Author’s Note: Fondly dedicated to an outspoken pony protester, Byrnwiga, who inspired some of the colorful dialogue in our little vignette! 😉

***

     The time had come for the dreadful scene in which everyone’s favorite least favorite teacher, the long misunderstood and personality repressed Professor Severus Snape of dungeonian fame, had to die in the most gruesome and overblown fashion possible just to get across to the loving and un-loving fans how dead he really was going to be.

   So first he received a potent zap with an electronically charged glow stick, proffered by the melted-cheese-faced arch-nemesis of the universe, that should have spelled the end of him instantaneously.

    But this time, electrocution was far too commonplace and painless to be considered fitting and proper. After all, we had to watch his scowling face for far too many movies (even a double-header flick dividing the last literary womper into two pats!), and we had come to relate him to far too many of our own most deeply despised toughie teachers from past school days. He simply had to suffer more for all those point slashes he inflicted on his students, and by extension, empathetic us.

    So it was time for budget horror hardcore gore, and a slash right across the neck…

    Then he is thrown against a glass wall…not the softest landing…

    Then…oh…oh, wow…

    So, he’s going to be brutalized by a python?

    Yikes, okay…like, one bite should suffice, right?

    Or…two…

    Uh…three…

    Okay, we get the idea; he’s toast…no butter, no jam, just plain burnt toast! Okay, I said, we get it!!! The author has it in for this guy! Screenplay crew, cut the scene, cut the…Eeeeeeh….     

*viewer faints from fake blood overload*

*fast-forward* 

    “So…you’re technically one of the good guys?” Harry queried.

    “Technically,” Snape rasped.

    “Huh…I mean, I guess that explains a lot of stuff,” the boy admitted. “Like the broom stick thing…”

    “Yessss.”

   “And the snake I talked with in second year…”

   “Yessss.”

   “And the werewolf…”

   “OBVIOUSLY.”

   “Okay, okay, no need to meet your heroic fate with a lousy attitude! This has great redemption moment capacity, here! The fans will love it!”

    “Look, this doesn’t have to be my fate,” Snape panted. “We reside in a universe with magic wands, and antidote potions, and time-turners, and resurrection stones…”

    “Yes, but…it only works if there is some emotional attachment,” Harry noted. “And you know, the chemistry just ain’t there for us.”

    “Heh, chemistry!” Ron picked up on the pun not intended. “Good one, mate!”

     “We hate each other; sparks fly whenever we’re around,” Snape noted. “That’s emotional!”

     “Well, I’m not exactly sure it’s the right type of emotion, sir,” Hermione noted, flipping through the Encyclopedia of Magic she always carried with her for smarty-pants notations. “No, I’m afraid not…it has to simulate something more warm and fuzzy…”

  “Can’t you just…fake it, you damned useless, brainless scurvy worm of a brat?”

  “That…really wouldn’t be ethical.”

    Snape groaned.

   “Sorry, buddy,” Ron tossed in, tilting his head towards Harry sympathetically, then looking back at Snape dismally. “He’s just not the endearing type.”

    “You cried for an hour on a beach over a CGI house elf!” the professor lamented. “And he didn’t even have a long-lost-last-minute love saga with your deceased mother!”

     “Thank heavens,” Harry sighed, wiping his forehead. “I mean, Dobby was a lot of things, but not really the Casanova type…”

    “I just said: I WAS IN LOVE WITH YOUR MOTHER!”

    “Actually, Harry, Dobby may have been dealing with various forms of psycho-sexual repression,” Hermione offered, pulling out her on-hand copy of Freud, “thus explaining his insistence upon being called a ‘free elf.’ He may have been expressing a yearning to explore the various aspects of free love…”

    “Whoa, ‘Mione, I think that’s taking things a bit far…”

    “Did you hear what I just revealed?!” Snape bellowed. “It’s a major plot twist, here! Miscreants will be driving around with vans shouting it out of bull horns sooner or later!”

    “Oh, yeah, I heard a fan theory about that,” Ron offered. “Everyone was either crying or creeped out, and asking why no one else in our universe seemed to know about this until your death scene.”

    “Regardless,” the teacher huffed. “Potter, doesn’t that make you feel…even vaguely emotional?”

    “Well…I mean, I’m kind of where they are,” he admitted. “That weird tingly feeling between crying and creeped out…I could kind of take it or leave it…”

    “Alright, fine,” Snape exhaled. “If you can’t help me with magic, can you not at least go in search of some sort of antidote in my lab?”

