Chapter Nine: The Impostor and the Wallet
Bridgit shuffled slowly down the hallway, giving a sigh and a look of pity at Professor Snape. He was dragging himself like a pitiful inchworm slightly ahead of her as they traveled to get him medical attention. She had tried to go to fetch Madame Pomfrey for help, but he deducted points every time she took the lead. By the time she figured he would accept no help, the number of points she had cost her house was over 9000! Snape said a silent prayer for behavioral psychologists everywhere…particularly Watson whose experiments of torturing children to see what would happen had inspired his own present outlook on life.
Bridgit had then verbally offered to help him, but he had flatly refused and insisted on going to Dumbledore's office instead of seeking the medical attention he so desperately desired.
"Slow down! You're going too fast." Snape grumped, crawling along the floor behind her. "This floor is filthy!" He roared. "That squib Filch isn't doing his job! If he weren't so busy trying to make babies with his cat wife-"
"I think the floors are fine." Bridgit didn't want to hear about a gross person's pretend sex life with an animal.
"Are you sure that you don't want to go to the infirmary first? Bridgit changed the subject.
"No! I must tell Dumbledore what happened immediately." Snape continued dragging himself along like a gimped snake.
Oh yes. You must tell your darling Dumbley-wumbley right away, for he awaits you with baited breath. I know you yearn for the comforting embrace of his arms, but be strong for now, dear Severus. Bridgit thought to herself.
"I recognize that expression of passive-aggressive bitchiness. Ten points from Gryffindor."
"How the hell do you keep doing that? And why do I keep helping you?" Bridgit sighed.
"Here we are. Now close your ears while I give the super-ultra-secret password." Snape completed his journey before two statues of stone gargoyles hiding the super-ultra-secret staircase.
Bridgit rolled her eyes and jammed her fingers in her ears.
"Thundercats ho!" Snape whispered.
The stone gargoyles sprang to life, entered small spacecraft and zoomed away at the speed of sound leaving only thunder in their wake.
"Now, Cora, I know it was amusing, but it was inappropriate." Bridgit heard Dumbledore say.
"You have no proof it was me." Cora said coolly.
Bridgit, letting her curiosity get the best of her, ran up the steps to find out what Cora had done.
"You stay there!" She yelled back at Snape.
"I'm afraid the entire class of eyes-witnesses beg to differ." Dumbledore contradicted her.
"Objection!" Cora pointed a finger at him. "Eye-witness testimony is both fallible and malleable."
"Only in North America. I'm afraid to avoid suspension, you will have to apologize to your classmates, to Professor Binns and to re-take that particular lecture."
"I'd rather have to battle for my life in a pit full of poisonous snakes." Cora growled.
"I knew you'd understand." He said warmly. Bridgit interrupted them by walking into the room.
"What'd you do? What'd you do?" Bridgit asked excitedly. Cora grinned mischievously.
"Never mind that, what are you doing here?" asked Dumbledore.
"Oh, someone tried to kill Snape, but I heroically stopped him with my beauty, valor and muscles. The culprit ran away at the sight of me! I'm not sure how he noticed my intense good looks, since he had no head. Anyway, I think he was an impostor because there can't be two Snapes and I figured the Snape who had a head was the real one. I left Real Snape outside." Bridgit said.
"Really?" Dumbledore asked dubiously, hoping it was a horrible, horrible lie.
"Yeah." Bridgit confirmed her wild tale. Dumbledore sighed.
"Yes, even us jolly guys have our bad days. Well, except for my cousin Santa Clause. Lucky dog only has to work one day a year." He left the office to go find Snape. He paused at the door. "Where is he, again?"
"I told you: Fake Snape got away and I left Real Snape at the bottom of the stairs." Bridgit confirmed as they all headed out the secret entrance.
"Ah, here he is!" Dumbledore spied the potions master being strangled to death by his headless impostor.
"Crap!" The impostor exclaimed, then threw a smoke bomb and ran away.
"So…what now?" Asked Cora.
"Oh, that guy tried to kill Snape with that spell Professor Summersong taught us with the violin. Then he used a knife and then his hands. I don't know what he'll use next." Bridgit misinterpreted Cora's question. "Perhaps penguins of some kind."
"Uh…" Cora couldn't believe the communication gap despite their common language.
"But the impostor must have some kind of social phobia. Every time he's around people, he runs away." Bridgit mused. "I'll bet we can use it against him!"
"That's so sad. He must not have any friends." Cora looked after him sympathetically.
