Mi'lord is No One's Pet

Mi’Lord is No One’s Pet

Part Two

“The Brat Makes Acceptable Eggs”

Tom had just about enough of the little beast.

Glaring from a top his perch behind the vase in the kitchen, he considered how satisfying it would be to leap down and sink his claws into that messy mop of raven hair. It’d be the sort of catharsis he needed at the moment. He itched to sink his teeth into something, to cause pain, and make the child bleed because there wasn’t much else for him to do.

He’s been stuck in this pathetic form for years after a failed animagus transformation. Years. Years of slinking down back alleys, digging through rubbish bins, surviving on rats and sheer bloody will, and—of course—his horcruxes. Without the creation of such, Tom was sure this whole situation would’ve been twice as disastrous and distressing. But as such, since he was immortal, spending the last fifty years as a cat was a drop in the bucket when compared to eternity. 

That didn’t mean it wasn’t the most infuriating, asinine, and degrading fifty years of Tom’s life. There was a time where he had thought it couldn’t get much worse being sequestered to a muggle orphanage in the middle of the Blitz while the rest of his schoolmates were kept warm and safe in their isolated, wizarding manor houses, but this whole experience had proved him wrong. There were worse fates than being huddled in an underground railway waiting for the next bomb to drop it seemed and being a black cat around a populace of superstitious wizards had put the sort of target on his back that Tom had never had during the war. 

If he had died during the war from the German bombs, Tom would’ve been considered nothing more or less than a civilian casualty. But as a black cat on Knockturn Alley you would’ve thought he was Grindelwald himself escaped from Nurmengard with how the residents there went out of their way to chase and fire curses at him. (Except, Tom considered, that Grindelwald wouldn’t have received such treatment there as most of the residents would have been his sympathizers. At least fifty years ago. He didn’t pay too much attention to wizarding politics these days to know what the consensus was now in Nineteen-Ninety-Five.) And Tom had to have constant vigilance to know who was around him and whether or not their wands were drawn in his direction. 

He had already been suspicious of people before all this. Tom was doubly suspicious now. 

Which is why this infernal child perplexed him so with his roast beef sandwiches. 

Who gives up their lunch to a cat? 

An idiot. 

Except…

After spending so much time with Harry, as he preferred to be called, Tom could not say definitively that the brat was in fact stupid. He seemed to have a well-enough understanding of defensive counter-curses from what he read of his summer homework, not to mention dark artifacts, if the old coot Mr. Borgin had been willing to hire him to work downstairs. What a light wizard, however, was doing working with dark artifacts was beyond Tom’s understanding. Especially a boy as young as fifteen. Although he was a Gryffindor,—of course he was—  which was a mark against him. Gryffindors were known for their inane bravery and smug chivalry. But there wasn’t anything smug about the brat, at least he considered that he lacked much of the Gryffindor arrogance that permeated that particular Hogwarts House.  

And he was practically living in squalor…

His flat, one could barely call it that, was essentially a one room storage room above the Borgin & Burke’s antique shop. There were boxes of records piled up against one wall to make room for the small cot Harry called a bed and the kitchen amounted to nothing more than a stove and a sink, some rickety shelves, and an even ricketier table that was balanced on top of a stack of divination textbooks. The toilet was also part of the kitchen, right out there in the open, and Tom had had the misfortune of being in the same room as the brat relieved himself on occasion. 

This wasn’t the sort of place you’d ever think to find a Potter. 

The messy raven hair had been a dead give away. Tom knew the second he got a good look at him, which family this boy was from; having attended Hogwarts with a couple Potters years ago.

Tom remembered the Potter brothers he had attended school with had the same unruly black head of hair. Fleamont had been a seventh-year when Tom had been a first, so his memory of him was foggier. But he knew, from his Head of House Professor Slughorn, that he had gone on to become a successful potioneer after graduation and developed some sort of hair potion that was all the rage back in the Nineteen-forties. His four years younger brother, Charlus, had been a part of the school’s dueling club. Tom had recruited him himself when he was first founding the Knights of Walpurgis back in his third year for his dueling ability in Professor Merrythought’s dueling and defense classes. He had passed his N.E.W.T.s with top marks and had gone into the British Auror Training program and married Dorea Black, he thinks, but after that just sort of fell into obscurity. Tom never heard what happened to either of them. 

