okay im definitely doing a turned-into-a-cat au with childermass but what if there’s an au of that au and is somewhat also an au of childermass-doesn’t-know-he’s-beautiful-immortal except that in this version he’s actually part faerie and he does know it but has conveniently not mentioned it because norrell
so then when a bit of magic gone wrong turns childermass into a cat norrell’s obviously like, he can’t very well have people knowing that his servant has been transformed into a cat. as far as the public is made aware childermass is simply away at present and norrell has acquired a perfectly normal cat
but that’s a problem because he can’t address his perfectly normal cat as childermass and make it seem like he has a cat named after his servant, but he supposes he must call the creature something because after all there are people (lascelles & drawlight) who will want to know the cat’s name
but before norrell can call him anything, some genius decides that faerie is a fine name for a cat so then drawlight or someone addresses the cat as faerie and he actually responds and norrell’s like childermass you make things very difficult could you not have waited for a more respectable name
and it’s like he’s now stuck calling him faerie because cat!childermass thinks that really is his name
but then childermass gets un-cat-ified (and dog-ified and raven-ified but that’s another matter entirely) and it turns out cat!childermass knew perfectly well faerie wasn’t his name but responded to it because he i,s in fact, part heckin faerie and norrell’s just. so done. he’s done.
strange is of course very impressed