Tales of Hogwarts: Of How It Came to Public Knowledge Snape's Little Secret
A short tale concerning the risks of shrubberries at Hogwarts
Disclaimer
I do not own the following: Harry Potter, Monty Phyton / Monty Phyton and The Holy Grail and all the characters here presented. I am only a fan of those, with better things to do but rather procastinate by writing silly fan-fictions like this one, making no profit whatsoever out of this.
sigh
Sad but true.
Prelude: So tells the tale....
Snape once was walking to his chamber at a chilly December night, deeply relieved and most unguarded. Relieved because he was able to save an important piece of information of falling into really, really wrong hands.
And striding he was. Left, straight, left, straight, straight, straight, right, up the stairs, ahead, ahead, open door, ... 'I've never saw this sculpture before... interesting' ... walk, walk, left, walk, open door.... 'Very well...'
"Where am I?" - he asked himself dumbly, standing at a room he never saw before in his life.
A figure, dressed in what seemed a black armour with peaces of 'shrubs? yes, shrubs', came from behind a vase of tall plants which was in the upper-left corner of the room.
He advanced towards Snape, who was paralysed by cluelessness.
"Ni!" - the figure said, as if cheering the newcomer.
The Tale: As it is told...
"I beg your pardon?" - the professor raised a greasy eyebrown.
"I am the Knight Who Say Ni!"
"Really? Whatever 'Ni' means..." - he crossed his arms, raised eyebrown matching his scowling lips.
"I've been alone in this room for quite awhile. My brothers, they've disappeared!! Help me find them!"
"What?!? Of course I won't! I must find a way back to my chamber, you silly man... creature!" - Snape turned on his hills to go away but the knight was faster and blocked his way out.
"Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!!" - the knight repeated insistently.
Raged, Snape advised (rather threatened) - "Step away, RIGHT NOW!" But the knight didn't move an inch nor stopped chanting his mantra: "Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!"
"Oh! STOP! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW! STOP, CURSED CREATURE, STOP SAYING NI!"
"Ni..."
They looked each other for several seconds before the knight broke silence.
"You'll help me find my brothers, else I won't stop saying 'Ni!'. I have good lungs!"
"I can tell. Now, step away, will you? See, I am the chief-professor of the Slytherin House, a very respectable Potions master here and acquainted with the headmaster, the great wizard Albus Dumbledore. If you let me pass, and I know you will, I'll be able to find my way back and, as soon as I wake up tomorrow, my first thing to do will be to look for professor Dumbledore asking for the rescue of your brothers. Now..."
"Ni!"
"STOP THAT!"
"Sorry. An almost unconscious habit. Please, finish what you were saying."
"If you let me pass, I'll look for the rescue of your brothers. Now, let me pass right away!" - meet Snape at his boiling point.
"That won't do. That won't do."
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!"
"You, in order to pass this door and rescue my brothers, must first do a sacrifice." - the knight proudly stated.
"WHAT?!?! Are you out of your mind?"
"Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!"
"OK! OK! STOP THAT! I'll do anything! I'll bloody do the sacrifice!!"
"The sacrifice is..."
The Knight of Ni made a dramatic pause, not even breathing.
"Yes!"
"The sacrifice is..."
Snape looked with anticipation.
"It's a most terrible sacrifice!"
"Oh, just go on!"
"The sacrifice is that you must go and fetch... A SHRUBBERY!!!"
Deep silence. Then a random cricket gives some of his music. Snape's jaw drops. It took him some time to recover from the shock. The knight looked so proud one would think he was going to burst with glee. His challenge ("sacrifice") was admirably taken as a shock by the professor.
"I'm sorry but... did you say that the sacrifice was to fetch a shrubbery?"
"Exactly!"
"A shrubbery?"
"Positively yes!"
"Here it is." - Snape swirled his wand in the air and conjectured a shrubbery.
The knight looked it with doubt, then proclaimed: "That's a lame shrubbery!"
"Oh, is it?" - Snape was fuming.
"DON'T SAY THE WORD!" - the knight was startled.
"What is it?!"
"OOH, OH! HE SAID THE WORD! THE WORD THE KNIGHTS WHO SAY NI CANNOT HEAR NOR SAY!! OOOOOH!"
"Are you insane? Which word is it?"
"HE SAID THE WORD AGAIN!! OHHH!"
"Bloody Hell! You're a serious nut case!! I'm sure you're Hagrid's doing; some exotic - not to say outrageously bizarre - annoying creature that I couldn't be careless to its existance!"
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! DON'T SAY THE WORD! DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!"
The knight started to rock back and forth. Snape shoved him from the door and went away.
He walked for almost two hours but found the proper way to his chamber. Till the middle of it, he could somewhat hear the faint cry of "Ni!"s and sobs. He tried not to loose his composure and shout a very gutural "SHUT THE BLOODY FUCK UP!!!", least a student or (even worse) a fellow professor surprised him.
