Who is Hermione's pet Crookshanks? Just a cat? A kneazle? An animagus? Try my version!
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Crookshanks. In the first years of course, I was offended to be called by this name. It hurts, you know. But then, gradually as I got used to the pain in my leg, I got used to the shame. Step by step, I was turning into being Crookshanks.
It happened during one of the flying lessons at the end of my 1st year at Hogwarts. Double flying with Gryffindor. James and Sirius, but also Frank, Bert and Sylv of our house were flying like masters, being eager to join the Quidditch team as fast as possible. I was not. I like doing things well, not fast. When it comes to being best, I use to go out of the way. I don't want to be the one and best the world was always waiting for. Not even then I was. My two elder brothers - Ravenclaws like our parents - were flying rather well. When I was a little girl having to stay at home when they already joined Hogwarts, they taught me things during their holidays. So I knew how to hold a broomstick in the exact Hooch maner when I finally entered Hogwarts. I remember the first flying lesson. Madam Hooch saw me holding the broom and doing the first steps. "This must be a Mammet girl", she exclaimed, "technically perfect from the beginning, like your brothers." Pride tickling. She really knows how to flatter her students.
The first lessons were about a speedy start and ways of soft landing in every weather. Then, we progressed to all sorts of curves and glidings. Very soon, she was my favourite teacher. As a girl, even on my first rides with dad on his broom, I never felt comfortable in the air. More the ground type of human, I always thought. But now with Madam Hooch, it changed rapidly. She showed us ways to enjoy moving on our brooms up in the air. Flying circles and pirouettes and loopings, gliding with the wind, jumping from wave to wave.
One flying lesson a week is not much. I was looking after having more. Before Haloween, I joined the Ravenclaw synchronized flyers group. Formation gliding, you know. We had weekly training in the inner courtyard of the castle, where the air turbulences didn't bother us as much as out in the park. But the best of the synchronizing group was our team spirit. Without the non flyers and without the Quidditch racers, flying was more challenging. And under the supervision of Madam Hooch, we learned our parts rather quickly.
When my parents came to visit us for the Halloween festivity, we could make a first aerobatic demonstration. Dad enjoyed my reddened cheeks and mum revealed, her eyes sparkling with joy, that she had been synchronizing too, while at Hogwarts. And Madam Hooch had been Hogwarts' flying teacher since her time.
On the Hogwarts Express after the winter holidays, Adrian, my classmate and best friend, asked me if I liked to exercise broom dancing in the evenings with another group of students. Some of them from upper classes turned to be quite famous and were giving demonstrations in clubs. The broom dancers, if you have heard of them. I had so, by my brothers, one of whom was attending the group as well. Of course, I wanted! It supposed to be real funny. Quite soon, I enjoyed doing the new sport and spending the evenings with Adrian, doing extra training. You don't have to touch each other, you just parallelize the movements. Bit of reading the partner's mind, as in the synchronized group, but in pairs and without a prescribed choreography. Doing the movements of your choice whenever you or your partner feels like.
One of the late spring days in the ordinary flying lesson with the Gryffindors. We were training adding a somersault while jumping from one wind wave to another. I had great fun with Adrian, doing a simultaneous somersault and changing the brooms in the air. James and Sirius were nearby, laughing like fools and chasing each other as if on the Quidditch pitch. Adrian and I saw nothing but each other and so did James and Sirius. I don't know, if Sirius really lost control of his broom as he told afterwards, but suddenly in mid jump, there was his body just in front of me and I had to change direction. Right was not possible, because he came from left, upwards I couldn't manage at the moment, so there was only the option of diving. Everything went on so quick. I grabbed Adrian's broom with my left hand, but it slipped away. The movement knocked me leftwards out of the reach of the broom. I lost control and there I was, falling quick and quicker to the ground. Both Adrian and Sirius came after me, tried to fly underneeth my falling body, but no way, I was too fast. I fell onto the ground - from about 35 feet.
