Oobi Doobi Oobi Noobi Shnooby Kanoobi (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} pen_and_umbra) wrote,@ 2005-08-02 18:55:00 |
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| Current mood: |  silly |
| Current music: | Viimeinen Erinomainen Mies - Jonna Tervomaa |
| Entry tags: | fanfic, harry potter, snape/harry |
FIC (HP): "Round Bottom, Twelve Inches" (SS/HP, humour, R)
And then Snape/Harry! Sort of.
Title: Round Bottom, Twelve Inches
Author: pen_and_umbra
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Snape/Harry
Rating: R
Word count: 3,307 words (complete)
Warnings: Humour (?).
Disclaimer: I pour beetles down the waistcoat of the suggestion that I own these characters.
Summary: It had always been the white ankle (and other bits) of an Englishwoman that had stirred Severus Snape's loins. That is, until he made a wrong turn and walked into Gaylord's House of Glugs and Slugs.
Notes: It started out as a fic for cordelia_v and painless_j's Snape is Straight challenge, underwent edits and moments of deletion rage, and then mutated into this... thingy. It's not quite the sort of story the challenge was supposed to spawn, I suspect, and it reveals exactly how much I'm influenced by PG Wodehouse these days. Muchas gracias, imadra_blue, for the speedy beta.
* * *
Imagine, if you will, a scarecrow.
Now, our Severus Snape is a man of that sort: a man that would stick out from a field of wavy wheat like the proverbial thumb in the... well, a thumb in something or other that Snape could probably tell us -- with much snorting derision, of course. However, on Knockturn Alley, Snape sticks out about as much as a thumb in a field of wavy Danish sausages. That is to say, not at all.
Much of this unwitting camouflage is due to the nature and habitus of the people around him -- indeed, amongst the scaries ankling about, Severus Snape is but a crow. At the very least, he is wholly human and without any of the odd appendages, growths, warts, and semi-transparent bits that the other street-goers sport about their persons (he doesn't count the birthmark shaped like a soft-ice machine on his lower back, mostly because he is blissfully unaware of what, exactly, a soft-ice machine is). The decidedly shady élan so proudly displayed by the folk on the streets is, in turn, entirely the fault of the wizarding world's new ruler, The Esteemed and Variably Benevolent Emperor-For-Life Voldemort I.
Yes, indeed. The war went to rot.
On this day in question, the apothecary (gloomy affair as it is, thus quite fitting for Snape and his invariably gloomy mood) has extended its offerings to a series of pamphlets that shoppers may peruse at will. Having perused thus, Snape has seen fit to express his ire in strongest terms to the proprietor, a man of regrettable practical wit.
Shopping tally for S. Snape:
- Gillyweed, 5 pcs ("How the bloody hell should I know whether merpeople like moonlit dinners or not?");
- Mixed table salts, 2 oz. ("Wha-- No, of course I'm not 'dating' a merperson! Are you mad?");
- Loggerknee's Liberally Edible, Lively Life-Enhancing Lubricant, 12 oz, clove-scented ("As far as I know, merpeople do indeed have self-lubr-- no! I am not!");
- Pamphlet: "The Ministry of Magic's Official Guide to Proper Stirring Techniques in the Manufacture of Potions and Other Various and Sundry", 734 copies, magically shrunk ("Diffindo!")
Upon finding the pamphlets (one through 734) amongst his comestibles, Snape has taken it to himself to multitask. We find him traipsing the length of the Alley, snorting at the obtuseness and amateurish dilly-dallying the pamphlet espouses. ("'Stir clockwise with a firm hand', bah! Mark my words, some dunderhead will indeed stir with a hand instead of his ladle, and you'll be in hot water then.")
Thus engrossed in such dross, it can be excused that he takes too early a turn and instead of wending his way to a shop that sells cauldrons -- the one owned by the witch that looks like her face has been a breeding ground for flesh-eating spiders, not the one with the three-eyed, one-eared, none-brained proprietor -- he takes a jaunt through the doorway of the establishment next to it. A rather shady place, this one, with an example of said shadiness in its dubious nomenclature: Gaylord's House of Glugs and Slugs. The name makes no claim to either the amphibian or the knuckle sandwich variety of slugs but instead it is, to put a blunt point to it, simply a case of liberal libation and libidinous literacy gone awry.
His vast nose still attached to the pamphlet, Snape utters fateful words.
"One round-bottomed twelve-inch, please."
Now, such a dry recitation of measurements and particulars would, one suspects, be reciprocated with the presentation of a cauldron of said m. and p. in the aforementioned establishment for equipment of that sort. However, our man is alerted to the decided lack of cauldron in his vicinity and he finally looks up from the pamphlet.
