Burn the witch Chapter 2:electric boogaloo       Severus Snape had a headache. Mind you, not a caffeine headache or one of those they’re-out-of Haagen-Daas™ headaches but a real one. This was a primeval headache, one that had stalked strange low creatures on the plains who made little shapes out of bone and wood. It was a headache that made the fall of Rome seem like a relaxing weekend away from the wife and kids. It was the alpha and omega headache, and it was the only thing that kept him from killing everyone in the school right at that minute.        He had managed to somehow grope his way down the myriads of hallways to the great hall, in every sense of the word. He had quite a few apologies to write in the morning. Inside the great hall, at anytime of day and sometimes at night, there would be a cacophony of sound and vast, chaotic movement that made you dizzy if you watched too long. But compared to this, it was a Sunday outing of a Ladies’ Church Auxiliary, big hats included.        For starters, there were far too many girls, and all of them stood out like a sore thumb in a toe convention. The most noticeable, of course, were the ones with outlandish hair color and styles, such as the Ravenclaw by the window with trailing locks of pure gold interlaced with silver. She was staring wistfully out the window and given to dreamy sighs Severus felt sure that even a unicorn would find sickening. It seemed that the other half, while having slightly more subdued hair, tended to go toward multicolor, in a way that made one think of ice cream. Even when the hair was normal in the spectrum of possible pigmentation, it was abnormally bright at all times, and they usually had something else outlandish about them.        Giants heels, tattoos of various persuasions(unicorns and griffins seemed to be popular), huge, clunky jewelry and the outfits. Exceedingly few of them had elected to wear the actual uniform, and even those were not what one would call regulation. The tops dipped low, far too low for a student, Snape thought with distaste. The clothing on the others were as varied as a pez dispenser. You had the Goth, the cheerleader, the slut, the “intellectual”, the valley girl, the Christian, the Wiccan, the martyr, and the goddess. Multiply it by ten and then you came near the scene in the great hall.        There were no longer just the house and staff tables, which had been pushed against the wall as far as they could go, now there were individual table roughly a quarter of the length of the others, somehow spaced so that every girl mind-bogglingly had her own table. The ones that sat at them stared out the windows with enough pathos to kill Nearly-headless-Nick all over again. The rest of them either occupied seats at the house tables, many, Snape noted, preferring to free-associate between houses. A group of Griffindors, all with hair like honey, sat admiringly around Cedric Diggory, who was blinking his eyes confusedly, so looking fairly normal.       Severus did a quick head count. Yep. All in three houses. “No one ever wants to be a Hufflepuff.” He thought to himself. An impossible amount of girls had crammed together at the end of one table, so much so that quite a few fell off at intervals and had to fight their way back. The object of their obsession was none other then the Boy who Lived, who was knitting tiny green socks and taking sips of tea every once in a while. The other end was almost deserted, its lone occupant, one Ronald Weasley looking as if he couldn’t believe Harry’s luck. Snape  thought on this one a moment and turned to scan the hall. No sign of the Granger girl, odd. The three were together so much you’d think they were connected at the hip. No here, though. Not today. He supposed she was off in some distant hallway, crying her eyes out, or failing that, snogging someone else. Severus considered the latter to be more possible, in his opinion they could both do better        He sighed and shook his head raggedly. He very much wanted to go back to bed, but there was no guarantee there wasn’t anyone else in it already. And he just didn’t feel like dealing with that right now. Against all his natural instincts, and a few unnatural, he waded into the fray. Making his way over to an empty table, he was immediately elbowed in three separate places. By the time he got there, his arches had been stepped upon numerous times, and his torso felt like one big bruise. Apparently he wasn’t “hot” enough to warrant much attention, though he did get some smoldering glances from across the room, all unreturned. It wasn’t that he wasn’t flattered, he was, it was that the attention should not be coming from students, especially ones half his age!        