Close Encounter of the Potion-tially Dangerous Kind

(Otherwise entitled, The Dangers MySpace)

DISCLAIMER: I am making no money off of this, and this site isn't either. This is purely fan-fiction written by a weird person who has absolutely nothing better to do than write this stuff. I don't own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, etc. J.K.R. does. Neither do I own Star wars, Jimmy Stewart, Gene Kelly, Maggie Smith, MySpace, or anything else that I talk about in here. But I do have some of my own original characters (er, character. Cherry the Narrator. Woot!) in here. Please don't take her! However, if you do, I can't see what I can do about it. Just refrain, please?

It's summer vacation in the wizarding world, and, thus, students and teachers at Hogwarts are on holiday. The title of 'teachers' includes our favorite Death Eater, Severus Snape. Let's see what he's up to at three in the morning on this July 3rd …

Oh my. What has on earth has happened to our greasy-haired slimeball? To our bat-like git? To our snuffling Snivellus? (me: he he, snuffling…) He's not raving about hotly in his dramatic wizard attire at Hogwarts, or his place in Spinner's End; indeed, he is far from both of either of those places. Instead, we find him donned in jeans and a black sweatshirt in a secluded cyber café in Muggle London. He's blandly staring at an unresponsive computer screen. We can see a luminescent glow coming from the screen and reflecting off Severus' oddly complacent face. We tiptoe behind him, careful not to let the floorboards squeak, and peer over his shoulder. An-all-too-familiar sight greets our eye. Snape has succumbed to the rapturous intoxication of---MySpace. (dun dun DUH!) As we look, he refreshes his home page.

The screen reads, "Hello, Dave!" and a picture of Jimmy Stewart (me: awesomeness! I love Jimmy Stewart!) smiles across at us. We little wonder why Snape did not use his real name and picture on here!

Snape scrolls down with the mouse. Next to "My Mail" it reads in blue: New Blog Comments! Languidly, Snape clicks on the hyperlink with the mouse.

The screen blinks, then changes gradually to show Snape's blog. It was rather long and random. Far too random for Snape. Hm. This was getting odd…

Ahem. At any rate, he knew what it all said already, since he had written it, of course, so he scrolled down to read the comment.

Only one comment so far had been made about the blog. The person who had posted it had a picture of Darth Vader from Star Wars and their screen name was 'Lord Vader.' Snape apparently didn't know this person, so he clicked on their picture to see their profile.

Their profile was completely black, with red script. "YOU WILL DIE A HORRIBLE AND UNTIMELY DEATH" was the heading. The other information read: "Male, 100 years old, A Galaxy Far, Far Away, U.K." Snape also noted that they were online. There was nothing in the 'About Me' section, much less anywhere else on the page. Somewhat satisfied, Snape clicked the 'Back' button on Microsoft Internet Explorer to read his comment.

"I DESPISE GENE KELLY" stated the comment. This was odd, because the blog was about making ravioli and ironing, not about Kelly. (me: woohoo! Go Gene!)

Snape hit the 'Forward' button and went back to the profile of 'Lord Vader.' From there he clicked on 'Send Message.'

The "Mail Center—Send a Message" screen popped up. Severus began to type, fast.

"What the…" he wrote as the subject, then he quickly jumped to the body.

"What the h.ll do you think you're doing, writing such a bizarre comment as that?" he wrote, glaring at the computer as though for all the world it was to blame. " 'I Despise Gene Kelly' WTF? You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, yes, but do you think I really care? And why do YOU care so much about defending your opinion that you post a random comment on a complete stranger's blog? Hm?"

With that, Severus hit 'Send Message.' In a minute, the next page loaded. 'Your message has been sent.'

"D.mn right it has," muttered Snape, still sneering at the monitor. He clicked home again, and, after a minute or so, found that he had a new message. He clicked. It was from 'Lord Vader.'

"I know I'm entitled to. That's why I did it" the brief reply to his previous message surmised. Snape shook his head and hit reply.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I actually really like Gene Kelly. He's one of the most fabulous actors ever. So shove off, in other words."

He hit send message. The 'Your Message has been sent' screen cropped up again, and from there he went back home. A moment later, when he hit F5 on the keyboard, he had a new message.

"Would you care to fight over this?"

Snape nodded to the computer. "Sheesh," he wrote back, "If it's that important to you, sure."

He hit send message, etc.

Lord Vader wrote back: "You give your word that you will do your utmost to defeat me?"

