The cat stretched and yawned. He flexed his muscles, feeling his claws extend, and dug them into the fabric of the sofa. The centaur was gone, though the rich horsy, sweaty smell of him still lingered in the room. The big man was fidgeting restlessly, as if he wanted to be off but had needed to stay put for now. Watching, until the cat had finished sleeping. It was all right; this was a friend.
A friend – how did he know that? Why couldn't he remember how he had got here, or anything much of his life before waking up this morning? Was he a stray? He wondered whether to climb into the man's lap, reconsidered and lay down on the sofa beside him. He didn't need the distraction of contact with another being as he tried to think it over.
He had been – somewhere else, once. He remembered a dark, dirty town, and huddling in a corner, away from a snarling adult male and a scared female. His mother and some tom or other? His mother – had been pedigree, he thought. Had run away from home, and got pregnant with him. She had told him there was a safe place he could go – but she hadn't known that it wasn't safe, not if you weren't pedigree, especially not if you were a scruffy stray whose mother didn't even love you enough to lick your fur smooth. There had been bad dogs there – even a rabid dog, who had tried to bite him.
The cat knew – without knowing how he knew – that this man was dangerous too, like the rabid dog. He could smell, in the droplets of sweat on the man's skin, traces of Calming Draught and Draught of Peace (how did he even know that was what they were?). Probably they were something he had to take every day to make sure he stayed safe, like Wolfsbane Potion for werewolves (yes, that was it – lycanthropy, not rabies). But – he was trying to be good. And he was a friend.
The other human, though – that was a different matter. The cat caught himself thinking the thoughts, 'Dark wizard' and 'his Animagus form wouldn't be a dog or even a wolf – it would be a dragon. A Hungarian horntail.' How did he know what a Dark wizard was, or an Animagus, or a dragon?
It didn't matter. He needed to be able to defend himself. He had been a powerful fighter once, he was sure of it. But he couldn't remember the moves he had used before, and he needed to find ones that would work now. He needed to practise.
He launched himself at the man – the dog-man, he decided to think of him. The other could be dragon-man. The dog-man caught him between two big, strong hands that could easily squash him flat. The cat could smell his fear-aggression, wondered whether the man was going to crush him, but instead the human just said, in human-language, 'No, Professor.'
Professor? The word sounded familiar – maybe it was his name? He miaowed, 'Is that my name?'
The human didn't understand, of course, but seemed to realise that it was a question. 'We can do combat practice when you're better. You're too breakable, yet.'
The cat wasn't sure what these human words meant, either. He had been able to understand human language once, he was sure. But now – his ability to understand it seemed to come and go. 'What are you talking about?' he asked.
'We can play tea-towel capture.' The cat didn't need to understand the words this time. He could smell how the man's aggression had turned to excitement and willingness to play. He understood what was going on when the man fetched a piece of cloth from a drawer, and moved quickly to wrap it around him – more quickly than most humans could move, but not quickly enough for a cat. His claws shot out, ripping the cloth and also lacerating the man's arm, before leaping up onto a high shelf where he could think about what to do next.
He didn't think he had ever done this sort of play-fighting with this man before, but it was familiar. Another friend of his – not someone from his old life, he thought, but someone who sometimes came to visit him here – a teacher, Japanese, with long messy black hair, long baggy black shirt and trousers, and long black boots, and with an eyepatch and a prosthetic leg by the last time they'd seen each other. Not exactly a wizard, but not a Muggle either: he had the magical power to cancel others' magic by looking into their eyes, so that he could capture them with a long scarf made of metal fibres. He thought they'd played combat practice then – or was that a dream? In his memory, he had looked very much like the man with the steel scarf – they had both been grumpy schoolteachers with black eyes, long black hair and black clothes.
Or was that just a dream? He couldn't remember. All that was clear was the present moment, and the tall man with short, greying hair reaching up towards him, with a new, undamaged cloth – he could easily reach, but from a high point the cat could leap over him, land on the floor, and take refuge under the sofa. From there, he could make a sneak attack to claw at the man's ankles…
They chased each other all over the room until they were both tired but happy. They had nearly run out of tea-towels, except for the last two, which the man had wrapped around his wrists to stanch the flow of blood. The cat felt a very uncatlike stab of guilt. Duelling practice was about aiming to incapacitate your opponent, not damage them. Or at least, you shouldn't inflict injuries that you couldn't cure. He tried to sing a healing chant, but all that came out was a loud yowl.