    “Uh, sorry, Professor, I’ve sworn off of going down there,” he explained. “Allergic to the mold.”

   “Oh, I know exactly what you mean,” Hermione agreed. “That mold used to clog my sinuses for ages when he used to give us detention sessions! It was hellish!” She turned back to Snape. “Besides, I really think it’s more like you’re dying from blood-letting issues, not venom per say. He was just the producer’s pet gardener snake, really, and was demanding a cameo appearance lest he slither away from home.”

    “Wait, you mean, I’m NOT dying from poison?! But from…blood loss??”

    “That does seem to be the case,” Hermione noted, opening up her coffee table home preventative care book. “Yes, you are DEFINITELY displaying all the signs of anemia…he is really quite chalky looking, isn’t he?”

    “Yeah, he really is,” Harry and Ron agreed.

    “Then I suppose it cannot be avoided,” he remarked dismally. “It is time to summon the last of the elixir of unicorn blood, the most precious commodity in the wizarding world…”

    “Oh, I forgot to tell you guys,” Ron exclaimed with a snap of his fingers. “I used the last of that stuff in hopes of reviving my hamster Binky, who was in a similar state to the professor here. Tough decisions had to be made.”

   The shock on Snape’s face rivaled his expression during the reptilian attack itself, as he realized that Ron’s rodent-loving sympathies (which had not abated since his days as tender care-taker of the Pettigrew rat-fink) had outweighed the gravity of the current humanitarian crisis.

   “Oh, poor Binky,” Hermione lamented sympathetically. “We should all observe a moment of silence…”

   “Well,” the ginger-haired lad chirped, “it turns out, he was just going into hibernation, but the elixir kind of gave him a new burst of energy and really boosted his speed on the hamster wheel. I’m sure he’s broken some sort of record by now.”

    “Nevertheless, the distress you experienced over his potential demise must have been an intense emotional strain for you!” she commiserated, pulling both Harry and Ron into a three-way therapeutic group hug.

    Snape rolled his eyes in speechless despair, realizing his efforts at toughening the future generation through the school of hard knocks and common sense had failed in totality. “Have any of you miserable mites even learned about tourniquets?” he queried in exasperation.

    “Hmm…oh, yes, something about it should be in here…” Hermione started flipping through the Healthy Helper’s Guide again. “Now what page was it on…?”

    “Try 394,” he suggested.

   “Ah, thanks,” she responded, with an overly bright Gryffindor grin.

   “Please don’t mention it…”

    Just then, who should break in upon the scene, high heels clacking a staccato beat, but the One They (usually) Could Not (fully) Name…but Snape did anyway…

    “JOANNE?!” he exclaimed, eyes wide as saucers. “But…but we had a contract!!!”

    She smiled down glibly, holding aloft her diamond-studded Smartphone. “Sorry, Snape, you and all bullying chemistry teachers of your ilk are going doooowwwn! Booh-haha!”  

     “Right, so we’re all part of your revenge fantasy for your grade school teacher who made you clean out test tubes during recess? Is that it?”

    But she was far too gleeful, dancing in an impromptu Flamenco style, akin to Wellington after defeating Napoleon.

     “Now I’m starting to feel a little guilty,” Hermione sighed. “I mean, surely we can provide him with some succor in his hour of need, right? He has saved our lives a few hundred times, remember?”

    “Yeah, but it was always followed by extra homework we had to do that made us miss out on Quidditch,” Ron pouted.

    “All that having been said…perhaps we might make an appeal to the Powers that be?”

    She turned with pleading eyes towards the authoress, whose sympathetic heart was moved by the empathy of her brainiac-child.

    “Alright,” she relented, a crocodile tear in her eye, and started to fiddle with the tumblers of her 24 carat gold combination lock brand name purse. She then produced a bright pink boo-boo bunny, which she had used ever and anon to soothe her bruised ego during her school-girl tantrums, and a matching My Little Pony mini Band-Aid.

     “Madam, you are a sadist,” he noted glumly.

     “Yes, but a sadist with a heart,” she corrected him, proceeding to bend over with the intent of pasting the pediatrician-approved puny pony plug over a measly fraction of his grievous wound.

    The good professor, however, would have none of it. “No! Nae! Never!” he bellowed defiantly, thrusting his hand out like a police officer stopping traffic to hold her at bay. “I refuse to suffer the indignity of being assaulted by such cringe-worthy pampered princess paraphernalia!”  

