This is a slightly expanded version of the story that was written for KerrAvonsen for the 2017 SSHG Giftfest over on LJ.

THE ANIMAL IN YOU

In the Shrieking Shack

Even though he had worked hard to keep them all safe over the years, Severus Snape had always had an intense dislike for the troublesome Gryffindor Trio – especially the Potter spawn and the redheaded Weasel. The girl wasn't so bad once she had learned to contain herself in class and at least she did have something resembling intellect. However, she wasted it on those bumbling idiot friends of her – much like another brilliant Muggleborn girl had once done. Therefore, he had no use for the Granger chit, either. However, despite his deep rooted feelings for the youngsters, he couldn't help but to be a tiny bit touched by their concern while they watched him die in the Shrieking Shack – especially Potter and the girl – both of whom had tried to help him, even though their efforts were in vain. He summoned up the energy to give Potter the memories that he would need to finish this fight once and for all and took the time to look into Lily's eyes once more – even though that memory continued to be almost as painful as the gaping wound in his neck. His eyes then slid over to the girl, and even in the midst of his painful demise, he noted her altered appearance and had an uncharacteristic pang of sympathy and remorse for all she had been through…before he passed out.

When he regained consciousness a short while later, he was alone. Bloody brats thought I was already dead, he snarled weakly to himself, but he wasn't really surprised since he could hear the faint sounds of shouting and fighting in the distance. Just then he recalled the contents of the secret pocket in his frock coat. He had unfortunately passed out before he could use them earlier. Therefore, he struggled to reach that spot, weak from blood loss and the poison that was coursing through his veins. However, eventually he persevered and was able to pull out three small bottles from their hiding place. He flicked off the caps and downed all of them before collapsing completely to the floor again. He could tell at once that even though the antivenin he had created specifically to counteract Nagini's poison was working, the blood replenisher wasn't going to be strong enough to make up for his massive blood loss and therefore, his special healing potion wasn't going to be effective either. He just had too much mass and not enough blood. He was going to die, despite his best efforts.

Consequently, there was only one thing left that he could try. He closed his eyes and slid into his accustomed meditation mode before he slowly felt his body shrinking down to a third of its length and a small fraction of its weight as he morphed into his animagus form. He immediately felt the change when the blood replenisher and the healing potion started working on his smaller body. The transfigured bandages that the two Gryffindors had tried to use earlier on his neck had miraculously shrunk with his body and the blood loss had finally slowed to a trickle before stopping completely. At this point, Severus Snape finally allowed himself to hope. Maybe he would make it out of this, after all. However, he knew he had to rest – and in the correct way for this form – in order for the special ingredients in his healing potion to work on this body. Therefore, he slowly clawed his way up the curtain beside him and swung himself over to hang upside down down off of the curtain rod. Ahh, that's better, thought the giant fruit bat as he slipped into a healing slumber.

Many hours later, the memories had been viewed and the battle had been won. As the dead were being collected and cared for, and as Harry and Ron grieved with the rest of the Weasleys, Hermione went back to the Shrieking Shack to collect the Headmaster's body. She was shocked to find it completely empty. She rushed back to let McGonagall and Kingsley know. Afterwards, it was assumed by almost everyone that the fleeing Death Eaters had either destroyed his body or had simply taken it somewhere else to desecrate once his true loyalties had become known.

Despite all of this, throughout the ensuing years, Hermione always had a secret hope that perhaps she had been wrong. Everything had been so chaotic and rushed that day in the Shrieking Shack that maybe she had somehow missed the fact that Professor Snape had lived. Even though she had not liked the man, she did like the idea that perhaps he had been able to fool Voldemort one last time and that he had escaped the terrible death that had been arranged for him. She liked to imagine him sitting on a tropical beach somewhere, rubbing sun cream on his pale hooked nose, and sneering at the thought of all the dunderheads that he had left back in his old life. The thought never failed to make her smile.

Five Years Later

Hermione Granger entered the dungeon classroom for the first time since her student years. The memories flowed around her and she realized that she had never been very happy in this room. Even if he had been on their side the whole time, Professor Snape had still made her life hell here for the first five years with his hateful bullying. In fact, she would never forget his "I see no difference" comment when Draco had hexed her teeth. Everything else, she could possibly forgive, could pass off as trying to maintain his cover, or even "tough love" to keep his class safe from dunderheads (Poor Neville's and even Seamus's cauldrons did explode quite a bit, after all!), but that had been a personal attack from a grown man to a teenage girl. There was just no excuse for it.

