CHAPTER 8:
ON THE CULINARY DELIGHTS OF THE GREASY-HAIRED BAT
Tom Marvolo Riddle was a man of no small ambition. This was an understatement on a par with saying that the ocean was wet. This was why he was Sorted into Slytherin. This was why he killed those people even as a lad. This was why he changed his name to Lord Voldemort based on an anagram and a vaguely French name. Who would follow a Dark Lord called Tom? Grindlewald got the right sort of name, sounding rather visceral and monolithic, but his near-Squib of a mother HAD to name him after that useless Muggle sugar daddy she had used Amortentia on.
His reasoning for his ambition was simple. At the tender age of seven, the young Tom Riddle decided that God didn't exist. For most, this would either provoke despair or relief. But sadly for the world, Tom belonged to a small subset of the remainder. He decided, as God didn't exist, that there was a vacancy to be filled(1). And so his quest for apotheosis began.
That being said, for all his exploration of means to achieve immortality at any cost (which, aside from the Horcruxes, also included rituals involving murder, rape, and, in one memorable ceremony, spanking Bellatrix Lestrange with a Mythril paddle before bedding her: insane though she was, and as incapable of love as he was, Voldemort was still capable of feeling lust, and Bellatrix was a VERY good lover), there had been nothing so transcendent as eating that slice of chocolate cake. Okay, he had checked it for every potion under the sun (and a few that weren't) with a paranoid precaution Mad-Eye Moody would have been proud of, but once he had declared it safe, and he gave but the slightest bit to Wormtail to taste-test (who, sadly, didn't perish, though he made a disturbingly orgasmic noise that reminded Voldemort that Peter Pettigrew should never breed), he tried it himself.
Voldemort was an intelligent man. Oh, he was a mercurial, impulsive, evil and wholly insane man, but he was an intelligent one. He knew what words like transcendent and theophany meant, but it wasn't until now that he truly experienced them.
Not that his minions could understand. All they saw was him staring into the distance, a single tear trickling from his red eyes. The fact that the Dark Lord was capable of weeping was surprising. How this happened after eating a non-potioned chocolate cake, they didn't know.
Voldemort had experienced something like theophany. In other words, he had thought he had met God. In reality, this was just his madness talking, triggered by the sheer delight of the chocolate cake. His deluded, Horcrux-addled mind had a hallucination of God as himself, albeit as a young man. Who, incidentally, told him to stop wasting time and murder more Muggles. He had a quota to meet, dammit!
Whether God exists or not is not a question that will be answered here. What is certain is that Voldemort was delusional, but his experience meeting his divine (well, diabolical by any normal metric) self had moved him in ways few things could. After all, it is one thing to believe one is God, but another thing entirely to have it confirmed.
When he came back to reality, he noticed a number of his followers looking at him in varying degrees of concern and confusion. Voldemort felt the tear on his ophidian face, and wiped it off, before glaring at them. "You saw…nothing," he hissed.
The gathered Death Eaters all nodded eagerly. About half a dozen of them promptly Obliviated themselves, though one of them got his wand movements wrong in his haste, and accidentally sent a Reducto at his head, turning it into something like chunky salsa. As this was Goyle Senior, the only persons who missed him was Crabbe Senior, and Lucius Malfoy, as Crabbe and Goyle were his OWN personal minions, Merlin-dammit! The others were just unhappy that Goyle turned out to have enough brains in his skull (a surprising revelation in of itself) to stain their robes.
After a hasty clean-up, Voldemort, who had read the note, said, "Everyone save for Severus may go."
The Death Eaters left with, for the most part, an optimal combination of deference, respect and speed. They wanted to get the hell away from their master as quickly as possible, but they didn't want to show their fear…or at least enough for Voldemort to start handing out Cruciatus Curses like candy at Halloween.
Severus Snape, meanwhile, stood firm. "What would you have me do, My Lord?" he asked once the others had vacated.
"The Queen of Britain's Vampires has indicated that she may join me, on the condition that I ate that slice of cake. It was…a beautiful cake, Severus. However, she wanted me to send an emissary, to negotiate her joining forces with us, and alone at that. She asked for you by name, and had her letter as a special Portkey. Normally, I would be hesitant to do so, but the truth is, with the raid on Azkaban, it would be prudent of me to acquire more forces before I can begin making my move." In other words, Voldemort was desperate, not that he would ever use such a word. A Dark Lord was never desperate. It would be unseemly to appear so.
"You are sending me out, My Lord?"
