It was a Friday evening in mid-September, and they were together in the workroom in companionable silence. Snape had dragged in a minor project of his own so that he had something else to do besides stand there and stare as Hermione quite competently fended for herself, but for the occasional question. She was, after all, still in the relatively easy stage of making a large batch of Forgetfulness Potion as a base for her research.

He stared at the Asclepio Potion, a powerful pain-reliever. He was trying to improve it a bit, hoping to find a way dull the pain of the Dark Mark a little further. True, he couldn't get rid of the damnable thing: he needed it to know when the Death Eaters were being called for a meeting so he could go spy on them. But although the pain was dulled in his falcon state, if he looked at the inside of his left wing near the tip, there was a faint pale-colored blotch against the midnight color of the feathers that throbbed painfully like sharply pressing a healing bruise. A blotch in the rough shape of a skull with a serpent for a tongue: it seemed the Dark magic of the Mark was so profound he couldn't escape it even with a shape-shift.

The pain, of course, only got worse the closer he got to Voldemort. Sitting right outside the window at Malfoy Manor, with the Dark Lord right inside had it aching quite acutely. And he couldn't concentrate and remember what was being said as well as he should have when he was sitting there with gritted teeth--well, gritted beak. Thank Heavens Tosca was there as well and could recall some of the words and nuances he missed in a haze of pain.

He added mulberry leaf to the potion. The trouble was finding a painkiller that wouldn't make him woozy or sleepy. He needed his wits about him. He looked over his shoulder where Miss Granger was diligently adding the week's portion of macaw feather.

He truly enjoyed these sessions--working over their cauldrons sometimes in companionable silence, sometimes exchanging ideas and such with a freedom that could never be found in Potions class. He had grown to respect her mind, at least--the glowing reports from all her other professors hadn't merely been the work of a successful teacher's pet. Her idea was better than many the Ministry idiots could come up with, and her determination and work ethic were commendable, to say the least. Thus he treated her as an intellectual equal in those hours together. In class, of course, he had a reputation to upkeep, and he knew she wouldn't want him to favor her there. He knew all too well the nasty rumors that would spring from that.

"I'm eighteen today," she said suddenly. He barely caught the words as he put in extract of hedgehog spine.

"Oh?" When he was eighteen, he had been burning with rage and injustice of seven years at Hogwarts and all too eager to listen to those would promised him power. "Happy Birthday, Miss Granger," he said idly, as much to pacify her as anything else, uncertain of what she wanted in saying that. Why had she said it?

"Thank you, sir," she said. She smiled a bit sadly. "Ron forgot, and Harry had Quidditch all day in preparation for the match with Ravenclaw, so he's forgotten as well." Her tone bespoke volumes about the simple wistful yearning for somebody to know and care that she was a year older now. That was probably her reason, then.

He grimaced. Not that anyone had cared when he was at Hogwarts, or even now. He doubted anybody besides Dumbledore would know that he would be thirty-seven in two months. "Shall I find some pretense for Potter and Weasley to spend detention slicing and drying Yarak eyeballs by hand, Miss Granger?" he asked with a smirk. "I do have a supply needing it, and a shortage of miscreants right now." Nobody had managed to get up to too much mischief since classes began two weeks before.

"No, no," she said hastily, turning back to her cauldron. He returned to the potion, as it now required being stirred for ten minutes without rest, adding willow bark every two minutes. "Oh, sir? I need the Jynx tooth now, and you know it needs to be fresh from the jar." Jynx tooth crumbled quickly when exposed to the air.

Jynx parts were ingredients set firmly in his office away from general student use. "My office is unlocked," he said, continuing to stir. The office adjoined this, one of two main workrooms. "I can't leave the potion, so please just go fetch it yourself. It will be on the fifth shelf down, third row from the right, and it's the second jar back. Dark blue glass, with a brass lid." The blue glass and storage at the back of the shelf was to keep light from tainting the teeth as well.

He knew his own system backward and forward, but it would drive others mad trying to find something. He kept stirring, adding in willow bark again. After all, she was Gryffindor; quite trustworthy. He could turn his back and put blind faith in her honor, as he couldn't with a Slytherin. They'd probably nick all sorts of things to brew God knew what.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hermione stepped carefully into the office, turning to the vast array of shelves. Jars of all shapes, sizes, and colors stood there in a riotous array. Their labels were written in a foreign alphabet--possibly Greek or Russian. He had mentioned he had a complex system and labels that not many could decipher, to prevent theft. Momentarily she regretted leaving Muggle schooling before having the chance to learn. She'd have loved to know what was in the large jar by her hand. It was no ingredient she had ever seen before. Purples, blues, yellows, oranges, reds, and greens all swirled together in an oily liquid form, like some violently colorful tie-dyed shirt from the Muggle world.

She heard Tosca squawk her greetings behind her, and turned momentarily to give her a quick caress on the back, which the white bird obviously enjoyed. Saying her greetings, she turned back to the shelves. Fifth shelf down, and third r--

She heard something hit the floor by her feet. Turning abruptly, she saw Tosca had landed on a half-open drawer on Professor Snape's desk and was cheerfully digging through it, grabbing things and flinging them hither and yon.

She chuckled in spite of herself and leaned down to pick up the few sheets of parchment Tosca had tossed her way. "Now that'll be enough, else he'll be having roast falcon for dinner." Tosca gave her a smug look and flapped back up to her perch, leaving her to clean up.