Next morning, I awoke in the hospital wing, and - I had the luck of the world, Madam Pomfrey, the young nurse told me - enormous amounts of bruises, but only an arm and a leg was broken. The arm bone had an easy fracture and was knit together in the same night by a combination of a special spell and a strangely tasting potion. The leg bone was the problem. It was broken in a twist and bone fragments had to be removed first, from all over the leg muscles. This procedure took a long time.
Sirius and Adrian came to visit me once a day. Sirius apologizing endlessly, putting himself in the position of different personalities, which all had done a big mistake, the mistake of their lifes, but some of them really couldn't express it, making everything worse with their excuses... Sirius the clown made me laugh to tears. Adrian on the other side spent the time at my bed bringing my homework, explaining what they had learned in class and reviving my hope to broom dance again: "We are wizards, everything is possible, don't forget that!" And thanks Adrian, I didn't forget.
After three weeks, I was able to leave the hospital wing. Flying was all right, and broom dancing I could re-establish short time afterwards, mostly because of Adrian's tireless patience. With a bit of additional training, I caught up the excercises of the synchronizing group, and kept the path. But walking was and remained painful. The long ways through the corridors changing from one classroom to another or from the Ravenclaw tower to the Great Hall, seemed to have grown during my three weeks in the hospital wing. I was allowed to do the longer parts on my broom, personal permission by the Headmaster. But short walks, I was to do without broom, the nurse said, because the muscles needed their daily training. I didn't like walking until the end of my seventh year and further on. The pains in my right leg, especially in the days before a change in the weather, made me limp. "Crookshanks", I heard the whispers behind my back.
In the fifth year, there was a fever going around the school. All sorts of rumors reported frightening and sad news from he wizarding community all around the country. The name "Voldemort" was named more and more anxiously. The morning owl post turned to be the most feared moment of the day as nearly twice a week one of the students broke out in tears after reading the letter, because one of his or her relatives had died or had suffered serious damage on household or body. We regretted that there was no defence or duelling or fighting class, and we had to rely on own defence strategies.
New rumours: some students had managed to transform into animals at will. Nobody exactly knew who, but everyone at Hogwarts wanted to know how they had managed. I of course was among the inquisitive students. There hadn't been a deatheater's murder in my small family yet and none was to fear in the foreseeable future as nobody was working or speaking for nor against them. My reason was related more closely to my own person: to leave my body and change into another one. A bird, I hoped. Stop having to rely on streight legs. How promising. I studied the books the Transfiguration teacher mentioned. I studied the books mentioned in those books. Adrian was searching as well. Frank told us that he wanted to become an auror like his father. An auror had to know ways to change his own body. If we let him join our research. Adrian shrug his shoulders and gave me a look. "Nothing against", I said, "one more possibility to find." And on we went.
One day, Frank came to our table, cheeks red and eyes glowing. "I think, I got it. But it needs lots of training." It was charm work, the hardest I've ever met. Not animagism - it would take too much time and it was too advanced for us, Frank's father had warned him. Aniformism, still one of the most complicated transformation charms. How it works and what it does? It's the transfiguration of another person into his or her animagus shape. The person to say the spell is called key spell keeper. He is something like a personal insurance that nothing goes wrong and if something goes wrong, he can go for help. The author of the book recommended to build up a circle of key spell keepers, at least three persons. That's why we decided that each of us learned to transfigure the other two into their animagism-shape and back. So far, so theoretical, so easy. Then came the practical part:
First step: we had to learn about our animagism-form, because it's more easy to transfigure a person, when you know what he is going to be. It helps concentrating. There was first a personality check: the transfiguration of a hair , then of a drop of blood into a white, shadowy, ghost like animal. This animal was supposed to be unique for each wizard. Therefore, it was part of the check to look it up in a bestiary and to determine it accurately. We were adviced by the book to perform the check at least twice to be 100% sure that what we had seen was right. The result: Adrian was a raven, Frank a fox and I, to my deep sorrow, was a non flying, four legged animal - a cat with flaming ginger hair and a lion-like tail. A Kneazle, Frank presumed.
