Double Dog Dare! -- Episode 9
Vulgarweed, 7 January 2002

Jason had never, ever felt anything like this, not even when he'd decided that a tab of his mother's Valium would go beautifully with model airplane glue. Was this what LSD was like, this feeling of dissolving and reassembling? For a moment he thought with a detached fascination that he might be dying, but though he racked his muddled brain, he couldn't come up with anything that might have happened to cause such a thing.

Before he was even able to complete the "no, that can't be it" thought, he found himself feeling almost normal and standing on a reassuringly solid floor with the tiny dog still in his arms. "Rif!" said the dog cheerfully. The little creature gave Jason a quick lick on the hand before leaping to the floor and bounding off out of sight down a narrow hallway.

As he surveyed his surroundings, Jason's head started swimming again. He was in a room made entirely of stone, lit by torches, with every wall covered in iron shelving and every shelf full of murky-looking dusky glass bottles. He wanted to go investigate, but he still hadn't managed to make his feet move. What the screaming hell had happened to him, and where _was_ he? His heart was still pounding just like it had that time that Jeremy had dared him to sniff that Liquid Paper and then hold his breath.

It was like being in a movie. Yes, that almost made sense. What kind of movie, though? Did he blunder into some sort of time warp? The room he was in certainly looked medieval. Was he going to have to try to joust? Kill a dragon or something? If that was what it was, he should explore his surroundings. (Shit, he thought, I'm a zero-level magic loser.) But if it was some weird sci-fi alternate reality thing, if he stepped off the stone square he was standing on, he might wind up somewhere worse.

He was so wrapped up in these thoughts, he hardly heard the footsteps. By the time it registered that he'd have company, it was too late, and he looked up helplessly at the figure in the doorway. Oh shiiiit, he thought wildly, maybe it's a _horror_ movie. The man emerging from the shadows was tall, thin, dark-haired and dark-featured and staring at him with malicious black eyes. Jason forgot all about the alternate-reality problem and stepped backwards involuntarily as this creepy and definitely not-normal person swept into the room in a cloud of black....robes? cloak? What _was_ that he was wearing? The man's intimidating effect was only slightly diminished by the tiny dog in his arms devoting its entire life force to licking his face.

To Jason's utter shock he heard himself speaking first. "Is...is that your dog, sir....are you Professor Snape, then?"

The man's face almost relaxed. "Yes, of course he is and I am. But who are you, and how did the two of you get in here?"

Jason squirmed a little, not quite getting the gratitude he'd hoped for and sensing there was a lot more to this situation than met the eye--and there was already quite a lot to deal with just in the eye. "Well, I'm Jason.....but....the thing is....I think I'm kinda lost. I mean, I don't really know just where here is." All the while he was thinking it might follow that he was at Fred and George's school--but if that was the case, these English schools were really fuckin' weird.

The professor's brow furrowed. The little dog squirmed and managed to get its tail out from under his master's arm, the better for freer wagging, and made a soft happy growl.

"Yes, Fidelis," the man said quietly to the dog. "It is odd, isn't it? I'm going to have to try yet again to find a charm to help you talk or to help me understand the linguis canis, because I think you're the only one who knows what's going on."

Jason couldn't possibly have heard what he thought he heard. "Um...sir."

"Yes?"

"Um....where am I exactly?"

"You're in a small antechamber off my private offices, and I haven't a clue how you got in here either, especially from the United States. It would be good of you to tell me exactly what you do remember, though. Please. Sit. Have some tea."

"Tea?"

"Yes. I was just about to have some myself."

And the mysterious man turned his back to get a kettle down from a shelf and suspend it over something that looked like it should have been a Bunsen burner except there was no burner, only a flame hanging suspended a few inches over the top of a metal desk. From the look of the bottles on the shelves all around him, Jason didn't think he wanted to drink anything this person was going to brew up.

Then came the clatter. The bang, the screech, the roll, the clang, the shriek, and the thump. Both Jason and Snape jumped and turned as one towards the doorway, and Snape was out the door in a flash, Jason behind him a little more cautiously. Just as he reached the doorway he heard Snape swear an oath that was so spectacularly foul, and yet so cool and English at the same time, that Jason hoped he'd be able to remember it. He couldn't see much beyond the spreading drapes of Snape's robes, but he could hear a woman's voice cursing, and what she said sounded like "That goddamned creaking cat-food-tin on legs with delusions of knight-of-the-realm grandeur decides to show his chivalry by _crashing right into me_, look at this mess, armor everywhere..." and indeed, there were armor parts scattered all about the floor, some of which seemed to be trying weakly to reassemble themselves. "And then as I was trying to extricate myself from his rusty old joints, this goddamn walking spittoon tries to _bow_ to me, but he doesn't realize he's _stuck_ and he falls over onto me _again_. That's all it was, Severus. I merely wanted to....surprise you."

Jason's eyes boggled when the striking dark-haired woman stepped up to Snape, her back against the wall, and let her robes drop to reveal a boned merry-widow in black silk, set off by hunter-green garters holding up her seamed stockings, which looked a little incongruous with the heavy belt holding her scabbard and sword (_Jesus_! thought Jason).

And though puberty had hit Jason hard, quite literally, survival instinct prevailed. He saw his moment and took it, running as hard as he could down the hallway, in the opposite direction.

* **

Sirius Black hated that reaction he got sometimes when times were tense. Sweat. Not cold sweat, hot. Pouring out of his palms like the blood of the Muggle fuckin' Saviour. Pouring down his face like summer rain. But he wasn't going to let anything else show if he could help it.

"Is that the best you can do, you stupid cow?"

"What did you say?" Janet Tewksbury turned towards him--slowly, like some giant lizard.

Sirius thought there wasn't much chance this gambit was going to work, but bound as tightly as he was and in as precarious a position as it seemed, he could only rely on hope of her erroneous assumption that if he dared to insult her, he must have something up his sleeve. Which just might buy him enough time to come up with something. "I said, you saggy-titted dim-witted bovine, is that the best you can do? I don't suppose it would have occurred to you that I had reasons of my own, with that dratted dog--no, you think everybody else is a stooge for Dumbledore, don't you? You think _Dumbledore_ is the only brain in the whole operation, don't you? I swear for sure, you people worship him more than his followers do. Really, for every Death Eater that Crouch's crackpots and Dumbledore's dummies managed to catch, two or three blew their own damned selves up. You people are the Keystone Kops of Dark magic. Roderick Tewksbury could have gotten himself killed as a Montessori teacher--" Damn, this felt good, to be on a roll again. Of course Janet Tewksbury wouldn't know the Keystone Kops from Scotland Yard, but who gave a damn?

Even her long nails raking his face felt good. Yes, buy time with pain, and with fun, and again with pain. Just how badly was she in need of pleasure, anyway?