There's a cat on his windowsill.

It's the first thing Draco lays his eyes on when he wakes up, which is weird. It stares at him with big yellow eyes, like he's confused what Draco is doing there; as if Draco is invading its space.

It actually takes him a few moments to realize that the cat isn't in his flat, that it's sitting on the outside part of his windowsill. Okay, then. Whatever. Draco has a day to get ready for; not a cat to worry about.

He closes his shades when he gets dressed anyway. The cat doesn't need to see all of that.

The cat is still there when Draco gets back from his healer training.

Well, maybe not still there; it's possible it left and came back. Still, it unsettles Draco, the fact that he has a visitor that doesn't seem like it wants to go away. The feeling borders on anxiety, because could that be a person? He doesn't think that he's much of an interesting person — in fact, he's trying to be uninteresting, trying to just lay low and live his life after the war.

There's a weird feeling in his throat, though, when he knocks on his window, hoping the cat is scared away.

The cat stays.

Draco triple-checks he's locked all his doors and windows before he goes to sleep, blinds firmly shut.

On the third day of Draco's little visitor, he decides to open the window.

He's not entirely stupid. He knows that it's very possible that this could be an animagus and there's some bigger thing going on and he probably should just get rid of it somehow.

It's just…

Draco's been staring at it through his windowpane, and he understands that there's a lot you have to do in order for a disguise to work, but he just really can't believe that there's animagus that wants to watch him so badly that they'd —

Well, that they'd lick their own butt.

"Hi," Draco says to the cat once he wrenches the window open. It's no longer having a bath, and is instead staring up at him with those piercing eyes. He probably realizes that he sounds stupid talking to a cat around the same time that the cat realizes — because the cat looks away from Draco and leaps into the room instead, not even giving Draco a meow back.

Instead of talking back to Draco, the cat stretches out on his bed, immediately purring and kneading his duvet.

It doesn't immediately turn into a person who's about to murder Draco, so. That's good.

"You really are just a cat, huh?" Draco says, sitting down next to it. The cat reaches a paw out and touches Draco's leg, before retracting it and curling up next to his pillow.

Okay. This is life now.

Draco comes home the next day, laden with bags and bags. He spent way too long at the store, dealing with options and Muggle money. But he spent the night sleeping next to this cat and he had realized he could see the cat's ribs. She — she is definitely a girl — obviously hungry; that's probably why she was at Draco's windowsill in the first place.

Except Draco doesn't really know which type of food to get so he just got whatever he thought a cat would enjoy and figured he'd let her choose.

He probably spent way too much time out of the house, especially considering that he left his window wide open. She was way too comfortable-looking for Draco to kick her out, and it's not like he could restrict her access to the outside. He doesn't even have somewhere for her to use the bathroom inside.

Is he going to have to get her a bathroom? How do cats go to the bathroom?

Wait.

Is he adopting a cat?

Is he going to have to name her?


for: hogwarts, assignment 2, notable witches and wizards task 1, write about befriending an animal