Fic: Waifs and Strays
Title: Waifs and Strays
Author: willowgreen on LiveJournal
Fandom: Harry Potter
Main Character: Molly Weasley
Rating: G
Word Count: 1870
Spoilers: Through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Prompt: Molly Weasley, waifs and strays
Summary: They say that what you send out comes back to you three times over. Fortunately for Molly, caring for others is one of the things she does best.
Author's Note: Oh, dear - I forgot until the last possible minute that my posting day was May 10! So this is short and very fluffy (no cat pun intended). Hope you enjoy it anyway.
When Molly was a little girl, her parents used to let her take in the neighborhood strays. She would leave food and water for them in the back garden, and they’d use the old shed as a shelter when the weather was bad. There were sometimes as many as a dozen cats hanging about the place. Her mum didn’t really like non-human mammals in the house - her own familiar was a toad called Ezekiel - but she was softhearted enough to let Molly bring a few of the smallest and tamest ones inside.
After Molly started her own family, she gave up cats for a while in favor of human strays. The boys were always bringing home someone who seemed to need attention. Charlie had gone around with that nice Olivia Tibbs for a while, who’d lost her mother in the First Wizarding War. Olivia was a beautiful girl with lovely manners, but a bit remote, which kept Molly from fully indulging her instinct to mother the girl. By the time Molly realized that Olivia was mostly just shy, she and Charlie weren’t spending much time together anymore. But that didn’t stop Molly from knitting her a cardigan and sending it to her at Hogwarts at the beginning of every fall term.
And then there was Percy’s friend Hubert Runkel, a jolly, rotund boy whose shirts never quite covered his belly. His parents were nice enough, but they’d retreated deep into academia after the war and didn’t have much time for him. Molly loved Hubert because he was one of the few people who could make Percy laugh. Suspecting his meals at home were both lonely and nutritionally unbalanced, she invited him to stay for dinner at the Burrow as often as she could. Hubert was always losing hats and gloves, and after he started going bald at seventeen, Molly made sure to knit him a new watch cap every Christmas.
She never told any of the children that there was a protective charm bound into every stitch she knitted, though she hoped that one day they’d have the wit to figure it out.
Then came Harry. None of her strays had ever taken hold in her heart the way Harry had. She loved him every bit as much as she loved her own children, though she made an effort not to overwhelm him with it. The thought of Harry growing up with those awful Dursleys, with not a moment of love in his life from the time his parents were killed, broke her heart.
And now Harry was off on a wild quest with her Ron, as well as Hermione, whom she’d come to care for almost as deeply. For their safety as well as her own, she wasn’t even allowed to know where they were. Ginny was away at Hogwarts, which was no longer much of a haven, and the other boys were all off fighting You-Know-Who in their own ways. All Molly could do was fret, and she knew perfectly well that a fretting witch was no good to anyone. She was so knotted up inside that she couldn’t even bring herself to knit; what if all that anger and fear worked its way into her protective charms? Something had to be done.
Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that cats turned out to be the answer.
She was desultorily degnoming the back garden one afternoon when she saw a movement behind the bracken fern. She stopped moving and pretended to look elsewhere, and in a moment, a yellow-eyed calico cat ventured out of the brush. It stopped at the edge of the herbaceous border and stared intently at her.
Silently, Molly Summoned a can of tuna from the larder. She Evanesced the lid off and set the can down a few feet away. Then she watched out of the corner of her eye as the cat sauntered over with studied casualness and devoured the tuna. When every bite of the tuna was gone, the cat gave her one more intent look and then bounded back into the bracken.
Molly put cat food on the shopping list.
The next day she brought half a dozen open cans of Tabby Feast outside and set them down at the edge of the border. She sat down in a lawn chair, closed her eyes, and remembered how she’d felt as a little girl, sitting amongst the cats in the shed at her parents’ house as the rain poured down outside.
When she opened her eyes, there was a cat nibbling delicately at each can. She took a good look at them. There was a tiny silver tabby, a big ginger tom, an elegant Siamese, a fluffy brown tiger with green eyes, and a huge black cat with fangs that protruded over his lower lip. And, once again, the yellow-eyed calico.
Molly hoped they weren’t some other wizard’s familiars or, worse, animagi. She leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes again, and listened.
“Thanks for the grub,” a voice said in her mind.
