"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the grumpiest of them all?" House muttered to his reflection in the men's bathroom on floor three. He palmed a Vicodin and swallowed it down with a grimace. When he opened his eyes again, it wasn't his reflection staring back at him.
"Who the bloody hell are you?" the man in the mirror growled. He had long grimy hair, a hooked nose and sallow skin, and oddly enough, a British accent. House blinked. The man was still there. He checked his tub of pills. Definitely Vicodin. Had his addiction finally reached the hallucinogenic stage? He'd been certain he'd have another year at least.
"Well? Are you going to answer, or are you just going to rudely stare at me? I don't have the time to waste talking to a moron who's managed to access my communimirror."
"Of all the names I've ever been called, moron isn't one of them," House said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. He sighed. "Fuck. I'm talking to my hallucination."
"Excuse me! How dare you! Me? A hallucination!" The man in the mirror drew himself up. "I am Severus Tobius Snape, Order of Merlin First Class, Master Potioneer."
House raised a brow. This was the most vivid hallucination he'd ever had, including the time he'd done acid then eaten three batches of hash brownies.
"And who might you be?" Snape asked.
House snorted with laughter. "This is insane, you know," he told Snape, his hallucination. "I'm Doctor House, and I'm self-diagnosing myself with Vicodin induced hallucinations."
"A muggle?" Snape said. He withdrew a long wooden stick and tapped Snape's side of the mirror with it. "In a muggle hospital. What the hell?"
He flicked the stick again, and a shining white doe shimmered into being. "Potter, I'm apparating to 40.338251o N 74.281908o W. A communimirror has made its way into a muggle hospital, and some muggle's managed to activate it." The doe bounded through a wall. House was disappointed to see it go.
CRACK.
The man in the mirror disappeared, and the mirror went back to being a reflective surface. House raised his eyebrow. What to do, what to do… He whistled to himself, and wandered back to his office.
"Have we got a case?" he asked, poking his head through the door of the adjoining conference room. Chase was balancing his chair on two legs, watching Cameron, who was writing up a report. Foreman was reading a fiction novel.
"No?" Chase said.
"Are you asking, or telling?" House replied, laying the patronisation on thick. Chase flushed, and glanced at Cameron, who rolled her eyes.
"No," she said firmly. House wasn't surprised. He was bored. A flicker of movement caught his eye.
"Is that a torrid romance novel?" House asked in delight as Foreman tried to slip the book away. He swiped it out of Foreman's hands and opened it to a random page.
"My mouth enveloped his throbbing member," House improvised.
"No!" Foreman growled, tugging the book away. "It's a crime thriller." He turned, almost pleadingly to his colleagues.
"Whatever floats your boat," Chase said, a smirk upon his face.
"I like reading erotic fiction," Cameron remarked, and Chase choked on his own spit. House turned to her, leering a little, but disregarded her comment as an attempt to provoke Chase.
"How about you come into my office and we'll make some together?" He wiggled his brows. Cameron didn't bother responding.
There were three sharp knocks on the glass window behind him.
"Not interested!" House yelled. "We've already got a case." He heard the quiet whoosh of the door opening anyway. He spun, ready to berate Cuddy, or Wilson, or whomever else disturbed his potential opportunity to sleep with Cameron, when his gaze settled on Severus Snape, his faithful hallucination that he'd so happily dismissed. He glanced warily at his team, but they too were staring at the disturbance.
"Do you see him?" House demanded, pointing at Chase, who was the most likely to give a straight answer without questioning him.
"Yes," Chase said.
"Describe him," House demanded.
"If I could have a word, Doctor House," Snape said, looking for all the world as if he were about to commit murder.
"Dark greasy hair, hooked nose, a severe deficiency of vitamin D, looks like he's going to kill us all, especially me," Chase said, his voice light, but his body tense. House scoffed, but narrowed his eyes. If he hadn't hallucinated Snape, then what the hell had happened in the bathroom?
"Let's go." House gestured for Snape to follow him into his office, drawing closed the blinds. He leant against the desk, twirling his cane in one hand.
"So… I've either hallucinated an entire day's worth of memories, or there's something unnatural going on here." House, as a rule, didn't believe in what couldn't be proved with empirical evidence. God, magic, aromatherapy. While he didn't trust his own eyes entirely, he trusted them enough to know that he'd not hallucinated his entire day. Which meant he'd not hallucinated Chase, which meant the man before him was as real as he was. He prodded him with his cane just in case. Quicker than he'd anticipated Snape grasped the cane, twisting it from his hands and threw it out of reach.
