The Familiars Apprentice

Midnight, Esme’s familiar, had been fully sentient for three years, two months, and seventeen days, and he was absolutely sick of pretending to be impressed by jingling keys.

"Who's a good familiar? Who's a good boy?" Esme cooed, dangling her keyring above his head like he was some common alley cat who'd never contemplated the philosophical implications of Schrodinger's thought experiment. (He was both annoyed and not annoyed until observed, thank you very much.)

Midnight yawned, comforted by Esme's sweet smell of efficient, perfectly executed magic, and turned away with as much dignity as a cat could muster while wearing a ridiculous enchanted collar that glowed a different colour for every day of the week.

The sentience had been an accident, naturally. Three years ago, Esme had been brewing one of her infamous "clarity potions", one guaranteed to help you find your keys, remember your grocery list, and possibly unlock the secrets of the universe if you got the ratio right. She hadn't gotten the ratio right. The potion had exploded, coating half the kitchen and one unfortunate black cat in shimmering blue goop that tasted like starlight and unwashed dreams. Midnight had licked himself clean, as cats do, and within six hours found himself understanding every word of Esme's ranting about "inferior moonflower petals" and "that hack Cornelius at the apothecary." The revelation that humans were just as stupid as they seemed had been both validating and deeply disappointing.

Still, life as a secretly sentient familiar wasn't terrible. Esme was a decent witch and powerful enough to keep things interesting, scatterbrained enough to be entertaining. Midnight had a warm bed, regular meals (even if Esme insisted on that organic free-range mouse kibble that tasted like cardboard and disappointment), and the satisfaction of knowing he was smarter than everyone else in the room. Then Clara arrived, and everything went to hell in a handbasket. A very nervous, sweaty, disaster-prone handbasket at that.

"She comes highly recommended," Esme had announced the morning of Clara's arrival, stepping over Midnight like he was furniture. "Rude," he thought.

"Top of her class in theoretical magic at the Academy. Just needs some practical experience."

Midnight had looked up from his breakfast (still cardboard, still disappointing) and thought: “This is going to be a disaster.”

He was right.

Clara was a walking catastrophe wrapped in an apprentice's robe. She was twenty-three, gangly, perpetually anxious, and had apparently spent so much time with her nose in books that she'd forgotten how physics worked. She tripped over her own feet, knocked over potion stands with her elbows, and once somehow set fire to a bowl of water. Water.

"It's totally fine!" became her catchphrase, usually said while something smouldered behind her. Clara had been left permanently affected by a confidence spell that had accidentally exploded in the classroom, and she had been caught in the backwash, leaving her afflicted with high-order anxiety that would not respond to reversal spells. Several sessions at the Dean's expense with a top Magichologist had failed to cure the affliction. Midnight watched from his favourite perch on the bookshelf as Clara fumbled through her first week. He'd decided early on that this was entertainment, not his problem. Let the humans sort out their own mess. He was just a cat, after all. A cat who happened to understand that she'd mispronounced the incantation for "illuminate" and had actually said "immolate."

Not his circus, not his monkeys; in this transaction, he was just audience and would be staying in his seat for the whole performance. Even when she'd accidentally turned all of Esme's hair blue (It'll fade in six to eight weeks!), Midnight had simply groomed his paws and enjoyed the show. But on the eighth day, Clara surpassed herself. Esme had been teaching her transformation magic, just basic stuff, really. Turn a teacup into a mouse, turn a mouse back into a teacup, try not to create any horrifying mouse-teacup hybrids in the process. Standard stuff.

"Now remember," Esme instructed, "clear visualisation, precise pronunciation, and for the love of Hecate, don't rush the wand movement. Magic isn't a race."

"Got it. Clear, precise, not rushing." Clara had nodded so hard her hat fell off.

Midnight, dozing in a sunbeam, had one ear trained on the lesson. He'd heard this lecture before. It was basic stuff. Even a cat could… The air crackled with wrong magic. It smelt like burnt overboiled cabbage. Midnight's eyes snapped open just in time to see Clara panic-flailing her wand.

"Counter-clockwise! COUNTER-clockwise!" Esme shouted.

