A/N: Hey y'all! Here is a little drabble that I wrote for a tumblr prompt a while ago and decided to post it here! Please let me know what you thought of it!

Hermione knew that it had been a bad idea to make the executive decision to get a kitten without discussing it with her boyfriend of three years first. She had absolutely no idea if he even liked pets, aside from him telling her he'd had a pet snake as a child. Hell, she had no idea if he was allergic!

But he'd been on a bloody business trip to bloody Albania for three bloody weeks and well…it had gotten so lonely.

…And she hadn't gone into the pet adoption event actually intending to get a kitten, but then the little all gray tom cat had pushed his paw out at her, practically begging to be held and loved. She'd signed the papers and bought the kitten before she even realized it.

All of the phone calls that she'd had with Tom, going into detail about her day, meetings at work, what she ate for dinner, never once did she mention that she'd invited a little furball into their shared apartment. Tom was definitely not the kind of man who enjoyed being surprised and well, at the time, it just seemed like a better idea to…keep her little impulsive decision to herself.

Now, though, when they were standing in front of their apartment, Hermione letting Tom fiddle with his keys, she realized that she might have made a terrible, terrible miscalculation of judgement. Biting her lower lip while she watched him finally turn the key in the door, Hermione blurted out the question that she knew she had no business asking now. "H-how do you feel about cats, Tom?"

Instantly, from the way his shoulders tensed, and the way that the silence stretched between them, Hermione realized that she might have fucked up. Tom turned to look to her, intense blue eyes boring into her very soul, with thinly veiled concern. "Hostile," he said with a frown, before pushing the door open and stepping inside.

Immediately, Salazar darted out and started rubbing himself against Tom's legs, darting between his legs, purring audibly. Her boyfriend stared at the little creature who dared to touch his person without his permission before flopping over onto his side, begging for a belly pet.

"Hermione," Tom seethed, before turning around to look at her, hand outstretched towards the cat to indicate him. "What did you do?"

She plastered a fake grin on his face, before bending over to scoop up the cat, rubbing her face against the little grey one. "His name is Salazar! Isn't he precious?" she questioned, knowing that if she would just play dumb, she might be able wiggle her way out of the situation. "He was my little tomcat while you were away."

"Okay," Tom said slowly. "But, I'm here now, so…where should we deposit this creature?" He asked again, keeping his distance between him and the cat.

Hermione set Salazar down on the ground, before standing up on her tippy-toes to give Tom a kiss on the cheek. "Oh, silly! Salazar is with us now – we're his forever home." She left the room before he could try to argue any more.

When they finally made their way to bed, Hermione knew that she was testing Tom's limits. She was already tucked into bed, a book in front of her, with Salazar purring next to her. On Tom's pillow.

"Hermione," Tom said sharply, clearly trying to hold his anger in check. "What is…the creature doing on my pillow?" His fingers clenched at his sides, as though he would like to do nothing more than strangle the little cat. But, to his credit, Tom didn't seem to scare Salazar one bit. The grey kitten just flicked his tail at her boyfriend and only seemed to purr louder next to her.

She grinned up at him, again trying to seem innocent. Fake it until you make it. "Oh, isn't it just too cute? He has been sleeping next to me every night while you were gone. It's like his own little spot," Hermione explained sweetly, wondering if she was able to pull the wool over Tom's eyes.

"Yes, well." He growled a bit at her explanation, before gingerly picking up the cat and setting him down on the floor. "I am home now, and he is just going to have to find a new spot. This one is already taken."

He pulled back the covers and slid in next to her. Hermione didn't hesitate in setting her book aside and curling into her boyfriend, pressing her still cold feet to his legs, making him hiss. She supposed she could agree with him on that one.

The weeks went by and Hermione was surprised that Tom hadn't put up further fuss about Salazar. She'd fully expected him to get so frustrated that he demand she rehome the cat, who loved to flaunt his place in the home, stomping across the counters and drinking out of Tom's glass. Now, that was not to say that Tom got along with Salazar. He still gave the mischievous kitten a very wide berth, removing himself from any situation when Sal might want any physical contact.

Hermione was happy with that, as she truly thought it was the best possible outcome for the pair. That was until she got a text from Tom that he was sick.

If Tom was telling her that he was sick, that meant he was really sick, and her heart clenched for him. She stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get chicken noodle soup and ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches, and was fully prepared to play nursemaid to the normally undefeatable man.

That was until she walked into the apartment and found Tom asleep on the couch, the television flickering the news, tucked in with a blanket. Salazar laid in a tight little ball, snuggled up on Tom's chest, purring wildly while his bed's chest rose up and down steadily. She couldn't stop the smile from growing on her face. Apparently, Tom was no longer quite as hostile to cats as he claimed.