Written for KerrAvonsen for the 2017 SSHG Giftfest

The Animal in You

Prologue: 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 was not 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 could not help but to be a tiny bit touched by their concern while they watched him die in the Shrieking Shack. After all, both Potter and the girl had tried to help him, even though their efforts were ultimately in vain. At any rate, he summoned up the energy to give Potter the memories that he would need to finish the fight once and for all and then he 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 was not really surprised since he could hear the faint sounds of shouting and fighting in the distance. Those thoughts paled, though, when he finally remembered the contents of the secret pocket in his frock coat that he had unfortunately passed out before he could use earlier. Therefore, he struggled to reach that spot, weak from blood loss and the venom that was coursing through his veins. Eventually he persevered, though, and was able to pull out three small bottles from their hiding place. He flicked off the caps and immediately downed all of them before he collapsed completely to the floor again.

The potion maste could tell at once that even though the antivenin he had created specifically to counteract Nagini's poison was working, the blood replenisher was not going to be strong enough to make up for his massive blood loss and, therefore, his special healing potion was not going to be effective either. He just had too much mass and not enough blood.

Despite his best efforts, he was going to die anyway.

Nevertheless, Severus knew that there was one last thing left that he could try. He took a deep breath, 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 then immediately felt the change when the blood replenisher and the healing potion started to work 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 it stopped completely.

At that point, Severus Snape finally allowed himself to hope. Maybe he would make it out of the situation alive, after all. However, he knew he had to rest – and in the correct way for his current form – in order for the special ingredients in his healing potion to work on his ravaged body. Therefore, he slowly clawed his way up the curtain beside him and swung himself over to hang upside down off of the rod where the decayed draperies still hung.

Ahh, that's better, thought the giant fruit bat as he slipped into a deep healing slumber.

...

Many hours later, the memories that Harry had been given by a dying Severus had been viewed. Armed with the new knowledge, he set out to fufill the prophecy...in one way or the other. Fortunately, fate had smiled on the side of the Light and the battle had finally been won. Afterwards, 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. After all, it was thanks to him that Harry had finally figured out what he needed to know to end it all.

Therefore, she was shocked to find the building completely empty and she rushed back to let both McGonagall and Kingsley know. Later, after a cursory search turned up nothing, it was assumed by almost everyone that the fleeing Death Eaters had either destroyed his body or had simply taken it elsewhere to desecrate once his true loyalties had become known.

Despite that assumption, though, 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 actually 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. In fact, she liked to imagine him sitting on a tropical beach somewhere as he rubbed sun cream on his pale hooked nose and sneered 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

The woman entered the dungeon classroom for the first time since her student years. The memories of all the time she had spent there flowed around her and Hermione realized that she had never been very happy in that particular 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 an effort 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.

Even after Professor Snape had left the position, she had spent the sixth year worried and even a bit jealous over Harry's success with the Half Blood Prince's book while she also dealt with Slughorn's favoritism towards those students that he thought could benefit him in some way. That whole situation had been quite disturbing - even if she had been one of the students whom he had singled out. Consequently, she found that it was actually amazing that she had retained any love for the subject whatsoever – especially after such an education in it.

However, she knew that unfairness was all behind her. As the new professor of Potions, she would make sure that all of her students had a fair chance in class. It did not matter what their blood status was, who their relatives were, or in which House they had been sorted - everyone who came to her to learn would be treated fairly.

Hermione knew that she would, of course, be sure to keep her eyes open for anything unusual. It was still Hogwarts, after all, and strange things had a habit of happening there. Consequently, her experiences there had made her cautious and she had spent half her life looking over her shoulder as she half-expected some kind of monster to appear around every corner.

Nevertheless, she imagined that such a vigilant habit would serve her well in the classroom.

...

Despite her determination to be the best professor that she could be, Hermione's return to Hogwarts had not been a straightforward one. After the battle, when the school had been repaired and classes had finally resumed, 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 in her life. After all, her parents had no memory of her due to the irreversible Obliviates that she had placed on them to keep them safe during the war. Plus, she had quickly figured out that things with Ron were simply not going to work out. In addition to all of that, Harry was so busy with his Auror training and Ginny that he just did not have a lot of time left over for her.

Therefore, Hermione understood that things would have to be different. She still loved her friends...and knew they felt the same for her. However, the change in their relationships...and the neverending chaos of the publicity over her new status as a war hero...convinced her 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. Where to go remained the only question at the point. After all, she had received both employment and education offers from all over Magical Europe...and even a few from the Americas, as well. She just did not know how to decide among them.

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. Consequently, she eagerly accepted his invitation to stay with him in Bulgaria for as long as she liked while she made her decision.

Over the next six months, Hermione fell in love with both the country and the man. Accordingly, she made plans to stay in Bulgaria indefinitely. Since Viktor often traveled for long periods of time on the Quidditch circuit, however, Hermione decided to use all of her free time and her new command of the Bulgarian language to continue to pursue her magical education there. With her usual determination to be the best at whatever she put her mind to, after only five years she was both a Transfiguration and Potions Master, as well as a registered animagus.