Second step: Legal studies. Legals was a subject which wasn't taught untill in the 7th year. But a chapter in the Standardbook to Animagism resumed the most important part. Transfiguration was always a dangerous action, particularly when humans were involved. So much things could go wrong. In the special case of transformation (transfiguring own body), the book recomended to have an assistant at side to provide help in in unforeseen difficulties. Therefore, the author recomended warmly, aniforms and especially animagus should be as honest as to register at the Ministery of Magic, Department Accident Prevention. Nobody accepted liability for transfiguration accidents.
The third step was consequently to register. We didn't. Why? We were feeling so small in in these times of growing horror and fear! Having the opportunity of being an animal was a possibility to run away, to flee, to go underground, to escape the Dark Lord and his accomplices, to have a room on one's own. For Frank, it was a preliminary stage to animagism. He told us that he was not up to register before he was an auror and not before having mastered animagism. Besides, we decided, the less people knew about it, the better. Adrian and I thought: we won't use it too often. Just learn it as an insurance for the worst case.
Forth step: training, training, training. We decided not to open our small circle of three mutual key spell keepers. That meant that everyone of us allowed the other two to transfigure him, both of them, exactly them and nobody else. As already told, the number of three was the recomended minimum.
After our very last Hogwarts exam at the end of our seventh year, I was lying in the warm june sun of the castle's ground with a group of students. "What now?", asked someone. Adrian said: "Royal Airforce!" And I: "Broom dancers!" Other students: "The ministry!" or: "Auror class!", "fighting against ... him!" - "building up my own business!" In the confusion of hopes and futures, Adrian turned his face to me and said in a low voice: "You forgot something." - "What?" - "Me." I couldn't help giggeling to myself. Was it possibly so easy? And asked back: "Will you still know me as a captain of the Royal Airforce?" - "Not as a captain. As Adrian." And if you believe or not, this was our first kiss.
We rent a small apartment of three pieces, a big kitchen and a kitchen door to the garden. Our apartment was in the small town close to the Royal Airforce Headquater. No, dad, I argued, not an own house yet, Adrian has to do his airplane flying education first. I? I was dancing two nights a week, and working three days as a secretary.
It was a time of love. Adrian had blocks of occupational training with aerodynamics, airplane technology, morse messaging and meteorology. Between the blocks, there was flying, flying, flying. He was doing well and his teachers were impressed by his presumably innate confident behaviour in the air movement. Very soon, he was asked to work as a reserve co-pilot on daily salary. These days turned out to be our most romantic ones. Rarely, he was really asked to fly, but all day long he had to be within telephone reach. We spent the time in our bedroom, in the apartment or in the garden behind the kitchen, sometimes wandering in the park nearby. In the nights before, we often took our brooms and rode in the air.
Have you ever been riding on two tied brooms? Interrelations between magical materials cause them to be much more powerful, even if there is more air resistance. The force field of the padding spell expands, the impact becomes softer and and the suspension better. Particularly if the sticks are made of the same wood. Don't tie them smoothly together, but at a certain distance. Work out the ideal distance and do not hesitate to experiment with differerent woods. It helps optimizing the effects. There are so big differences! Oh, and pair flying. Have you ever been riding as two persons on the same broom or double broom? This and much more we experimented.
Sometimes, in mid air, we were joining our brooms, tying them together with the ferula spell and riding one behind the other touching each other, tickling each other on the same stick. Laughing our heads off. Racing at fast speed, entering clouds and being shaken about all over the place by the air turbulences. Leaving the cloud, parking on top and enjoying the wide sight. The sleeping landscape made us drowsy. We were leaning against each other. Touching each other. Exploring each other's body, making love a hundred feet above our town. Feeling with all our senses what it means to be a couple of young wizards, enjoying life.
In other nights, Adrian came with me to a broom dancer's performance as a raven. And the public was fond of my well educated bird who seemed to understand everything I told or asked him. I called upon people in the room asking simple math questions and he cawed the answer. Then, after the first quarter of an hour, I ordered my broom, which he brought without hesitation. This used to be the end of the magical show and the beginning of my broom dance performance with my raven on the shoulder or without. I had different programs: with the raven, there were partner broom dance shows and synchronized flying parts as far as possible in the magically enlarged stage without wind. Oh, the audience loved that!
