Far below, Professor Snap was lovingly watering his begonias as he hummed a merry tune.
"There you go, my loves. Grow up to be big and strong so your natural visage can put distressed students at ease and encourage the healing." He stroked their leaves.
He looked around his office and, seeing neither colleague nor student, sighed in defeat. There was certainly nothing to do now that students were mentally balanced from his ample care and Professor Snape's recent leave of absence.
Sitting down in his soft chair, he began to drum his fingers on the mahogany surface of his desk. The echo of each finger fall was somewhat depressing after a while, so he decided to flip through his notebook.
Instead of detailed notes and patient logs, each page contained meticulous sketches of pencils. These highly-polished tools of writing looked so real that one could almost touch them. He nodded in satisfaction and put the notebook in the upper-right-hand corner of his desk such that it was parallel with the desk's surface.
Bored again, he stood up and pulled out an easel from his closet and resumed some kind of oil painting. It appeared to be another gay duck painting. The ducks were merrily cavorting in an inflatable paddle pool shaped like a grinning yellow duck. Ducks that were not in the pool were playing with cute, fluffy kittens. The meows and duckling chirps filled the room. Professor Snap jumped in fright as he thought he heard a swallowed yelp of rage. He looked around the room and found nothing. He suddenly cast a suspicious look at the ceiling, but then his door slammed open.
"Professor Snap! Please, I can't take it anymore!" An angelic-faced blond young student breezed into his office.
Her sweet scent and naturally wavy hair made her look like she was amidst an ocean breeze.
"Oh, hello Miss Valentine." Professor Snap looked uneasy.
"Please, call me Honeysuckle!" She heaved her bosom forward.
"Er…I'd prefer that we keep this professional." He twitched, barely hiding his contempt. "Please, tell me what's troubling you." He gave an encouraging nod.
"Pencils!" She exclaimed, somewhat confusingly.
"I…see. Are you having intrusive thoughts of self-harm?"
"No! I just…I see them sitting there and it's like they're mocking me. I can't help myself! I just have to have them. I compulsively steal them!" She emptied the pockets of her robes, which contained no less than fifty-seven pencils that all bore the crest of Hogwarts.
"How interesting. Why do you suppose this is?" Professor Snap was barely listening to her as he slowly reached for his notebook as inconspicuously as he could manage.
"It all started when I began having recurring dreams about bluebells. They would bloom with the morning sun and turn to greet the day."
"Go on." He had taken hold of the notebook and was slowly dragging it towards his desk drawer.
"Then the next thing you know, I'm going up a bra size and all the girls are being bitches to me."
"Yes, puberty is very…confusing." He managed to place the notebook quietly into his desk drawer.
"And then when I'm sitting in class and I see those pencils, I just get this overwhelming need to steal them! I take them up to my room, close the bed curtain, and stare at them for hours." Her face was very animated as she spoke of pencils.
"Stationary can be quite lovely. But why do you think it is that you are so drawn to them that you feel the need to steal them from the school?" He asked triumphantly as he locked the drawer and tucked the key safely away in his pocket.
"I JUST WANT A PENIS SO BAD!" She screamed, her lips quivering and her blue eyes shining with mania.
Professor Snap made no response. There was some sort of inarticulate sound from the ceiling.
"They're such perfect phallic symbols – but they're always mocking me! Shoving my inadequacy back into my face! Do you have any idea how that feels?"
Not actually waiting for a response, she continued.
"It's just so unfair! So hard! No one understands me! So I think if I can get enough pencils, then I can push those feelings down and –"
"I was afraid of this. You have penis envy." Professor Snap gave a heavy sigh. "You see, Muggles and magical people differ in one major way. If you look at this chart here," he pulled a large chart out of his closet, "you can see the difference between a muggle brain and the brain of a magical person."
The Muggle, as one would expect, contained a normal-looking brain within the casing of the skull. The magical brain, however, was an indistinct circle with unicorns inside.
"Magical people are mentally unbalanced and Freudian theory applies quite nicely. It was certainly rather surprising to our community and unfortunate for Freud's reputation that it only applies to us. Ours is a terrible mental deficiency and a horrible burden to bear. And soon research will prove my theories." He explained.
