Archive of Our Own

"I want to be a real girl," Hedwig hooted miserably.

"You are a real girl," Dumbledore assured her. "It's not the colour of your feathers that defines..."

"No, no. It's not that. I want to be a girl like... Like Hermione. A human girl."

"Hermione is an owl," Dumbledore noted.

"Is she? But then, she can turn into a human girl and I can't, however much I try. What is wrong with me?"

Dumbledore half-hummed, half-hooted. "Perhaps you're trying too much."

"Oh, you're useless." Hedwig flapped her wings at the old snowy owl. "I'll fly and talk to Snape, I guess."

"Snape is not an owl," Dumbledore hooted to her back.

Snape was, indeed, not an owl. He was, quite anticlimactically, a bat. Having to pretend to be a human was a source of eternal suffering for him. Not the least because he was a nocturnal creature but Dumbledore stubbornly refused to accommodate his needs and put the Potions classes at the nighttime.

At the present, Snape had one more headache to deal with. He had to console Draco whose heart was positively broken.

"And then I asked him, 'Would you still love me if I was a worm?', and he said 'Yes, of course', and then I turned into my real form, and he... He... He just ran away!"

Snape, who had been hanging from a chair's back, dropped to the floor and transformed into a human with the sole purpose of being able to pinch his nose bridge. Draco did not follow suit and proceeded to worm around dramatically.

Hedwig assessed the situation and decided that Snape had enough on his plate as it is.

"Perhaps," she hooted to herself, "I better consult McGonagall. She is not a flying creature but she is wise nonetheless."

By some coincidence, the wise, not flying creature was giving a humanagi lesson to one Mrs Norris at this very time.