The Fourth Cat


The cats knew it was close to feeding time. The great ginger tom was making desperate chirping noises and pawing at her skirt, while the deaf white one was screaming to high heavens like the end of the world was nigh and the chubby grey tabby was sat on a chair with a paw on the table. Knowing full well he wasn’t allowed on it; this was him testing the limits for the umpteenth time.

“Get your paw off the table this instant, Mr Tibbles!” Arabella cried, moving forward ungracefully as the ginger tom kept stepping in the way of her feet, dragging the side of his body against her leg and effectfully colouring the dark blue fabric with his fur. “And where’s your new sister gotten to, I wonder?”

Mr Tibbles side-eyed her for a second or two before he removed his paw from the table and jumped off the kitchen chair. She met him again at the four clean-licked bowls, flanked by the ginger and the white one. She filled three bowls to the contented sound of purring and some off-key meowing from the white one, but she hesitated by the fourth.

“Princess?” she called uncertainly. She hadn’t been told what the cats original name was, but it was undoubtedly a regal, rather aloof creature.

The doorbell rang before Arabella could decide on her course of action. She heaved the sack of cat food back into a cupboard with a lock where the cats couldn’t reach it and left the kitchen.

She passed the collection of photographs of herself and Mr Figg, back in their prime, and the candle she habitually lit to remember him by flickered in time with her steps. The cats had learnt from their previous mistakes with the candle and gave the whole shelf a wide berth nowadays.

Arabella could see a solitary figure outside through the distorting amber-coloured panes in her front door. A single figure it was, but the arms suggested it was carrying something.

“Good evening, Mrs Figg!”

“Mrs Dursley! What a nice surprise.”

Mrs Dursley shifted uncomfortably in the doorway. She was dressed in a pale dress with lots of frills and bows, which Arabella could just see under her open winter coat with fur trimmings. Some of it, too, was obscured by the toddler.

“And widdle Harry, isn’t it? How do you do?”

Arabella was rather less used to little children than she pretended to be, much since mothers of all ages and sizes expect a certain behaviour of you when you’re an old maid. She touched the tiny little hand, then realized the boy was asleep.

“I’m sorry to intrude upon your evening,” Mrs Dursley began, taking a step forward and forcing Arabella to retreat, allowing her inside, “but my babysitter has just cancelled on me. We’re invited to a New Year’s Eve party out in the countryside. Vernon’s boss is from rather an old family, has an estate outside of Guildford, don’t know whether I’ve mentioned it before…? And we’re invited this year.” Mrs Dursley’s huge, pale eyes came alight with smugness.

“That’s nice,” Arabella said vaguely.

“Yes, isn’t it? We’ve so been looking forward to it. Only now, with the babysitter calling at the very last moment to tell us she can’t come…” Mrs Dursley glanced bitterly down at the toddler she was carrying. “You mentioned before that you wouldn’t mind sitting for us occasionally?”

“So I did,” Arabella admitted, wringing her hands. The cats were apparently finished with dinner because they entered the hallway in tandem, three tails like polite question-marks of greeting.

“Shoo!” Mrs Dursley said, wincing badly and retreating into the corner next to the shelf with the photographs and candle.

“I was planning to see my brother tonight,” Arabella said, shepherding the cats back into the kitchen and closing the door behind them. “I rarely see him, but I suppose he got worried I was going to be alone for New Year’s Eve as well as Christmas. After my husband, ah…” Arabella gazed sadly at the lit candle, which flame flickered when Mrs Dursley edged past again.

“Well, if you look after Harry, you won’t be alone.”

“And Dudley, I expect?”

“Oh no!” Mrs Dursley said, looking shocked. “Oh no, Dudders is coming with us. Vernon’s boss and his wife have just had a baby of their own, so it will be quite appropriate for me to bring Dudley.”

“I see,” Arabella said, although she didn’t. Mrs Dursley stepped closer, holding out the sleeping boy to her.

“I should think it goes without saying that I can’t bring more than one child,” Mrs Dursley said shrilly. “How would that look?”

