OH NO!!!!!!

RW here.  As of March 2008, I can find no more working links to "The 
Growing Pains of Severus Snape, Aged 36 3/4" by Valeria.  It's probably 
the best Snape fic EVER, so I'm adding it to 
"Homeless Treasures."  
***************


The Growing Pains of Severus Snape,
Aged 36 3/4

by Valeria


Disclaimer:  Characters property of J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishers
and Scholastic Press.  Also contains parodies of material
property of Sue Townsend, Tony Hendra and Michael O'Donoghue.
No copyright infringement intended, and no profit made.

The following is a not terribly Rowlingesque parody in which the Slytherin 
Sex God 
gets to live up to his silly fanon nickname. He does a lot of other very 
silly things 
as well. This story is episodic in nature, which is a fancy-dan way of 
saying that it is
technically a work in progress but each chapter stands just
fine on its own. Make your all-important reading decisions accordingly.

This story originally appeared in LiveJournal under the name 
"The Secret Diary of Severus Snape." In order to avoid confusion
with the Very Secret Diaries of Every Fanfic Character Ever 
Created Anywhere, the title has been changed.

Special thanks to Sue Townsend, whose Adrian Mole Diaries are a constant 
source 
of inspiration. Special thanks as well to Viedma, to the LiveJournal 
Slytherin 
community, and to my beta readers Captain Margaret, Stuffy Rodriguez 
and Mr. Squiggly the Wild Rabbit.

Feedback?  Why not?  Send it here.




20 November

I am starting to have my suspicions about the efficacy of the 
Anti-Snooping Spell that guards these diary pages; at least, that is the 
only explanation I can come up with for that little shit Draco Malfoy 
demanding of me point-blank this morning at breakfast, "Professor, do tell 
all of us that story about the Durmstrang sixth-year, the willow cane and 
the jar of raspberry jam, won't you?" Fortunately only Crabbe and Goyle 
overheard and were, as usual, entirely flummoxed. Prating spoiled 
varnish-haired arse-kissing sieg-heiling wanker-in-training. However, the 
surge of anger this discovery inspired did offer me an excuse to punish 
three of my seventh-year House girls exceedingly severely, and order has 
thus been restored to my soul. Such soft, rosy skin the third one had. And 
then the pleas for more. (Thank heavens nobody is reading this, though if 
it ever got out about Dumbledore and that saucy little house-elf I doubt 
anyone would even notice my petty indiscretions.)

Another bilious hallway encounter with famous Harry Potter this evening, 
all flashing green eyes and wild dark hair and an implacable defiance of 
spirit which is screaming out to be humbled. Preferably after a long, 
heated, heavily-breathing struggle. I curse the day that nasty, 
self-important, lithe, supple-limbed brat ever entered the confines of 
this school and have I mentioned before just how like his father he is? 
Not that I ever noticed James when we were in school together, unless you 
count those one or two (all right, dozen or two) times with Lucius that I 
closed my eyes and let my imagination roam free but the libido of a 
seventeen-year-old is a truly uncontrollable thing and therefore my 
painstakingly scripted fantasies clearly meant nothing. I wonder if Filch 
would let me borrow those ceiling chains of his? Purely for research 
purposes of course.

Well, almost midnight and time to milk the toads. Bloody potion-making. A 
misunderstood genius's work is never done.

********

26 November

I shall soon go mad from sheer lack of privacy! Six months' purgatorial 
labor to coax, wheedle, flatter and cozen that pretty little Drumstrang 
Potions apprentice into my bed and it is last night of all nights that the 
pig-sticking cretins Crabbe and Goyle choose to misapply an Engorgement 
Charm to one another's more vulnerable portions, with truly disastrous 
results. Immediate attempts at bringing the situation under control via 
the wand proving futile--and the sight the two presented before my eyes, 
frankly, threatening to strike me blind--I finally magicked up a stretcher 
and sent the interlocked, gibbering morons floating off to the hospital 
wing of their own accord. 

All's well that gets out of my sodding face--but of course by the time I 
was finally able to return to my private chambers, it was to be greeted by 
the sight of my pearly-skinned prize having drawn her furs back up to her 
neck and embarking upon a lecture about how "Ve neffer just talk anymore, 
do ve?" Feeling understandably more than slightly put-upon at this point, 
I made the mistake of snapping, "When did we ever talk, or it is common 
foreign practice to insert one's tongue in the listener's mouth to 
emphasize a point?" She did not take kindly to this and was soon back on 
her broomstick and speeding off across the Atlantic, leaving myself--who 
at this point should have rightly been bound hand and foot to the bedposts 
and enjoying a deliciously futile fight against the Latvian Fondling 
Charm--with only a fifth of Oggham's and a most justifiably foul temper 
for company. Fortunately, the Bloody Baron having one of his episodes and 
attempting to decapitate several Hufflepuff first-years, again, did 
provide all of us some much-needed comic relief.

As if it were not enough of a chore to have to play strategic warmhearted 
mentor (gaaack!) to the loathsome little towheaded toad Draco Malfoy in 
and outside the classroom, today after the 4 p.m. class he--there is no 
other word for it--sidled up to me and in a voice dripping with something 
akin to a puff adder's venom cut with honey, "Professor Snape, do tell me 
you have the time to give me some private dueling lessons? I'm going to 
show Potter who's in charge around here once and for all." Insolent little 
kissup! If anyone around here has rightful claim on besting famous bloody 
Harry Potter it's me and me alone, and I'm damned if lissome little 
bastard's emerald eyes ever gleam in pure, unassailable, utterly 
mesmerizing fury like that for anyone else on earth, Draco sodding Malfoy 
very much included. (Speaking of which--though I certainly wish I 
weren't--why on earth does the little pureblooded swot simper at me like 
that during classes? I am always on the intensely annoyed verge of asking 
him whether his expression is the result of a burst appendix or a 
house-elf burning his breakfast kippers.) I suppose I shall have to give 
him the dueling lessons, though, good sense requires that I keep tabs on 
all the little wanker's plans and plots and besides, I strongly suspect 
Lucius still has those negatives of myself and Madam Rosmerta hidden away 
somewhere in his precious manor. I never get to have any fun.

I know I'm being rather paranoid, but why do I sometimes get the distinct 
feeling that total strangers are in fact accessing this completely private 
journal and reading every word I have written in it? I suppose that's just 
the price one pays for the glamour and prestige of being a half-reformed 
Death Eater--always and forever feeling like someone's looking over one's 
voluminous black shoulder.

********

29 November

A new reminder to myself, to be repeated as often as humanly necessary: 
Never, ever, ever, EVER simply fling open a door behind which Filch and 
Mrs. Norris have sequestered themselves without giving said parties 
considerable advance warning of one's impending presence.

If I wake up tomorrow to discover my hair has turned completely white, I 
will know why.

********

6 December

The students at this godforsaken hellhole that passes for an institution 
of learning are getting nastier and more impertinent by the second. Case 
in point: the infernal seventh-year who today apparently decided to 
celebrate the onset of her eighteenth birthday by secretly painting 
several well-handled surfaces in the Slytherin common room with undiluted 
bobotuber pus. How Blaise Zabini managed to get the stuff on parts of his 
anatomy that should, by all rights, never come anywhere near the vicinity 
of the fireplace's stone gargoyles must needs remain a mystery (at least, 
it must if we are all to manage to keep our breakfasts down); but at least 
the culprit was found out before I myself was affected, and it was with a 
wholly justified sense of rage that I dragged the willowy, golden-haired 
practical joker back to my private chambers for as sound and severe a 
punishment as it has ever been my pleasure to deliver.

I must say, in my own antediluvian schooldays we were far more stoic and 
dignified when faced with the unfettered wrath of our prefects and 
professors--but I will admit that the uninhibited writhing, panting, 
moaning and howling which greeted each stroke of the cane did, in the end, 
have a certain tonic effect upon my mood. So much so, in fact, that 
without quite intending to have done so I found myself climbing upon the 
bed where she on all fours knelt, tossing aside the willow switch and 
seizing her about the hips hard enough to bruise.

"Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she shrieked, all the while waggling her arse 
like Mrs. Norris at the hunt and spreading her knees as far apart as she 
could manage, and soon we were comporting ourselves in a fashion which, 
while it is assuredly not sanctioned by any Hogwarts disciplinary 
committee past or present, nonetheless has the advantage of securing the 
student's undivided, even obsessive attention. All one asks of one's 
charges, after all, is that for once in their miserable little lives they 
listen. And obey. Immediately. Is this really such an unreasonable 
request, for Circe's sake? I know several (none of them, unfortunately, 
the accursed raven-tressed maggot known as Harry Potter) who do not seem 
to think so.

This morning's heated, feverish events proved to be the summit of a 
rapidly downhill course of hours, as one pupil after another proved 
themselves unfit to crawl across the room, kiss my shoes and address me as 
"master." Why, simply because for a mere handful of years I devoted every 
last ounce of my time, energy, intellect and cunning to assisting the 
forces of ultimate evil and darkness in their horrific sprees of 
bloodlust, am I doomed to be surrounded by idiots and toadies for the 
remainder of my days? Life is so unfair, and on top of it all the famous 
Mr. Potter today led a fresh humiliation of Slytherin House on his 
precious sodding Quidditch field. The filthy Snitch-snatching lissome 
little shite! He will pay for this folly, I shall gladly see to it. How, 
and when, and where, are the only remaining questions.

Tonight, oh joy, I have to look forward to the first of the private 
dueling lessons which the noisome--and, judging by an unfortunate incident 
in the second half of today's disastrous Quidditch match, increasingly 
motion-sickness prone--Mr. Malfoy half-blackmailed out of me. He was kind 
enough to remind me thereof as he left Potions class today, gripping my 
forearm in an oddly caressing motion and, as he leaned in mere inches from 
my face, half-whispering, "I'm really, really looking forward to it, 
Professor." I myself nodded coolly and dismissed him from my presence, 
fervently wishing all the while that there were some way to convince the 
more Muggle-loathing segments of our society to adopt the blessed, albeit 
entirely non-magical, concept of breathmints.

********

19 December

If there can in fact be said to be any actual "advantage" to having one's 
entire dungeon office and laboratories end up flooded five feet underwater 
for the better part of a week and a half, it would have to be threefold: 
Firstly, the utterly noisome, mildew-ridden stench of slowly drying 
parchment and rotting puff adder carcasses is guaranteed to drive away any 
and all nosy little non-Slytherin swots (thank Paracelsus those "special 
edition" engravings that once drove Minerva into such a memorable 
frenzy--the ungrateful, lying, two-timing slag--are safely undamaged in my 
private chambers). 

Secondly, the utter ruination of my already creaky and motheaten desk 
chair has given me the perfect excuse to commission Figghoffen's finest 
available model as a replacement: Hand-carved mahogany, upholstered in 
deepest black velvet and, best yet, equipped with that special and only 
slightly illegal feature permitting silken snakelike cords to spring from 
the chair's interior and instantly immobilize some distinctly (un?)lucky 
guest at a snap of the owner's fingers. If I hear any complaints from 
Dumbledore about the cost, that little incident between him and the 
paddock of centaurs will be the late-edition front page of the Daily 
Prophet. And I'm not letting him sit in it, either.

Thirdly, the aforementioned flood will, with any luck, prove once and for 
all that Gryffindor House--the most puffed-up, nose-in-the-air and 
downright nauseating of all our miserable worthless base-born rivals--no 
more deserves a reputation for courage than the scribbling bitch Rita 
Skeeter deserves one for discretion. Because who caused this 
classroom-swamping tsunami with his abysmally typical incompetence at the 
cauldron? Who was enough of an irredeemable idiot to raise his wand unto 
the heavens and quaveringly bring down upon all our heads an indoor 
tropical storm requiring the evacuation of half the castle--and who, might 
I ask, then proceeded to hide in a South Tower closet for the better part 
of five days in order to avoid facing his just rewards? Neville 
sodding-Squib Longbottom will be the death of us all, and the only thing 
that stops me from poisoning that pathetic lump of pig's-fat is the fact 
that his Gryffindor status--so proud! So brave! So noble!--inspires all of 
us in a worthy House toward gales of helpless laughter which not even a 
house-elf's beating can rival. Ah, yes, they have so much to be proud of 
in Gryffindor: the know-all Muggle spawn Hermione Granger, the toadying 
Ron Weasley and his disgusting brothers, the almost artfully insolent 
Harry Potter and now, Neville Longbottom's shameless duck-and-run! I fear 
I pounded my fist against the common room's stone floor so hard in my 
hilarity, the knuckles have ended up profoundly bruised. 

That particular injury, might I say, was made wholly worthwhile by the 
sloe-eyed little sixth-year who took one look at the state of my fingers 
and insisted upon bringing to my private chambers a concoction of her own 
devising which she insisted would "bring the swelling down." It 
accomplished precisely the opposite result, it must be said, upon its 
application to certain other areas--but then, one learns to expect such 
minor mistakes from inexperienced students of the potion-making art, and 
to see them so willingly and cheerfully accept punishment for their errors 
really does constitute its own reward.

The chaos attendant upon Mr. Longbottom's aquatic misadventures, and the 
search for his presumably drowned self (he might have been better off that 
way, considering that Filch will have him scrubbing slug trails off the 
courtyard flagstones for the better part of eternity), did also end up 
delaying the start of Mr. Rather-a-Prat Malfoy's private dueling lessons 
for nearly a week. The inevitable finally dawned, however, and as planned, 
he turned up in the trophy room with his wand at the stroke of midnight. 
What was not planned was that he should also turn up drenched in what 
smelled like rubbing alcohol cut with rosewater, a starched jabot pinned 
to the neck of his robes and his hair slicked so severely against his 
skull it resembled the wood of a well-varnished Muggle basketball court. 
(Whom on earth is the idiot boy preening for? Crabbe and Goyle surely 
would not notice such efforts made on their behalf, and if they do I do 
not wish to hear about it.) 

At any rate, our first few lessons have shown the estimable Malfoy fils to 
be a preternatural genius at the art of bowing, smirking at his dueling 
partner and screeching "EXPELLIARMUS!" at the top of his agonizingly 
shrill lungs, but to be rather amusingly hopeless at absolutely everything 
else. Merely as a test of which curses in particular were most likely to 
prove his downfall in an actual battle, I subjected him during the first 
go-round in rapid-fire succession to the Jelly-Legs, the Furnunculus, the 
Immobilus, the Exsanguinus, the Crab-Dance, the Spasmodus, the 
Clod-Hopper, a spot of Stupefaction and, well, just about anything else 
short of Unforgivable that sprang into my mind. The months of training the 
wretched little fire ant will require in order to be anywhere near a match 
for the likes of myself is honestly nothing short of tragic; but the 
intellectual always enjoys a challenge and, as he staggered back to his 
dormitory wobbly-legged, covered in Sickle-sized pustules and bleeding 
profusely from the eyelids, I could only reflect with satisfaction upon 
the fact that the entire lesson had been nowhere near as tedious as I'd 
feared.

And now, I must relate in these utterly private pages an exceedingly 
strange incident that occurred just two days past and which still puzzles 
me. For the past three or four weeks, I have observed that every time I 
turn a corner, open a door or wander through the hallways in search of 
Harry bloody Potter breaking yet another school rule, I see passing in the 
opposite direction a quiet, rather nondescript Ravenclaw creature--her 
name escapes me--who studiously avoids my eye in favor of scribbling 
prodigiously in a small, well-worn notebook. Short, owlish-faced and with 
her locks arranged in a neatly tended but rather dull pageboy (I prefer 
dark hair to be rather tousled and unkempt, myself), she barely seems to 
notice my presence and yet, and yet I cannot escape the feeling that her 
writings concern me. Insolent little hell-kite! The last time this 
happened, two days previously, I swore I would put a stop to it once and 
for all.

Standing concealed in the embroidered hangings near the entryway to 
Ravenclaw House (the estimable Miss Chang was kind enough to give me the 
password list, of course, but that little mesalliance du coeur has long 
since come and gone), I waited until the creature had emerged, alone, and 
then stepped like a specter from the shadows. She started, clutching her 
notebook to what appeared from my sights to be an unfortunately inadequate 
bosom, and took a step backwards. This was all the impetus I required and 
I lunged sinuously forward, seizing her wrist in one still-bruised hand 
and shoving her with all my weight against the wall. Panting hard, my eyes 
inches from the glint of her spectacles, sinking the nails of my grasping 
hand into the yielding flesh of her wrist, I reached for the notebook 
still curled protectively in her other arm...

