"You wished to see me, Albus?" said Severus Snape.
Albus Dumbledore glanced up from his astrolabe. "Ah, yes, Severus," he said. "Take a seat." He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, and Snape obligingly eased himself into it, wondering what the "rather momentous matter" might be that the Headmaster had wanted to speak to him about. The only recent event he knew of that might have been classified as momentous (at least, he suspected that the school's board of regents might have considered it so, had they caught wind of the gossip about it in the faculty lounge) was that Dumbledore had canceled his scheduled trip to the Cornish coast and had instead spent the past five days in Bermuda – but what that had to do with him, he hadn't a notion.
"Have one," Dumbledore said, pushing a bowl of sherbet lemons towards the Defence against the Dark Arts master.
Snape made a polite gesture of refusal.
"Oh, come now," said Dumbledore. "They're good for you. Make your beard grow. Here, here's a nice one." He plucked a particularly shiny yellow ellipsoid from off the top of the pile and proffered it to Snape with an air of quiet firmness, and Snape, who saw that there was nothing to be gained by resistance, took it and popped it into his mouth with a resigned sigh.
He was sucking on it thoughtfully, and reflecting that he had expected something with "lemon" in the name to be a bit more sour than this, when he belatedly realised that Dumbledore had handed him the candy with his right hand – and that that hand hadn't had a spot of black on it.
"Albus," he exclaimed. "Your hand..."
"Ah, you noticed," said Dumbledore, with a broad smile. "Yes, it seems I shall be able to bowl again after all, despite Voldemort's best endeavours. You see, about a week ago, Miss Granger came to ask a favour of me with regard to this League the students are forming; you know about that, I suppose."
"It would be difficult for me not to," said Snape dryly, "since I spent most of last Thursday endeavouring to restore a semblance of order to my classroom after Mr Thomas decided to block his partner's jinx with a Category-One cyclone."
"Did he, now?" said Dumbledore, amused. "I wondered where all the rubies in the Gryffindor hourglass had gone. Well, as I say, Miss Granger came to me on Thursday, having discovered a very definite snag in her and the other members' plans for this League. It seems that, under a very ancient wizarding law, every benevolent organisation of super-powered individuals must include at least one adult Kryptonian, and so..."
"Kryptonian?" Snape repeated.
"A race of man-like beings from a distant planet," said Dumbledore. "Extinct now, poor fellows, but quite an important people in their day – and their range of physical powers was something phenomenal. Enormous strength, tremendously acute senses, invulnerability to nearly everything except the radiation of a certain meteoric mineral – under the proper circumstances, even the power of flight."
"Most impressive," said Snape, looking remarkably unimpressed.
"So I thought," said Dumbledore. "It seemed like just the sort of package that befitted a Headmaster of Hogwarts – and so, being loath to disappoint a charming young lady like Miss Granger, I contacted a gentleman I know in America who I thought might happen to have a fragment of Kryptonian hair or skin lying around his shop and brewed myself a nice, hot flagon of modified Polyjuice Potion."
"Modified Polyjuice Potion?" said Snape.
"Certainly," said Dumbledore. "Ordinary Polyjuice Potion would have been worthless for my purposes: it would only have turned me into a perfect replica of my Kryptonian original for a short period of time – and, since Kryptonians are technically non-human, even that minor task might well have gone awry. What I wanted was a potion that would change my species, permanently, without changing my outward appearance in the least; I wanted to be the Kryptonian that Albus Dumbledore would have been, had he happened to be born on Krypton. It was a difficult thing to arrange, but eventually I found a recipe that worked – and thus I became... well, what you see." He spread his arms wide, as though inviting his DDA master's admiration.
Snape's face darkened, partly out of concern for the Headmaster's sanity and partly out of his native impatience for fantastic tales. "Forgive me, Albus," he said, rising from his chair, "but all I see is an elderly wizard who wishes me to believe that he is a creature from a distant star solely on the basis of an admittedly impressive curse recovery. He will, I trust, pardon me if I decline to join him in his hallucination."
Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. "I see," he said. "You think that the sudden reversal of Voldemort's curse unhinged my mind, is that it?"
"Something of the sort did cross my mind," said Snape.
"Very well," said Dumbledore, opening his arms even wider. "Then I think it's time for you to kill me."
Snape blinked. "What?"
"To kill me," repeated Dumbledore. "We agreed that you would do so eventually, did we not? And surely such a doddering half-wit as I have evidently become ought not to be allowed to remain in a position of authority. If you play your cards properly, you may not even have to flee the school."
"But, Albus..." Snape began.
"This is not a debate, Severus," said Dumbledore sternly. "As both your academic superior and your commander in the war against Voldemort, I am ordering you to kill me. Now."
There was that in his voice which brooked no argument. Almost without conscious volition, Snape found himself drawing his wand, pointing it at the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and shouting, "Avada Kedavra!"