"Severus, my slippery friend, while keeping an eye on Dumbledore and his Order is a worthy task, I still am slightly uncertain of your true allegiance," Voldemort said silkily. "I trust that your knowledge of the Dark Arts would be up to the task of dealing with vampires if necessary. If she refuses to join us, then kill her, along with her associates, with Fiendfyre. It will leave the vampires leaderless, especially as the Dieudonne woman is currently on the Continent."
After a moment, Snape bowed. "I will go at once, My Lord."
"Excellent. Then go, Severus. Oh, and Severus?"
"Yes, My Lord?"
"Whatever happens…I MUST have that recipe for the cake! Do not fail me!"
Snape took a brief detour, actually, rather than heading to his rendezvous with destiny. Severus Snape was a dour man with the personality of a toxic waste dump and an obsession with a dead woman that stopped only just short of the right side of necrophilia. He was also caught between two masters, one a Dark Lord who went into the accoutrements in a big way, the other a manipulative old fart who was a major control freak, hidden behind a kindly grandfather persona. And Snape hated that. He had since come to realise that he preferred to look out solely for himself, and wished he could be free of those masters so that he could fuck off and retire to some seaside town in Australia in absolute anonymity. He'd have to change his looks a little so he looked less like Alan Rickman, but he had potions for that. Sadly, one master branded him like cattle, and the other kept exploiting the fact that he kept him out of prison.
Still, Snape was glad about one thing. The old fart claimed that Harry Potter was dead, or at least had been through a traumatising experience that he had died temporarily. Snape hoped it was the former, or if it was the latter, that the little shit who had stolen Lily's eyes was in a VERY bad way. As in brain-damaged, eating, pissing, and shitting through tubes, and unlikely to ever come near Snape ever again. Or maybe he had a close encounter with a Dementor, which would end in a similar fashion.
Dumbledore had urged Snape to be cautious, and to try and persuade the vampires from joining with Voldemort…or else destroy them. They were Dark creatures, after all. And as Tonks had been uncooperative lately, Dumbledore said that, if she was present, well, they could cut their losses and deal with her. That certainly appealed to Snape: Tonks was a relative of Sirius Black, and while she was a closer relative to Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange, those two hated their niece. Tonks' death would hurt Black, and that made it perfectly acceptable in the petty and petulant mind of Severus Tobias Snape, Esquire.
Of course, Dumbledore, upon hearing about the cake, also wanted the recipe. He may prefer lemon sherbets and the like, true, but he wouldn't say no to any well-made confection. Especially as Voldemort had tried it, and had enjoyed it. Voldemort was too Dark to deserve a good chocolate cake. Only Dumbledore deserved it! Not that he said the last few things out loud, but Snape knew, even without Legilimency, that the old wether(2) was thinking it pretty damned loudly.
Snape, afterwards, activated the Portkey in the letter, albeit not before preparing himself to fight for his life, and taking an antidote to any potions he might be forced to inhale in aerosol form. He ended up stumbling into what had to be a waiting room of some kind, albeit decorated in clashing colours that looked like a rainbow shat itself all over them. So, Dumbledore would have loved them. That being said, Snape frowned. This didn't seem like the décor for a vampire queen's lair. In fact, it seemed vaguely familiar.
Snape raised his nose and sniffed. While mocked mercilessly for his big nose by the Marauders, it was a surprisingly sensitive one, a veritable boon for any Potions Master. Not as sensitive as a werewolf, say, but he could tell, for example, the distinctive smell of a dirigible plum. And while that in itself wasn't noteworthy, that, plus the décor, did tend to indicate a conclusion that he didn't like.
As he came to this realisation, his eyes picked out a series of runes that had started to glow on the wall. In the last few seconds before his consciousness left him, he realised that the runes created a ward that promoted sleep, and prevented Apparition.
His last conscious thought before everything went black was, simply, Bugger.
He didn't expect to wake up, and he certainly didn't expect to wake up with the face of that deranged little bitch Luna Lovegood gurning at him, a marker pen in her hand and the distinctive smell of marker pen ink in his nostrils. Though a substantial part of him was far from surprised to find that odious little shit Harry Potter (alive and well, it seemed), that Mudblood bucktoothed swot Hermione Granger, and the two surviving, non-traitorous Marauders present. The universe couldn't be kind enough to have them here as corpses, or else tied up for him to use the Cruciatus Curse until they filled the air with their screams and the smell of urine and faecal matter. Tonks was also looking on. He would enjoy torturing and killing her too.
"Salvador Dali!" Granger called out.