Without the raven, when Adrian was at work or staying at home and doing his homework, or when he simply was too tired to join me, I was doing broom acrobatic or partner broom dancing with an imagined partner, at times jumping from one part into the other. The audience was fond of that as well. Lots and lots of opportunities for witty asides to cause laughters or to raise the suspense. - Oh, the audience loved me. Very soon, I was able to reduce my office hours to two, one-and-a-half and one day a week and and dancing in clubs of neighbouring villages as well.
Sometimes, I joined Adrian to his work as a kneazle. He showed me around the cockpit with its aparatus and hundreds of buttons and displays. Sometimes, he gave me flying instructions in mid air: "press the red button now, pussy", was one of his request, "and now the square black one, the second in the in the third row". And to his captain's astonishment, I did what I was asked for. What a laugh we had days and days afterwards, telling each other the details of the story!
Time passed fast. Adrian finished his education and was asked to be a flying teacher at the Royal Air Force. The newspaper article about his nomination was short, but contained a photograph. We sent it to our parents, pleased as punch and proud as never before. But before anyone of them had time to owl back, a group of black owls arrived at our home. Libelling mails. Words and letters cut out of the article and stuck together in a new order: "Working for muggles is against a wizard's pride", or "defend a wizard's state, not the muggle's". And his photograph maliciously painted over. No signature, but a mask releasing a red serpent out of its mouth. Unmistakable.
One sunday afternoon shortly afterwards, Adrian and I went out, holding hands. In one of the roads, there was a crowd of people. Fast as we could, we transfigured each other with the aniform spell. Not for security reason, just because we felt like doing so. I passed the legs of the crowding people, and to my astonishment, I saw two schoolmates of our year. Peter and Sirius, facing each other with their wands behind their backs. As if they were up to duel. Peter yelled to Sirius that he had betrayed a certain Lily and James. One of the onlookers laughed madly.
Suddenly, a jet of fire. An explosion. Blood and black fog all over the place. Peter transformed into a rat and sped down into the sewer. I ran after him, but too late, I couldn't catch him. "Adrian, help me", I shouted, but no answer. I turned my head and saw the full size of the disaster. Parts of about a dozen human bodies scattered around, blood, the smell of burned flesh, an injured Sirius limping away, and in the crater of the explosion ... raven feathers all over the place. Adrian! No answer. Not a sign of him.
All of a sudden, the hooter of muggel police and the plops of apparating ministery wizards. I ran away, back to our apartment, fast as I could. But there, another devastation: a burning house, the rising smoke forming a grinning dark mark.
Adrian - where have you gone? Why didn't you take me with you? For weeks and months, I was railing against my fate, moaning about the bird who left his nest without a comeback. This lousy little rat had taken away my beloved, but also locked me up in the cat body. As mutual key spell keepers, we weren't able to turn into humans again on our own - I needed his spell, he mine. Why had we been so silly to think that nothing in the world, not even time or politics or the Dark Lord or a nasty little servant of his could separate us. How I hated this rat! Oh, I refused to believe that Adrian was dead.
What could I do? In our happy days we had lost tracs to Frank. Had he managed to enter the auror class? How many years did the auror education take place? More than a pilote education? Should I go to the ministery and ask for him? But how? Just sitting around the buildings and waiting untill the information dropped on me? And then: where was the Magical Law Enforcement Squad? Where the Auror Department?
I found them. Even the Auror Department. Even a group of policemen in my age. Even a Magical Law Enforcer mentionning his name. But not more. Never more. As if everything around my "case" was jinxed. I spent my days around the Auror Department Building and my nights roaming in the parks of the town. Chasing rats. Climbing high trees and gazing into the sky. Looking for my raven or a fox or even a hidden animagus who possibly knew a way. Looking for a special trained wizard to help me transforming into my human body again. A Hit Wizard. Or ... a wizard with a book. Not Madcap Magic for Wacky Warlocks or jokes like that, but a real helpful one. I had to become a human again. I had to please my audience again. I had to. ... but that also meant to accept being alone, which I didn't want to. I killed every rat I found. Dozens. I never ate a rat, just killed them.
