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Everyone expected the Great Harry Potter to turn into a stag, just like his Patronus, just like his father. But no, Potter’s Animagus was a great big snowy owl, and the first thing Severus thought was, ‘Wonderful, he’s going to eat me.’
His second thought was around the lines of, ‘beautiful’, or, ‘Stunning, as always’, but neither he could say out loud. At least, not yet.
Besides, the Harry-owl was swooping over the student’s heads, letting out a loud screech just as its wings brushed across Severus’ head and sent his hair fluttering into the air.
“Potter!” He snapped, spinning on his heel just in time to catch the owl land, and turn back into the dark-haired boy he knew and loved. “Four points from Gryffindor.”
“Oh, come on professor, it’s my first time, go easy on me,” Potter replied, giving him a perfectly innocent look that didn’t match his words. This bloody child—this bloody man-child would be the death of him.
“No one else managed to crash into their professor, one would expect the same amount of… agility from our Savior.”
“I think I proved just how flexible I am, by not crashing into you,” Potter shot back, tone growing sharper. He never did like it when people mentioned the ‘Savior’ thing, Severus had made a mistake. Old habits die hard.
To his left, Minerva cleared her throat loudly, drawing everyone’s—yes, everyone was watching, good lord—attention away from the two of them. “I think that’s a good place to stop for today. A lesson for us all, I believe. Do not grow over confident in your abilities as an Animagus, or your Animagus’ abilities. Always approach the transition carefully, with consideration.” She paused to level Potter a look. “Not by simply swooping in for a landing and changing back.”
Potter’s cheeks were already red by the time she addressed him, her words clearly striking home.
“Now, one more example before we call it a day… perhaps from someone with more experience.” She turned, and Severus’ stomach dropped. Damn her all to hell, she wasn’t really—“Severus, if you could?”
She was. No wonder she was a cat.
“I believe they have seen enough, if—“
“Severus.”
“Right…” he murmured, taking a few steps back from the small crowd of students gathered in the main hall. It wasn’t your typical class, since many witches and wizards didn’t have the capability to become an Animagus at all. It was a difficult enough skill to learn, but the magic did not touch everyone in Hogwarts. This meant that the lessons were more of advanced, with bi-weekly class times rather than once or twice a week. When they first begin to transform, students needed that week to restore much of their energy reserves for other classes, and to practice switching their mindset from human to animal.
Still, once every two weeks was enough to get on Severus’ nerves, especially when he had to be one of the two professors required to teach the class. [some nonessential safety regulation or another.]
And now the students would finally see his Animagus… oh wonderful. There would be teasing, once again.
“Professor Snape,” The headmistress sighed, “There are only so many hours in the day, if you please.”
Scowling, Severus closed his eyes and readied himself. No more Severus Snape, no more clothing, or wands, or spells, or potions, or snot-nosed kids.
Think…
Green, and sun—Lilly’s hair and they’re all laughing at him while he hangs upside down and—no, not that. Try again.
Sun—warmth and grass—no, green. Green eyes.
There was a collective gasp. Severus opened his tiny, jewel-like eyes, and hissed.
Minerva was babbling something far above him—something the students were ignoring as they pressed in closer to get a look at him. One on one, Severus had no problem showing off his scales, they were quite lovely, if he did say so himself. But all those feet, and giggling, and loud—their voices were so loud when he was like this. It reverberated up through the floor, and into his body, making him feel sick and fearful. It was, admittedly, an irrational response, but he was always a little irrational as a snake.
He hissed louder when someone reached for him, and he was off, gliding across the smooth, stone floor as fast as he could go. Behind him, the vibrations grew stronger, voices echoing off the walls. He had upset them, and he didn’t care. He needed to get away, he needed sun and warm and green, not cold, and laughter.
Always cruel laughter.
It wasn’t green grass, exactly, but Severus found some nice, warm rocks by the lake to curl up on. He had chosen wisely, a small collection of flat rocks, tucked away near the willow tree. It was, undoubtably the safest place to sun-bathe, without worrying about any predators scooping him up for their dinner. No one got past the willow.
Just as he thought it, the soft, constant creaking of the branches came to a stop, and Severus felt the vibrations of foot steps drawing nearer. Apparently he had been wrong, one predator knew its way past the tree.
“You’re sssafe?” a voice hissed, startling Severus fully out of his sun-induced stupor.
Ah—there they were, those big, green eyes.
“You really do like to be a cliché, don’t you?” Potter continued, his smile only growing larger as he sat down on the rocks beside him, and settled in.
“It’s ‘Sssir’ to you, Potter,’ he hissed back, and how on earth could he have forgotten Potter’s one and only ‘dark’ attribute? [‘Dark’, according to the bloody Ministry, so it didn’t mean much.]
“You sssaid I only had to call you that in classsss,” the boy replied, sounding smug for someone who never called him anything but Snape or professor. “And anyway, why did you hide thisss from me?”
“I didn’t hide it.”
“You didn’t ssshare it, either.”
“It never came up,” Severus argued, wriggling his tail in frustration. He had very little control of his body’s need to express his feelings in this form. Potter would be lucky not to be bitten, if he pushed far enough.
But, for once, Potter looked… defeated. It was not a good look on him, it looked wrong—bad—no.
“Sssccared,” Severus hissed, barely a whisper of sound escaping him.
Potter blinked at him, lips turned down in the beginnings of a deep frown. He got like that, sometimes. Going straight to sad before stopping at confused, or curious first. Things had changed, obviously, from the time where curiosity and questions lead to adventure, rather than pain.