He grumbled as he took his seat. In a school where things had never, ever gone right for him, he had come to expect a certain amount of animosity from his students and disrespect from the staff. He had gotten it down to a science, where the misfortune of one day was directly counterweighted by something else, which just happened to take the place of a drinking contest now and again. True, his days were miserable and atrocious, but they were consistently miserable and atrocious. He had certain expectations for a day when he got up in the morning, and all of them were low. But however low, they were higher than this entire day had been so far. So far he had had his faith in one of the greatest wizards alive shattered once more, he had been given a series of bruises the LAPD would be hard pressed to explain, and he had not even considered how he was going to deal with all of this. So, doing the only thing he could think of at the moment, he put his face into his hands and wept quietly. ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~        It seemed like hours since he had closed his eyes, he couldn’t tell from the light. But the next thing he knew, there was a scrape of chairs across the table from him, and the thumps of multiple bottoms hitting the chairs. He spread his fingers and peeked out from behind them, wary of what he would find. There was a woman and two children, if you could call them that, sitting across from him. The woman caught his motion out of the corner of her eye and looked up at him, nodding amicably. The children didn’t even give any sign that they noticed him. They each had a lunch tray like you would find at a public school, aquamarine plastic with dividing compartments. They each had stuffed grape leaves, what looked like hummus, and some oddly shaped vegetables, as well as individual foods. The girl had some red paste and some small round pastries in the dessert portion, the boy had strange candy shaped like flowers. On the woman’s tray, there was a stack of bamboo skewers full of small, fried octopi. Strangely enough that wasn’t the strangest thing about them.        Their appearance was normal enough to go unnoticed at a UFO convention, but not here. Not even now. The woman was a study in black and white. Her hair and her eyes nearly matched eachother in shade. Her dress was also black, and very austere, the only thing showing on her was her hands and face, and when she shifted, parts of her neck. The skin on those was so white it made Severus look like a picture of glowing, buttery health. Her two eyebrows arched above her face like slices of midnight, and there was no color to her lips. Her monochrome shape set off the pair on either side, the two whom Severus could now see were probably preteen. The boy had the kind of hair most ancient Scot warriors strive for, and the girl’s hair, though not as unusual, was boyishly short and formed a helmet of spikes flowing forward. However, they looked soft, the boy’s you could probably stick an apple on. The really unusual part was that it was silver. Not coarse silver like old women got, or the flamboyant silver of the girls. It was simple, and tended towards gunmetal gray in some parts. The girl caught his look and gave him an unfriendly stare in return. The boy merely went on shoveling his food into his mouth like it was going to disappear.        The woman had started into her food with enthusiasm a while ago, but when she caught his questioning look, she set down her hashi. The children hadn’t brought any, they seemed to be content with shoving food in their mouths with the fingers of their right hand. The woman neatly folded her hands in front of her and gazed at him, as if waiting for him to speak. Severus tried, and found that his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He tried noisily to swallow, and the woman snapped her fingers and produced a thermos made from a single bamboo stalk out from under the table. She uncapped it with a pop and poured some liquid in the cup for him. She pushed it over with two of her fingers, which he now noticed were so long and skinny they more resembled tentacles. He didn’t even glance at the cup between them, but stared unabashedly at the woman. She gazed back affably, but he could see a reserve behind her eyes, as if she was waiting for him to start something. He wondered idly if he really wanted to know what she’d do then. After a few tries he managed to get his mouth open enough to speak. His opening proclamation was this: “You’re not from around here.” He stated numbly. “All right.” She said and went back to eating. ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~ The strange folk across from him, whom he had only met fifteen minutes ago had reached the zenith of their feeding frenzy, and now took time to lean back and converse good-naturedly with eachother, most of it in a language he couldn’t understand. He had wearily accepted their offer for food, and had half a plate of Sukiyaki  and some saffron rice, as well at three of the woman’s spareribs. When idle chatter died down to leisurely knuckle-cracking, he made another attempt to speak, first being toasted with three different beverages. “So,” He stated, not sure where to begin, “You’re not from around here.” “Stated.” The girl said. He nodded in agreement, and the boy toasted again. “And I don’t mean to be impolite, but- ” “Hm?” the