Like Cats and Dogs - 1. Chapter 1

Little Whinging was quiet again. Not even two months ago, the residents of the Surrey suburb woke to bright lights streaking across the sky, the roar of a motor bike in the middle of the night, and barely audible cursing. In some places, (lesser places to the reckoning of Little Whingians) that might not even have roused a baby, but the neighborhood might as well been the victim of an air raid, for all the disruption caused. The next morning offered little comfort. Mr. Rupert from the next community claimed that his prize hydrangea bush had been covered with blood, though from what he couldn't say. He burned it rather than take chances. A body was discovered, not even a whole one, missing eye and leg and mangled to the point it was barely together at all. And the Dursley house, home to a family more stolid than should have been humanly possible, was in even worse condition than the body: its windows and furniture was smashed to pieces, anything valuable was gone, and it looked like someone had made a go of burning it all before the police arrived and put a stop to it all. Worse, there was no sign of the Dursleys or their mysterious nephew, the one Little Whinging had for some time noticed was never far when oddity was afoot.

That was all that was needed for some folk to begin pointing fingers and talking loudly about how they, "always knew that boy was trouble, sinister even. Evil one could say." Of course he'd never fitted in, the dark-featured shadow behind the fair Dursleys, but now overnight it was accepted that the boy was a demented homicidal maniac on the loose. The last Dursley relative, a rotund woman named Marge, demanded that the authorities call a manhunt for the murderer. "That Harry Potter had better run far," she could be heard saying still, if one went round to the pubs she held forth with a tear mixed brandy in one hand, "and hope that I'm not the one to find him. I'll kill him barehanded, make him suffer what he did to my little Dudders."

Arabella Figg, now with the escape of the Potter boy officially the oddest resident of Little Whinging, laughed herself sick when she heard the rumors, and had to restrain herself from giving the game away when the police came to question her. It was the only bright spot she'd had in some time, so it was with mixed regret that she watched the interest around the Dursley's fade. Her failing humor aside, Arabella knew it would be much harder for Harry to be safe if he was a wanted criminal, which Harry understood as well. She'd done what she could to quash it, but really it was Marge Dursely was making such a sotted spectacle of herself, not to mention the dearth of any real information about what happened, that made what had been the sole topic of conversation for a week into only whispers over the hedge and into the spirits.

So the quiet returned. Mrs. Figg found herself forgotten."I'd better be going myself. No reason to stay here, now that they've gone. They won't return. Even if they do, he never will," she told herself, and her cats, the evening as she poured milk into their saucers. "He always hated it here, and here hated him right back. Musn't say his name."

This was common. Mrs. Figg had lived alone in a strange town for quite some time, watching over Harry Potter as he grew up a wizard, with no one to talk to but her cats. This slice of Surrey was as anti-wizard as it was possible to be, and no true wizard would have lasted five minutes without standing out, as Harry himself proved. But someone had been needed to stand vigil over young Potter's childhood. She'd been younger then, but still already old, and as a squib had gone the entire first Voldemort war without being able to do more than provide information to and about the wizarding world. It made her smile to think that a woman who raised cats able to suss out suspicious characters and half-truths had gone on to become a spy in her dotage, but that was how the world had worked. Without the ability to work magic, Mrs. Figg would always be overlooked by wizards and accepted by muggles, and that had kept her safe. It also meant she could go where no wizard was able, and so she went.

But it had been hard on her, being away from the wizarding world for so long, and it was even harder now. As her task was finished, and her uniqueness had served its purpose, she was again forgotten. "No point in staying here, Mr. Tibbles, but I'm too old to move. Too old by half. I was too old sixteen years ago." And too old to fight, or even participate. Last time, she'd been able to make herself useful, fight in her own way, but this was not the old war. "They'd never let me on the lines, Barmy, and I'd not be able to do enough worth the risk," she reminded the assembly.

If only someone would talk to her, she thought, she might not be in such a dither. But since "that night," as her neighbors called it, not one witch or wizard had made contact. She had not dared to even get the Daily Prophet (not that they would have told the truth, but the spy in her knew you could get the shape of the truth by the way someone lied), because she could not afford the scrutiny. Little Whinging had become more conservative in the last few weeks, and she knew more than one person had their eye on her. Despite her efforts, she didn't completely pass for normal, not by their standards. It was only a matter of time, she could feel, before complaints were made about the risks of so many cats in one small house, her sanity questioned, and she was carted off to the hospital by the police while her "concerned" neighbors and government descended on her home with an eviction notice. That was the fate of cat-ladies and other odd old folk, and she needed to leave before that happened.

