Work Text:
There were several logistical issues that came with suddenly having no opposable thumbs. The first was doorknobs. The second was can openers.
Alphard probably should have thought about that before permanently transforming himself into a cat, but in his defence, he’d never been much of a planner.
~
Being a cat was strange. It took Alphard a few hours of stumbling around his house before he adjusted to his new centre of balance. He had thought the cat’s instincts would take over, but it was yet another element he’d overlooked.
Perhaps he should take a few days to get used to his new body. Despite his utter ineptitude at buying himself food in advance—honestly, why did he think buying tinned cat food was a good idea—he’d never gotten around to fixing the leaky tap in the downstairs bathroom, so he could theoretically subsist on tapwater for a few days. But then there was the whole business with his own dead body occupying the cellar, slowly rotting inside the complicated Rune array he’d drawn on the floor, and he really had no desire to stay in his house with that.
Unfortunately, he’d also forgotten to crack open a window before the ritual.
In the end, all Alphard could do was sulk and wait for someone to figure out he’d died.
~
On the fourth day, the front door opened.
Alphard darted into a shadowy corner and waited. He’d gotten quite good at darting to and from shadowy corners.
Andromeda paused in the threshold. She was wearing a bright aquamarine raincoat. Very Muggle. He loved it. Alphard wished he could tell her that.
“Oh, Alphie,” Andromeda sighed.
He should have figured out a way to let one of his neighbours find his body, and not poor Andie. She’d always been one of his favourites. Well, every one of his nieces and nephews were his favourites, except for maybe Bellatrix. He’d tried his best with that one, but there was only so much one could do when her parents fed into her worst impulses.
There were a lot of things Alphard had wished he’d done differently. Hurting Andie in this way joined the list.
To her credit, Andie pinched her nose shut, straightened her shoulders, and started to close the door.
Alphard seized the opportunity without a second thought. He darted out of the shadows, through Andie’s legs, and out the door. He didn’t stop, even when he heard her swear and try to Summon him back.
He’d liked to have lingered a bit longer. Maybe gotten some head scratches. Made sure she saw the copy of his will on the dining room table.
But Alphard had somewhere to be, and he’d delayed long enough.
~
A week ago, Alphard had woken up with the certainty that he would die.
That wasn’t new. He’d seen his own death so many times it no longer shocked him. That was yet another gift from his family, along with the webbed toes and the attached earlobes. He’d almost—but not quite—grown used to seeing his own body, collapsed at the bottom of his staircase, dead of an aneurysm at forty-three.
He’d known how it would happen, and he’d even known approximately when it would happen. But then he’d woken up one Tuesday morning and realized: it was here.
His own impending mortality still came as a total shock.
He’d never gotten around to returning that too-small dress to Harrods. He’d never gotten around to sending Midas Trelawney the last of the boxes Midas forgot to take with him when they broke up for good. He’d never gotten around to reading War and Peace.
He’d never gotten around to a lot of things, really.
~
Another thing Alphard had overlooked was the difficulty inherent in travelling large distances in a cat’s body.
His house was just outside of Portsmouth. His destination was in the Scottish Highlands. Truly, if he’d had any sense, he'd have picked a spot closer to Hogwarts to do the ritual. But then there would have been questions, and an inquiry, and people wondering why in Circe’s name had a member of the Black family died in such an odd fashion, and then they’d have called in an expert who would have taken one look at the way he’d died and realized they had a feline with a human mind running loose.
No, it was far easier to do it at home, where nobody would look too hard at the Runes he’d used or the particular cause of his death. Except for poor Andie, but she had enough on her plate as it was. She’d make sure Alphard’s human body was buried in the backyard with the begonias and that his affairs were sorted.
Alphard snuck onto a train headed to London. He could still read, thankfully, so figuring out his next few stops was relatively easy. His mind was his own, although as the days went on the cat’s instincts took over in some regards—which was excellent, because he'd never have been able to kill pigeons as a human.
He ate pigeons and occasionally received scraps of food from Muggles that took pity on him. It was a miserable fucking existence, but he knew what he was getting into when he decided to use an illegal ritual to turn his soul into a cat.