woman said, pouring more tea. “Who the hell are you people?!” He waited for the explosion, but none came. He peered out from under the tabletop. They went on as if nothing had happened. He cautiously put a hand on the table, found it wasn’t red-hot, and sat back up. No difference. “Did you hear what I–” “Yes, yes, you don’t know who the hell we are.” The girl said in a bored tone of voice. She turned to the woman. “Jen, we’re going to get napkins. Save our seats.” With a sort of military precision, the two left their seats at the same time and walked in step to one of the other tables. His eyes followed them in amazement. He turned back to the table, where the woman was pouring the last of the tea out. She savored the aroma for a bit, and sighed. “Alone at last.” She said it as a flat statement, so Severus had no idea what she meant by it. He ventured a guess. “Um.” He said. “We’re visiting.” “Huh?” “We’re just visiting. You know, for lunch?” “Ah…no, actually I don’t know. Are you students here? Possibly exchange students?” he asked with suspicion in his voice. She broke out into a grin, which was slightly unsettling. “Finished school a long time ago, sweetcakes.” He didn’t quite know how to respond to that one. He decided to ignore it. “So…the children…the ones you’re with, are they your students transferring…” here he trailed off because she was shaking with polite laughter. She picked up a sparerib slightly more charred than the others. “Trust me, sugar, if they were my students, I would’ve destroyed them a long time ago, for the good of humanity..” “oh.” He regarded her as she bit into a rib, chewing with more gusto than he thought necessary. He was about to make another futile attempt to grasp reality, when one of the girls waiting on the wings got tired of acting casual and bumped noisily into the table. She spilled tea on both their laps, and dropped a pile of papers onto the tabletop, along with what looked like half a gallon of ink. She gasped in familiar routine, hand flying up to a specific point on her face and blushing accordingly. “oh, Professor. Exchuse me.” she said breathily, causing the one called Jen to look up in annoyance from where she was blotting her lap. “Yes, excuse you.” The way she said it made it sound like a death threat, and that was ignoring her body language. However, the girl only had eyes for her professor, whom was holding both hands in the air and looking at his only pair of clean pants, now spattered with ink and tea. “I’m so ssorry.” She murmured, a blush spreading to exactly three-fifths of her face. “I meant to assk you about the homework asssignment.” Severus stared at her in confusion. “Have we met?” Behind her, the third person of the party was making a face. The way she held her S’s for just a beat too long, and the weird emphasis she put on some words rankled Jen, and she glared, squeezing the handkerchief in her hand until blood ran out. The girl’s glance merely flitted over for a moment, and then went back to Snape’s face like flies hovering over a piece of meat. “It’ss about the love potion-” “We were talking.” The words gained an odd resonance, like they had bounced around somewhere within the woman before coming out, somewhere not shown by the outside dimensions. The girl looked up at her irritably, in a fast food-worker kind of way. Her mouth got a quarter of the way open, roughly four inches, when Jen planted both hands on the table and stood up, giving her the Look. It was said in the town where she lived, that Jen could outstare the sun. It is not remarked upon fondly. Jen had the kind of gaze that would follow you home that night, the kind you always felt sure was just behind you, waiting for you to drop your keys. The girl was quickly taken aback, the gaze did unsettling things to her intestine. She shrank back slightly, and caught herself. It irritated her how fast she had backed from conflict, who did this woman think she was? Voldemort’s daughter? That’s what she was! She rallied herself to condemn her for this obvious breach of etiquette. But the woman dug her fingers in slightly, and so her voice came out like a sort of quaver. “Just who do you think yhou are?” “I am the walrus.” It was said sardonically, but the woman’s mouth was far too tight at the corners for her to be joking. The girl gulped quickly and looked around for support. The group of fourth/fifth years she ran with was nowhere in sight, and she didn’t trust a newcomer to back her in a fight. They could be so annoyingly fair. She gave a hopeful glance to the potions master, but he was watching the woman like a rat watches a cobra. Knowing it was nearly hopeless, but unwilling to back down, she turned back to face the woman, who was now right there. She gave a start, and the impromptu speech died in her throat, which now constricted horribly. The stare had now gained it own personality, and it was grinning at her with idiotic malevolence. “I’ve seen where you live.” It said, “And I know what you’ve done.” “You were saying?” Jen said, and smiled politely, so politely the cords in her neck stood out like steel cables. It  was more of a corpse’s grimace, and even Severus had to look away. Bed suddenly didn’t sound like such a bad idea, even if the person in it was Sirius Black, he would pull the blankets over his head and ask him to get the light, thank you. It wasn’t as if he was some great lover of comfort, he had spent an entire year living in a barn. In Glasgow. In winter. He just could never quite stomach multiple attempts on his life. True, the woman wasn’t about to kill him, but looking at this situation, you just knew there was going to be fiery aftermath.        