A Slight Deviation Pet

⋄ December 27th, 2023 | Magical Menagerie ⋄
⋄ Interactions: None | Mentions: None ⋄

𝓑ex is almost bouncing with enthusiasm by the time she arrives at the Magical Menagerie, with her dad and Leo following much more sedately at her heels. They're glancing at each other with no small amount of trepidation, but Bex is on Cloud Nine and far too distracted to notice. It's two days past Christmas and Leo's luck has finally run out. Home for break with her family, Bex had been determined to make due on Leo's ill-thought out summer promise to her that she could get her very first pet.

He really should have known better, but her step-father is nothing if not a pushover, and Bex had just been so sad during the days leading up to the start of her first term at Hogwarts.

"I really don't want to go." She'd told him, as the two of them knelt together in the backyard, carefully tending to the herb garden. "Obviously none of my friends are going, since muggles can't go. So I won't know anyone there. Dad says I have to go though, since untrained magic can end up dangerous."

Leo had hummed sympathetically as he pinched the flowers off of the chives. "It's hard to go somewhere new, but you will make friends there, Birdie, you don't need to worry about that."

Bex shrugged noncommittally. "It is what it is." She'd said, mimicking her mother's favorite phrase. "I just wish I wasn't a witch. I want to stay here and play football and have sleepovers with Kayla and Darcy. I won't have a good time there, Leo, I won't."

Leo sighed and pulled her into a hug, ruffling up her carefully braided hair despite her protests that she was far too old for this. "Your dad went to school there and he turned out fine, Bex, no matter what your mum has to say in that regard. I promise it will be okay, more than okay, even. I know you'll make it good."

Bex made grumpy smooshed noises against his side before relenting to the hug, her voice muffled from where her face was pressed up against his shirt as she replied. "Dad spent his first year only talking to his cat, I know, he told me. I don't have a cat to talk to, so what am I 'sposed to do?"

"Well," He'd said, like an idiot, "If you keep out of trouble and mind your professors, maybe we can get you one when you come back for the holidays. A cat that is."

Bex pulled back and stared at him in excited shock. "Really? You'll get me a cat? Mum hates cats." She replied.

"I'm sure your mum will be fine with it." Leo answered, as if his wife of less than two months hadn't been divorced before and wasn't perfectly capable of doing it again.

And thus, record-scratch, this was how Leo had gotten himself into this situation (and how Bex had gotten herself into her far better situation.) Bex's mum, Meredith, had been livid when Leo had first told her of his fatal error, but had by this point had around four months to cool off, and both she and Leo had hoped that Bex would end up forgetting about it.

She did not forget about it.

Walking through the shop, there were so many cats to choose from, and all of them were beautiful in their own way. How did one go about choosing a cat? Was there a guide you could look at? She ended up asking what must have been dozens of questions about the various breeds to the elderly shopkeeper, Anita, who dutifully answered them all with some truly supernatural levels of patience.

In the end though, it isn't one of the cats that ends up catching her eye.

"What is this?" She asked Anita, enchanted by the little creature that had pressed it's paws up against it's enclosure so it could get a better look at Bex. It had a long little body with sleek, dark brown fur, and a sort of cream colored mask shape on its face.

"A European Ferret." Anita replied, reaching in and picking up the ferret and handing it to Bex to hold. "I've been calling this one Pleione. She's very sweet and mellow."

At this point Leo did his best to interject, saying, "Bex, remember that we agreed on a cat?"

"I remember." She replied. "But mum hates cats, so don't you think this is better?"

"I actually don't think that at all-" Leo started before her dad, Milo, gently cut him off.

"Leo, is this really the hill you want to die on? There's going to be so many hills this week."

And so they left the shop one ferret richer that day, with Bex over the moon and Milo and Leo grounded very nervously on Earth.

There was so much to learn when it came to ferret maintenance. Little Pleione slept for 14-18 hours a day, and was something called crepuscular, which Bex learned meant that she would wake up twice, at dawn and at dusk respectively. There were some products and some spells to help with the smell, especially around her sleeping area, so Bex went ahead and bought the products at the Menagerie, as attempting to learn the spells would undoubtedly be a lost cause.

And for two days, things were great. It was only after that that everything went down hill.

Pleione was sweet and mellow when they brought her home, but there was a very good chance that this was because she was shy and overwhelmed at the shop, because as soon as she was away from the hustle and bustle of the Menagerie, it was like they'd accidentally said her sleeper agent codewords and activated a menace.

Pleione was perhaps the dumbest animal alive. Full of love, but dumb as rocks. She'd make sad squeaking noises if you left the room she was in, but would escape out of it herself the second your back was turned. Despite being a carnivore (and Bex feeding her plenty) she kept trying to eat whatever they were eating, culminating in her climbing into Bex's bowl of cereal. After this, the decision was made to keep her in her enclosure during meal-time.

Things came to a head when Pleione had climbed up the sink and fallen into the toilet, for the second time, and had thankfully been rescued by Meredith who had heard the doomed creature as she'd been walking by.

Meredith presented the little terror to Bex, damp, squirming, and clucking happily at Bex. "She fell in the toilet. Again." Meredith held the ferret up and looked her in the eye as she chattered happily at her. "You have a brain the size of a crumb." She told her, with fond exasperation.

From then on, "Crumb" stuck, and while Pleione may have been the name officially listed on her papers, Crumb was by far the more fitting of the two names for this specific little pest. While Bex was dreading bringing Crumb back to school with her, as statistically Hogwarts had a far higher fatality rate than her home in Leeds, she had admittedly grown helplessly fond of her pet, and would gladly pull her out of the toilet as many times as needed.

Word Count: 1217

What animal do you wish to purchase? European Ferret
What do you want to name it? Crumb
Is this a boy or a girl? Girl
What is your pet's date of birth? September 9th, 2023