Then, she had spent the sixth year worried and even a bit jealous over Harry's success with the Half Blood Prince's book while dealing with Slughorn's favoritism towards those students that he thought would benefit him in some way. It had been quite disturbing - even if she had been one of the students whom he had singled out. It was actually amazing that she had retained any love for the subject whatsoever – after such an education in it. However, that was all behind her now! She would make sure that all of her students had a fair chance in class no matter what their blood status, who their relatives were, or which house they were in – even though she would be sure to keep her eyes open for anything unusual. Of course, she would have done that regardless. Spending over half her life looking over her shoulder and expecting some kind of monster to appear around every corner had certainly made her cautious. However, she imagined that the habit would serve her well in the classroom.

After the final battle, she had stayed at Hogwarts just long enough to take her NEWTS on an accelerated course. After that she had decided to make some changes. Her parents had no memory of her due to the irreversible Obliviate that she had placed on them to keep them safe during the war, she had quickly figured out that things with Ron were not going to work out, and Harry was so busy with his Auror training and Ginny that he just didn't have a lot of time for her. Between all of that, and the neverending chaos of the publicity over her new status of war hero, she realized that she just needed to get out of Britain for a while before she could decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Her saving grace came in the form of a personal visit from her old friend, Viktor Krum. For obvious reasons, they had lost contact with each other after Bill and Fleur's wedding, but they had never forgotten their friendship. Therefore, she eagerly accepted his invitation to stay with him in Bulgaria for as long as she liked. Over the next six months, Hermione fell in love with both the country and the man. Therefore, she made plans to stay there indefinitely. However, since Viktor was often traveling on the Quidditch circuit, Hermione decided to use all of her free time and her new command of the Bulgarian language to continue to pursue her education. Five years later, she was both a Transfiguration and Potions Master, as well as a registered animagus. Since her relationship with Viktor had ended amicably on both sides a year earlier (they had simply wanted different things in life), she was now ready to come back to England for good when she received the offer from Headmistress McGonagall to teach Potions upon Slughorn's second retirement.

Therefore, before long, she found herself setting up her own classroom with quite a bit of enjoyment. Slughorn had been neat, but he had relied on the students and the house elves to keep his classroom arranged and stocked. Therefore, things were not as meticulously organized as they had been in Snape's time and how she preferred for them to be herself. However, organization had never been a chore for her and she set to it with enthusiasm while singing some Bulgarian folk songs that she had learned to love during her years in that country.

The resident of the chambers adjoining the Potions classroom stretched his wings from his roosting position as his rest was interrupted by the sound of music. Severus's disposition had not improved much over the years. This was especially true since he had spent the last five years locked in his megabat form due to the wrong dosage of the mixture of gryphon feathers and powdered sphinx claw in the special healing potion that he had created for his man-sized body. Even though it had been highly effective in healing him after Nagini's attack, it had also proven to be entirely too strong for his much smaller bat form. Therefore, his rapid bat metabolism had tried to process those volatile ingredients too quickly and BAM! he was stuck in his winged form. The problem was that he knew of a remedy. There was a recipe for complex potion in one of his grayish-magic books that could soon free him from being stuck in his animal form. However, his lack of hands prevented him from making the potion himself and his lack of a voice prevented him from asking someone else for help. In addition to that, he knew of nobody skilled enough to pull off such of feat of complex potion making, besides himself – of course. Therefore, he had stayed in his bat form for the last five years.

He didn't actually didn't mind being an animal most of the time. As an animagus, he retained his human mind and consciousness – so he never lost his keen intelligence and the capability to think and plan. He also had the privacy of his old chambers to himself since Slughorn had declined them in favor of Merryweather's former chambers. Before he had left the castle to meet the Dark Lord in the Shrieking Shack, the sentient building had followed her headmaster's last order to seal his rooms off from the adjoining classroom and hallway. Therefore, he now had all the privacy that he could want and all of the restful quiet that he had craved during the many years that he had served two demanding masters – all while trying to teach hopeless dunderheads in the process. He also had the freedom to go and come from the grounds as he pleased due to the high windows in the chambers. They were perfect to flit in and out of and, thankfully, they retained the charm that he had put on them several years before his accident. Therefore, they would still open and close whenever he was near them in order to let him come or go effortlessly.

