Post by mousemaylikecheese on Jul 23, 2008 16:34:16 GMT -5
Alternate Universe, or "Horrors! I've got a seeress in love with me!"
Author's notes: This idea popped into my head while searching for fanfictions by ship. This story seems to be set in a non-canonical fifth year or thereabouts. It is yet to be determined whether it's any good. Characters are bound to act out-of-character, it's a alternate universe... There is minor violence in the form of child abuse. It is minor enough that it shouldn't disturb you. There are also several OCs in the past.
Chapter 1: Dragged spitting, gagging, kicking and screaming into the past
It seemed like a normal day at Hogwarts.
I repeat... it seemed like a normal day at Hogwarts.
Snape disappeared at breakfast.
*******
"Oh, yes, and well, I foresaw in my porridge that Albus is going to be horribly injured after he trips on a hose that will appear in the charms corridor. And you simply must do something about that group of thirty-one students on that one side of your table, Severus." Sybil Trelawney droned, munching on a piece of limp bacon and ignoring the oatmeal covered piece of fringe that was wrapped around it. She had come late to breakfast and had been forced to sit down next to Snape, in the only empty seat. Of course, she had planned this--she'd instructed Emmy and Rolanda and Minerva and Pomona on exactly where they should sit so that she could slip the potion into his drink. Sybil had a secret plan to bring more happiness -in the form of love- to the irritable Potions master. So, she had a love potion. "Thirty-one is thirteen turned around, and so it's very unlucky."
Emmy Vector cut in from Trelawney's other side. "But thirty one is also the first two digits of Pi, if you put a decimal point in between."
Severus Snape sighed and absentmindedly drank from his goblet. He had not requested pumpkin juice. And... there was something incredibly foul about the beverage today. Something like a botched... love potion? He gagged, and then fell victim to a curious sensation as if someone were tugging him backward by grasping him around the waist from behind. He struggled and tried to yell for help, but the air around him was suffocatingly hot, moist, and airless. Apparently Trelawney and Emmy(she was an acquaintance of his. Not a friend, but at least she and her numbers did not attempt to "reform" him or insist that he be friendlier) could not see him or feel him, for Emmy took no notice when he accidentally kicked her shoulder. The world went black around him.
*****
The next thing he knew, he was in a large, ornate house. There were overly fancy plaster fixtures everywhere, and he seemed to be standing between a dour couple garbed in robes and a young black haired girl with a red face, who was sitting, crumpled, in an armchair. She had been crying, he could tell. But they all seemed to be able to see through him.
His unspoken question was quickly answered by himself, for he looked down and noticed that he was suddenly missing corporeal form. He was like the ghosts of Hogwarts in form! The man walked over to the girl, ignoring Severus, and, with a smug grin not so dissimilar from the ones certain Death Eaters might wear, shook the girl quite violently. "Your mother's family are a filthy disgrace, girl! You ought to be glad we're letting you live here, now that you're going to learn proper magic at Hogwarts!"
"They are not a disgrace!" the girl replied angrily. Severus could tell that she was about eleven years old. Her green eyes blazed angrily as she gave the man cheek.
"Silence!" the man ordered in a grand voice, and there was a sound that Severus recognized--the sound of a hand slapping a face.
The girl flinched and cowered back in her chair. There was a red mark on her cheek.
The man, apparently satisfied with the punishment he had inflicted upon her, strode back across the room. As he did so, he came upon a shelf of assorted little items--keys, receipts, coinage, and the like. He nonchalantly tossed a stone at the girl. It hit her in the forehead.
Severus's temper rose. "Amelnda," the man said, "I'm going to get something to eat from those lazy house elves. I recommend you start showing her real magic while I'm gone."
The woman nodded, and began to do several spells that would shield later spells from detection. Severus was sure that whatever she was going to do was going to hurt the girl. So he followed his instincts--he threw up a magical barrier, and then proceeded to stand in front of the girl to shield her from any spells. Only after he had done this did it occur to him that while he did not have a corporeal form it might not be possible to do or be affected by magic. But it was too late. The woman let loose with a curse, the effects of which were something like that form of torture--the rack*.
It seemed that his barrier might hold, but Severus wasn't able to stick around, because he disappeared again, this time with the sensation of being catapulted through the air.
**********
Back at Hogwarts, Emmy Vector queried, "Was there something in his drink?"
Sybil Trelawney contemplated various explanations, and then, horrified at the realization that it had gone wrong, fainted.