"I shall run after the assassin. Please take Professor Snape to the infirmary immediately and suspend your guard duties of Harry until further notice." Dumbledore called to them as he ran down the hallway, unusually spry for an old geezer.
"So, what did you do to get in that much trouble for?" Bridgit, having been conditioned, ignored the idea of taking Snape to the infirmary.
"Well, it all started with a very civilized debate. We were learning about the history of the Ministry of Magic and Binns incorrectly asserted that the first minister was a man and not an octopus, as is common knowledge. I tried to correct him but he insisted that I was mistaken and that the ministry has never had an octopus as Minister of Magic. He refused to relent."
"The rogue!" Bridgit gasped.
"I know! Trex clearly stated in our history of the world class that the first minister of magic was, and I quote, "an octopus or something like that."" Cora crossed her arms.
"That was the year they confiscated our textbooks because they were so old that they were growing carcinogenic mold. And Trex heroically taught us history from his own mighty memory. It's too bad magic still hasn't found a cure for cancer." Bridgit shook her head sadly.
"Anyway, I was really pissed, so I decided to give him a little taste of my haymaker."
"But Binns is a ghost! Physical attacks don't affect him." Bridgit pointed out.
"So I learned." Cora sighed. "I shot fire at him, but that wasn't very effective either. In the end, I had to resort to using psychic. That was super effective and he fainted. I gained 30 exp and raised a level, learning frustration. It was, all in all, a very unproductive class." Cora finished her story.
Cora sadly purged the real memory of what had actually happened from her mind. In reality Binns had shown her documented proof that the first Minister was, indeed, a person and provided her with DNA records and his death certificate from when he had drowned. She had then screamed 'you're not the boss of me!' and ran from the room, lighting the chalkboard on fire as she went. But because memory is partially reconstructed, she was able to avoid conflict with her ego.
"So, Snape's looking a little green, eh?" Cora changed the subject.
"I guess so." Bridgit conceded, fearing the loss of more house points.
"We should probably do what Dubledore told us to." Cora prompted her friend.
"Yeah…" Bridgit looked uneasy.
" But first…let's pinch his wallet."
Dumbledore sprinted nimbly to the broom and naked statue closet, which was now a crime scene. The culprit was long gone, so he decided looking for clues would be the best use of his time. He burst into the empty room and gasped. The walls were somehow covered in blood…he assumed it was Snape's. His true concern, however, lay not with his faculty member, but a beloved rendition of a urinating angel.
"Thank Satan the statue's okay!" Dumbledore breathed a sigh of relief.
He noted the shattered violin on the ground and nudged it with his curly-toed shoe. He noticed a flash of white and bent down to retrieve a messy note.
"I did it. It was me." And it was signed, "Severedhead Snape."
"Well, that cinches it. The culprit can be only one man: Severus' estranged brother: Severedhead!" He explained out loud for no reason.
He brushed his hands together.
"Well, my work here is done. Off to Hogsmeade and the shapely curves of Madame Rosemerta." He sighed, blushing a little at the thought of butterbeer.
He suddenly slammed his fist into his palm.
"No, Goddammit! I'm going to act like a man. I will have real beer. Nice and warm."
Meanwhile, Bridgit was looking at Cora in abject horror.
"What?" Cora asked.
"You mean you were serious?" Bridgit couldn't believe her ears.
"Oh, don't look so shocked!" Cora berated her friend.
"No, it's not your lack morality! How much do you really expect to find in a teacher's wallet?"
"Ten bucks, but that's not the point! Maybe we'll find something to blackmail him with!" Cora happily forecasted.
"Yes, because Snape isn't paranoid at all and is totally the type to carelessly leave incriminating evidence in his wallet."
They searched his pockets and Cora found a jingling sack full of coins. Cora gave it a sideways glance, but decided that money was money.
"Oy, watch yourself." The bag, which apparently was able to talk out its money hole, warned her.
"Screw you." Cora jammed her fist into the bag.
The bag then bit her.
"Aghhhhh!" Cora yelped in pain. "How can it have teeth?"
"Wait, maybe it's like those biting books." Bridgit rushed in and tried tickling it.
The bag, with razor sharp drawstrings, cut deep into her hand.
"Ow! This isn't magical at all." Bridgit whined.
"Get off!" Cora ran around screaming, violently flailing her arm about.
The bag got dizzy, lost its grip and was flung against the stone walls. There was a sharp crack upon impact and the bag slid slowly to the floor, leaving a trail of blood.
"Neat!" Cora started to pillage it's corpse.
"What? Only two sickles!" She frowned in disappointment.