"Umm…sure. Yes, whatever." Snape thought Lord Vader meant a bit of verbal fencing.

"Good. Meet me at the center of Trafalgar Square in ten minutes. Be prepared to loose. MUAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!"

Snape looked at this last message, puzzled, but curious. A quick glance at Lord Vader's icon told him that Lord Vader was no longer online. With that, Snape x'ed out his windows, deleted his history, and got up. On the way out the door he tossed away a plastic empty cup, which earlier that day had contained a now-consumed cappuccino, into a trash can.

He had his wand with him, thankfully, so he feared nothing that might come his way. Perhaps it was foolish doing this, he thought, but he was bored. Confronting a psycho who hated Gene Kelly at three in the morning would be far more entertaining than going home and sleeping. So, he went.

Seven minutes later he was in the center of Trafalgar Square, sitting on the rim of the fountain beneath Nelson's Column. The area, so busy and well-traversed in the day, was almost completely abandoned now at night, with even the latest of the show traffic waning. Snape looked expectantly around for his rendezvous.

Without warning, from the shadows emerged a stately figure in dark black capes, a mechanical black suit, and black hard mask. In the dim glint of a streetlight, the mask shone like a beetle's back. Snape began to get nervous. But then he realized, or so it seemed to be, that the man was panting from the exertion of walking. Well, perhaps, thought Snape with a grin, this man would be less to overcome than some of the others he had taken on in the past…ahem. Anyhow, the man in the beetle-mask was breathing very deeply and succinctly between sentences.

(deep breath) "Are you (breath) Severus Snape?" asked the strange man.

Snape was slightly startled. "Um…yes, I am. What of it?"

"I have come (breath) to fight you to the death (breath) over the matter of personal preference of Gene Kelly. (breath)"

Snape was startled; his username wasn't his real name, how did this rhetorical man know who he really was? However, Snape nodded.

"Yes, to the death."

He meant this in sarcasm. He little realized that the other man was serious. In an instant, the other man drew out of nowhere what looked like an old soup can. He pressed something on it, and a shaft of red light that looked strangely menacing and solid shone out of it. Snape drew his wand a split second later.

The Lord Vader person-guy slashed at Snape, and actually came dangerously close to hitting Snape. Snape threw a 'stupefy' at the other, and it temporarily stunned Lord Vader. However, in a moment, Lord Vader snapped out of it and sent another swish of the lightsaber (for that is what the red thing in a can was) at Severus. This time he knocked the wand out of Snape's outstretched hand.

"Hey!" declared Snape, mad now, and a bit frightened.

Lord Vader advanced slowly. There was a smirk in his very voice.

"You have been defeated, Severus Snape. Surrender or prepare to die."

Snape glared. "You won't get the best of me, Lord Vader!" he cried loudly, hoping that a policeman would come running to separate them soon. With one swift movement, however, he was able to reach his wand, and he picked it up. He soon had Lord Vader under the imperious curse, and was holding him against the column with it. Vader's lightsaber dropped into the fountain, where it sizzled and shorted out.

When he was certain that Lord Vader could not attack, Snape approached the other man warily.

"I will kill you now," joked Severus, roughly quoting what Lord Vader had said not minutes before.

Again, however, sarcasm was lost on Lord Vader. "You won't want to," he said slowly, still going on with the thing of breathing deeply. "You see, Severus, I am your father."

Snape frowned. "Pardon?" he asked. "I'm sorry, I thought I just heard you say that you are my father."

"That I am. (breathe)"

"You lie! My father, Tobias Snape, was a drunken geek with a pocket calculator. My mother Eileen Prince was a preppy cheerleader who just happened to contain a natural talent at potions. So you see, my dear sir, that you cannot be my father."

Lord Vader grunted in dissent. "I beg to differ. Your mother Padme and I had you before we were married. Tobias Snape and Indian Princess were your foster parents."

Snape stared. "Indian Princess?" he asked. Well, if this insane fool was going to play games with him, he may as well oblige and play back. Heck, he might even drive this fool even more off his onion than he was! So he went on, "My mother's name wasn't Indian Princess."

Vader laughed breathily. "Oh yes she was!" he debated. "She doesn't look or sound it, I know, but she was a third generation Lakota imported from the States."

Snape shook his head, pretending to believe the guy. "Ok, well, there's an example of something I never knew," he said.

