a/n: I realize that I have not updated this thing for like a year. There is no excuse for this madness.
The day of being a ref came sooner than Severus had precipitated (wait, didn't precipitation have something to do with rain?) He was mortally dreading it.
"Severus!" Madame Hooch screeched in a super-scary voice as he plodded into her pathetic excuse for an office.
"I am mortally dreading this," Severus informed her, sitting down stiffly.
Madame Hooch walked over to a wardrobe and took out a ghastly striped suit. Severus didn't recall any other refs having to wear suits.
Indeed, as he reported to her after changing into the stupid thing, Madame Hooch was smiling rather evilly at him, as if she were trying to keep a case of the ha-has from springing up. Severus seriously hated her.
A while later, Severus was hovering on his broom out on the Quidditch pitch, trying to concentrate on not looking down. His broomophobia was coming back worse than ever. As the players flew onto the field, he chanced to look up into the stands in time to see Dumbledore sit down next to some professor that didn't matter, chatting away.
Severus stared at Dumbledore, mouth agape, but Dumbledore was too busy looking for something in his beard to notice. Severus imagined the only person as generally POed as he was right now was Dumbledore's lunch date. He assumed a facial expression which clearly said he was holding a lot of mean in.
"Those aren't real reff robes," Professor Sprout said bossily from behind him.
Severus turned around and ripped a decorative Hufflepuff flag off of the balcony where she sat.
There was a shocked, angry silence. Severus ripped two more flags off . Far below on the Quidditch pitch, Filch was flipping out over all the litter.
The quaffle flew past Severus's head and he realized that the game had been going on for a while now. Madame Hooch had obviously been neglecting her whistling duties. Severus turned away from Professor Sprout's territory and flew a short distance back and forth to look like he was doing something. The stadium was very loud and he had "Go Go Gryffindor", the smash hit from last game, stuck in his head.
A random red-hair Weasley hit a bludger at Severus, who swerved just in time and hit a wall. Trying not to look at Professor Sprout, he awarded Hufflepuff a penalty in the face of the random red-hair attack. The random red-hair Weasley looked scornful. Severus didn't know what he expected.
Severus spent most of the rest of the game skirting around the boundaries slowly on his unsteady broom. Every once in a while, when no one was looking, he would tear a paper flag and put on a burst of speed to the corner of the field in muffled laughter. Three Gryffindor flags and five Hufflepuff flags were down and no one seemed to notice but Filch, who was on the verge of a heart attack. This seemed to be the longest Quidditch game there ever was. He wondered if there were a way to speed this thing up.
"PENALTY TO HUFFLEPUFF!" Severus made up, mixing it up a little. He was coming around from his fifth lap of the field. This game was a drag. Suddenly the Pointy-Face Brat leaned out of a stand that Severus swore hadn't been there before, and started saying words in a very high volume. A second later however, the Weasley and the boy Severus bet he could beat up decided to pile on top of the Pointy-Face Brat, so that ended that.
Severus turned around again and got a mouthful of Potter-the-quite-frankly-unexpected's Quidditch robes as that crazy hooligan came flying right at him. Severus was starting to get a feeling that someone out here wanted him dead. He scanned the bleachers squintily, and saw Dumbledore grinning way too huge for comfort. A second later, everyone started yelling that Potter-the-somewhat-irrelevant had caught the Snitch. Severus seriously wondered if that was an entirely necessary thing to point out.
Suddenly a swarm of Gryffindors came charging onto the field, and Severus made a quick-fast landing, shoving his broom back at a startled Madame Hooch.
"Now wait a minute!" she hooted in a disgruntled manner.
Severus's mouth tasted like gym locker. He spit out a piece of lint on the ground.
"Litter, litter, vandalism," blustered Filch, chugging scarily over to him. Severus ran for it. He only stopped momentarily next to a strained looking Quirrell standing on the outskirts of the Hogwarts grounds.
"Meet me at inconspicuous o' clock p.m. in the Forbidden Forest," he hissed bossily. "We need to have a bit of a talk."
Quirrell looked frightened and confused. He opened his mouth to say something but Severus shushed him and hurried inside. One of his feet was an ache and pain. He could only presume it was the Fluffy foot, acting up again.
Severus ran down the dungeon stairs pretending he was a stunt man and skipping steps every once in a while. Stripping off his ridiculous referee outfit, he found a bonus coupon inside one of the pockets for a free sundae at Florean Fortesque's ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley.
