Mi'lord is No One's Pet

Mi'lord is No One's Pet
Part One
"Mi'lord's Breakfast"

Harry sighed, spatula scraping the bottom of the pan and dislodging the egg and cheese from the heated metal, and flipped the omelet with a deft flick of his wrist. 

This was ridiculous. Truly.

What was his life coming to?

Who did things like this? 

What sort of bonkers person would go out of their way to make an omelet for some stray cat they found in an alley? 

Apparently, he does. 

Summoning a plate to his hand, Harry slides the omelet onto it, then shuts off the stove. As he turns, he glances upwards to the ceiling where a pair of striking, vermillion eyes peer out at him from behind a vase. The stray cat, which Harry had taken to ironically referring to as Mi’lord, jumped down from the shelf onto the floor, rattling the vase in the process so close to the edge that Harry was almost afraid it would fall and shatter, and slinked across the floor to the kitchen table. Its body a black mass, a shadow, more of an outline of a cat than an actually living, breathing creature. But it was alive and it was breathing despite Mr. Borgin’s numerous attempts to unalive it. 

Perhaps, it was those numerous attempts by the crotchety, old, shop owner that made Mi’lord so finicky and untrusting. Perhaps it was simply a result of spending so much of its life roaming Knockturn Alley, a place that was considered unsafe to the ordinary wizarding populace, but was especially so to black cat that was seen as an omen of misfortune. Perhaps, and Harry considered this to be the likeliest scenario, Mi’lord had just never been domesticated to begin with. And Harry, if he was being honest with himself, probably should’ve left the mangy, feral beast on the street where he found it. 

Merlin knows it would’ve saved him the dozens of angry, red scratches on his hands and arms he received in his attempts to earn its trust. And if Mr. Borgin found out that Harry was harboring the very same stray, that was notoriously known around the alley as being a thief, and was constantly taking off with magical items from Borgin & Burke’s shop inventory, not only would Harry lose his summer job but the old wizard wouldn’t hesitate to throw him out of his flat too. 

And still, Harry couldn’t help himself. He empathized with the stray. When he had first seen it, it had been digging through the rubbish bins behind a seedy pub, looking for scraps to eat, and all the sudden Harry had been transported back to his youth. To the years before his Hogwarts letter, when he had been locked in a cupboard, and had taken to pilfering food scraps out of the Dursley’s bins when he was tasked to take out the rubbish after diner (a diner of which he cooked, but was never allowed to take part of) to hide away in his cupboard. Those had been awful years; the isolation, the hunger, the beatings of Uncle Veron’s belt and his cousin Dudley and his school friends fists. When he saw Mi’lord, underfed and so skinny he could see the outline of the creature's hip bones jutting out from its skin, Harry found himself approaching it and removing the roast beef from the sandwich he had just purchased for his lunch before fully realizing what he was doing. Mi’lord had swatted at him, hissed and ran away, crawling under the bins and refusing to come out until Harry had crossed back over to the other side of the street. Harry ended up eating his meatless sandwich there, leaned up against the wall of the apothecary, watching it for the rest of his break. 

Then the next day, he found himself repeating the process. He had even ordered extra roast beef, from the cafe on Diagon Alley so that he didn’t have to eat a sandwich consisting of only bread, lettuce, mayonnaise, and cheese. Again, Mi’lord didn’t come out from under the bins, until Harry had situated himself across the street, and again Harry spent his break leaning up against the brick wall of the apothecary watching it gobble down the offering.

It became a routine. Something almost ritualistic after that. 

Then over a period of weeks, Mi’lord warmed up to him—Well, Harry wouldn’t call it warmed up. More like, Mi’lord was no longer satisfied with just the roast beef. There came a day, where the stray didn’t immediately run off to hide under the bins, though Harry was still hissed and swatted at for his troubles, and refused to touch the meat offered to him, eyeing the sandwich in Harry’s other hand covetously. He should’ve known then, when he placed that whole roast beef sandwich on the ground between them and forewent his lunch that day, that this relationship—dynamic, whatever you call it—was not one of equals.

But still…this—this was too much. Cooking for a cat was too much. It was madness. A degrading act, Harry knew, that lowered his status from the halfblood son of James and Lily Potter to that of a penniless servant. Mi’lord wasn’t his pet. Mi’lord was no one’s pet. Could never be. And Harry knew this. Accepted it. That was why he left the window to the fire escape open, so the feline could slink in and out whenever he so desired. 

He was more like a flatmate, except he didn’t pay rent, and Mr. Borgin couldn’t know he was there or put him on the lease—so he wasn’t like a flatmate at all. He was a squatter. An illegal, unwanted vagrant, taking up space and demanding omelets for breakfast instead of eating the canned cat food Harry had gone out of his way to purchase at the muggle shops. And there were days Harry hated him. Like this morning, when after placing the omelet before him, as if he were a waiter being tipped for the service, the ungrateful little beast hissed and turned up his nose at it.

“Are you serious right now?” Harry exclaimed, brandishing the spatula in the air, thoroughly exasperated. “What’s wrong with it?” 

Mi’lord gave him a bland, unimpressed look. It was a look that Harry could almost interpet, something he considered to be a complaint, at the lack of presentation or the small chip on the plate that the omelet was served. Harry groaned. 

“Do you not want it?” He moves to take back the plate only to be swatted at by an angry, black paw. Harry narrowly avoids the extended claws that reach for him, snatching his hand back as quick as a snitch. “Fine! Then eat it and stop complaining, you bloody git. I’m not making you anything else, you can either eat that or go and find your breakfast elsewhere. Pull a rat out of the rubbish or whatever.”

Mi’lord hissed and his ears, one of them mangled with a hole through it from a close call of a curse, flattened against his head. Harry was unimpressed by the display, having grown used to such tempertanturms—for what else could you possibly call it— after weeks of cohabitation together, and sat down in the chair opposite with a cup of tea. 

Harry drank his tea and watched the feline consume the meal with barely, concealed, relish. Apparently, despite appearances, the breakfast was not subpar. The little beast was trying to act like it, restraining itself from burying his face in the egg and cheese, but soon the cleared and licked-cleaned plate revealed the whole truth.

What a greedy, spoiled, git, Harry thought. So childish. 

Harry set his tea aside and sneered. “I’ll assume the meal was up to standard, Mi’lord?”

Mi’lord only hissed again in response.

“Rude,” Harry frowned. “You know, if you don’t start showing a little gratitude, I might just put your skinny arse back outside.”

The cat turned and hopped off the table, slinking to the open window and disappearing through it as if to make the point that he didn’t need Harry or his cheap flat. The boy huffed, a sound something close to a laugh escaping him, at the audacity of the creature. 

Harry knew he’d be back. He always came back. He just hoped when he did, it wasn’t with some antique pocket watch. The horrid little thief was gonna get them both in trouble with the neighbors if Harry couldn’t find a way to return all of these previously stolen items. Looking away from the window, his eyes settled on the bundle of milkweed Mi’lord had sauntered in with sometime last night and left on the nightstand next to his bed. 

What a cat needed with that was beyond him. But at least it could be used as a potion ingredient. Harry decided to put it in his trunk for the upcoming year instead of facing the mean old hag that ran the apothecary to return it. Everything else, he decided, was going back where it came from. Especially any stuff from the shop downstairs. 

Neither of them needed Mr. Borgin getting suspicious, after all, or they’d both be out on the street.