And then, to my great astonishment, I realized the creature had deftly 
evaded my grasp and was now standing poised for flight in the Ravenclaw 
entryway. Before I could quite fathom just how this had happened, she 
straightened her robes with a shaky hand, studied me with what appeared to 
be a sincere expression of regret and then firmly shook her head.

"I'm very sorry," she said to me. "I mean, honestly, Professor, I'm 
incredibly sorry--but it's just that I simply do not believe that 
self-insertion constitutes acceptable fictional characterization." And 
with that completely cryptic and bewildering statement, she vanished once 
again into Ravenclaw House before I could say another word. I have not 
seen her since.

That, may I say, is the real reason why I so strenuously object to 
Dumbledore's insistence upon filling the Hogwarts hallways with half-blood 
and Muggle-born students. All issues of genetic purity aside, half the 
time you can never figure out just what the hell they're talking about. 

********

6 January

If I have to witness Harry famous bloody prat-wanker Potter mooning like 
the calf-eyed virgin he is over his precious widdle Ravenclaw flower Cho 
Chang one more time, I will in fact slap both of them until their cheeks 
are raw and their ears are ringing. (Admittedly, Miss Chang would hardly 
object to this particular manner of treatment--quite the opposite--but at 
the end of the day it's the intention that counts.) What does the boy 
honestly think, imagining a devious little madam like our dear Miss Chang 
would ever give him the time of day, or for that matter seize him from the 
clutches of the Whomping Willow if his life depended on it? The stories I 
could tell, if I weren't jealously hoarding them for my bestselling future 
memoir, would make our famous Mr. Potter faint dead into my arms like a 
neurasthenic Victorian maiden and, for that matter, put him off the female 
of the species for the remainder of his natural life. (To be honest, I and 
all the rest of the school with two brain cells to rub together suspect 
the boy does not have very far to fall anyway in that particular 
regard--but it is hardly as though I have nothing better to do than 
indulge in wild speculation concerning the amorous proclivities of my 
younger and fresher-faced and suppler-limbed students, so let us simply 
leave matters where they now happen to lie.)

At any rate, at least the horrible sodding interminable holidays are 
finally over for another year. Presents were a mixed lot this time out: 
the usual box of peppermint creams and hand-knitted cloak from Mum (when 
on earth will the poor woman accept that daffodil yellow and mauve are 
simply not my colors?), a set of gobstones from my loyal elf Minsky (my 
well-worn childhood set was unfortunately lost in that little incident 
with the wormhole in time last autumn), a Maison de Bathory gift 
certificate from my little Durmstrang potions apprentice (finally, a 
useful present), something called the Lord of the Rings trilogy from my 
Squib cousin in Dorchester (Professor Binns's lectures on Wilghuffa the 
Weird and Norquist the Needle-Nosed are breathlessly fast-paced and 
scintillating in comparison), a faculty Christmas "bonus" from Dumbledore 
that wouldn't keep Minsky in fresh socks and, mysteriously enough, a tiny 
bottle of very inexpertly prepared Spanish fly from someone signing 
themselves only "To the Best, Smartest, Fairest-Grading, Purest-Blooded 
Potions Professor in the Whole Wide World." Who on earth could have given 
this to me? It can't be one of my students, even Mr. Longbottom wouldn't 
be this pathetically unskilled in tossing together a simple and 
all-too-ineffective Muggle "aphrodisiac." Still, the bottle itself is a 
pleasant shade of blue glass and will serve me as a passable enough 
knickknack.

Rather than face the nauseating spectacle of Harry Potter's smug little 
mug sitting across from me at the Hogwarts feast table for yet another 
year, I decided to take my life and my sanity into my own hands and accept 
Lucius Malfoy's Christmas Eve party invitation. Yes, I have become that 
desperate for outside companionship! Malfoy Manor was packed to the 
tinseled rafters and stiflingly hot when I arrived, and predictably no 
sooner had I walked in the door and handed off my cloak than Lucius 
himself was yanking me by the arm to a deserted anteroom, slurping at my 
earlobe and rubbing himself against my person in a manner to make a hungry 
house-cat blush in abject shame. 

"Stay here with me a while before dinner," he hissed into my ear in what I 
can only suppose he imagined to be an irresistibly come-hither fashion. 
"Let's just...talk about old times."

"We have no old times to discuss, you shit-faced wanker," I answered 
shortly, pulling swiftly away and wishing--not for the first time--that I 
had simply drugged James Potter when I had the chance (preferably right 
after a Quidditch match when he was panting and sweaty and flushed with 
the exhilaration of victory and if Lily wanted to watch or possibly even 
join in as well that would have been just fine, but I digress), rather 
than let this mewling whining rich-twit prat serve as his unwitting 
teenaged substitute. Once a Malfoy thinks he's got his claws in you, 
more's the pity, you can't get rid of him for murdering!

Normally, this would be Lucius's cue to pull out his wand, recite the 
first half of an Unforgivable and announce that I would be the pony while 
he was the stableboy, but that night he actually appeared rather 
distracted. "Very well," he smiled, "there's always time after dinner. And 
I've got a little surprise for you, you know...a little surprise for all 
of us."

This didn't sound at all good. Apprehension rising, I watched Lucius 
strategically adjust his robes and then followed him into the cavernous 
dining room, where pure-blooded Death Eaters both past and present were 
already belching up their starters to the chorus of a goblin string 
quartet performing on a nearby dais. Seated in the middle of a 
half-mile-long table groaning with jeweled plates and goblets, I skirted 
conversation with my former hell's-circle companions and dutifully 
complimented Narcissa Malfoy on her flaming fruit-studded suet pudding, 
all the while doing my best not to meet her husband's libidinously roving 
eye. Halfway across the room, my tiresome dueling-student Draco sat wedged 
in his chair at the children's table with his knees nearly to his chin, 
fighting with a five-year-old cousin over the last slice of the roast and 
glowering occasionally in my and his father's general direction. (What on 
earth did he have to sulk about? It was pure dumb luck that the 
five-year-old was so much more adroit with his fists anyway.) No sooner 
had we all wrestled our Christmas trifle into submission than our host and 
hostess were on their feet, tapping and then pounding at their goblets for 
our attention.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Lucius drawled above the general din, "it is time 
for the real party to begin!"

With that, he waved his wand in the general direction of the children's 
table, sending it and its inhabitants sailing through an open doorway and 
off to the general vicinity of the nursery (Draco, you little fool, if you 
haven't learned by now that trying to outmaneuver a Banishing Charm will 
only result in your braining yourself against the highest available 
ceiling, I don't know what on earth bloody Flitwick has been teaching 
you). The goblin string quartet then reached for an array of silk scarves, 
each musician tying one over his own eyes and then expertly resuming his 
blindfolded bow stylings. The reason for this curious stab at discretion 
became apparent just an instant later, when Narcissa Malfoy suddenly 
shrugged her robes off her shoulders and, save for a ruby-encrusted 
leather collar and glossy, high-heeled black patent leather boots, stood 
before us as naked as she presumably was the day she was born.

I have, at past moments in these pages, righteously railed against the 
scheming and shrewish disposition of this miserably Xanthippian cow, but 
to be quite honest glimpsing her for the first time in my life in this 
particular fashion did make those uncharitable assessments die away in an 
instant. (Judging from the expressions of both the men and women around 
me, I was not the only one among us so moved.) Her skin lambent as the 
flames in the dining room's immense fireplace, Mrs. Malfoy then pulled an 
emerald-tipped pin from her hair--blonde curls cascading wildly around her 
milky shoulders--and with a satisfied little smirk of vanity gamboled over 
to the opposite wall and took down an enormous, filigreed-handled 
cat-o'-nine-tails from its place of display. She worked the thing in 
midair with a startling CRACK of sound, making several of us jump and 
Augustus Rookwood prove, once again, why his old school nickname of 
Quick-Draw was wholly and sadly justified. 

At that very moment, what had appeared to be a solid wall began sliding to 
one side, revealing a small hidden room furnished only with a large, 
securely locked cage. Exactly what manner of creature was in this 
cage--from my vantage point, I could make out only a large, long shape 
covered in fur--was uncertain, but it had quite clearly been spelled into 
submission and was now lying completely still on the cage's floor. 
Smirking with delight, the naked Narcissa advanced toward the subdued 
creature's holding pen, cracking her whip with even greater flamboyance 
before beginning a series of rather profoundly obscene gyrations standing 
before the iron bars.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Lucius repeated, clearly enjoying the sound of his 
own voice more than anything else that had transpired, "please enjoy, for 
your delight and edification, the entertaining, stimulating holiday 
spectacle of Beauty and the--"

Now doubtless, what happened immediately after this will be the subject of 
arguments, recriminations and Ministry of Magic investigation for months 
or perhaps years to come, but I myself can only report what I saw at the 
moment I saw it. Lucius, the self-satisfied git, was so engrossed in his 
mythmaking spiel he never even noticed that the enormous steel padlock on 
the front of the cage was literally melting away as if under the force of 
some greater outside magic. The beast inside the cage, whose posture and 
attitude had suggested it was either asleep or half-dead, reared up on its 
hind legs and, with a hideous slavering flourish of its saliva-dripping 
teeth, hurled itself against the cage door and burst forth with a roar to 
awaken Brunnhilde on her pyre.

"A WEREWOLF!" howled several guests (it is enchanting, I must say, the 
faculty of certain unique idiots in moments of great crisis for voicing 
aloud the patently and crashingly obvious). Narcissa screamed and, with 
the clear head in crisis that befits a true Malfoy, dropped her whip 
entirely and rushed to cower behind her husband as they both joined the 
mad rush for the doors. (The goblins, for their part, kept doggedly sawing 
away at their instruments and never even bothered peeking beneath the 
blindfolds.) The werewolf--for that is indeed what it was--outstripped 
them all in speed and strength, and soon its jaws were dripping with some 
of the purest, most undiluted, least Mugglefied blood in England's green 
and pleasant land.

Perhaps the thing had imbued some of the Yuletide spirit--along with the 
vast quantities of Somnolence Potion that Lucius had apparently been 
feeding it--because when the smoke and the exposed entrails had been 
cleared it turned out the actual body count was amazingly low. Macnair, 
Rookwood, Mulciber and Lestrange were wholly eviscerated (hardly a 
surprise, considering that they all apparently set the trap and had been 
beating and half-starving it since its capture, that it should go for 
their throats first), and while the beast on its rampage might necessarily 
have been expected to tear into enough more victims to create an entire 
pack of its own kind, the raging inferno caused by the fleeing guests' 
knocking over an entire wall of torches did serve to distract it from its 
mission. 

The dining room filled with sheets of flame and a nauseating black cloud 
of ash as we all attempted our exit, and the only reason I myself did not 
end up either trampled or roasted is that the werewolf--apparently 
disoriented by the smoke it had inhaled--barreled straight toward me, sent 
me flying off my feet and landing with a tremendous thud upon its back, 
and carried me Europa-like straight across the room and out a 
floor-to-ceiling window into the very heart of a waiting bramble bush.

The briars would have been bad enough, and the werewolf who landed with me 
even worse, but as it happens I also landed upon another person, who let 
out a loud squeal of pain and struggled to escape our collective weight. 
Our hair and clothing--or pelt, as the case may be--now torn, singed and 
bristling with the bloody brambles, we half-rolled, half-wrestled out the 
other side of the bush and, panting with exhaustion, finally raised our 
heads to discern just who the sodding hell we all actually were. It was in 
this manner that I was made to realize that I was lying in the Malfoy 
gardens covered in scratches and burns, that I was hemmed in by a werewolf 
on one side and a wall of needle-sharp topiary on the other, and that the 
person against whom my own body was closely cradled was none other than 
the supposed Gryffindor prodigy known as Hermione Granger.

For a moment, as the fire began spreading to the manor's main armory and 
the goblins (now finally divested of their blindfolds) led the nursery of 
Death Eater progeny outside to safety, I simply stared down at the 
astonishing sight of the prating little know-all--her hair even wilder 
than usual and the skirts of her robes, owing to our fall, rucked up past 
her knees--as she stared defiantly into my eyes and clutched the wand she 
had had pointed at the dining room's windows. Clearly, I had literally 
stumbled over, and onto, kindly Mr. Werewolf's lock-melting friend.

"What in God's name are you doing here?!" I hissed, my voice rather 
throatier than usual due to the influx of smoke.

"Rescuing him," said a new voice that gave me a violent start. "What 
else?"

For a moment, neither I nor Sirius Black said a word as he gazed down at 
me, and I up at him, with typically searing, seething murderous hatred in 
our respective eyes. Our impasse was broken by the werewolf--three guesses 
who he was, welcome to the pure unadulterated nightmare that is my 
life--formerly rather dazed from his fall but now growling with renewed 
bloodlust at the sight of this fresh prey and tensing himself to spring. 
It all might have ended on a very satisfying note--for yours truly if none 
other--had not Sirius swiftly done his little black-dog party trick and, 
with what to my blessedly human ears sounded like a rather alarmingly 
amorous growl, enticed his lupine comrade off into the dark, overgrown 
woods surrounding the manor. 

Presently, realizing we were both still in a position which did no justice 
to our Houses' integrity, Miss Granger and I rolled off one another and 
struggled to our feet. We were still rather too close to the manor for 
safety in any sense; however, distracted as they were by the fire and 
Narcissa Malfoy's unique charms, none of the other guests seemed to take 
any notice of our presence.

"Malfoy was bragging about it," she informed me, before I could ask how 
any of this had come to pass. "About the werewolf he singlehandedly 
captured--pathetic git can't keep his mouth shut about anything."

I might have known. "So, you snuck away from school to rescue your 
precious beast of a professor," I sneered at her. "How wonderfully 
courageous of you, Miss Granger, venturing into the darkest heart of true 
wizarding territory for--"

At that moment, she very calmly put her wand away, put her hands on my 
shoulders and kissed me. No, once again I reiterate that this journal is 
completely private and entirely hidden from outside eyes--I have neither 
motivation nor purpose for making anything in it up! 

When she pulled away once again, I felt the need to remove my own wand 
from my robes and point it straight at her.

"Are you under some sort of spell?" I croaked. "Miss Granger, what on 
earth was that for?"

The Brillo-haired little know-all braggart, who normally would require 
medical intervention to prevent her considerable jaws from flapping 
twenty-four hours out of every sodding day, just looked me over for a 
moment and then smiled. (God help us, but the girl's teeth would make a 
beaver weep with envy.)

"You know what they always say, Professor," she replied. "Keep your 
friends close, but keep your enemies closer."

And with that, just as the Ministry's crack team of water sprites arrived 
to douse the fire, she turned, strode down the sweep of the Malfoy lawns 
without the least attempt to hide herself and vanished from my sight.

Needless to say, this entire incident has left me both exceedingly 
confused and profoundly pleased to be back in these relatively saner 
environs, but after giving the matter much thought I have decided not to 
report Miss Granger to the appropriate authorities. All other 
considerations aside, you will never convince me that anyone who can so 
cavalierly consort with escaped criminals, release untamed monsters into a 
roomful of potential victims, help commit arson against one of the largest 
and oldest mansions in England *and* lose not a moment's sleep over the 
literal guttings of four total strangers is not--whatever their *supposed* 
House--in magnificent actuality a Slytherin born and bred.

********

26 March

The next time Albus Dumbledore approaches me entirely out of the blue in 
the uneventful doldrums of mid-January, informs me he has a "very short, 
very inconsequential" errand he wishes me to perform for the benefit of 
certain persons planning certain countermeasures against a certain 
exceedingly powerful renegade Death Eater in a certain dark and dangerous 
section of a certain foreign country and then proceeds to place my Potions 
classes in the care and custody of that two-timing skirt-lifting slag 
Minerva McGonagall, I will tear his lying dissembling MOTHER-BUGGERING 
tongue out by the roots with red-hot pincers and force him to hand-feed it 
to one of Hagrid's accursed Skrewts.

And that is all I have to say about that.