“Like you had twins, I expect.”

Mrs Dursley wrinkled her nose, looking like Arabella had suggested something abnormal and gross to her.

“Harry looks nothing like my side of the family, and certainly not like Vernon’s.”

Smiling sadly down at the sleeping little boy, Arabella took him from Petunia’s arms. The little thing was wearing a large baby hat that covered the entirety of his hair and forehead.

“There’s another one!” Mrs Dursley burst out, pointing to the stairs behind Arabella. Her voice was so loud little baby Harry made a confused, sniffling noise, but he didn’t open his eyes.

“There you are, Princess,” Arabella said, turning to face her fourth cat. This one was all black and with a sleek, shiny coat. There was something odd about the eyes, Arabella had seen it before but never quite as strongly as now. The cat’s yellow eyes, which should have been filled with the brand of self-love and arrogance peculiar to its kind, were instead filled with sorrow. Princess looked at Mrs Dursley like they had met before and shared the most heart-wrenching of experiences.

“Princess is new,” Arabella explained to Mrs Dursley. “Her original owners died and then the poor thing was shipped off to a new family, but she –”

“Is that so? Well, I mustn’t keep you. I’ve brought some milky porridge you can heat up if he gets hungry. Just keep him away from the cats, will you?”

“Of course,” Arabella said to the retreating, skinny backside of Mrs Dursley. The door snapped shut behind her, but not before Arabella heard her sigh of relief. Arabella shifted the child in her arms and opened the door to the kitchen with her elbow, prompting the cats to leap out and scatter across the hallway. She carried the sleeping boy into the kitchen and, after looking around for several moments, carefully deposited him onto the kitchen table.

“There, there… You won’t be able to fall off, will you?”

The baby slept on, and Arabella walked back to the cupboard where she kept the cat food.

“Princess? Why don’t you come on in. You haven’t had your dinner yet. Silly girl, surely you must be starving?”

The black cat hesitated in the doorway, her eyes on the baby sleeping on the table.

“Have you seen babies before, Princess? I’ve promised Mrs Dursley to keep you at some distance from him, but if you’re very curious, I could lift you up and get you a bit closer to him. If you want to see what human babies look like, of course?”

The cat smelled the air, then gave Arabella such a sad look that she felt a physical tug near her heart.

“Your old family were magical, weren’t they?” she asked. “Dumbledore said you can’t stand to be around magic anymore, that you tried to escape from the wizarding family who took you in after they died. That’s how Dumbledore thought of me, he knows that I’m very fond of little ones like yourself. I just wonder what happened with your first owners that was so traumatic for you?”

The cat didn’t respond, but she had her tail between her legs and edged along the wall when she came over to her food bowl. Arabella filled it for her and petted her several times.

“What to do about Alfred?” Arabella said eventually, straightening up. “He doesn’t even have a phone, so there’s no way of reaching him to tell him I’ve had a change of plans for tonight.”

Neither Princess nor the sleeping toddler on the table responded.

Undecided, Arabella swayed on the spot. It had been very thoughtful of Alfred to think of her, very thoughtful and very unusual. She had seen little of him after he turned eleven, their lives had diverged then and never realigned. There were no hard feelings, at least she didn’t think there were, it was just what happened sometimes, even between brother and sister. You grew up to have nothing in common. They had attended each other’s weddings and the funeral of their parents, one after the other. And then, six months ago, they had met again at the funeral of Mr Figg.

There might have been other funerals, too, but Arabella had not attended those. If she had, Alfred might have realized that they had more in common than he knew.

After Mr Figg’s funeral, Alfred had hugged her and told her she wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. She was sure neither of them had known what he meant, but now he had found a way to show a token of sibling love.

There was a scratching noise from the window over the sink. Hurrying over, Arabella just manage to close it before the black cat managed to slink through.

“No, Princess!” Arabella said sternly, wagging her finger in the cat’s face. “No more tricks like that from you, thank you very much!”