Susan Mammet thinking of nothing but death and revenge - who would have thought that!
Then, after an uncountable row of waiting, roaming, fighting and moaning days, in one of the rare moments of peace with myself, I had another idea. Our house wasn't anymore. Adrian wasn't anymore. Frank was nowhere. There was no point of going back. Except for... going back three steps instead of one. Going back to my parents and explain anyhow what had happened. Would they believe a cat to be their daughter? Would they be able to find a powerful healing wizard to change me back? Whatever, I had to try. A long and uncomfortable journey, which I don't want to recall again, neither do I want to count the rats I killed on my way, brought my back to my parent's house.
I arrived exactly a month after my mother's death. I arrived and stayed, just as cats do. I became friends with my father who more than ever needed someone to keep his company. He fed me and I warmed him. I learned to jump onto his lap and to purr loudly when he was up to crying. I comforted him in his biggest grief.
As the worst time was over, he was accustomed to my presence. It was my turn now.
I made several attempts to tell my father who I was. One day, at the very beginning, I was collecting twigs in the forest nearby, carrying them one by one in my mouth to our garden and then arranging them on the terrace: "call a healing wizard, I need help." But by he time I had caught him in the house, convinced him to follow me and brought him to the back door, the wind had messed up the twigs, so that only the letters "wiza... eed he" remained legible and the rest was covered up in the garden. His only reaction was that he told me off for the mess.
Another time, I was lurking for the newspaper boy in the morning, with a pencil from father's bureau between my front paws. As soon as he was at our door, I began in my clumsy handwriting: "I am Susan. Help me becoming hum..." - "human again", I was to write, but I couldn't finish at once, it took such a long time. I had to rest because of a cramp in my paw. When I was able to continue, father came down for breakfast. When he saw the writing on the newspaper, he thought it had been scribbled for some reason by the newspaper boy. He raised me on his lap, stroke my bushy hair and told me endless stories about his late wife, his two sons and his beloved daughter Susan, who looked exactly like her mother. He hadn't seen her for such a long time and nobody knew where she and her husband had disappeared. How her mother had loved her, how she had expected to be visited by her before her sudden death. I felt guilty. I never knew she was ill. Was I too much in love to ask for my parent's health?
Then, there were the other days. The leaden ones. The days, I sat in the window ledge, looking out into the sky and waiting for a raven to cheer me up and to tell stories about his flying lessons. Days, I wanted to run with him in the wind, nights to dance on our brooms again, the brooms we had left in the apartment before the black day's fire. Going back to my broom dance performances. Feeling the excited audiance. Hearing the applause. Going home happily and snuggle up with Adrian.
I don't complain. I had a good time at father's, even if I had no possibility to tell him who I was. As time went by, it became less and less important. I could have lived with him for the rest of his life. Listen to his stories about his wife's short and mortal illness. Be there when he needed me. He cared well for me and he told me everything he was doing and thinking. Sometimes, he read aloud from the newspaper or from the book he was writing. A historical one about the treatment of magical animals in the 18th century, his favourite time. When one of his former student came to visit him, he had long conversations about his most recent chapter. And he showed him his new pet, an extraordinary intelligent and sympathizing cat, a pure kneazle perhaps, which had come to share its lonely days without being called by him.
Nevertheless, I couldn't bear staying in this house forever. My useless attempts to get help. The endless and sad stories of an old and lonely man. The lack of laughter and love and Adrian. Was this supposed to be the rest of my life? When father planned his next disaparation to Florish & Blotts for a chat with Mr. Blotts about his forthcoming book, I hid in his trunk and aparated with him to the Leaky Cauldron. As soon as he was out of his room, I crept away straight on to the Magical Menagerie. Perhaps, I could get a new owner. Perhaps, a new owner could help me. Perhaps, someone dropped something about Frank. So there I sat at the back door, waiting for someone to take me in.