And so it is that, as always, I find myself rewarded for my efforts by 
being relegated yet again back to this miserable, moldy, wand-waving 
backwater sink of miserable Muggle-born spot-covered swots. Now, is there 
any actual respite, one might logically ask, to be given one subjected to 
months of physical knackering, mental exhaustion and tooth-grinding 
heavens-cursing sexual frustration under the highly dubious guise of an 
"academic sabbatical"? Shall I, after all I have just endured, actually be 
expected to simply go about my business conveying elementary 
beaker-stirring to classfuls of pathetically cretinous swish-and-flickers, 
preparing my few students who do possess two brain cells to rub together 
for their infernal OWLs and NEWTs (the whippings are, it must be admitted, 
a sweet and soothing balm to an understandably embittered soul but Lord, 
does one's arm get tired easily), giving sugared smiles and mind-numbingly 
tedious dueling lessons to the pathetic Draco Rather-a-Wimp Malfoy, and 
dreaming up ever more devastatingly cutting and artful putdowns to toss at 
the tousled head of young Mr. Celebrity-Wank Potter? Shall I actually be 
expected to return to this pathetic excuse for a purposeful existence 
without so much as a "Thank you, Severus, and I'm glad that that 
Petrificus Curse you picked up in Romania didn't actually stick"? Well, 
heavens and Circe forfend that anyone ANYWHERE in this bunghole 
institution--much less its headmaster--actually think to show me anything 
in the way of GRATITUDE! Oh, no! Here comes good old Severus Snape, he's 
always up for a wank with the dark forces and you won't even have to buy 
him DINNER! Sods, all of you, BLOODY BUGGERING UNGRATEFUL PIG-STICKING 
DOG-SHAGGING GOAT-SUCKING ACCURSED SODS!

Flitwick was quite right, surprisingly enough, about the efficacy of those 
anger-management classes. I feel far better now. Deep breaths. Positive 
visualization. Replace quill-pen split straight down the middle.

I'm bored. Dear God of the fiery pisspot netherworld, but I am so bloody 
bored with bloody boring Hogwarts.

Last night, having relaxed my nerves by forcing my tiresome weasel-faced 
dueling student to run the Asafoetida Gauntlet and then treating my more 
nubile sixth-year charges to a spirited game of Witches and Inquisitors (I 
have it from rather reliable, if quite charmingly breathless and 
transported sources, that my Torquemada is second to none), I swept up the 
stairs to my chambers rather early and retired with a finger of Oggham's 
and a volume of Poe's Tales for my only company (I had sworn off any and 
all Muggle literature since the disastrous C.S. Lewis incident, but this 
fellow is quite the wry humorist and "The Tell-Tale Heart" gave me a 
much-needed chuckle). Both substances swiftly had their tonic effect and, 
within minutes, I was sound asleep.

I was wrenched from my slumbers by a terrific crashing noise, which made 
me sit bolt upright in bed and grab for my wand. At first I naturally 
assumed it was Blaise Zabini terrorizing a few errant first-years and, 
hearing no screams for mercy or strange gurgling sounds as a sequel, lay 
back to let the little buggers build character by fending for themselves. 
No sooner had I begun to doze once more, however, than there was a strange 
shuffling, banging sound--softer, but now unmistakably very much 
closer--and someone whispering, rather too quietly to awaken any actual 
sleeper, "Professor?"

I didn't stir or open my eyes, but did permit myself an inward groan of 
irritation; Expelliarmus on a cream cracker, but am I to have no rest from 
the incessant whinging and noisome demands of my little Durmstrang Potions 
apprentice? Clearly, the crashing noise was her broom hitting the Hogwarts 
roof (I have explained and explained that one flies on the left side of 
the sky in these environs, not the right, but if I am not murmuring 
Bulgarian obscenities into her diaphanous knickers the wretched girl never 
listens to a single word I say), and the subsequent sounds her inelegant 
entry via my fireplace. Considering the less-than-friendly terms on which 
we ended our last assignation, this sudden dead-of-night desire to kiss 
and make up struck me as more than slightly presumptuous.

"I do not have time for this, Erzebet," I informed her, admittedly rather 
coldly, still without bothering to open my eyes. "As you may or may not 
have noticed, I was asleep."

"Ve very much need to talk, Severus," she insisted, her footsteps now 
approaching my bed with what sounded like an ominously determined stride. 
"Giff me five minutes, five minutes only--"

"Which is five more minutes than you will ever deserve," I retorted, now 
reluctantly sitting up once again and blinking into the light of her 
upraised wand. "Do you imagine I didn't know about what you and that 
Lithuanian lizard-wrangler were up to the last time I visited you? Did you 
honestly think I would believe that Durmstrang requires all its junior 
professors to seminar in the nude so as to promote greater 
solidar...it...Erzebet?"

My much-justified fury seemed to be swiftly deserting me, largely because 
its target now seemed literally to be melting before my eyes. As I stared 
in astonishment, Erzebet shrank nearly half a foot in height, her somewhat 
frighteningly sharp cheekbones became far less defined, her long dark hair 
became a bushy Brillo-pad and her rosy little mouth suddenly sprouted an 
unmistakably and unfortunately huge pair of front teeth.

"You!" I hissed. 

And it was, indeed, the little swot Hermione Granger staring right back 
down at me, her hand at her throat to clutch the oversized robes more 
closely around her body. Her head held rather annoyingly high and her 
mouth pursed in the insufferably priggish fashion bespeaking a true Head 
of School (my God, sometimes I do miss Percy Weasley--that depraved, 
libidinous, marvelously masochistic little toady), the girl nodded in 
acknowledgment of this greeting and then offered a rather sarcastic little 
bow of the head.

"Polyjuice Potion," I noted flatly, all the while contemplating how many 
hundreds of points Gryffindor would be forfeiting for this little stunt 
(don't think I won't, little madam, and certainly don't think I won't be 
informing all and sundry of who really brought them to heel!). "For what 
possible purpose, Miss Granger, other than attempting to startle me 
straight out of a richly deserved rest?"

As I sat up straighter against the pillows--fleetingly wondering how much 
necessary authority I had already lost, conducting this meeting 
half-asleep and in a gray linen nightshirt--to my astonishment, the 
creature sat herself down on the edge of my bed without so much as a 
by-your-leave (I have caned students for far less, Miss Granger, and only 
a very slim majority of them completely enjoyed it). 

"Thank God that's finally done with," she announced as though I hadn't 
even spoken, setting her still-lit wand down on the bedside table and 
attempting--futilely, need I add--to smooth her hair with her free hand. 
"Bloody pain in the arse, making Polyjuice. Do you have any idea how 
nauseating the smell of brewed lacewing is to--"

"Considering that I am this school's Potions master, it is quite possible 
I might have some inkling thereof," I snapped, now very much awake and 
losing what little patience I had. "Would you like to try and explain this 
completely nonsensical stunt to me, Miss Granger, or shall I simply hand 
you over to Argus Filch and hope for your sake he's not feeling in too 
inventive a mood?"

"But, Professor, I had to do it!" she insisted, looking positively 
indignant that I should object to this little act of blatant breaking and 
entering. "How on earth did you expect me to get into Slytherin House as 
myself?" She rolled her eyes. "God knows it was hard enough even in 
disguise getting past Malfoy, that pathetic sex-starved little--"

Now wholly justifiably unable to control my temper, I grabbed the neck of 
her robes myself and yanked her towards me so hard she nearly lost her 
balance. "Miss Granger," I snarled, "for what I promise you is the final 
time, what are you doing in my chambers?"

She was silent, for a long moment. I was seething. On the count of three, 
little Miss Know-All, one...two...

"I missed you, Professor," she said softly.

I do have to admit that this sudden admission, and its accompaniment by 
her free hand brushing lightly against my temple, did leave me taken 
slightly back. Not that I so demonstrated this for a moment, of course.

"Very well, then," I replied dismissively. "Your admirable thirst for 
contact with your intellectual superiors has been assuaged, Miss Granger, 
and I'm certain you will have no objections whatsoever to my informing 
your Head of House and Albus Dumbledore of your shockingly flagrant 
violations of--"

In one sudden movement, and with no prelude whatsoever, she had wrenched 
herself and her robes free of my grasp, leaned in toward me where she sat 
and pressed her mouth against mine.

When one is surprised enough by sudden unexpected events--as even the most 
dimwitted of Muggle "scientists" can surely attest--one does tend to fall 
back upon the reassuring rituals of instinct, and it is for this reason 
and this reason alone that I discovered myself almost instantly kissing 
her back. Her kiss of that disastrous Christmas Eve, while startling, had 
been a close-lipped and almost chaste affair, but this second time she 
harbored no such fastidious scruples and I found that, yes, one's tongue 
can run most pleasurably along the edge of those monstrous teeth without 
being cut summarily to ribbons. This was in the way of a minor 
realization, to be sure, but the swift discovery that her kisses were of 
more varied, more skillful and, yes, far more rousing caliber than those 
of the woman as whom she had been disguised, was astonishing enough to 
constitute a major one.

Realizing that I had become somewhat distracted from my main objective of 
scaring the midnight interloper shitless, I pulled my mouth away from hers 
and, irritated to discover I needed to catch my breath, offered up my most 
ferocious scowl. "Was that meant to bribe me into sparing you Filch's 
punishments?" I sneered. "If so, it is hardly the quality of, it--oh--"

To my absolute amazement this prating little teacher's pet, whose anxiety 
at in any way angering a professor rivals that of the most cringing 
house-elf, ignored every word I said, slid onto my bed and, her slim 
girl's legs straddling mine, drew a line of kisses up the side of my neck, 
behind my ear and finally once again onto my mouth; and I did mean to push 
her away, and I did mean to ring instantly for Filch, but once her lips 
were fully open against mine the very thought of doing so had, of an 
instant, become patently absurd. We were lying cradled together in very 
much the aspect we had experienced in the bramble bushes behind the Malfoy 
manor, that same Christmas Eve, but instead of briars and dirt there was a 
firm mattress against my back and her not at all negligible breasts 
pressed against me and, though we were separated by layers of late-winter 
sheets and blankets, I could feel the lines of her body as though this 
impediment were not even there. She is, may I point out, hardly the first, 
third, seventeenth or ninetieth student to have the privilege of sharing 
my private chambers, and to say many of them far outshined her in beauty, 
depravity and eagerness to please is to damn with faint praise. That can 
all go hang, however, for not a single one of them ever knew exactly and 
with such shockingly instinctive skill how to do things with their hands 
that made me kick at the barrier of tangled bedclothes like a frantic 
colt.

"Well," she muttered, nipping hard at my earlobe as my palms cradled her 
buttocks--bare underneath the robes, of course she had absolutely nothing 
beneath them--and squeezed. "I see you've missed me, too."

"Miss Granger--" I breathed, still in spite of all outward appearances 
struggling for some remnants of dignity.

"That," she declared, lifting her head for a moment to look me over, "has 
to be the ugliest nightshirt I have ever seen. And I've seen Ron Weasley 
in his Chudley Cannons pajamas."

"Miss Granger, if you will--"

"Take it off."

My roving hands became, for a moment, far less paripatetic. "I beg your 
pardon?" I demanded.

I had raised myself from the pillows at this little pronoucement, and now 
found myself shoved back against them by a pair of very insistent hands. 
"Professor," she replied--her normally whiny little voice now low and soft 
and with an almost thrillingly commanding edge--"I said, take it off."

I do not even remember removing the wretched thing, not for a moment, but 
quite suddenly and unexpectedly it was off. Her skin pressed against mine 
from throat to feet, we wrestled against the bedclothes and one another 
for several furious seconds before she finally came to lie on her back, 
beneath me, her nakedness wonderfully lithe and graceful and almost silken 
to the touch and her fingertips trailing fire against my back. Her breath 
was ragged and uneven and entwined heatedly with mine, and the moment was 
upon us but I could not help prolonging such delicious torment just a few 
moments longer.

"What about Weasley?" I threw out, rubbing myself rather shamelessly 
against the soft inside of her thigh. However wet our kisses, my mouth had 
gone very dry.

She laughed, almost a hissing sound from between her teeth, as her head 
lolled against the pillows and her palms splayed against my shoulder 
blades. "Can't decide what he wants," she exhaled. "A new girl every week. 
Or boy. Or veela. Or elf. I mean, you may behave more shamelessly than a 
bitch in heat, but at least you don't look like a giant withered carrot 
with your clothes off."

I hissed right back against her mouth and slid my fingers against her, 
inside her, until they were drenched and sticky-sweet. She arched up until 
her throat was exposed, her hips locked mercilessly against mine.

"What about--about--" she gasped. "What about Harry?"

"Sod the little bastard," I growled. "James was a better fuck."

She laughed once again, a high helpless sound, and when I entered her it 
became a long and shameless moan. Finally there, so deeply inside her, so 
wonderfully and tightly and wetly trapped, I couldn't help but groan out 
loud and we moved together, in perfect tandem, her hips pushing against 
mine as I thrust harder, faster, her legs wrapped around me and her 
fingers in my hair and her voice an endless cry in my ears as we begged 
each other for more, yes, more, now, don't stop, I--yes--yes--

And it was at this precise moment that I awoke for real, the school's 
barn-owls hooting the early-morning alarm-call (however my mind had wished 
to narrate otherwise, I had in fact slept the entire night through), my 
sheets kicked nearly to the foot of the bed, drenched in sweat and other, 
more troublesome substances and wondering how on earth the entirely 
blameless combination of Oggham's, Poe and an understandably foul temper 
could ever have inspired such a deeply bizarre and patently absurd dream. 
For it was surely, surely either good whisky or bad literature that would 
prove the final culprit--not that anyone is in fact reading these utterly 
private pages, but were they to do so I challenge any of them to find a 
single passage, a single phrase, a single word, to suggest a man of my 
poise, dignity and notably refined tastes could ever harbor any manner of 
even fleeting desire for a creature like Hermione Granger!

And the little wench had the absolute gall, in this afternoon's Potions 
class, to throw an unmistakably arduous glance in Genius Girl's-Blouse 
Celebrity Pint-Size Piss-Potter's direction and behave as though I were a 
mere servant privileged to teach them the exacting science of stewing 
crushed slugs. As I may or may not have recorded at other times in these 
pages, I hate, I hate, I BLOODY HATE my bloody boring deadly DULL damnable 
life.

********

6 April

Let the resolution be immortalized in these pages first: I will murder 
Albus Dumbledore. I have the means, I have the motivation, I have an 
exceedingly canny potential accomplice and on the highly unlikely chance 
that I am actually caught, a jury comprised of a dozen Sirius Blacks would 
not convict me. Not after today.

This morning was comprised of an intensely unsatisfying series of events, 
starting with a quarrel with a usually delightfully submissive 
seventh-year who seemed to believe my time-honored affections for her--and 
believe me, the girl has the marks all over her pretty arse to prove 
it--had suddenly begun to drift in other, formerly unprecedented 
directions. (Really, considering all the wonderfully degrading inventions 
by which I have proven my affinity for this creature time and again, why 
on earth would she have such strong objections to my requesting she let me 
temporarily alter her headful of curly locks into a slightly frizzier, 
bushier style? It's not at all like that highly alarming incident back in 
my unmourned youth when Lucius tried to turn me into a Border Leicester 
and, frankly, I was hoping for a far more exciting excuse to break in my 
new silver-handled riding crop than a spasm of truly insufferable feminine 
vanity.)

And what, might one ask, could be better followup to this entirely 
unnecessary waste of an empty manacle-equipped common room than a class 
session with the witless walking jellyfish known as the Hufflepuffs? Why, 
absolutely nothing on this damned earth, that's what! I really do not know 
what more the bleeding-hearted Levellers in our wizarding midst would need 
to obviate every last one of their nauseating Muggles-are-people-too 
folk-guitar whingings than to be subjected to Justin Finch-Fletchley--he 
who was shortlisted for no less a stellar institution amongst those 
creatures than Eton--describing the proper composition of a 
Memory-Enhancing Tincture as follows: "Take just a spot of the old 
vervain, old chap--and don't nibble on the leaves unless you want a gippy 
tum--then toss in great lashings of woodrose, have Nanny stir it all up on 
the Aga until it's gone to this simply super sort of froth, pour it out 
into a beaker, drink it straight away before Cook serves the porridge and 
it's tally-ho, pip-pip and Bob's your uncle for the old noggin!" 

