“Hello, Madam Pince,” chirped Professor Burbage. “I wonder, do you have any Muggle classic literature in your collection? I was thinking of assigning my students to do book reports.”
“This is a wizard library,” Irma said stiffly. “My budget for acquiring new material does not cover Muggle literature.”
“Pity.” Burbage leaned casually on Irma’s desk and nearly tipped a stack of books over. With some hasty wandwork, Irma steadied the books; then, putting her wand away, she moved the stack behind the counter, where it wouldn’t be disturbed. “You know,” Burbage was saying, “I have always thought that Muggle literature is undervalued in the wizarding world.”
“Tell me about it,” said Irma, rolling her eyes. “I’ve yet to meet a single student who knows the difference between Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë.”
“It’s a crime,” Burbage said sadly. “I was just saying to Mr. Filch the other day”Mr. Filch, I said, I’ll bet no one even realizes your cat is named after a Jane Austen character.”
Irma’s eyes bugged. Professor Burbage gave her a mildly curious look, but prattled on about Shakespearean references in everyday parlance, ignoring the look on Irma’s face.
Irma, meanwhile, was unaccountably annoyed that Burbage had recognized that name. No one else ever had, or at least had never commented on it, and Irma had had the satisfaction of imagining that it was a reference she alone would understand. For it was she who had named Filch’s cat, when he had first arrived at Hogwarts with the animal in tow.
She had been the school librarian for five years when he arrived. Her ascension to the position had been fairly easy; her predecessor, Atticus Lear, had been a handsomish middle-aged wizard who leaned a little too close to the pretty girls when they asked for help finding a book. Fortunately Irma was not a pretty girl; Mr. Lear condescended to teach her the shelving spells and allow her to help him out in her free periods, but otherwise he left her well enough alone.
Thus, she’d been the only one with any experience when, in her seventh year, Mr. Lear had been asked to retire. It was a rather sudden decision; a few weeks before final exams, he had taken it into his head to study and write a research paper on Beatrix Bloxam’s Toadstool Tales, an endeavor which caused him to vomit most spectacularly all over the library, and which left the students and faculty alike very unamused. Irma had volunteered to perform the necessary cleaning charms, and was offered his job on the spot.
On the other hand, no one was quite sure how Filch had been hired. It might have been one of Dumbledore’s odd charity cases, like keeping Hagrid around as gamekeeper, or there might have been a long list of applicants for the post of caretaker’s assistant, and Argus Filch had somehow been the most qualified to take the job. Whatever the case, he had simply shown up on the first day of the new term, a poorly-dressed, shaggy-haired, supremely bitter teenager just out of Muggle school. Rumor had it that his parents were wizards, and his twin sister a witch, but Argus had never developed any magical talent whatsoever.
Rumor also had it that the entire family was no good. Not Dark, of course, merely useless. The father had been killed in a drunken wizards’ duel, and the mother couldn’t hold down a job. The sister… well, Irma remembered her as a Slytherin a few years behind her in school. She was the sort who took pleasure in malicious tricks and bullying younger students, but after quitting school, she seemed to have vanished completely from the wizarding world.
At least Argus himself seemed willing to work hard. The ancient caretaker, Apollyon Pringle, kept him moving, which was a good thing, since it kept him out of the way of the students. Irma had pitied the poor boy for the cruel teasing they heaped on him (especially the Slytherins, despite his twin sister having been in their House).
Irma vividly remembered the day Argus acquired the cat. He had been missing for a few days with no explanation, which Mr. Pringle complained loudly about, since it meant he had to do actual work instead of ordering his assistant around. Then, suddenly, Argus was back, and there was a ragged, scrawny scrap of fur trotting at his heels, its yellow eyes seeming to take up its entire face.
“What’s its name?” Irma had asked one day, while Argus took his daily ten-minute break in her library. Pringle had ordered him to clean it, but since Irma kept it spotless already, he used the time to put his feet up on a chair and page through whatever books the students had left lying around.
Argus looked up, startled that she was addressing him. He looked over his shoulder to make sure she was talking to him, then looked down at the cat. “I… don’t know,” he said. “It’s a she.”
Irma put down Mansfield Park, which she had been rereading, and bent to scratch the cat behind its ears. “Sweet little puss,” she cooed.
The cat scratched her.
