Pyro Lady Tequila : Hello everyone, welcome back to The Decline and Fall of Something! Finally, after a long and arduous wait, the second chapter has arrived!!
Bob the Cat : I hated this effing chapter.
Pyro Lady Tequila : Oh, didn't we all. It was a horror to write. As you will be able to tell when you get to the rather abrupt ending.
Bob the Cat : We do not own it, we do not own The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That is all I have to say.
Pyro Lady Tequila : I don't have anything else to say, either. We would like to thank our reviewers, though, who with great dedication have given us many lovely reviews!! Thank you ever so much, you give us incentive to write more. Of course we would probably still write more without our lovely reviewers, it would just be even worse. Just a word of caution for those of you trying to get rid of us by not reviewing.
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Sunny groaned and glared at Shadow, who was sitting on her bed, from which a light was shining despite the thick curtains which she had hung. "Are you going to put that light out any time soon?" Sunny asked tiredly. "It has to be at least 2:00 AM…"
"You know I'm nocturnal," Shadow replied, intent on something small in front of her. "Besides, this is important." She picked up her wand and muttered at the object hidden in the folds of her blanket.
Sunny sighed and covered her face with her pillow. Shadow was probably up to something diabolical and unpleasant that she didn't want to know about. However, just as she began to drift off to sleep, she was woken by the sound of Shadow laughing in a very disturbing manner.
"It worked!" Shadow cried madly, gently picking up the object she had been pouring over and bringing it over to Sunny. Sunny looked warily at Shadow as a tiny man wearing a tight black suit embroidered with dragons. Shadow handed the little man a small guitar and placed him carefully on Sunny's bed.
"Shadow, is that…" Sunny began, looking at him in astonishment.
"That's right," Shadow said smugly. "Jimmy Page."
Sunny blinked several times in astonishment. "Wow, Shadow. That's cool and vaguely disturbing. Now… GO AWAY! I will marvel at your diabolical genius some other time. I have Herbology tomorrow, and I would really rather not be covered in some foul plant's juice because of you and your clones."
Shadow continued on, utterly ignoring Sunny's impassioned speech. "See, I've been waiting to practice this forever, there's a lot of preparation involved in this sort of thing. First, you have to mold a clay figure to the object of your choice, THEN it all gets much more complicated from there –"
Sunny cut her off with a Drousius charm and levitated her and her miniature Jimmy Page back to bed. Sunny would be more than happy to listen later, but couldn't care less when sleep was at stake. As an afterthought, Sunny used another charm to extinguish the irritating candle by Shadow's bed before finally going back to sleep.
The next morning, Shadow woke up late, as usual, allowing herself what Sunny considered a painfully short amount of time to get ready for school. Shadow sleepily dressed and gathered her books, and then coaxed the miniature Jimmy Page into the black sporran she carried as a purse. Sunny finished applying eyeshadow and selecting jewelry and then walked with Shadow down to the great hall to eat breakfast.
They worked their way to a couple of empty seats next to Molly Maguire, the strawberry-blonde girlfriend of Arthur Weasley. Sunny sipped her breakfast tea and picked at her boo-berry cereal, while striking up a conversation with Molly, hoping to get her to admit to pregnancy.
Shadow, on the other side, feeding her mini-Page small bits of breakfast foods, heard snippets of this conversation.
"Bananas for breakfast, Molly? I understand, I get cravings too sometimes… You, lately?"
Shadow snickered at Sunny's subtle hinting. She finally tired of it when Sunny asked Molly if she was retaining water, since she was looking so puffy. "Hey, Molly, are you really pregnant?" she leaned over and asked. Molly answered enthusiastically and began talking about the upcoming wedding.
Sunny dropped her spoon in disgust and walked away, hoping to talk to their Herbology teacher before class about ordering plants through the school.
"Where are our schedules?" Shadow asked in irritation, offering Mini-Jimmy a small bite of scone. "Class starts in about twenty minutes. We might have to walk a long way." Shadow leaned around the people next to her in an attempt to find the whereabouts of any sort of papers. Finally after what seemed an eternity but Mini-Jimmy pointed out had only been five minutes, at most, the stack of schedules arrived.
Sunny showed up several seconds later, having finished a very unsuccessful chat with Professor Tree about the wholesale herb market. "So what's the first class?"
"History of Magic," Shadow replied, looking at her schedule. "We have that with the Gryffindors."
Sunny sighed dramatically. "Binns, first thing in the morning, How awful."
"Could be worse," Shadow said absently, looking down at her schedule as they began their walk towards the history room. "Who knows what time we'll have it next week? I honestly don't think there IS a system to these schedules…"
The two girls arrived at their first class with very little time to spare. Roger waved to them, indicating the seats he had saved for them. They sat down, Shadow winking at Sirius, who was sitting by James a little bit away from them.
Sunny began setting up her History of Magic supplies: a large warm bathrobe, house-shoes, and a pillow that was charmed into invisibility. Shadow looked at her condescendingly.
