A/N: This silly little drabble was written for my friend Kyle, who requested a fic in which: Harry has a drinking problem; Ron bursts in (somewhere); Hedwig gets drunk; and Snape has a penchant for BMXing.
I don't own HP.
It was fairly common knowledge that Harry Potter had a drinking problem. Well, the teachers didn't know, as he was always very careful to launder his robes twice a week to counteract the smell of liquor, and he brushed and flossed regularly, but the vast majority of the student population was well aware that the Boy Who Lived also Drank A Lot. No one ratted him out-not even Draco, who had a similar problem due to his father's constant unrealistic expectations-because they understood the pressure he was under. Hermione had tried the odd intervention, citing numerous sources which extolled the benefits of teetotaling, while Ron scoffed and rolled his eyes, but Harry had become proficient at tuning her out while appearing attentive and receptive so as not to hurt her feelings. Thus it was that one Friday afternoon, after the merciful end of a particularly brutal fourth year double Potions with the Slytherins, Harry took refuge in his dorm.
After ascertaining that neither Dean nor Neville was to be seen (Ron and Seamus had snuck off to Hogsmeade the instant they had been released from the dungeons), he drew the curtains around his bed, cracked open a bottle of Beefeater, and took a good hearty swig. Followed by another. And another. It didn't take long before his breath should have come with an inflammatory warning. (Alcoholism aside, Harry was and remained a rollicking lightweight.) By his bedside, Hedwig bided her time. She knew that once Harry got to the point of no return, he would start dancing in his socks, singing badly to tunes only he could hear, and attempting to pet her, at which time she would manage to get pleasantly inebriated off his liquor-soaked fingers. It had become a very enjoyable Friday afternoon ritual for her.
Professor Snape needed a break. It was no secret to the majority of the inhabitants of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that he had an anger problem the size of a Quidditch pitch, but it wasn't helping matters that it had been three straight weeks since he'd posted his profile on lonely wizard dot com, with nothing to show for it. In fact, the rude sidebar ads had even begun deviating from suggestions such as, "Low on potions ingredients? Let us help!" and, "Dragon watching cruises-fun for all!" to, "Better give up now!" and, "Really? Who'd be with you?". His final class of the afternoon had been a particularly infuriating Gryffindor/Slytherin double Potions, in which Neville had singlehandedly managed to blow up every cauldron in the immediate vicinity and scorch off most of Snape's hair in the bargain. Really, his hair was his one good feature. It was not greasy, as his slanderers liked to say; rather, it was exceptionally well conditioned, and Snape was privately quite proud of its health and raven wing sheen. He could almost have borne it had all the hair simply been singed off; however, the bald surface of his head was dotted with little black tufts strewn at random intervals, lending him the appearance of a particularly foul-tempered evil scientist. Making matters worse was the fact that his efforts to improve the situation had so far met with little success. He concluded bitterly that whatever Longbottom had managed to add to his vile mix before the explosion was resistant to magical growing charms.
He found himself pacing his study, eyeing the smoldering remains of his Wizarding computer. He had used it as a punching bag several nights prior, as he had no longer been able to take the merciless taunting of the ads. Ruminating on possible ways to expend his rage, he considered his options. Normally he would have turned to doing tailwhips in a secluded paved ditch near the Great Lake. It was not-so-common knowledge that the surly professor had been quite the BMXer in his day. Sadly, however, the magical termites which had recently plagued his living quarters, and that thrived as much on aluminum and steel as standard termites thrived on wood, had rendered his poor bicycle virtually unusable. He sighed as he stared at the wreck. It was quite clear that he was debating what to do to distract him from his bad mood, and a thought seemed to come to him suddenly. Digging in the voluminous pocket of his teaching robes, he retrieved something very small. Looking down at it with a smile, and rolling it from side to side in his palm, he seemed to make up his mind. Black robes billowing in his wake, hood drawn up to conceal the shameful tufts adorning his pate, he stowed his wand safely inside his pocket and swiftly exited the dungeons, heading for his favorite disapparition point just outside the Hogwarts grounds.
Harry had already begun dancing poorly. Hedwig watched with interest as he began shuffling to a driving K-pop beat. Where he had learned the song was anyone's guess, and Hedwig strongly suspected he was making it up as he went along. She perked up more and more the closer he got to her cage. At long last, the sloppy caresses began. Hooting blissfully, she leaned into his flailing hands. She was even more of a lightweight than Harry. In fact, the fumes alone were quite enough to affect her, so within minutes she was staggering from side to side on her perch and hooting in a rather choked fashion. The duo's happy hour was rudely interrupted, however, by a ruckus emanating from the common room directly outside. Harry, who had just begun to debut his version of the Melbourne shuffle, staggered to a halt mid-spin. Hedwig let out a belated hoot, and the two stared drunkenly at each other. Before either of them could determine what to do, the door burst open, and Ron not so much entered the room as fell helter-skelter onto the carpet in a jumbled heap of long, lanky limbs.
