Disclaimer: All Harry Potter people, places, and things, (all Harry Potter nouns) belong to J. K. Rowlings. Desiree Snape and Eleanora Snape are mine.

Chapter 3: Reflections of the Past

The whole incident began not long after the Shrieking Shack incident.

Severus had been allowed to return to his room the evening of the next day. As he walked through the unnervingly quiet halls, he became aware of a presence. He turned to see a grey tabby walking behind him. In the dim evening light, he could only distinguish that the cat was grey with black stripes.

"What do you want? Don't you have birds to catch or rats to chase? Why bother following me? It's not as if I plan to feed you," he tried to argue with the cat.

The animal seemed to stare back at him, as if she did not care what he was saying, still intent on following him. He shrugged and continued walking toward his rooms. Dressing for bed, he realized how sore he was from the incident. He was glad that his roommates had other places to be that night as he did not like anyone seeing him in pain. He opened the window to allow fresh air into the room. Before he could crawl into bed, he heard a light scratching at his door. He opened it to find the cat sitting in the doorway.

"I suppose you need some place to sleep tonight. Well, you might as well come in," he told the cat gruffly.

She looked to him as if the cat nodded her head before entering. He watched with curiosity as the cat seemed to scout out the room. Exhaustion soon outweighed anything else and he slid into his covers, careful not to injure himself further. Lying on his back, he turned his head to see where the cat had gone. She sat on the floor next to his bed, her tail swishing back and forth as she watched him. With great effort he reached down to pet her head. The cat allowed him to pet her and then jumped up onto the bed.

He raised an eyebrow as she curled up at the foot of his bed and stared at him, as if watching over him. Confused as he was about the cat's peculiar behavior, he drifted off into a dreamless sleep as the cat continued to watch him. She left through the open window as soon as he had gone to sleep, carefully hopping from ledge to ledge until she had found her intended target.

In the morning he was not surprised to find her gone. What surprised him was that she came back and laid on her stomach on the end of his bed again the following night. "Since you don't seem hungry, I will assume that you get your food from somewhere else. If you're going to be around for a while, I might as well give you a name," he figured. "How about Ophelia?" at that suggestion the cat put her two front paws over her head. "Alright, I can see you don't like that one. What if I called you Ana?" he suggested. The cat seemed to consider the suggestion and then walked over to him in order to be pet.

The cat's odd behaviour of watching Severus fall asleep and then leaving continued for the next two weeks. She learned a great deal about him because he would talk to her about his day or various concerns he had before he went to sleep. One evening the cat stayed longer than she intended to and when he woke, she was still curled up at the end of his bed. She woke instantly and looked around, as if she were confused, as he ran his fingers through her fur.

"Ana, you slept in. You probably ought to be going," he told the cat. As if she understood him, she scurried out of the room when he opened the window.

Everything came to a screeching halt when he noticed grey tufts of fur on the ground by the Quidditch Pitch the following day. He followed the fur to a bush inundated with foliage and spotted a grey ball of fur under the bush. A small wolf was heading in the opposite direction. He reached over and picked up the cat he had become familiar with, carefully carrying the creature to the school nurse.

The medwitch looked up with concern as Severus let himself in and dashed over to her desk. Then she noticed the injured feline, bits of blood and missing fur in various places. "Ana's hurt. Some wild animal must have attacked her. Can you do anything?" Severus questioned.

She took the cat from him and gasped. "Why did you call her 'Ana?' This is Professor McGonagall!"

"How can that be?" he inquired.

"This cat is her animagus form," the medwitch informed him. "You may go now."

Minerva sat in her office, drinking a small glass of fire whiskey. She did not indulge in the act often, only when recalling unpleasant events that left heavily guilty feelings. She remembered waking in the infirmary and knowing that a grave error had been made.

She had barely escaped with her life that night. The last thing she remembered after the attack was being gently held. When she woke on the bed in the infirmary everything ached. When she tried to sit up, someone stopped her. She looked to her right to see Albus. "How are you feeling, my dear?"

