Melangell's Curse

Disclaimer: JKR owns the rights to anything you recognize in this fic. I wish I did, but alas! Life is like a box of Bertie Bott's. Sometimes you get chocolate fudge, sometimes you get earwax.

Credit: Credit goes to my wonderful beta, Tevildo, for cleaning up my horrible punctuation and grammar. Any errors that remain after he is done with a chapter, are solely my own. Feel free to pelt me with cauldron cakes for these.

AN: Alas, Severus wasn't turned into anything as interesting and exotic as a wombat or a llama, but I hope my choice and reasoning are satisfying. These two are in for a world of trouble, let me tell you.

Hermione had been horrified at his reaction. She hadn't expected the effects of the spell to be that painful, but then again the book hadn't been that specific, glossing over some details. She had just wanted to scare him. Oh, Merlin... was he even still alive?

With a trembling hand she reached out to the pile of black robes in front of her, carefully moving the inky material aside until she found him. He was lying very still, the flutter of his ribcage evidence of his shallow breathing.

He would be so angry; it would be better if he were restrained when he realized what had happened. Hermione gently picked him up by the scruff of the neck. His fur was surprisingly soft under her fingers and she had to resist the urge to stroke his velvety ears.

***

The pain had subsided but small tremors still shook him occasionally. There was a sudden tightness across his shoulders and then an odd lifting sensation. His body was nestled against a soft warmth as arms encircled him. 'Has she changed her mind?' he thought dazedly.

"Severus?" Although whispered, her voice seemed very loud to him. He willed his eyes to open, but found that he couldn't focus. He turned his head to fix her with one eye – that seemed to work better. Hermione was chewing on her bottom lip, a nervous twitch he had observed over the past few months. "Can you understand me?"

He felt rather annoyed, of course he could understand the girl – she was speaking English, wasn't she? He felt too tired to talk, so he just nodded impatiently. She looked relieved.

"Severus... I'm afraid I've done a rather foolish thing..."

Foolish indeed! What could be more foolish than rejecting him when the consummation of his – their – game had been so close? He kept his moody silence.

"I didn't mean to... I... I just came across this book, and it had the spell in it." She was chewing on her lip again. "I didn't think that Melan-"

Severus' ears swivelled toward the sound of the soft patter approaching... Wait... swivelled? He had a mere instant to consider this thought before the ball of orange fur crashed into his body, knocking him away from Hermione. The bloody hell?

***

Hermione had the wind knocked out of her as the huge cat pounced at the hare. "CROOKSHANKS! NO!"

The two animals were tumbling on the floor, somersaulting over each other in a flurry of fur and limbs. Severus was currently pinned to the floor, but evaded the bandy-legged cat by delivering a powerful kick to Crookshank's midsection. The cat yowled and Severus bounded up and out of a window.

Hermione rushed over, thanking all things holy that they were on the ground floor. "SEVERUS!" she yelled after him. "PETRIFICUS TOTALIS!" She sent several blasts of magic after him in an attempt to stop him, but he ducked and dived, the spells fizzling uselessly into the ground around him as he raced across the moonlit lawn.

She groaned in dismay, losing sight of Severus as the shadows of the Forbidden Forest swallowed him.

***

It took a long time before Severus' mind could regain control of his new body. His body operated on instinct, clouding out all rational thought. All he had wanted was to get as far away from danger as he could – running seemed like a good way of doing this, 'where' was a secondary concern.

He finally threw himself down under the protection of a prickly shrub, too exhausted to run any further. As his body calmed down, his mind tried to get a grip on what had happened. Hermione had been angry and, although he was loath to admit, he knew she had every right to be. Her body and mouth had seemed so willing... things had got out of hand... his blood had boiled at the prospect of finally receiving his reward. 'What happened to all your Slytherin patience and control?' he berated himself.

He hadn't recognized the incantation she had used; no matter how intensively he searched his extensive mental library, he couldn't come up with anything even phonetically close. It was definitely not Latin-derived, so it had to be from a more ancient or obscure line of magic. She had said "Melan..."; maybe this was a clue that would help him out of this predicament.

He lay, considering the information he had at hand. As his muscles cooled and the adrenaline drained from his body, he winced as his shoulder stiffened up considerably. Crashing against the wall and then running, Merlin knew how far; it was protesting against its abuse. Severus gingerly stretched out his forelimb. He rolled his eyes as it suddenly struck him that he'd been overlooking the most obvious clue – himself.

Sitting up, he inspected his new body. The black fur was probably just a vestige of his natural colouring, so he ignored it. His body was lean and sinewy, his chest deep, housing the machinery required to sustain a runner. His neat forepaws were tipped with sharp, non-retractable claws, but not those of a predator. His hindlegs were long and muscular, his thighs still quivering from exertion.

A hare? She had turned him into a hare?

A tale his grandmother had told countless times flooded back to him.

A nobleman was out hunting with his hounds one day. The faithful beasts soon flushed a handsome hare from a field of wheat. The creature had been wily, evading the hounds for a long time, before finally being cornered in thick, tangled undergrowth. The hounds stopped giving tongue as a human cry came from the vegetation. The nobleman called off the pack and waded into the thorns and branches to investigate. Instead of a hare, he found a young woman protecting an injured leveret.

Her name was Melangell.

Fuck! Trust Hermione to be all poetic when meting out punishment! Everyone with an interest in the history of magic knew of Melangell's Gift – the ability to transform into a hare at will. Muggle folklore was rife with tales of women taking on a hare's form to steal milk from unsuspecting farmers' cows or to cause trouble. It was very similar to modern-day Animagi, but relied on ancient magic to effect the change. There were certain... restrictions that applied to ancient magic. The spell could only be removed in the place it had been cast; a failing that cost the lives of many witches of old when they led their pursuers back to their homes in order to return to human form. '"Melangell's Curse", more like it!' Severus sneered.

He had to get back to the castle and find Hermione. Somehow... he had to convince her to remove the spell, and he had to do it without anyone else finding out. He would never live it down! This was not going to be... A rustle in the undergrowth interrupted his train of thought. He froze, his senses coming to full alert.

Something was heading straight for him.

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