The cat looked unrepentant and, shaking her head, Arabella moved closer to the window.

“Could’ve sworn I closed it earlier. Oh well, no matter. I’ve got a key, and I’m not afraid to use it. Hear that, Princess?”

Arabella showed the cat the key, then turned it in the lock by the handle.

There was another knock on the door. Arabella replaced the key in the cutlery drawer, then lifted the sleeping baby from the table and hurried to the door.

“Alfred! And Nerida too, how nice!”

“Arabella, how are you? And, oh? What’s that?”

“It’s a baby,” Arabella said matter-of-factly, looking down to check that the hat was still covering the tiny little forehead, “I’m afraid I’ve been roped in as a baby-sitter tonight by one of the neighbours.”

“That’s a shame,” Nerida said politely, “Alfred thought you might like to spend this evening with us.”

“I would’ve,” Arabella assured her. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way, but I didn’t know how to contact you. I couldn’t say no to my neighbour when she knocked earlier, she’s one of those people, you know... I would love to meet up some other time. Maybe the two of you would like to come here sometime in the new year?”

Nerida opened her mouth with what was sure to be a courteous refusal, but her husband cut across her:

“You can bring it with you,” Alfred said, indicating the baby. “The hosts of the party we want to take you to have kids of their own, and I know they won’t mind if we bring an additional one along.”

Nerida gave him a look that wasn’t missed by Arabella, and again she hesitated. The thing was, she had really looked forward to tonight.

“It’s a baby boy,” she said slowly.

“Honestly, it’ll be alright. You can bring him along, our host and hostess won’t mind, in fact I bet they’ll be delighted!”

“Fine,” Arabella decided, straightening her back and smiling more than she had in ages. “Hold him for one second, will you, I’ll just grab my coat and let the cats know they shouldn’t expect me back until after midnight.”



Ten minutes later the four of them landed in the snow next to a turnstile. Arabella was gasping for air but the baby, miraculously, seemed completely undisturbed by his first disapparition. He hadn’t even woken up.

“They live just up here,” Alfred said, leading the way up a hill. Craning her neck, Arabella saw an immensely tall but thin and rickety-looking building silhouetted against the dark sky.

As was usual when she was planted into a wholly magical environment, Arabella got a headache. She slipped and slid her way up the hill with the others, gritting her teeth against the discomfort in her head and shielding the child in her arms from an increasingly biting wind.

“Ah, Perkins! Welcome, welcome, nice to see you old chap!”

“You’ve met Nerida, of course,” Alfred said happily to the tall ginger man stepping aside on the doorstep to let Nerida through, “and this is my sister, Arabella Figg.”

“I’m Arthur Weasley,” the man said, waving to Arabella. “Alfie’s colleague, we’ve shared an office for, what is it now? Five years?”

“Yeah, I think so. Still getting used to the way you smell.”

“It’s muggle Berlin!” Arthur exclaimed with fake outrage. “And I’ll have you know I smell lovely after I’ve put it on. I love all things muggle, don’t you, Mrs Figg?”

“I’ve had to learn how to,” Arabella said, although she could tell neither man was listening to her.

“He means cologne,” Alfred said, smiling broadly. “And he sprays it all over our office a dozen times a day.”

“I do not!”

“Don’t you have magical cologne?” Arabella asked, stepping inside as Arthur waved for her to come through. “I always imagined there must be wizarding cologne that changes the colour of your hair or that smells in a particular way so as to attract fairies or veelas or something.”

“We do, but it’s called witchy-water.”

“Yes, to attract witches,” Arthur said, looking curiously at Arabella. “I say, you aren’t a – ?”

“Where he thinks he’ll find witches in our office I’ll never know,” Alfred said loudly. “Ah, there’s Molly!”

“I’m a squib, Mr Weasley!” Arabella said, her voice quivering a little, but she jutted out her chin and pulled the toddler defiantly closer to her chest.

“Call me Arthur, please,” Arthur said, and to his credit his smile had barely faltered at all. “Well, I want you to know that you are very welcome here. Both of you. Who is the little one?”