"That's more than I expected." Bridgit said.
Cora reached in to take the coins out to add to her collection of stolen money.
"All according to plan." She pocketed the cash. "Wait, I think there's something else in here. Some kind of book."
As her fingers closed around the object, a large electric shock sent her flying into the wall. Cora groaned and climbed to her feet, looking angrily at her scorched hand. Bridgit burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at? My hand is severely burned!" Cora yelled.
"I'm sorry! It's just that your hair is standing on end!" Bridgit said between laughs.
"Oh like you've never seen hair standing up before." Cora muttered irritably.
"It's not that. Your messy hair looks like Einstein's and I find the dichotomy hilarious!" Bridgit continued to laugh cruelly at her injured friend.
"Stupid wallet! Should have known better. Whatever, this only proves that he has something to hide!" Cora threw the little black book to the ground in disgust. A whole bunch of pictures fell out.
"Yes! Jackpot!" Cora whooped with delight, "Now we have some blackmail material." She picked up the pictures.
"They might not necessarily have blackmailing potential. I mean, they could be pictures of his family or something." Bridgit warned Cora.
"Look at his face." Cora shook her head and pointed at the unconscious professor. "Does that look like the face of someone who has a family?"
"Well, he was born, right?" Bridgit gave Cora a scathing look.
"From the bowels of hell." Cora started sifting through the pile of photographs.
"Let's see…Snape and Hagrid with Hagrid in bondage and Snape dressed lolita, crap, crap, crap, Snape sewing a tarantula skin purse in a sweatshop, crap, oh, here's your family photo." Cora chucked it over her shoulder and Bridgit barely managed to catch it.
His family was creepy and the photo was in grainy black and white. Snape's brother had no head, his father was bleeding from several stab wounds and his mother literally had a horse's face. They were all twitching sporadically and the mother was neighing, threatening to beat her sons under her sturdy hooves.
"I wanna go home!" Bridgit sobbed.
"Whoa!" Cora suddenly stopped.
"What is it?"
"Look!"
They went through about twenty pictures of McGonnagal, all of which were clearly candid. Especially the one of her sleeping.
While Bridgit stared in horror, Cora exclaimed, "Jackpot!" once again.
She triumphantly thrust a picture into Bridgit's view. It was a Death-eater photo of some kind of kegger and Snape stood all alone in the background, ridiculously fat.
"…Snape was fat?"
"I know! You'd think not based on how skinny and wretched he is now…" Bridgit went off into imagination land.
~Snape stood in his cold dungeon, throwing all of his food into the furnace window and sulked in front of a mirror.
"You're fat! You're fat and ugly and no one likes you! Boooo! Booooo!" He sobbed.~
"Best birthday ever." She grinned.
"Well, I guess we have a winner. Now to just put these back before-"
Snape's eyes exploded into openness.
"What the hell is your major malfunction?" He slurred.
"..." Bridgit mechanically stated.
"Oh god, the bells." Snape moaned, rolling over.
Putting his weight on his bad arm, he grunted in pain and then passed out again.
"You're silly!" Bridgit giggled.
"Well, that was close." Cora sighed, putting back the corpse of his moneybag. Hopefully he wouldn't notice until it started to decay.
"Weren't we supposed to be doing something important?" Bridgit pondered aloud.
"Well," Cora paid Snape's unconscious visage a visit with her eyes, "it could have something to do with this unpleasant dead guy."
"Right, the infirmary! We'd better help him out; he's not so bad. It would be wrong to let him die."
"Perhaps. But, I still don't like him." Cora muttered.
"Well, what about when he's unconscious? He's less lippy that way." Bridgit mused. "Do you suppose there's a spell for that?"
"No, idiot. It's called a coma." Cora sighed.
"A coma, eh? Where can I find a coma spell?" Cora patted her friend's head.
"There, there, Bridgit. It's clear you've done too much thinking today. I'll relieve your brain of duty."
"THANK YOU!" Bridgit sighed in relief. She then started to drool.
"Frieeeeeeeeeend."
"Right!" Cora clapped her hands together and rubbed them. "Time to get you healed."
"I'll do it!" Bridgit's hand shot up into the air. "I'm a healing-type magical girl just like Reagan!"
"No you're not!"
"Yes I am, watch me!" She spun around in a circle, entered horse stance and thrust her palms out in front of her. "HEAL!" She commanded.
Snape's body exploded on contact.
"Shit! To intensive care!" Cora yelled as she and Bridgit quickly dragged Snape off before he died.