Disclaimer: Anything you recognise belongs to the incomparable J. K. Rowling. No money is being made from this.
Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition – Season Seven – Round One
Beater 2 for the Tutshill Tornados
Round One: Snake Humour
We don't have enough comedy rounds in QL, so how better to remedy that than dedicating a round to Monty Python? For those who don't know them, or want a refresher, Monty Python is a group of Parselmouths… um… British comedy group known for their sketches, and later their films, using several different types of humour. It's the most well-known comedy group in the UK and the members have been referred to as the "Beatles of comedy" in terms of influence on the industry.
BEATER 2: "Hell's Grannies". Best moment? When the grannies start graffitiing "Make tea, not love" on the walls. Write about someone who looks innocent but is evil on the inside. (Tom Riddle is not allowed for this prompt)
Additional Prompts:
3. (object) telescope
4. (word) insufferable
14. (dialogue) "If I had a Knut for every time (...) said that." (fill in the blank with any pronoun or name)
Thanks to the Tutshill Tornados for betaing!
Warnings: Animal and child abuse.
Innocent Flower
Words: 1960
"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't." - Macbeth 1:5, Shakespeare
"Lily! Wait up!"
Petunia's sister and the Snape boy were half-way up the hill in the park and she was trying desperately to catch up. Lily must have forgotten to mention their plans. There was no way her baby sister was going to leave her out of a fun adventure. Not again.
Her parents hadn't even noticed them leave, glued as they were to the new television set. All they could talk about was "Apollo." Petunia had heard about Apollo in school; he was one of those Greek gods Mrs Appleby had told them about in their History lessons. She just couldn't understand why her parents were so interested in him all of a sudden. Perhaps they hadn't learnt about him at their school.
Snape clutched a long, cylindrical case and she was determined to find out what was inside it. He and Lily were already at the top of the hill, their laughter carried down to her on the light July breeze. She hated this hill. Reaching the top always made her breath come in sharp, wheezing gasps. She patted the pocket of her flowered dress and felt the familiar lump of her inhaler.
She began the slow climb up the grassy verge and kept her eyes focused on the oak tree at the top, its branches spreading like fingers across the sky. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. The words of her PE teacher echoed inside her brain and she let them guide her, taking one deliberate breath after another. By the time she could hear their voices, each breath burned like acid in her lungs.
"You're doing it wrong, Sev!" Lily said, giggles bubbling from her.
"Am not. I've done this 'undreds o' times."
Snape had what her mummy called the "filthy, local accent." Earlier that year, Lily had taken to copying him. She'd flattened her vowels, run words together and theatrically dropped her aitches. Mummy had been furious and said that if Lily wanted to talk like a commoner, maybe she'd like to live like one for a week. She hadn't been allowed to watch the new television, her mattress had been replaced with the lumpy one from the attic, and she'd been banned from using the indoor bathroom. Mummy made her use the scary one at the end of the garden. Petunia had been in there on a dare once; spiders scuttled in the cobwebbed corners and snails squelched their way over the slime-covered sink. Though she hadn't seemed to mind the changes too much, Lily spoke properly after that.
"Let's try doing it this way!" Lily said in a tight voice that made her sound just like their mummy.
"Fine," Snape growled. Petunia doubted he was actually mad. Snape never got annoyed at Lily.
She finally crested the hill, gasping for breath, and took a puff from her inhaler. The medicine inside felt like a cold drink of water on a hot day; it immediately soothed her aching chest. Snape and her sister stood next to a brass telescope. They took it in turns to peek through one end and point at the crescent moon that had just become visible against the pinks and purples of dusk that painted the sky.
"Do you really think we'll be able to see it land, Sev?" Lily asked.
"I don't see why not." Petunia watched as he grabbed her sister's wrist to take a look at her watch. "They should be landin' soon."
"Who should be landing soon?" Petunia asked. She was frustrated at not knowing what was going on.
"The astronauts, Tuney," Lily said with a smile. Petunia hated the nickname; she was named after a beautiful flower but Lily always insisted on shortening her name until it sounded ugly and cartoonish.
"What astronauts?"
"The ones landin' on t'moon tonight," Snape said and rolled his eyes at her. "You really are insufferable, y'know? How can you be so self-absorbed that you don't know about Apollo 11? Everyone's talkin' about it."
"Yeh, Tuney. Don't be so insuf—" Lily stumbled over the unfamiliar word, "insufferable."
Lily's words stung as though she'd been slapped. Tears hitched in her chest, but she tried to tamp them down. There was no way she would cry in front of the Snape boy.
"That's not fair, Lily." The tears crept into her voice anyway, making it shrill. "You should be nice to me, else I'll tell Mummy," she threatened.
"If I had a Knut for every time you said that," Snape said with a sneer, "I'd be richer than Midas."
"What's a Knut?" Petunia asked before she could stop herself.
"It's a—" Lily started but Snape interrupted her.
"Don't tell 'er if she doesn't know, Lil. Maybe she'll become less insufferable if she 'as to find things out for 'erself."
Lily didn't argue.
Petunia couldn't stop the tears this time. Her breath stuttered as they clawed their way up her throat and burned her eyes. She turned away and began to run down the hill, heedless of the way her heaving chest and sobbing breaths made her lungs ache. When she looked behind her, eyes blurry with tears, they were focused on their telescope once again.
