her with came from, and sure enough, there is nothing there.
She drops the hat and turns around to stare at her cat. "See?" she says, pointing at the hat that now lies next to the fireplace. "This is where these things are supposed to stay. You can't just take them, alright?"
Crookshanks' head drops a little as he mewls quietly. Hermione bends down and reaches out for a hug, burying her head into the reddish fur.
"I'm not mad," she explains, "but you can't do it again."
Crookshanks mewls again, but somehow Hermione feels he understood her.
('Not this either then,' Crookshanks thinks as he looks at the soft-thing-my-human-made. It's fine. He'll find something she wants, eventually)
.iv.
He's much more careful this time. Before, he reasons, he hadn't been quite prepared when she found his gifts. This time, he would keep it hidden until he could give it to her on his own terms.
But what to get her?
Nothing alive. She didn't like that. And nothing that had been alive before he came across it, as she wasn't particularly fond of that either.
She hadn't wanted the things she left in the Common Room back—though that was an honest mistake, as he hadn't realised she was getting rid of them, but in his defence leaving them out in the open in her own territory wasn't really the best method of disposal.
That left…
Nothing.
What could you possibly get for someone who turned up their nose at a dead rat? She clearly has unreasonably high standards.
He stalks over to where she is talking to the youngest boy with the red hair, giving him his best threatening glare. But the boy is being significantly less annoying than usual so he goes off in search of the mother.
He likes the mother, though at times she does mistake him for one of her young—an understandable mistake, as she's done the same with both his human and the other boy, but not an excusable one. At least she's usually easy to find.
And, as usual, he locates her in the kitchen handing a pile of bedding to one of her young—she calls it laundry but Crookshanks grew wise to the mother's strange ways early on—and watches as the boy takes the bedding to his room.
He drops a small piece on the way, and Crookshanks would tell him but he thinks his human would appreciate the gift much more, and if he were being really honest with himself Crookshanks probably wouldn't have told the boy anyway because he is so rarely allowed on the good bedding.
It's a little small, though—it might fit Crookshanks at a push, but his human is very large—so he decides the best thing to do is to hide it and collect more bedding for her.
And he knows the best place.
Crookshanks hears whining of missing underwear—though he's not quite sure what that is—on the second week of collecting, and not long after there's a whole new stack of bedding to choose from.
By the third week, he is ready.
He waits until she's out of the house before he starts pulling the bedding out from under the drawers, arranging them into a comfortable looking pile on her bed.
So comfortable, in fact, that he's debating whether or not he should try it out himself—so that he can be assured it will supply maximum comfort, of course—when she walks in with the youngest red haired boy.
Silence.
He jumps onto the bed—perhaps she just hadn't seen his gift—when:
"Uh… Hermione?" the boy asks. "Are those my boxers?" His human is turning alarming shades of red. "Seriously, 'Mione, why is there a massive pile of underwear on your bed?"
"I—I don't know!" she says, gesturing wildly. "Crookshanks, probably! I just—" She looks around the room desperately, her eyes never staying on one thing for too long. She rounds on Crookshanks. "This is too far!" she says, glaring at him. "Underwear of all things? Why would— Oh, God, are they at least clean?"
The boy stifles a laugh with his hand, but she still hears. "Ron, this isn't funny!"
"It's a little funny, Hermione," he says. The rest of the boy's litter, when they arrive, clearly agree.
Eventually, his human also seems to become amused. Crookshanks bristles at that. It's one thing to reject his gift, but to mock it?
(After some time has passed, he will come to the realisation that his human hadn't objected to the bedding, per se, but to the type of bedding. Even the boys who wear them do so in a way that no one can see. Of course she wouldn't want them.)
.v.
"Hmm, hey guys? Have you seen my cloak? I can't find it," Harry asks somewhat dejectedly, plopping down on the sofa between Ron and Hermione.
Hermione looks up from her book, frowning as Ron asks: "Your cloak or your Cloak?"
"Yes, Ron, my Invisibility Cloak," he hisses through his teeth, worriedly checking that no one is listening.
(No one is—Hermione is pretty sure the Gryffindors have learned that meddling in their affairs is bad for their health by now, and so they deliberately try not to listen in on them, which is nice.)
"Did you check under your bed?" Hermione asks, mentally going through a list of the places where Harry's cloak might have ended up. She's not familiar with the boys' dorms, though she imagines they're much like her own, just with more beds and possibly more stuff lying around, so she can't be sure of where the cloak is, but under the bed seems like a good place to start looking.
"Yes, I looked under the bed," Harry replies, rolling his eyes, his tone clearly conveying who do you think I am—Ron? It makes her lips twitch up in a smile, because from Ron's suddenly offended face, he heard it too.
"Well, when's the last time you used it then? Maybe you forgot it there?" Ron suggests before Hermione can.
Harry sighs. "I'm pretty sure it was in the room last night, guys."
"'Pretty sure' isn't 'entirely sure' though," Hermione points out.
"Fine, I'm like ninety-five percent sure, is that better?" Harry snarks back.
"Much better," Hermione snorts. "But if you think you had it last night then that means someone borrowed it."
"I know," Harry scowls, clenching his fists. "I just don't know who."