"If only I wasn't so old," she told her cats. That she spoke to them, and in the last while only them, wasn't helping her case. If only Figg could have explained that at least the cats never lied or judged her. "But that would land me in the sanitarium for sure," she mused.

The cats (half-cats really, and half magic, though everyone knows even the most common tom knows a bit about magic) for their part, didn't talk but were very sympathetic to Figg, the woman who had been the next best thing to mother, father, and clan head to all of them. They stayed in to offer what comfort they could, even if the full moon called their cat side out to play feline games.

"Nothing worth in their world. I've never been," Figg said as she finished, with a sigh.

There was another creature of magic that the full moon called to in Little Whinging. Cedar Morag found it hard to concentrate under Selene's light. It had only been a few months since the wrong turn in London, also on a full moon, had turned him from a quiet, unassuming wizard of modest talents to...this. He was hunger incarnate now, always hunger, and possessed streak of wildness that had never been part of his character. His friends didn't know what to make of him, what few he still had, for he'd taken to avoiding all humans when he could. His dreams were haunted with memories of what had happened that night, and full moon nights since, both what had happened to him and what he had done to others. Shame at these memories forced him away from others, but what made him feel worst was that he didn't fee guilty at all. He felt powerful. For the first time in his young life, he was alpha dog, and he enjoyed every second of it. His dreams of the blood in his mouth, of neck being crushed between his jaws, were better than anything he'd ever experienced. There was a price of course, and he didn't want to pay it, but he never struggled against the voices in his mind for very long.

This was the first time he hadn't fought it at all. Tonight, he'd been offered someone to kill, someone as weak as he'd been once. And he wasn't even going to be made to use a wand.

Oh yes, Cedar was going to enjoy this. He might cower at what he'd done later, when daylight came and all the rules he'd lived his life by once again took over, but that was for the morrow. For now, the only thing he struggled with was passing by all the delicious innocents in their houses to the one he was compelled to target.

"Figg," he found, he was able to say.

"Got to put out the light," Figg said, walking toward the front door. Most of her pets had found a warm spot to curl up in, and the rest would be joining them shortly. So would she, once her outside light was put out, and she could rest for the night. It wouldn't do to leave it on; someone would complain, and Arabella didn't need the bother. "It's wearying, all this worrying."

No sooner had she reached the door than Mr. Tibbles sprang forward, planting himself in front of it before she could turn the knob. He made a noise then, a purr so threatening that for a moment she wondered what she had done. And if it had been any other cat she might have had something to worry about, but this was Mr. Tibbles. "Too much kneazle in you, not enough cat," she murmured, but despite her words she was grateful. Kneazles were magical cat-like creatures known to be able to detect ill-intent and guarded whatever wizard they adopted with a kitted vixen's zeal. Tibbles had been a fancy of Figg's, nearly pure kneazle bred from the half-cat's that had given one magicless woman a foot into the wizarding world. He was smarter than her on his good days. "If you don't want a door opened, there's a reason for it," she told him. He yowled again in response, and in seconds it was picked up by the others, all over the house. One by one they joined Tibbles and her in the living room. First was the matriarch, Cosmic, who had attitude enough for three normal tomcats. Then Snowy, the pretty girl who has daft as the Dursleys and who several years ago Figg had tripped over. Barmy, Tibbles's father and the oldest of her cats, joined his son at the door. Paws, Zat, Tufty, Sarabi, even Meriwether Lucille Humphrey III (the only one she didn't breed, and thus name herself), they were in her living room by the time she had made it to the window, where she drew aside the heavy, tattered curtains to look outside.

It was discovered, in the lull between the wars, that there was something besides potions that could put a damper on a werewolf's behavior. While it wasn't possible to stop the violence or the change, or even effect it in any way once the change had taken over (as some magics were too strong and too much a part of a person to ever be countered), it was possible to channel the violence, as it were. A well-wrought imperious curse, cast before the moon's rise, allowed a wizard-wolf to focus for a time. It was imperfect of course, it didn't always work, and even when it did, like anything bottled up once the Imperious let go the werewolf was even more bloodthirsty than it would have been. Only the darkest of wizards would even bother with such methods.

One existed. And he had decided it was time that one Arabella Figg had seen enough.