"You know, you're gonna be doomed to repeat history."
Sunny was not impressed. "Yeah, well you would go to sleep too if you weren't staring at Black."
"That is not true," Shadow declared, attempting to stare at Sirius hard enough to make him turn around.
"Have you heard anything about our new class yet?" Roger inquired, lowering his voice slightly, as Professor Binns had begun lecturing.
"What new class?" Sunny asked, panic tingeing her voice.
Roger pointed to his schedule, which proclaimed "Physical Education, MANDATORY for ALL students."
"They seem quite emphatic about the 'mandatory' bit," Roger added. "When I said something about skipping it, the word 'mandatory' blinked red."
Sunny looked confused. "But wouldn't that involve… physical activity?" The thought seemed to leave her mortified.
"Sirius would get all hot and sweaty…" Shadow said to no one in particular.
"And Remus will probably collapse!" Sunny cried indignantly, causing Professor Binns to stop his lecture and stare at her curiously, along with the rest of the class. Sunny quickly turned to stare at Shadow, hoping to cause everyone to think she was the one who was worried about Lupin. Binns decided to ignore it, and resumed lecturing while everyone else went back to their various activities.
Sunny sighed and fluffed her pillow. Roger and Shadow began pondering what they would have to do.
"Run? That's physical. Maybe we can go for walks."
"Hopefully we'll have to train with weights. I really need to work on my Bludger arm."
"What about quidditch? That's physical enough. Then fans get more exercise than we do, there's no need to make everyone work even harder?"
"I wonder if this means next year is sex ed?"
"Why would this school need that, you know what goes on here… Don't you?"
"I'm just saying…"
Sunny arranged her pillow one last time before going to sleep, muttering something about Remus and physical activity, and Shadow shifted about in her seat until she found the best position from which to see Sirius. Roger produced a stack of square sheets of paper and practiced making origami cranes. By the end of the class, Sunny had given herself a facial, every student had three paper cranes, and Sirius and Shadow were passing drawings of stick people suffering gruesome deaths between each other.
"I'll see you later," Roger said, giving Sunny an origami flower and Shadow an origami throwing star. "I think my schedule's changed since breakfast. I really have no idea where I'm going."
"Who does?" Sunny asked, although Roger was already gone. "Is lunch even still on there?"
"Well, Sunny, it's time for us to go divine mysterious things about Divining… I think," Shadow frowned.
"Oh, good. I hope Professor Ado teaches us about fortune wheels."
"…What?" Shadow asked, not sure if she really wanted an answer.
"You know, wheels of fortune. My muggle Aunt Teeka is always going on and on about them. Apparently they're quite difficult, but I feel I'm ready for the challenge."
Shadow stared at Sunny, causing herself to trip. "Sunny… Wheel of Fortune is… You know what? Nevermind."
Sunny and Shadow trekked onward, towards the distant Divination room. Since they had just come from the same class as Sunny and Shadow and had not gone far in the wrong direction before their schedules had brought it to their attention that they weren't headed for class, Sirius and James soon drew near to the two girls. James looked wary and stayed on the side of Sirius farthest from the two. Sirius, however, waved and called, "Hey, Sunny, are you going to be tutoring for Divination? I could use some… help… with my homework."
Shadow appeared enraged at the idea that Sunny might get to spend time alone with Sirius, even if she was only attempting to teach him how to read tea leaves.
"Regular assignments are 50p each, essays are £1.50. Prices depend on the individual assignments for anything else."
Shadow showed obvious relief at the discovery that Sunny was only selling homework rather than actually being with Sirius.
"Alright, I'll get back to you on that," Sirius said happily, obviously glad that he could go another year without actually having to do anything more than show up for class in the divination tower classroom.
Peter came charging down the hall, book bag flapping wildly. "SUNNY!" he gasped. "Thank goodness you're here!"
Sunny put on a disinterested face, rather like a person thinking of buying a used car. "Hi Pete. Yeah, I'm pretty happy about it too."
"How much will it take for you to do my Divination homework this year?"
Sunny studied her nails and shook her head. "Oh, Pete. You know I have to charge you premium. Ado's been suspicious of me for two years, and she's seen you in class. The risks are going to break you, not to mention originality fees to make it sound like you wrote it."
Peter looked on the verge of tears. "You don't understand! You have to do it, I CAN'T!"
James looked mildly impressed, as Sunny made Peter think that the job was second in danger only to Aurors, nearly reducing him to tears. "Has she always been so business oriented?" he asked Shadow.
"Oh yeah. She'll own her own business one day."
Sirius looked concerned. "Oh, man, I had no idea so much went into the art of cheating. I wonder how she can chance so much…"
James burst into laughter. Shadow would have commented on the fact that Sunny was chancing nothing, seeing as Ado couldn't really care less, but they had arrived at the classroom and she didn't think that comment would be prudent.