My dear boy, I do hate to have to be the one to so inform you, but I fear 
it was Bob's-your-uncle for that astoundingly thick skull of yours the 
moment your mother first met an amorously minded brother-cousin coming 
through the rye. And others in our midst are alleged to have unduly 
enormous teeth? The equine mouthful of choppers Master Finch-Fletchley 
flashes at anything shiny in his exophthalmic field of vision puts a 
bloody hippogriff to shame and makes me grind my own down to nubs, and 
only the knowledge (which I simply could not break his studious little 
heart by revealing) that drinking this undiluted mixture straight from the 
beaker would give him a "gippier tum" than Crabbe's after he ate that 
entire carton of caterpillars on a dare (I do realize that other, 
considerably less dignified souls than myself would throw themselves 
head-first into buckets of filth to try and impress the 
impossible-to-please fairer sex--but for the love of Paracelsus, Pansy 
Parkinson?) served to stop me from flinging an entire cauldron of crushed 
slugs straight at his hollow head. (Not, if it did meet its target and 
render him entirely insensible, that anyone would actually be able to tell 
the difference. Why, Circe, why did I turn down that tenured post at the 
League of Defiantly Elitist Cauldronmasters when I had the bloody chance?)

My nerves understandably jangled by this incredibly unfortunate series of 
events, I stalked off to the blissfully deserted staff room for what I 
hoped would be a few relaxing between-class moments--and of course, this 
was the only signal fate required to send in after me none other than 
Sybil Trelawney. Fortunately, she noted my wordlessly murderous dismissal 
of all attempted salutations and--in a rare flash of genuine 
perception--promptly draped a gauzy golden scarf over her face, closed her 
eyes and proceeded to mutter a sotto voce incantation to who knows what 
manner of back-of-the-beyond fate-spinners shooting through the holes in 
her head. For my part, I did my best simply to ignore her very existence 
whilst I folded my arms, stared up at the ceiling and entertained that 
little Quidditch-match fantasy that got me through some of the more 
explosively frustrating hours of my adolescence (rather regretfully 
leaving out the bit with James Potter in the shepherdess costume because, 
well, one does not wish to get too excited in polite company). Presently, 
just as I was beginning to shift somewhat restlessly in my chair and wish 
for a more genuine and uninterrupted solitude, the staff room door was 
hurled open with a Peevesian thunderclap and galumphing over the threshold 
came none other than the most unwelcome sight of a red-faced, panting and 
thoroughly breathless Hermione Granger.

"Sorry," she threw out, before I could begin a most richly deserved 
chastisement (purely of the verbal variety, let me add--whatever 
nightmarish images my non-waking hours may dangle before my eyes, I do 
pride myself while upright on having more than a slight semblance of 
taste). "I thought--Professor McGonagall--"

"Do you make it a custom, Miss Granger, simply to storm unannounced into 
rooms where you are most clearly an unwelcome presence?" I snarled, rising 
to my feet (Sybil, for her part, was too busy communing with her bloody 
Delphic oracles even to register the arrival of a third person). "This may 
come as a shock to you, girl, but you are not yet a full-fledged professor 
no matter how much of a miserable hem-kissing know-all you may--"

"Please," she interrupted most rudely, brushing a coarse furze of hair 
from her forehead as she fought to catch her breath, "I don't mean--to 
barge in--need to speak to Professor--"

"Miss Granger, I really must insist--"

"I need Professor McGonagall," she blurted out. "Actually, I need any 
professor I can find, who can help me--it's Harry. He's gone missing."

"Oh, really?" I demanded, not bothering to rise from my seat. "Gone 
missing how? Gone missing down to Hagrid's cottage or sneaking to the 
trophy room for a Weasley-snog or prancing around Hogsmeade like the 
Messiah returned to heal our most embarrassing crops of boils? I do not a 
give a damn where's he's gone, Miss Granger, so once again I must ask that 
you--"

It was at this moment that the girl marched toward my chair, had the 
temerity to seize my arm and muttered in a single swift rush of words, her 
lips mere inches from my ear: "We were in the restricted shelves at the 
library and he opened a copy of Most Incurable Curses and there was this 
enormous flash of blue light and he vanished right in front of my eyes."

I glanced once more toward Sybil: still insensible, her eyes rolled nearly 
to the back of her skull and muttering an incoherent raga-chant of which I 
could make out only the completely incomprehensible phrases, "Getcha 
getcha ya-ya dada, mocha chocolatta ya-ya." Swiftly I rose to my feet, 
wrenched myself from Miss Granger's grasp and, grabbing her own arm in 
turn, shoved her out the study-room door and into the adjoining hallway. 
No fool she--whatever else one may say about her utterly noxious 
personality--she at least had the self-preservational astuteness to look, 
and act, entirely intimidated by this unplanned turn of the screw.

Good.

"And what exactly were you doing in the Restricted shelves, to begin 
with?" I inquired, my voice as quiet as befits one far too well-placed to 
need to raise his voice. "Miss Granger?"

Unbelievably the little prig actually blushed, a simpering and 
self-serving female trick that has never moved my heart in the slightest. 

"I am waiting," I pointed out, letting my fingers tighten almost 
imperceptibly on her forearm. "It's fifty points off Gryffindor either 
way, Miss Granger, so you might as well tell me now."

"Or I might as well not tell you," she countered, now staring me straight 
in the eye. "Since you put it that way."

Bloody cheek. "One hundred points, Miss Granger--"

She sighed. "It was to do with Professor Lupin," she replied, having the 
utmost gall to sound impatient. "All right? And it wasn't me who picked up 
the copy of Most Incurable Curses, I told him not to touch it, he never 
listens to a word I say and I just need someone to help me figure out 
where Harry--"

"Professor Lupin?" Oh, this did in fact just get better and better! "Miss 
Granger, I am afraid your dear little werewolf chum will never be a 
professorial presence at this institution again while I have breath in my 
body, and we're all highly fortunate your little Christmas escapades on 
his behalf didn't get all of us--"

"Merlin's tits, Professor," she shouted, "but do ever you do anything but 
sit around masturbating to the sound of your own damned voice?"

Well, well and well. Not that I minded. The look of horror on her face, 
once she fully appreciated the implications of her little burst of temper, 
was singularly pleasant and entirely worth contemplating in complete 
silence. At length, I permitted myself the luxury of a smile.

"Two hundred points, Miss Granger. And do have a splendid time attempting 
all by your lonesome to retrieve Mr. Potter from whatever temporal 
whirlpool he's currently--"

"I'm sorry," she said hastily. "Honestly."

"I don't care," I replied. "Honestly."

"But--"

"But nothing--you figure it out for yourself, like the good little 
prunes-and-prisms Gradgrind that you are. After all, what could I possibly 
bring to the equation, being so entranced by my own voice to the detriment 
of all else?"

Hoist as she was by her own pathetic petard, she could only stand there in 
disbelief, breathing through her gargantuan teeth and progressing rapidly 
through several other, deeper shades of red. I'd pretend I wasn't richly 
enjoying every last minute of it, but after all, these private pages are 
for the recording of the most unvarnished and unalloyed of personal 
truths.

"I just told you Harry Potter vanished into thin air right in front of my 
eyes," she repeated, with a most hilarious expression of disbelief, "right 
after opening up a book of ancient curses, and all you care about is 
whether--"

"Miss Granger, your own utterly plebeian conduct aside, I have already 
wasted more years than Mrs. Norris has whiskers chasing after that little 
crisis-prone imbecile. If he is the sheer wondrous product of nature all 
seem to believe, he will hardly need my help or yours to--"

"But he's gone!" she wailed. "And nobody believes me, nobody, and I told 
him not to touch anything without asking me first because I've read all 
about these things but he never listens, ever, and I can't even do any 
research in peace and quiet with him and Ron always getting their heads 
stuck in some giant Cauldron of Doom and they'd both have flunked your 
class if it weren't for me and Millicent Bulstrode stole my powdered rhino 
horn again and I never get so much as a bloody thank-you out of--"

"Are you his little wife, Miss Granger?" I finally burst out, no longer 
giving a tinker's damn if Sybil were in fact home from her mental Pluto 
and drinking in every word. "I mean, honestly, is there any viable reason 
for all this running around after your precious thickheaded Piss-Pot 
Potter with a dustpan and broom twenty-four hours a day, or are you simply 
the sort of pathetic little prat who enjoys playing house-elf to a--"

"Oh, I'm a pathetic prat?" she retorted, now displaying the sheer 
unleashed ferocity--and hair--of an enraged hedgehog. "That's a fine one 
coming from you, after all the stories Sirius Black told Harry and me 
about--"

"Three hundred points," I snarled. "You go entirely too far--"

"I'll tell everyone," she suddenly announced, her eyes narrowing from 
hedgehog to ferret. "If you don't help me find him, I'll tell everyone 
about the time half the school caught you up in the Astronomy Tower 
chained to that enormous--"

"FOUR hundred points, Miss Granger!"

"--and the motorbike engine--"

"FIVE hundred!"

"Sirius's got photographs, you know--"

"SIX!" I roared, and without the least restraint or regard for propriety, 
took hold of the little would-be blackmailer's shoulders and shoved her 
with all my might against the hallway's tapestry-covered wall. We 
struggled for a heated, furious moment; then, realizing even beneath the 
clotted-cream layers of her own self-regard that she had no chance of 
besting a man twice her size, she subsided. We stood there for a long, 
silent moment, our breaths ragged with mutual frustration and fury, and 
stared fixedly into one another's eyes.

Now, if this were some sort of slapdash, fly-by-night entertainment 
written for the cheap gratification of a horde of nematode-brained 
semi-literate sentimentalist Muggle-borns, I suppose this would be the 
moment at which we would be expected to enfold one another in a passionate 
embrace and, thereby, see our entirely justifiable antagonism magically 
melt away like a meringue in a March rainstorm. Fortunately, however, we 
are in the cold, hard grip of actual real-world fact as reported with 
complete objectivity by me--and, I may most happily report, no such wildly 
improbable occurrence did, in fact, take place. Instead, we did the 
sensible thing and scowled.

"Six hundred points, Miss Granger," I said, gazing with a complete lack of 
interest at the rather fine, silky-looking down covering her cheekbone as 
if it were a peach. "Do you honestly believe you have the immense 
popularity to survive subjecting your own House to that sort of 
hammer-blow?"

"Harry's my friend," she declared stubbornly, fingers worrying the folds 
of my robes where she had instinctively grabbed for balance. "And his life 
may be at stake."

Sentimental little fool. "Harry's life is always at stake," I pointed out. 
"When Harry's life is not at stake, he performs the most thickheaded 
stunts imaginable to assure it and those of his supposed friends will 
thereby end up at stake. And at this point, Miss Granger, I am entirely 
convinced he gets a perverse and thoroughly disgusting sort of thrill out 
of being the object of so much unabashed--"

This, in fact, was the moment at which she chose to throw all good sense 
to the winds and interrupt me with a kiss; not as chaste as Christmas 
Eve's, nowhere near as lewd as certain infernal nightmares would suggest, 
but a profound systemic shock all the same. I shuddered for a moment, 
purely from surprise, then wrenched my mouth away from hers and set to 
work nipping this shameless bit of manipulation straight in the bud.

"If that was meant as a bribe," I said, sounding oddly breathless as I did 
so, "it barely adds up to a Sickle."

She reddened again, but didn't pull away. "Believe me," she retorted, "it 
wasn't. Anyway, I know better than to think you'd ever take it."

"What was it, then?" I demanded, feeling my impatience rising once more. 
Silence. "Well?"

The girl shrugged, as if this were all of entirely of no consequence, and 
then had the unabashed arrogance to smile.

"It was," she said quite calmly, "a perverse and thoroughly disgusting 
sort of thrill."

I stared at her for a long moment, then grabbed her and disgusted her 
several more times in succession. Her lips were as soft as I recalled from 
months past, her mouth as richly wet as I might ever have imagined and as 
her hands slid with a most deliciously tentative ardor up my back I was 
very much on the verge of dragging her back into the staff room and 
letting Sybil Trelawney get a little vicarious bird's-eye of that which I 
strongly suspect she has never personally experienced--whatever Nearly 
Headless Nick's incessant claims to the contrary--and my little 
steel-wool-haired swot breathed so very sweetly into my ear and gripped my 
shoulders with such wonderfully eager fingers, and this day might in fact 
have ended on a far more satisfactory note than it began had not Minerva 
McGonagall and Albus Pig-Sticking Dumbledore chosen that precise moment to 
BARGE THROUGH THE BLOODY WALL TAPESTRY and send us both crashing like 
ninepins to the floor.

"Severus!" the old man croaked, beaming like some deranged garden gnome at 
the pair of us--mercifully flung a few decorous-seeming feet apart by his 
own orangoutang clumsiness--as we untangled our robes from around our 
knees and struggled to our feet. "What on earth are you and Miss Granger 
doing just standing there in the middle of the hallway? Ravenclaw and 
Hufflepuff kick off their match in less than an hour--get out to the 
Quidditch field and look alive! Sing songs! Wave pennants! Aren't you both 
just terribly excited?"

I cannot speak for Miss Granger, assuredly, but I had my own reasons for 
not wishing to answer that question. "I have my next Potions class in less 
than an hour, Headmaster--"

"Yes," said Miss Granger, her color still rather high. "So do I. 
Transfiguration." She quickly gave a dutiful nod and smile to the 
still-silent Minerva, who had fixed me with her usual narrow-eyed, 
shrewish glare. "Actually, Professor McGonagall, I was just hoping to 
speak to--"

At this, our inexplicably esteemed headmaster favored us with a twinkling 
eye and a merry laugh; always, a most ominous sign. Minerva looked as 
instantly wary as I felt.

"Now, you see, that's just the problem with this school lately--everyone 
walking around in an absolute daze of hard work and low spirits!" 
Dumbledore paced back and forth along the hallway's brief length, his 
stride that of a man decades younger and his eyes brimming with a genial, 
completely irrepressible senility. "Feels like the end of the Triwizard 
Tournament all over again--" He stopped in his tracks in alarm. "Morgana 
save us. Nobody's died again, have they?"

We all shook our heads, thereby inspiring another round of twinkle, 
twinkle, let me slap that smile right off your creaking jaw. "Thank God 
for that," he said. "I've got to do something, though, to get everyone's 
mood up off the ground, shake this old place up a little bit...wait, I've 
got it! Yes! How about..." He turned back toward us, his eyes now alight 
with a new and rather frightening intensity. "A musical!"

Our usual seething hostilities abruptly suspended, Minerva and I exchanged 
glances of sincere horror and hastened to assure our fearless leader that 
this was not the slightest bit necessary, we were all in point of fact 
feeling wonderfully elevated--needless to say, our frantic reassurances 
fell on deaf ears. "Yes!" he cried. "A big bally bully all-House musical 
extravaganza, with all sorts of costumes and plot twists and close-harmony 
singing and pantomime horses and--and an obstacle course!" Here, I am sad 
to record, he actually grabbed the front of my robes in his deranged 
excitement. "Can't you just see it, Severus? The entire stage will be an 
obstacle course, with all kinds of hoops and stairways and iron spikes and 
dragons lurking in fungus-ridden corridors and my GOD, it'll be the most 
fun we've all had in ages--and Severus, YOU can organize it all!"

Though I never dreamed such a thing would actually be possible, I now 
found myself at a complete loss for words.

"I beg your pardon, headmaster?" I finally managed.

By this point, he was twinkling harder than a Christmas tree smothered 
beneath fistfuls of fairy lights. "Why, you can be in charge of it all, 
Severus. You can write it for us, first off--you're clever with that sort 
of thing, aren't you?"

"I'm tone-deaf, myself," Minerva said sweetly, making me twitch with the 
frenzied need to throw her out the nearest available window. "I couldn't 
possibly make the lyrics scan properly."

"Jolly good, then," our revered Stumble-Snore declared. "Severus can write 
the musical, direct the chorus--we'll have a big dance number, give the 
Hufflepuffs something to do--design the sets, the costumes--" 

Miss Granger must have not nearly the mental acuity with which she has 
been credited, for it now seemed to dawn on her for the first time that 
this was not, in fact, merely an utterly macabre and tasteless joke. "But, 
headmaster--"

"Oh, you'll have a wonderful time, Severus, working with all those dozens 
and dozens of children from all the other Houses to give us all a bit of 
lighthearted fun and laughter--how many times have I told you you need to 
get out of that dank smelly dungeon of yours and really start to live? 
Well, this is your big chance, man, take it and run!"

I opened my mouth, and absolutely nothing came out of it. And just as I 
was prepared to turn tail and run like a white-arsed Longbottom back to 
Slytherin House, find the Bloody Baron and beg him to do anything 
necessary to put me out of my misery...

"THE DARK LORD HAS RISEN FROM THE SARCOPHAGUS OF SLYTHERIN!"