She grimaced as she tried to face him. "You don't want to know."

"Minerva, you have some explaining to do. I would ask you about the matter when you are feeling better, but I think I need to ask you now. Why was there a young man in here calling your cat form 'Ana?'" he asked gently.

Laying back down, she closed her eyes for a moment. "I watched over him in my animagus form, just until he fell asleep, and then I would leave."

Albus sighed, wishing that the situation was different, that she had not involved herself. "You need to apologize to him. He will most likely be upset with you. You are not to keep vigil in this manner again," he instructed softly.

"I understand," she said quietly.

Albus was about to leave, but then turned back. "Many of our students have troubled lives. Of all of them, why this one?" he inquired, looking at her over the top of his half-moon spectacles.

"I don't know. Albus, his family doesn't care about him and his roommates dropped out of school. Nobody cares about him and if someone doesn't watch out for him, he'll go to the other side," she whispered.

She had sent for Severus and waited pensively in her office. The pens on her desk were rearranged three times before she began pacing. When the activity of pacing reminded her of how sore she was, she sat down at her desk again and readjusted the bun that held her licorice-black hair. She refilled a few papers and had a pot of tea ready when she finally heard a knock at the door.

He entered the room after she told him to come in and sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. "Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr. Snape?" she offered.

Looking at his hands folded in his lap, he shook his head. "No, thank you."

She realized that he was not going to make this easy for her. His dark brown eyes seemed to have a brooding look, almost smoldering with irritation. Sighing, she faced him and met his gaze. "Mr. Snape, I owe you an apology. In my effort to attempt to help you, I may have taken an improper approach and-"

He never let her finish, springing up from his chair and gesturing with his hands. "I'll say that was an improper approach! You allowed me to think that you were nothing more than a stray cat! What I told the cat about half-hazardly was information I would never have told a professor!"

"Mr. Snape, I-" he would not yet allow her to speak.

"You say you were helping me, but the whole time you were just a bloody spy! All you were doing was spying on me. Right now I don't care if you take away house points because I'm swearing! All anyone wants to do these days is spy on me, and I usually catch most people. But you had me completely fooled! Congratulations, Professor McGonagall, you're the best bloody spy of them all!"

For an instant she lost her control as a professor and stood to look him in the eyes again. "I was not spying! I was only trying to watch over you! I did not go there with the intent of overhearing anything. You seemed so troubled and I only wanted to help."

His eyes seemed to burn with anger. "I didn't want your help. I wanted to be left alone. Why couldn't you just mind your own bloody business? You had to bloody involve yourself in mine!" he snapped.

Her professor persona suddenly came back. "Mr. Snape, I will not tolerate this rude, arrogant, shameful behaviour from you. I therefore take two hundred points from Slytherin and you are dismissed," she stated firmly.

He glared at her. "Every time the situation does not go as you planned, you hide behind the professor. One of these days you won't be able to do that and you will have to actually deal with your problems. Good day, Professor," he told her coldly, with much sarcasm, running out of the office.

She sank down in her chair and placed her head in her hands, wishing she could change what had happened at the Shrieking Shack, wishing she could have changed her reactions to events, wishing that she had never known him and that he had never come to the school.

When Minerva retired for the evening after leaving her office, sleep did not come easily and she stared at the ceiling, trying to will herself to fall asleep. Her mind drifted back to the conversation she had with Severus regarding Eleanora Snape. "I won't fail him this time. I won't let anything happen to her and I will see that the others treat her with respect. I won't fail you again, Severus," she whispered before succumbing to sleep.

Severus sat on his bed, running the events over in his mind again. "I should not have said those things to her, knowing that she was only trying to help. I ruined any chance I ever had of a friendship with her a long time ago. Minerva, will you ever forgive me? I am sorry for asking to look after Nora, but the truth is that you are the best at watching out for people," he whispered as he crawled into bed.

(my thanks to Quill of Minerva and Leta McGotor for reviewing :D)