"Well, then what can I do?"
"If you feel strongly enough, you could always have a magical gender-reassignment procedure."
"No…I want to be a woman…but I also want to have a penis." She sighed.
"I'm terribly sorry; the English language is far too pejorative and biased to allow for more than two genders. The best I can suggest is joining a different culture."
"I have a simpler solution." She gave him quite the look, complete with a twinkle in her eye.
"And that's your cue to leave!" He began pushing her forcefully out the door.
"But you're so rugged and masculine! You remind me of my father." She wailed as he slammed the door shut behind her.
"Merlin's baggy ass sack." He sighed in relief as he locked his door.
The frantic pounding and clawing gradually subsided as the girl lost interest and wandered off. Being an authority figure certainly had its down-side.
Secreted amongst the rafters and ventilation ducts, Snape was keeping a careful watch on the certainly evil Professor Snap. After a week of living in the ceiling, Snape was becoming used to his new abode and even learning a few shortcuts. Spiriting the brunt of the house elves' rations away, he reflected on what he had witnessed. The student body was clearly more disturbed than he could have possibly imagined. Watching Professor Snap's therapy sessions had been more alarming than Professor Snap himself. Sure his drawings of pencils were weird, but that was nothing compared to the boy who murdered lobsters and kept their left antennae as a trophy in order to compensate for the fact that his mother was having an affair with the milkman. Not to mention the girl with multiple-personality disorders who possessed a mighty forty-six distinct personalities as catalogued by Professor Snap. Even more distressing, her condition seemed to be worsening as she developed a new duck personality which, from the rafters, he watched swimming about in the lake with the naked mermaids. No doubt this was Snap's doing with the influence of his suggestive duck imagery. The man was a menace. None of the students had been diagnosed with mental illnesses before Hogwart's had hired a psychologist; clearly he was somehow destroying the minds of the children.
But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out how! It was like the man was some kind of devious genius. Snape had been watching him for weeks and all he did, aside from the basic necessities, was draw pencils, listen to bitchy students, paint ducks, and go for shirtless morning jogs with the sweat sparkling off of his toned abs in the morning light.
As he finished off a buttered bun, he resumed his post above Professor Snap's office. Looking through the grate, he took stock of the duck paintings, the incessant quacking, and the furniture, but there was no man. No matter. He must have gone for his evening shower half an hour early. However, the shower was sadly empty, as was the rest of Professor Snap's living quarters. Could he have gone to the staff room? But he was nowhere to be found. Professor Snape started to feel uneasy. He had made a few strangled sounds during that crazy girl's train wreck of a therapy session, but surely Snap hadn't realized…
Snape was suddenly disturbed by an uneven pounding sound that was reverberating through the ducts. THUNK-THUNK! THUNK-THUNK! THUNK-THUNK!
"What the hell?" He muttered.
He looked behind him just in time to see chiseled good looks and greased-up shirtlessness flash past the junction he was hiding in. Before the reality could sink in, Professor Snap's angry face rounded the corner.
"I knew it!" His eyes flashed in anger.
"Oh shit!" Snape's eyes widened. "There are no witnesses here! Expelliarimus!" He cast a quick spell
Professor Snap flew backwards and slammed into the ventilation duct, seriously denting it and causing a panic among the girls in the girl's washroom. They were still edgy after the centaur incidents. Snape desperately clawed his way through the duct, hoping to Satan that Stanwick wouldn't recover his senses before he could reach Dumbledore. No wait! He was under Stanwick's influence and McGonagall was infatuated with the jerk. Who did that leave him? He shuddered.
"No…" But he knew it was true. Professor Sprout was his only hope.
Where would she be?
"Got it!" He exclaimed as he headed for the Great Hall where she would no doubt be stuffing her face.
"SNAAAAAAAAPE!" He heard the primal war cry from behind him.
"Naaaaa!" He panicked and doubled his speed.
But Professor Snap, greased up in spandex shorts, was steadily gaining on the winded Snape.