When he was safe in his chamber, much more relaxed after some triple doses of firewhisky, Snape started to undress and missed for something. The letter... where was it? He was sure he put it in his robes but... it's no where to be found! Did he drop it? Did he left it at his classroom or did he...
"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!"
And that was how professor Severus Snape, the every Hogwarts's pupils "nightmare come true" (Slytherins excepted, mind you), was fooled by a pathological Ni-speaker/shrubbery-greedy knight.
Mysteriously, "the letter" was later to be divulged its contents through out Hogwarts. Before one can say "Jack Robinson", the whole student body (and the teaching staff, the house-elves, ...) knew that Snape had written a letter to a muggle company, a very dubious one that is, which sells penis enlargement goods - unfortunately for the professor and many other discontented wizards, magic isn't a cure-all. In the letter, Snape gave vent to his unsightly and small... well, wand, illustrated with pictures of it and pleas.
"It was a research on muggle's complexes! A RESEARCH! And Those pictures were fictitous! Fictitious, you brainless things!!!" - Snape for several weeks would bellow to any giggling student who crossed his path, trying hard to avoid effing and blinding.
That's the tale told at Hogwarts and written on the walls of the Gryffindor male bathroom and on every house's noticeboard (Slytherin included), side by side a copy of Snape's compromising letter.
Epilogue: The Other Side of the Tale
At the same night of the incident...
"Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni! Niiiiiii!"
The Knight Who Say Ni showed his best enfant terrible pose, which was very effective indeed for The Fat Lady couldn't bear the noble knight any longer.
"ALRIGHT! Alright, alright, alright!! Stop this nonsensical monologue already and I shall let you pass, even if you don't know the password. Anything in order to get the bloody rid of you!"
The passage was revealed and the knight made his way to the Gryffindor common room. As it was past 11 p.m., the room was fairly empty. Only the Weasly Twins were gathered by the fireplace.
At the arrival of our knightly knight, the twins started. "It was about time!! Blimey! We were almost dead with anxiety!" was all that George could say before Fred advanced to interrogate the man... er, thing.
"So? How was it?"
"I have fulfilled mine and my brothers promise to help you, noble Twins of Weaserland!"
"Ni!" - from behind the curtains, the knightly brothers came and exclaimed.
"Three cheers to our success!" said one of them and they started to "Ni" around.
"Whoa! Easy there or you'll wake everyone up, mates!" said Fred.
"Who cares?! We have the letter! Thank you, Knights Who Say Ni. We will never forget how you've helped us tonight. Now, if I may show you the way out so you can all go to your house-shrub!, shrub I mean, and have a most deserved rest... Please follow."
And nobody saw the red-haired pair leading those strange figures out of the castle that night.
Nobody knew why the Knight Who Say Ni made his way to Hogwarts and accidently (?) stepped in professor Snape's way, fetched his letter and made it public.
Nobody knew how the letter came to the public eyes so perfect everything was done by the genius twins.
Nobody knew that, early that day, in the afternoon, the knight and his brothers were happily chanting in a shrub nearby Hogsmeade when a band of dwarfs started to gather around them and poke their shins and shout, as if trying to expel them from the shrub. They tried to fight (by chanting louder) but it was for no result: the dwarfs started to undress and copulate, not caring if the knights were willing to give them some privacy or not.
The knights, shocked by such behaviour, started moping towards the road. There they found two red-haired boys, amazingly alike, and felt very obligingly towards those fellas, who were unusually obligingly in turn to help the knights by conjuring them new shrubberries, better ones. After this arrangement, the twins started to tell the knights about their dreadful Potions professor back at their school, Hogwarts. How he had taken 150 points from their house, Gryffindor (the best house ever, they reminded in each sentence), just because they had found a letter inside one of the cauldrons and mentioned to open it. The knights became very simpathetic to their pain and wanted to help, somehow, in order to thank everything the twins had done to them.
That's the obscure part of the tale that no one knows. Except the twins and the knights...
And now you.
The End
Authoress Note: I started to write this ffic somewhere in May 2004, while on a Monty Phyton craze, and it's my first attempt at writing a story in English, since my first language is Portuguese. Actually, it's one of my first attempt at writing a story at all!
If this ffic has a bunch of misspelled or misused words, please, forgive me. I tried hard to write correctly but, even in our mother tongue, we're bound to make some mistakes.
If anyone would like to beta-read it to me, I would appreciate. I found no one to do so before. Anyway, please contact me by the comment-thingy. :D
Cheerio!
Updated: Thank you so much for all the reviews! It's truly overwhelming to know that people actually had fun reading this. I sure had loads writing it, although my dictionary never worked so much in his entire existence in my shelve. XD
I'm really happy with this!
Thank you once more. : )