He sounds angry and pained, and Hermione's heart goes out to him. She knows how dear that cloak is to him, and she can't imagine what must be going on through his head right now, and she really doesn't want to.
"Maybe it was an accident?" she offers, wincing a little at the thought. After all, picking up and Invisibility Clock by accident sounds kind of implausible.
"Yeah, mate, maybe it got mixed up with other stuff and the House-Elves are washing it right now," Ron says. "Wait, has that Cloak ever been washed anyway? Do people wash their Invisibility Cloaks?" He looks disturbed by that train of thought, and honestly, he's not the only one.
"I have no idea," Harry replies, weirded out.
"You should ask Dobby," Hermione says before the conversation gets anymore derailed. "He'll know if someone's washing your cloak." Probably because he'd be the one doing it (Hermione is pretty sure Dobby has called dibs on all things Harry Potter), she doesn't add.
"Good idea," Harry replies with an eager smile.
As it turns out, Dobby has no idea who took Harry's cloak, but he is very (very) willing to try to find the culprit and punish them for the horrible crime of trying to steal from 'the great Harry Potter, sir'.
"Thank you, Dobby," they all say to that somewhat bemusedly, and then they settle back to wait. They've moved things to the boys' dorm room, since Harry and Ron can't get into hers and they're trying not to advertise what they're doing.
"How long do you think it'll take him?" Ron asks after a few minutes spent in awkward silence.
Harry shrugs. "I have no idea."
The silence lasts a few more minutes, during which Ron starts to rummage through his bedside table for the Exploding Snap cards he swears are there—Hermione is secretly relieved when his search proves futile, because there are about a hundred things she'd rather be doing than playing Exploding Snap right now—before Dobby pops back in which a sharp crack, followed by the sound of furious hissing.
It is a sound Hermione is only too familiar with.
"Crookshanks!" she yells when her cat crashes into her chest, "what happened?"
Deciding she would deal with Ron's muttered "I knew that cat was a menace" later, Hermione busies herself with checking Crookshanks over. Thankfully, he seems unharmed.
"Now what was that about?" Hermione asks, rounding up on Dobby, who, last she saw, had been fighting off her cat like he was the devil himself.
"Well," Ron starts, suddenly sounding more amused, "it seems like your cat stole Harry's cloak."
Hermione just blinks, taken aback. "He did what?"
Dobby nods animatedly as he reverently hands a familiar piece of silvery fabric to Harry. "Dobby founds Harry Potter sir's cloak with the cat, sir," he says, throwing a look so full of venom towards Crookshanks that Hermione tightens her arms around him.
"Well, I'm sure it was just an accident, wasn't it, Crookshanks?" Hermione retorts, looking at her cat and mentally lamenting at his lack of forethought. "He's very sorry, and it won't happen again," she tells Harry, who looks relieved, amused and thankfully not mad at all.
"Make sure it doesn't," he says, and that's that.
(Crookshanks had thought that the soft, sparkly thing that belonged to his human's not-litter and smelled like his human would make a perfect gift, because it was pretty and soft and useful, but his human hadn't liked that either. Crookshanks was beginning to think that his human was being very difficult—but she deserved the best, and so the best she would get.)
.+i.
Hermione doesn't think that she had ever been as happy as she had been when Ron had proposed. She had been expecting it—discreet, her fiancé was not—but he still had managed to surprise her with a ring that she loved, and, obviously, she had said yes.
But loving the ring doesn't mean that she always wears it. She tries—Merlin knows she tries—but well, she's not used to wearing a ring, and so sometimes she just takes it off and well, forgets that she's not wearing it anymore until much later, at which points she always panics and tries to remember where she left it.
Today is particularly bad. She's supposed to meet Mrs. Weasley—Molly, she corrects herself—in fifteen minutes to plan for the wedding, but she can hardly show up not wearing her ring, and Hermione knows she took it off for reading a couple of hours ago but now she just can't find it. It's maddening.
"Not now, Crookshanks," she tells her cat when he starts headbutting at her shins. "I'm busy—I have to find my ring," she says, speaking both to herself and him as she overturns the sofa's cushions. She's halfway through overturning every book in her library when she remembers that she could just use magic, but of course she's not carrying her wand right now.
She heaves a great sigh, and nearly trips over Crookshanks as she takes her next step."Crookshanks!" she chastises, torn between massaging the palms she used to catch herself on and checking that she didn't hurt her cat. She doesn't have time because he headbutts her shins again, more strongly this time, a low purring sound echoing at the back of his throat before he starts kneading at her jeans.
"I so do not have time for this," she mutters to herself before bending down and lifting Crookshanks into her arms. "What is it that you have to tell me then?" she asks, running a hand softly down his back.
He purrs again, loudly, before shifting his head and opening his mouth, uncurling his tongue slowly. And there, covered in saliva but still sparkling in the low light of the mid-afternoon, rests her ring.
"Oh, thank you, Crookshanks!" Hermione says, burying her smile into her cat's fur. She takes the ring carefully and wipes it clean quickly—a more thorough cleaning will have to wait until she gets her wand. "Thank you!" she repeats, scratching his ears. "You're the best."
If a cat could smile, Hermione would swear that that was what Crookshanks was doing then.
(Finally, Crookshanks thought as his human stepped into the hot-hot-burning place and vanished, he had found the perfect gift for her.)