Disclaimer: All of the funny lines are from Blazing Saddles.

Chapter 4, Fastest Hands in the West: In which Severus Snape makes his appearance in a most unlikely role—that of the washed-up gunslinger.

Remus spent most of the afternoon barricaded in the sheriff's office. Being conscientious and tidy by nature, he'd done his best to clean the place up and take care of the unfinished paperwork left by his deceased predecessor. He was just hanging up a wanted poster for some hippogriff poachers when the squeal of iron grating against stone signaled some sort of activity behind the prison bars. "Sounds like the drunk in number two is awake," Remus said to himself. He went to investigate. A black-clad man was hanging awkwardly, dangling upside-down from the top bunk. Greasy curtains of lank black hair fell back from a thin, sallow face. Remus tilted his head for a better look. "Severus Snape," he breathed. Even inverted, there was no mistaking that beak of a nose. Snape groaned. "Are we awake?" Remus asked wryly.

Snape turned toward the sound of his voice. Bloodshot black eyes focused on Remus with difficulty. "We're not entirely certain," Snape finally replied. "Are we a foul, traitorous creature of Darkness?"

Remus shrugged. "Why yes, we are."

"Then we are awake... But we are very puzzled."

Taking pity on the man, Remus unlocked the cell and managed to disentangle him from the bunk and get him more or less into a seated position leaning against the stone wall. The stale, sweet odor of firewhiskey reeked from every pore. "Can I get you something to eat?" Remus asked.

Snape waved a hand arrogantly. "I don't eat. Food is utterly wasted on me." He groped along the bench and produced a bottle of cheap firewhiskey. Snape threw back his head and drank, adam's apple bobbing rhythmically in his scrawny neck as he drained half the bottle.

Remus was appalled. This was certainly not the strictly controlled—and controlling—man he remembered from the Old World. "Snape," he chided, "a man that drinks like that, and doesn't eat, is going to die!"

The cavernous eyes that turned to meet his were as cold and unfeeling as ever, but the voice held a plaintive note as Snape responded, "When?"

Long moments passed in awkward silence. Finally Remus summoned a cheerful smile. "Well, Snape, since you are my guest, and I am your host, what can I do for you? What's your pleasure?"

Snape seemed taken aback at the show of kindness. "My current incarnation is somewhat limiting," he finally drawled. "I do occasionally enjoy... A game of chess? A good, hard shag?"

"Chess," said Remus decisively.

——————

"Checkmate," Remus said forty-five minutes later.

"What?" Snape blinked blearily until the game board came into focus. "Checkmate? Really?" Remus nodded. Snape shrugged. He leaned back tipsily in his chair and took a long pull on yet another bottle of firewhiskey.

He'd never felt any great affection for Snape,but it saddened Remus to see the once formidable Potions Master brought so low. "What happened, after the war, Snape? Why did you decide to settle in the West?"

"I'm sure that topic is of no interest to you."

"Oh, but it is, it is."

Snape chuckled dryly. "If you must pry..."

"I must, I must." Remus smiled in encouragement. It seemed to him that although he would never admit it, Snape was desperate for human contact—even contact with a human tainted by the curse of lycanthropy.

The cold, dark eyes met his, suddenly clear. "I had few options, Lupin. Without Albus Dumbledore to confirm that I really was on the side of all that is good and pure and right..." His voice trailed off. Snape gave Remus a resentful look and took another swallow of whiskey before continuing. "Well, at that point, having my name cleared would have been of little use to me, actually. I would have been back in society's good graces, but to what purpose? The Ministry would have given me the Order of Merlin... Posthumously. Because, you see, without Albus Dumbledore's protection, once my role as a spy was revealed, the Dark Lord's remaining followers would have hunted me to the ends of the earth." He sighed. "It seemed the best course of action was to pretend to be one of the penitent Death Eaters and take the amnesty the Ministry offered to those willing to settle the West. Upon arrival in this benighted dimension, subjected to the same bizarre effects as everyone else, I found myself turned into an unwilling avatar of the American Old West."

