Oh, la. Another non-sequitur! If you're all sick of hearing about Lovegood, do leave a review saying so. I'm an incorrigible Suethor, but I can be persuaded to refrain from posting (at the very least). In the works are a completely unnecessary chapter about owl-post and its shortcomings, a rewrite of chapter seven in which Lovegood gets his ass kicked, and a whole lot about Luna. I promise, and I promise to deliver -- which in practical terms means fuck-all, really.
Is anyone annoyed by the way this fic somehow got swallowed by dialogue? Me too. It was all very promising at the beginning. Perhaps I should take it down for a while, until the talkie-bits can properly be interspersed with irrelevant essays on Ravenclaw run-ins with the Wizarding criminal justice system or something.
Anyhow, this is an OotP-timeframe encounter between Snape and Lovegood: chock-full of pepperjack cheese, current events, the pepperjack-cheese version of current events, and a bit of pepperjack violence. The Sue bloats evermore. Lance the Sue! Lance it! Leave incisive concrit, please.
"Twelve cartoons of the Dark Lord," Snape said in a deceptively pleasant voice by way of greeting.
"Guilty as charged!" Lovegood replied. "One of the kids down in the Suspicious Circumstances bureau is writing a children's book called "There's a Dark Lord In My Closet!" and couldn't persuade any of the illustrators to contribute any pictures of, erm, the current one. Apparently everyone was scared that either a Ministry minion or a masked Death Eater -- or, in some versions, Lord Voldemort himself -- would nip over to their beds in the dead of night and kill them very slowly. This is a state of affairs which, I think you'll agree, cannot continue."
Snape was making a show of perusing page three of the French edition of the Quibbler.
"The Dark-Lord-as-angel attempts to fly away from Death but can't, having already given Death his wings, brain, halo, and all his squishy bits."
"The book will be a hit when it comes out, I'm sure," said Lovegood mildly. "It's written in really catchy verse. The first page goes 'Dark Lords here, Dark Lords there, In my closet -- Everywhere!' I think that's very sweet. The kids will love it -- Luna completely approves."
"The Dark Lord is about to rape Death, who screams 'No, no, you've got the wrong gal; I'm the Ministry of Magic'?"
"Dark Lords here... Dark Lords there..." Lovegood was chanting with an infantile smile.
"The Dark Lord is mysteriously pregnant with a bomb?"
"Actually, Luna's thinking of writing a foreword. Something about Salad-oil Salamanders. She claims -- and I believe her -- that they have a very powerful Dark Lord threatening them in the guise of deforestration. Quite a neat bit of reasoning for a fourteen-year-old imbecile."
"The Dark Lord is five years old and sitting on Santa's knee, only Santa appears to be Dumbledore in a poorly-drawn costume. Santa says, 'Now, Tommy, I want to give you the world, but nobody believes you've been bad enough this year.' So much for taking care of the rag."
Lovegood shook the magazine off his face. "Much could be achieved if the Wizarding World could be persuaded to yell 'Riddikulus!' in unison in your master's general direction."
"Oh yes, there is indeed one of the Dark Lord as a boggart! Brilliant, Lovegood, and useful in the extreme. Do you know that the occasional stray Death Eater in France has seen these cartoons? That the Dark Lord is not especially pleased?"
"Yes," said Lovegood, "I do."
"Let me impart a really important secret to you. The Dark Lord does not laugh at cartoons. He sneers a bit, and then says Avada Kedavra."
"Perhaps he really is a boggart, then," said Lovegood insolently. "We clearly need more people laughing at him. Perhaps a few more cartoons will do the trick -- make him incapable of casting nasty curses, that sort of thing."
"And this will be achieved how?" hissed Snape in exasperation. "He actually exists -- you published that barely-coherent interview with Potter. He's dangerous. He can actually do things like rape Death and steal the world out of Dumbledore's pocket. He has killed and he will kill and he likes killing, and his supporters --"
"-- have threatened to kill me and Luna and all my staff and anyone caught with a copy of the Quibbler. I know -- I got a letter to that effect, copied to Cornelius Fudge himself. And I received... oh, two hundred and seventeen death threats at last count this morning."