“Er, this is Harold,” Arabella said, glancing down at the sleeping baby and adjusting his hat slightly.

“We have one about the same age sleeping through there,” Arthur said, smiling down benignly at the baby and pointing his thumb over his shoulder where Arabella could see a door next to a large chest of drawers, “feel free to put him down in there. Can I get you a drink in the meantime?”

“Some wine would be lovely, thanks,” Arabella said graciously and carried the baby past him. She came to a stop before she reached the door, however.

Having grown up in a magical house she was of course used to the sight of moving photographs, that wasn’t at all what made her stop dead in her tracks in front of the chest of drawers. It was the two smiling, waving young men, sharing a frame and with two lit candles either side. The candles burnt ruby-red and smelled distinctly of laughter, but remove the magic and it was the same old story.

Arabella had not known both of them, just the one on the left. Fabian. He had made her laugh and laugh when he used the Figgs’ home to spy on some suspected Death Eater neighbours.

Arabella had moved house a dozen times during the war, each time taking up residence with her dear husband next to suspected murderers and torturers and mind-controllers. Sometimes her observations had been enough for the Order, and sometimes someone else had been sent in. Someone with magic. Dorcas had been lovely, if a bit quiet, and Caradoc had been so reclusive she and Mr Figg had barely noticed he was in the house. But Fabian had been different.

It had been so natural when he was there, always ready with a joke and happy to play cards with Mr Figg in the evenings. The cats had loved him, too. Afterwards, when she received word about his death from Dumbledore, she had wondered how he could have remained so funny and friendly through it all. Like he was untouchable. It did not make sense, not when there was a war on.

Dumbledore had asked if she wanted to go to the funeral, but she had declined. She had feared she would feel like an intruder if she went. She had meant to ask Dumbledore about where he was buried, though. When all other duties came to an end you still had to pay your respects.

In a way, not all her duties had ended with the war. Glancing down at the sleeping baby, she steeled herself once more and opened the door with the aid of her elbow.

The room inside was small and dark and looked like it was used both for storage and as a nursery. A large rocking unicorn neighed softly at her and a pile of boxes moved out of the way to let her through when she spotted the cot by the window. She smiled when she saw a boy of similar size to little Harry amongst the blankets and plush dragons and toy murtlaps, but he had strands of violently orange hair growing all over his head.

“You’ll be the spitting image of your father, no doubt,” Arabella mumbled before she eased baby Harry down into the foot end of the cot, where there was plenty of room for another baby. She wondered sadly whether this cot hadn’t been designed for a pair of twins, originally. It certainly didn’t look new.

Feeling confident that she had found a good, safe spot for little Harry she exited the room and closed the door gently behind her.

“Oh dear!” There was a startled, sniffing noise and the short, round woman standing in front of the chest of drawers turned her back abruptly to Arabella. Arabella could hear the loud, hearty noise of a nose being blown. “Sorry,” the woman said thickly, turning back around and stuffing a gingham handkerchief into the front pocket of her pinny. “How rude of me, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m Molly, and you must be Mrs Figg? Arthur told me you brought a little one that needed a bed for the evening. I was about to come in, but I – I got distracted.”

“Harold is fast asleep next to your son. I hope it’s alright I put him there?”

“Of course it is!” Molly’s face shone in a way that made it eerily similar to Fabian’s. Arabella did her best to smile back. Fabian had spoken a lot about his brother and sister. They had been a tight-knit family.

“He’s very cute, your son,” Arabella said, nodding at the closed door. “Do you have more than one?”

Molly laughed, and Arabella remembered that Fabian had mentioned nephews. Many, many nephews.

“We have six,” she said proudly, although momentarily her pride became muddled with something that looked like guilt. “Oh dear, you must wonder why I’m keeping the littlest one in the storage room? You see, he does have a room of his own, but the house decided to make his room at the very, very top if you can believe it! Up seven flights of stairs and right underneath the ghoul in the attic. Once he’s a bit older, he’ll get to move in there, but I just felt it was more practical to keep him down here while he’s wee. Saves my poor knees too, can’t understand what the house was thinking, placing little Ronnie's room so out of the way!”

