Double Dog Dare! -- Episode 10
Catherine, 7 January 2002

"Oh...My...God."

That was all Michael McCarthy could say, once Arthur had dismissed the Disillusionment Charm.

Vera McCarthy wasn't much better. She stood in the middle of the Weasleys' parlor, her mouth convulsively opening and closing like that of a goldfish.

"Sorry for hiding this from you for so long," said Arthur sadly, passing a handkerchief over where his hair used to be. "But in order for you to understand exactly what happened to Jason, you have to understand our world."

Jeremy looked at his parents with studied teenage disdain, which was just about the only thing he ever studied, and opened his mouth to make his first known utterance that had any sense.

"Mom, Dad, lookit," he said, making a face at his mug of pumpkin juice, "we're in this weird town, we find this tiny weird dog, we meet these weird people -- I mean, besides you all," he said hastily, as Molly Weasley started to glare at him -- "of course it's magic! What else could it be?!"

Vera McCarthy was about to tell Jeremy to shut the hell up -- but never got the chance, for at that moment a disembodied head appeared in the fireplace.

A hollow-cheeked, hook-nosed, thoroughly inimical-looking head.

Vera screamed and dropped her tea all over her husband, who yowled in pain as the hot liquid soaked his shirt. "A -- A monster!"

"Monster, indeed," growled the head, which belonged to Professor Severus Snape. "Weasley, a word!", he barked, darting an especially venomous glance towards Vera McCarthy.

"Ah, Professor!" cried out a relieved Arthur, putting away his handkerchief. "Just the man we wanted to see. You haven't seen a lad by the name of Jason McCarthy by any chance, have you?"

~~~~~

Ten minutes before, there was just a disembodied head. Now, the head had come through the fireplace, attached to a body, accompanied by a scared-stiff Jason and a rather grim-faced woman wearing what appeared to be robes of a mannish cut rather hastily thrown over whatever she had on underneath.

If the McCarthys were frightened before, they were petrified now.

"It seems we have several problems here," said Professor Snape, his tall figure standing by the fireplace in the Weasleys' parlor.

Black robes billowing, Snape turned toward the McCarthys, who were looking at him as if he really were a monster. He raised one of his eyebrows, and they all drew back from him, huddling together and quivering like Flobberworms. He allowed himself an inch of thin, bitter smile before turning to face Fred and George.

"So," he said, in his best and worst manner, his black eyes glittering like a cobra's, "Young Master McCarthy here was holding Fidelis, and said the word 'home'."

"Yes, sir," the twins said in unison.

"And can you confirm this?" Snape said to Jason, rounding on him like a cat cornering a rat.

"Y-yes, sir."

"Blast it all," said Snape. "Then he is a wizard, after all." He turned to to the grim-faced woman, whose name was Viviane, who still had Jason by his shirt collar and showed no signs of letting go. "We'll have to take him to Dumbledore -- and Fidelis, as well. None of us can speak dog language, but we might be able to make sense of his visual memories, once they're put into Dumbledore's Pensieve."