Argus laughed.
“I oughta’ve warned you,” he said. “She’s right unpleasant.”
“I see that.” Irma nursed her hand. “You should call her Mrs. Norris.”
“What’s that?”
“A character in a book,” Irma said, smirking at her own joke. She retrieved Mansfield Park and found her favorite passage about the odious Aunt Norris, which she read aloud to Argus:
It ended in Mrs. Norris’s resolving to quit Mansfield, and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria… where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other, no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.
Argus, suddenly and inexplicably, began to laugh. He laughed for far longer than one might normally laugh at Miss Austen’s delightful brand of sly humor. It was a dry laugh, a wheezing cackle, and Irma could not help but feel that Mr. Filch did not laugh very often.
“Mrs. Norris it is,” he said, when he had caught his breath. “How do you like that, eh, Mrs. Norris?”
The cat looked up with her enormous eyes and meowed primly, then began to wash her paw.
“Tempers became their mutual punishments,” Argus cackled. “Tell you what, library lady, can I borrow that book?”
“It’s my personal copy,” said Irma, hugging it to her chest. “And my name is Irma Pince, if you please, not library lady.”
“Well, I’ll treat it extra careful,” said Argus. He pried it from her hands. “And I’ll bring it back in a week, Irma Pince, I swear.”
Irma looked into the boy’s pale eyes for a long moment, and he stared back from behind the curtain of his unkempt hair. If it had been anyone else, she might have pulled out her wand and hexed him for daring to touch her precious book. But she pitied Argus Filch. He’d received enough rough treatment; maybe it was time someone showed him kindness.
“Don’t spill anything on it,” she said, and allowed him to take the book.
Exactly one week later, he had stalked into the library, slapped the book down on her desk, and told her in no uncertain terms that it was the most unrealistic and boring rubbish he had ever wasted his time on.
“Madam Pince?” Burbage said, bringing Irma back to the present. “Am I boring you?”
“Not at all,” said Irma, rubbing her eyes. “I’m just a little tired. Really, Professor Burbage, anytime you wish to talk about Muggle literature, my door is open.”
Burbage caught the dismissal in Irma’s tone and began backing towards the door.
“Watch out!” Irma called, but not in time to keep Burbage from tripping over Mrs. Norris herself.
The cat hissed and sat down to groom her tail angrily. Burbage said, “I’m all right, don’t mind me,” and beat a hasty retreat.
“What are you sniggering at?” Irma snapped at a Slytherin fourth year. The boy”Crabbe, was it?”stopped laughing, and he and his mates returned their gazes to their notes.
Which left Irma to stare down the cat.
She frowned at the beast, wondering (not for the first time) why Mrs. Norris was so very long-lived. It had been thirty-five years since Filch had started work at Hogwarts, and the cat had been there nearly the whole time. Yet Irma was certain Mrs. Norris had not aged, or even changed at all, except to grow fatter and fluffier.
Why had no one ever thought to question Mrs. Norris’s longevity, or her apparent psychic link to her owner? Irma supposed that it was not totally unheard of for a wizard’s familiar to live longer than its species’ usual lifespan, though since Argus was a Squib, that explanation was suspect. Nothing, though, explained the way that Mrs. Norris seemed to be able to summon Filch. She’d arrive on the scene, students would panic that they were in trouble, and as they tried to run, Filch would arrive and apprehend them. It had happened more times than Irma could count, yet no one ever asked how.
“Go on,” she said, waving her hand at the cat. “You’re shedding on my floor.”
Mrs. Norris, showing a typical feline disregard for human commands, leapt onto a bookshelf and lay down, purring.
“Now you’re shedding on Dressing Like a Muggle For the Clueless Wizard,” Irma muttered. She went to fetch her feather duster.
The cat wouldn’t budge, merely sat there batting at the feather duster like it was a dead bird on a stick (which, admittedly, it resembled). Irma huffed in frustration and turned around, intending to do another sweep of the library to make sure all the students were behaving.
Instead, she bumped into Argus Filch, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.
“What is it now, Mr. Filch?” she asked, wondering if she should apologize for yesterday’s insult, or if he had already forgotten.
“I wondered,” said Filch, shifting his feet and looking quite uncomfortable, “if you’d let me borrow your copy of Mansfield Park.”