A Small Problem

The problem with translating a language that hadn't been read in thousands of years, Jenova reflected as she threw another broken quill into the trash beside her desk, was that you had to break the damn code before you could translate it. Unfortunately, she was having trouble figuring out which verb she was trying to conjugate in the first place.

"As soon as I translate this stupid thing," she swore to her birds, who were picking their way across her desk, "I am going to write a book on how to translate this stupid language. Once I name it. Jenovese, maybe?"

There was a knock on her office door, causing Jenova to hurriedly transfigure the pages of the book she had been working on into an attractive vase before pulling a stack of papers onto the center of the desk and looking up.

"Come in," she said absently, as if she wasn't doing anything illicit at all. Much to her surprise, it was Snape, whom she hadn't really spoken to since he had bruised her arm the week before. "I wasn't expecting to see you."

"Minerva was concerned because you weren't at dinner," he said, as if he resented even being in her doorway. "I said that I would check your office since I wanted to ask you for something anyhow."

"What? You want something from me? When did Hell freeze over?" Standing up, she picked up Piama and stroked her beak.

"Those birds are of the genus Agapornis, unless I am mistaken," Snape said, ignoring her sarcasm. "I have been working on a potion that requires a small amount of their down feathers and thought it easiest to get them fresh."

"I suppose a simple forced molt would do the trick. Which bird was it? Agapornis personata or Agapornis roseicollis?" Jenova picked up her wand and held up Piama. As she did, Valtier dove down hawk-like to land on Snape's head. His lips tightened as he reached up and closed the small bird firmly in his hand so that only its head was sticking out. "Ah. Yes. The personata species is somewhat protective of the one it perceives to be the flock leader."

"I didn't come in here for an ornithology lecture," Snape said, dropping Valtier on the desk unceremoniously. "Either bird will do. The instructions don't specify a species."

"Fine." Setting Piama on the desk beside her friend, Jenova took out her wand and pointed it at them. "Plumeus Depilare." Instantly, Jenova's birds became much smaller as their down feathers fell into neat piles around their feet. Still pointing her wand at them, she smiled. "Plumeus Abundare." The birds were refeathered in the blink of an eye and looked at one another to try and figure out what had happened to them. Meanwhile, Jenova scooped the feathers into a small glass bottle and corked it. "There. That should be more than enough."

"They will keep." Nodding at her, Snape started out of her office and Jenova frowned after him.

"Hey." Her voice made him turn around again to see her looking annoyed. "Don't you ever say thank you? I mean, I did just defrock my birds for you. I could have made you go down to Hogsmeade and get feathers, you know."

"Thank you," Snape said, sounding as if he were doing so under great duress. "Am I allowed to go now, or was there another lecture you wanted to favor me with?"

"You don't always have to be so hostile," Jenova said, loading her birds into their cage and closing the door. "This is probably why you don't have any friends." She picked up a book and walked out the door in front of him, then turned back. "Well, are you coming or what?"

"Coming? Where?"

"The faculty tower. I thought the least you could do was walk with me up there. You were headed that direction anyway, weren't you?" There was no reply as he started to walk with her, and Jenova shook her head. "You see? This is precisely the attitude I'm talking about. It doesn't hurt to make small talk."

"I despise small talk."

"Why am I not surprised?"

* * *

Several weeks passed uneventfully this way, and by the beginning of October, Snape had decided that the best course of action was to just ignore Jenova as best he could whenever she decided to follow him around. Somewhere, she had gotten the idea that they were slowly becoming friends and he didn't feel like expending the energy to tell her otherwise.

"Could you pass me the kippers, please, Severus?" Jenova smiled at him from the seat beside him that she had claimed as her own. Silently, he handed her the plate and she piled two of the little critters onto her plate. "Thank you. I feel like I'm going to need my strength today…I'm handing back exams."

"I told you they were all idiots," he replied matter-of-factly. "You should have just listened to me when you had the chance."

"And I suppose that you were never a student?" Amused, Jenova began to cut her kipper into small pieces.

"No, I was never an idiot. There's a difference."

"Is that so."