Lovegood pouted. "Oh, poo. How did you guess?"
"One, that moustache is pretty distinctive," Granger said. "Two, Dali's art would be right up your alley(3)."
"What in Merlin's name are you doing, you little shits?!" Snape snarled, his usual iron control lost in being in close proximity to those he hated most, as well as being helpless (he was bound tightly to his chair, and something was affecting his magic). The aftereffects of being knocked out didn't help either.
"Playing Name that Moustache," Potter said. "Sorry, Luna, but it's no fun when they're awake. You might want to get away, he might bite you. Bats are known to carry rabies."
"Along with Ebola, Lyssavirus, Hendra Virus(4), and Greasyhairitis," Lovegood said.
Snape glared at her, and tried to use Legilimency, only to be confronted with a kaleidoscope of memories, a blizzard of thought that he nearly got lost in, of the lives absorbed by a vampire, and only his quick thinking had him pulling out in time. And he realised he had made an even graver mistake than coming here when he saw Lovegood glaring at him. Especially when she bared her teeth in a snarl. The teeth, those teeth, Oh Grandma, what HUGE teeth you have! I didn't know you had a shark in your immediate ancestry.
"That wasn't very polite," Lovegood said with considerable understatement. "Especially as Voldemort sent you as an emissary to me."
What? She was the Queen of Vampires? Luna Lovegood? Impossible! That's what Snape thought in his head. Out loud, he merely said, in a restrained tone that nonetheless betrayed Brobdingnagian depths of anger, hatred and contempt, "You're lying. I'd sooner believe Granger to be the Queen of Vampires."
"How flattering, Professor," Granger said with a smile that didn't bode well. "Then again, you ARE going to be my familiar after all, so it's just as well."
"You see, Snape," Lovegood said, "I know you're a spy for both sides, but really, you're only out for yourself. You're a self-centred greasy-haired bastard with a twisted obsession for Harry's mother that would ensure that you would screw her Inferius. Not only that, but you're so bad a teacher, you've effectively crippled a new generation of Healers and Aurors who need to know about Potions."
"It's not my fault that I have high standards," Snape sneered back.
"No. You just think anyone other than a Slytherin doesn't deserve to learn," Potter retorted. He suddenly lunged forward, and grabbed Snape's hand, squeezing it. "You always derided me as a celebrity, as someone coasting on their fame. You knew why I got it, because my mother saved me, but you couldn't see past the fact that I look like my father. Newsflash, Snivellous, I am not my father. I am far worse than he is."
"Because you're a vampire? No, all you have done is painted a bigger target on your back! Dumbledore will be after you now when you kill me, and rightly so! He should have finished what Voldemort started!" Snape bit out, even as his bones began to break. He had suffered worse pain with the Cruciatus Curse. "And I should have strangled you in the crib, Potter! You should have died! YOU DID NOT DESERVE TO LIVE! ONLY LILY! SHE WAS MINE!" Suddenly, he screamed a wordless scream as his hand was turned into pulp. Then, with another scream, he felt his leg shattered, by Potter punching it. His other leg went the same way.
Potter then calmed himself with an effort, and then said, "You hurt me for no good reason, even though you owed my parents debts, especially my mother. I should kill you, make you die slowly and painfully…but Luna here has a better idea. Tell me, Snivellous…how much do you hate having to serve two masters?"
With perhaps the most honesty Snape had ever shown in his life, he said, biting the words out through the pain, "Almost as much as I hate you and your father."
"Good. Because you're going to be serving us now, while spying on both the Order, and the Death Eaters," Potter said. "All for the Queen of Vampires, and of the Pudding Club, Luna. And the thing is…I won't be the one controlling you as a familiar. That privilege goes to Hermione. She wants your knowledge of the Dark Arts. I mean, I've warned her about the dangers of greasy food, but…"
Granger stepped forward, and glared down at Snape. "I think it's fitting that someone you doubtless call a Mudblood in the privacy of your head is going to be pulling your strings. You will become my familiar, our puppet. Have you got any last words, Professor?" The last word was dripping with sarcasm.
A strange calmness swept over Snape. A strange serenity. Oh, he was still angry, still filled with hate and contempt for those in front of him, and he was still in pain…but he knew now that he was about to die, or rather, become a familiar to Granger, and there was nothing he could do about it. So, he gathered himself, and said, in a low growl, "I hope you choke on me, you Mudblood slut." He then punctuated his last words by spitting on her face.