“It sound like a sensible decision on your part,” Arabella said with a smile.

“Mrs Figg! Oh Mrs Figg! I come bearing wine!”

A tipsy-looking Arthur came into view, carrying another red-headed boy in one arm and a goblet in the other. Laughing and feeling perhaps a little bit of déjà vu, Arabella accepted the goblet of wine.



“Oh, but animals always know!” Arabella interrupted, sloshing some gooseberry wine down her front, “they’re much cleverer than we give them credit for!”

The witch and wizard looked at her, then at each other. It looked like they were making to leave, and so Arabella grabbed the arm of the wizard to keep him put.

“My cats always know when I’m about to get the ‘flu, for instance,” Arabella explained to the wizard, who looked oddly at her like he had never heard of the flu. “They’ll lie on my chest and purr when I’m poorly, sometimes they’ll all try to get on top of me at once and it gets a bit heavy…

“I’m more of an owl-person, myself,” the wizard muttered, pulling gently at his sleeve so that Arabella almost fell over him.

“They can get depressed, too,” Arabella continued and began mopping up the wine she had spilt on his sleeve with the edge of the tablecloth. “Not often, mind. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before Princess.”

“Hmm?”

“Dumbledore gave me Princess,” Arabella explained as the witch lunged over to catch a goblet Arabella had inadvertently pulled off the table with the tablecloth.

“You know Dumbledore?”

“Of course I know Dumbledore!” Arabella huffed. “He gave me Princess after her old owners died somewhere in the West Country. It was a tragedy, he said. There were a lot of tragedies, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her owners died in the war.”

An eerie quiet settled over the witch and the wizard. Arabella thought glumly that the war, for so many like them, would never really be over.

“They died, and Dumbledore told me in confidence that Princess feels responsible. She shouldn’t blame herself, of course she shouldn’t. She’s a cat for heaven’s sake! She couldn’t have stopped Him, if it was Him. Might’ve been one of the Death Eaters, of course. Dumbledore didn’t say. But he was worried about her. She can’t stand the smell of magic anymore. And that’s why he thought of me.”

“Fiveworks!” a child’s voice yelled. “Fiveworks!”

Laughing, two identical boys in bright knitted jumpers tottered past the table, set for the kitchen door. Arabella could hear the excited voices outside. Arthur and Molly had invited dozens of guests, although Arabella had the feeling that some, like herself, had not so much been invited as found their way here.

With a combined heave, the tiny twins managed to push open the door.

“Ten – nine – eight – seven – six – five – ”

“Back inside immediately!” Molly chided, taking a twin under each arm and heaving them back inside the kitchen.

“ – two – one!”

“Happy New Year!”

Arabella leant a little to the side past the screaming, laughing twins and their mother, and saw a wild, green and gold full-sized dragon made of sparkles and glitter and loud smoky bangs stomp past, shaking out its wings until it could leap into the air and take flight to the chorus of awed gasps and sighs and several more “happy new year’s”.

“Sorry,” Arabella said to the wizard next to her, releasing her iron grip on his arm at last. “I’ve had a bit too much to drink. I had such a terrible headache that I thought I needed some wine to counter it, but actually I think all I managed was to make a tit of myself.”

“Not at all,” the wizard said magnanimously. “But if you’d like a sober-up potion, I think there’s one or two left over there on the counter. Might be good to have your wits about you when we foretell what the new year has in store for us.”

“Oh, d’you mean..?” Arabella paused, fighting to make some old bits of memory fall into place.

“You know, when we each take turns to smelt a knut with our wands and throw it into half a crystal ball filled with water? It solidifies into a shape and then we all decide what shape it looks like, what it signifies for the new year?”

“Ah yes, of course. I think we did it slightly differently in my family,” Arabella said. She got up and went to get a sober-up potion. She had only just chugged it down when Alfred appeared by her side.