"What exactly do you mean by…"

"Oh, look, the morning mail." Jenova looked up into the air, where owls had begun to fill the room, dropping letters and packages to the students at their tables. This in itself was nothing new, as it had been happening since she arrived. What was different about this morning, however, was that an owl dropped a rolled up newspaper in front of her plate. "That's interesting. I didn't order the paper. Probably a mistake."

"Let me see that," Snape said, snatching it from her hands before she could even untie the twine that held it together. "Haven't you been around here long enough to know that there are no mistakes?" He unrolled it and scanned the front page quickly, then stood up and slipped it under his arm. "I shall return it later."

"Wait a minute, that's mine!" Jenova started to stand up, then looked back at the other teachers as she settled back into her seat. "Well, if he wanted to borrow it, all he had to do was ask," she said with a small laugh in Professor Sinistra's direction. Inside, she was fuming. How dare he?

Over at the Gryffindor table, Hermione was reading her own copy of the purloined paper while Ron and Harry discussed Quidditch. Noticing that she was unusually quiet, Ron looked over at the paper.

"Something interesting?"

"No, not really. Another disappearance or two that the Ministry refuses to connect with Voldemort. According to this article, a young woman was found in Amsterdam that appeared to have been killed using one of the Unforgivable curses. They didn't give her name, but they said that her traveling companion has been missing for more than a month now and is presumed to be dead as well."

"Creepy," Ginny said softly.

"Why doesn't the Ministry just admit they were wrong and help Dumbledore fight Voldemort?" Ron shook his head with annoyance and Harry frowned.

"Politics," he said quietly. "Who would want to support a Ministry that knowingly denied the truth and allowed innocent people to die?" The small group around the table was quiet for a moment, then Hermione stood up.

"Well, I'm going to be late for class if I don't get going. Professor Verdana's handing back our exams and I want to see if I got the extra credit." She picked up her bag and her paper. "See you later."

"Yeah." Harry looked as if something was bothering him, but he got up and followed Ron to Divination. There was something about that article that had seemed strange. Maybe he'd borrow the paper later.

* * *

Groups of students were rushing past Jenova toward the Great Hall for dinner, but she continued to walk against the tide toward the entrance to the dungeons. All day long she had been trying to get back her newspaper with no success, but this time she wasn't going to be put off, even if she had to trap him in his office and steal her paper back.

The dungeons were empty, and Jenova looked around cautiously before heading for Snape's office. The door was closed as usual, but she could hear voices coming from behind the thick wood. Leaning closer to the door, she frowned. It sounded like Snape and McGonagall, but she could barely hear what they were talking about. Mouthing an Amplification Charm, she pressed her ear to the door to hear the end of the conversation.

"…impossible to know for sure, Severus."

"You know as well as I that this was no accident, Minerva. We shall have to remain on our guard longer now."

"Albus must know about this," McGonagall's voice said, coming closer to the door. "Have you shown it to him yet?" From inside the office, Jenova could hear footsteps advancing and she ducked into the empty Potions classroom just in time before they came out of the office.

Waiting for their footsteps to disappear up the stairs, Jenova sat on an empty desk. What were they talking about? Did he think that someone was coming after her? If that was true, why didn't he just tell her so? Peeking out the door, she saw that they were gone and went back to the office door, which was now closed.

Thinking that it would be very unlikely for him not to have locked his door, Jenova took out her wand and pointed it at the knob.

"Finite Incantatem," she murmured softly, listening for the clicking of the lock. It was barely audible, but she heard it and pushed gently on the door until it opened. Smiling to herself, Jenova looked around to make sure no one was watching before going inside and pushing the door closed. She was so busy trying to be sneaky that she didn't notice the spindly brown cat walking primly up the stairs after the teachers.

The inside of his office was cold and felt a little damp, but Jenova held herself back from lighting a fire in the dark fireplace. She didn't want him to know she had been in here looking for her paper. Normally, she wouldn't have been so concerned over a newspaper, but it seemed like Snape was going through a lot of trouble to keep her from reading it. What was in it that he was trying to keep from her?

Carefully rifling through the papers on his desk as her eyes darted toward the door, Jenova found herself getting more and more impatient. Nothing here but a bunch of failing papers. Picking one up, she looked at it. Why had he taken points off of this one? She put the paper back where it had been on the desk and looked around the room. He had probably taken it with him to show Dumbledore.