The redhead was gasping and sweating as though he had been running from his worst nightmare, which was, in fact, exactly what he had been doing. Ron's Friday afternoon had taken a turn for the worse when Seamus had nabbed the last Chocolate Frog in Honeyduke's. This unforgivable action had sparked a furious fight, during which Seamus had cast a rather spectacular Arania Invado hex. Ron had been forced to leg it back to the castle, too busy fleeing from his worst fear even to think about blasting out a countercurse. He trembled on the carpet, so relieved to have escaped that he almost didn't notice the six inch spider crawling up his pant leg. Shrieking like a girl, he shook frantically, trying to dislodge it. One magnificently cast Arania Exumai later, the arachnid lay curled up and smoking on the floor, charred to a crisp.
"Had to master that one, didn't I?" he said to nobody in particular.
A few moments passed, during which he gathered his strength and waited for his harsh breathing to subside. Slowly, he looked up, frowning disapprovingly at the gin bottle in his friend's hand. His sternness, however, was diminished by the fact that he was still sprawled on the carpet in a singularly ignominious position.
"Blimey, Harry, isn't it a bit early to be hitting it this hard?" Hermione's right, you really can't leave the stuff alone, can you?"
Incensed, Harry aimed his wand at his friend and brandished it threateningly, encouraged by Hedwig's squawks. Ron swiftly rolled to one side, effectively avoiding the poorly cast stinging hex, which missed him by several feet, but simultaneously knocking over the table upon which the owl's cage was perched. In a blur of wings and a cacophony of hooting, the door of the cage was dislodged, and the overjoyed Hedwig flew to freedom. This was more than she had ever dared hope for on a Friday night. Flying while intoxicated was a rare treat. Colors seemed more intense, and her owlish stresses were dulled. Without sparing a second thought for the unconscious Ron, who had sustained a whopping blow to the head from her heavy metal cage, she swooped gracefully out the open window and made her way through the darkening sky towards the front gate of the castle.
Hardly noticing the flight of his pet, Harry looked down at Ron. It was hard enough dealing with being rip-roaring drunk, without also having to cope with with a lanky, unconscious redhead with a bump on his head the size of a baseball. After about twenty minutes, Ron woke from his comatose state, and Harry had quite a time trying to drag him into his bed. Finally, he remembered he was a wizard and levitated him, dumping him unceremoniously on his pillow. (Harry's technique was considerably the worse for the gin.) Flopping down beside his friend, Harry slept the sleep of the alcoholically irresponsible.
Professor Snape gathered his cloak about him, preparing to disapparate. He concentrated very intensely. He liked everything he did to be dramatic, which was why he had developed a special, highly unusual disapparition modification. He had found that picturing clouds of black smoke in his mind's eye at the same time he turned on his heel had the effect of causing sinister looking puffs to surround him, cloaking his disappearance and adding to the overall mysterious persona he liked to perpetuate. The more Rita Skeeter pestered him for an explanation, and the more people begged to know his secret, the more reticent he became. Because of the intense focus this bit of showmanship required, Snape did not notice the snowy white owl, which popped into the whirling, shrieking vortex of the disappartion tunnel like a dustball being sucked up by a particularly powerful vacuum.
Hedwig was too scared to hoot. She had been hovering over the trees, minding her own business, and floating on a particularly wonderful breath of wind, when she was suddenly wrenched from her thoughts and dragged through a horrific, sucking corridor which made her feel as though all her feathers were being permanently flattened and stuck to her body. When the pressure finally ceased, she skidded through the air, nearly crashing into the tall grasses. Catching herself at the last second, she managed to get airborne and gain the lowest branches of the nearest tree, where she slowly began to recuperate from her shock. The fact that she had no idea where she was only contributed to her feelings of vulnerability, and she eyed the tall, black-cloaked man on the ground beneath her with considerable suspicion.
