PART TWO

November was growing to be bitterly cold and windy, the sky already taking on a slate gray shield over the sky. Medusa barely stirred in her terrarium and Martis had to get used to not hauling the snake around her shoulders again.

No more notes brought by the giant owl the next day, but Martis and Sev and a crowd of other students saw a group of trash cans bouncing down the stairs past them on their way up to the third floor.

"Seems our 'Trash Can-Fu' artist is up to his pranks again," Martis commented.

"Hopefully they're not wearing my face as a mask this time," Sev remarked.

A figure in black with gold and scarlet trim on his trousers flashed by them on a broom. "Take that, you smegheads!" the boy jeered at the cans as he disappeared around a landing. "FOR THE GLORY AND THE HONOR OF THE HOUSE OF SNAPE!"

Martis and Sev glanced at each other, then thundered down the stairs after the figure and the trash cans. Several other students followed them.

"Wait!"

"Come back here!"

"Who the hells are you??"

"Stop!"

By the time they reached the ground floor, the Marauders were crawling out of the trash cans and collapsing on the floor; their robes were missing, but they were still in their under-uniforms. The dark figure was nowhere to be seen.

"What the Avernus happened??" Martis demanded.

Potter rolled over on his back, staring at them upside-down and through one cracked lens of his glasses. He weakly pointed at them. "Ask Snape ... he did this ... "

Sev raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps it was my Good Twin again?"

Lupin groaned and held his stomach. "I told you guys not to gang up on him."

Black snorted, one of his eyes blackened. "He was the one not wearing a uniform; he needed to be taught a lesson."

Sev narrowed his eyes. "I always wear the school uniform, Sneerius; unlike yourselves with your robes missing."

"You transfigured our robes into the trash cans, you git!" Pettigrew squeaked. "Don't play innocent in front of your girlfriend with the bigguns!"

The Marauders received a collective hex for Pettigrew's stupidity.

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"This is getting ridiculous," Sev stated as he and Martis ascended the stairs to the Conversation Room. "This Trash Can-Fu person is now trying to get me into trouble for beating up the Maraudiots when I didn't get to in the first place!"

"Quite obvious, especially with that battle cry," Martis agreed.

"There is no glory and there is no honor in the House of Snape," Sev snarled. "Whoever this bastard is, he's also insulting me!"

"I think there's honor," Martis said softly. "You're the only one with it, but you do have honor."

He turned to her, pausing in the stairwell. He hesitantly offered his hand, and she accepted it, smiling up at him.

"If I could cry at the moment, I think I would."

"No need to cry over truth, my Snips." Martis climbed up closer to him and kissed his forehead. "Now, let's figure out how we're going to catch this imposter!"

Sev smirked. "I like it when you talk evil."

Sev distinctly felt a hand on his back push him into Martis. He stumbled a bit, trying to keep his balance by grabbing onto the nearest thing as Martis automatically braced herself against the wall.

"Severus ... " she gasped.

"I was pushed." He looked around wildly.

"Severus, your ... hands ... "

Sev looked down to see what he had grabbed onto to keep his balance.

One hand had grasped the sweater over her breast while the other hand had her shoulder pinned to the wall.

"Eep!" he commented calmly as he jerked his hands away. "Sorry!" His eyes widened in panic. "I swear, I wasn't trying to do anything! I really was pushed!"

"Calm down, Sev," Martis chided gently. "No use panicking."

"It is when there's some imposter around and I'm shoved into you by unseen forces!"

Both screeched as they were suddenly thrown away from each other - Sev down the stairs and Martis against the other wall.

"Severus! Are you all right??"

"I'm going to kill them - I'm going to disembowel them, then I'm going to explode them into red mist! Then after the warm-ups I'll TORTURE them!"

Martis got up and began to descend the stairs toward him.

"Ow!" Sev cried. "What is that?"

Martis felt something 'in her way', a gradually-increasing pushing force between herself and Sev, like a static field created by scuffing shoes on a carpet, but more intense. She experimentally leaned forward, taking her weight off her feet. "Whoa ... "

"Martis?" Sev looked up, seeing her leaning forward about six feet away from him and not supported by anything.

"Don't know, but it's a neat effect." Her expression turned serious. "But I'm not able to reach you."

Sev got up and reached up toward her. "Right. I feel a force of some sort in your direction."

"Which one of us has a Bubble Charm over their whole body?"

"Not cast." Sev narrowed his eyes. "Spirals, your hair is sticking out."