"Congratulations."
"Yes, well, most of them seem to have been written by Bellatrix Black -- or whatever consanguinity she's up to these days. What is she now, Lestrange? She always thought she could vary her handwriting. Silly girl. But pretty enough to get away with most theatrics, I find. Don't you agree?"
"You're getting people killed," Snape stated. "Already. In France there have been three murders already. Three. Since yesterday. Does that register?"
The clear blue eyes, unperturbed, continued staring through Snape. "Gruesome business. I'm told they had a copy of page three fused onto their faces -- death by suffocation. Clever, I have to say. Much better than Avada Kedavra. It's good to know your master's French subsidiary has more imagination than our lot. And yes, Snape, I know you can curse me into tomorrow: I still find it clever, and tragic, and amusing, and I see no contradiction in any of that."
There was a long pause.
"I don't see you wandering about the streets of Paris," Snape said bitterly. "I don't see you asking Bellatrix over for tea. You're here; it's your beloved readers that have to die for your clever bloody idea. Your clever bloody wrong idea which will get more people killed -- why, exactly, do you have to go about everything the wrong way?"
"So you can fix things," declared Lovegood. "You like fixing things, don't you? My wife always said you were brilliant at it."
"Come off it. There's no way to fix dead things," said Snape. "Yelling 'Riddikulus' in the Dark Lord's general direction --"
"Blast it, Snape, he isn't Lord of anything yet!"
They glared at each other, motionless.
"Just Bellatrix and some lunatics in France, right?" Snape said conversationally.
"One lunatic. One. The operative words here are 'lunatic' and 'one'. He isn't even a Death Eater -- he's a Beauxbatons dropout Death Eater wannabe. Of course you already knew that. We've christened him Nibbler -- rhymes with quibbler, appropriately enough."
"I'm sure you've passed on this information to the French Ministry, so as not to be guilty of criminal nondisclosure under Statute CXIX in the European Thaumical Union's Constitution."
For the following several minutes Snape fingered his wand, scrutinised the ceiling, watched an errant spider fixing the part of its web attached to Marsilio Ficino's De Vita Libri Tres. As Lovegood's inappropriate spasm of mirth showed no sign of letting up anytime soon Snape lightly flicked an counterdrunkenness charm at him. He then had to wait for tears to be wiped and stray giggles to subside, and for glasses to be wiped clean of the teardroplets that had spattered them, and for several calming breaths to be taken, and for a brief relapse, and then for Lovegood to beg out of the hexes Snape was obliged to cast, and for the last vestiges of laughter to be wrung out of Lovegood by a somewhat painful spell used to juice carrots in Ancient Egypt. Presently sanity re-established itself in the room, although -- Snape couldn't help noticing -- it had slightly tittered edges. "You were saying?"
"I'm sorry, Severus, but it was funn-- erm, right; hard as it is to be less competent than our Ministry, the French have achieved it. They've a warrant out for my arrest, for instigating hatred and rebellion, and incitement of violence against the adherents of a registered religion, under Paragraph 22 of the Separation of Churches, States, and Magical Worlds Act of 1955. Le Grignoteur apparently had enough foresight to register the nameless one as a god. Now tell me, could He have achieved that himself?-- or is bureaucracy even more powerful than your master?"
"Mm," purred Snape, "I don't know. But I can just see your bug-eyed little brat with these pictures glued to her. The suffocation aspect of things will probably make her more bug-eyed, of course, but at least it'll no longer be visible. Quite an improvement; almost one devoutly to be wished. Yes, I can just picture it..."
"Don't say another word," Lovegood warned him, all traces of merriment gone.