She happened to glance at the top page in her hand. In Snape's bold, meticulous writing, the notes dated last spring, a listing of Potions ingredients immediately caught her eye. Boomslang skin, horn of a bicorn: what does he want with Polyjuice Potion? Drawn to read more, she let out an involuntary gasp as she read more and discovered that it wasn't Polyjuice Potion that he had been brewing. It was a potion to…help become an Animagus?

Struck dumb, she grabbed up more parchment, the pieces all suddenly dropping into place. This was his project last year. And he had obviously succeeded, as he was still here. Did this mean--a vision of Rita Skeeter coming to mind--he was using his new ability to spy?

Professor McGonagall, I've found a good use for Animagism, she thought. To go spy on Voldemort! Looking in the drawer, she saw a thick sheaf of notes; almost as much parchment as her project proposal. Well prepared as always.

She moved to put the papers back, frozen in indecision. On the one hand, he would kill her. On the other hand, she had gotten no further with researching a director towards eliminating only certain memories for her potion. She had raked Hogwarts' library time and again to no avail.

Was it Providence that had sent this her way, perhaps? Was this a chance to make her mark in the war in a different fashion? This was difficult magic, after all--nobody could sneer and say she was just a teacher's pet or a Mudblood no-talent if she managed this. And she would be helping to save lives. Wasn't that far nobler than being boring, painfully correct and good Hermione Granger and plodding along with Arithmancy equations just to make top marks? And she had heard Professor McGonagall saying quietly to Professor Snape three days ago that Voldemort had caught two Ministry spies amidst his ranks. They would need replacements.

If something is truly worth fighting for, she thought, it's worth risking life, limb, and a place at Lothlorien for. She nodded firmly. Truly a Gryffindor sentiment; sometimes people had also wondered what in her had merited her place in that house rather than Ravenclaw. Well, now she'd prove it. She was more than a mind.

Hastily, she grabbed a quill from up her sleeve. She grasped the rest of the notes from the drawer and put them next to the quill, putting the sheets still clutched in her hand in the pile. Drawing her wand, she whispered, "Replicus!," aiming first at the parchment, then the quill. The quill slowly paled, changing shape, growing to be a stack of parchment exactly the twin of the first.

She then murmured, "Reducio," and the copied sheaf of Snape's painstaking research on Animagism became no more than the size of a Muggle pack of playing cards. She put it in her robes and shoved the original papers back into the desk, closing the drawer quietly. She turned to the shelves and grabbed the jar of Jynx teeth, almost dropping it with hands trembling.

She hurried back out to the workroom, intently staring at her cauldron so that he wouldn't turn and see it written on her face. She wasn't used to breaking rules like this…even now she heard something within her protest that she shouldn't have done it. She added the teeth, forcing herself to calm down. It will be for the good, she consoled. You're not doing this just to become an Animagus for no reason but to show off. You're going to use it. That's more than the Marauders did with it in their school days, and they had no qualms, so buck up!

Two minutes of quick stirring, and she set the spoon beside the cauldron. "Good night, sir," she said. "Until Monday."

"Good night, Miss Granger," he said nonchalantly. She slipped out of the workroom, feeling her frustrations earlier in the day over getting nowhere with the potion evaporating. She'd still be of great use to the cause now, just in a different, much more direct way. The thought cheered her immensely. It was her birthday, and she felt like she had been given a rather wonderful gift in those notes. She settled down on her bed, relieved that her homework was nearly done, pulled the notes from her pocket, murmured, "Engorgio" to return them to full size, and began to read intently as Crookshanks settled on her lap in contentment.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tosca chuckled smugly to herself as she watched the girl Severus had taken under his wing leave the workroom. She had done precisely what the falcon had hoped: taken up the notes.

After all, she was getting rather tired of flying all over the countryside nearly every week and listening to a bunch of idiot humans wanting to take over the world and kill off half their own kind: the Muggles. Don't see gyrfalcons trying to murder each other, she thought wryly. Stupid humans.

She had been taking a lazy flight after hunting two nights before when she had faintly heard the girl talking through an open window. Lighting upon the sill, she had listened while the poor thing spoke to her cat of her need to be of use to the world. She had seen the girl teased in her years at Hogwarts, and things hadn't seemed to improve.

The potion she was making under Severus' watchful eye was at a standstill--the route she had wanted to take after brewing the basic Forgetfulness Potion would not work and she was bemoaning how it was a failure. No, she was a failure, and she would always be disliked and useless.

She was even more apart from people, she had told Crookshanks, the nasty-looking ginger cat; now that she was Head Girl. They considered her even farther from being one of them due to that. They had to watch themselves around her, or she might punish them, so they didn't know when a joke was right or not. Her first responsibility was to the school, and so they were cautious around her. Even her old friends were wary.

She wasn't usually the sort to give a fig about the petty problems of the overly fragile human ego, but somehow the girl's gloom reminded her of Severus'. After all, she had been the one to listen to all his self-hating rants over the past eight years. So she figured she'd lend a claw to the girl, and to Severus. The two were perfect for each other, of course, if they could get their egos out of the dung heap. Both were remarkably intelligent, with a need to be of use, introverted, and both were quite lonely.

Being a falcon spy had given Severus purpose, so she had contrived that once the girl had come into the office to lead her to the notes, hoping to help do the same for Hermione Granger. If the girl became an animal of any sort, hopefully she wouldn't have to go out on these idiot missions, since Hermione would be more than eager to do the job and be of use. She had been about ready to steal the notes and fly up to her room, leaving them there. But this worked even better--Severus would never know. And perhaps, she thought cheerfully, as animals they might have some sense and quit with all this, 'She's a student, he's a teacher' bollocks. Humans make things much too complex, really. With that, she fell asleep shortly, feeling satisfied that she had done her part.