Hicks, Sticks, and Ugly Chicks Part 2
A/N: Part 2! Dos! Aren't you just spiffing? Um, in this part, a slight realization is made. Someone has apparently gotten confused about the other someone. Well, don't just take our word for it. Read. Dragonwings wants to say hi to Quaxo because Quaxo reviewed Part 1 and is her idol. Thankies! J
Severus fell to his knees in despair. "I didn't know who was opening the curtain, Sis or Mama. I figured it was Sis, but it was Mama, and it was too late when I finally realized it! I'm sorry Lovey… er… Voldemort, sir!" Tears streamed down his face and he wailed hopelessly. His hair looked greasier than ever, and his Muggle clothes were so ripped that they were indistinguishable from a pair of dishrags.
"It's all right, Sevvy, don't worry! We've got each other, and that's all that matters!"
"Don't call me Sevvy." Severus moaned.
"OK, Sev."
"Grrr…" But the situation did seem hopeless. There was nothing they could do except to walk all the way to Snape manor, and it didn't seem very promising. "I guess we'll just go back to London and forget about my relatives…"
In a puff of violet smoke, Dumbledore appeared, tauntingly holding the coveted wand within his grip. Severus ran and jumped for it, but Dumbledore simply levitated higher and allowed Severus to fall flat on the ground. "No sir, you're not getting your wand back until you go reconcile with your poor relatives."
"Oh, THAT'S likely…" Severus whispered under his breath.
"I don't care whether it's likely or not, you have to do it. I'll see you when you've made good with your family." Then, just as he had appeared, Dumbledore disappeared. Severus and Voldemort promptly groaned. Suddenly, Voldemort spoke.
"Wait… why am I staying here? I can leave you anytime I want. I think I'll be going now…. Bu-bye!"
"No… Voldemort… I, ah, need you!" Voldemort looked skeptical. "Ah, Lovey, I need you! You're the, er, light of my life!"
"All right, I suppose I will stay. If you insist, my dear."
"Fine, I need to get to Snape Manor and get rid of these pests."
"Well, why aren't we apparating?"
"I have no wand." Snape said dismally.
"True."
"Well, let's start walking."
"Uh, sweetheart, how far is it from here to Snape Manor?" Voldemort asked inconspicuously.
"I don't know and don't call me sweetheart!"
"Fine, I won't call you sweetheart, sweetie. Your Voldie will get us out of this mess!"
"Stop speaking to me like I'm a child, nincompoop!"
"Now, now, hold your tongue." Voldemort joked, a smile on his face.
"Oh, stop talking and start walking."
So they walked aimlessly down the grassy prairie, not sure what they were looking for, not sure what they would find. What they did find was disturbing. A horse and an ox were roaming around together.
"Well, this is just our luck! Two pack animals just for us. You may have the horse, my sweet."
Snape muttered, Ignorant git, under his breath and mounted the horse. He hated riding bareback but he had no choice. At least he wasn't stuck with the ox. Snape began to gallop off, but Voldemort's whimpers brought him back.
"Please don't run away! I know you have a wonderfully free spirit, but I'm a bit slow. Forgive me sweetie." Voldemort sighed as he kicked away at the ox. Snape hopped off the horse and searched around for a tough-looking plant. He found a dry reed, plucked it, and then remounted the horse. He backed a few meters away from the ox then charged at it at break-neck speed. He reached his skeleton arm back as far as he could then, with an almighty crack, he hit the ox on the rump with the reed. If there was one useful thing his relatives had taught him, it was to never smack an ox on the rump. Our hero gripped the horse's mane and continued at a run. The ox bellowed and then began to chase after Snape with Voldemort clinging to the ox's horns. At that moment, the horse realized the ox was chasing it with the intent of making horse-kabobs. The horse gave a loud whinny then galloped faster. Snape steered the horse directly to the north in hopes on heading for a town or a village.