She hadn’t heard a cat speak that way in years, but the sensation was unmistakable. No animagus could communicate with a human like that, and a familiar would speak telepathically only with its own wizard or witch. This was an ordinary alley cat, she was sure of it. She opened her eyes and saw the calico looking directly at her.
Closing her eyes again, Molly focused on the calico. “You’re welcome,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Lucky. Hope you don’t mind me bringing my friends.”
“No, of course not, you’re all welcome at the Burrow. You might see what you can do to discourage the gnomes while you’re here.”
“No problem.” The cats finished eating and slipped away silently. Molly didn’t see a gnome for the rest of the afternoon.
The following day, Molly brought out even more cans of cat food as well as a huge bowl of kibble and a big flat pan for water. Once again she sat in the lawn chair and closed her eyes. When she looked, there were cats everywhere. Lucky, the yellow-eyed calico, was sitting in front of her.
She reached down to pet her. “I’d rather you didn’t,” Lucky said in her mind. “I’m feral.”
“Oh, excuse me,” Molly said out loud. She put her hands back in her lap and gazed out at the sea of cats.
“Well then, what can we do for you?” Lucky asked.
“Do for me?” Molly repeated stupidly. “You don’t have to do anything for me. I’m happy to feed you all; I’ve missed having anyone around to take care of.”
“Your call was one of great need,” Lucky said.
Molly started. “I called you?”
“You did,” Lucky said. “We came, of course, because we knew we’d be fed, as our brothers and sisters have been in the past and will be in the future. But in cases such as this, we also offer service to the one who calls us. We’re cats, not dogs, but we know who cares for us. Let us help you.”
Molly was amazed. It was common enough for young wizards and witches to do accidental magic. But for a woman of her age and experience, it was nearly unheard of. She’d never been aware of an ability to call animals, even as a girl, though she supposed she must have been doing it throughout her childhood. For it to pop up now, she must be in a worse way than she’d realized.
She smiled a cat-smile, curving her lips gently and narrowing her eyes so the cats would read her face correctly. “What you can do for me,” she said, “is be cats. I’m trapped here; it’s not safe for me to ask questions, or even to go out, really. But you can wander the streets unnoticed. Do that. Be curious. Use your ears, your eyes, your speed and your incredible sense of balance. And report back to me when you observe anything interesting or unusual. I’ll have food for you here at this time every day.”
Lucky nodded her assent, and once again the cat horde finished eating and slipped off into the shadows.
*****
And that, Molly reflected much later, was how she’d stayed sane during those dreadful months at the Burrow. The afternoon hour spent outside, knitting and watching the cats, had given a shape to her anxious days. The cats had nosed out all kinds of news, and they’d even been able to do her a few little favors. Rumor had it, for example, that a small silver tabby had been suddenly underfoot when Death Eaters approached Augusta Longbottom’s front door, giving Augusta crucial extra moments to prepare her defenses.
Sometimes, of course, the news they brought just made Molly fret more. It was Lucky who’d brought back the story of how Hermione changed her parents’ memories and sent them to Australia. That was just so wrong, for a child to feel she had to protect her parents, muggle or wizard, rather than the other way around. Molly had ground her teeth over that one many nights in a row.
Still, thanks to the cat network, Molly already had the household packed and ready to move when the Weasleys had to go into hiding at Auntie Muriel’s. The cats hadn’t been able to get past the Fidelius charm on Muriel’s house, of course, so she’d been without their contact at the very end. But in a way, the weeks at Muriel’s had been easier to bear than the previous months, because she’d had Ginny and Fred and George with her - even though Ginny had raged and ranted and paced like a caged animal. Molly was so grateful, in retrospect, to have had those last few weeks with Fred. She’d hardly scolded him at all, that she could remember.
Now that the world was itself again, Molly gloried in her routine. She fed the cats faithfully each afternoon at three o’clock. The other cats came and went, but Lucky was there every day.
One morning, she got a hand-written note from Hubert Runkel. Inside the envelope was a photo of Hubert and his charmingly rotund family of five, smiling together on a ski slope in Switzerland, all of them wearing rather tatty watch caps.
A few days later, when she was babysitting little Victoire, she answered a knock on the door - and there was Olivia Tibbs, all grown up but still wearing an ancient, hand-knitted cardigan. They caught up over a nice cup of tea. As they talked, Victoire played gently with a kitten on the kitchen floor. Outside, a neighborhood boy degnomed the garden. Molly paid him to help out at the Burrow in the afternoons while the elderly aunt who looked after him worked.
Caring for waifs and strays was never-ending work, Molly thought. Thank goodness.
