featherxquill | Fic: Gryffindor vs. Slytherin

My blamefic is done! Finally! Just a touch later than the end of Sunday, but I hope it's still Sunday somewhere in the world.

Ttile: Gryffindor vs. Slytherin
Rating: PG
Summary: I get to blame this on

onyx_noir who wanted Snape and McGonagall go on a drinking binge. Bonus points for the gratuitous use of catnip!
A/N: For those of you who wanted a sequel to Midnight Snack, well, this isn't one, really, but it could be, if you use your imagination. So consider it a companion piece.

“This is terribly muggle, Minerva.”

Severus trailed a finger along the top of the television; then lifted it as though searching for dust.

“Well, considering I’m the only one who knows you’re not a traitor, I don’t think you’re in the position to complain. There’s no other way for you to see it.” Minerva, decked out in scarlet and gold scarf and matching socks poking out from under her robe, was sitting on a lounge before the currently blank television and starting up at him with something resembling a smile.

“Perhaps not.” He crossed the room and flopped down onto the sofa beside her, then peered moodily at the television. “How’s it going to work?”

“I’ve transfigured it so it will show us the game, starting when the players walk onto the field.”

“How did you get out of being there?”

“A Headmistress can plead prior engagement. Besides, I’m supposed to be impartial now.”

He snorted. “Right.”

“And Gryffindor vs. Slytherin just wouldn’t be the same without you.”

She turned her head to meet his eyes, and there was a sly glint in their blackness. He reached a hand inside his travelling robes and pulled out a small black bag. The movement revealed a scarf like hers, in green and silver.

“Where’s your socks?” she asked with a grin.

“Socks? Please. My house allegiance is much too precious for that. I’m wearing Slytherin underwear.”

She waggled her brows at him, then laughed. “What’s that?” Gesturing to the bag in his hand.

“Well, since we’re not in the presence of a thousand whining brats this year, I thought we could up the stakes. Accio coffee table. Engorgio.” From the now restored bag Severus was pulling a rather large bottle of firewhiskey, and laying it on the coffee table that now sat before them. Then there were glasses, all shot sized and shaped like boots, and he lined them up in rows of six before each of them.

The television flickered to life as the players strolled onto the field.

Severus was filling the shot glasses to the brim. “Gryffindor scores, I shot. Slytherin scores, you shot. Let’s see who wins, and who can stay conscious longer.”

“You’re going to challenge a Scottish woman to a drinking contest? Living with Deatheaters must have addled your brain.

“Ah, let’s wait and see how your team does without it’s golden boy for morale, shall we?”

“We’ll wipe the floor with you, and I’ll peel you off mine later!”

Severus snorted his response, then both pairs of eyes lit on the television screen. Madam Hooch threw the Quaffle into the air.

The angles of viewing were sharp, as the focussing charm chased the action. Minerva was on the edge of the sofa, one hand pressed against the table. Severus rested casually in the seat next to her, alternating between watching the game and smirking at her.

Slytherin scored, Severus grinned broadly and Minerva hissed, wrapped fingers around the shot glass and downed it in a single gulp, wincing as it burned and giving her head a shake.

“Where did you buy this crap?” She peered at Severus as though he’d committed a mortal sin.

“Back of Knockturn Alley.”

“Knockturn Alley!?”

But Severus had leaned forward now too, and Minerva’s attention snapped right back to the game. The charm was following the Slytherin seeker, who hurtled upward in a spin, arm outstretched. A blaze of scarlet robes and flame hair followed, but then the gong of the goals rattled through the speakers, and the perspective snapped back to Ron Weasley, on goals, who had been just as entranced by the sudden commotion as Severus had. Slytherin had taken another ten points.

Minerva took another shot.

Gryffindor fought back, and took their first ten points. Severus downed his first glass, and shuddered.

“Ugh, that is crap.”

“I told you.”

Ten to Slytherin. Twenty to Gryffindor. Ten to Slytherin. Ten to Gryffindor. Back and forth like a duel, hard and fast and violent. Ten to Slytherin. Ten to Gryffindor. Empty boot shaped glasses slapping down onto the wood, and Minerva filling them again with a hand that shook; both of them on the edges of their seats.

“We’re going to run out before the game ends.”

“It’s got a self-refilling charm on it, good for five goes.”

“Bloody hell, I’m dizzy.”

“Lagging already, Minerva? Getting old?”

Just for that, she downed one for free.

The whistle blew, and Hooch called a penalty shot for Gryffindor. One of the Slytherin beaters skulked angrily across the screen behind her, twisting his bat menacingly.

“What are you doing, Xiomara!?” Snape cursed at the TV.

“She’s being a good ref.” Minerva responded, smiling affectionately at the vision on the screen.