Her relationship with Viktor had ended amicably on both sides a year earlier, though, when they both admitted they simply wanted different things in life. Even though they remained good friends, Hermione found that she was finally ready to come back to England. Therefore, it seemed meant to be when she unexpectedly received the offer from Headmistress McGonagall to teach Potions at Hogwarts upon Slughorn's second retirement.

So it was that after her five year absence, Hermione found herself back at home and reunited with her friends before she returned to Hogwarts to set up her own classroom there. It was a task that she found quite enjoyable, even if it was hard work. Professor 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 Professor Snape's time and how she preferred for them to be herself.

Fortunately, however, organization had never been a chore for her. She set to the work with enthusiasm and, since there was nobody around to hear, further lightened the work load with singing. She found that the Bulgarian folk songs that she had learned to love during her years in that country were the perfect choice for that activity.

Five Years Later: Severus

The resident of the chambers that adjoined the Potions classroom stretched his wings from his roosting position irritably as his rest was interrupted by the sound of music. Severus's disposition had not improved much over the years. That was especially true since he had spent the last five years locked in his megabat form.

It had been an accidental oversight caused by 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 became stuck in his winged form.

Ordinarily, such a situation would only be a minor inconvenience because Severus knew of a remedy. In fact, there was a recipe for a potion in one of the magic books in his personal library that could soon free him from being stuck in his animal form. It was a gray potion - neither particularly dark nor light - but so complex that most masters would not attempt to create it themselves. That was not the problem in this case, however - especially since Severus had never met a potion that he could not master. No, the real issue in the case was that his lack of hands prevented him from making the potion in the first place...and his lack of a voice prevented him from requesting assistance from someone else in the matter. Plus, in addition to all of that, he knew of nobody skilled enough...besides himself – of course...to pull off such of feat of complex potioneering.

Therefore, he had stayed in his bat form for the last five years.

Severus actually did not 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. Plus, 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.

Ironically, he now had all the privacy that he could want and all of the restful quiet that he had craved during the twenty or so years before his accident. It was then that he had risked his life and soul to serve two demanding masters at the same time he had depleted all of his patience in an attempt to teach such a subtle art to hopeless dunderheads, as well. Therefore, it was not all bad - especially since Severus the Bat 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 year before when he had first become an , they would still open and close whenever he was near them in order to let him come or go effortlessly.

Severus never went hungry, either, since the sentience of the castle still recognized the presence of her former Headmaster. Therefore, the house elves did, as well. One elf in particular, Lonny, had loyally served him for many years as both a professor and the Headmaster – and continued to do so even though his old master was currently a bat...and was likely to stay that way indefinitely. Even though Severus could not talk to them, Lonny and the other elves kept him supplied with fresh fruit. That was a very good thing because only their unique magic allowed them to apparate in and out of his rooms. Nobody else could do so. They never informed anyone of his continued presence, however, because he had previously forbidden them to ever speak of his animagus form to anyone. At the time, 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. He just had not anticipated that such an extreme situation would occur where he might want someone else to know of his ability.

Thankfully, though, since he was a fruit bat, he also had excellent eyesight – unlike that of most other bat species. Consequently, he could still read. In fact, it became his habit that whenever Lonny brought his dinner, he would point out which of the many books from his shelves 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 and continue to enjoy one of his favorite pasttimes. Severus was grateful for the ability. It was a comfortable way to spend his many lonely waking hours and he knew without a doubt that it helped him to retain his sanity.

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 the situation, though, and so he existed in the only way that he could...until his circumstances could somehow change for the better.

...

When Severus heard the singing, he could not decide whether the sound coming from his old Potions lab irritated him or delighted him. Normally, he ignored the noise of everyone else. After all, the sounds of the many inhabitants of a magical school could drive one crazy - especially if participation was not an option.

However, there was a joyous feeling that came from the slightly muffled music from the next room, though, that made him wonder about it. It sounded Slavic. Russian, perhaps? He then wondered who would make such a happy noise. The potions lab and classroom did not have any outside windows, though, so he could not just fly out there and peek in to find out. Therefore, he just continued to listen to the melodies as he thought about the identity of the singer. It certainly was not old Slughorn, that was for sure. He would recognize his old professor's booming voice anywhere and this voice was distinctively feminine.

However, it was not Minerva, either. Severus had actually longed for years for her to enter the dungeons in her cat form so that he could tell her everything that had happened. After all, communication between transformed animagi was possible because it was all a part of the magic. Plus, after all of this time, she surely knew the truth of where his loyalties had always been and would help him. Unfortunately, the Headmistress apparently no longer had the time to go mousing like she used to and, therefore, had no need to come down to the dungeons as a tabby cat anymore.

For his part, he did not dare to fly up to the upper halls to find her. He knew instinctively that nobody would be happy to see a giant bat up there, and since he did not know of any other animagi in the castle to approach and speak with, he simply stayed where he was. He did not 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 whenever he was in the castle. At the moment, that meant that he was on his favorite perch listening to the songs 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. After all, her particular form was built for such a climate.

Hermione had always thought that her long stint in Bulgaria, where she mastered the difficult Transfiguration skill, must have influenced her transformation. Otherwise, how could one explain that her animagus form was 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. Hermione 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 keen 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 and listened intently with her sharp feline senses. However, after several minutes of 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.