"I wonder -- will the next luna-tic be so kind as to kill her directly or will he play with her a bit first? I think he'll play with her. Maybe more than a bit. Maybe at some length, actually -- some of the Death Eaters have bizarre but not altogether unusual tastes, inclined toward the barely-pubescent blonde variety of Lolita --"
Snape had managed to keep talking through the curse that sliced his cheeks open, first the right and then the left, Lovegood threading his wand through the air with the sort of precision that only Potions Masters are thought to have, and managed to keep his voice steady as each gash (on the right and the left, on the right and the left, at equal intervals on the right and the left) unstitched the lengths of his arms, and refrained from screaming -- though his voice was now ragged -- as Lovegood moved to his insteps and calculated his way up his legs, precisely, retracing the same infinity-sign into nerve after nerve. The pain only choked him when he could feel the spell hovering over his groin and his jugular.
"Your priorities are... wrong," he hissed, though not, this time, for effect.
"You're staining my carpet," Lovegood replied coldly.
"Your priorities... were always... wrong--"
"And you're staining my carpet."
Little neon fireflies had begun peppering Snape's field of vision. He forced himself to count them, wondered what trick of oxygen-deprivation and pain had made Lovegood's eyes appear orange, tried to spin against the spin. I didn't scream yet, he thought, and then, somewhat incoherently, I didn't tell him anything about Rosebud.
Just as the blackness began closing over him he thought he saw Dumbledore stepping out of the washbasin, as cheerful as if he were taking a walk in the park.
"Ah, Simon, Severus -- having a nice friendly chat again, I see."
Neither of them felt the slightest inclination to answer.
"I think you've made the point you were making, Severus," Dumbledore said after some time. Snape glared at Lovegood. Most of the wounds had been reknit and a numbing extract administered, though he was distinctly displeased at the fact that Dumbledore was holding his head up. "As noble as it is to warn an ally of the clear and present danger he's in, however, I'm disinclined to let you die for it. In fact, I expressly forbid it. NEWTs are coming up, after all; you'll have to mark your share of the exams coming in from abroad."
Snape glared at Lovegood.
"I'm told there's a miraculously bounteous crop of Potions students in Botswana this year, and with the French having changed their system -- well, obviously, the school boards are at a bit of a loss for options. Tongue-tying Toffee?"
"I'll pass on the caramelised punch-line, Headmaster, thanks," Snape glared at Lovegood.
"I find them extremely useful when I find my mouth and my mind have become disengaged one from the other," the headmaster went on. "Though of course such a thing rarely happens to one with as quick a mind as mine. You, my dear, have been warned."
Snape glared at Lovegood a bit more balefully for emphasis.
"No. I'd slice you to pieces."
"Whatever happened to freedom of speech?" remarked Snape with a sneer.
"You've made your point, Severus. I would have expected more self-control from both of you. Both of you."
"You expected what you got. And as it's unwise to leave your vulture's froth and scum pooling about, one or the other of you is going to get that mess out of my carpet. Negotiate it between you," Lovegood said flatly. "I'm not going to apologise, Albus; he's not worth another word."
"A thousandth of a picture," Snape pretended to muse. "Good to know the exchange rate for lives in your ledgers."
"Enough, the pair of you! My patience isn't infinite and this isn't a theatre class. I'll only say this one more time: I can't have the Order destroying itself; the other side is quite capable of doing it for us. Regardless of whether you choose to believe it. And now --"
"-- see to the carpet," Lovegood finished the sentence for him.
We sadly have to abandon our friends at this poetic juncture, though the reader may rest assured that glares were glared and snarks were snarked for some time afterwards, and that Lovegood stubbornly refused to be civil for the remainder of the afternoon. His parting words to Dumbledore were, quite frankly, unprintable.
Oh, the Sue. Did I forget to mention that there's another pepperjack chapter in the works where the Sue drags Snape to Chicago? This is getting out of control.
...and that's your cue for concrit. Everthanks.