Score Severus thought numbly, pulling on his robes with Extra Cape Attachments. Wrapping his cape around him, he ran all the way out to the grounds again, concentrating on not running into anything. Feeling like a dementor, Severus stopped on the edge of the Forbidden Forest and proceeded with caution. Something moved to the left of him, and Severus froze. A minute later, however, he unfroze, realizing that it was only Hagrid. Severus briefly wondered what kind of person wanders around in the back of their own house after dark before continuing.
Severus finally found Quirrell standing in the middle of the Forbidden Forest with his back to him. By now he was covered with twigs and panting a bit.
Severus asked his back what part of "edge" of the forest it didn't understand. Something moved past them in the mist. It looked suspiciously like a werewolf. Quirrell turned around real quick, almost falling over.
"Oh, S-Severus, what a s-s-surprise!"
Severus stared at him.
"Quirrell, I told you to meet me here, what exactly is surprising about that?"
"W-well, I d-don't know why you wanted t-t-to meet here of all p-places, Severus," Quirrell said, changing the subject.
"Oh, I thought we'd keep this private. Students aren't supposed to know about the Sorcerer's Stone after all."
Quirrell muttered something about it really being the Philosopher's Stone, but they changed it for the U.S. because Americans don't understand philosophy.
Dude, whatever Severus thought. Quirrell was clearly determined to get off the subject. Severus had already determined that he would like to get to bed before Christmas. Moving on.
"Have you figured out how to get past that beast of Hagrid's yet?" he asked quickly, staring around for a minute to make sure Hagrid hadn't in fact gotten so lost in back of his house that he wandered farther out and took the mention of his name as an invitation to join them.
"B-b-but Severus, I— Quirrell blathered.
Blablablabla bla.
"You don't want me as your enemy Quirrell," he said through gritted teeth, moving forward in an attempt to herd Quirrell into a tree.
"I-I don't know what you-
"You know perfectly well what I mean. And in case you forgot, I know that you are the host of an evil dark lord trying to come back to power by way of the Sorcerer's SLASH Philosopher's stone. And ALSO," Severus breathed triumphantly, "Relatively soon the Headmaster will listen to me about this, so you might as well cough up and tell me about your little bit of hocus pocus. I'm waiting."
"B-but I d-d-don't---
"Very well," Severus said, annoyed. "We'll have another little chat soon, when you've had enough time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie." He gave Quirrell a significant, I'm-watching-you type of look which lacked the hand motions because his cape would so totally fall off if he did that. Then he flung his cloak dramatically over his head and left the scene, so to speak.
Severus was clambering out of the woods, and Quirrell apparently wasn't following him because he wanted some quiet time alone in the woods. Severus hoped something ate him, which would solve the problem nicely.
That was when a not-too-nice smell hit Severus's nostrils. A minute later, he stumbled over a motionless lump on the ground. It turned out to be a dead unicorn. He was about to get up and leave this mess behind when Hagrid came galumphing over.
"I suggest you look into that," Severus told him, pointing to the dead unicorn.
"Blimey," Hagrid rumbled, not bothering to help Severus up. Instead, he bent over the unicorn, looking for who knows what. Severus had a revelation about the matter, and was about to tell Hagrid that oh please it was so obvious how that thing died, but then decided that leaving it a mystery would give Hagrid enough subject matter to trouble over for a good length of time. Plus Hagrid wouldn't get to asking why Severus had been out in the woods instead of going to dinner anyway.
So it was that Severus did a tick check behind the east parapet of the castle, before going inside and falling asleep thinking about Quirrell-unicorn parallels.
In the middle of the night, Severus woke up to hear Professor Flitwick stumbling drunkenly around on the floor above. He waited patiently for these sounds to desist, but when an hour had passed, Severus became suspicious that there was a staff party somewhere nearby, and took some Benedril.
The second time Severus woke up in the middle of the night, it was because his alarm spontaneously went off, blasting "Can You Do the Hippogriff" by the Weird Sisters ultra loud.
Severus jumped so bad that he knocked down a pickled lizard spleen in a jar on the shelf above his bed and had to reparo it. Deciding he was not going to get sleep sometime this night, Severus took to roaming the halls above. The staff party had ended, and Flitwick was lying passed out in a doorway. Filch was leaning over him, muttering wheezily about litter.
Severus wandered around for only half an hour though, because Phineas Nigellus kept following him through all the pictures, asking "about that tea party". Finally, Severus locked himself in the staff room to get away, and fell asleep.