Simultaneously, all four of us turned toward the staff room, where the 
forgotten Sybil Trelawney was now writhing in her armchair and bellowing 
at a register three octaves below her natural speaking voice. 

"HE ARISES TO THE TUNE OF THE LUTE AND PENNY WHISTLE!" she thundered. 
"MUSIC SHALL SUMMON FORTH HIS EVIL, HARMONY AND MELODY SHALL BE AS HIS 
BLOOD AND BONE! FOR EVERY NOTE OF THE FLUGELHORN, ANOTHER STUDENT SHALL 
FALL...THEY WHO DANCE SHALL SOFT-SHOE TO A MAGGOT-RIDDEN GRAVE...FOR EVERY 
DROP OF RAIN THAT FALLS, A FLOWER DIES! THE CHILDREN SHALL SING, AND THE 
CHILDREN SHALL BLEEEEEEEEEEEEED!"

And with that, she rolled off her perch entirely and fell, seemingly 
lifeless, to the staff room floor.

None of us spoke for a moment; then Dumbledore, his eyes gone very wide, 
shook his head decisively. "Bloody hell," he declared. "Forget that 
idea--Minerva, you help me organize a nice little scavenger hunt." 

Not sparing a second to tend to our homegrown harbinger of doom, 
Dumbledore parted the wall tapestries and marched back from whence he 
came. Minerva, clearly quite disappointed to see the man who used to make 
her scream so loudly the hippogriffs would piss themelves snatched back 
from the saliva-dripping jaws of absolute doom (I still want that damned 
ring back, you trollop, two bloody carats on a teacher's piss-stinking 
salary and I know you pawned it for dragon scrap), sniffed loudly through 
the little reed-pipe that passes for her nose and followed in his wake. 

Alone, once more, Miss Granger and I glanced into the staff room and, 
seeing Sybil's flattened bosom rising and falling where she lay, turned 
back toward one another once more.

"Do you still have this Incurable Curses book?" I demanded.

"Hidden in my trunk," she said. "I was afraid to open it again."

"Bring it with you to the south dungeons, eight o'clock. And please have 
the good sense not to broadcast your whereabouts to anyone before that or 
to go gallivanting off on your own. Do you understand?"

She nodded, then just stood there shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. 
What was she expecting, anyway, a farewell snog? I had already disgraced 
myself more than enough for one day!

"Well..." She shrugged. "Goodbye, then. Professor."

And with that, she scuttled back down the hallway without so much as a 
backwards glance. With perhaps the most horrifying crisis I have yet in my 
life experienced finally, thankfully averted (and that, as previous 
volumes of this journal will attest, is definitely saying something), I 
prepared to do the same when I suddenly heard something from the staff 
room that made me jump.

"A hell of a party trick," came Sybil Trelawney's normal, workaday voice. 
"Innit?"

I turned, sharply, and saw Sybil standing there in front of her capsized 
armchair, as windblown and disheveled as ever but apparently none the 
worse for wear. To my absolute astonishment, the woman then winked.

"You owe me for that one," she practically purred. "We'll have a nice, 
long discussion of the terms of payment...as soon as the muses command the 
time."

I hastened down the hallway as if pursued by an entire battalion of 
Dementors. My house-elf Minsky, the one and the only creature in my life 
who has never yet failed my trust, is forevermore charged with keeping my 
frowsy-haired gauze-brained benefactor as far away my dungeons and this 
mercifully private chamber as possible, especially as I have somehow found 
myself agreeing to ruin my evening pulling Harry Rather-a-Wanker's 
chestnuts out of yet another self-made fire--

Oh, bloody miserable hell--Malfoy-prat's dueling lesson at midnight 
tonight, on top of every damned thing else. When am I ever going to have a 
single solitary moment of peace and quiet in this hellhole that has the 
gall to call itself a school? Why am I, of all blameless and--by the 
standards of many civilized cultures, I will forever insist--highly 
virtuous souls, the Fates' most favored, mercilessly persecuted, sensitive 
and gentle and inviolately pureblooded whipping boy?

Lucius, you Skrewt-fucker, you swore you stole those negatives back from 
Dog-Boy after they dragged him off to Azkaban. Note to self: Get them 
back. ANY MEANS NECESSARY. 

********

7 April

I may be in a great deal of trouble through absolutely no fault of my own, 
and have been thoroughly humiliated in the process. But then, what else is 
new?

Last night, to my utter amazement, Hermione Granger actually had the 
presence of mind to follow my instructions and meet me at precisely eight 
o'clock in the southernmost Hogwarts dungeons, clutching the blameworthy 
copy of Most Incurable Curses as though it might at any moment leap out of 
her arms and devour her like a Norwegian Blue (yes, they are all so very 
brave in the mighty stick-up-the-arse fortress of Gryffindor House, it 
makes all us old serpents feel humble by comparison!). I must say, my 
justifiably foul mood was somewhat assuaged by the sight of her jaw 
dropping in abject astonishment at the gleaming whitewashed stone floors, 
the glass forest of bubbling beakers and pipettes, the long row of silver 
cauldrons in all stages of boil and simmer and the magnificently 
libidinous stonework frieze of Circe discovering an unprecedented new use 
for pickled pigs' feet. Turning several variegated shades of pink as she 
took in the exquisite background detail--it is inspiring, really, the 
affinity of the young and unschooled for the fine arts--and exhibiting the 
sort of proper deference the little swot clearly thinks beneath her in an 
actual classroom, she ventured across the flagstones and followed my 
silent instructions to place the book in the precise center of the floor.

"We'll begin with the preliminaries," I announced briskly, Leviosing a 
piece of chalk from my pocket and making it draw a rather admirably 
perfect circle around the book where it lay. "Doubtless, Miss Granger, you 
never even considered the possibility that a Restricted-shelf volume is 
always best approached by the use of a--"

"I've done the Encircling Charm," she interrupted me, sounding rather 
distinctly impatient. "I've read all about it in The Only Four Thousand 
Six Hundred and Eighty-Nine Spells You'll Ever Need and I practiced last 
summer on Crookshanks until he bit me and I tried doing one in the 
library, but Harry opened the book too fast and I never got the chance. 
Could we just get on with it?"

Sodding little know-all bint. Resisting the exceedingly strong urge to 
stand back and permit her unwittingly to charm herself straight into a 
considerably less wizard-friendly dimension than our own (my own 
accidental sojourn in the emerald mines of Horkon-7 four years ago 
certainly gave me more than a slight measure of gratitude for even the 
miserable shred of soi-disant status I possess here--though I've yet, 
more's the pity, to meet up since with such a shockingly accomplished 
whip-hand as was the High Priestess Herodias), I gave Miss Granger the 
most poisonous glare I could muster, pointed my wand at the circle and, 
when the chalk scorings had transformed themselves into a flickering 
purplish flame, muttered the requisite Latin at double-speed and waited.

"Nothing," I noted, not without some surprise, as the flames failed to 
take on the color or smell of a trapped curse leeching into their depths. 
"You didn't try fiddling with this beforehand, Miss Granger--"

"I haven't touched it," she declared indignantly, watching me douse the 
flames with another wave of the wand, and put a puzzled hand to her 
frizz-crowned forehead. "You must be approaching this the wrong way, 
Professor, no offense, maybe if we did a Finite Incantatem along with an 
Encircling Charm, and we double back with--no, wait, that's for a Portkey 
and touching the book hasn't taken either of us anywhere. Right, I've got 
it--an Accio Unguentum, and then the Word-Weaving Charm of Almighty Odin, 
if I only had my bloody rhino horn powder I'm sure I could do it--"

Just my luck, to catch the wretched girl in the manic cycle of her 
incessant mood swings. "Or," I noted, "we could simply muster up all our 
remaining courage and see what happens when we open the book. I presume 
you will approve of that beautifully simple and straightfoward tactic, 
Miss Granger, or has the Four Thousand Spells entirely robbed you of your 
last vestiges of common sense?"

With a rather sullen and insolent glare of her own (that's six hundred and 
five points, little madam professor, don't think for a second I've 
forgotten), she made so bold as to pick up Most Incurable Curses and, not 
without clear trepidation, hand it to me. I tapped the cover with my wand, 
flipped it open without the slightest hesitation...

And once more, other than a rather amusing little squeak of fear from the 
valiant Miss Granger, absolutely nothing happened. 

Now growing increasingly puzzled, I tapped random pages with the wand; 
still nothing. I searched in vain for margin notes or significant 
underlinings; not a one. Finally, discovering a series of pages bookmarked 
by folded corners, I began reading. After a mere three or four 
paragraphs--which appeared to have been written in some wholly alien, 
vaguely hysterical semblance of the English language--I flipped to the 
flyleaf, pulled the book free of its dragonhide jacket and confirmed that 
this was, in fact, not Most Incurable Curses or anything remotely 
resembling it.

"The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty?" I demanded of Miss Granger, who had 
been standing at my shoulder holding her breath all the while. "Does this 
sound at all familiar to you?"

I gazed fixedly into her eyes, prepared to deliver the inestimable wrath 
of Salazar upon her unkempt head at the merest hint that this had all been 
a practical joke. She, however, looked just as taken aback as I. 

"It's...Muggle," she said faintly, now daring to peruse the pages herself 
and, strangely enough, once more turning slightly pink in the process. "I 
don't think you'd know it...but here, I'll just take it back with me. To 
be safe."

I was now becoming sincerely confused; what sort of Gryffindor, or 
Slytherin for that matter, is that put off by the sight of a mere 
collection of Muggle children's fairy tales? "Nonsense," I replied, 
wrenching the book away from her, throwing it headlong into the largest 
cauldron and observing with great satisfaction both her expression of 
instant dismay and the resultant billows of cobalt-colored steam. "We 
clearly have on our hands, Miss Granger, some manner of crude and 
primitive Vanishing Curse lurking somewhere in the pages of this innocuous 
book, and if you were half the prodigy you seem to believe you are, you 
would already have attempted the very simple potions that will quickly 
unlock all its secrets..."

As I crouched over the cauldron I very distinctly heard the epithet "prat" 
issuing sotto voce from her lips, but with the dignified stoicism for 
which I am rightly renowned I let the moment pass. After all, the mystery 
afoot would be solved in a very few minutes, and there would be ample time 
to deliver an appropriately sadistic chastisement for her sins.

That is what I thought, I should say, before nineteen potions and three 
and a half hours slipped through my increasingly blistered fingers without 
a single solitary glimmer of progress.

"Er...maybe we're not quite on the right path, Professor," Miss Granger 
finally dared venture, the sweat pouring from her brow as she stirred the 
pulp that had been the Muggle book in a tincture of diluted asphodel. "We 
might be better off going back to the library and--"

"You are wrecking my concentration, Miss Granger," I muttered between 
gritted teeth, now up to my elbows in toad-liver mousse. "One more 
outburst and this entire experiment may--" 

"May prove a total failure and a complete waste of time?" she demanded, 
throwing down her stirring-pole with a rather unnecessary degree of 
vehemence. "We haven't found Harry and we haven't figured out where he 
went and we haven't done anything but use up my last supplies of bee 
venom, so why don't we just quit while we can pretend we're ahead?"

"I will not request your acquiescence again, Miss Granger--not with your 
Potions grade for this term dropping with every syllable you utter. Stir."

With a melodramatically weary sigh, she picked up her pole and resumed the 
task at hand while I--having with great and completely unremarked chivalry 
assumed for myself the noxious chore of steeping the 
mammoth-milk--attempted to recall the Temporal Portal Passkey spell I once 
spent a memorable, if tiring, three hours pile-driving out of Ilsa 
Karkaroff (I must say, if my dear Durmstrang headmaster's piano-legged 
frau did not have the acute misfortune to possess the breath of a 
prizewinning mouser and the guffaw of a rabid nanny-goat, that particular 
stolen afternoon might have proven far more pleasant). It is quite 
possible I would have remembered it, all four hundred lines of it with the 
accompanying and vitally necessary Old High German footnotes and 
close-harmony chorus, had Miss Granger not chosen that exact sodding 
moment to venture timidly from her side of the cauldron, "It's just that 
Professor Dumbledore knows all about these sorts of things, if we asked 
him for some direction he might--"

"I KNOW what I'm DOING!" I shouted, loudly enough to make Circe's massive 
dugs visibly vibrate.

"Oh, really?" She hurled the pole down yet again. "Then you bloody well do 
it yourself, Professor, because I've had just about enough. We've wasted 
hours we could have spent actually looking for Harry, my arms are killing 
me, it's nearly midnight and--"

No, the fun and the joy simply never stops in my happy little universe! 
"Midnight," I muttered, grabbing for my wand. "Very well. I am off to the 
inestimable Mr. Malfoy's dueling lesson--don't give me that look, Miss 
Granger, an evening in your own company produces no bliss either--and you 
are free to wander around Hogwart calling after your beloved until your 
throat is raw and the soles of your feet are bleeding. MINSKY!"

With his usual unnerving swiftness, my house-elf emerged from the back 
room where I had set him the twice-yearly task of pickling a barrel or 
seven of sheep's bladders (amazing, how many of those one can tear through 
in the course of a week when inspiration really strikes) and scuttled 
annoyingly close to my hems. He was entirely his usual, pleasantly fawning 
and cringing self, may I say--until I ordered him, foreseeing any manner 
of contrite confessions to higher authorities should Filch happen to catch 
the wretched girl alone and out of bounds, to escort Miss Granger around 
the castle on her search. His Bludger-ball eyes widened alarmingly in 
their sockets, and to my eternal astonishment he shook his head.

"Minsky is very sorry," he rasped, "but he cannot escort Miss Granger 
anywhere--"

"Why on earth not, you little popinjay?" I snarled, with a bone-crushing 
grab at the scruff of his neck. Of course, Miss Granger--demonstrating the 
demented and wholly unwarranted Lady Bountiful instincts for which the 
entire kitchen-staff, so Minsky informs me, have rightly dubbed her "Great 
and Generous Nosy Stupid Bucktoothed Save-the-Whales Smelly Go-Away Git" 
(well, the actual Elvish is considerably more obscene, but it scans rather 
badly in literal translation)--sprang from her papermaking with an 
expression of boundless fury.

"Don't hurt him!" she shouted, making a more than slightly hilarious 
attempt to appeal to my nonexistent better nature. "You don't have any 
rightful authority over him, it's all race-prejudice, he doesn't have to 
do anything he doesn't want to--"

"He is a child of the universe no less than the trees, and if you say one 
more word to undermine my rightful authority I will hurl you both into a 
vat of slugs. Minsky? Please ignore the lunatic rantings of this 
misinformed little girl and do as I say."

"Minsky is not hurt, Great and Generous--Miss Granger. And Minsky is still 
very sorry, but he cannot obey because Master said Minsky must never do 
anything ever no matter what to help a filthy piss-stinking Gryffindor."

"Master is momentarily suspending that particular rule," I said, 
increasing infinitesimally the pressure upon his windpipe. "And he has no 
time to argue about it, Minsky, so go forth and sin."

"Master said very specifically to Minsky on several unsolicited occasions 
that Gryffindors are poncy mincing self-worshipping Dumbledore-wanking 
Flobberworm-blowing girl's-blouse shits only good for cannon fodder and 
random lab experiments," he gasped insistently, his disgustingly rubbery 
little feet now dangling off the ground. "They're nasty filthy beasts and 
we hates them forever, that's what Master said!"

"Minsky?" I managed, ignoring Miss Granger's little sniff of indignation. 
"Do as I say."

"Master said not to," Minsky insisted. 

"Minsky will do as he is told," I said slowly, feeling a very large and 
very painful vein start to pulse in my forehead, "or Master will see to it 
that Minsky loses the means ever again to do anything on Master's behalf."

"Minsky is doing what Master told him!"

"Bobotuber pus, Minsky. A whole bath of it. Dissecting scalpel, very sharp 
dissecting scalpel--"

"Minsky has no fear of death. Not after the emerald mines of Horkon-7--"

"CLOTHES, MINSKY!" I roared at the top of my lungs.

That did it. As he abruptly ceased his protestations I tossed him to the 
floor, gave him a sound kick and watched with immense satisfaction as he 
rolled like a little tea-towel-wrapped ball to rest at Miss Granger's 
unfortunately wide feet; as he struggled to stand up again, notably 
without her proffered assistance, he gave me a most amusing attempt at a 
defiant glare.