About three kilometers later, Snape saw a speck in the distance. He sped on toward the speck, calling Voldemort and the ox after him. He kept his head turned toward his partner at all times to make sure no damage was being done to him, the ox, or…er… anything else.
"Come on, lazy!" Snape cried. "I want to get home now!"
"I'm trying, it's just not that simple, my sweet!" Voldemort crowed.
Suddenly, Severus turned around, and what he saw caused both he and his horse to stop dead in their tracks. Snape manor was just beyond the next hill, and normally, that wouldn't have been so disturbing. However, when your manor used to be gray, seeing it tye-dyed comes as a bit of a shock. "Those stupid hicks!" Severus yelled. "I'll get them!"
Finally, Voldemort's ox took this opportunity to run faster than ever… and run it did… right straight into the buttox of Severus Snape's horse. This jolted Voldemort forward, who crashed into Snape, and they both flew like geese all the way to the sickeningly Arkansasish manor, the ox and the horse completely forgotten, and the only thing in their scrawny little heads was one feeling: pain. With a disgusting and disturbing thud, both Severus and Voldemort landed right on the doorstep of the mansion, which had a cow skull laying nonchalantly on the front porch and at least eleven pairs of neon cowboy boots in disarrayed rows. Rubbing their behinds, the pair groaned with remorse.
The crash was loud enough to make Sis come outside. "Sevvy! We was all lookin' fer ya and yer Lovey! Git inside here and say howdy to Slappy Jack and Bubba!" she bellowed as she, yet again, scooped Severus and Voldemort up in her mammoth arms and flung them to the floor past the door frame. The only good thing about this family was their short-term memory, which was almost non existant. This meant they forgave easily, one fact that Severus greatly enjoyed. Now, if you had been thrown on the floor of a manor, it would hurt… if the manor had stone floors. Well, Snape Manor DID have stone floors… at one point in time. It looked as if the family had carelessly ripped up the spotless Italian tile and replaced it with… hay. Stringy, golden and prickly hay. It was protruding from every part of Severus and Voldemort's bodies. In their hair, between their toes, stuffed inside their shirt… Severus coughed violently and steadied himself. Standing up, he began to greet his family, trying to make good with them so he could have his precious wand back before vacation was over.
"Hello, Ima Gene…" here he paused and shook her hand with a terribly sweet smile upon his face, "Hello, Big Mama…" he shook her hand as well, "and hello to Bubba and Slappy Jack."
"What's that?" Said Slappy Jack. "Didja say somethin' 'bout my crappy back? Yeah, I been knowin' fer awhile dat it's gone, but ya know, I didn't think you young 'uns would notice." Severus shook his head in disgust.
"Such language!" Said Voldemort in reply. "Don't talk like that around my precious baby!" He cuddled his 'baby' and set to chiding the rest of the family.
The man known as Slappy Jack was perhaps a little over three feet tall and very plump. His belly sagged out from his pants, making him look quite top-heavy and perhaps slightly dangerous. When Slappy opened his mouth, rows of black and yellow teeth would greet everyone in the room. The stench that came from him was almost unbearable, as if one needed a clothespin on their nose to breathe normally in the house. His plaid shirt was red, as traditional plaid shirts are, and on the right sleeve a patch was sewn on that read "I Won 2nd Place at the Live Pig-Eating contest at the Arkansas State Fair." His jeans were ripped at the knees and had rainbow suspenders holding them up, so where the waist of the jeans should have been, they were nearly past his chest.
Then there was Bubba. Bubba was a, quote, "young feller" of about twenty eight years. He had straw blonde hair and gray eyes that looked incredulously dull. He was quite attractive for a hick, and his smile was worth a million words. In fact, Bubba was downright handsome… until you saw his feet. Problem was, he HAD no feet. Actually, he sort of had feet. See, when Bubba was three, he got his feet caught in a plow and was dragged halfway across Arkansas. His feet had to be amputated by a local farmer and, of course, such a poor job was done that Big Mama decided she'd put duck feet on her little baby to make it all better. Sure enough, Bubba learned how to use those duck feet, as rotten and smelly as they were. Naturally, he didn't have a girlfriend. Well, he'd have one for a day, and then they'd look down. Severus thought he might be the only sane one in the family besides himself, but that was before the accident that left him senseless as well as footless.