By the time Petunia reached their large, semi-detached house on Badger's Crescent, the streetlights were on, their sulphurous glow staining the street yellow. She checked her face for tears in the wing mirror of her daddy's new Ford and tidied her blonde ringlets. It wouldn't do for her parents to see that she'd been out.
She crept into the back garden and through the rarely-locked backdoor. The television blared from the living room as she slipped out of her shoes and tiptoed up the stairs, the thick carpet muffling her footfalls.
Once at the top, she turned around again and stomped her way down, bursting into the living room.
"What is it, darling?" her mummy asked, turning to look at her.
"I just went to say good night to Lily, but she's not in her room. I can't find her anywhere!" Now she had both of their attention.
"What do you mean she isn't there?" her daddy thundered. "I sent you both upstairs over an hour ago!"
"I'm sorry, Daddy," Petunia wailed. The tears came easily. "I didn't know, else I'd've stopped her."
"Of course, you would have, darling," her mummy gathered her in for a cuddle, rubbing soothing circles on her back and dropping a kiss on her curls. "Now, run upstairs and get ready for bed whilst we look for your sister."
Lily was grounded for a week and forbidden to speak with "that awful Snape boy." But it wasn't enough. Petunia was sick and tired of how her sister ignored her and left her out. She'd looked up "insufferable" in the Oxford English Dictionary her daddy kept in his study. It meant "intolerable" or "too extreme to bear." She'd teach them. She'd show them what insufferable really meant.
Petunia was patient. She kept her eyes peeled for the perfect opportunity for revenge. It was almost a month later when Lily rushed into breakfast from the garden.
"What were you doing out so early?" their mummy asked as she poured coffee into teacups.
"Checking on Fudge," Lily said, helping herself to toast. "I thought I heard foxes last night, so I wanted to check that he was okay."
Lily's bunny had been a birthday present from their granny. She loved that bunny with all her heart and it gave Petunia an idea.
Late that night, she only pretended to go to sleep when her parents came in to turn out her light. She waited for hours. She fought against her heavy eyelids and listened to the tick tick tick of the clock on her bedside table. Once she was sure that everyone was asleep, she crept downstairs where she tucked her feet into her wellies and found the pliers her daddy kept in his tool box.
It wasn't until the following afternoon that Lily went to check on Fudge. His hutch was tucked next to the shed at the bottom of the garden. Her arms erupted into goosebumps as she saw the broken wire mesh and she ran the last few yards to the hutch, swinging it open to make sure Fudge was safe.
He wasn't there.
She was about to run for her mummy when the sun caught his mottled brown and white fur peeking from amongst the bright flowers that lined the edge of the garden. She dashed over to check on him, to make sure he was alright.
As she picked him up, his head flopped limply to one side and blood seeped from a wound at his neck. It oozed sluggishly in a ruby red rivulet across her pale hand.
She didn't know what to do.
She couldn't even scream.
It took far longer for Petunia to teach Snape a lesson, but she was patient. She ignored his jibes and focussed on finding opportunities to take her revenge.
She overheard him and her sister discussing his homelife as they walked along the riverbank one evening, arm in arm. They had no idea that she was just the other side of the bushes.
"How is it at home?" Lily asked, her voice soft.
"The same," Snape said. Petunia could almost picture the shrug that would accompany his words. "As long as I stay outta trouble, 'e leaves me alone. 'E's not laid an 'and on me at all since the moon landin'."
"I hate that he hurts you like that."
"It is wha' it is. 'E's a small man who likes t'feel big. One day, I'll be big enough t'face 'im."
Instead of the compassion her sister clearly felt, Petunia saw an opportunity. She rushed home and crept into her daddy's office whilst he was still at work. Carefully, she wound a sheet of paper into the typewriter just like he had shown her and began to type.
Dear Mr & Mrs Snape, I'm writing to inform you of your son's recent behaviour…
Severus slipped into his family's dingy end-terrace just as the clock inside struck six. He tried to stay out of the house in the evenings come rain or shine. He found it was safer to not to be around when his father slumped in after a day's work in the mill.
His mind on his tea, Severus didn't notice his father sat at the foot of the stairs, a sheet of paper clutched in his large hand.
"And jus' what've you bin playin' at, boy?" his father growled and stepped from the shadows to block Severus's path to the kitchen.
"I haven' bin playin' at anythin'," Severus said. He automatically stiffened his spine and faced his father head-on.
"Then why 'ave I got a letter from your teacher complain' of your," he consulted the sheet of paper, "childish and unruly behaviour?"
"No idea." Severus was unable to keep the petulance from seeping into his voice.
His father grabbed him by his scrawny arm and threw him into the stairs. The uncarpeted edges bit into his back, leaving familiar bruises. He watched with wide, unmoving eyes as his father scrunched the letter into a ball and threw it towards the empty hearth before unbuckling the thick leather belt he wore, pulling it free from the constraints of his grimy work trousers.
"I'll teach you to show me up in public, boy."
The next time Petunia saw Snape, a livid bruise blossomed across his sallow cheek and he walked with a limp.
A smile crept across her pretty face. It served him right.
She couldn't wait until the next time he called her insufferable.