"Don't know if we've got anything that big," replies the grinning barhand. His words are punctuated by sounds that bring to mind a horse with barleys and hops of the fermented sort in his estomac.
"Of course you do," scoffs Snape; when it comes to cauldrons, twelve inches is a case of 'it's not the inner volume of the equipment, it's how you use it'. "And what has happened to Mme Foieveau?"
"Nothin'. Still next door, guv," the barhand says with a jaunty flip of the fin eastward-ish. "And would yeh be settlin' for a ten-incher?" he adds, grabbing something under the counter that Snape fervently hopes is a bartending implement and not, as he suspects, the man's personal swizzle stick.
Only then does Snape observe his surroundings. This results in a decided feeling of dropping stomach and gurgling intestine or, in other words, mortification. However, being a man perennially and perpetually paranoid about appearances and keeping up thereof, Snape does not beat a hasty leg out of the joint but instead, utters more fateful words.
"I meant I want a pint."
His pint of bitter is delivered in a smudged glass and with more equine snickers -- both details that Snape promptly ignores. In a cloud of carefully practised indifference of the sneering sort (naturally), he takes his hops and barleys to a table towards the back. There is a stage show in progress and it takes a moment or two of peaceful sitting about before Snape grasps the enormity of its particulars -- or at least the cheerful disregard of gender and proper wizarding attire it presents -- but when he does, it is a matter of judicious timing that he does not gargle, snort, spit, or otherwise mistreat his drink. He does, however, gag on his tongue.
Now, one must understand that Severus Snape is an Englishman of the traditional sort: horse-faced, old-fashioned, and blessed with questionable dentition. He is teacozy-and-tradition loving, rather conservative a fellow, thus virginal at least in the shadier shades of sexuality. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that it is usually the white ankle of an Englishwoman that stirs his loins, or that it is the Playwizard magazine that is delivered to him in discreet brown paper wrapping every other Thursday.
Alas, said ankles or any other white bits of Englishwomen have been sadly lacking in his life, and though that is but one reason for his dissatisfaction with Voldemort I's variably benevolent rule, it is the most important one; often, whilst in the cups, he has been heard muttering, "Death Eater orgies, my knee. All we got were stale canapés and harangues." Indeed, the last female ankle of any colour he can remember spying was Bellatrix Lestrange's when she had kicked the bucket at the climax of a Death Eater raid; the particulars of the moment when he espied said leg joint were so unpalatable that recently, he has been put off the thought of chasing ankles altogether -- not that he ever has had much success when he indeed has been in the mood, mind you.
In any case and in this light, Snape's begogglement at the stage show can be excused, for it is a liberal dose of nudity mixed in with camp worthy of La Cage aux Folles: wigged wizards writhing about in sequined bikinis, mouthing the lyrics to the latest song from Elspeth Sashwizzle and the Sashoons. The wizards are flanked by a conflux of gyrating house elves, the odd witch in a tie and bowler hat and little else, and, most improbably, a Hippogriff attempting to masquerade as some other horse-type animal, if the atrocious dye job of its feathers is anything to go by.
Once he has expectorated his tongue, Snape chugs his first pint down in about three swallows. For reasons that shall bother him to his (early) grave, he then decides against hieing his arse out of there and instead, orders another drink. After three pints, he thinks the music is becoming louder, though he supposes it could just be the buzzing in his ears. With Elsepeth Sashwizzle, the difference is not easy to distinguish, though it is entirely negligible when it comes to the overall effect of the art itself.
With pint number three being busily absorbed by his stomach lining and the rest of him feeling perfectly whiffled, Snape is joined at the table by a pint of lager. Attached to it is a young man who is, regardless of the beer be-wobbling his eyeballs, someone Snape could recognise even when Confunded.
"Harry Potter?"
Owing to, perhaps, the loud and thumping music, Potter replies with a jaunty grin and says, "I'm not hairy, but most emphatically a poofter, yes sir."
Though one would imagine it would, it doesn't surprise Snape that Potter doesn't recognise him -- after all, he was there when it happened.
It was Voldemort's coup de grâce, the fourth Unforgivable: Gropius Confundus Totalus. It was a brilliant if (Snape vehemently opines) entirely accidental collusion of disabling with physical means -- a ghost hand squeezing one's family jewels rather as if they were lemons and world peace depended on there being lemonade -- as well as magical. The side effect of the latter is, as was later determined, irreversible and utter memory loss. From the ashes (or rinds, as it were) of Harry Potter apres Unforgivable #4 was, Snape supposes, Hairy Poofter born.
Snape installs his empty glass on the sticky table and eyeballs said H.P. "What are you doing here, Potter?"
Potter looks at him as if he had suddenly declared paisley a religion. "I work here."