"Master would still be a wall-hanging in High Priestess Herodias's study," 
he muttered, "if not for Minsky's superior kickboxing skills." 

And with that, he marched out of the dungeons without bothering to await 
his human companion. Miss Granger, gazing after him with genuine and 
welcome distaste (there may in fact be some potential in the little 
Mudblood yet), grabbed a torch from the nearest wall and gave me a rather 
formal nod.

"I'm going to start with the library," she announced, "and then the rest 
of the East Tower. I'll send him to find you when you're done with 
your...er..." She glanced up once more at the frieze of Circe. 
"...lesson."

The limit, the absolute limit! "I assure you, Miss Granger," I said in the 
frostiest voice I could manage, "I have no more interest in the contents 
of Mr. Malfoy's robes than I do of--" 

"Mine?"

She gave me a smile that deserved to be slapped right off her face. 

"Precisely," I replied, and with a stonefaced dignity only slightly marred 
by my dramatic slide through a puddle of spilled sheep's-fat swept out the 
opposite dungeon door without looking back.

The trophy room was pitch dark and apparently deserted. Deciding--with not 
a little irritation--that my erstwhile student had brooked not even a 
minute's tardiness on my part and gone pissing off to bed, I turned 
without even bothering to illuminate my wand and was about to follow his 
lead when I suddenly heard a voice calling out from behind me, 
"Professor?"

At first I naturally assumed this had been some pathetic attempt at 
dueling subterfuge on the part of the witless Mr. Malfoy, but just as I 
had decided I would not in fact be waiting until May to subject him to the 
character-strengthening agonies of the Unicorn-Hair Acid Bath, every torch 
in the trophy room suddenly roared to life. There, in the center of the 
room--and here I actually shook my head to assure I was not hallucinating 
from tiredness--stood a long white-clothed table groaning with enough gold 
plates, crystal and candleabra to outfit a dinner-party of twelve. A 
bottle of what appeared to be champagne sat in an ice-filled golden 
bucket, a filigreed cornucopia spilled apples and grapes hither and yon 
over the tablecloth, and the forest of roses arraying the room's every 
nook and cranny fired up my allergies so badly that I sneezed a half-dozen 
times in vigorous succession.

"Mr. Malfoy?" I managed, wiping my streaming eyes.

My host for the evening, who had been leaning in what I can only suppose 
he believed an artful manner upon the edge of the dangerously overloaded 
dinner-table, straightened with a characteristic smirk and took a few 
steps toward me. He might have taken more, had not his gait been visibly 
hampered by the nearly three-foot train of what appeared to be a 
mink-trimmed black velvet robe set off by a collar engulfing his entire 
neck and threatening to swallow up his head. I, for my part, found it 
necessary to sneeze still more.

"Mr. Malfoy--" The stream from my eyes had become a mighty cataract. "If 
you could--possibly get rid of--these infernal blossoms--"

"Don't be shy, Professor," he actually purred at me, in tones all too 
uncomfortably reminiscent of his father after one too many Schmendrick's 
Enchanted Apple Wines. "I just thought you might like a little...respite, 
after all that work you've been doing getting me ready to kick Potter's 
sorry arse nine ways to Friday..."

As Mr. Malfoy did not, in fact, seem to have perceived the depths of my 
torment I took the liberty of vanquishing the offending flowers myself. He 
seemed not to even notice, absorbed as he was in attempting to undulate in 
my direction without tripping headlong over his own extraordinary attire.

"You must be hungry," he insisted, extending a sweeping arm toward the 
dining-table and, in the process, plunging his sleeve into what appeared 
to be a tarpit of Russian caviar.

"I am rapidly losing any conceivable shred of an appetite," I informed 
him, growing increasingly irritable at being subjected to what was clearly 
a highly elaborate practical joke. "Never mind the fact that the days of 
my considering a midnight kitchen-raid feast the height of subversive 
pleasure have long since thankfully passed--Mr. Malfoy, do forgive my 
curiosity but who or what could possibly have put you up to this?"

My ferret-faced host stopped in his tracks, did what I suppose was meant 
to be a graceful pivot on one mink-swathed heel and clutched at the edge 
of the table for support. "Nobody's put me up to anything," he insisted. 
"Well...that's not entirely true. You drove me to it, Professor--you 
compelled me to it. You've known it all along, all these years. Haven't 
you?"

Am I in hell, and thereby destined to be surrounded by throngs of Satan's 
stupidest little mouth-breathing minions for the better part of eternity? 
"Mr. Malfoy," I repeated, as slowly and loudly as he seemed then to 
require, "I would really like to know who put you up to this entirely 
futile attempt at humor--given the obvious expense involved, I strongly 
suspect your idiot father--and I would then like to complete your dueling 
lesson so that I may be permitted to quit all human company and go to bed. 
Now, please take off that ridiculous robe."

In retrospect, this particular admonition--sensible as it might have been 
under any other circumstance--proved something of a mistake. I say this 
because Mr. Malfoy did, in fact, proceed with admirable obedience to shrug 
off his velvet and furs, thereby revealing a contraption of minute black 
dragonhide lattice-squares and silver-filigreed alligator clips that would 
have been a rather prosaic, everyday undergarment for my Durmstrang 
Potions apprentice, would have driven me insane with lust upon Narcissa 
Malfoy's person and which, outfitting her adored only son, drove me to the 
deepest depths of indelible nightmare.

"Mr. Malfoy," I croaked, "put on that ridiculous robe."

"Father told me all about you," he drawled, actually advancing upon me 
with wand upraised in all his fish-belly-white glory. "That little pash 
you had for James Potter, of all the piss-stinking Gryffindor 
shites--well, he took care of that straight away, didn't he? And he's 
shown me those negatives of you and Madam Rosmerta, so don't think you're 
getting away with just a snog."

"Mr. Malfoy, you are clearly either very drunk, or finally demonstrating 
the tragic consequences of three centuries' frighteningly enthusiastic 
inbreeding. I am now going to do you the great favor of going to bed and 
pretending this all never--"

"Petrificus Totalus!"

I leapt backwards just in time. The spell ricocheted wildly off a 
ruby-studded candlestick, came rolling towards me like a fiery tumbleweed 
and seized hold of my right leg and arm hard enough to send me crashing 
straight to the floor. Wand-hand thus paralzyed, I was soon fully disarmed 
by Lucius's psychotic (and, as the dragonhide tended to reveal, rather 
unfortunately flabby) demon-spawn, who straddled me with heavily breathing 
eagerness and pressed a knee against my left hand when I quite justifiably 
attempted to wrap its fingers around his neck.

"You've taught me so well," he murmured, snapping at my ear like a 
starving Siamese kitten. "Now, I'm going to return the favor."

"Mr. Malfoy," I said, my left leg kicking futilely at the air, "there are 
not words in the English language to describe just how much trouble you 
are in--WILL YOU STOP BLOODY KISSING ME THIS INSTANT!"

"I've wanted to do this since you got Lupin sacked," he breathed, ripping 
open the front of my robes as I tried, unsuccessfully, to heave him away 
by rolling on my side. "And I heard that Mudblood slag Granger telling 
Weasley she was meeting you tonight in the south dungeons, so I knew it 
was now or never. I'm not having that as competition, the little 
beaver-toothed bitch--"

Miss Granger, I DISTINCTLY TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY A WORD TO ANYONE--am I some 
pitiable species of mute, and only imagining anyone alive hears a single 
sodding word I say to them? "Mr. Malfoy--"

"You've got to stop this nasty habit of getting squiffy about 
non-Slytherins, Professor," he so courteously advised me as, to my horror, 
he began reaching eagerly for my hems. "Your own House mightn't like it, 
at all--"

"Mr. Malfoy, you now have one and only one chance to be forgiven your 
utter derangement. Remove yourself from me now, or by the almighty power 
of Urbain Grandier I promise you I will--"

Apparently, I am in fact a wordless man in an oblivious world, for rather 
than do my entirely reasonable bidding Mr. Malfoy rearranged my clothing 
to his highly discomfiting liking, slid beneath it like a dog in search of 
table scraps and began performing an activity whose only uncoerced 
pleasure was to be had in the fact that it prevented him from speaking at 
all.

Needless to say--and I consider it highly important, given the subsequent 
events, to record the actual facts of my participation thereof in these 
pages--I proceeded to do absolutely everything in my power to force Mr. 
Malfoy to cease and desist. The fact that what few efforts I was, in my 
hemiplegic state, able to make seemed to excite him even more--and the 
fact that the human body is cursed by the instinctive occurrence of 
certain, wretchedly embarrassing physiological responses entirely divorced 
from its true psychological desires--in no way detract from my heroism in 
this matter, and I would like this fact noted for all persons who may 
stumble upon these well-chosen words long after my death. I would 
especially like it to be noted that when Mr. Malfoy quite abruptly ceased 
his efforts in this particular direction and proceeded to roll me upon my 
face, any and all ambivalent physiological responses immediately vanished 
in the wake of a new, rather horrifying reality.

"Mr. Malfoy, you filthy little--" I began, but got no further than that 
before I found my voice muffled by the weight of his abandoned robe thrown 
over me like a shroud.

To my righteous indignation, not to mention my complete disgust, the 
self-satisfied little wanker actually giggled. "Bit of advice, Professor?" 
he offered, in between his nauseating slurpings at various bits of 
involuntarily exposed skin. "Just lie back, not that you really have much 
choice, and think of--"

It was at this precise moment that the remainder of my erstwhile dueling 
student's eloquent molestational accompaniment was drowned out by the 
sound of a tremendous overhead crash.

A sudden, icy wind, far too frigid to be the springtime's night air, came 
rushing through the trophy room with enough force to blow out every torch 
and candlestick and send the velvet robe sailing halfway toward the 
windows. Nearly blinded by the sudden influx from seemingly nowhere of an 
overwhelmingly bright blue light, I shielded my eyes with my working arm 
as best I could manage and, therefore, did not actually see the moment at 
which none other than Harry sodding Potter came plunging through the hole 
he had unwittingly made in the ceiling, plummeted nearly four hundred feet 
and landed upon both myself and Mr. Malfoy with a back-breaking force. 

I turned my head toward our new, blessedly advantageous arrival, again as 
best I could. His hair, a tangled mess under the best of circumstances, 
was now standing nearly straight on end, his skin was clammy with sweat 
and his pupils had dilated to the size of grapefruits. Clearly not 
possessing the foggiest notion of who I actually was, he gazed rather 
soulfully into my eyes, coughed up several clouds of bright blue steam and 
let his head loll upon his neck like a flower on a broken stalk. 

"The llamas are so beautiful," he croaked, and passed out cold atop my 
still half-petrified body.

Mr. Malfoy, having been neatly brained by Mr. Potter's shoe as he made his 
bizarre descent, was also unconscious. Being without the means to spell my 
way out of this particular dilemma, I did my level best to heave myself 
away from the brace of cretins now smothering me beneath their weight, 
kicked myself halfway free, reached out with my left arm for my just 
out-of-reach wand...

And found my hand touching not a satisfyingly firm bit of eleven-inch 
ebony, but rather the unmistakably thick and dowel-like ankle of none 
other than Minerva McGonagall.

For what seemed nearly sixty hours, silence reigned as I took in the sight 
of Minerva, standing above me with her favorite little bushy-haired 
tell-all swot at her side and Minsky bringing up the rear, and they took 
in the sight of myself lying half-dressed upon the floor with one nearly 
naked student and one apparently drugged one spread-eagled on either side. 
Minerva's lip curled, her face turned a particularly unattractive shade of 
beetroot and, before I could say a single word in my own defense, she 
marched over, kicked Mr. Malfoy off to the side, yanked Potter to his 
feet--where he stood lolling and drooling upon her arm like some infant's 
life-sized ragdoll--and reached down to slap me full force right across 
the face. Minsky, a brick as always, calmly handed me the wand I was still 
too immobilized to employ.

"I just thought she could help us, is all," the insufferable Miss Granger 
began pleading aloud, clearly understanding for whom the cold, silent 
promise of slow murder brewing in my eyes was intended. "I wasn't getting 
anywhere in the library and everyone's been asking me about him going 
missing--"

"So this is what you meant when you said Slytherin would take the 
Quidditch Cup with a strategy I couldn't begin to imagine," Minerva 
interrupted, glaring down at me with what, under better circumstances, 
would have been a truly hilarious level of fury. "To conspire to kidnap 
the Gryffindor Seeker, and to Confound him senseless the night before the 
match"--and here, to my amazement, she actually reached out and seized 
Miss Granger by the earlobe--"and to then inviegle our House's best 
student into stealing the one book in the entire Hogwarts library that 
contained the proper countercurse! You're a disgrace to this school, 
Severus Snape, you're a disgrace to wizarding and I never really believed 
you'd come back to our side of things for a single damned second!"

"So the noble Minerva McGonagall stoops to giving a leg-over or seven to 
pure evil?" I sneered. "Well then, it must have been true love. Or perhaps 
you were so pathetically desperate for anyone besides a Mediwizard to go 
fishing under your skirts that--" My rather elegant and witty riposte was 
here, unfortunately, cut off by another slap.

"I didn't steal it!" Miss Granger shouted, looking rather tearful in a 
fashion that moved my heart not in the slightest. "I told you, the real 
book went missing and I don't know who has it and we were just trying 
to--"

"You be quiet, Miss Granger," Minerva turned upon her, fury further 
congealing her already none-too-dulcet voice. "To collude in such a 
shameless and disgusting fashion with a rival House-master, and then to 
lie about it! Ten of Madam Pince's elves saw you taking Most Incurable 
Curses, and Harry Potter disappearing right in front of you just as you 
were stealing it, and I had to find out by an anonymous owl-post who you 
were taking it to, and then Mr. Weasley tries to cover for you--that's 
fifty points off Gryffindor, do congratulate him when you next see 
him--and then you have the utter gall to come running to me with that 
falsehood of an alibi! Helping Professor Snape find Harry, indeed--"

"It's the truth!" Miss Granger cried, to absolutely no avail. Potter, his 
eyes rolling like gobstones to the back of his skull, did a fish-flop on 
Minerva's supporting arm and then subsided once more. Malfoy, thankfully, 
remained unconscious; not so thankfully, he also remained in a 
rabid-Pomeranian straddle upon my immobilized leg.

"If Minsky could interrupt for a moment, please, good and generous--"

"Miss Granger," I said, every word a pellet of ice, "I would be most 
grateful if you could dry your eyes and perform the Finite Incantatem 
which would permit me to recover what remains of my dignity."

It was Minerva, doubtless seeking only to deny Miss Granger yet another 
supposed favor, who finally waved her wand in my direction. "Apparently," 
she added coldly, as I struggled to my feet, "you have both decided to 
continue your little conspiracy. Very well--there is little I can do to 
you, Severus, but I assure you that until Mr. Potter is restored to his 
full health, and until either you or Miss Granger produce the volume Most 
Incurable Curses in exactly the condition you took it, Miss Granger will 
be confined to Gryffindor House under my strictest supervision."

Here, I confess, I was moved to a derisive snort. "What, no hysterical 
skipping-off to Big Daddy Dumbledore?" I demanded. "No grandiose 
announcement to the entire bloody school of my completely unproven grocery 
list of nefarious deeds? You're losing your touch, Minerva--"

"I am attempting," she hissed, "to show some modicum of kindness to Miss 
Granger--whom you have clearly lured into your habitual web of deceit, she 
has no history of this sort of trickery whatsoever--by keeping this as 
secret as circumstances will allow. The Gryffindor-Slytherin match has 
been postponed for one week. You have precisely that amount of time to 
return the book, or both I and your fellow Slytherin Madam Pince will be 
more than happy to see the two of you revealed for exactly what you are." 
Here she finally deigned to give Mr. Malfoy an understandably disgusted 
glance. "As for him...well. I see that Miss Patil clearly wasn't 
exaggerating."

"Minsky," Minsky attempted once more, "really can explain everything--"

"Oh, I've no doubt of that," Minerva said, glowering down at him in a 
fashion that would have sent any other of his kind scurrying for a hole in 
the floorboards. "I'm certain your story is as well-rehearsed as Miss 
Granger's and as completely lacking in veracity--come with me, girl, if 
you think you're such a grand wizard you can conjure up a stretcher and 
help me get Mr. Potter to the hospital wing. Disgraceful behavior, utterly 
disgraceful, I'm not giving you a moment out of my sight..."

