Chapter 7 : The Sexy Goth And The Meme
"Maybe!" Mary hurriedly said. "This specifically isn't supposed to be fun. Maybe it's supposed to be… terrifying!" Brie opened her mouth to say something, Mary continued regardless. "You should be crying yourself to sleep every night with the knowledge -"
"That sounds like projecting." Severus chimed in, her voice only became louder in response.
"- that we're all one hundred percent for certain going to bloody die!" Mary let out a sob… and left.
Brie, Jack and Severus stayed quiet for a few seconds. The professor was looking in the direction that Mary had left, disgust evident on his face.
"Is she… always like… that?" Brie asked cringing, and Severus' gaze snapped back to her. Jack laughed nervously.
"I should have brewed her a Calming Draught." He replied with disdain.
At this, both hosts erupted with laughter. Teddy heard the Potter Followhip whispering to each other, but he didn't want to miss anything on the TV.
"Said like a true Goth! Or are they called emo nowadays?" Jack said.
"You…" Brie pointed her finger playfully at Severus. "We're gonna have to get you back!" She looked behind her shoulder. "Is he a plant? No?"
They joked around some more before Brie concluded the interview.
"Well, the handsome Professor is welcome back anytime. The yelling lady… not so much."
Teddy turned off the TV, not quite sur of how he felt overall.
Luna chuckled softly. "Mary has become a meme."
"A what?" Neville asked.
"It's like an inside joke, except everyone can enjoy it." Luna replied. She turned the phone screen toward Neville, and the colors drained from his face.
"Everyone with these phones can see this?" He asked, clearly horrified at the scale this was taking.
Teddy opened the Vroom Vroom app and scrolled until he found what Luna was referring to. There was a plethora of pictures of Mary's distraught face with jokes written in plain white, some of them had evident digital worked done on top of it to make her look even worse. Memes indeed.
"Yes. It's hilarious." She showed Ginny while chuckling, while the ginger girl gasped.
"What's going on?" Ron asked as he got up.
Teddy turned his phone to show Ron and Hermione one of them. Mary's face had been made to look like it was melting. Hermione gripped Ron's shoulder from her seat, her stare never left the phone's screen. They were both speechless.
Teddy felt the urge to comfort them.
"Don't worry, these are photoshopped."
"Photo-what?" Ron replied. He looked down at Hermione and she shook her head.
"I have to go get her…" Ginny said frantically. She rushed to get her coat and she was out fast. The door would have slammed shut if it hadn't had a spring.
Teddy was surprised that Ron didn't understand. Wasn't photoshop a world-wide renown software for photo manipulation? Hermione seemed as confused.
"It's a software that allows you to do whatever you want with a photo. Some people use it to make themselves look thinner, for example."
"Professor Snape also went viral." Luna chimed in. "P.I.L.F. Professor-I'd-Like-To-Fuck."
"Ew!" Neville and Ron both reacted.
Teddy looked down at his phone, and he saw that many Vroom Vroom posts nicknamed Severus The Sexy Goth. People thought his physical appearance had been a deliberate fashionable choice to fit in a specific trend.
In short, nobody took their story seriously.
The show coordinator had just left them alone in the room, after showing them the statistics regarding how effective their segment had been. Math, demonstrating the fiasco this all was. Severus sarcastically hoped Potter appreciated those maths.
The only thing that had come out of this was memes. The coordinator had explained to them what that obvious concept was, clearly uncomfortable at the idea of being in the same room as people who didn't. In his humble opinion, it wasn't worth even mentioning. Yet, that's almost all the coordinator talked about, after quickly glossing over the math parts.
Potter was sitting across from him at the conference table, the blood drained from her face. She didn't appear to appreciate the modified ugly photos of herself as much as he did.
"Are you proud of yourself, Potter?" He said his voice silky yet dangerous. He stood up from his chair to glare at her, his palms on the desk, his back hunched. If he hadn't been a spy in control of his emotions for a war, he would have been trembling with wrath.
Potter lifted her tired gaze to stare at him, frowning. He was certain she was daring him to continue.
"Your little stunt here may have fulfilled your attention seeking urges, only it's not Hogwarts anymore."
"I'm not attention seeking!"
"I thought that it may have been the Dark Lord's soul piece and a rebellious phase that squandered your Occlumency exercises." His lips curled. "It's now clear that you are simply incapable of controlling your emotions."
She stood abruptly from her seat. "Aren't you baffled at their response? They didn't take you seriously either!"
"Thanks to you throwing a tantrum next to me and thwarting our efforts." He hissed scathingly. "You may as well have doomed us all."
"How is that my responsibility alone? You were there, too. You didn't even try to reason with them!"