"Where've ya been Sevvy? Out chasin' those durned rabbits again?" Big Mama bellowed.
Severus just smiled sweetly as he could, since he was not used to that sort of thing, and replied,
"No mother, I was out with, um, Lovey."
This time, Big Mama grinned her yellow grin back at him, chuckling merrily. "That's all right, Sev, I git it. Now, go on down ter da grub area, we got some fine chicken stirrin' up in dat dere pan. You and yer Lovey can go eat some of it."
So, Severus and Voldemort walked into the kitchen, tired and hungry. Severus wasn't even appalled when he saw that his elegant gothic dining table had been replaced by wooden barrels and carboard… that's how bad he felt. The old gray stone that used to adorn the walls had been covered by posters of country stars and splashes of red and gold paint. Snape was too tired to notice that those were the colors of Gryffindor. He simply plopped down on a barrel next to Voldemort, ate fried southern chicken off two old frisbees, and drank cold ice tea with lemon and a little pink umbrella on the side. He wanted to slaughter them all, but he was exahusted and he didn't have his wand.
Oh well. At least he could let Voldemort escape.
"My lord, now is your chance. Get out while you can." Snape murmered.
"But I wouldn't do that to someone I love!" Cried Voldemort with an obvious passion. You could almost see the little pink hearts in his eyes and with every thump of his real heart, you could almost hear, "Snape", "Snape", as the exact rythm.
"WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?" Severus shouted above the din created by the surrounding country music as he dropped his neon red plastic frisbee of chicken and fell off the creaking wine barrel that served as his chair.
"I said I love you." Voldemort blushed, and turned his head away in shame.
"Are you a madman? We are two well-educated men, not hicks, and we very well know how wrong it is to…." Snape was interrupted.
"Man? I thought you were a woman!" Voldemort gasped and toppled off his beer box and joined Snape on the floor.
"What?!?!?!?!?!?" Snape cried, throwing his hands above his head in immediate despair.
"Well, you've got that long hair and you're pretty scrawny… I don't know, your hips are pretty feminine, too…" Voldemort went over a complete list of Snape's more "feminine" features, including some I'd rather not mention.
"Out!" Snape ordered. His face was a mottled red from rage, exhaustion, and humiliation, and the color did not set well with his sallow, milky white skin.
"Gladly. Bye!" Voldemort said as he drew his phoenix feather wand out of his robe pocket and was about to apparate away into another dimension of time and space when…
"Hang on! You had your wand with you this entire time?" Severus was dumbfounded.
"Of course. What idiot leaves his wand behind? Someone could steal it, snap it, think it was a stick and throw it out a truck window…!" Voldemort snorted with laughter, then apparated with a pop. Severus buried his head in his hands and shook himself gently.
"Great. Just me and the relatives! How fun." Sarcasm had always been one of his better points. He liked his sense of sarcasm… it was witty and came in good handy with particularly… er… difficult classes, namely the one that had Potter in it. Yet this was no time to think about that little runt! He, Severus Snape, was stuck in a tye-dyed shack of a manor with hay on the floor and cow and horse skulls right and left, and to make things worse, the only way he could escape was to be nice to these people. I can't even be nice to my own friends, so how in the bloody world will I be nice to these people? Snape wondered. I don't know, but I've got to do it. I need my wand back.
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an erupting voice coming nearer to him. It was none other than the voice of Bubba, and he seemed quite afraid. "Sevvy! Come quick! Big Mama's havin' a heart attack! Least, I thunked dat's what it is… she's all icky-lookin' and I dunno what ter do! Come fix 'er, Sevvy, we need you!"
