Read my new story (CaveLeather)
Game of Thrones: The Sword King
Game of Thrones: From Deserter to Power
Game of Thrones: King of Harrenhal— Garth Greenhand Stat Panel
Maybe every cat has a tail it's gotta learn to live with.
For a solid minute, the black cat was busy trying to figure out how to get along with its own tail without losing its mind.
Harry watched the whole thing and felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward. All the heavy, gloomy stuff that had been weighing him down suddenly felt a lot lighter.
"Hey, Mr. Black Cat," he said again.
Now that the panic wasn't drowning him anymore, his thoughts were finally starting to line up.
"I can speak Parseltongue."
The black cat let go of its tail, turned to look at him, and gave a little nod.
"Voldemort can do it. Salazar Slytherin could do it. That's gotta mean I've got some awful dark magic in me, right? I'm gonna turn into something horrible. The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin. Everybody knows Slytherin's full of… bad people."
Harry dropped his gaze. A huge wave of fear and confusion swallowed him whole.
The black cat hopped onto his shoulder and pawed away the thick cloud of foggy dread hovering over Harry's head. (That kind of fog always hangs around the borderlands of the soul. Any wizard who digs deep enough into themselves runs into it sooner or later. It lies. Worse, it can twist you, take the wheel.)
"Not every Slytherin's like that, Harry," the cat said, casually tossing the fog-ball far away.
This was his borderland, after all.
"You mean…?"
Harry stared, wide-eyed.
Inside that ball of fog he'd just seen himself laughing cruelly. His own fear, made solid. And the great spirit of the castle had just… batted it away like it was nothing!
"There have been plenty of great witches and wizards from Slytherin," the cat went on.
Its green eyes softened with something that looked a lot like human memory.
Harry didn't doubt it for a second.
"But you're not a Slytherin. The Sorting Hat wanted to put you there; maybe it saw some Slytherin traits in you. Some of the exact qualities Salazar Slytherin prized when he hand-picked his students. Rare gifts—like Parseltongue. Resourcefulness. Determination. A certain… disregard for rules."
The cat had this mysterious, all-knowing vibe, but zero arrogance—like it understood everything and still thought you were worth talking to.
Harry figured it had to be some kind of sage, humble and approachable the way Dumbledore was.
Maybe even wiser. This was the spirit of Hogwarts itself, a thousand years in the making.
"The reason it put me in Gryffindor…" Harry said slowly, "was because I begged it not to send me to Slytherin."
The cat nodded, clearly pleased—like a teacher whose student just got the answer right.
"Exactly. That's what makes you different from Tom Riddle. Harry, it's our choices that show who we really are—far more than our abilities."
Another swirl of mist drifted over. Harry saw himself in it—proud, steady—pulling the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat.
He froze, mouth open.
"B-but that was Sean who— I didn't really—"
His heart was doing flips like a stag on the loose.
"Harry, that came straight out of your soul. That's what you want to be."
The cat nudged the misty image closer so Harry could see his own determined face.
"As for the rest of your questions… I can't answer those for you. Don't ever let anybody else tell you what you can or can't do. The life you want? That's yours to choose. If you've got dreams, fight for them. Make them real."
Harry just stood there, totally stunned, lips moving with no sound coming out.
"Goodbye, Harry."
The cat's tail gently placed the little ball of mist into Harry's hand.
Everything around him started to blur and lift like morning fog burning off.
"Will I see you again, Mr. Black Cat?!"
"In the world of the soul, nothing's ever an accident. Harry, you called my name seventy times tonight. But really? You were calling yourself."
The cat's voice faded from his mind.
Harry's eyes snapped open. Dawn had come.
It was freezing. The Gryffindor common room windows were frosted over with snowflakes.
For the first time in forever, Harry felt… full. A quiet, steady kind of courage that made him feel solid from the inside out.
Meanwhile, back in the dream-borderlands…
The black cat padded along, lingering a full three minutes this time—way longer than usual.
wisps of mist started rising from its midnight-black fur. First they shaped themselves into a strange creature—something between a cat and a panther.
Then the mist spread out like silken threads, weaving a delicate web.
The cat somehow knew: this was a tether. An anchor that kept you from getting lost in the soul-world.
Those misty threads drifted off in every direction—toward the little stone cottage where the Transfiguration professor lived, down to the dim dungeons, into the student dormitories, even up to the headmaster's office…
As the threads floated away, the cat's own shape started to blur.
Three minutes and three seconds.
Ravenclaw dormitory.
Sean reached for the wand on his windowsill, flicked it lazily, and a small notebook flew into his hand.
He jotted down how long he'd managed to stay in the borderland this time, then felt a little rush of excitement.
His second soul was finally taking shape—and if he wasn't mistaken, it was a Wampus cat.
Wampus cat. XXXXX creature.
Looks a bit like a mountain lion or cougar, native to the Appalachians. Walks upright, faster than an arrow, eyes that can hypnotize or even perform crude Legilimency.
The Cherokee studied them for centuries—same homeland. Only Cherokee warriors ever managed to get Wampus cat hair for wand cores.
Isolt Sayre, one of the founders of Ilvermorny, used Wampus cat hair in her wand. Her adopted son Chadwick even named one of Ilvermorny's houses "Wampus" in their honor…
Sean scribbled down everything he remembered, mind already racing.
If his second soul really was a Wampus cat, he'd stay fully aware while transformed.
The hypnosis and Legilimency powers alone would be insane.
Now the only question was… where on earth was he supposed to find a Wampus cat to make into a magical creature biscuit?