"As I recall, I am not the war hero. I am not the Chosen One. I am not the Girl who lived." He turned around to look outside the window of the conference room, gesturing at the busy streets of New York, multiple floors below. "And I didn't curse us all with that dreadful discovery."
Potter didn't bite the bait, still her jaw was clenching. She had seemingly improved her temperament since Hogwarts.
"What about you?" She finally whispered.
"What?" He turned his head to look at her.
"When you were my age, you sold my family, as well as jeopardize the Order's side when you took that prophecy to your Master, didn't you?" She stood up and walked up to him in challenge, and then added using the same tone he had used: "Cursed us all with your own dreadful discovery."
A hot flash flowed through his torso and shoulders despite the cold room, and he stiffened.
He had dreaded that moment, though he had always expected it to happen in a much different context. Although Severus thought she might try to be righteous by attempting to make amend and become… friends.
"You know, I have always wondered what would have happened, had you not snooped, or had you kept the prophecy to yourself. How different the war would have been, how many lives would have been saved. Especially when it comes to my parents."
She didn't need to tell him this. He had wondered the exact same thing, for at least a decade longer than she did.
"Has the Potions Master finally ran out of retorts?"
He didn't bite the bait either. She gritted her teeth.
"Don't lecture me on something I had no choice about. I didn't choose for a comet to hit earth in half a year. That would have happened regardless." She jabbed a finger on his chest. "But you did choose to get the Dark Mark."
"Then that's a lesson you should have learned from my mistakes, if you claim to know them so well. You did choose to make the cause look like a delusion from a maniac!" He snarled.
The door silently opened behind Potter.
"Fuck you!" She spat back, unaware.
A girl stood in the doorway and Severus recognized her as the hair and makeup artist whom he was assigned to prior to going Live. She reminded him of Tonks with her pink hair and young rebel features.
"S-Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to see if I could take a picture of you for my portfolio before you left?" She asked hopeful and chewed her lips nervously while staring at Potter. She probably thought Potter was crazy, which wasn't far from the truth in his opinion.
Severus rolled his eyes. "Sure."
The Chosen One, clearly unhappy about not being the center of attention anymore and possibly having been heard losing it again, clenched her fists to her side before storming out while mumbling weakly you're going to die to the stylist.
"Is she always like that?" She looked at the doorway Potter had gone through while taking out her BASH phone from her pocket.
"…Always." He answered bitterly.
Mary tightened her grip on her coat, trying to shield herself from the cold while she was walking on the streets of New York in a rush to go back to her hotel. While this weather was nothing compared to Scotland, it was enough to prevent her tears from spilling and freezing on her cheeks. She stopped at an intersection and waited for the pedestrian light. She took a deep, shaky sigh when arms warped around her, making her jump.
"I was looking for you!" Ginny's worried voice reached her ears through the scarves.
"Hope you didn't look for long. I was heading for the hotel."
The light indicated it was their turn and they crossed the road together, Ginny still wrapping Mary with one arm. It looked as though she wanted to know something but didn't dare ask.
"Are you alright, Ginny?"
"Yes, yes. It's just… The pic-… I mean Luna's device… Teddy had one too."
"Indeed. What about it?"
"There's been… pictures, of you. Modified ones, I presume, going around on those things' network." Ginny said slowly, as they walked.
"Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about. I saw a few of them earlier." Seeing Ginny's relief that she wasn't bringing her bad news, she hurriedly added. "Don't worry about that. I'm used to it by now. I guess Rita Skeeter was useful for something, she made me grow thick skin when it comes to the medias and my reputation."
"You're still upset about something."
"Yes, the world ending."
Ginny snorted.
"They have half a year still, I'm confident someone will do something about it as midnight crawls closer."
"I also told Snape off. That felt great."
"He can't take points or anything now."
"Can you imagine if he did out of habit?" Mary smirked. They both chuckled.
After a bit, they reached the hotel and entered their room. After removing her coat, Mary threw herself belly first on the bed with a sigh. Replaying the events of the last weeks in her head, she couldn't help feeling like something was incredibly off.
"History is inexorably repeating itself."
Ginny lied down next to her, looking up at the ceiling. "Hmm?"
"When I met the President, it was like arguing with Fudge and Umbridge about the return of Voldemort."
"And the Daily RIP, including the unflattering pictures, reminded you of Rita Skeeter and the Daily Prophet?"
Mary suddenly noticed how the two shared the first word of their names and laughed cynically in her pillow. Because the second word fitted so beautifully with each of their respective situations; the Daily Prophet had caused her trouble during Voldemort's search for the Prophecy, while the Daily RIP was causing her trouble during the period of her life she had hoped to rest peacefully from being a public figure.