A jet of green light shot from the end of his wand, and struck Dumbledore squarely on the tip of his long, crooked nose; then, to Snape's astonishment, it ricocheted off that nose and crashed into the eastern wall of the office, causing three mediæval headmasters to scurry for cover.
Dumbledore straightened his half-moon spectacles, which had been knocked askew by the force of the impact, and looked mildly up at the awestruck Snape. "Well, Severus," he said, "what say you now?"
Snape regained his composure with practiced ease. "My apologies, Albus," he said, making a graceful bow. "Your mind is every bit as sound as your body – and that, it would seem, is very sound indeed."
Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, a long weekend spent soaking up yellow sun's rays in Bermuda does wonders for the constitution," he said. "Incidentally, have you finished your sherbet lemon yet?"
Snape blinked, and felt at the tiny sliver of crystallised sugar on his tongue. "Yes, almost," he said. "Why, what..."
But even as he spoke, the last bit of candy dissolved into his saliva, and the next moment his entire body was seized with a violent spasm. The sensation that went through him was almost indescribable: it felt as though he were simultaneously melting like hot candle wax and being buried alive in Antarctic snow. He fell to one knee and remained there for perhaps thirty-five seconds, with his eyes closed in agony and his right hand gripping the Headmaster's desk as though his life depended on it; then, as suddenly as it had started, the spasm subsided, and he returned shakily to his feet.
The first thing he noticed was that the world around him seemed to have gotten much more intricate – or else he was perceiving much more of it than he was used to doing. He counted five different phenomena that he was observing without the aid of eyes, ears, nose, skin, or tongue – though what he was observing them with, he hadn't a notion. He also noticed that he felt much stronger in body than he had ever felt before; it seemed to him that he could have lifted a hippogriff by the tail and blown down the castle with a breath, and he was only mildly surprised, glancing down at Dumbledore's desk, to find that he had left three-inch-deep finger-marks in the wood where he had clung to it. But the most startling discovery of all was when he looked down at his hands, and found that they were covered with smooth, green skin, something like that of a frog, yet seeming somehow more fluid and malleable.
He glanced up sharply at the Headmaster. "Albus, what..." he began.
But he found that he had no need to finish the question. Without Dumbledore saying a word, all his thoughts were clear for his DDA master to perceive; the art of mind reading, which Snape had so often denigrated as a Muggle fantasy, was apparently another of the gifts he now possessed. He saw that the law that Hermione Granger had found in one of Madam Pince's ancient tomes required the Justice League of Hogwarts to have a Green Martian for a member as well as a Kryptonian; he saw that Dumbledore had realised the advantages that would accrue if his spy among the Death Eaters possessed the Martian gift of telepathy; and he saw how Dumbledore had, in consequence, brewed a second batch of modified Polyjuice Potion, coated one of his sherbet lemons with just enough to cause permanent transformation, and then summoned Snape to his office.
His lip curled. "You might have warned me in advance, Albus," he said.
"I might have," Dumbledore agreed, "but then I wouldn't have gotten to see the look on your face."
Seeing that this motive did not recommend itself to the new Martian, he added, "It's not so bad, you know. As a shapeshifter, you can change back to your old form at any time (should you wish to, that is), so there oughtn't to be any impediment to your living as you always have – except, of course, that you'll have to avoid fire as much as possible."
"Ah," said Snape. "Avoid fire. I see. And may I ask how I am supposed to do that, living as I do in a world where three-fifths of all travel is accomplished through fireplaces?"
"Well, as to that," said Dumbledore thoughtfully, "I doubt a Floo-powdered fire would affect you in the same way as an ordinary fire. But you will certainly have to live rather cautiously and cleverly from now on – which is partially why I chose you for the role, rather than, say, Filius. That famous Slytherin guile of yours may end up being more valuable than any other power."
"You flatter me, Albus," said Snape dryly.
"I do my best," said Dumbledore. "So will you be joining us in the League?"
"It seems that I have little choice," said Snape. "Unless you have a second vial of Polyjuice Potion in reserve that will turn me back into a human if I decline."
Dumbledore cocked his head. "And what makes you think I don't, Severus?" he enquired.
Snape blinked, and scanned Dumbledore's mind again; sure enough, there was the location and chemical formula of the pre-prepared antidote, together with a record of how Dumbledore had gotten the hair off of Snape's head. For the first time since entering the Headmaster's office, the DDA master smiled. "Truly, you think of everything, Albus," he said. "Very well, I will join your League."
"Marvellous," said Dumbledore, and rose and stripped off his robes to reveal a (to Snape's taste) perfectly garish blue costume with a red "S" on the chest. "Then I suggest we start heading down to the Great Hall. The other members should be waiting for us there; I believe that Mr Creevey is just about ready to set up his group photograph of the completed League."
And, in a swish of cape and robes, the world's two most powerful academics exited the office.