The girl snorted, her rage almost outstripping her blind terror. There was just something…wrong about the woman, like if she walked away suddenly, there would be a hole in the air. But she had no wand in evidence, and so the girl’s hand grasped blindly in her jumper until it clumsily found her wand. 9” exactly, perfect for potions, with unicorn hair and phoenix feather core, with a small sliver of veela hair. Yes, she had that in her background too. The woman’s eyes dipped imperceptibly to where her hand was. With professional speed, her hand went to her hip and stayed there. She hadn’t started it, but was ready to finish it if need be.        Severus cast a desperate eye around for help, but found no staff in evidence. Which was odd; most of them ate lunch in the great hall, mulling over test scores, swapping hip flasks. It was then he noticed other minor pockets of drama as well as full-blown tragedies. Apparently no one of any authority was left in the school. It seemed he was alone on this one. He sighed and stood up. “Excuse me miss.” He said with more politeness than was necessary. She immediately brightened up and simpered in his direction, though Jen’s eyes did not turn from her. They just bored right through the back of her head like molten pennies. Severus sighed. “What my companion so adroitly put, is true. We were in the middle of a conversation, so if you would-“ “You’re so UNFAIR!” she burst out and hid her face in her sleeves, great, heaving sobs immediately followed.        The potions master opened and closed his mouth a few times, put out a hand to reassure her, and then stopped. He turned to Jen, who had a look of white-hot fury on her face. He turned back to the girl, who felt that her fake tears weren’t quite doing the job, so she was turning on the waterworks. He turned back to Jen, who had her hand on the thing by her hip and looked ready to use it. He felt like he was underwater, and motion had all but stopped. He tried to reach out to prevent something, he didn’t know what, and then Jen pounded on the table with her fist and broke it.        The noise surprised him, even though it was right in front of him, he didn’t know wood breaking could make that sound. He felt it in his chest and parts of his lower extremities. It had the immediate effect of making the girl stop crying, and it drew the attention of the other students. Jen smiled, a little more calmly now, and brushed her hand off on her side. It looked as if a small squid was beckoning from behind a rock. The girl gave a few small hiccups, and wiped her nose messily on her sleeve, pointing her finger like a sword at Jen. “You,” She said, “Don’t belong here!” There, it was out. “But neither do you.” The answer came back full force, and the backlash hit nearly everyone in the room. Harry, who had finished one sock, gave a cry of shock and buried his head in Draco’s shoulder. Ron, who was making what he thought was good time with another Griffindor, was distracted momentarily and accidentally poured pumpkin juice down her front. Hermione, who had just walked in holding the hand of Dean Thomas, was smeared with hoochie-mama makeup, which immediately began to run.       The girl let the echo die down before replying, completely flustered. “W-well, I don’t think your storyline is very original!” Jen grinned at that, a shark’s grin in a suddenly lipless mouth. Her teeth made her face seem grubby as bathroom tile, and much more friendly. “More’s the pity.” The voice was like someone rubbing sandpaper on silk, and it made Neville bury his face in Lavender Brown’s lap and sob. Severus could feel this morning’s breakfast stir uneasily, and hoped for a resolve before he had to make an offering to the porcelain god. The girl swallowed a few times, making a face like a flounder in a feeding frenzy. She decided to resort to her last line of defense, flat out whining. “You guuuuys! Someone stop her! She’s ruining the mood! And she’s not supposed to talk like that to me! I’m-” “Voldemort’s daughter?” The room let out a collective gasp. Not because she had so freely spoken the dark lord’s name, nearly everyone there did that. It was because she so callously exposed someone’s entire storyline, paper-thin though it was. The girl gasped a few times, sounding like a cat with a cold. Jen smiled at her expectantly, and it was just as gruesome as the rest of her facial expressions. “Well?” Jen said. “Am I right?” Silence. “I’ll take that as a Yes.” She said, and sat back down in her chair. Rooting through the scattered contents of her tray, she pulled out a skewer and commenced to eating octopi the size of a silver dollar. A few moments of agonizing silence greeted this, and Severus looked at the hourglass on the wall. A few grains teetered on the edge, but no movement. He swore under his breath.       