Clara was overcorrecting wildly and blurting out a garbled incantation that sounded like someone choking on alphabet soup.

The spell hit Esme square in the chest.

There was a sound like a thunderclap played backwards, a flash of sickly green light, a smell of bitter carrots, and suddenly, Esme was grey. Not just grey; granite grey, stone grey, statue grey. Esme stood frozen, mouth open mid-shout, one finger pointed accusingly, transformed into approximately two hundred pounds of igneous disappointment. For a moment, the only sound was the crackling of the fireplace and Midnight's internal screaming.

"Oh," Clara whispered. "Oh no. Oh no no no no…"

“Oh yes.” Midnight thought, fur standing on end. “Oh, very yes. You petrified your teacher, you absolute walnut.”

Clara circled the Esme statue, hands fluttering uselessly. "Okay. Okay! This is fine! This is…no, this isn't fine, this is the opposite of fine, this is very not fine." She grabbed a spellbook, dropped it, grabbed another one, and couldn't seem to focus on the words. "Reversal... reversal spell... There has to be a reversal spell..."

Midnight watched as she tore through the library, growing more frantic, knocking over books and scrolls and that vase Esme had stolen from a duke in 1987. Clara tried three different counter-spells, all of which fizzled out harmlessly against the granite.

"Why isn't it WORKING?!" Clara yanked at her hair. "Think, Clara, think! What's the composition of granite? Quartz, feldspar, mica…no, that's not helpful! Maybe if I…no, that could make it worse. Oh gods, I'm going to Witch prison. Do they have a Witch prison? There definitely is a Witch prison." She paced faster, spiralling. "I could leave. Just leave! Go to another country! Change my name! Become a sheep farmer in Wales! Do they ask questions in Wales? Probably not, right?"

Midnight's tail lashed. This was bad. This was very bad. Esme would stay stone forever, and this panicking disaster would flee to Wales, and he would be stuck as a "normal cat," adopted by some family with sticky children who'd try to dress him in doll clothes. “Absolutely not happening”, he thought. It was time to abandon the transactional nature of being a feline and get on the front paw to solve this crisis. He jumped down from his perch with a heavy thud.

Clara didn't notice, too busy contemplating her Welsh sheep-farming future.

Midnight marched to the largest spellbook, Fundamentals of Reversal Magic, and shoved it off the shelf with both paws. It landed with a mighty THUMP at Clara's feet, quickly followed by an unbalanced Midnight.

She jumped. "What…?" She looked at the book, then at Midnight, then at the book again. "Did you... Did you just...?"

Midnight sat down and stared at her. "Pick up the book, you absolute muffin," he thought.

"You're... just a cat. Cats knock things over. That's just... random cat behaviour."

Midnight slowly, deliberately, reached out one paw and opened the book to the first page while keeping eye contact.

"Random cat behaviour," Clara repeated, but her voice wavered.

Fine. Subtlety was dead. Midnight grabbed the book's cover with his teeth and dragged it to her feet, then sat next to it and meowed.

"Okay, that's... that's weird." Clara picked up the book, glanced at the title. "Reversal magic. Right. I was looking for reversal magic." She looked at Midnight suspiciously. "Did Esme train you to help in emergencies? That's actually pretty clever. Okay. Good cat. Helpful cat."

“I'm going to cough a hairball in your shoe,” Midnight thought, but he purred anyway. Whatever worked.

Clara opened the book, but Midnight could see the problem immediately: she was too panicked to focus, her eyes skimming uselessly over the words. She kept jumping between chapters, second-guessing herself. This called for more direct action. Over the next hour, Midnight became the world's most specific poltergeist. When Clara reached for the wrong potion ingredient, he'd knock it over. When she turned to the wrong page, he'd sit on the book until she tried another. When she started to give up, he'd yowl so loudly she'd jump and refocus.

"You're either the most helpful cat in history or this cottage is haunted," Clara muttered, following Midnight as he led her to the cabinet where Esme kept the good spell ingredients, not the everyday stuff, the good stuff. He knocked over a bottle of crystallised moonlight. Then, essence of reversed time. Then, powdered paradox (expensive, but desperate times).