Author: willowgreen on LiveJournal
Fandom: Harry Potter
Main Character: Molly Weasley
Rating: G
Word Count: 1870
Spoilers: Through Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Prompt: Molly Weasley, waifs and strays
Summary: They say that what you send out comes back to you three times over. Fortunately for Molly, caring for others is one of the things she does best.
Author's Note: Oh, dear - I forgot until the last possible minute that my posting day was May 10! So this is short and very fluffy (no cat pun intended). Hope you enjoy it anyway.
When Molly was a little girl, her parents used to let her take in the neighborhood strays. She would leave food and water for them in the back garden, and they’d use the old shed as a shelter when the weather was bad. There were sometimes as many as a dozen cats hanging about the place. Her mum didn’t really like non-human mammals in the house - her own familiar was a toad called Ezekiel - but she was softhearted enough to let Molly bring a few of the smallest and tamest ones inside.
After Molly started her own family, she gave up cats for a while in favor of human strays. The boys were always bringing home someone who seemed to need attention. Charlie had gone around with that nice Olivia Tibbs for a while, who’d lost her mother in the First Wizarding War. Olivia was a beautiful girl with lovely manners, but a bit remote, which kept Molly from fully indulging her instinct to mother the girl. By the time Molly realized that Olivia was mostly just shy, she and Charlie weren’t spending much time together anymore. But that didn’t stop Molly from knitting her a cardigan and sending it to her at Hogwarts at the beginning of every fall term.
And then there was Percy’s friend Hubert Runkel, a jolly, rotund boy whose shirts never quite covered his belly. His parents were nice enough, but they’d retreated deep into academia after the war and didn’t have much time for him. Molly loved Hubert because he was one of the few people who could make Percy laugh. Suspecting his meals at home were both lonely and nutritionally unbalanced, she invited him to stay for dinner at the Burrow as often as she could. Hubert was always losing hats and gloves, and after he started going bald at seventeen, Molly made sure to knit him a new watch cap every Christmas.
She never told any of the children that there was a protective charm bound into every stitch she knitted, though she hoped that one day they’d have the wit to figure it out.
Then came Harry. None of her strays had ever taken hold in her heart the way Harry had. She loved him every bit as much as she loved her own children, though she made an effort not to overwhelm him with it. The thought of Harry growing up with those awful Dursleys, with not a moment of love in his life from the time his parents were killed, broke her heart.
And now Harry was off on a wild quest with her Ron, as well as Hermione, whom she’d come to care for almost as deeply. For their safety as well as her own, she wasn’t even allowed to know where they were. Ginny was away at Hogwarts, which was no longer much of a haven, and the other boys were all off fighting You-Know-Who in their own ways. All Molly could do was fret, and she knew perfectly well that a fretting witch was no good to anyone. She was so knotted up inside that she couldn’t even bring herself to knit; what if all that anger and fear worked its way into her protective charms? Something had to be done.
Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that cats turned out to be the answer.
She was desultorily degnoming the back garden one afternoon when she saw a movement behind the bracken fern. She stopped moving and pretended to look elsewhere, and in a moment, a yellow-eyed calico cat ventured out of the brush. It stopped at the edge of the herbaceous border and stared intently at her.
Silently, Molly Summoned a can of tuna from the larder. She Evanesced the lid off and set the can down a few feet away. Then she watched out of the corner of her eye as the cat sauntered over with studied casualness and devoured the tuna. When every bite of the tuna was gone, the cat gave her one more intent look and then bounded back into the bracken.
Molly put cat food on the shopping list.
The next day she brought half a dozen open cans of Tabby Feast outside and set them down at the edge of the border. She sat down in a lawn chair, closed her eyes, and remembered how she’d felt as a little girl, sitting amongst the cats in the shed at her parents’ house as the rain poured down outside.
When she opened her eyes, there was a cat nibbling delicately at each can. She took a good look at them. There was a tiny silver tabby, a big ginger tom, an elegant Siamese, a fluffy brown tiger with green eyes, and a huge black cat with fangs that protruded over his lower lip. And, once again, the yellow-eyed calico.
Molly hoped they weren’t some other wizard’s familiars or, worse, animagi. She leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes again, and listened.
“Thanks for the grub,” a voice said in her mind.
She hadn’t heard a cat speak that way in years, but the sensation was unmistakable. No animagus could communicate with a human like that, and a familiar would speak telepathically only with its own wizard or witch. This was an ordinary alley cat, she was sure of it. She opened her eyes and saw the calico looking directly at her.