And with that, she half-pushed and half-dragged her former teacher's pet 
back into the hallway, Potter hauled like a potato-sack between them and 
the Granger waterworks once again flowing to their fullest. 

Without a word, Minsky handed me the cloak he had slung over one arm, 
finally permitting me the luxury of being once more fully clothed long 
after it might have done me any good. I pointed my wand at Mr. Malfoy, now 
stirring slightly in his utterly unalluring deshabille, and visited upon 
his richly deserving head the selfsame curse he had aimed at mine. 

"Do notify Mr. Filch," I ordered Minsky, gazing past both him and my 
petrified would-be swain to the gaping chasm in the ceiling now emitting a 
slow hail of plaster. "He will surely find this a situation of keen 
personal interest."

As I staggered back toward the blessed haven of Slytherin House, Minsky 
mercifully possessed the deep and profound wisdom to remain entirely 
silent, at least until he left me at the House's main door. 

"Minsky would simply to point out," he ventured, "that everything Master 
ever said about Gryffindors--"

"Minsky?" I said, shaking the plaster dust from my hair, the rose petals 
from my robes and the stray bits of caviar out of my ears as best I could 
manage. "Blatant instances of I-told-you-so's poorly disguised as flattery 
are grounds for blatant sadism with large handfuls of roof-nails. Get out 
of my sight."

Showing, at that moment, more intellect than every else I had encountered 
that night put together, he went instantly scuttling off in search of our 
noble caretaker.

And so, once again, here we are. Mr. Potter currently resides in his home 
away from home--namely, the school infirmary--completely disoriented, with 
no idea of where he was taken or who brought him there but apparently, 
accursedly, none the worse for wear. The actual cause of his 
disappearance, and reappearance, and the strange blue light and 
destructive elemental forces accompanying it, remains an utter mystery. 
Miss Granger is currently in Coventry for her supposed collusion with my 
nefarious Quidditch-disrupting schemes, and is thus barely permitted a 
moment out of McGonagall's grimly obsessive sights; the actual Most 
Incurable Curses, wherever it may be and whoever may have it, still has 
not been discovered. Argus Filch is doing his level best to repair the 
hole in the trophy-room ceiling, and Mr. Malfoy is showing a rare glimmer 
of self-preservational sense by departing in the dead of night for an 
extended visit to his supposedly ailing grandmother. Three of my favorite 
and more deliciously tractable seventh-year students have scampered up to 
tend to me, and been summarily whipped, and then whipped again because 
doing it the first time did absolutely nothing to assuage my mood. 

I will surely, in the course of due time, be able to explain all of this 
to the appropriate parties in a fashion even their wretchedly inferior 
intellects can comprehend. I have a certain measure of position in this 
wretched damp of an institution after all, a certain measure of status, 
seniority and genuine respect--nobody, surely, would ever believe the 
paranoid fantasies of Minerva bloody McGonagall over my own, entirely 
honest and objective version of events!

********

9 April

8.30 pm: Very well, then. Minerva McGonagall--not the least content with 
DESERTING ME at the altar without so much as a by-your-leave to make the 
alarmingly sinuous two-backed beast with Madam Hooch--has now decided on 
the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever that I am a thief and a 
lecher and a seducer and a kidnapper out to snatch the Quidditch Cup from 
its supposed divine birthright by the most dishonorable sort of chicanery. 
Half my own bloody House is now also convinced that I am not the 
forthright Slytherin schemer whose hems they once fought for the right to 
kiss, but rather a cringing fawning Gryffindor-lover who was only found 
out through the heroism--bloody sodding heroism!--of Draco Mole-Wanker 
Mama's-Boy Malfoy. Hermione Granger, the little arse-kissing 
beans-spilling shrew whom I made the NEVER-to-be-repeated error of relying 
upon to keep her mouth shut, remains in close-quarter punishment and it is 
for this reason and this reason alone I have not sent her the beribboned 
nosegay of Unforgivables she so richly deserves. Erzebet refuses to return 
a single one of my owl posts. My favorite sixth-year has gone and got 
herself a bloody Gryffindor beau and, thereby, has debased herself in such 
unalluring fashion there will be Muggles in the Ministry before I stoop to 
the level of paddling her once more. 

In a word, I am bereft, and it is through no doing, no fault and no blame 
of my own. In short, I am my usual sensitive and tragically misunderstood 
self--and nobody in the entire bloody world is worthy to get the back of 
my damned hand!

Very generously gave Minsky the night off--all right, forced him via the 
dire threat of a dangling pair of lace knickers to take the night off, 
bloody idiot house-elves--to go dance around toadstools or slit the 
throats of newts or whatever his species get up to when not attending to 
their betters, for I desperately need to be absolutely and completely 
ALONE. A snifter of Oggham's, a set of especially obscene engravings and 
myself, that is all I need in this life to be happy. Thank Mirandola 
nobody else is here to destroy my hard-won solitude and pour their 
miserable moronic bleatings into my long-suffering ears!

9.15 pm: Nobody ever talks to me. They're intimidated by my astounding 
intellect, is what it is. Bastards.

10.11 pm:  Worked out simple, rather elegant new series of equations which 
gracefully synthesize Muggle chaos theory and the wizarding Table of 
Elemental Potions into a brand-new unified field theory resolving many 
long-standing contradictions concerning the biochemical origins of the 
known universe. Suitable to present at the Salem conference next winter, 
blow away those miserable self-congratulatory buggers in Arithmancy? 
Maybe. No. Stinks. Drawing board.

Why did I pay so much for these damned engravings, anyway? That little 
Beauxbatons sixth-year always willingly endured a far more severe 
chaining-up than this supposedly irresistible lithographic tart, and she 
was a genuine quarter-veela to boot. That kind of instinctive depravity 
you just can't buy. 

Well, yes you can, but considering Lucius's complaints about Narcissa's 
incessant elephantine snoring I'm not entirely sure it's worth it.

10.45 pm:  Finished the engravings. Still seemed rather more exciting when 
viewed in Minerva's company. Slag. Somewhat pissed. Somewhat bored.

11.35 pm: Incredibly bored. A few sheets to the wind. Perhaps I should 
break down, just this once, and try actually washing my hair.

11.38 pm:  Did I just write that? Dear God, but I am shitfaced. 

11.42 pm:  Granger, you foolish featherbrained dunderheaded arse-kissing 
shit-eating little Gryffindor COW, I hope you die a very old, completely 
unloved and utterly desperate virgin. In fact, I'll personally see to it 
myself.

11.45 pm:  There's the bloody engraving I was looking for. Page 478. God, 
what a lovely, achingly pristine arse, and such a pricelessly frightened 
expression on--I really do need to expand my horizons a bit and begin 
trawling the corridors of Hufflepuff every last chance I get. Pretty, 
docile, stupid, unafraid of toil and utterly untouched by the hand of 
greatness? Oh, yes, get down on those chubby dimpled little girls'-knees 
and come crawling straight to Daddy--

More later.

11.51 pm:  If I could manage to get certain featherbrained dunderheaded 
images out of my bloody BRAIN for more than a half-minute at a time before 
they entirely WRECK AND DESTROY what had been a highly pleasing bit of a 
daydream, that would all have been far less anticlimactic. Needless to 
say, I blame the Oggham's, because it can't have been anything else.

I need another drink. 

11.55 pm:  Sitting around a Hogwarts dormitory entirely alone, bereft of 
company, wanking off, dead bored and dead drunk--yes, by Circe, I have 
made such magnificent leaps and bounds in the past twenty years, now 
haven't I? I hate this shithole of a school, and I hate every 
piss-stinking wand-waving Muggle-born Hooray Henrietta in it even more. 
Die, pusillanimous world, see a big sodding flash of bright green light 
and DIE.

12.15 am:  Minerva! Minerva! Minerva!

12.17 am:  Why?! Why?! Why?!

12.42 am:  I hate women. All of them. Which is no more than prudent, 
because apparently THEY ALL HATE ME. What, other than spending a 
negligible year or six in utter thrall to the forces of universal evil, 
have I ever in my entire life done to deserve this? I'm a bloody artist at 
the cauldron! I'm sensitive as shit! I threw up before my Potions NEWTs 
and that was the class where I actually enjoyed shagging the instructor! 
Dumbledore's not the only wizard Voldemort's afraid of! I'm the only one 
he's afraid of, they all just go around SAYING it's Dumbledore to be nice! 
You know why they all hate me? I'll tell you why they hate me, it's 
because of bloody anti-Semitism and I'm fairly sure most of the time that 
I'm not even Jewish! Mum?! Where are you, mum?! THEY'RE TRYING TO CRUCIFY 
ME!

1:03 am:  I need another drink.

1.26 am:  James! James! James!

1.28 am:  Why?! Why?! Why?!

1.47 am:  Figured out new formula for Wolfsbane Potion--just as effective, 
oh yes, but twice as acidic and sadistically inflammatory for the imbiber 
to endure going down the gullet. I am golden. And Minerva always 
complained I could never hold my liquor? Jealous prating slack-jawed 
jammy-cow SLAG. Think I'll put on the new Goblin String Quartet to 
celebrate. I need another drink.

2.02 am:  I will devour you like a Norwegian Blue, you priggish little 
tart. Oh, YES I will. Slowly. Very slowly, savoring every bloody bite. I 
need another drink.

2.10 am:  Someone is knocking at the door of MY private chambers to 
complain about the so-called noise bloody sodding HELL. If it is Draco 
Malfoy, I swear by John Dee's beard that I will pull the miserable wet 
scraps of pig's-fat that masquerade as his brain out through his nose one 
by one until--GOOD GOD, JUST GIVE ME FIVE DAMNED SECONDS TO GET OUT OF MY 
CHAIR AND ANSWER THE BLOODY DOOR!

********

10 April

I hope to almighty Merlin that that was, in fact, the genuine Mad-Eye 
Moody last night, because if it were not I may have just inadvertently 
handed certain forces of absolute darkness the means with which to 
blackmail me for the better part of eternity.

If my hangover were any larger it would require its own dormitory.

********









RW HERE.  The initial story ended at this point.  Then, many moons later, 
Valeria updated:







15 April

5.40 am: Not to put too fine a point on it, but what on earth is this 
thin-haired, thick-ankled, thoroughly uninspiring seventh-year doing 
sprawled naked in the sanctum of my bed, at a time of the morning when 
even a veela in full-blown estrus is a blearily unwelcome sight? As I was, 
in fact, entirely sober last night when I dragged the gangly spotty little 
chit from the common-room mah-jongg table to the padded ebony sawhorse 
that was Madam Rosmerta's one worthwhile birthday present (what on earth 
the woman ever thought I would do with those inexorable gauzy-bowed gift 
baskets of Hasenpfeffer's Organic Strawberry Shampoo and No-Lye Relaxant 
is still a mystery to me), the only possible conclusion is that I am, at 
long last, losing my accursed touch. You are old, Father Severus! 
Increasingly and tragically hard to believe there was once a time in 
halcyon days past when my students, my House-charges, my fresh-faced 
black-hearted acrobatic little concubines-in-training knew enough to creep 
noiselessly from my chambers on satiated hands and knees long before the 
onset of dawn and--

 Ah, now I recall my happy motivation: The girl's sleeping head has just 
lolled in my direction, revealing in her washed-out little face the 
incongruity of a mouth the texture, color and obscene lushness of an 
overripe plum. Father Severus is not so blind or doddering after all, it 
appears. More later.

6.12 am: A well-tempered gag reflex is a joy, but solitude is a treasure. 
Slept rather badly last night, all plum-plucking aside, and was beset by 
bizarre dreams where I was Potions master at a strange, ersatz Hogwarts 
mockup hundreds of miles removed, my classes (as, worse luck, they as good 
as are in reality) crammed to the rafters with glib doughy-faced little 
Muggles in piss-poor wizard's guise. For reasons that escape me, in this 
particular dream I was also rather fat. I lay my nightmare-inducing 
dyspepsia at the wizened feet of the usually blameless Minsky, who has 
taken shameful advantage of his master's inherent kindness by begging me 
to indenture one even more worthless than he into my service. There is 
truly no experience on Loki's black earth like being interrupted at 
precisely the least opportune moment in a good vigorous bed-break 
deflowering, only to confront the ghastly green bug-eyes of Barty Crouch's 
disgraced erstwhile house-elf--Winnie, Whiny, I can't be arsed to recall 
such bloody trivia as her name--and Minsky jibbering some demented stuff 
and nonsense about how "Minsky's friend is on a really heavy trip" and 
"needs some space to cool down and get her head together, if that won't 
completely wreck master's scene." 

 Suffice it to say that master was unfortunately in that usually blessed 
state when one would give fervent assent to blowing a thundering herd of 
diarrheic gazelle, and thus Minsky's nauseatingly tear-prone, and 
butterbeer-guzzling, petite amie (Weepy?--that must be it) is now 
installed on the straw-ticking next to his in the backstairs midden, and 
has already artfully dodged no less than five attempts on my part to gift 
her with one of Mum's pastel Christmas cloaks. Being thus stuck with her, 
I had thought to put her to work scraping bits of that 
twenty-Galleons-an-ounce Ponce de Leon moss off the topmost South Tower 
parapets. That fell by the wayside when I discovered the little wretch 
suffers Mount Etna nosebleeds at any height above a step-stool (I will 
never get the stains off my Royal Society of Cauldron-Polishers 
Certificate of Distinction--years spent perfecting the most dangerous, 
complex and illegal aphrodisiacs known to firm-buttocked virgin, and the 
parchment's sonnet in honor of my Most Stiff and Mighty Wand is completely 
obscured!), and I have set her instead to polishing my buckets of dried 
roaches while I figure out whether Minsky would suffer more if killed by 
boiling or frying. Didn't Serpensortia Standish and that whole motley lot 
of colonial wizards survive the first Massachusetts winter on a diet of 
roasted house-elf? Of course, Yank wizards also seem to feel no shame 
whatsoever in having unleashed the Psychic Friends Network upon a 
typically unsuspecting Muggle world, so I should hardly turn to them as 
proper arbiters of such much as a sock-drawer. (We will not even address 
the shameful subject of the Celestine Prophecies!)

 A mere half-term today, thank Merlin--Bumble-Bore, in his typical 
sapience, has seen fit to cancel afternoon classes for what he deems a 
"morale-boosting" scavenger hunt--so all I need endure is the inevitable 
forehead-slapper that is a Hufflepuff Potions session before liberty is 
mine. A certain veteran Arithmancy mistress whose tastes I could have 
sworn were immutably Sapphic has now groped for her "lost" napkin in the 
folds of my robes at one Great Hall dinner too many for coincidence, and 
the prospect of wrenching a highly and helplessly vocal ecstasy from 
fresh-faced youth at dawn and skillful age at dusk is simply too poetic to 
resist. Or I could just organize my supplies of dried rat dung by size and 
color, that's always a good way to kill an afternoon. Time, as they say, 
shall tell.

 I see I have nearly forgotten to note that the elusive and 
hysterically-sought copy of Most Incurable Curses has, as of yesterday 
morning, turned up minus its dragonhide jacket but otherwise unharmed in 
the library's Medieval Purgatives wing--yes, buckets of sturm and oceans 
of drang from the always redoubtable Minerva McGonagall and Madam Pince, 
and the wretched thing was evidently merely misshelved! Miss Granger, 
despite this happy happenstance, continues her richly earned confinement 
in Gryffindor House for all time not devoted to classwork, as Minerva 
appears to suspect--undeservedly, I am certain--that she had something to 
do with the infernal Potter's bizarre disappearance and, most deservedly, 
that were I to find myself alone once more with the flap-jawed little 
cretin, I would quite cheerfully and justifiably murder her. Peace, quiet 
and the distinct prospect of the most acquiescent sort of companionship; 
today may, then, despite the best efforts of my inexorably moronic 
soi-disant colleagues, prove to be thoroughly pleasant and uneventful.

 Minsky is ushering me downstairs to breakfast. Let the surfeit of dubious 
delights begin.

10.17 pm: A notation of profound importance to myself--never, ever, ever 
again tempt the vagaries of fate and the whims of the Great Beyond with 
blithe predictions of a serene and uneventful day. Dare to do so, and 
every last force in the universe with the least thing to say about it will 
conspire to prove you wrong.

 More later, when my hands have stopped this infernal trembling.