To be honest, this third attempt to to find a way back was as useless as the former ones. But the life in the Magical Menagerie and my roamings in Diagon Alley was more distracting, less depressing. Very soon, I was known as exceptionally intelligent cat, with an astonishing ability to detect suspicious persons. Sometimes, I guided drunken or lost people back to the Leaky Cauldron. Sometimes, especially on sunny days, I sat on the offset of Florian Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour pricked up my oversized ears and listened to the chats. Very often, I was chasing rats in Nocturne Alley. Chasing rats was and remained my favourite activity.
How many years I spent there? Nine? Ten? Suddenly, a new rumour spread along Diagon Alley: "Sirius Black at large". Sirius? Been in Ascarban? What had he done? What was he accused for? An explosion, people said. Having murdered 13 muggles. - 13 muggles and a raven perhaps? But was this really him? Where was this lousy rat Peter? Dead, people said. Murdered by his former friend Sirius at the same accident. No, I thought, all of you are definitely wrong here. But - if everybody believed him to be dead, this could only mean he had never turned up again. Still hiding as an animal? Why still hiding? In diference to aniforms, animagi could transform back at will any time. More than ten years not wanting to transform back? Yes, I found out very soon.
It was a summer afternoon. I was dozing on one of the cages in the Magical Menagerie. Three children entered the shop, one of them holding a rat. "He's a bit off colour ever since I brought him back from Egypt", he explained, asking for a remedy. "How old is this rat?", Magda, the shop assistant, asked suspiciously. The word "rat" woke me up and her tone made me curious. "Quite old. He used to belong to my brother", the boy replied. I opened my eyes and looked accurately. And I saw HIM. Undoubtedly, nasty little Peter, terribly aged, a toe missing at his right front paw. His sight transfixed me for a couple of seconds. "What powers does he have?" asked Magda. Apparently none, because the boy didn't know. "Fishy", I heard her thinking.
I teared myself off my trance. Sprang with a big bound onto the counter. "Ouch!" yelled the boy. "No, Crookshanks, no!" shouted Magda, and Peter fled to the door which had remained open for an inch. Magda and the two boys run after him, pushing me out of the way and closing the door. No, not gone. This lousy little rat had not gone forever. I had to act. Now. "Adrian!", I thought, and a wave of pain flooded back to my heart. "I want revenge!"
I rushed to the girl, sprang on her bent back and sat down, started immediately to purr loud as I could. "Take me with you, girl", I thought, "if you are his sister, I will be close to this murder and I will have the opportunity to kill him with my proper paws." Finally revenge. "Take me with you", I purred. Obviously, the boys found the rat outside the Magical Menagerie and went off for other shoppings.
The girl stayed, held me now tight in her arms and stroke me. "Take me with you", I purred. "Can I help you?" Magda asked in a businesslike tone. "Oh", I am looking for a pet. An owl, perhaps..." - "Take me with you", I purred even louder. "... but now, this cat ..." - "She seems to like you", said Magda, as if this was a strange thing. "She'd been here for ages. No one wanted her in all those years." - "I like her, too. Crookshanks, you said?" She gave me an admiring look. "What's her price?" - "It depends on how much you can pay." Magda knew her business. Selling pets was dealing with emotions. "Ten Galleons. It'll be an early birthday present from my parents", answered the girl. "Hmmm", hummed Magda. "Take me with you", I purred. "Hmmm, she seems to be really happy." She paused again. The good shop assistant gives his customers time to make a higher proposal and at the same time the feeling of having bargained a lower one. "I can add two of mine, if this isn't enough", the girl said quickly. "O.k., say twelve galleons!" A gigantic amount of money. How could Magda! But at the moment, I didn't care. I had to go to where this lousy rat was. I could have kissed Magda and the girl! "And - oh, the boy forgot his rat tonic. He didn't even pay." The girl picked the coins out of her pocket and payed without hesitation for both, me and the rat tonic. "I'll take it with me. We are in the same house at Hogwarts."
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Thanx for reading. Of course, I know that Crookshanks is male in JKR's book. I
had to change a bit, for further chapters. Excuse my faux pas. Hope you
like the story anyway.
The location & background and some of the persons are JKR's. I don't mind
her having the credit. Nobody gets money for fanfic, do they? But if she likes
to take broomdancing lessons, she 's free to join a class at my school. (BIG
GRIN)