**********
There was a mad man in this tower room. Clearly. Severus could tell it from his face. Once again, he seemed to have landed in the middle of a conflict. There were five people on the other side of the room, all younger than the madman.
The red haired woman had her wand raised in the air--there was a snake coiled around her wrist, and the blond woman was weaving a complex ward. The third woman, who had black hair, and was wearing Muggle clothes, was sending nonverbals one after the other at the man, peppered with Legilimens spells. Most of them were not working because the madman had his own wards. There were two men with the woman. The one, who had brown hair, was casting impeding curses against the madman. The other was approaching him, apparently for a duel.
The blond woman made a complex hand gesture which indicated that her protection spell was finished, and Severus noted that it was a sort of blast containment.
"I'll duel you, Grindlewald!" the black haired man, the second one, threatened, raising his wand.
Severus recognized the look in the madman--Grindlewald's eyes--he had seen it in the eyes of another madman, another dark lord, what was now years in the future. It was the look of a man who was about to kill. He didn't know whether it would help, but he conjured a large stone about eight inches ahead of Grindlewald.
"Impedimenta!" the brown haired man.
"Serpensortia!" the woman with the snake on her wrist.
"Avad---oof!" Grindlewald tripped on the boulder and was promptly bitten by the freshly conjured snake. He fainted.
"Alex!" the blond woman chastised. "That was foolish! You would have been killed, had that boulder not appeared!"
"Lila, sometimes sacrifices need to be made." the challenger said. "I could have distracted him."
"But Alex, there is no defense against the Avada curse! Oh, shame, shame, shame!" the red haired woman said. Her voice faded, though, and she began speaking in a hiss to the snake as she stroked it. So she was a Parselmouth.
Lila, the blond woman, began probing for curses, and Severus felt himself tumble out of the time period.
*********
For mysterious reasons, Amelnda Prince's curse did not hit her niece. Instead it rebounded back to her, and the thing about this rack hex, like electric shock from DC current, was that it did not allow the caster to release the spell and stop torturing herself. Fortunately for her, she had a protection spell that would alert an Accidental Spell Damage squad if she seemed to be in danger. But, because Edwin tripped over a house elf that had laid down on the stairs as instructed to protect one of the man's precious scrolls, he broke his ankle, and Ephineus Prince, Amelnda's brother, was called in to handle the medical care. Therefore, Eileen was taken back to her own home.
*******
When Severus came to, he was in a rather precarious position, perched on a doorjamb. Because the floor had dropped out from under him, quite literally. Apparently however, in this ghostly form, he was able to levitate without thinking about it. He might be at Hogwarts, but it didn't seem to be quite right.
Someone began to jiggle the doorknob. "Oh, come on, you cad of a inexorable, inevictable poltergeist! Open this door at once, or my name isn't Slytherin!"
"There's no floor in here!" Severus said, but he couldn't even hear himself.
"THERE'S NO FLOOR IN HERE!" he repeated, this time yelling it, but his voice was still inaudible. So he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances--he held the door shut.
"Oh, d**n." the person cursed.
"What's wrong, Salazar?" a woman's voice asked.
Severus ventured a peek down. He was hovering over a huge chasm. And , for the first time, he wondered whether he would ever get back to his normal life. Not that being a spy was a particularly fun sort of existence, but it was better than drifting aimlessly through time as a ghost.
"The door won't open. Probably that poltergeist Peeves. And I thought I told you that I wasn't talking to you, Ravenclaw."
"Salazar..." the woman said in a pleading voice.
There were a few muffled sounds in an otherwise vacant silence until Severus heard the sounds of kissing. He finally had the presence of mind to put a magical barrier across the door, so he let go of it.
Salazar tried the door once more, and found it openable. But he gasped at the chasm.
"Revelios Incoprealum" the woman said, and Severus found himself visible as a sort of grayish figure.
"We don't know you." Rowena Ravenclaw noted. "But thank you for keeping us out of danger."
That was all Severus had time to hear, before he seemed to melt, and landed back in his seat at Hogwarts.
******
Upcoming, hopefully... Chapter 2: The Nightmare DADA Professor
Questions that may or may not be answered:
Who are the people in the second history scene?
Why wasn't Slytherin speaking to Ravenclaw?
Why is this story also entitled "Horrors! I've got a seeress in love with me!"?
*do note, dear readers, that I mean the actual torture device, not the dishwashing rack of the Monty Python sketch. I'm not exactly sure why any one would create a curse to imitate the effects of a dishwashing rack, especially not its effects on a person.