Score! Minerva let out a whoop and jumped from her seat, then immediately regretted the way that made the room spin. But she smiled. They were ahead, and Snape was downing another shot.

“Can’t taste it anymore.” He murmured.

Gryffindor scored again, then again, and Slytherin came back with one. The Gryffindor chaser was almost hit with a bludger, and the quaffle slipped from her hands. Slytherin was below to catch it, and scored three consecutive goals. The Gryffindor team bristled like lions, and became violent, playing with every bit as much ruthlessness as their opponents, and managed to keep the ball away from Slytherin long enough to take forty more points, and the lead. Severus grimaced a little on the fourth shot in as many minutes, and blinked a few times.

Then the perspective switched again, and this time it was Ginny Weasley reaching for the snitch, crimson hair whipping back in the wind in a way that Minerva could remember so well she could almost feel; and neither she nor Severus were breathing. Her fingers brushed at the wing, and the snitch darted away, and in the next moment a swirl of green twisted up from beneath her, and the Slytherin seeker’s fist closed around it.

Snape was on his feet with the rest of his house in the stands, cheering and clapping like he was there with them. For a moment, Minerva forgot the loss long enough to feel glad for him, then she frowned, poured herself another drink and tossed it down her throat. He was right, she couldn’t taste it anymore either.

Moments later, the screen went blank. Severus blinked, lifted a hand to his forehead, as if only then realising what standing up so quickly had done to him.

“No little golden boy this year, Minerva.” He smirked. “Wipe the floor with us, will you?” He flopped back onto the lounge beside her, poured himself another drink. “Keep forgetting I won’t be seeing the cup in my office.” He took a large sip from the glass.

Minerva’s head was spinning, and something in that comment struck her as profoundly sad, though it could have been just the whiskey. “It’s all righ’, Sev’rus,” she heard her voice coming out strangely, tried to right it, but couldn’t. “’T’ll be all righ’. Heh. I sound like Hagrid.”

He smiled at her, lay his head back against the lounge and closed his eyes for a moment. “But it won’t be, Min. It won’t.”

At this point, she didn’t care what he’d just called her. She forced her voice to behave, though her syllables were longer than usual. “I… I’ve got something cheer you up a little.”

And she was lifting the corner of the sofa cushion, and pulling out a little muggle plastic bag full of something that looked like herbs, and some little white papers. Severus stared at her as she began to roll whatever-it-was into joints, wondering if he was dreaming. Even in his present state, he would have known almost every hallucinogen in existence by sight, but that was…

“Minerva, what is that?”

“Catnip.” She replied shortly.

“Cat… What?!”

She rolled them deftly, with the hands of someone who had done this many times before, and offered him one without replying. He took it with a sceptical expression.

“’s good.” She assured.

He shrugged, couldn’t be bothered to argue with her, and was kind of interested. His mind felt thick, and the world sort of far away from it, but he managed to pull his wand from his robe and speak incencedio, not once but twice, since he was a gentlemanly man after all.

Minerva took a pull, sighed, and lay her head back on the lounge in bliss. Severus, not sure it would even work on him, did too. Coughed at the strange, bitter and sweet taste of the smoke, then tried again. Interesting, but…

Pretty soon he started to giggle. Minerva opened her eyes lazily, feeling purrs in her throat, and peered at Severus, who was just… giggling. Like a little girl.

She laughed at him. “Listen t’you, you’re like a kitten!” She remembered those days, when the ‘nip had made her wild instead of just pleasantly mellow. “You’re not gonna start jumping ‘round the room, are you?”

He shook his head, but continued to giggle uncontrollably, managing to stop only long enough to take another pull on the joint. The giggles turned to gasping breaths, and the gasping breaths to sobs. Minerva watched his face with a growing sense of horror and wrongness, however detached by the alcohol and ‘nip in her system. Severus Snape, crying?

But it wasn’t crying, no, it was sobbing, snivelling, little boy snorts. “Miss him, Minerva, and his stupid lemon drops, and the way he used to pay out on the Dark Lord when I repeated the speeches, making pantomime voices and stuff. Miss him…”

“Oh, Sev’rus, I miss him too.”

And she found herself moving forward, though she had never really intended to (snivelling children had always made her supremely uncomfortable, mostly because she usually felt more like ripping their eyes out than comforting them – no motherly instinct at all, Poppy Pomfrey said). She found herself pulling him against her, wrapping her arms around him like a mother. He clung to the back of her robes and sobbed against her chest. She stroked his hair, regretted touching it because it gave her greasy fingers, then patted his back instead.

“There there, Sev’rus,” her voice still thick with the whiskey. “There there.”

It was, all in all, a very surreal moment.

Now check out the The Morning After, which

onyx_noir got to blame on me!