Well, there was something he could do, anyway. He jumped onto the worktop and nudged the flasks of Wound-Cleaning Potion and Wiggenweld Potion with his nose. The man nodded good-naturedly. 'Yes, Professor.' He unwrapped the cloths, cleaned his wounds with the smoking purple liquid without even wincing (though the cat knew from memory that it stung badly), and then measured out a dose of the green Wiggenweld Potion and drank it. His scratches stopped bleeding, though they still looked sore and a darker green than his surrounding skin.
Hold on – green? Was that right? Professor – that must be his name, he supposed – knew that Wound-Cleaning Potion really was purple and Wiggenweld Potion really was green, and that Essence of Murtlap Tentacles – he wished he'd thought to prepare that as well – was blue. And those were the colours he could see now, though the colours on everything were a bit more faded than they should be. But the Calming Draught looked green to him now as well, and he was sure it hadn't before. In the memory they had watched earlier, the woman's hair was the same green as the centaur standing beside him. He knew there had been another name for that colour, but he couldn't remember it.
Who was he? Why was he named Professor? Why did he think he was supposed to be able to brew potions and sing healing chants? Did cats normally do those things, wherever he came from? Instead of feeling physically tired from running about, he suddenly felt mentally exhausted from trying to think about all this. It could wait. In the meantime, he was hungry. The man laid a plate with a piece of fish and a saucer of milk on the floor for him, and made himself a hot drink that smelled deliciously bitter. Professor jumped onto the table to sniff at it, but the man held out a hand to block the cup off from him. 'No, Professor. Cheiron says you can't have coffee. Your drink's down there.' He pointed at the saucer of milk.
Professor lapped at the milk, while the man sat down on the sofa with his cup in front of him. 'Better see how General Skywalker's getting on, soon,' he muttered. 'He just wanted to sleep after his bacta bath, but Cheiron said he'd be back to talk to him when he woke up. Need to do some cross-trainer work, too.'
Professor didn't know what the human's words meant, but he could sense intention. The man wanted to hurry about doing things, but what he needed was to rest while the Wiggenweld Potion finished healing him. The dragon-man upstairs was quite safe with the metal woman looking after him. Professor jumped onto his lap and curled up comfortably, feigning sleep. After all, nobody who respected cats would disturb a sleeping cat, would they?
He didn't know who he was or how he had got here, but it didn't matter. He didn't think he and this man had ever played together like this before – and certainly not cuddled up together like this. But they could now, and it felt right. He kneaded his paws softly against the man's thigh, trying to remember to keep his claws retracted, as he fell asleep.
Author's note: I haven't watched My Hero Academia, and know of it only because my friend Evilkat23 writes MHA fanfiction. But I had already decided that Snape hangs out with various other teachers from different fandoms, such as Miss Hardbroom from Jill Murphy's Worst Witch stories (though, as my husband points out, there is no particular reason why Hogwarts and Miss Cackle's Academy shouldn't exist in the same universe and why Professor Snape and Miss Hardbroom wouldn't know each other in their mortal lives, quite apart from meeting on the Rock), and Aizawa Shouta from My Hero Academia), and that Bothari has various acquaintances on the Rock whom he gets together with for sparring practice. But it didn't occur to me until I started writing this chapter that Snape and Aizawa also used to do sparring practice together. It just wouldn't have been an activitity that Snape and Bothari could do together (up until now) because it is difficult for a fight between a wizard and a Muggle to be evenly matched. And, obviously, they weren't comfortable about the intimacy of cuddling while they were both adult human men.
I'm probably not going to have Aizawa Shouta appear in this story, because, as I say, I haven't actually watched the animé or read the manga, and I don't think I can write him convincingly just based on having read some fanfiction. But I like the idea of his being friends with Severus Snape, and I think he'd be happy to meet cat!Severus. In fact, this story arc was partly inspired by one of Evilkat23's stories in which Midoriya Izuku dies, is reincarnated as a kitten, and is adopted by Aizawa Shouta.