Author's notes: This idea popped into my head while searching for fanfictions by ship. This story seems to be set in a non-canonical fifth year or thereabouts. It is yet to be determined whether it's any good. Characters are bound to act out-of-character, it's a alternate universe... There is minor violence in the form of child abuse. It is minor enough that it shouldn't disturb you. There are also several OCs in the past.
Chapter 1: Dragged spitting, gagging, kicking and screaming into the past
It seemed like a normal day at Hogwarts.
I repeat... it seemed like a normal day at Hogwarts.
Snape disappeared at breakfast.
*******
"Oh, yes, and well, I foresaw in my porridge that Albus is going to be horribly injured after he trips on a hose that will appear in the charms corridor. And you simply must do something about that group of thirty-one students on that one side of your table, Severus." Sybil Trelawney droned, munching on a piece of limp bacon and ignoring the oatmeal covered piece of fringe that was wrapped around it. She had come late to breakfast and had been forced to sit down next to Snape, in the only empty seat. Of course, she had planned this--she'd instructed Emmy and Rolanda and Minerva and Pomona on exactly where they should sit so that she could slip the potion into his drink. Sybil had a secret plan to bring more happiness -in the form of love- to the irritable Potions master. So, she had a love potion. "Thirty-one is thirteen turned around, and so it's very unlucky."
Emmy Vector cut in from Trelawney's other side. "But thirty one is also the first two digits of Pi, if you put a decimal point in between."
Severus Snape sighed and absentmindedly drank from his goblet. He had not requested pumpkin juice. And... there was something incredibly foul about the beverage today. Something like a botched... love potion? He gagged, and then fell victim to a curious sensation as if someone were tugging him backward by grasping him around the waist from behind. He struggled and tried to yell for help, but the air around him was suffocatingly hot, moist, and airless. Apparently Trelawney and Emmy(she was an acquaintance of his. Not a friend, but at least she and her numbers did not attempt to "reform" him or insist that he be friendlier) could not see him or feel him, for Emmy took no notice when he accidentally kicked her shoulder. The world went black around him.
*****
The next thing he knew, he was in a large, ornate house. There were overly fancy plaster fixtures everywhere, and he seemed to be standing between a dour couple garbed in robes and a young black haired girl with a red face, who was sitting, crumpled, in an armchair. She had been crying, he could tell. But they all seemed to be able to see through him.
His unspoken question was quickly answered by himself, for he looked down and noticed that he was suddenly missing corporeal form. He was like the ghosts of Hogwarts in form! The man walked over to the girl, ignoring Severus, and, with a smug grin not so dissimilar from the ones certain Death Eaters might wear, shook the girl quite violently. "Your mother's family are a filthy disgrace, girl! You ought to be glad we're letting you live here, now that you're going to learn proper magic at Hogwarts!"
"They are not a disgrace!" the girl replied angrily. Severus could tell that she was about eleven years old. Her green eyes blazed angrily as she gave the man cheek.
"Silence!" the man ordered in a grand voice, and there was a sound that Severus recognized--the sound of a hand slapping a face.
The girl flinched and cowered back in her chair. There was a red mark on her cheek.
The man, apparently satisfied with the punishment he had inflicted upon her, strode back across the room. As he did so, he came upon a shelf of assorted little items--keys, receipts, coinage, and the like. He nonchalantly tossed a stone at the girl. It hit her in the forehead.
Severus's temper rose. "Amelnda," the man said, "I'm going to get something to eat from those lazy house elves. I recommend you start showing her real magic while I'm gone."
The woman nodded, and began to do several spells that would shield later spells from detection. Severus was sure that whatever she was going to do was going to hurt the girl. So he followed his instincts--he threw up a magical barrier, and then proceeded to stand in front of the girl to shield her from any spells. Only after he had done this did it occur to him that while he did not have a corporeal form it might not be possible to do or be affected by magic. But it was too late. The woman let loose with a curse, the effects of which were something like that form of torture--the rack*.
It seemed that his barrier might hold, but Severus wasn't able to stick around, because he disappeared again, this time with the sensation of being catapulted through the air.
**********
Back at Hogwarts, Emmy Vector queried, "Was there something in his drink?"
Sybil Trelawney contemplated various explanations, and then, horrified at the realization that it had gone wrong, fainted.