The Divination students filed in and took seats on the various cushions, stools, rugs and very short chairs scattered about the room. The school had already expended its miniscule Divination budget on new crystal balls, so the seating was rather haphazard and worn. Their teacher, Professor Ado, was nowhere in sight, but a faint haze of smoke and the sounds of the Grateful Dead coming from behind an ornate folding screen in the corner belied her presence. Peter was just expressing his hope that maybe Ado had completely forgotten about class when the record cut off mid-song and Professor Ado emerged from behind her screen. She was very small and thin with long, curly hair. Although she wore gauzy wizard robes, underneath could be seen what could only be denim and tie-dye.
"Hello, class," Professor Ado said absently, walking over to a large easy chair in the front of the room.
"Good morning, Professor Ado," the class responded.
Ado nodded and both professor and students sat silently staring at each other, waiting for the first move to be made.
"Maybe you won't have class after all," Sirius whispered to Peter, after a few minutes of this silence. Unfortunately for Peter, this tiny sound brought Ado back from wherever she thought she had been, and she leapt up and began to walk very slowly around the class, telling them to perform random bits of fortune-telling on the students sitting next to them.
After class, Shadow was forlorn about completely destroying Sunny's tea leaf reading by transfiguring the tea into coffee. Evidently French roast grounds didn't hold quite the same magic as wet leaves. Shadow was also rather thrilled, however, seeing as Professor Ado had her read Sirius's palm later in class.
Consulting their schedules once again, Sunny and Shadow discovered that their next class was Potions. "Not all the way in the DUNGEONS!" Sunny said with an exasperated groan. "It takes forever to get there, even if you aren't on the completely opposite end of the castle!"
"We'd better hurry," Shadow said, quickening her pace to something between a fast walk and a slow jog. Sunny did her best to keep up in her super-high heels. "We have Potions with Slytherin," Shadow continued. "You know what that means, right?"
"Severus!" Sunny cried gleefully. Although quite a few of the students at Hogwarts detested the rebellious Severus Snape, many others loved and admired him. It was also no secret that Severus was the source of most of the provisions for unofficial Hogwarts social events.
Sunny and Shadow scurried down to the dungeons, greatly looking forward to catching up with everyone's favorite dealer. There was one rather tense moment when Sunny tripped and stumbled down a hall to regain balance, but it was an otherwise safe and timely arrival. They burst through the dungeon doors and ran to claim the table beside Severus.
"Sev, baby!" Sunny shouted, terrifying him with a hug.
Shadow was rather more sedated. "How goes it, Sev?"
Sev, already putting things into his cauldron, pried himself away forcefully from Sunny and muttered something about not calling him 'Sev,' dammit.
"How has your summer been, Severus darling?" Shadow asked, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Been keeping well out of the sun, I see."
Severus rubbed his violated cheek on the back of his hand and muttered something unintelligible.
"What was that?" Sunny asked with a slightly confused expression.
"He said, 'Lovely, I didn't have to leave the castle once, and the curtains were closed the entire time,'" Shadow supplied helpfully.
Sunny shrugged, deciding the mysteries of Scottish dialects to be something best left to Scots and not puzzled over too much.
Before class had started, Severus was busy, leaning over his cauldron, tossing ingredients in, muttering all the while. At one point he seemed to be singing, but no one said anything for fear of getting beat up.
In strode Professor Jordan, beaming at his students with great benevolence. "Hello, kids! How was everyone's summer?!"
There was a chorus of cheerful replies from the Hufflepuffs. Jordan was a great favorite of theirs, knowing slightly less about potions than they did. However, nothing but a stony silence was to be heard from the Slytherins, being rather goal oriented and all.
"Wonderful, wonderful," Professor Jordan chortled. Rocking back and forth on his heels, he began informing them of his own summer, spent in a French wine cellar. Meanwhile, Severus continued his vaguely wicked potion making.
As Professor Jordan was telling an animated tale of an adventure with three barmaids in the French wine cellar, Severus suddenly cried, "I have done it!!!! I have created a space-time continuum!!"
Everyone in the classroom turned to face Severus, whose cauldron was now glowing an astonishing shade of mauve. None even had a chance to wonder what a space-time continuum was before a flash of mauve light filled the room, followed by strange music and a large number of people dressed in bizarre clothing began dancing about the room, joyfully singing something about a time warp.
At the end of their song, the odd people who called themselves "Transylvanians" disappeared, with a cheerful wave towards Professor Jordan and a few fun-loving Hufflepuffs who had joined in their dancing. When the dancers disappeared, Severus was left lying on the floor beside his cauldron, a large bag beside him. The mauve light slowly faded from the cauldron, as did the final echoes of the music of the Transylvanians.
"Very, very good, Mr. Snape!" Professor Jordan cried happily. "Most excellent indeed! I think we have all learned a great deal today. Twenty points each to Hufflepuff and Slytherin! Class is dismissed."