She reached up and felt her hair, feeling it raising up under her hands. "That's weird."

"Static," Sev blurted.

Martis snapped her fingers. "Exactly!" She paused. "If we're repelling each other, then that means we're both similarly charged."

Sev stared at her. "How do you know that?"

"Dion is studying Muggle science and physics, he told me last summer." She casually lounged against the magnetic field as her hair floated even higher (quite impressive since it was over four feet long). "It doesn't really matter which type of polarity, but the fact that as long as we're both charged like this, there's no way we can get close."

Sev snarled. "Oh, Dion," he said cooly. "Of course. Dion."

Martis was surprised for a moment, then smiled. "No need to worry, My Snips. He follows me around like a puppy, blathering to get my attention. I don't drape myself all over him like I do with you. And I certainly never ever talk sexy to him."

"I wasn't worried," Sev replied, his cool tone betrayed by the grin that threatened to split his face open. "I was just puzzled by these static fields." He stepped toward Martis, who cried out 'Whoopsie!' and scrambled to keep her balance. "How did they get here? Did we walk across a flock of sheep without noticing?"

"Or someone put it here," Martis said, her brain now speculating. "This is pretty sophisticated - I've never even heard of a spell to manipulate static electricity. Or electricity at all."

"And why cast it like this - to repel each other?" A candle flickered above Sev's head.

A similar one blossomed above Martis' head.

As one they proclaimed, "KARKAROFF!"

"It fits!" Martis said. "He would want me away from you!"

"And he's a Durmstrang student," Sev snarled. "No doubt he's learned all sorts of unwholesome ways to defile nature."

"Now how do we get out of this?" Martis pondered.

"If we touch a doorknob or something - "

"- we blast ourselves. Can you imagine how powerful this field must be?"

Sev nodded. "But like this, we're kept apart ... "

They both leaned against empty air, pondering the riddle of how to get out of this trap without blasting themselves.

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Slytherin was puzzled as Martis entered the common room first with her knee-length blonde hair sticking up all over the place and her clothes clinging to her body in odd ways.

They were just as confused when Sev entered a few minutes later, his own clothes clinging to his small frame and the ends of his hair flipped up.

They watched as both moved to opposite sides of the common room away from each other.

One of the Quidditch team members finally commented, "I didn't think that sort of thing caused THAT much static."

"Shut your hole," Sev growled.

"Fallon, we need your help," Martis said.

The eleven-year-old Irish girl got up. "You look like a dandelion puff." She poked the hair, which shocked her a little. "Neat!"

"We need you to open doors to get outside. We're statically charged enough to get blasted if we try to do it ourselves."

Fallon nodded. "Good enough reason." She left the room with Martis, and Sev waited until both were through the door before following.

"Snape," Evan Ryper asked. "What's going on? And what's with the hair?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Then he left as well.

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"Spells for electricity, eh?" Fallon remarked as she and Martis descended the stairs. "By the Fires of Brigid, whomever did this is brilliant."

"Whoever did it is going to get their intestines wrapped around their throat," Martis retorted. "Although we think this is Karkaroff's doing."

"The Durmstrang champion?" She paused. "Oh, yeah, didn't he try to put the moves on you yesterday?"

"Yes, him."

Sev snorted behind them.

Fallon smirked. "I was going to offer to hose him off. Flitwick just taught us what we call the 'water pistol charm'."

"Thanks, but we'll take care of him ourselves." Martis pulled her wand out and checked over the surface. "I don't know what effect it will have, but it should be interesting to see if this can be discharged through a spell."

Fallon opened the doors leading to the outside of the school. "It might ruin your wand."

"True." She put her wand away. "Perhaps we can try to choke him at once and it'll discharge into him?"

"We can't get that close to each other," Sev piped up.

"Then we'll take turns - it'll be worth the blast!"

Fallon piped up with, "How close are you able to get to each other?"

"About six feet is the closest we can get without the repulsive force being unbearable." Martis paused. "You can go back to the castle. We can manage from here."

"No, it's boring back in the common room, I need a laugh." She snorted. "Besides, Karkaroff doesn't smell right."

"I know, his eyes are cold."

Fallon nodded. "Pretty hair, nice mouth, but cold eyes."

Sev snorted again.

"You're too young to be talking like that," Martis informed her.

Fallon smirked. "You're too blind to see what's around you."

"Excuse me," Sev stated. "But there's the Durmstrang ship."

"All right, Fallon," Martis said. "You may want to stay out of the blast radius."

