Author's Note:
Round 2: Where Are We Going?
Team: Pride of Portree
Position: Beater 2
Location: Spinner's End
Prompts used: 5. (word) noble
1. (image) s5 . favim orig/150131/black-and-white-city-dark-grunge-Favim . com-2431975 . jpg
2. (quote) 'Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.' — Nathaniel Branden
Word Count: _2063_ excluding Author's Note
The Age of the Spinner
Severus Snape leaned over his desk until he was nearly touching the parchment with his nose. He was writing… no, that wasn't quite right. He was trying to write. He was perfecting an article for Potioneering Monthly, but every single time he thought he was getting somewhere, his train of thought was disrupted by bursts of laughter coming from outside his window. By the fifth interruption, he'd finally had enough. The Potions Master pushed back his chair with a groan and headed for the door to stop this uncharacteristic sound.
Spinner's End was a dark and creepy-looking little street filled with houses that were falling apart from neglect. The sort of people who lived there all seemed to wear a permanent scowl on their faces. It was, in fact, not picturesque in any sense of the word, unless, perhaps, that some artist had surely taken a picture of Spinner's End for their depressing black-and-white polaroid collection of desolate landscapes..
Apparently, whoever was standing under Snape's window had no idea that Spinner's End was a dark and brooding sort of place. His lip curled out of habit as he looked out of the window. There, on the sidewalk, knelt four children who could not have been older than thirteen. They were obviously wasting their summer sitting on the side of the street and playing with some… things. Snape put on his scariest scowl and then threw the door open on its hinges with a bang that was loud enough to ensure optimal fear.
To his disbelief, none of them so much as looked up from what they were doing. Snape's scowl deepened. Even here, at the home he rarely visited, most people were afraid of him to some degree and avoided him like the plague. Especially the children, which was just fine with Snape.
"Still, if at first you don't succeed, and all that," Snape muttered darkly under his breath.
He coughed in a markedly silky manner that he'd used before with the Weasley twins. Of course, the twins were harder to intimidate than the average dunderhead, but they always paled visibly at the sound of that particular soft noise.
Once again, Snape was ignored.
"What do you think you are doing, causing such a ruckus outside the windows of people trying to work?" Snape finally growled. Well, that did elicit a row of gasps. Snape allowed himself a mental pat on the back.
"I'm sorry, sir. We were just playing, sir!" blurted a timid looking girl who, with her pigtails and freckles, looked exactly like she'd stepped out of a children's book.
Snape turned to her. "Well, I don't care what you were doing. Keep it down-"
"Are you a vampire?"
A dreamy-sounding voice made Snape snap his head to the side to see who was addressing him. It was another girl, even younger than the first, and oh god she had that look. Snape knew it very well, though he wished that he did not. He was staring right at the trademarked Luna Lovegood look of I-am-going-to-ruin-your-perfect-day-by-being-utterly-random. Snape nearly flinched.
"No, I am not a vampire. What nonsense! Now, clear off!"
"But sir, we were only playing around. It's summer after all!" protested another. He seemed the oldest of the bunch.
"And what, if I may ask, were you playing at under my window?" demanded Snape.
"You absolutely may!"
Snape would have glared at the Muggle version of Luna Lovegood, but from experience he knew what little good that did. Instead, he inhaled deeply and tried to ignore her.
"You look stressed. Perhaps you could use some play, yourself!" the girl mused and took a step forward. "Maybe we should give him one."
Snape blinked. "Give me one of what?"
The girl smiled victoriously, as if the man had just agreed to hear a presentation on nargles and how to protect oneself against their thievery. She took a step forward and handed him an object. Well, she tried to hand it to him. Snape just stared balefully at the thing on her outstretched palm.
At first glance, he could not figure out what it was supposed to be or how one was supposed to eat it. It was a three-bladed… well… thingy… with a round hole in each blade and a bump in the middle. Vaguely, Snape realized he would be asking at his own peril but surely one question could not hurt much? Right?
"So…what is that?"
"It's a spinner, sir."
"And what…does one do with a spinner?"
"You spin it!"
"Ah, silly me." He looked up at the girl. "And you are saying that this is why you've been causing a riot under my window?"
"It was hardly a riot, sir!" The older boy rushed to Muggle-Luna Lovegood's defense like a noble knight. "We were just a bit excited."
Snape sneered, having no use for knights. "My whole house shook with the sound!"
"Yeah, well, this dump would probably shake in a stiff breeze!" someone muttered under their breath.
Snape turned and made himself look as tall and scary as he could. "Who said that?"
Four angelic faces stared back at him. He sighed inwardly. It was half past four already and he still had the article to finish. "My point stands. Clear off and find somewhere else to play!"
He was satisfied to see that he still had a bit of influence left because three of the children scattered away from him at a run before he could blink.
The fourth child cleared their throat and Snape nearly groaned. He could guess who it was even before he sent a piercing glare down at her.
Miss-Muggle-Luna Lovegood was still holding out the…spinner thingy…towards him with a smile on her face. "Here. You can have this, sir. Maybe it will help you get rid of some of that stress. Chases away the energy vampires too!"