"These are... these are advanced ingredients." Clara's hands shook as she gathered them. "I'm not qualified to…"

Midnight bit her ankle. Not hard, just enough.

"Ow! Okay! Okay, I get it! We're doing this!"

Midnight had watched Esme perform complex magic for years, had memorised the motions, the words, the precise timing. But translating that into cat-available actions while Clara followed his lead was like playing the world's highest-stakes game of charades, while blindfolded and wearing a cat suit. He arranged potion bottles in order. Knocked over a spell diagram and dragged it to Clara's attention. Sat on specific passages in books. When she was about to add ingredients in the wrong order, he knocked them over in the right order, one paw pat at a time.

"This is insane," Clara whispered, following his instructions. "I'm taking magical direction from a cat. If this works, I'm buying you a whole salmon. If this doesn't work, we're both moving to Wales."

“Not a terrible outcome”, Midnight mused.

The potion bubbled in the cauldron, shifting from green to blue to silver, the right colours, in the right sequence. Clara consulted the spellbook Midnight had indicated, practising the wand movement over and over while Midnight watched with the intensity of an Olympic judge. The next eight hours were the most stressful of Midnight's nine lives.

The first attempt burnt all the fur off Midnight's right ear. The second one left Clara with goat legs that took four hours to turn back. The third and final attempt of the day left Midnight missing an inch off the end of his tail. Time was running out. If the spell was not reversed by midnight the next day, Esme was going to have to spend eternity as a garden ornament, and Midnight would be living in Wales.

Morning came, and this was the absolute last chance, and Clara, knowing this, was even more anxious.

"Counter-clockwise, loop, figure-eight, then the sharp diagonal," Clara muttered. "I can do this. I can... Midnight, is this right?" She demonstrated the wand movement. It was almost perfect. Just one angle slightly off.

Midnight jumped onto the table and traced the correct pattern with his paw in a patch of spilt potion powder.

Clara stared. "You... you just drew the spell pattern. Cats can't... that's not..." She shook her head. "Okay. Magical emergency. Suspending disbelief. We're doing this." She took a deep breath, lifted her wand, and began. The incantation was in Old Gaelic, complex and tongue-twisting. Midnight held his breath as Clara spoke, her voice growing steadier with each word. The wand movement was slow, careful, each loop and swirl precisely placed. The potion shot out of the cauldron in a stream of silver light, swirling around the Esme statue.

For a horrible moment, nothing happened.

Midnight buried his head in his paws.

Clara felt the colour draining from her cheeks.

Time stretched.

The clock ticked once.

Then once again.

With a sound like ice cracking, colour bloomed across the granite. Grey became fabric, became skin. Esme gasped, stumbled, and Midnight leapt away just in time for her to catch herself on the chair instead of falling. For one heartbeat, Midnight froze. Esme was warm. She was breathing. She was Esme again, frizzy blue blue-haired, slightly confused, but alive and real.

"What…how long…Clara," Esme blinked, confused. "Did I pass out? I remember you were about to transform the teacup, and then…"

"You did pass out!" Clara blurted. "Very briefly! Just for a week!" Clara saw confusion in Esme's eyes and quickly corrected herself. "No, I meant you were weak! Weak pulse! Very weak."

Esme frowned. "I... passed out?" She checked her pulse, conjured a diagnostic spell. "That's odd. I feel fine. Bit of a headache, but Clara, why do you have the moonlight crystals out? Those are for advanced magic."

"I was just... looking at them! Admiring them! Beautiful crystals! I'll put them back!" While Clara scrambled to clean up the evidence, Esme's eyes fell on Midnight, who was studiously grooming his shoulder with the air of someone who had definitely not just saved everyone from disaster.

"Midnight, did something happen while I fainted?" Esme frowned, looking at the cat more closely. "What happened to your ear? And your tail!"

"Magical exploding mice!" Clara blurted. "Accidental summoning! Very small accident! They're gone now! I fixed it! Mostly!"

Midnight looked up and meowed in a way that clearly said: I am but a simple cat who knows nothing of magic or incompetent apprentices; my favours are simply transactional.