The girl recovered enough to make one last bluster. “Who do you-” “What’s your name?” She blanched. “Wh-what?” Jen turned an eye like a black sun on her. “I said, what’s your name, outlander.” “M…Mariana.” Jen let out what could’ve been a snort or a chuckle. “Mariana Riddle. How original.” She sighed and shook her head, smiling like it was all too funny. The newly-ousted Mariana narrowed her eyes, no one laughed at the daughter of Tom and Jessica Riddle! She whipped out her 11” dragon heartstring wand made of very black wood, probably forgetting that just a few moments ago it was completely different. Oh well, the wand-maker probably gave her two. Because she was so powerful. “You…you!” She cried, too ladylike to be original. Jen sat back in her chair, unceremoniously picking her teeth with a skewer. Mariana turned white with fury at this show of extreme blasé. “You’re going to regret getting in between me and Harry!” She bellowed, momentarily forgetting whom she was supposed to fall in love with. She whipped out her wand and held it about half an inch from Jen’s face, who stared at it with vague disinterest. “Avada-” She began, and quicker than thought, Jen cocked the rifle she had hidden by her side and caught her full in the chest. The loud rapport echoed throughout the hall, even louder because of the complete absence of sound. The girl was thrown back quite a ways and for a few seconds after, everyone was too shocked to move. Jen picked up her skewer and went back to nonchalantly picking her molars. Snape stared aghast, looking back and forth, between Jen and the flat figure of the girl’s body. Somehow, he found his voice. “You shot a student!” he said accusingly, and a little bit surprised. Jen looked over like she just now remembered he was there, and nodded. “Had to.” She said, reaching for another snack. “That was annoying.” You could’ve spread toast with the silence that came afterwards, it was so loud it echoed. Then one of the other “exchange students” came up, and with a decidedly bitchy air, put her hands on her hips and asked Jen, “Who the hell do you think you are?” She responded with the one-finger salute. Severus let out a short laugh, then disguised it as a cough when the girl turned her offended gaze to him. “It’s against the rules and, like, so wrong!” she snapped, flicking hair the color of red wine over her shoulder. Even at her best, this girl sounded like a wounded crocodile. Though it went against his base nature, he had to disagree with the psychopath. “Jen, loathe as I am to agree, you did just kill a student.” he told her, and she merely smiled and uncocked her gun. Taking out a still-smoking cartridge, and she showed him the inside, which smelled of black powder and- “Clay?” He said, baffled. She nodded. “Dirt shot.” She looked over at the stirring form of the girl. “Be glad I like you.”        The girl gave a cough that sounded it like came though a handful of feathers, cradling her midsection. Some blood seeped through the front of her shirt, but she was still alive. She turned shakily to look at Jen, who gave her another shark’s grin, resting her rifle on the back of her shoulders. “What do we say?” She asked condescendingly. The girl opened and closed her mouth a few times, small trickles of blood coming from the corners. She seemed to have trouble enough breathing, Severus doubted she could talk. But the girl who had risen meteorically to her aid now stepped right over her and gave Jen a piece of her mind. “Hey, like, who the hell do you think you are? You have no right to just, like, come in here and-“ Jen flip-cocked her rifle and put it dead center on her forehead. The girl cut off and stared at the barrel, which gleamed like cobalt steel. “Shut.” Jen said. “Up.” The girl glanced over at Severus, and he felt an uncomfortable tightening sensation in his throat. She opened her mouth and he winced at the harpy-like screech that came out. “Professor, you have to help me, she’s pointing a sort of muggle-wand, called a gunn-” “I know what a gun is.” He muttered, red-faced. “What?” she rasped. “I know what a gun is, I haven’t been living in a box all my life!” He said through clenched teeth. Jen chuckled. He looked at her sternly. “Could you possibly put that down? You’re scaring the straits.” He told her, completely deadpan. She cracked a grin and, with a series of needlessly katana-like acrobatics, she holstered it. “Shall we continue this party outside?” she asked him drolly. “If it stops you shooting anyone else.” “Can’t make you any promises.” She chuckled and slapped him on the back. It felt like a lead horseshoe thrown from three feet away.        