"You have no idea what you're meddling with, Severus!" Snap continued through the vent with a THUNK-THUNK! THUNK-THUNK!
"I won't let you destroy the school with your mind games and attempted murder!" Snape felt his panic steadily rising as Snap continued to gain ground.
"And do you have any idea how rude it is to spy on people?" Snap was practically foaming at the mouth.
"You're not my mother!" Snape shot back.
"Freudian Slip Attack!" Proffesor Snap used his ultimate psychology attack in an ironic and unintentional reference to his greased-up state and suddenly tackled the hapless Snape.
"Agh!" Snape cried.
The vent suddenly gave way and the two found themselves falling through the air. Hitting a few floating candles on the way down, the two fell for an awfully long time until they landed with considerable force on some large turkeys in the middle of the Gryffindor table. As the candles lit a ring fire around the edge of the table, the children were sprayed with pieces of turkey debris.
"What the fuck?" Harry was disappointed and confused by the spectacle before him.
"Uhhh…" Ron whimpered, silently crying for the angel Harry had just killed with his F-bomb.
"You asshole!" Snape leapt to his feet, his cloak tearing off because it was caught on the rib of a turkey.
With a resounding CRACK! Professor Snape bitch-slapped Professor Snap with his wand. That would show his smug face to look so good.
Professor Snap, furious, regained his composure despite his near nudity and pulled his wand out from the recesses of his spandex shorts.
"I didn't want it to come to this, Severus, but you've left me no choice!" His eyes were wide with fire and passion.
"I didn't either. Where the hell were you keeping that thing?" Snape looked upon Snap's wand with disgust.
"Wingardium shiviosa!" Professor Snap didn't give Snape anymore time for delay.
Snape barely dodged the conjured knives that flew at him, and the right sleeve of his robe fell off leaving behind a thin red line of blood.
"Petrificus totalus!" Snape cast back, but Snap nimbly dodged the spell.
It hit Neville in the face and he fell backwards off of his stool. Professor Snap stood, his muscles gleaming in the firelight, and glared.
"You're endangering the students." He growled.
"I'm endangering people? What about that guy you killed when your spell missed me in Hogsmeade?" Snape used flailing hand gestures to emphasize his point.
"I tried to tell you, that wasn't me!" Professor Snap looked at him imploringly.
"Immobulous!" Snape screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.
But again, Snap dodged.
"Wingardium shiviosa!" Professor Snap succeeded not only in convincing Snape that he only knew one spell, but he also succeeded in cutting off the rest of Snape's robes and leaving a deep cut in the haggard, topless professor's shoulder.
"Expelliarimus!" The two cast at the same time.
As both were successful, their dignified wizard's duel denigrated into a homoerotic wrestling match as the two launched themselves at each other in rage.
"This is hot." Hermione breathed softly, as she and many others hadn't bothered to flee the carnage.
"I know." Harry remained transfixed.
Ron, who had initially had food dripping out of his agape mouth, now had vomit silently trickling out. This was the worst birthday ever.
Professor Snap slipped on a piece of pumpkin pie and fell heavily onto a goblet of pumpkin juice.
"Owwww!" He screamed what his spine was thinking.
Professor Snape toppled on top of him, somehow apparently winning at a contest of strength. Unsure of what to do when winning a fight, he resorted to slapping Professor Snap repeatedly in the face. It was quite satisfying.
"This is for your dumb duck paintings!" Slap!" And all those times you tried to kill me!" Slap! Slap! Slap! "And this is for looking much, much better than me shirtless!" Snape was sensitive about his sunken chest, protruding ribs and alabaster skin.
Professor Snap, recovering from his spine pain, managed to grab Snape's girly wrists to stave off the attacks.
"I keep on trying to tell you! It wasn't-"
A jet of green slammed into the honeyed ham beside them, creating a pink rain.
Alarmed, the two rolled onto their feet and jumped over the ring of fire just as another volley of the unforgivable curse hit more food.
The two regained their footing and whipped around to locate their assailant.
Snape's eyes widened in betrayal.
"YOU! But why?"