Snape had alighted gracefully, trailed by wispy remnants of grayish smoke, and withdrawn a small object from his pocket. It was, in fact, the infamous Weasley Ford Anglia, (magically compressed), which he had found two years prior while on the hunt for potions ingredients in the Forbidden Forest. It had been running amok amongst the centaurs, but he had caught and pocketed the troublesome automobile with a bit of ingenious wandwork. (Just because he preferred potions didn't mean he wasn't a dab hand at "foolish wand waving".) During times of high stress, he periodically disapparated to distant locales and wheelied the hapless car repeatedly on any available flat surface. He found that it was a surefire way of relieving tension. His favorite retreats were pristine areas of nature, such as large sunlit meadows surrounded by ancient forests. Hedwig would have been astounded to know that she was perched upon a cypress tree in one of the remotest areas in all of Greece.
He tossed the miniaturized car onto the dirt in front of him. With a wave of his wand, it expanded to full size, and Hedwig nearly gave herself away with a surprised squawk as she recognized the old Weasley car. Snape then pulled a second object out of his pocket-a small vial labelled "Sedative Gas". This was a concoction he had invented to fuel the car while simultaneously administering a sedative strong enough to control its unruly emotions. The car put up a good fight, but it was no match for Snape, who managed to sneak around the trunk and pour the contents of the bottle into the fuel door.
Hedwig watched incredulously as the odd man entered the vehicle and revved it up to full speed, making it spin round and round. There was a burning smell of rubber as the tires engaged, and dirt and grass went flying. She had never seen anyone do such a thing before. He was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white, and his brow was furrowed with concentration as he threw the vehicle into reverse and gassed it. Around and around he went. It was dizzying. Hedwig was so riveted by this strange sight that she did not notice the great gray Goshawk flying straight at her until it was nearly too late.
She was a beacon of brightness in a sea of green, and the hawk, unaccustomed to such an easy target, gleefully swooped in for the kill. Just in time, Hedwig was alerted to his presence, and immediately leapt from her perch, squawking and fluttering madly as she tried to gain height and speed. She was not quick enough. The great bird of prey caught her and slashed brutally. Twisting to the side, she was able to avoid the worst of it, but he still sliced her wing quite badly. As she plummeted to the ground with the Goshawk quite literally on her tail, she squawked in despair. The spinning Ford Anglia was drawing closer and closer. She wouldn't be able to avoid it. She was going to die. She stopped her flailing, realizing it was futile, and closed her eyes resignedly, her whole body tensed against the inevitable.
Snape swore as his field of vision was suddenly blocked by what looked like a large cottonball. It collided heavily on his windshield in a non-too-cottony way, closely followed by a great hawk with murder in its eyes. He swerved from side to side, unsuccessfully trying to dislodge the birds and free his line of sight. With his vision impaired, he was unable to fight centrifugal force and pull the car out of its circular cycle. It was with a sickening crunching sound, and an impact which snapped his neck forward painfully, that the hood of the vehicle made unmistakable contact with the cypress in which Hedwig had been perched just moments ago. The car then burst spectacularly into flame.
Long seconds passed before there was any movement. When an unseasonal warmth alerted Snape to the conflagration, he extracted himself from the vehicle so quickly that his movements were a blur, rolling from side to side on the ground to extinguish the flames that cloaked him. Hedwig did the same. The Goshawk, however, did not move. He would trouble owls no more. Hedwig and the Potions Professor sat upon the ground facing each other, panting heavily. Gradually, Snape felt his strength return, and reached up to his face to feel the damage. The tufts on his head had been singed off, and he was now completely bald. In his paranoia, it seemed to him that the white owl was mocking him.
What are you looking at? He was much too sore and banged up to speak.
The owl just looked back at him. Far from mocking, her eyes were pools of fright as the realization of her near death experience kicked in. Snape looked around him for his wand and, not finding it, concluded that it must have perished in the explosion.
Well, that's just perfect. I hadn't thought my day could get any worse. Turns out I was wrong.
Getting shakily to his feet, he gathered his cloak about him and held out his arm for Hedwig.
Come on then, bird.
Reluctantly, Hedwig weakly hopped up onto his proffered forearm, wincing as her torn wing throbbed. Seconds of head crushing pressure later, they were both standing outside the great iron gate of Hogwarts. Snape had no idea what made him take the little bird up to the Owlery to be cared for despite the fact that she had nearly caused his demise. Perhaps nearly dying together in the same accident had softened him towards her. Battered and bald, he drew his hood tightly under his chin, and made his slow, painful way back to his dungeon quarters. All he wanted to do was rest, but he had to research hair growing spells. He had a public persona to keep up, after all, and baldness had no part in it.
Snape's ardor for tailspinning in remote locations had effectively been quenched...for the time being.