The two children, gone for what Severus seemed a shade too long, now arrived back, napkins in hand. The girl’s eyes moved from the body on the floor, to Severus’s displeased expression, to the other girl, finally resting on Jen’s face. She sighed and clucked her tongue softly. The red-haired girl, seeing there wasn’t any immediate danger, swung back into bitch mode. “Look, if you just going to-” She was silenced by a backfist to the mouth. The new girl stood over her, wiping her hand off on the corner of her pink sari. “God, why do they always have so much makeup?” She muttered. She turned an accusatory eye to Jen. “Can’t we go anywhere without you shooting something?” “I think we both know the answer to that one.” Jen replied, slinging both girl’s bodies over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Be back in a few.” She told Severus, and strode off.        Severus watched her go off with a loping gait normally attributed to wolves, and then turned back to the children he was now stuck with. The boy preoccupied himself with staring into the distance and making clicking noises with his mouth. The girl took out a golden cigarette case and flicked one out, not before Severus saw an all-purpose razor stashed in there. He gulped. “Don’t worry.” “Huh?” He turned to the girl, who gave almost no indication of speaking. “We’re only here for lunch, we’re not planning on staying.” She said to the air in front of her, taking out a lighter with an abnormally large wheel and no lid. She lit her cig and shook the lighter out, finally turning her gaze to Severus. “But I supposed she told you as much, didn’t she?” “Actually, we never did get into a conversation. This-“ he gestured around, “all happened at once.” She let out a little chuckle. “These things always do.” She blew  a puff of smoke, and the boy continued staring blankly. Severus racked his brain. Was it his fault? Did he get up wrong in bed this morning? Was he actually dying and this was all a side-effect of the delirium? He punched himself in the jaw. It hurt. He rubbed it and winced. No, not a dream. The girl looked at him oddly. “If you want us to hit you, just ask.” she told him. He gave a start and shook his head. He began contemplating a means of escape, but scrapped it when the dark one came striding back. “Well, that’s over and done with.” She said, dusting her hands off. “Jesus, Jen, what took you so long, you bury them in China?” the boy asked. He got a plate that smashed into the wall right by his head as a reply. “Oh, that’s mature.” He muttered. She turned, grinning, to Severus. “Want to extend this shindig to the backyard?” she asked him. Severus weighed his choices. Probable expiration at the hands of a demonic Amazon, or staying in here with the students. “Outside.” He told her. “But before we go, do I at least get the pleasure of introductions?” Jen smiled sheepishly, the children watched him like owls. “Sorry.” she told him. “Name’s Jen.” She stuck out a hand like a pale king crab. He chose to ignore it. “Jen…?” “Just Jen.” She told him, and non-too-gently nudged the children forward. “Celes.” The girl told him, eyes boring into him. “Cade.” The boy said, putting his arm on the girl’s shoulder. She punched him in the ribs. He withdrew it. Someone cleared their throat like a wolverine, and he turned to see it was Jen. “Shall we?” she said. He held out his arm. “Let’s.” he said. Cade looped his arm through. “Let’s go!” he said brightly, and went off, dragging a thoroughly confused teacher with him. Jen and Celes took a moment to gather up the remainder of their picnic amongst the stares of the students, and then left for the door. They caught up with the other two just as they left the great hall. Jen leaned over to Severus and whispered, with some urgency in her voice. “Severus?” “Yes?” “Was that boy back there pregnant?” To be Curtailed… In order to clear up some confusion some of you have, and send others of you running for the hills, we have here the cast of characters not culled from another literary work. The cast: Jen: hails from Henteko, one of five mages, this warrior was a wanderer before settling down in this tepid little mud-hole. Is fond of Chinese clothing, born in the little burg of none-of-your-damn-business. Celes: this wide-eyed miscreant is one of five mages in the town of Henteko. Smokes like a chimney, possibly Prof. Moriarty’s reincarnation. Huge unicorn magnet. Cade: one of five mages in Henteko, has been know to practice the ancient Hindu art of scrap booking, has yet to realize scrap booking is neither ancient nor art. The place: Henteko: one of several small towns out in the sticks who have elevated guerilla warfare to an art form. Has survived onslaughts from more populous neighboring cities by the utter viciousness of it’s inhabitants. Over three-fifths swamp, and polluted to the point where a dropped match in the wrong place does a lot of damage. Notably hostile to mages, the sudden influx of Mary-Sues has led to development of special tactics, most notably the Sphinx maneuver, conceived and executed by Senior mage Jen.