At that, Snape looks around and takes in the whole and breadth of the bar (to use the term loosely, he adds in his mind). Not the sort of place where a Death Eater well-aware of his standing in the world of their Emperor-For-Life would set a foot, let alone other, more cherished body parts. It is a place gone to serious seed, to dogs, to various toothsome creatures, is what Snape concludes, and thus, it really is the perfect place to hide someone like Harry Potter.
"And you work here, doing what, exactly?"
Apparently again mishearing (or, Snape suspects, suffering from addlement of the eyesight as well as the brain), Potter proclaims, "Why, I'm here to take care of you, pretty fellow!"
Whilst Snape's noggin noodles stall at the incongruity of 'pretty' -- after all, he is rather familiar with the contours of his face that, he freely admits, in no way resemble the gently rolling hills of Devonshire but rather, the white cliffs of Dover, complete with frothy turmoil beneath -- Potter drops his coaster and dives after it underneath the table.
"Potter, that's the hem of my robes, not a coaster."
"What're you blithering about?" replies Potter and pushes up said hem in a manner that Snape finds brow-furrowing, not to mention mouth-pursing and tut-tutting.
"What the bloody hell are you're doing, you blighter?"
"What you came here for, of course!" exclaims Potter and in one vigorous flick of his wrist, shoves Snape's robes up so high that his (Snape's, not Potter's) arms become entangled with the voluminous volume of fabric.
"Pot--" is as far as Snape gets. Unlike first impression might suggest, he is not calling the barhand for a potted plant or perhaps potpourri (though he quite likes his own secret potpourri mix of angelica, lavender, lemon verbena, and a dash of slug viscera); instead, he is unable to say the rest of 'Potter' because said Potter has, inexplicably and impossibly, closed his mouth around Snape's Little Snape.
Snape's feelings at this development are a confusion of feelings, everything between acrimony, alarm, and indescribable thing-ness. Later on, it surprises him he didn't try to push Potter away or, indeed, hex the living daylights and possibly other sources of illumination of varying liveliness out of him. Instead, Snape just sits there, mouth open and crotch region suddenly feeling as calm and collected as a bag of badgers in heat.
Always thought that mouth would get him in trouble, Snape reflects with what wit he has left. Not yours truly. And-- andahaaha! Goodness gracious, where did he learn that?!
As things progress as they often do -- i.e. with his upright citizen becoming upright-er, possibly with sounds Snape is happy he can't hear over the throbbing beat of the music, or perhaps it's the blood rushing in his ears that's making all that noise -- Snape attempts to rationalise by thinking that there are holes in doughnuts, too, and picturing Miss Magical April in his mind; the softness and general pillowiness of the lips gobbling up his pompadoodle make the mental image reasonably simple to conjure up. He almost commits the faux pas of groaning out the given name of Miss Magical April, but disaster is prevented because the parts of Snape-y brain that usually deal with word formation are undergoing a process that could be illustrated by observing a blancmange pudding congealing in its mold and then running a recording of the events backwards at a high speed.
Said decrease in cohesion of grey matter is a brief refuge, however. Potter's mouth slides off his bratwurst with a pop reminiscent of a bottle of Flitwick's Frothy Fripperywine opening, and then Snape feels the brush of a stubbled chin across his abdomen. All thoughts of Miss Magical April flee his mind -- her chin being free of stubble, Snape remembers from his close examinations of her various assets -- and he opens his eyes. When Snape sees the vigorous handjob Potter is giving him, his thoughts on the matter can be summarised as any and/or all of the following:
My gillyweed must be going ba-- ba-- ba-- badsobadohGOD!
He really looks no-no-nothing like his father. Rrrr. Gurfizzble.
Missmagicalapril! MissmagicalaprilthinkofbreastsMISSMAGICA
Where in the name of... something did he learn to do tha-- thaaaahhahaat that thing, that thing he's doing with his hand that's... that, wow. Wohohow!
Not usually a man prone to stuttering, S. Snape, but one can excuse his cerebrum at this moment, for he is suddenly overcome with all-overness of the feeling sort -- mostly because Potter's hand is doing a twirly-thingy kind of a move around his todger, and Snape's digestive tract, complete with the luncheon and beer it contains, is doing its gosh-darned best at imitating the flip-and-twist of it.
"Pot--!"
Once more, Snape manages but one syllable before Potter again swallows his tackle whole. Thus prompted, Snape's undercarriage decides it's time for a custard donation and, in an embarrassment of stars and heavenly cymbals and sparkly things, he re-christens Potter to 'Pot-afsdhagdhgdfha grgle'. Snape also performs an inspired mime show of jerking and twitching in a fashion that owes more than passing resemblance to anyone who has ever stuck a fork in an electrical outlet.
His afterglow, which is of the very glowy and vaseline-in-camera-lens blurry sort, is ruined by Potter.
"That'll be two bob, then."