Outside her house, Cedar howled as the spell relaxed, and his curse mangled his body and shattered the hold on what was left of his mind. Only one fragment remained. As he leapt towards the window where his quarry had just shown her face, he heard it.

Go for her eyes.

It made sense, really, to have heavy curtains in a house where the pets were as keen as children and just as inventive at getting their own way. Generations of half-kneazles had shredded these things to their heart's content, and Arabella had only needed to periodically add more fabric to the bottom to keep them in shape. They weren't pretty, but neither was she (or the cats, come to that, except for Snowy), and they suited them all.

It was because of those heavy curtains and that she had been able to move faster than any woman her age had a right to that Cedar hadn't killed her in the first moments. There was a horrendous crash as he smashed through the glass, but in the confusion of the change he attacked the velvet instead of her. It ripped off the wall of course, but that only meant it covered him completely. He fought, twisted, and instead of finding an exit that only tangled him more.

Mrs. Figg managed to scuttle away from him towards her kitchen, where there was a phone. And a saucepan. There wasn't a question of escape; she was too old, and once he was out in open ground he'd have the advantage. There was no out-running a werewolf, not for her. Worse, there was a certain tightness to her chest, as her heart was pumped with adrenalin, that suggested win or lose this would be her last fight. So, no running. "I'm not too old to be brave," she said, more confident than she felt.

Cedar heard the voice, and that steadied him just enough that he was, at last, able to break free. He ripped the curtain apart, not as savagely as he tried, but well enough that it fell around him into scraps. He stood, only his eyes betraying that he might have been human once. He watched her tighten her two-handed grip around an old skillet till her knuckles turned white, and tried to grin. She was making it fun for him. He'd been afraid she would whimper a die like a mouse. This was a lot better. He took two lurching steps forward.

And stopped dead as a cat with a face like a sack full of pennies stepped between the two with murder in its eyes.

"No Tibbles! Run all of you," Mrs. Figg said through gasps and wheezes, but of course he paid her no mind. His tail bristled, and if he'd been able to talk he doubtless would have said something along the lines of, "Do you feel lucky, punk?" As it was, his stance and fully extended claws made it clear Cedar would have to go through him first, and that Tibbles was prepared to make him work for it.

The hesitation lasted only a moment. The panoply ended; Cedar once again started forward to Figg, and Tibbles moved too, jumping up to meet Cedars claws with his own. But he wasn't alone. Barmy beat him to the werewolf, attacking from behind and getting onto the back of his head. The others joined the fray, clawing, biting, and bleeding whatever sensitive area they could find. All of them, even Snowy, had for years ruled the local feline population by being nastier and cleverer fighters than the rest, and ever once of that ingenuity was let loose at one target.

The sight steadied Arabella. "My beauties," she breathed.

Cedar, what was left of "Cedar" and not yet wolf, screamed. The little bastards blinded him, tripped him, and then they started going to work on him. His entire body was being attacked at once, and there was no way to stop them. He flailed, as surely as he had against the curtain, but this time it was like the damn thing was fighting back. But he was a lot bigger than they were, even if they were better fighters he eventually shook loose. He grabbed the last, the one on his head, and through the spitting mad beast into the wall, where it slid down with a slump. He growled, turned his bleeding eyes towards his target. His last thought before the madness completely took him was that they would all die for his eyes. He wiped the blood away, and blinked away the haze.

Just in time to see the skillet swing into his face with a strength given to the desperate and the determined.

He sailed backwards, and did not get up. The cats were on him, at his throat, and did to him what he'd so enjoyed doing to others. Figg let herself relax when his body started changing again, back to his human shape, and she realized he was dead. Her weapon slipped from her hand with a clang, and she sat down on the floor of the kitchen almost as heavily, right next to Barmy. She stroked his fur, and by the keening of Tibbles and the others, realized that Cedar had managed to claim one victim this night. "There isn't going to be two. I'm not beat yet!" she declared. Figg tried to struggle towards the phone, but heard, in the distance, the growing sound of a siren. Obviously, one of her neighbors heard the crash, and decided to be useful for once.

Meriwether came to her hand, and she stroked his living body with one hand and Barmy's with the other. "I'll be fine, you inbred fleabag. I'm not so old that one fight will take it all out of me yet."

She smiled. It looked for a moment like Tibbles's. "It looks like we'll be leaving here soon. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did an old woman the favor of bringing the fight to her doorstep. I'll have to find someway to return that favor, don't I?"

Snowy, the dim one, yowled in agreement.