Chapter Text
“Mama!” A young, distressed Harry Potter wailed into the night air. Earlier that night, young Harry witnessed the death of his mother in front of him. He was too young to understand that she had actually died, but after he was taken from his home by a large man without his mother following, Harry kept up his calls for his mother to come back to him.
After a flight through the air with the large man driving a motorcycle, the pair of them landed in a quaint subdivision of Surrey called Little Whinging. Harry was still occasionally calling out to his mama to come back to him, but nothing had changed the large man’s goal in delivering Harry to a new location.
The large man walked past a wall and Harry noticed a cat that was sitting on it before it jumped down and transformed into a woman. She then started talking to another man, but Harry’s attention had switched to another memory of his dogfather playing with him.
For the most part Harry ignored the conversing adults around him and at this point was starting to tire himself out after his repeated calls for his mama. He was laid down on the front steps of a house in a carrier basket as the adults prepared to leave.
Little Harry hadn’t quite fallen asleep yet when the conversation seemed to end as the adults prepared to head their separate ways. The large man started up his motorcycle again, the older man disappeared with a crack, but the woman turned back into a cat before slinking off into the night.
Harry’s brain, however, had become excited at watching the cat lady switch back and forth and wasn’t ready to sleep anymore. In his young mind, Harry wanted to be able to turn into an animal just like the talking cat lady.
In a normal child’s body, that wishful desire would have only ever been just that, a wishful desire. Harry’s body, on the other hand, had magic and it had just seen that something could be done multiple times. Whenever Sirius Black had turned into a dog Harry was around him for long periods of time, so his brain just thought that his godfather happened to be a dog most of the time.
Now, however, Professor McGonagall had demonstrated a very cool trick to the mind of the child and his magic was being commanded to copy that trick. What should have taken months of training to become an Animagus happened instantly thanks to Harry’s accidental magic.
In place of the little boy was now a small Bombay black kitten with green eyes. The kitten was still a kitten though and didn’t have full control over its body yet. Despite that, the feline had more motor control than a baby and so after several hours of falling down repeatedly, it managed to wander off in a random direction searching for his mama.
Kitten Harry had to take lots of breaks since his body wasn’t developed enough for long distance travel. He was on a mission though to find his mama and wouldn’t be deterred from looking for her by a small little thing called ‘sleep’.
Normally a small kitten with no parents or human handlers would have zero chances of surviving in London’s urban environment and would have either been crushed by a car or eaten. Against every conceivable odd though, nothing took interest in him, and it was still nighttime so there were fewer cars wandering the streets.
Eventually though, Harry’s body demanded sleep and he found a nice little spot to fall down in. He slept clear through the whole day because he had only stopped the previous night when it had started getting light outside.
When Harry woke up, it was to see the setting sun of that day. His little body was starting to demand things like food and water and Harry plaintively called out for “Mama!” to come feed him. Harry didn’t realize anything was wrong with that because he’d clearly seen the cat lady talking so why shouldn’t his magic have been able to fulfill that wish as well.
His little cry was heard by a woman just leaving work that day and looked across the street to see where that desperate cry came from. Quickly hurrying over to the cry, the woman, Emilia, called out to the child.
“Hello? Who needs help? Where are you?” Emilia called out to the child, but she couldn’t see it. Sifting through the detritus, she kept calling out to the young voice she had heard earlier. Eventually she got another response.
“Mama!” The voice cried out again and this time Emilia located where it was coming from. Pushing aside a couple pieces of trash and boxes, she was met with the plaintive green eyes of a young Bombay black kitten instead of the child she was expecting.
Before she could turn around and continue looking for the child she heard, the kitten opened its mouth and cried out “Mama!” again.
What?! Emilia was floored at what she had just heard. Did that kitten just say a human word? The kitten then started moving towards Emilia and it opened its mouth again.
“Mama!” The young kitten cried out in joy at seeing her. He started rubbing up against her leg and then shocked the young woman even further when he demanded “Mama! Up!”
Emilia’s jaw was hanging open after the first word spoken but, if possible, it would have fallen to the ground at hearing this kitten continue speaking human words. Her own child had and was going through a similar level of development and Emilia’s maternal instincts told her to pick up the little kitten when it asked her to.
The kitten seemed to practically melt into her hands which caused flutters in her stomach. It then let out a very audible rumble from its stomach. Looking back up into her eyes, the kitten plaintively called out “Mama!” And that was when Emilia realized it was starving and started taking it back to her car.
Emilia didn’t have any baskets in her car at the time to put the young kitten in, so she kept it between her legs as she drove home. Pulling into the driveway, Emilia picked the starving kitten back up and rushed to the kitchen.
Setting the kitten on the floor and retrieving a bowl to put its food in, Emilia then went to the fridge and looked for some leftover meat. Luckily, they still had some and she quickly cut it up into smaller sizes for the little kitten.
Emilia saw that the kitten had its baby teeth in and wasn’t concerned about it not being able to eat the meat. It looked a little uncertain about the meat in the bowl, but its starving belly reminded it that it didn’t care what form of food was presented to it.
After it started chowing down on the food, Emilia got another bowl and filled it with water to set beside the first one.