16 April

 I am now--I blatantly tempt the flatulent bitch Fata Morgana by 
writing--in a sufficiently coherent frame of mind and calm enough 
disposition to narrate with a cool head the events of yesterday afternoon 
and evening. As all of this wretched sick-bucket of a school, staff as 
well as students, are now indefinitely curfewed in-House for what is 
purportedly our greater safety, and as that hulking Valkyrie Millicent 
Bulstrode insists upon monopolizing the bloody mah-jongg table for hours 
on end, it is hardly as though I possess the wherewithal to do anything 
else.

 After enduring the comedy of terrors that was morning Potions and Ernie 
Macmillan's newly discovered, and admittedly highly comedic, urge toward 
self-immolation (at least that is all I can reasonably conclude, after 
noting that it took a literal rain of flesh-eating toads leaping in 
formation from his cauldron to his face for him finally to heed Justin 
Finch-Fletchley's nervous twitterings of "I say, old bean, those little 
green jim-jams in your thingummy-potion look ready to slit you up a 
corking treat!"), keel-hauling of the witless Macmillan to the hospital 
wing and receiving confirmation from Madam Pomfrey that human earlobes are 
indeed a doddle to grow back, I changed into the least grease-spotted of 
my robes and swept into the Great Hall in search of the elusive Professor 
Vector. It was then I discovered that she, along with three-quarters of 
our doughty and dung-brained Hogwarts staff, had scuttled off to secure 
themselves spectator seats for the headmaster's bloody scavenger hunt. 
Arselicking shites.

 Newly appreciative of this unexpected gift of solitude (if I want a 
skirt-lifting boot-polisher with a brain or two in her head that badly, 
there's always--oh, bloody hell, never mind), I ate my way through two 
chapters of Curses for the Easily Distracted and, roundly ignoring Sybill 
Trelawney's sherry-fueled billings, cooings and vague gibberings about 
Duncan's horses breaking their stalls and contending 'gainst obedience (so 
what else is new?), departed toward the south dungeons for a peaceful, 
entirely undisturbed afternoon.

 I thought.

 I had just rounded the South Tower hallway past Samuel Pepys's 
gibberingly garrulous portrait when it happened: A sudden CRACK snapped 
the air before me like a great dead twig, a frigid and foul-smelling 
draught came rolling in its wake and a blinding, almost poisonously strong 
blue light--the selfsame light that had accompanied Potter just last week 
to the trophy room back from dimensions unknown--flooded my field of 
vision. Throwing my sleeves over my face in a vain attempt to ward off the 
blinding assault, I hurled myself into a crouch and grasped for my wand 
with screwed-shut eyes, rose with a most admirably fiery courage and 
resolve to face this fiendish, implacable, inexplicable foe from beyond 
the realm of humanity--

 --and when I was able once more to open my eyes found myself not in the 
South Tower at all, but rather in a dank, close, stalactite-dripping 
cavern which, if it were in fact anywhere at all in the vicinity of 
Hogwarts, was surely many labyrinthine miles beneath it.

 Needless to say, my situation did not appear entirely ideal. My wand, at 
least, was intact and operational and once lit, enabled me swiftly to scan 
the cave walls for the telltale Quaffle-sized emeralds that would have 
heralded my most unwelcome return to the moon-drenched shores of Horkon-7. 
Breathing a sigh of admittedly premature relief when I spied not so much 
as an errant topaz, I raised my brows at the astonishingly obscene 
paintings chalked on the rough stone walls (not being much of a llama man 
myself, I fear the aesthetic subtleties were entirely lost on me) and 
proceeded forward with all necessary caution.

 I had not gone more than a half-dozen steps down the pitch-black, 
seemingly deserted cavern when I heard a sound that would have set a 
lesser wizard's heart to racing: an unmistakable, pulsating thrum that 
seemed to emanate from the very walls around me, as though the cave itself 
were some malevolent living body and I had just managed to lodge myself in 
its throat (as if that little boyhood misadventure with the Banshee 
Chicken of Chichester weren't enough of that sort of experience for a 
single lifetime). Undaunted, I advanced forward even as the breath of evil 
grew louder, and louder...

 ...and slowly I turned, step by step, to see sitting quietly upon the 
cave floor not three feet removed a glossy, black-coated rabbit. And not 
just any random rabbit, mind you, but a creature whose gleaming ebony fur, 
crooked front tooth, cast in its left eye and appallingly huge mutated 
feet were instantly, astonishingly familiar: my old velveteen Flopsy, lost 
when I had the scarlet fever! (How I ever managed to contract the scarlet 
fever in the first place in this day and age is a question which must 
forever go unanswered, though I will note that my accursed Uncle Agrippus 
never did forgive me for that harmless little incident with the 
Skin-Peeling Soap.)

 Surely, this was but a foul illusion wrought by the sort of dark magic 
that at one point in my increasingly wretched life won me more 
Rabelaisian-breasted pillory-partners than the Hellfire Club at its 
zenith, but--as it is only for these entirely private pages to 
record--muzzy-headed nostalgia will have done with common sense every 
damned time.

 "Flopsy?" I foolishly ventured, lowering my wand.

 Instantly, the splay-pawed horror reared back on its furry haunches and, 
baring blood-drenched buck teeth twice as long as any actual 
carrot-chewer's, roared loudly enough to send a Christmas-tree-sized 
stalactite crashing to the earth, launched itself off the ground and 
rocketed straight towards my unprotected face. I had only the briefest 
vision of its hellish maw opening on shockingly wide hinges before, 
overpowered by its fetid, wheezing breath and once more engaged in an 
uphill battle to preserve my blameless eyeballs, I shot the loudest 
"STUPEFY!" I could manage toward the little airborne monstrosity.

 Undaunted, despite my spell having hit it full-force in the hindquarters, 
Flopsy circled overhead like a moss-carpeted V-2 bomber and, diving for me 
just as I made the accursed mistake of fumbling in my robes for that 
bottle of Professor Duff's Vermin-B-Witch'd (had I even thought, during 
that nauseating little liaison Rita Skeeter blackmailed out of me right 
after the Hoboken veela incident, that it would work a treat on beetles I 
would doubtless have that decades-deserved Order of Merlin by now), sank 
its teeth into my wand-shoulder and hung on fast as an engorged tick 
despite all my frantic salad-spinnings to dislodge it. Blood trickled in 
ever-increasing rivulets down my numbed and flaccid arm, my head filled 
with the buzzing of a thousand malevolent bees, I dropped to my knees and 
felt an overwhelming weight sink down upon me, pushing me by degrees into 
a great black sea...

 I awoke I know not how many minutes, hours, days later in this accursed 
netherworld's strange reckoning of time, my temples throbbing and the 
sleeve of my wand-arm stiff with blood. I was, at the very least, in 
enough control of my faculties to perceive that I had been transported to 
a cramped limestone alcove somewhere in the midst of the cave, though the 
unfortunate matter of my being paralyzed from the neck down prevented me 
from taking the exact measure of my surroundings. Using the only voluntary 
movement left to me, I turned my head to the left, then the right--and saw 
what appeared to be gauze. Exceedingly sticky and thickly-woven gauze of 
the sort which, considering it now kept me suspended in midair and was 
wrapped around me in a shoulders-down cocoon, resembled nothing more than 
a giant spiderweb.

 Never having achieved a very keen appreciation for the supposed delights 
of mummification (there are few words for how utterly delighted Gilderoy 
Lockhart would have been to find himself in my predicament, but that is a 
story strictly for another day), I made a desultory attempt to wriggle 
free and, as expected, got nowhere. Sensing movement just below my feet, I 
looked down to see the faux-Flopsy deftly negotiating the web and, no fool 
I, made every effort to draw my toes away from reach of his bloodthirsty 
jaws.

 "You needn't worry, Professor," a sneering voice informed me from out of 
nowhere. "My dear little Mopsy has fed her fill, and now wishes only to 
gloat over your impending doom."

 I looked up, and nearly made matters far worse by staining the front of 
my robes. (Do note, those who read this long after my death, that I said 
nearly--I am not Neville bloody Longbottom and for that I thank the Norns 
on a daily basis.) Looming before me in the alcove's narrow entryway was 
the largest, hairiest and longest-legged spider I have ever, and indeed I 
submit anyone has ever, seen in their days on this pissant planet, and I 
very much include our deranged groundskeeper's erstwhile house-pet in that 
equation. Its shining and disgustingly hirsute legs a pure onyx, its body 
a venom-fattened black cherry set to burst, the creature's most horrifying 
attribute was the all-too-human head that sat just atop a pair of 
scimitar-sized pincers--not just any random human head, but the smirking, 
triumphant, full-youthful-flower visage of one Tom Marvolo Riddle.

 I looked down, and saw Mopsy sitting back on her haunches looking 
distinctly smug, and looked back up at the thing representing itself as my 
onetime lord and master.

 "An immense improvement," I informed it, as indifferently as 
circumstances might plausibly permit.

 The thing smiled widely, revealing a mouthful of blood--mine, Mopsy's, 
some unfortunate giant house-fly with Peter Pettigrew's head for all I 
knew--which it swallowed in a single, goiter-sized gulp.

 "Getting my miserable, paltry human body back was only the beginning," it 
declared, licking its lips with what even my erstwhile Durmstrang potions 
apprentice would have deemed a repulsively long tongue. "Yes, my 
traitorous onetime prot
Ã
©g
Ã
©--it is I the magnificent Vol-de-Mort, returned to all my power and 
splendor. Once small children mocked my impotency, and old women pointed 
and laughed for I was a pathetic freak reduced to subletting the back of a 
stuttering dragon-sucker's turban in order to survive day to day. Now, 
though, I am once again the greatest and strongest magician of my age and 
as you can see, the advantage is mine! Ha, ha ha! Ha! Ha! Ha ha!"

 Enduring this salivary stream of egotism run amuck would have been bad 
enough, if not for the additional, unnerving fact that for reasons 
entirely mysterious to me, his mouth continued moving frenetically long 
after his actual words had stopped. Having absolutely no other recourse 
open to me, I decided to attempt a subtle, offhand interrogation.

 "So, it's you who is behind the recent...incidents at Hogwarts," I said, 
trying with no success to squirm free or, at the very least, deliver 
faux-Flopsy a sound kick to the front molars. "I might have known. And 
once again, for all your posturings and pirouettings the cretinous Mr. 
Potter has managed to evade your astonishingly inept grasp--"

 This was, of course, a shot in the dark, but it was well worth the 
pummeling I received from the rays of blue light shooting out of his every 
available orifice to have it confirmed.

 "Admittedly, I had not quite worked the bugs out of my gloriously new and 
improved body when Mr. Potter was summoned to my lair," my erstwhile 
fearless leader nasally snarled, pincers click-clacking like giant 
knitting needles in his rage. "How was I to know that since his wand and 
my wand were made from the wood of a holly tree and a yew tree that grew 
side by side on the grave of Godric Gryffindor's nephew's sister's 
charwoman's pet Doberman pinscher Skippy, that those wands when they met 
in duel would thereby incorporate the second-to-last spell cast by the 
wand of the second part into the third-to-last spell cast by the wand of 
the first part and thereby cause the wand of the second part to summon 
forth a miniature flying hippogriff with the Gryffindor house-crest on its 
back and a venom poisonous only to hideous mutated giant spiders to save 
the arseheaded little by-blow from his rightful death at my godlike hands? 
Or that it's bloody difficult to handle a wand at all when all you've got 
are these wretched pincers?"

 "So why in the name of Mirandola didn't you just slit his throat when you 
had a chance?" I shouted. "I'll thank you! Legions who once cursed your 
very name will thank you! Make yourself sodding useful for once and just 
get the little bastard out of my hair once and for all!"

 He cocked his tousled head in my direction, one ten-foot-long, 
slime-gleaming leg reaching up to give Mopsy an affectionate pat. "I don't 
abide by silly, straightforward, efficient Muggle ways of dispatching 
human beings," he spat. "It offends my exquisitely refined aesthetic 
principles. Would...you like...to hear...the 
very...very...very...long...story...of...why?"

 "No!" I said hastily, and found myself struggling all the harder to pull 
away. "If you mean to kill me for my supposed treachery, by all means have 
done with it now."

 That provoked a truly frightening, if unfortunately gap-toothed smile. 
"Oh, I have no intention of killing you, my dear, treacherous Severus," he 
pronounced. "It would be far too kind a fate, and entirely wasteful for my 
purposes. I shall instead allow my dear Mopsy and my precious Nagini to 
feed off the rich, flavorful bounty of your intestines until your vital 
essences are sucked bone-dry and you are a pale, zombielike shadow of your 
former miserable self. You shall thereby serve me and my nefarious court 
of cringing mewling evildoers for all your days, as I establish my supreme 
imperial rule over the turd-bowl of humanity and destroy all who do not 
bow before my awesome might, and untold millions of those who do just for 
plain old fun! Ha! Ha ha! Ha, ha ha ha, HA! HA!"

 Christ on a torn and bleeding crutch, where the hell are Piss-Pot Potter 
and his bottomless bag of dei ex machinis when you actually need them? 
"You and your hollow threats do nothing but bore me," I drawled in 
time-honored Malfoy fashion, even as I fervently hoped Minsky remembered 
my detailed instructions for posthumous disposal of my crate of Wench 
Weeklies. "Have you forgotten I've been listening to you rave about your 
supposedly foolproof idiot schemes to conquer the world since I was 
thirteen bloody years old? Why should this turn out any less of a balls-up 
than that time you tried to annex Poland?"

 "That was all your fault," he hissed, sidling close enough for me to 
smell the enchanting squirrel-compost perfume of his heated breath. "If 
you'd been able to bloody figure out once and for all whether or not 
you're Jewish--"

 "Or the time you tried to rob Fort Knox--"

 "Well, you can't blame me for half my elite Pureblood Firing Squad 
getting sucked out the window of that airplane, I told the fools that 
Muggle technology is damned tricky--"

 "Or the time you tried to take over the Nakotomi Building in Los Angeles 
and that off-duty Muggle police officer--"

 "STOP TRYING TO DISTRACT ME!" he thundered, sending another array of 
lethally sharp stalactites like arrows to the cave floor, and hurled his 
arsenal of blue sparks at my pinioned body until I was convulsing in a 
fashion normally reserved for far more pleasant happenstances. "YOU HAVE 
BETRAYED ME, SEVERUS SNAPE, AND SO YOU SHALL BE REDUCED TO--"

 All at once he frowned, and turned his head abruptly in the direction of 
the alcove's entrance. "Am I even madder than usual," he demanded, "or do 
you hear...chanting?"

 Indeed--if I strained to hear around the ringing in my ears from the very 
slightly overwhelmingly agonizing pain I had just suffered--I could also 
pick up on it: An intense, ceaseless, almost breathless chant uttered in a 
language I was quite certain I had never before heard, in a voice I felt I 
should have recognized immediately. I frowned, and glared at my 
monstrosity of a captor in silent demand for an explanation, and as I did 
so found myself blinking repeatedly as he and the very cave itself seemed 
to begin wavering before my eyes. Evidently I was not the only one so 
affected, for his would-be satanic majesty began whipping his spinnerets 
from right to left in a fashion first bewildered, then downright frantic.

 "MOPSY!" he shouted, the cave around us now not wavering but dissolving. 
"Mopsy, get off your fat gut-stuffed haunches and DO SOMETHI--"

 He was drowned out by the mysterious chanting that grew to a rush of 
blood in my ears. As the strange, disembodied voice rosary-beaded faster 
and faster through its words, the cave walls vanished entirely, melting 
with astonishing swiftness to be replaced by what looked very much like 
the Magical History wing of the deserted Hogwarts library. Any relief I 
might otherwise have felt was, sadly, rather shortchanged by the fact that 
I appeared to have dragged both the spiderweb and its putative spinner 
right back to the library with me. Understandably piqued both by my 
imminent, horrifying torture and death and the fact that I would surely be 
accused at my very gravesite of having breathlessly scuttled back to the 
Dark Oik's coattails (the reams upon reams of incriminating notations and 
photographs with which I will be festooning our headmaster's own memorial 
served, I fear, as a strangely ineffective source of comfort), I braced my 
web-bound back against a row of Kramer and Sprenger first editions 
and--certain that all cries for help would fall upon deaf ears--squeezed 
my eyes shut as the Arachiddle advanced upon me with a howl of pure 
triumph, as the foreign chanting of one of hell's own invisible army of 
minions grew louder, and louder, and louder...

(The astonishingly exciting and mind-bogglingly prolix entry of 16 April 
will very soon, or not so soon, Be Continued...)



 (Story begun 2003.)

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