Mostly.
~
In his will, Alphard left Sirius his money, Andie his wardrobe, Ted his gardening tools, Narcissa his remaining heirlooms, and the rest of his family a big fat SOD OFF, YOU UGLY WHORES!
Well. The rest of his family, minus one. But his gift to Regulus wasn’t something he could put in a will.
~
Slowly, ever so slowly, Alphard made his way North.
Days blended into weeks into months. He foraged for food. Sometimes, a family would take him in for a while, and he'd abuse their kindness mercilessly. His world narrowed. Seasons changed. His thoughts became repetitive. Simple. Clean.
Hunt, feed, shelter, warmth, find map, keep going.
~
Sometimes Alphard had to remind himself of why he’d done this in the first place.
He’d never wanted children of his own, not really. It wasn’t necessarily because he preferred the company of men, although that might have been a part of it. Alphard was loathe to take on responsibilities, even small ones like house plants or a betta fish. Why add to his plate when he could continue living a blissfully irresponsible existence? Especially when his siblings had plenty of children of their own that he could dote upon when the mood hit.
Andie was the eldest, and he’d always have a special place in his heart for her. Then came Bellatrix, then Narcissa—a delicate little flower who'd always been just a bit too devious for her own good. Then came Sirius. When Alphard first held his nephew in his arms, he'd seen himself reflected back. The comparison only grew stronger as Sirius grew older.
And then there was Regulus.
Regulus was such a gentle soul, so unlike the rest of the Blacks. As a child, Regulus had smiled just as often as he’d cried. He was expressive and open to a fault. Alphard occasionally wondered if Regulus was some sort of changeling. But no, Regulus was the spitting image of one of Alphard’s uncles—fine-boned, dark-haired, and just a little strange.
Regulus had taken to Grimmauld Place quite poorly. For a while, there were whispers among the family that Regulus wouldn't survive the illnesses that plagued him, trapped in that horrid space Walburga insisted on living in.
Regulus survived. That in and of itself was an achievement. But surviving was just the first hurdle of many.
Sirius had been protective of Regulus the moment Regulus had entered his life. Perhaps it had been an attempt to shield him from the rest of their miserable family, but that task should have never fallen on Sirius’s shoulders.
As time went on and Alphard’s relationship with the Black family soured, he’d distanced himself. He’d gone on lavish trips and taken up international lovers. Every time Alphard came back, he found less and less of that bright, soft child who once begged him for stories of his travels and the different magic he had encountered. Slowly, Regulus retreated into himself. He learned to mimic what his family demanded of him. Sirius lashed out, afraid of losing himself, but Regulus always hid in plain sight.
At the time, Alphard had his own problems to deal with—substance abuse, Midas Trelawney’s dramatics, credit card debt, an identity crisis—and so he hadn’t been much use at all.
Then Sirius had run, and Alphard had realized the truth of it all. Regulus wasn’t lost. He’d become small in order to survive. Both brothers craved love and safety so desperately, but only one of them had been able to seize it with both hands.
Alphard would never forgive his family for what they’d done to Regulus. Himself included.
~
When Alphard finally made it to Hogwarts, reality came crashing back down.
Alphard’s human body had died in the early winter. His journey North had taken him through spring, high summer, autumn, and back to winter.
A year had passed. He might be too late.
If he was wrong, if Walburga had smothered out every last good thing in Regulus—
Well, he’d figure that problem out if it arose. For now, he had some centuries-old wards to sneak around.
~
When Alphard sat down to write his will, in the last week of his human life, he took a very long time to decide what he would give Regulus.
He didn’t need money like Sirius did. He didn’t need books or heirlooms. He didn’t anything, except for someone to be there for him. It was what Alphard should have done for Regulus in the first place.
That was when Alphard realized he had a few options available to him.
The first was becoming a ghost—but ghosts were so limited in what they could accomplish. The second was figuring out a way to cheat death, which was not as difficult as one might imagine.
Many members of House Black, faced with their own inevitable mortality, had tried to figure out ways to avoid their fates. Most of them failed. A few of them, though, demonstrated a bit more canniness.