Snape opens his eyes and glowers down at Potter, in his best glowering manner that Mr. Fudge always though deserved a special dictionary entry in the Oxford dic. under 'glowersome' or some such new-fangled not-word. Potter's eyes appear glazed, bearing more than passing resemblance to the perfect gleam of Mrs. Lestrange's best marmalade-glazed Christmas ham that she brought to the Death Eater pre-Christmas potluck back in 1997; in his state of post-orgasmic insouciance, Snape is utterly unable to worry about the incongruity of this memory.
"What do you mean, two Galleons?"
Potter laughs and hoists himself up from the floor, only to sit down like a sack of flour whose Wingardium Leviosa has suddenly expired. "You didn't think I blow fellows for free, did you? Although..." Potter trails off and smacks his lips. "Say, is that Loggerknee's Liberally Edible Lubricant?"
"Er. Pe-perhaps," says Snape in his best inscrutable spy manner of nonchalance and utter inscrutability-ness. On the off chance there are Legilimenses nearby, he smothers the inevitable recollection of exactly why Potter is busy smacking his lips (i.e. the self-application of the last of said lubricant the previous night and the resulting need for a bout of shopping that day) underneath enough Occlumency blankets to give one to each inhabitant of Hogsmeade and still have enough left to be able to keep his knobby knees warm through a Scottish winter.
"Great stuff, Loggerknee's. I use it m'self. So let's make it a Galleon and a drink!"
Giving Potter a fishy eye worthy of an entire school of cod, Snape rises and tosses two Galleons on the table; when the coins bounce once and stick to the dark surface like limpets on a Holy Crusade of Clinginess, he shudders.
"Buy your own drink, Potter."
"Aw, don't be such a sourpuss, Mr. Pretty," Potter says with cheeriness that would make anyone suspect the involvement of Emerson's Ever-Perky Elixir and elective brain surgery. "You liked it, admit it."
As he arranges his robes to something resembling order, Snape grinds his teeth together. He did enjoy it, gosh darnit, and not just when he was picturing the pillowy pink lips of Miss Magical April around his snozwanger. Mortified by this development and the adhesive feeling about his groin region, he hurries off towards the exit -- with a detour back to collect his various and sundry.
"Be seeing you soon again, Mr. Pretty!" Potter calls across the bar when Snape and his v. and s. are finally leaving in their intended huff. Potter's words prompt a veritable coterie of tittering and tee-heeing and pointing from the group lounging about the stage.
"No, you will not be," Snape hisses to the doorjamb, who promptly hisses back and, for good measure, tells the door to smack him on the arse as he exits.
So, we find Severus Snape again on Knockturn Alley, a globby feeling in his nonexistent pants and his arse smarting for reasons not related to said globbiness.
Alas, he finds himself adding.
Promptly, he considers pointing his wand at his own head and making a go at all the Unforgivables at once, even though he knows such a feat has previously been managed only by one person -- a witch by the name of Artemsia Marblenavel in 1698, resulting in a most spectacular dispersion of evenly-mixed viscera and brain across the counties of Somerset and Worcestershire. (Regarding the latter, wizarding historians believe this event to be the key in the invention of the toponymical sauce; to this day, its colour and viscosity bear a striking resemblance to the general consistency of Ms. Marblenavel's corpus delicti.)
"I am not g-gay," Snape says to himself -- and rather firmly at that, too, he is delighted to delude himself.
"Of course you're not, love," replies a passing witch in a tremulous voice. Snape is thisclose to hexing her until he realises she is Mme Foieveau, and he really can't make do without her twelve-inch, round-bottomed wares.
"I'm not!"
Mme Foieveau offers nothing of disputatious nature or, indeed, any reply at all; Snape supposes she is out of hearing range.
"I'm not," he repeats to the rainwater barrel now keeping him company, and then hurries off towards Borgin & Burkes and the safety of the Floo network.
It can be said that Severus Snape is a man of strong character and ingrained habits: he renews his Playwizard subscription until the day he dies. It is also testament to his staunchily English nature that it takes him three months of frustration before he caves in and charms all of his many pictures of Miss Magical April to have a stubble, green eyes, and a scar on the forehead.
Additionally, it isn't until after a year of mutinous internal resistance that Snape adds the Playwitch magazine to his subscription. Further thirteen months of visiting Mme Foieveau's cauldron shop and purchasing no less than twenty-nine twelve-inch round-bottom cauldrons go by before he accidentally on purpose wanders back into Gaylord's House of G. and S. and asks for Potter.
* * *
End.
Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! *runs away*
ETA:
furiosity and valis2 also had their unwitting hand in this, though I do think they'd like to deny any involvement thereof...Son of ETA: Fixed the use of a wrong word. Thanks,
hms_yowling!
