The Many Talents of Knowi Tall

Crooks was no help with the kittens’ incessant mewling. Not that he could be even if he’d wanted to. But it would have been nice if he’d wanted to be helpful. Instead, he was too busy (as usual) alternating between jumping up onto the worktop to fetch this or that knife and dancing between Severus’s feet (when he was inevitably banished from the worktop) to even notice that his mate was stuck in their basket, providing sustenance to his insatiable get.

It wasn’t that Knowi resented her role as milch cow to the two little darlings nipping at her teats long after they should have been eating food from one of those ingenious little tins Hermione had introduced her to, but – damn it! – Severus was her human, and Crooks had no right to try to insinuate himself into said human’s food artistry. And yet, he did. Every. Single. Night.

As if thinking of the bushy-haired witch had conjured her into being, Hermione appeared in the kitchen (strictly against the rules while her husband was cooking!). She gave Knowi an understanding grimace as she passed the hearth.

Severus looked up just then and shoved Crooks to the floor even as he opened his mouth to toss Hermione out.

Fortunately, his wife was the cleverest witch Knowi had ever met.

“I forgot to feed the cats,” Hermione told him, striding across the room to the pantry door. “You wouldn’t want her to go hungry, would you?” she called from the tiny room. “She’s eating for three now. And it’s not like Crooks is helping.”

Severus and Crooks hissed in unison and shared a glance. When Crooks leapt onto the worktop again, Severus didn’t shoo him off.

“I suppose she expected you to grow a pair of teats,” Severus muttered.

The comment might have gone unpunished if Hermione hadn’t come out of the pantry, tin in hand, at that very moment.

Her hair crackled with energy neither male seemed to notice.

Knowi stared.

The kittens sucked.

Crooks and Severus cooked.

And in that moment, Knowi knew. Not in the way Liverpudlian Rexes always knew what was to come. This was another knowing entirely.

Without warning, the chef’s knife clamped between Crooks’s jaws flew into the air. The tomato Severus had been holding floated towards the ceiling.

Knowi squeezed her eyes shut, pulling against the push of magic emanating from her sister-in-arms. The bushy-coated cat had never before felt such power coursing through her body.

Think of the kittens, she thought at her human’s mate. Mine and the one in your womb. Annoying as our mates are, we need them.. The kits will need them. Some day, anyway.

And the tomato made its way back to Severus’s waiting palm. Crooks closed his teeth over the knife’s handle as soon as it was in reach.

Hermione approached the hearth and her husband’s familiar. The two shared another look before Hermione emptied the tin into the waiting dish.

At the tantalising aroma, both kittens released their mother’s teats and wandered over to investigate.

A/N: Written for linlawless’s SND prompt The secret is out: some of the familiars have many more talents than their witches and wizards are aware of.