“Of me?” he asked, and yes, there he went, directly to self hatred. Merlin, Severus was going to have to work harder at this. A little honesty, perhaps, would go a long way.
“I’m small, like this, and people… James laughed and they—“ Severus broke off with an upset hiss that was nothing more than sound. Potter had no response to this, but simply stared and stared at him until his eyes grew unfocused, and he turned his gaze to the lake instead.
Their relationship—if you could call it that, yet—was a tentative one at best. Shameless, yet mostly subtle flirting on the one hand, on the other, Severus would not touch him outside of a few one-armed hugs, and a pat on the back here and there. They had both hinted at wanting something more, something other than their surprisingly pleasant lunches together, long conversations about important things—but never certain important things—and careful gift giving that lead to even longer conversations. It was turning out to be the longest, and only courtship Severus had ever really taken part in, and he was actually having fun with it.
Until things like this happened. Until a secret crawled its way out of the woodwork, or one wrong word was said, or tempers flared and many wrong words were said. Then, everything came crashing down faster than the Ministry without their coffee in the morning.
“I didn’t laugh.”
Severus blinked both sets of eyelids and stopped zoning out to his own misery long enough to realize big-green-eyes were focused on him again.
“No?”
“No, I didn’t. I was… happy,” Potter replied, the words seeming to struggle out of his mouth. He was always terrible at expressing himself, but that really was a cauldron calling a kettle black.
“Why happy?” Serverus inquired, unraveling his body from the tight knot it had formed upon Potter’s arrival.
“Because out of all the creaturessss you could have been, it’s one I can sssstill speak with.”
And that was just… so very Potter. And one of the reasons Severus really wanted this tentative relationship to work, damnit it all.
But speaking of creatures…
“And you are one who eats my kind,” Severus pointed out.
Potter let out a bark of laughter, making the rocks around Severus shake and rattle. It was jarring, but somehow, Severus still found his laugh charming.
“I’ve never seen an owl eat a ssssnake before, I think we’ll be fine.”
“I have seen many a snake be gobbled up by an owl.”
“A ssssnowy owl?” Potter mused, looking way too pleased with himself.
“I don’t discriminate.”
“Yessss you do.”
For some reason, that made Severus laugh, which was undoubtably an odd sound for Potter’s ears, if his confused grin was any indication. But the boy had been right, it was nice to be free of, well, everything that made him Severus Snape, and still be able to hold a conversation about, well, anything really. It was especially pleasant to do so with someone he—with someone who…
Someone like Harry.
“Turn around,” he ordered, flicking his tail as he unwrapped himself fully and slithered free of his rocky alcove.
Harry blinked down at him, suddenly looking worried. “Why? Did I sssay something wrong?”
“No—they had no word close enough for ‘Potter’, so it sounded more like’ Psssoottsss’ when he tried to hiss it—I wish to change back.”
“Can’t I watch?” he asked, completely and utterly missing the point.
Severus hissed, “It’s private!” and started to slither around the larger rocks to hide.
“I showed you mine!” Harry called out after him, humor apparent in his voice. Then, he was muttering something under his breath, while Severus changed back. It took a few tries to return to himself, finding it hard to trick his mind into any logical reasoning. It was convinced he was better off in this body, safe from bad bad things, safe from bad bad memories, laughter, and here, there was so much warmth and green. Yes, he really did like being a snake, but he also really needed to do something that required arms. And maybe lips.
“Welcome back,” Harry said, the second Severus turned around and met his eyes. He seemed hesitant, like he always did when they were alone for a long period of time. It was as though… it was as though the longer they spent time together, the more sure he was that something horrible was going to happen. Which, incidentally, wasn’t that surprising, considering his past. Still, there was no room for hesitancy here.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “…Harry.”
As he expected, those lovely, green eyes widened dramatically, cheeks growing flushed, mouth opening and closing uselessly. It was a perfectly goofy, laughable, adorable expression, and Severus really had no other choice than to pull him close, and kiss it right off his face.
Harry seemed content to do that for only a moment before he was breaking the kiss to go back to staring at him.
“Yes?” Severus drawled.
“Does this mean—so I can actually call you Severus?” he blurted out, cheeks reddening even more.
“Only outside of class, and preferably not in front of any other students.”
“Severus…”
“Yes?” he repeated quietly, not completely unaffected by his name being whispered like that.
“Severus?”
“Keep it up and I will start calling you every name Draco every came up with for you.”
Harry gasped dramatically, putting a hand to his chest. “You wouldn’t!”
“I shall, Potty,” He confirmed, smirking at the boy. That seemed to have done the trick, though, dragging Harry out of his odd state of reverence and back into their usual banter. Severus didn’t, exactly, want banter right now, though. He wanted more of those steps being taken towards a solid relationship, not a tentative one.
But, before he could swoop in for another kiss, Harry reached up, and pushed all of his hair backwards.
“Potter!” He sputtered, caught completely off guard.
“Four points from Gryffindor?” Harry teased, leaning in dangerously close while Severus brushed all his hair out of his face again.
“Five points,” Severus grumbled, unable to stop his lips from twitching with amusement.
“Oh, come on, Severus, go easy on me,” Harry whined, flashing that perfectly innocent look again.
“To Gryffindor,” Severus added, enjoying the way Harry’s face light up with pleasure at that.
His first thought was ‘beautiful’, or, ‘Stunning, as always’, but neither he could say out loud. At least, not yet.
Instead, he kissed him again.
And, Merlin, he was right, Harry really was going to be the death of him.