     Joanne squinted seethingly, stuck in the time-warp mentality of a vengeful 11-year-old. “Now you’ve done it; my empathy has run its course! You are infringing on my sense of wellbeing!” She stuffed the tender care items back into her purse and took out a tin of Tylenol, hastily popping a couple in her mouth as the pain-wracked professor looked on in disbelief. “I’ve gone above and beyond my natural inclinations, and all you’ve done is increase my stress levels, give me a terrible headache, and disrupt my selfie-taking-schedule!”

    Not one to lose time, she zippered shut her purse with definitive finality, tossed back her bottle blonde locks, struck a photogenic pose, and started snapping away with her phone to share with her goddess-worshipping minions, just as her ring-tone began to jingle in unision with her self-satisfied teethy grin: “Pack up your troubles in an old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!”  

    Snape exhaled in frustration, realizing that his doom had been sealed. “Potter, I just want to say…well, you have your mother’s eyes.”

    “Umm…actually, no. My mum had green eyes, and mine are…blue. I tried wearing green contacts a few times, but they kinda hurt…”

    “You’re splitting hairs. I’m trying to be nice in my last moments so that the fandom can finally sympathize with me, alright? Do you have to be such a sniveling little wretch and deprive me even of that?”

   “Oh, okay…well, it’s the thought that counts, y’know?”

   “Right. Actually, I’ve got something for you…” He dug into his cloak and produced a key ring, which had a variety of odds and ends attached, including a cute glow-in-the-dark bulging eye snake keychain, that looked very much like it came from the Hogwarts tourist center half-price-off trinket shelf.

   “Oh, a Slytherin keychain,” Harry noted. “Just what I always wanted.”

   “I meant for you to look at the other keychain, with the religious gift store price tag on it.”

   Harry squinted and read the inscription: “If I am dying, call a priest.”

   “Wait a sec…so you’re like, Catholic?”

    Snape raised an eyebrow.

   “Whoa, dude, that is like the last thing I’d guess! Who threw in this plot twist?”

   “I don’t know; they must have gotten some Papist interloper to fill in this bit,” Snape offered. “Besides…let’s face it, why are Exorcist films so popular? Catholics can do the ceremonial stuff like nobody’s business…”

   “Yeah, good point,” Hermione agreed, snatching up a history of cinematography and flipping to the section on The Exorcism of Emily Rose. “They can really plug into the whole special effects racket.”

    “The films don’t include their fund committees,” Snape noted dismally.

    “Funds! Money! I’m rich! I’m rich! Yoweeeee!” Joanne squealed in delight, juggling her Smartphone in ecstasy.

    “So is someone going to call a priest, or what?”

    “Uh…Hermione, do you have a phone book?”

    “No, sorry, they did away with phones in the magical world; too archaic. Owls are so much more majestic and mystical…”

    “Then…why is she allowed a phone on set?” He jutted his chin towards the gleeful authoress.

     “Well…duh, she’s special!” Harry stated with a shrug. “But hey, don’t let it get to you; maybe she’ll give you a grand twitter send off, or even apologize over you a few years down the line! Maybe she’ll even have me name my futuristic kid after you or something, and he’ll be sorted into Slytherin, and get a screenplay all his own…”

     “Oh, whatever! Let’s just get this death scene over with already,” Snape growled, making a very Irish (as in, faster-than-you-should-but-better-that-you-did-than-not -right?) Sign of the Cross, realizing Last Rites were assuredly lost in translation. “I’ve probably already drained more blood than I had to start with, and I’m really getting tired of looking at Potter’s stupid fake shell-shocked expression.”

   “Hey, I’m just trying to helpful, okay?” Harry grumbled, proceeding to unhelpfully prod Snape’s neck wound.

    “Ouch! WHY are you doing that?!”

    “I have to! Otherwise I’ll look uncaring!”

   “You…you’re just like your fa…100 points from Gryf…oh, damn it all to bloody hell, CUTTT!” 

*cut to narration* 

    With that, everyone’s favorite anti-hero passed into his well-deserved reward…which we never really get to experience, due to the tender ministrations of the All-Powerful Jo of the Be-Jeweled Cell, who prevented him from paying us a visit courtesy the rainbow rock akin to that utilized by Emmy and Max from Dragon Tales to ferry them to even more fantastical dimensions…

   But he does get a painting. Even though it doesn’t talk. Oh, whatever. He’d just be snatching more points anyway…