"I need that to walk," House said mildly. Snape looked unrepentant.
"Where's the toilet that you contacted me from?" Snape asked. House smirked.
"Why on earth would I want to tell you? I rather like the idea of having a magic mirror at my disposal."
Snape stared at him blankly then sighed. "Bloody muggles," Snape muttered, whatever they were, and withdrew the stick from before. House eyed it warily. Snape raised the stick and House began backing away, regretting trying to hit Snape with his cane now it was absent and he could barely walk.
"Severus!" A voice saved him from whatever fate he'd been about to face, and a man even prettier than Chase walked into his office.
He had dark, artfully messy hair, a lithe build that spoke of hidden muscles, and piercing green eyes. "You can't just go around cursing helpless muggles!" the man hissed, also in a British accent, and House decided he liked this man very much. This, presumably, was Potter.
"He attacked me!" Snape said. Potter glanced about, and spotted his cane on the floor.
"Is this yours?" Potter asked, scooping up the cane and passing it to House. He turned back to Snape, and House smirked at him over Potter's shoulder. Snape's eyes flashed in irritation.
"My name is Agent Potter, and this is my Consultant, Severus Snape," Potter said, turning back to House. He slid an officious looking badge from his pocket, which House granted a cursory glance. House couldn't help but notice Potter hadn't said whom he was an Agent of, and the badge was less than enlightening.
"I understand you've got an advanced piece of technology that's malfunctioning," Potter said smoothly. "Would you mind showing us where it is?"
"Certainly," House replied, and Snape's eyes flashed in anger again. "If you let me watch you fix it, then tell me what it is, and which Agency you're from, and how you arrived here so quickly, and what the wooden stick is in Snape's hand, and answer many other questions I've got."
"Departmet M, Interpol," Potter said, his mouth twitching in what might have been amusement. "I'm afraid the rest is classified."
"Well then, I suppose we're at an impasse."
Potter looked at him, truly looked at him and House advantage of the moment to look right back.
"If you just let me…" Snape muttered impatiently. Potter pursed his lips.
"No. I'll do it," he said. Snape huffed. "I'd rather you not ruin the mind of one of the foremost diagnosticians in the world," Potter said quietly. "You know you can be rather abrasive."
Snape rolled his eyes and turned away.
"I suppose you'll avoid obliviating him as well," Snape growled. Obliviate, an unknown word, perhaps from the Latin oblivium, from which came oblivion.
"If I can," Potter replied. House did not like the avenue this conversation had taken. Potter stepped forward, quicker than he'd expected, and grasped House's chin in one hand. He gazed into House's eyes, and House couldn't look away, couldn't even blink. Memories raced before his eyes, unwillingly pulled forth, of the bathroom in which this had all started, eventually Potter pulled back. House staggered away.
"Let's go," Potter said, and stalked out the door, Snape hot on his heels.
"Foolish boy," he heard Snape berating Potter. House shuffled out after them.
"Harry Potter!" Someone cried, and Potter froze. The delusional elderly lady that believed in witchcraft tottered toward him.
"Merlin and Morgana. It's really you," she murmured. House wondered if they'd been too quick to diagnose her.
"Ma'am," Potter said quietly. "I'm here on official business I'm afraid."
"I just wanted to thank you for your service," the lady said, and patted him on the cheek. "Augusta Longbottom's an old friend of mine, and she always speaks highly of you." Potter's tight expression softened. House contemplated her words. 'Thank you for your service.' A phrase often used to compliment those in the armed forces. But Potter was British, and barely thirty, and had none of the wounds a veteran might, certainly not one that was well known.
"Thank you Ma'am, but I really must be going," he said. She nodded, shook his hand, and Potter continued on his mission. House was torn between following the pair, or accosting the old lady. In the end, it wasn't that difficult a decision.
"How do you know him?" he asked abruptly. The old lady turned a raised brow upon him.
"Don't you know when to mind your own business?" she told him. If House hadn't been in such a hurry he would have found her immensely amusing.
"Never," he replied.
She grinned. "Me neither, but that doesn't mean I'm going to share his with you. Of you go now, I need my rest." She waved him away. House sighed in exasperation, and walked as fast as he could to the third floor bathroom. There was only one way out, so he'd see them there or in the corridor. He pushed in way in, and stopped. The bathroom was completely empty.
They were gone, as if they'd never been there at all.