But both had been ridiculously wealthy. Wealthy and skillful. And their father, Henry Potter, had sat on the Wizengamot which made them politically useful. (Although, Henry Potter had been disgustingly Pro-muggle & light-leaning.) More useful than this brat, Tom now found himself with. An orphan, from what Tom had gathered, with barely two knuts to rub together.

What had happened to all those galleons? To the manor houses? To the potion business?

His curiosity was burning. He wanted to know the answers to those questions. Nonetheless, being stuck as he was, he was unable to voice any of them. And Harry, well, the little he did say of his home life Tom was able to deduce that the child had not been raised by wizards. He once mentioned an Aunt Petunia who forced him to tend her roses during the hottest months of the summer with garden clippers instead of a wand like any respectable witch would’ve done. 

Perhaps, he was a bastard? That seemed likely to Tom. He was probably some unfortunate little wretch born to some muggle woman after some tryst with one of the Potters and was discarded to save face. What would people say if the light-magic, pro-muggle, Potters knocked up some poor muggle in some illicit affair? It would be quite the scandal. Sounded like something brash, reckless Charlus would’ve done. 

Yes. Tom was sure that must be what happened…

The child obviously had never been raised with magic. He did everything like a muggle. Dressed like a muggle. Cleaned like a muggle. Cooked like a muggle using a spatula to flip an omelet rather than his wand. It wasn’t like he’d get in trouble for using magic here on Knockturn where the Trace became obsolete around such a concentrated population of magic as any respectable pureblood would know, or for that matter halfblood raised by a wizard. Which was why Tom was so sure he was raised by muggles.

And likely, the worst sort of muggles. Muggles who didn’t care about the whereabouts of their ward. Muggles, who Tom considered, either threw the boy out or made their home so uninhabitable that a place like this was an improvement.

How sad for him. How pathetic.

Perhaps that explained why Harry had been so adamant on taking him in? The poor bleeding heart of an unwanted child seeing some stray on the street and wanting to save it. It was disgusting. A kid with a savior complex. 

Tom didn’t need his charity nor his pity. Nor did he want it. He had survived just fine on his own. 

But he wasn’t going to turn up his nose to a good roast beef sandwich or a warm, dry place to sleep. He wasn’t that much of a prideful fool. And if Harry wanted to waste his money on tinned gruel labeled KittenMix, he was free to do so but Tom would not eat it. 

He may be a cat currently, but he still had bloody standards. He would not eat that rubbish. Those eggs on the other hand…Those eggs had been especially appetizing yesterday. 

Tom inhaled deeply as he leaned forward, bumping into the vase. It rattled. Then the brat sighed heavily below him before looking up and meeting his gaze. “Don’t break that vase,” he warned. “It’s not mine.”

Well, in that case—Tom purposely bumped the vase again. 

“Mi’lord!” The boy glared, whirling around with the spatula brandished in his direction as if it were a wand. “Don’t. I swear to Godric if you break that—”

Tom pushed the vase off the shelf.

“Shit!” Harry lunged, hand outstretched. Unfortunately for Tom, the blasted child managed to catch the vase in his hand before it hit the ground—so close— but also unfortunately for Harry, he ended up dropping the plate in his hand and subsequently the omelet too in his act of lunging across the kitchen. Tom pounced on it quick as a shadow, avoiding the broken pieces of the plate and snatching up the omelet between his jaws and making a beeline straight for the open window.

Harry shouted and cursed behind him. “Oi! That wasn’t for you!” 

Tom slipped through the window and leaped onto the fire escape, taking the steep steps by leaps and bounds until he landed onto the cobblestone alley below. The boy had his head out the window and was glaring down at him furiously. “Mi’lord! Get back here right now! Give me back my breakfast!”

Tom scoffed. As if. It was his breakfast now. The brat could make himself some more eggs. 

Again the boy swore before he ducked back into the flat, likely to retrieve his wand. Tom didn’t wait around to find out if that was the case. He dragged his meal further down the alley and disappeared into a narrow alcove between two buildings. 

There he consumed the omelet with relish. Food always tastes best when it was meant for someone else. Tom grudgingly admits, only to himself, that the brat makes acceptable eggs so he wasn’t entirely useless. Perhaps he could do more than cook a decent omelet? 

Perhaps the brat could be his means of returning to his human form? 

The question was how. Tom resolved himself to think about it; assured that a plan would soon present itself.