Crookshanks trotted along one of those passages known only to cats, one of those that humans could watch them enter and still not see. This one led straight to the Hogwarts kitchen, where the house elves should be busy preparing dinner.
Indeed they were. From an exit strategically placed between a Hagrid-sized vegetable bin and a bread kneader big enough to hold several first years, Crookshanks surveyed the scene in front of him for likely prospects for his own dinner.
On one counter, a knife was busy chopping carrots, several at a time, and scraping the pieces off into an enormous pot. Beside it, a bushel basket of peas was shelling itself into another equally large cooking vessel. Both had great potential to become toys – at another time, when the cat was not so hungry – but to the feline palate, they did not constitute food.
The same went for the potatoes that had generated the peels that filled one of the garbage cans to overflowing. The tubers themselves were mashed and steaming gently in a wide pan. Cubes of butter, hovering over the off-white mass, melted and drizzled onto the potato like a thick, golden rain onto mountains. Crookshanks considered decorating the dish with pawprints, but thought better of the idea. He was likely to get mired up to his belly, making a safe escape more of a challenge than he wanted before dinner.
Meat. Where was the meat? Was it out of the great ovens yet? The cat leaped up onto the edge of the bread kneader and from there, narrowly avoiding the huge rounded wooden device that pounded the dough, onto a countertop that was out of the house-elf traffic pattern. The kneader rocked dangerously, and then settled back into place.
One of the elves, wearing only a pair of tea towels tied together at the corners, paused in her mad dash to glare at Crookshanks. She raised a long forefinger and waved it in the cat's face. "Kitty stays out of students' food. Does kitty hear Smiley?" she hissed. Her ears lowered, and Crookshanks felt his own flatten in response. He forced himself to relax, raising his ears back into neutral position and widening his eyes to their most innocent. The elf frowned. "Smiley does not believe you, but Smiley must go back to work." And she did.
Now, back to the meat… A huge platter of hams emerged from one of the ovens, and settled onto a counter on the far side of the kitchen. That was more like it! The cat watched while carving knives separated meat from bone in great chunks, the easier to reduce them to pieces of more moderate size for the serving platters.
It was time to leap into action. Crookshanks launched himself from the counter onto the floor. At full speed, he wove in and out of elfin legs in an orange blur. His goal was within reach! As if rocket launched, he flew up onto the counter and seized a hunk of ham almost as big as he was. His jaws clamped like a vice on the luscious meat. He dropped back to the floor, awkward with the added weight, and dashed for his passage to safety. He held his head high to keep his prize clear of the ground.
"Bad kitty! Come back!" screeched a house elf waving a cleaver. Crookshanks just increased his speed, leaping into the passage out of the kitchen barely ahead of a thrown blade that thrummed in the wall next to the opening.
The temptation to stop and eat was almost overwhelming, but Crookshanks resisted it. He was not the only one who would enjoy this prize. Mrs. Norris would be eating better than her human tonight.