"No problem." The girl ran for one of the trees.

Standing exactly six feet apart, Martis yelled, "HEY! Can you send Igor Karkaroff out here?!"

"We would like a word with him!" Sev added.

Vladimir Jovonovich appeared on the deck. "He's indisposed right now - "

"Tell him to get out here now or we'll start hexing this rickety bucket of a ship!"

Vladimir nodded and retreated below deck.

Sev turned to Martis. "That's crude of you, Spirals."

"If I don't get my hug quotient in today, I'll become nastier."

"You may cause an incident between the schools."

"And this means what to me?"

Igor Karkaroff appeared, bundled into a heavy wool dressing gown. "Who wishes to - ? Oh, Mr. Snape and -" he smirked a little "- Panni Vox."

"'Panni'?" Martis asked. "Should I be insulted?"

"Polish for 'miss'," Sev answered, then yelled up at the Durmstrang champion, "Karkaroff, we need some questions answered."

Igor nodded, carefully making his way down the gangplank in bare feet. "Pardon my appearance, but I was merely napping and your demand to see me - "

As he stepped into the chill grass, Martis was the first: "Ever worked with electrical spells?"

"Quite unnatural spellwork, you know," Sev added.

"Ever use them on anyone?"

"Like us."

"Know how to get rid of them?"

"Without endangering Miss Vox."

"Why aren't you answering us?"

"He knows what he did."

"What have you got to say?"

"Make it quick."

Igor - completely poleaxed by the rapid-fire see-saw questions and comments from the two Hogwarts students - tried to calm them down in his best mediator fashion. "Snape - my dear Miss Vox - please calm yourselves and we'll straighten this - !" His hands reached out to clasp their shoulders in a friendly overture.

Instead, the electrical charge from both blasted outward and into him and crackled like thunder, allowing a quick discharge into the ground through his bare feet and knocking him several yards away along the shore of the lake.

Martis and Sev had also been knocked off their feet, flying only a few feet back toward the school.

"Ow," Martis understated, not moving.

"Never felt that before," Sev commented. "Not even from my father."

"My teeth feel loose. Can you move?"

"Ask me when I'm numb rather than dead."

Martis forced her twitching muscles to roll her body over to him. "All right, I can see I'm cuddled against you but I can't feel it. We should be able to move and feel in a few minutes to an hour."

He shifted his eyes to look at her. "Your hair doesn't look like a dandelion puff anymore."

Fallon ran up to them, leaning over in their lines of sight. "You guys should have seen it from this angle - it was like a ball of lightning going off!"

"Can you get us to the school, Fallon?" Martis asked. "We might be implicated in the death of Karkaroff if we stick around here."

"He's not dead," Fallon assured her. "He's just unconscious from the shock." She hesitantly picked up Martis' hand, then pulled the girl up on one side. "I'll be back for you in a minute, Snape. You two are damned lucky I'm used to hauling around dead weights."

"Hurry up, O'Shanahan," Sev snapped. "Before the Durmstrang students find out what happened."

Fallon took off with Martis and Sev stared up at the slate gray sky. (That ought to teach that uppity weasel not to mess with my Martis.)

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That evening, after regaining muscular control again, Sev took a warm shower after reports had circulated during dinner about the Durmstrang champion being struck by lighting. One of the Durmstrang students had mentioned seeing two Hogwarts students wanting to talk to Karkaroff, but he could not tell who they were.

Sev dried and dressed, then entered his dorm room and finished combing his hair, which fluffed up as it dried.

"Damned side-effects," he muttered.

Thomas St. Claire appeared in the mirror beside him. "FEEL the power of the 'FRO, my brother!"

Sev shrieked, then turned and glared at his roommate. "Do you mind???"

"Object to having an Afro, Snape?"

"No, I just don't care to have people suddenly appearing besides me." Sev grumbled then clutched a handful of hair. "I look stupid."

"True, you really can't carry off a 'Fro - your European features can't convey the Majesty of the Afro properly." Thomas grinned, taking the hair pick out of his own. "But if you need any help in accessing the power of your 'Fro, don't hesitate to ask."

"Right," Sev agreed. "What can I use this for?"

"Store your wand, man." Thomas reached in and withdrew his own cherry wand. "Plus the hair oil keeps your wand in good shape."

"I doubt my grease would do much good for my wand."

He stuck his wand back inside his hair. "And the ladies know the Afro is a sign of virility."

Sev stared at him. "I can't believe we're having this conversation."

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