He never went hungry, either, because the house elves were aware of his presence. One house elf in particular, Lonny, had served him for many years as both a professor and the Headmaster – and now continued to do so even if his old master was a bat. Even though he couldn't talk to them, Lonny and the rest of the elves kept him supplied with fresh fruit because they were the only ones that could enter his chambers since they alone had the power to apparate in and out of his rooms. They never informed anyone of his continued presence, however, because he had previously forbidden them to ever speak of his animagus form to anyone. He felt like he needed to keep some secrets from his masters and so had never told anybody else – just in case the information somehow found its way to either Dumbledore or Voldemort's ears.

Also, since he was a fruit bat, he had excellent eyesight – unlike that of most other bat species. Consequently, he could still read. Whenever Lonny brought his dinner, he would point out which of his many books that he wanted to peruse. As long as the house elf laid the book out open on the table, then Severus was able to manipulate the pages with his little appendages enough to turn the pages. It was a comfortable way to spend his lonely waking hours. Therefore, all in all, he lived in relative comfort as a bat. He did miss being a man, however, and all that entailed, too frequently to ever be able to be perfectly content to stay in his bat form forever. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it, though, and so he existed in the only way that he could, until his circumstances somehow changed.

When he heard the singing, he couldn't tell whether the sound coming from his old Potions lab irritated him or delighted him. Normally, he ignored the noise of everyone else. However, there was a joyous feeling that came from the slightly muffled sound of the singing from the next room, though, and he wondered what language it was. It sounded Slavic. Russian, perhaps? He then wondered who it was. The potions lab and classroom didn't have any outside windows, so he couldn't just fly out there and peek in to find out. Therefore, he just continued to listen to the tuneful sounds as he thought about the identity of the singer. It certainly wasn't old Slughorn, that was for sure. He would recognize his old professor's booming voice anywhere and this voice was distinctively feminine. However, it wasn't Minerva, either. Severus had longed for years for her to enter the dungeons in her cat form so that he could communicate with her and tell her everything that had happened. By now, she surely knew the truth of where his true loyalties had always been and would help him. However, apparently she didn't have the time to go mousing like she used to before she became Headmistress and, therefore, had no need to come down to the dungeons as a tabby cat. For his part, he didn't dare to fly up to the upper halls. He knew instinctively that nobody would be happy to see a giant bat up there, and since he didn't know of any other animagi in the castle to approach and speak with, he simply stayed where he was. He didn't want to run the risk of someone thinking he was just a pest that needed to be exterminated – especially since he had no magic with which to defend himself. Therefore, he just stayed put in his dungeon hideaway when he was in the castle. At the moment, that meant that he was on his favorite perch listening to the singing from next door. When it stopped, he just shrugged his little bat shoulders and thought, Peace and quiet, at last! What kind of dunderhead wants to sing in the dungeon, anyways? It didn't sound too terrible, however. At least my ears aren't bleeding…

Hermione stopped singing when she finished her work for the day and found that she was quite tired. She suddenly realized how cool it was in the dungeons, and remembered how comfortable it was to nap in her animagus form when the temperatures dipped low. Hermione had always thought that her long stint in Bulgaria where she mastered the difficult Transfiguration skill must have influenced her form. Otherwise, how could one explain that she transformed into an Eurasian Lynx when the animals were so prevalent in Bulgaria, but almost nonexistent in Scotland? It was also odd because she had always assumed that her animal form would be an otter – just like her patronus. However, animagi were so rare that she had no idea that a patronus often changed to match an animagus form instead of the other way around. She just shrugged her shoulders, however, as she pushed aside her memory of the moment she made that surprising discovery so that she could seamlessly morph into her feline alter-ego. Almost immediately, she stretched out on top of the large teacher's desk and drifted off into a cat nap. Before succumbing completely, though, Hermione's lynx ears pricked as she heard a familiar voice coming through the walls.

Peace and quiet, at last. What kind of dunderhead wants to sing in the dungeon, anyways? It didn't sound too terrible, however. At least my ears aren't bleeding...

The lynx's sleepiness continued for just a moment until the human part of her brain registered exactly why the voice sounded familiar. She bolted upright, listening intently with her keen feline senses. However, after several minutes after hearing nothing at all, she relaxed back into her original position. I must be more tired than I thought, she chuckled to herself – especially if I am hearing the voice of Severus Snape! I guess it's just a combination of that and the memories associated with being back in the potions lab and classroom after such a long time, she thought reasonably before drifting off into slumber.