The barber was fussing. He fussed supremely, twining his fingers in and out of one another like amorous snakes with agoraphobia.
"Some nice red highlights?" he offered plaintively.
"No," said the dark and sallow occupant of the chair before him.
"Perhaps a layered cut then?" the barber pleaded. The monstrosity before him was making his scissor hand itch. "A subtle perm? A wash and blow dry!"
Snape did not remove his eyes from his smeared and gloomy reflection on the ice-bright mirror. The atmosphere of Curl Up and Dye was infectious, cosmopolitan and vivacious as a multi-lingual streetwalker, and for that alone the famously aloof Severus Snape would gladly suffer any amount of snide remarks about his hair. "Just a trim please," he stated, as he did at ever visit. The barber whimpered.
The chair beside him was empty, but beyond that was a venerable white-haired huddle comparing white rinses. As Snape watched (from behind plummeting strands of his fringe, which the barber was sneakily shaping), the one wearing sky blue dress robes extracted a pretty little pouch of tobacco from one unfathomable pocket and stuffed some into his pipe.
Merlin lit his pipe with an effective little fire spell, then coughed furiously. His Adam's apple wretchedly struggled up his tortoise-neck, then subsided as the smoke filled up the sorcerer's lungs.
Merlin twinkled from behind the screen of smoke. White-bearded wizards get to be good at twinkling- they do it at pretty girls all the time. "Lads?" he asked, waving his pouch politely before the assortment of hooked and beaky noses.
"Don't mind if I do," Gandalf said pleasantly, and extracted a pipe from goodness knows where. He and Merlin spent as educational five minutes attempting to blow ever more creative smoke patterns, Gandalf winning with his thirty second Mikado rendition. Merlin applauded gracefully, then hocked and huffed his way through a good part of the pipe.
"Dumbledore old chap," Gandalf interrupted, "won't you try some of the baccy?" He addressed this to the third member of the trio, who had been twinkling at a fantastically gorgeous young woman who had just waltzed in, dragging a reluctant muscle man behind her. ("Now Samson, grunge locks are just so out..." "Oooh, but Delilah!")
"Oh, no, mustn't, Gandy," Dumbledore replied jovially. "I've got myself a nicotine patch! Only fair on the kiddiewinks, don't you think?" He pulled up a splendid royal purple sleeve and showed them the patch. Being's a wizard's patch, it was flashing and singing the British anthem in a tinny voice.
"Gosh!" said Merlin and Gandalf appreciatively.
In the meantime, the chair that separated Snape and the senior wizards had been occupied. A fresh-looking young gallant in a guard's uniform circa Louis XIV was fiddling nervously with the baby-hair moustache on his face. Behind him a startlingly handsome older fellow, in a musketeer's uniform of the same period, was tousling the young man's locks in a fatherly manner.
"You ought to get a bit off this side here," the older man said in an elegant voice with elongated vowels.
"A bit racy, don't you think, Athos?" asked the young man in a voice sewn stiff with provincial diphthongs.
"Not at all, D'artagnan," Athos replied indulgently. "It would bring out your eyes, and that would please Constance Bonacieux!"
Behind them was a quick giggle, hurriedly stifled when the quick-tempered D'artagnan spun about and gave the giggle-perpetrator a hard, fresh look. The perpetrator ducked quickly into the nearest chair and signalled a barber.
"Captain!" the barber (an aggressive looking ex-boxer) boomed across the top of a ridiculous feathered hat.
James Hook removed it with a deft gesture. "Avast, good sir," he said, "make it quick and make it slick. I've got a date with Queen Grimhilde in an hour."
The barber-boxer beamed beatifically. "Business or pleasure, captain?"
Captain Hook fondled his long cleft chin with his prosthetic appendage, wounding himself slightly in the process. "She claims she wants her step-daughter dealt with, but we all know that hussy has got seven live-in lovers and wouldn't be able to make a claim to the throne even if she did have any energy left. I'm hoping she just wants an excuse to see," he smirked, "little old me."
"Scandal," murmured the occupant of one of the driers. Captain Hook looked over.
"Toshin ahoy!" he roared. "Go on, lad, give me your best ninje."
"Ninje this, codfish," Eiji Shinjo, under the hairdryer, growled cheerfully, and tossed some sort of energy ball over. It set fire to a lovelock on Hook's effeminate hair...
"Bad form," Sherlock muttered to Watson, as a blade scraped across his chin, subduing the sparse bristle. "Throwing magic around in the barbers!"
Outside, the manager was putting up the reality checks. Rush hour was due.