Esme scratched his ears. "Good boy. At least someone around here is reliable."

“If you only knew,” Midnight thought, leaning into the ear scratch. “If you only knew.”

That evening, after Esme had gone to bed, still puzzled by her "fainting moment”, Midnight found Clara sitting in the kitchen, staring at a glass of wine.

"You're not a normal cat, are you?" She said quietly.

Midnight jumped onto the table, something cats really weren't allowed to do, but they were past that now.

"You understand me, don't you? Everything. You're... you're fully sentient."

He blinked slowly. “Yes”.

She took a sip of wine. "Are you going to tell Esme?"

Midnight looked towards the stairs where Esme snored peacefully, then back at Clara. He reached out one paw and gently tapped her hand.

"You... want this to be our secret?" Clara's eyes widened. "But why? You could talk to her, be partners, really…"

Midnight jumped back off the table and walked to his food bowl, which still contained the organic free-range mouse kibble. He looked at it with obvious disgust, batted it away, then looked meaningfully at Clara.

She snorted. "Ah. You want leverage. Help me not kill myself with magic, you get... what? Better food?"

He purred. “Transactional, she understands cats.”

She held out her hand. Midnight lifted his paw and placed it in her palm.

"Partners?" Clara asked.

Midnight squeezed his paw beans against her fingers. “Partners. But if you ever endanger my witch again, I'm leaving a hundred dead mice on your pillow. And don't think I can't enchant them there.”

Clara seemed to sense the threat. "I'll do better. I promise. I'll study harder, practise more, and I'll actually listen when you knock stuff over. So, what should I know? Any other secrets around here? Haunted teapots? Cursed floorboards?"

Midnight walked to the cupboard, pawing at it until Clara opened it. Inside, behind the regular tea, was Esme's secret stash of chocolate.

"She's been hiding chocolate from me!" Clara gasped. "The betrayal!"

Midnight meowed smugly. “Stick with me, kid. I know where all the bodies are buried.

Metaphorically... Mostly metaphorically.”

Life settled into a new normal. To Esme, Clara seemed to improve dramatically: fewer accidents, better instincts, and more careful with her spell work. In reality, Clara now had a secret advisor who would knock books off shelves to redirect her research, sit on incorrect spell diagrams, and once even tripped Esme to prevent her from drinking a potion that Clara had accidentally contaminated with sneezing oil.

"Midnight, you clumsy boy!" Esme had laughed, not noticing Clara frantically dumping the potion while Esme's back was turned.

In return, Midnight's food dramatically improved. Real salmon. Actual chicken. Once, gloriously, a bit of expensive tuna that Esme had been saving for herself. Clara thought of it as having a very furry, very judgmental guide who charged by the hour.

"How's this?" Clara whispered, demonstrating a summoning spell.

Tail swish: Terrible. Your loop is too wide.

She tried again.

Tail still: Better. Still not great, but you won't kill anyone.

"You're a harsh critic," Clara muttered, but she was smiling.

Clara grew more confident and more competent. Esme beamed with pride at her apprentice's progress. And Midnight... well, he was content. He had his witch, safe and sound. He had his apprentice, improving daily and keeping him in salmon and tuna. He had his secrets, his intelligence, his comfortable life. Sure, he had to endure the occasional "who's a good familiar" and couldn't verbally complain about the magic colour-changing collar. But honestly? Being a secret genius wasn't the worst fate. Especially not when your humans kept leaving wine glasses within lapping distance.

One evening, as Esme praised Clara's perfect execution of a transformation spell (only slightly aided by Midnight "coincidentally" knocking the correct reference book open to the right page), Clara caught Midnight's eye and winked.

He slow-blinked back. “Not bad, kid. Not bad at all.” From his cushion by the fire, Midnight surveyed his domain: his cottage, his witches (both of them now, really), his salmon-filled future. Being sentient was pretty good, actually, even if he still had to pretend to be impressed by jingling keys. Some sacrifices, he thought, settling in for a nap, are worth making. Though if Esme dangled those keys one more time, he was absolutely going to hide them in her shoe.

A genius cat had to have some standards.