She wiped the spittle off her face too calmly. "I am going to enjoy this altogether too much," she remarked almost casually, as if discussing the weather, before she grabbed Snape's head, wrenching it back, and then biting down hard on his neck…
Afterwards, after they dumped Snape's body into the hatch to be fed upon by an eldritch horror, Hermione looked at the others, her features twisted in disgust. "He was the one who set Voldemort on your parents, Harry," Hermione said. "He overheard a prophecy, one that claimed someone was to be born soon with the power to stop Voldemort. He told Voldemort, hoping that Voldemort would only kill you and James Potter, and leave Lily to himself. But he was worried that Voldemort would kill Lily, so he approached Dumbledore."
"There was a prophecy around me?!" Harry demanded.
Sirius nodded. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything earlier, Harry, but I personally thought it was bollocks."
"As did I," Remus said. "It was apparently uttered by Trelawney. We don't know the full details, only that the children who fit the bill were you and Neville Longbottom. I don't think Dumbledore even told the whole thing to your parents. I only learned about the prophecy from Padfoot when we reunited after that whole mess after his escape. They didn't trust me at the time."
Sirius then added, "I only kept that from you because the prophecy is a load of shit, as far as I'm concerned, and I only knew a little about it anyway. Sorry."
Hermione grimaced. "And you were right about the masturbatory fantasies, Professor Lupin! Ugh! I want to scrub out my head with bleach! It's almost not worth the encyclopaedic knowledge of the Dark Arts and potions!"
"Almost?" Harry asked.
"Let's just say that we need to track down one of his old textbooks that he annotated. You can learn a lot of what I've just done. It's in the Potions classroom at Hogwarts, last he knew. We'll have to find a way to get it." Hermione then grinned viciously, showing off her fangs, and a shadow extruded itself from her to reveal Snape, looking very angry. "At least we now have a not-so-willing accomplice to help us. Isn't that right, Snivellous?"
"Fuck off, Mudblood!"
"That's Mistress Mudblood to you, Snivellous…"
CHAPTER 8 ANNOTATIONS:
So, there you have it. Snape's been captured and eaten. Okay, a little too easily, but Snape was prepared for anything but Runes. Plus, this story is meant to be about Lunar Harmony kicking the arses of those who deserve it.
Incidentally, Voldemort believing God to be himself while under the influence of the Theobroma Theophany was partly inspired by William Gull's dying hallucination/mystic journey in From Hell.
Anyway, sorry if the latter part of the chapter seemed rather darker and more serious than before. It happens. Even in crack, you have to have some serious bits. And frankly, I wanted to give Snape a painful death. That being said, I didn't want him to go out in a cowardly fashion. Snape is such a vicious bastard that he would go down cursing defiantly.
The next chapter may not be for a while. But Umbridge will get hers.
Review-answering time! mordreek: Well, Blackadder is brilliant, and the Vorkosigan Saga needs more fans. I'm glad you liked those references.
SurealFoxtrot: Wholly unintentional, but I'm glad you thought of it that way. Serendipitous, that.
duskrider: He tried to apologise to Lily, but by that point, he had joined the Death Eaters, so she refused.
DZ2: Not quite that bad. It'd repeat on her rather than make her high.
PikaMew1288: Well, in most of my Nasuverse crossovers, Luna is said to have Zelretch as an honorary grandfather, and the Brunested sisters as her honorary sisters. She's never a vampire in those, though in one, she IS half-Homunculus, namely in Perils of Magical Investigative Journalism.
WhiteElfElder: Harry was only dead temporarily: the Goblin instruments are made of sterner stuff, so he can still access them if needed.
DalkonCledwin: Oh, so that's where it went! I didn't realise you had written it!
1. This is based on the initial paragraph of Gareth Roberts' novelisation of the Doctor Who story Shada, which was originally written by Douglas Adams. It's about Skagra deciding he wanted to become God. Incidentally, I wholeheartedly recommend that book for any Whovians.
2. In some of my previous fanfics, Dumbledore has been called a wether (even in a couple of the fics where I don't actually bash him). A wether is a castrated goat.
3. This is a continuation of the Red Dwarf: Trojan joke from the previous chapter, where Dali's famous moustache was the first to be drawn on a catatonic Rimmer's face by the Cat. Dali's famously surreal images would probably suit Luna's own surreal nature.
4. Save for Ebola, all of the previous diseases are known to be carried by bats. Ebola, however, is suspected to be a bat-borne disease. Greasyhairitis, obviously, is a made-up name, and is not transmitted by bats, but I am sure somewhere, there is a medical term for greasy hair.