Feeling a little like an idiot, Jenova rubbed her forehead. Maybe one of the other teachers had a copy of the newspaper that she could borrow. She was not expecting to have a wand pointed at her face when she stepped out of the office.

"Hey, watch it!" Following the length of the wand, she felt her stomach slide into her knees as she saw who was holding it. Trying her best to smile, she put her hand over the end of the wand. "Oh…hello, Severus."

"Just what do you think you're doing in here?" Putting away his wand, Snape narrowed his eyes at her. "I should have known it would be you."

"I…uh, was looking for uh…" Suddenly all coherent speech was failing her and she felt her cheeks getting very hot. As if he had read her mind, Snape held up the newspaper. "Yes, that."

"Here. You wanted it badly enough to break into my office, take it." Jenova stared at the paper, not really wanting it quite so badly anymore. "Take it," he growled, tossing it at her and pushing his way into the office. "And get out of my office."

"I…I'm sorry I…"

"Just get out." Snape turned his back on her, leaving Jenova to hurry out of his office and back up to her room. As soon as his door closed, Snape sighed deeply. That girl didn't know how much trouble she was getting herself into.

Without warning, a familiar burning began creeping its way up Snape's arm and he reached over to clutch his forearm tightly. Right on schedule. He had been expecting this all day.

* * *

Back in her own office, Jenova unfolded the paper. Why did he have to be so mean all the time? He acted like it was her fault he took her paper. All she wanted was to see what he and McGonagall were…

Jenova's eyes fell on the article Hermione had been reading to Ron and Harry earlier, and anything else she might have been concerned about flew out of her mind. Even though it didn't specifically name her or Serafina, she knew that it was about her. Immediately, she saw what Snape and McGonagall had been concerned about. Someone knew that she would be here to read it.

Picking up the vase from the corner of the desk, Jenova turned it over in her hands. Usually she kept it on her person, but she had been working on it today. Waving her wand over it slowly, she transfigured it back to the sheaf of papers she had been leaning over when Snape interrupted her to get the bird feathers.

When the Death Eaters had caught her in the alley, they had taken the book from her, undoubtedly to give it to Voldemort. But what they hadn't realized, to Jenova's relief, was that she had torn out a handful of pages from the end of the book and transfigured them into a coin that she had been able to slip into her shoe. Originally, she had intended to burn them as soon as she got to Hogwarts, but that was before she had started to translate them and realized…

The door to her office was opening slowly, and Jenova quickly transfigured the papers into the Muggle coin again and stuck it in the pocket of her robe. Valtier and Piama jumped out of their sleeping tent and began hopping up and down madly, shrieking at the top of their tiny lungs like the watchbirds they were.

Snape walked in, giving the birds a disdainful look as he passed their cage, and stopped in front of Jenova's desk. Still extremely annoyed with him about his earlier behavior, Jenova gave him an icy look.

"Why are you here?"

"There is a matter of some importance I need to speak to you about," he began, keeping his voice low. "You…"

"Excuse me," Jenova said, rising slowly from her chair. Her voice was brittle with its chill as she narrowed her eyes at Snape. "Who exactly do you think you are? You walk around here like everyone in the castle owes you something, you order me out of your office like I'm one of your students and then you have the nerve to walk in here and say you have to talk to me like I'm just going to hang on your every word?" Snape looked as if he was about to say something, but Jenova grabbed the handle of her birdcage and stormed around the desk. "Don't hold your breath."

Before he was totally sure what had just happened, the door slammed behind Jenova and he was left standing in front of her desk, staring at the back of the door where her 'Magical Birds of England' calendar was hanging. A Jobberknoll darted through the page for October as Snape curled his hands into fists, ignoring the steady throbbing pain in his arm. Hang on his every word? She was going to be lucky if he didn't curse her birds into next term.

As he walked back down the stairs to his office, Snape shifted his eyes in the general direction of the faculty tower. She'd find out tomorrow whether she liked it or not, anyway. It was the last time he tried to be nice to her, that was for sure.