Transforming one’s soul into an animal was considered a last resort. After all, there was no going back once the ritual was complete. Alphard had initially been rather hesitant—living out the rest of his days in an animal body would probably be a form of torture. He'd never been interested in becoming an Animagus. He had no idea how to be anything other than human, but he saw no better way to help the nephew he’d abandoned.
It would have been more convenient to turn into a dog. But, well—Regulus had always loved cats.
~
Eventually, Alphard smuggled himself into the castle.
Things were far worse than he’d thought. The school was at war, and nobody seemed to be doing anything. The professors tried, but it wasn’t enough. The Prefects tried even less. The Headmaster was nowhere to be seen.
Alphard watched for a while, gathering information from the shadows. Nobody really paid attention to cats—not when a good third of the student body kept them as pets.
Food and head scritches were far more plentiful here. A wily Hufflepuff boy managed to catch Alphard and give him a nice grooming, which he’d resisted wholeheartedly, but eventually had to admit had done wonders. Despite all that, he never let himself get distracted from his mission.
Poor Regulus wasn’t faring well. He was alone in a house full of enemies, and there were some days where Alphard would catch a glimpse of Regulus and see nothing but a blank sort of emptiness there. A candle, snuffed out before it ever truly shone.
But he was there. Somewhere, deep inside, was the boy who'd stared up at Alphard with wide eyes and asked him about the universe beyond Grimmauld Place.
Alphard watched and waited for the perfect opportunity to act.
~
Something strange was happening to the Slytherins.
Black magic. Dark, the likes of which Alphard had only seen in his mother’s grimoire. It struck them seemingly at random, when they least expected it.
Sometimes, Alphard could smell raw meat and coppery blood coming from the Hufflepuff Basement. It clung to one girl in particular. She watched Regulus out of the corner of her eye.
It raised the hair all over Alphard's body. The girl looked harmless, but he couldn’t understand her intentions.
Alphard couldn’t figure out what to do. He feared Regulus would be next, because from what he could tell, the girl was a Dark witch and she had her sights set on his nephew.
So when Alphard came across a discarded amulet that radiated protective magic, he picked it up with his teeth and went to deliver it to Regulus.
~
In the shadows of the Astronomy Tower, Alphard’s heart broke.
His poor, sweet nephew, Marked by a madman and so desperate for a way out that he’d contemplated the unthinkable. Alphard wouldn’t let it happen.
Regulus scooped up Alphard’s tiny cat body in his arms and walked down to the Slytherin Dungeons.
~
It had been a very long time since Alphard had been inside the seventh-year boys’ dormitory. The moment he realised which bed belonged to Regulus, he leapt onto it and dug his claws into the soft duvet. Thankfully, Regulus saw reason and didn’t shoo him off the bed.
The exhaustion from the night seemed to hit Regulus all at once. He took off his shoes and crawled into bed, movements fumbling and exhausted. As a reward for his sensible behaviour, Alphard snuggled up next to Regulus and began to purr. At first, Regulus didn’t seem to know what to do with him, but as time stretched on and Alphard kept purring, Regulus seemed to accept that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Regulus buried his face in Alphard’s fur and let out a shaky exhale. He began to cry, very quietly. As a cat, Alphard couldn’t ask Regulus how he had learned to muffle his sobs so well, but he didn’t need to ask. Alphard already knew the answer.
If he was lucky, Regulus would take him back to Grimmauld and then Alphard could make his dear sister’s life an absolute hell. If he was even luckier, perhaps he’d have a shot at the Dark Lord himself.
For now, Alphard snuggled closer and vowed that he wouldn’t let Regulus out of his sight. He would protect him with his last breath, but most of all, he would not abandon him. Never again.
~
Nobody could say that Regulus was good at naming things. As a child, he’d been overly literal. His stuffed teddy bear was Bear, the kneazle the family had owned for a time was Kneezy, and so on and so forth.
There was definitely a story behind the name Regulus gave Alphard-in-cat-form, but whatever it was, it must have given Regulus some measure of comfort. For that fact alone, Alphard loved it.
It might not have been his first choice, but really, there were far worse names than Soup.