What have I done now? Emilia thought. I’ve just adopted a kitten without telling Daniel. He’s gonna be in for a surprise when he steps in the door in a couple minutes.
Harry’s day had gotten much better than the previous day. The lady that picked him up had the same green eyes as his Mama and she smelled like a Mama, so his little mind just assumed she was his. She took him into a strange, enclosed space for several minutes, but which felt like hours to his mind before arriving at a house and offering him food and water.
She was doing everything his mama did for him in the past when he was hungry so that just reinforced that she was Mama. The house smelled just like her but there were a couple other smells that he wasn’t sure of. Nevertheless, this was Mama and even if the house smelled funny, Harry knew he was safe here with Mama.
A couple minutes later, after Harry had satisfied himself and requested to be picked up again, the two of them were sitting on a couch when the front door opened. The man that walked in smelled like one of the other smells in the house and Harry deduced that this must be Dada. There was still one other smell, but Harry wasn’t concerned about that right now.
Before Emilia managed to explain the new cat to her husband, he opened his mouth and called out “Dada!” Daniel dropped his suitcase to the floor with a thud and had to grab onto the wall to prevent himself from falling over.
“Believe me I was as shocked as you were when I found him after work.” Emilia said. “He was starving, and I don’t know what caused me to want to take him home with me but he’s here to stay now.” Emilia explained.
“And you don’t know how its talking?” Daniel managed to stutter out of his shock. He approached the couch his wife was sitting on and sat down himself only to watch as the little kitten crawled over into his lap and placed his paws on his chest.
“Dada! Up!” The kitten demanded and Daniel took a moment before lifting the kitten into the air. It then did something again that no kitten should be able to do. The little one started giggling as he was held in the air.
Daniel looked back over at his wife. “This is honestly astonishing. I’d say this little guy’s as smart as a regular human child.” He spoke. “I’ve never heard of a talking cat before. And you say we are keeping him?”
“I’ll need to go out and get some cat things for him, but I wanted to wait until you knew about him.” Emilia told her husband. “Do you want me to go get some things now before the stores close or wait until tomorrow?” She asked.
“Let’s go ahead and get Hermione from the sitter and let her see the new member of the family and we’ll worry about all the things the little guy will need tomorrow.” Daniel replied. He then gave the little cat back over to his wife where it proceeded to snuggle into “Mama!”
Getting back into his car, Daniel drove the short distance to go pick up his daughter. Strapping her into her seat, Daniel turned around and gave his daughter something to look forward to. “Your mother got a new kitty cat.” He told his two-year-old daughter.
Hermione was already showing an impressive intelligence for her age and quickly got excited at the news. “What kind?! What kind?!”
Grinning at what he was about to tell his daughter, Daniel said “A talking kind.”
“Well duh silly, all kitties meow.” Hermione cheekily told her father. Daniel simply grinned in response before replying “Oh, well you’ll see…”
Harry was following Mama around the house as fast as his little legs could carry him as she showed him around. She took extra care not to step on him as she was much bigger than he was. Pretty soon though, they both heard the sound of Daniel returning as well as another higher pitched voice.
Emilia scooped the kitten up into her arms and returned to the couch to await Daniel and Hermione. When Daniel led his daughter into the living room, Hermione squealed in joy at seeing the kitten.
“Can I hold him?” Hermione plaintively asked her mother.
Harry in turn simply looked up to his Mama at this new member of the household. “Mama?” He asked. He didn’t remember any little kids from before and so was very confused.
“He can TALK?!” Hermione shouted in surprise.
“That’s what I said in the car ride over Hermione.” Her father cheerfully chuckled at her surprise.
“Can I hold him? I’ll be careful.” Hermione asked again.
Emilia looked down at the confused little kitten in her arms and felt a little silly before addressing him back. “This is Hermione, she is our daughter. Is it okay if she holds you?” Emilia asked. “She’ll be careful and if you don’t like it just call out for me, okay?”
That seemed to be too many words for the young kitten and Emilia addressed her daughter instead. “Two hands and don’t walk around with him yet.” She then transferred the little kitten over to her daughter.
The kitten just seemed confused at Hermione’s presence but wasn’t distressed over it. Hermione chose that time to voice her own question again. “What’s his name?” She asked.
Emilia and Daniel looked at each other before deciding to let Hermione have this one. “Why don’t you give him a name sweety?” Emilia told her daughter.
Hermione barely thought for long before cheerfully pronouncing the new kitten “Harryson!”
“Any particular reason why?” Daniel asked his daughter.
“He’s hairy, so of course his name is Harryson.” Hermione said with flawless logic for the two-year-old. The newly dubbed Harryson didn’t seem to have any issue with the name and Hermione cheerfully started requesting the young kitten to say her name.
After several failed attempts, Harryson managed to stumble out “Hermie!” He didn’t seem to be able to get any better than that and the bemused couple wondered if his vocabulary would get better with age.
How strange to think that we’re already expecting a talking cat to get better at talking. Emilia wondered. Earlier this day I never would have believed it but now we have a talking cat.
I'm putting this here to make sure I don't give permission for this story to be used in any other form of media that is not posted by myself on the AO3 website. -Rubbernecking.