**********
There was a mad man in this tower room. Clearly. Severus could tell it from his face. Once again, he seemed to have landed in the middle of a conflict. There were five people on the other side of the room, all younger than the madman.
The red haired woman had her wand raised in the air--there was a snake coiled around her wrist, and the blond woman was weaving a complex ward. The third woman, who had black hair, and was wearing Muggle clothes, was sending nonverbals one after the other at the man, peppered with Legilimens spells. Most of them were not working because the madman had his own wards. There were two men with the woman. The one, who had brown hair, was casting impeding curses against the madman. The other was approaching him, apparently for a duel.
The blond woman made a complex hand gesture which indicated that her protection spell was finished, and Severus noted that it was a sort of blast containment.
"I'll duel you, Grindlewald!" the black haired man, the second one, threatened, raising his wand.
Severus recognized the look in the madman--Grindlewald's eyes--he had seen it in the eyes of another madman, another dark lord, what was now years in the future. It was the look of a man who was about to kill. He didn't know whether it would help, but he conjured a large stone about eight inches ahead of Grindlewald.
"Impedimenta!" the brown haired man.
"Serpensortia!" the woman with the snake on her wrist.
"Avad---oof!" Grindlewald tripped on the boulder and was promptly bitten by the freshly conjured snake. He fainted.
"Alex!" the blond woman chastised. "That was foolish! You would have been killed, had that boulder not appeared!"
"Lila, sometimes sacrifices need to be made." the challenger said. "I could have distracted him."
"But Alex, there is no defense against the Avada curse! Oh, shame, shame, shame!" the red haired woman said. Her voice faded, though, and she began speaking in a hiss to the snake as she stroked it. So she was a Parselmouth.
Lila, the blond woman, began probing for curses, and Severus felt himself tumble out of the time period.
*********
For mysterious reasons, Amelnda Prince's curse did not hit her niece. Instead it rebounded back to her, and the thing about this rack hex, like electric shock from DC current, was that it did not allow the caster to release the spell and stop torturing herself. Fortunately for her, she had a protection spell that would alert an Accidental Spell Damage squad if she seemed to be in danger. But, because Edwin tripped over a house elf that had laid down on the stairs as instructed to protect one of the man's precious scrolls, he broke his ankle, and Ephineus Prince, Amelnda's brother, was called in to handle the medical care. Therefore, Eileen was taken back to her own home.
*******
When Severus came to, he was in a rather precarious position, perched on a doorjamb. Because the floor had dropped out from under him, quite literally. Apparently however, in this ghostly form, he was able to levitate without thinking about it. He might be at Hogwarts, but it didn't seem to be quite right.
Someone began to jiggle the doorknob. "Oh, come on, you cad of a inexorable, inevictable poltergeist! Open this door at once, or my name isn't Slytherin!"
"There's no floor in here!" Severus said, but he couldn't even hear himself.
"THERE'S NO FLOOR IN HERE!" he repeated, this time yelling it, but his voice was still inaudible. So he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances--he held the door shut.
"Oh, d**n." the person cursed.
"What's wrong, Salazar?" a woman's voice asked.
Severus ventured a peek down. He was hovering over a huge chasm. And , for the first time, he wondered whether he would ever get back to his normal life. Not that being a spy was a particularly fun sort of existence, but it was better than drifting aimlessly through time as a ghost.
"The door won't open. Probably that poltergeist Peeves. And I thought I told you that I wasn't talking to you, Ravenclaw."
"Salazar..." the woman said in a pleading voice.
There were a few muffled sounds in an otherwise vacant silence until Severus heard the sounds of kissing. He finally had the presence of mind to put a magical barrier across the door, so he let go of it.
Salazar tried the door once more, and found it openable. But he gasped at the chasm.
"Revelios Incoprealum" the woman said, and Severus found himself visible as a sort of grayish figure.
"We don't know you." Rowena Ravenclaw noted. "But thank you for keeping us out of danger."
That was all Severus had time to hear, before he seemed to melt, and landed back in his seat at Hogwarts.
******
Upcoming, hopefully... Chapter 2: The Nightmare DADA Professor
Questions that may or may not be answered:
Who are the people in the second history scene?
Why wasn't Slytherin speaking to Ravenclaw?
Why is this story also entitled "Horrors! I've got a seeress in love with me!"?
*do note, dear readers, that I mean the actual torture device, not the dishwashing rack of the Monty Python sketch. I'm not exactly sure why any one would create a curse to imitate the effects of a dishwashing rack, especially not its effects on a person.