Closing her eyes again, Molly focused on the calico. “You’re welcome,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Lucky. Hope you don’t mind me bringing my friends.”
“No, of course not, you’re all welcome at the Burrow. You might see what you can do to discourage the gnomes while you’re here.”
“No problem.” The cats finished eating and slipped away silently. Molly didn’t see a gnome for the rest of the afternoon.
The following day, Molly brought out even more cans of cat food as well as a huge bowl of kibble and a big flat pan for water. Once again she sat in the lawn chair and closed her eyes. When she looked, there were cats everywhere. Lucky, the yellow-eyed calico, was sitting in front of her.
She reached down to pet her. “I’d rather you didn’t,” Lucky said in her mind. “I’m feral.”
“Oh, excuse me,” Molly said out loud. She put her hands back in her lap and gazed out at the sea of cats.
“Well then, what can we do for you?” Lucky asked.
“Do for me?” Molly repeated stupidly. “You don’t have to do anything for me. I’m happy to feed you all; I’ve missed having anyone around to take care of.”
“Your call was one of great need,” Lucky said.
Molly started. “I called you?”
“You did,” Lucky said. “We came, of course, because we knew we’d be fed, as our brothers and sisters have been in the past and will be in the future. But in cases such as this, we also offer service to the one who calls us. We’re cats, not dogs, but we know who cares for us. Let us help you.”
Molly was amazed. It was common enough for young wizards and witches to do accidental magic. But for a woman of her age and experience, it was nearly unheard of. She’d never been aware of an ability to call animals, even as a girl, though she supposed she must have been doing it throughout her childhood. For it to pop up now, she must be in a worse way than she’d realized.
She smiled a cat-smile, curving her lips gently and narrowing her eyes so the cats would read her face correctly. “What you can do for me,” she said, “is be cats. I’m trapped here; it’s not safe for me to ask questions, or even to go out, really. But you can wander the streets unnoticed. Do that. Be curious. Use your ears, your eyes, your speed and your incredible sense of balance. And report back to me when you observe anything interesting or unusual. I’ll have food for you here at this time every day.”
Lucky nodded her assent, and once again the cat horde finished eating and slipped off into the shadows.
*****
And that, Molly reflected much later, was how she’d stayed sane during those dreadful months at the Burrow. The afternoon hour spent outside, knitting and watching the cats, had given a shape to her anxious days. The cats had nosed out all kinds of news, and they’d even been able to do her a few little favors. Rumor had it, for example, that a small silver tabby had been suddenly underfoot when Death Eaters approached Augusta Longbottom’s front door, giving Augusta crucial extra moments to prepare her defenses.
Sometimes, of course, the news they brought just made Molly fret more. It was Lucky who’d brought back the story of how Hermione changed her parents’ memories and sent them to Australia. That was just so wrong, for a child to feel she had to protect her parents, muggle or wizard, rather than the other way around. Molly had ground her teeth over that one many nights in a row.
Still, thanks to the cat network, Molly already had the household packed and ready to move when the Weasleys had to go into hiding at Auntie Muriel’s. The cats hadn’t been able to get past the Fidelius charm on Muriel’s house, of course, so she’d been without their contact at the very end. But in a way, the weeks at Muriel’s had been easier to bear than the previous months, because she’d had Ginny and Fred and George with her - even though Ginny had raged and ranted and paced like a caged animal. Molly was so grateful, in retrospect, to have had those last few weeks with Fred. She’d hardly scolded him at all, that she could remember.
Now that the world was itself again, Molly gloried in her routine. She fed the cats faithfully each afternoon at three o’clock. The other cats came and went, but Lucky was there every day.
One morning, she got a hand-written note from Hubert Runkel. Inside the envelope was a photo of Hubert and his charmingly rotund family of five, smiling together on a ski slope in Switzerland, all of them wearing rather tatty watch caps.
A few days later, when she was babysitting little Victoire, she answered a knock on the door - and there was Olivia Tibbs, all grown up but still wearing an ancient, hand-knitted cardigan. They caught up over a nice cup of tea. As they talked, Victoire played gently with a kitten on the kitchen floor. Outside, a neighborhood boy degnomed the garden. Molly paid him to help out at the Burrow in the afternoons while the elderly aunt who looked after him worked.
Caring for waifs and strays was never-ending work, Molly thought. Thank goodness.