Severus' first thought was, "Thank God! One less of them to deal with…" but then he recalled the last phrase of Bubba's frantic sentence. He'd said that the family needed him. Severus had never felt truly needed in his entire life (outside of his previous rendevouz with the Death Eaters) and now, when he least expected it, from the people his least expected it from, someone was saying they needed him. He seized some magical herbs that had managed to survive the family's, ah, redecorating, and they appeared to be just what he needed.
When he got to her bedside, he took one look at her and figured out she was having a seizure. She resembled a gigantic whale, flopping about and shaking the whole room to its very core. When Severus told Bubba, Slappy Jack, and Sis, they went into hysterics since they had no idea how to treat seizures! Severus just snorted in disgust and shoved a teaspoon of Salamander blood down her throat. She sprang up as if she had been pricked with a pin and threw her arms around Snape. "My baby saved me! Oh darlin' we love you so much!" Sis perked up, "Ya finally figured out how ter show ya care. Ya saved Big Mama!"
Severus smiled as he felt his wand snugly back in his pocket. In the blink of an eye, he whipped it out, and performed a memory charm on all present (excluding himself). Unfortunately, the charm must have been a mite too strong, because not a single family member could remember his or her name, birthdate, or anything else for that matter. Severus was just about to be beaten up by Mama for being "an unknown and potentially dangerous man to all the attractive females in the house." Snape supposed she meant herself, but was not able to controll his hysteria. He whipped out his wand and quickly sent them all back to Arkansas via a combination of floo powder and apparating.
Severus flopped tiredly on the bed that big Mama had laid on moments before. He fell into the deep crevasse where her body had been, and chuckled under his breath. The bed was made out of what looked like a pile of cow droppings lighly toasted and covered with a sheep skin. "Oooh…" He whispered aloud, excitedly. "Now I can get rid of all this southern memorabilia and get on with my life." Somehow, Severus felt a slight bit melancholy, but he decided to get it over with. He performed a simple reversal charm and everything was back to normal… the whole gothic look was once more present in his home. All the walls were made of stone, the floor had plush green and silver rugs once more, and the dining table was back to it's former self, an iron masterpiece encrusted with emeralds, jade, and silver. Marble counters were in the kitchen where the barrels used to be, and no hay was in sight. Sighing heavily, Severus crawled upstairs, tapped the stone bannister once or twice, and proceeded into his bedroom for the first night's sleep he'd had in about a week.
When Severus awoke, he checked his watch. It was the first part of his normal daily routine. He liked the word normal. It was comforting, satisfying… dark and creepyish. All right, maybe not dark or creepy, but normal was just so… normal. It wasn't hicks, or Neanderthals, or Dumbledore. It was normal, and he liked it that way.
Severus went on to put on his wizard's robes for the first time since God-knows-when (what? You thought he'd take a shower?) and brushed his long, greasy hair in one quick swipe, leaving large clumps protruding from his sallow head. Admiring his Professor badge, he slipped on his old leather boots and went downstairs for a quick breakfast at a normal dining table with normal chairs and certainly no frisbees. He served himself Angelsey Eggs, a particular delicacy from Wales, and washed it down with a cold glass of water. Severus grabbed his overcoat as he walked out the door and was just about to mount his Comet 260 (he never had much of a liking for brooms) when it occurred to him that there were two animals in his yard: a horse and an ox.
Disclaimer: We own nothing. We don't want to own Severus' relatives. Dragonwings says she'd like to "own"Severus, but that's not happening. Hey, a gal can dream, can't she? Oops, sorry, still writing in hick-mode.
Final A/N: Well, how did you like it? We hope you enjoyed our fic. Please review and keep the spirit of insanity alive! We may write some more fics if the time and situation presents itself. Note: Cadbury crème eggs inspire. Eat them. They work.
Please R/R and …. THE UND (END) (Or is it?)!