“Nerida feels we should call it a night, you don’t mind heading home, do you?”

“Yes, alright. I’ll go get Harry – I mean Harold.”

Alfred patted her shoulder and she hurried off, colour rising on her cheeks. This would not do at all, her and her big mouth. What would Mrs Dursley say if she knew that Arabella had flounced off with her nephew like this? And what would Dumbledore say?

Arabella hurried inside the little storage room and nursery only to find Molly standing by the cot.

“Ron’s still sleeping. I was just about to take off Harold’s little hat, I think he’s too warm.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Arabella said quickly, “we’re leaving now and it’s cold out, so he’ll need his hat.”

“He has very pretty eyes,” Molly said, smiling as she handed Harry over to Arabella. “Unusual colour.”

“Thank you so much for having us,” Arabella said, extending a hand to Molly with some difficulty from underneath Harry.

“Oh, don’t mention it. You’re welcome again, anytime you like. But you have to stay just a minute longer. We’re doing a light-hearted bit of fortune-telling, I don’t know whether you’re familiar..?”

“Barely,” Arabella said uncomfortably. “But I don’t carry knuts or galleons and I can’t do magic to smelt one.”

“I’ll do it for you,” Molly said decisively, and she led the way back into the house. The other guests were standing all around an enlarged halved crystal ball filled with water. Arthur had his wand out, levitating a small, bronze piece which was contorting, then melting in mid-air. With keen murmurs and glee from the on-lookers, Arthur made the molten mess fall into the crystal bowl. The water hissed sharply and when it had hit the bottom, it had frozen into a new shape.

“Pick it up Dad!” a red-headed boy that might have been eight or nine said. Arthur did and held it up to the light.

“It looks like a shoe!”

“No, it looks like dragon!” the boy said decisively and to much laughter.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed, Charlie?”

“To me it looks like a spark plug,” Arthur said delightedly. “It’s a muggle thing, they use it instead of an ignition spell.”

“What do you think?” Molly asked Arabella while she fumbled in her apron pocket. Arabella could hear some metal clinking together inside.

“That looks rather like the muggle symbol for woman to me,” Arabella mused.

“Let’s do yours, Mrs Figg,” Molly said, triumphantly pulling out a knut from her pocket along with her wand. “Focus hard now.”

Arabella closed her eyes and hugged Harry. He appeared perfectly content despite the strangers all around, or perhaps he was finding it too overwhelming for words. She wondered if he knew, instinctually, that he was among his own people tonight.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s got three heads!”

There was a lot of laughter going around, and little Charlie assured everyone that it was another dragon.

Molly held the melted knut out to Arabella. It did, indeed, look like three cat’s heads.

“Maybe you’re getting three new ones this year?” Alfred asked from behind her. He was in his coat and Arabella could see a stoic-looking Nerida behind him in the doorway.

“Yes, maybe,” she said uncertainly, waving goodbye as well as she could with her arms full of Harry and following her brother and his wife outside.

“Nerida is going straight home, she’s feeling tired. But I’ll take you to Little Whinging.”



This time, little Harry cried after the apparition. He wouldn’t stop, either, but sounded so inconsolable that Arabella had to keep her goodbye to some hurried platitudes that didn’t nearly convey how much she had enjoyed the evening.

Arabella shuffled inside with the crying boy, doing her best to comfort him. He was probably hungry, but hadn’t Mrs Dursley left some porridge for him? She stumbled over the cats come to greet her, the ginger tom and the deaf white one and the fat grey tabby called Mr Tibbles.

The kitchen was cold, but it took Arabella a moment to understand why. A sense of dread spread up her spine when she bent down and placed little Harry on the carpet. The cats all stared at him like he was an alien. He continued crying as she walked up to the kitchen window. It was wide open.

Slowly, Arabella opened the cutlery drawer. The key was still there.

“Just like magic,” Arabella said, brushing a stray tear from her face and, after allowing herself a second or two, turning her attention to the container of cold porridge Mrs Dursley had left.