Luck of Nines

23

The next morning he was up before the others, stretching quietly out for the day and grabbing his newly acquired towel, shampoo and uniform before silently slipping off to the bathroom. He'd showered, poorly, unused to the contraption and transformed temporarily into his canine form to shake himself off before changing into the clothes he'd been forced into accepting. Proper wizarding clothes. He had twelve full sets, three hats, a lightweight cloak, a heavyweight cloak, and two pairs of boots now, which was entirely too many of all of it.  

     Thankfully the woman had nodded approvingly when he suggested getting it all in sizes a few too big and folding- she insisted on properly hemming- the sleeves, so at least the clothes were loose and did not restrict him too much. Dressed for the day, he let his hair hang about his face as he sat down to reading the schoolbooks on his bed until the sun began to rise. Then, after a pause to focus and direct his will, a quick gesture with his hand had his hair tightly braided back again and he slipped on the bag he was given for his school supplies and slid outside of the dorm, the others still asleep.

      The Common room was entirely empty so he slipped outside and climbed the stairs that let out to the side of the Entry Hall. Now was as good a time as any to get a feel for the lay of the land. For the first few hours he simply wondered around the first floor, it wasn't as if he knew what classes he would be taking or which teachers would be teaching them, and he didn't particularly care about where the other dorms were either. So he simply wandered, his ears sharpened and listening, his nose and mouth carefully tasting the air and his skin feeling every draft and current as he strolled along.

He was just beginning to get bored when he felt another person hurrying down the hall. They had just come in from outside using a tunnel a few turns behind him. It was one of the professors, most likely, given they were older than any student. The Professor murmured quietly to himself, as they walked, their clothes swishing along, but that wasn't what caught 'Harry's' attention, it was the smell of tainted fresh blood and an old smell of rancid, festering death which barely covered the smell of rough garlic, forest, and old sweat. He gagged at the taste even from this distance and quickly forced his sense of smell to fade until the stench was no longer crippling. Or rather as crippling.

Nothing that carried that smell could be good, nothing that could tolerate that hellish rot could be sane. Perhaps though, humans were more enclosed than he had expected. He remembered as a kitten the whole world had felt opened wide to him. The new smells, the new senses, were overwhelming. Perhaps... humans were simply that oblivious that they could not tell any of that, they not even intuitively knew to give that stench a wide berth. He was aware his senses had improved by leaps and bounds.

It was this knowledge which was the only thing that kept him from panicking as he quickly and quietly slipped around the corner and headed back to the Slytherin dorms, he wanted nothing to do with someone who could tolerate being anywhere near that, and even less to do with anyone who smelled like that, and he wanted even less than all of that to be trapped with them- alone. He had no illusions about his magical skill, with time and concentration he could do some spells, but he hadn't been able to use his wand since he got it, and he hadn't thought to bring it with him either.

If it came to a fight; he would lose.

But the Professor was unaware of him as he made his way down the hall, reaching out with all of his senses for the slightest sign that something was wrong until he reached the common room. The Head of House, Snape, was lurking in the shadows of the common room, which held only a handful of people. Quietly, he slipped down the side door for males and along the hall to reach the first year dorm which sat at the very end.

It was still early morning, and it seemed only Nott was awake. The small boy glanced upwards from the ancient book that he was reading as 'Harry' entered. "Hello, I did not expect there would be another early riser in Slytherin."

"I suppose so," Harry replied vaguely as he picked his way to his bed, unsure how to respond, "Have you been up long?"

"No."

Chipped Fang meowed loudly for his attention, it was an odd sound given the scars that ran up either side of his mouth and the mostly missing tongue, 'The runt has been awake for some time now,'

'Harry' smiled, stroking a closed fist gently moving down Chipped Fang's head. "I see."

      "That is an interesting cat you have."

      "Interesting?" He snorted, letting his head roll back to look over his shoulder at Nott, "That is one way to put it, but you don't need to mince words." Chipped Fang, from a human standpoint made for a rather ugly cat, even without counting the scars which showed through patchy fur.

       Nott hummed noncommittally and Harry gave an amused smile at the prompt to keep talking as he turned his attention back to Chipped Fang, who carefully picked Harry's wand up from the bed in his tiny mouth.

Seeing as Harry wasn't about to speak again, Nott once more interrupted the silence, it seemed that he was much more interested in knowing something or getting something than he was in the subtle power plays this morning.

"Why do you keep it around then?"

"The cat?" Harry clarified, careful not to let his affection for said cat show.

"Yes, most people only keep pets around for their usefulness or because of cuteness."

"Because I can trust him, that's worth a whole lot more than a pretty face," Harry held his arms open for Chipped Fang to jump in, the cat quickly doing so, turning to carefully observe Nott, "Appearances are not everything."  He left out the half a dozen other reasons, none of them were something Nott needed to know, and not saying something wouldn't make him appear as if he was hiding something and thus further direct attention to Chipped Fang.

"And what if something really is exactly as the outside suggests."

"This is no longer about the cat is it?" Harry smiled, sharply this time. He took a few steps closer, it seemed Nott was making his move already, he quietly checked to make sure the others were still asleep.

"Do you know how Chipped Fang got these marks? His previous owner had a cat, and then she got married, but her new husband had a son. The son was not kind, but a grown cat can escape a kid easily, if it's smart enough. But the kid grew up some and the cat had kittens... you get the picture. The mother cat could only do so much, and Chipped Fang and one other decided to protect the others to buy their mother more time. But somebody was going to find out. Rather than help though, when the owner found out that her step son was torturing animals, she gave him one of the kittens, so long as he left the others alone and since Chipped Fang was deemed ugly, and already scarred. He was not worth much. But the stepson could not resist, and he went after the others as well, and so the father found out. He felt he would be humiliated, if it was found out what his son was doing. So he would not let the kittens be dropped at a shelter, and he would not let the kittens stay. But he was a coward and would not kill them himself either, so they were tossed into a river where I saved them. Sometimes the outside reflects what is within, and sometimes it only reflect the past. Either way that does not determine somethings worth."

"How would you know any of that." Nott clearly didn't believe him.

"I have my ways." He stated simply, they both stared down at Nott, Chipped Fang sitting on his shoulder, wand still clutched in its jaws, "Does it matter?"

"I suppose not," Nott rose from his bed and packed away his book in the book bag, "Are you headed to the dining hall?"

"Yes, would you like to join?" Nobody saw his smug smile as he spun about and exited. Nott followed a half step behind him.