Vader went on, "Anyhow, your mother and I, as soon as we had you, because you were so ugly and stuff (like you are now, muahaha) we couldn't tell you apart from a chinchilla. And so once Obi-Wan Kenobe, when we stopped on this planet for a time, exchanged you on this for a cute fluffy little bunny. We left before he we found out what he had done to you. Anyhow, the bunny was a lot less expensive and a great deal more attractive as it got older than you would have been, so it all worked out for the better."

Snape, at this, sarcastically fake-swooned on the ground. "Oh Merlin!" he ejaculated, "My worst dreams have come true! I always THOUGHT that I was adopted but no one ever told me I was so I always just assumed that I wasn't! And I was switched for a cousin of a rat…and Oh my Merlin! That means I'm related to LUKE SKYWALKER! NOO!" He leaned against the rim of the fountain and covered his hands with his face, to unsuccessfully hide the fact that he was laughing so hard that there were tears streaming from his eyes.

Vader took these tears to be of grief, however. "Aww, Severus, it's ok," he consoled his 'son.' "Come on," he said, "Son, give your Daddy a hug."

Hoping to Merlin no one who knew him was watching at the moment, Severus, somewhat high with more mirth than he had experienced since James Potter was caught asleep in the girls bathroom one day in his Hogwarts years with bubble-gum pink hair and a Muggle disco outfit (This was our darling Severus' work, mind you!), actually complied. He still feigned complete and utter distress.

They remained in each others' arms for a while, Snape thinking the situation amazingly ridiculous, and sure that the guy was insane. Suddenly, though, the Darth-Vader man started to chuckle.

"What?" asked Severus hotly, drawing away from his 'father.' "Have I suddenly become funny for some reason?"

Darth Vader began to laugh harder in reply. Finally, gasping, he managed to say, "Oh my God! You are more gullible than I ever thought!" His voice had changed to a heavy south-western accent.

Snape did nothing but impolitely stare at the other.

Darth Vader-man-with-the-outrageous-accent went on, "I'm really not Darth Vader."

Snape still stared.

Darth etc. continued, "I'm just a twisted old man who wanted a freakin' hug."

Snape snorted with contempt. "So who are you really, then?"

Darth etc. ripped off his mask. "George W. Bush, Jr." he said, stepping into the glow of the full moon.

Snape felt like barfing. He had just hugged the leader of those filthy Americans across the Atlantic! Sure, he had done so in jest, but that didn't change the fact that he had done it. "Why the h.ll aren't you over in YOUR country then?" he demanded angrily. "What are you playing at, coming over here, bothering us, impersonating the most awesome character of Star Wars despite the fact that he is NOT REAL! AND WHY THE H.LL DID YOU WANT A HUG ANYWAYS?"

George Bush shrugged. "First, I'm not in command of my country because Congress declared one day that I'm cookoo. I don't know why the durned heck why." He began to giggle in a most unmanly fashion. Finally, he somewhat regained his composure and went on, "So, to save the country from scandal, they hired John Wayne to impersonate me when the president, (they decided to move John Kerry into the post) has to declare something to the media or make a public appearance."

Snape shook his head. "All right," he said, "But why are you impersonating Darth Vader, and why are you bothering me about Gene Kelly? And by the way," he added quickly, before he forgot, "John Wayne's dead, you know."

George grinned demonically. "I know, that's why it's so funny, ya know?"

Snape shook his head. He turned around, then suddenly noticed a young girl sitting there watching him. To his utmost surprise, he happened to SOMEHOW know her name, though he had never seen her before. "CHERRY!" he cried, running over to her and embracing her. "Save me from this blithering idiot! This maniacal nitwit! This dithering ding-dong!"

Cherry stroked his hair. A little voice inside his head told him that he should like that, and, somehow, he didn't mind it that much. He figured that she must be the all-powerful Narrator. "Aw, come on Severus," she said sweetly yet sarcastically, "Come on. Let's go."

And Cherry led Snape off the scene, to a little delicatessen still open somehow even at three in the morning on a Saturday night. And they got to know each other better over the ensuing weeks, and they got married a year later, and they lived happily ever after, the end.

As for George Bush, I think Scooby Doo and the gang came along an hour later, chased him around to some cool-but-corny chase-scene music, and revealed that he was, in fact, not George Bush, but Maggie Smith…? Erm…

And then the Narrator (Cherry) decided that this story was getting too weird, and that it was past time to have concluded it.

So, in other words: THE END! (Muahahha!)

Thanks to TAM for having me sleep over that one night when we wrote this out together (even though I lost the papers later. Stupid me. I did this all by memory. Heck, it's good that I'm a musician…)

Hopes you enjoyed! Please rate and review!