The explanation only made Remus more curious about his unusual guest. "And your avatar was..." he prompted.

The black eyes suddenly gleamed. "You may have heard of me," Snape said, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. "In this dimension, I was known as the Honeydukes Kid."

Remus shook his head. The poor man really was delusional after all. "No," he said gently. "The Honeydukes Kid had the fastest hands in the West!"

"In the world," Snape corrected with his customary arrogance.

"We're both too old for schoolboy pranks, Snape. You are not the Honeydukes Kid."

"Ah, but I am, or rather, was." Snape pushed up out of his chair and assumed a gunfighter's stance several steps back from the table. He pointed at the game board, indicating the king Remus had just taken. "Put your hands on either side of that chess piece." Bemused, Remus complied. "When I say 'go', try to stop me from grabbing it."

"It's no contest," Remus told him. "You're standing three feet away!"

Snape's eyes gleamed again. "Just prepare yourself for my signal." Snape flexed his fingers, watching Remus intently. Remus tensed, his hands poised around the little carved wooden king. "Go!"

Remus snatched the king off the board. He sat back, trying without much success to hide his smile of satisfaction. As a side effect of his lycanthropy, his reflexes were exceptionally quick. By comparison, Snape seemed to have barely moved.

"Recognize this?"

Shocked, Remus watched Snape pull the chess piece from the empty holster at his hip. Surely it was a trick, some sleight of hand—perhaps Snape had somehow conjured an identical king? Remus opened his own hands and gawked at his empty palms. "You really are the Kid," he breathed.

Snape waved a graceful, long-fingered hand dismissively. "It no longer matters. Two years ago, perhaps, I could have shown you something truly impressive. But no longer." With a sneer of contempt, he held his right hand out. "Just look at this."

"Steady as a rock," Remus said.

"Indeed. But I shoot with this hand." He slumped back into his chair and held his left hand out for inspection. It trembled so violently his entire arm spasmed. "I believe Muggles refer to my affliction as post-traumatic stress disorder," he said in his soft, cold voice. "As my fame as a gunslinger grew, every two-bit punk who wanted to make a name for himself would ride into town, seeking to challenge the Honeydukes Kid. It reached the point where I heard the word 'draw' in my sleep. One day, a thought occurred to me—'I've killed more men than the Dark Lord himself!' All my memories of my former life came flooding back."

"And it drove you to... To this?" Remus indicated the nearly-empty bottle.

Snape gave a soft, bitter laugh. "The final straw came one day when I heard a voice say, 'Reach for it, mister.' I spun around, and found myself face to face with... A child. A six-year-old boy." Snape shook his head. "I just threw down my guns and walked away... Little bastard shot me right in the ass!"

Recovering his cultured British accent, Snape concluded, "I limped to the nearest saloon, crawled inside a bottle of firewhiskey, and have been there ever since."

Remus tried to think of something tactful to say in reply, but Snape cut him off. "That's all ancient history now. Tell me, Lupin, how did a cultured urbanite such as yourself end up in this rustic setting?"

Remus smiled. "If you really must pry..."

"Oh, I must, I must."

"Well I'm sure you already know the basic details," Remus said. "By the end of the war, Voldemort had recruited werewolves to his side in droves. It mustn't have been too difficult, with the Ministry's policies taking away even the few rights we lycanthropes had to begin with..." Remus put those bitter thoughts aside. "I was rounded up and sent to Azkaban with all the other werewolves, guilty and innocent alike," he continued. "From that point, I imagine my situation was remarkably similar to yours. With Albus dead and Harry..." Remus' voice faltered. The last news he'd heard of Harry Potter, he'd still been confined to a locked ward in St. Mungo's, his mind broken. Had Harry ever recovered? Remus collected his thoughts and went on, "Well, with Harry injured, there was no one left to plead my case. When the Ministry opened up the New West as a penal colony, I decided that forced labor out in the fresh air was preferable to rotting away in a cell in Azkaban... So here I am. Fascinating story, isn't it?"

A rumbling snore from Snape was his only reply. Remus shook his head ruefully. "I always like to keep my audience riveted," he chuckled.