Snape had enough common sense to know two things. One, that he should never ever ask what an energy vampire was, and two, he would have to accept the gift to get the girl to leave.
Still, his dignity put up a bit of a fight. He growled again, tried one more deep scowl, and then finally snatched the thing right out from the girl's palm before stalking back into the house.
"Good luck fighting the energy suckers!" the girl loudly declared.
As Snape risked a glance over his shoulder, he saw the girl skip away whistling a happy tune both irritatingly loudly and nerve-gratingly badly.
Once inside, Snape discarded the spinner on his table and sat back down. Now he would be finally able to focus on writing without suffering from the incessant annoying sound of children laughing.
Three hours later, he was still sitting in the same spot, his fingers covered with ink and the floor all but invisible under crumpled pieces of parchment. It seemed that the article, which was about the ethical and moral limits of potion creation, simply did not want to be written no matter how hard he tried. He groaned and balled up another piece, threw it at the fireplace, and missed by about a mile.
Having had enough and feeling a headache developing he abruptly stood up and began walking around the table inwardly cursing Minerva for talking him into doing this. Then his eyes landed on the...thing.
Snape blinked and in anger he lifted the thing up to throw that at the fire as well. He twirled it between his fingers, taking aim, when suddenly the perfect opening for his article came to mind: "A man named Nathaniel Branden once said: «Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.» I would like you all now to allow yourselves to try to imagine all the possibilities of true and complete freedom. Furthermore, try to see how far we could advance if we stopped limiting ourselves."
With the spinner in his left hand, he sat down and began furiously scribbling again with his right, the quill scraping against the parchment in a slow and sure rhythm. Without even noticing it, he began unconsciously playing with the damn Muggle thing, spinning it between two fingers. He started to make it spin and then kept it perfectly balanced on the tip of his finger without even realizing it. The article was coming along just perfectly, if he said so himself. Finally, he put the quill down and straightened up in the chair. His eyes read over the paper carefully as he threw the spinner thingy from one hand to another, trying his best to keep it spinning non-stop. The article was by far the best he'd ever written.
"What on earth is Professor Snape playing with?" whispered one voice.
"Hush, he'll hear us!" reprimanded another.
"He looks silly! What even is that thing?"
"I don't know, Finnigan, why don't you go ask?"
Finnigan never did because even if Hogwarts' scariest professor wanted to play with what looked suspiciously like a Muggle toy, asking him about it would not have been what one would consider a smart move.
Somewhere in the distance, someone was screaming. The poor sod had displeased Lord Voldemort and was now paying the price. Snape sighed and watched the spinner as it spun in perfect balance on his left index finger. The pleasing sound pushed everything but the spinner out of his mind and allowed for some peace and calm instead of the usual fear and violence. Only downside was having to charm the spinner to be invisible so that other death eaters would not have questions. Which meant that Bellatrix Lestrange was starting to think him a simpleton for standing in an empty room and examining his finger.
"I'm glad to see that you are taking the energy vampire problem seriously!" remarked Luna Lovegood in her melodious voice.
Snape groaned inwardly but refrained from commenting. Apparently the Lunas of this world were at least consistent in their craziness.
"I can see that you're already much calmer. It certainly chases them off rather well!" The girl nodded like a doctor approving of a patient's progress. Then she tilted her head to the side. "Can you balance it on your nose, too?"
For once, Snape's growl made the girl get lost.
The spinner got caught in Dumbeldore's beard. Snape had not meant to do it. He'd just been heading down the hallway, completely lost in thought, when he'd bumped into the old man. The thingy made a nice swirl and gathered up half of the old fool's beard. Dumbledore smiled happily and picked the odd thing up. He twirled it between his fingers. This was in no way a good sign.
Dumbledore was twirling the spinner between his fingers as he spoke to the students in the Great Hall. It had become a competition. The Gryffindors were doing the most daring spinning tricks. The Slytherins spun their green spinners, trying to emulate the precision of their Head of House. The Ravenclaws were writing papers on the history and physics of spinner tricks and Hufflepuffs were enjoying how everyone was united in engaging in the same fad.
Of course, once the Weasley twins began spelling spinners to play pranks on unsuspecting players, the school began spiraling into chaos. Snape narrowly escaped getting turned into a toad by one spinner and he found a poor Hufflepuff later that day staring at a perpetually spinning one in a catatonic state.
Minerva finally had enough and declared a school wide ban on the spinners. Only Snape was allowed to keep his because he sometimes let Minerva play with it when she was in cat form. He was, however, ordered never to use it in class. Thus came the end of the age of the spinner at Hogwarts. But in his quarters or back at Spinner's End, he'd take it out and think of Muggle-Luna Lovegood while spinning the irritatingly enjoyable spinner over and over again.
When the war was finally over, it was won partially because of his ability to focus so well in front of Voldemort. That summer, Snape sat in his wingback chair at the drab little house on Spinner's End and, though he'll deny ever having done it if anyone were to confront him, he spun the spinner and balanced it perfectly on the tip of his long and elegant nose.