FIC: The Karaoke Mission
Title: The Karaoke Mission
Rating: PG
Genre: Humour
Word Count: 3320
Warnings: Extreme silliness.
Notes: Written for the HPN Snape & ABBA Super Trouper challenge. The first paragraph of the fic was written by the challenger and not myself.
Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognise.
Challenge: It has to be at least 2,000 characters long and have at least 6 ABBA references (I put these in bold). And, there must be a performance of the song Super Trouper and featuring Professor Snape.
The Karaoke Mission
After a hard day's work of teaching potions, Professor Snape is cleaning up his classroom as dusk falls. As he's organising through his papers, he finds an unexpected treasure... his old Super Trouper LP. He didn't know that he still had it. He gently brushes off the dirt that had collected on the cover. It had been many years since he last listened to this recording. As he gazes upon the cover, memories flood back to him...
He shuddered involuntarily as the first of those memories returned.
“Severus!” The voice called down to him from one of the higher staircases, and Severus quickened his pace slightly without looking up.
“Severus!” The voice was louder now. A quick glance from the corner of his eye revealed that Sybil Trelawney was hard on his heels, and the staircases were apparently moving according to her wishes, not his own.
He still didn’t know how she had found out about his liking for the muggle music group known as ABBA, though he suspected Dumbledore might have had something to do with it. Unfortunately, it was against school policy to perform memory charms on fellow staff members, tempting though it was, and Sybil showed no signs of conveniently forgetting this nugget of information.
Apparently, their shared love of ABBA had convinced the barmy old fraud that they were perfect for each other… and nothing Severus said seemed to change her mind.
He nearly made it to the sanctuary of the dungeons, but nearly wasn’t quite good enough. He was halfway down the stairs to the dungeons when he caught the telltale whiff of the Sybil’s perfume, that told him he was caught.
“Didn’t you hear me calling?” Sybil asked in a chiding tone of voice that immediately grated on the last of his fraying nerves.
“Apparently not,” Severus replied coldly as he continued on his way. “Did you want something important?”
“Oh, yes,” Sybil replied in an entirely inappropriately suggestive tone.
“And?” Severus prompted, his patience running short rather rapidly.
“The Hog’s Head is having a karaoke night next Saturday!” Sybil announced brightly.
Severus wondered how she wanted him to react to this particular piece of news. His initial reaction was to thank her for the warning, but something told him that that was not what her intention had been.
It seemed a response wasn’t necessary, for which he was extremely thankful, because Sybil simply rattled on about the news. And on and on and on. After ten minutes or so he simply tuned her out and went into his office, where he set about marking the fourth years’ essays. Sybil followed him inside and hovered over his desk, but he found that ignoring her was the best policy for the moment.
He was nearing the end of the pile of essays when suddenly he realised that there was a strange noise coming from somewhere close by.
Sybil was humming to herself as she examined the jars on one of his shelves, but she wasn’t making the strange banging noise that he could hear echoing through the dungeons.
“Do you hear something strange?” he asked Sybil, hoping, rather than expecting, a sensible response.
Sybil nodded vaguely. “It’s a sign,” she announced knowingly. “Here we are, making plans to go to the karaoke together, and now this…”
“It isn’t a sign,” Severus snapped as he threw down his quill, accidentally dripping a rather large blot on the essay he had been reading. He frowned at the stain, checked the name at the top of the page, saw that it was particularly hopeless student named Benny, and realised that it was probably not covering up anything important. No sense worrying about it, not when he could hear the sound of banging and clattering coming - if he was not very much mistaken - from his classroom.
“Can you hear the drums?” Sybil asked airily. “Fernando,” she added with a dreamy sort of sigh.
Severus glared at her, reminded her that his name was not, had never been, and never would be Fernando, and then swept from the room.
Sybil followed behind him, singing that there was something in the air. Severus suspected it was her perfume, the fumes of which were strong enough to knock out a Hungarian Horntail from a hundred paces.
The sound was louder in the corridor and he knew that it was coming from his classroom. “I’ll be locking that, too, in future,” he muttered to himself as he opened the door and glared at the noisy culprits.
“Professor Snape!” the tallest of the sixth years hissed at his two friends.
“And what precisely are you doing in here?” Severus asked icily as he looked at the upturned cauldrons that were scattered across the desks.
“We’re starting a band,” the most foolish of the trio replied.
Severus glared at him. “A foolish waste of time, but it does not explain why you are in here,” he replied.
“We need drums,” the same boy explained, gesturing to the cauldrons with a hopeful smile.
Severus approached the desk and returned the largest of the cauldrons to its correct position. “This, as most sixth years would know by now, is a cauldron. It is not a drum, or any other type of musical instrument.”
“Yes, Sir,” the third boy replied sheepishly.
“In order to familiarise yourself with these items, you will all serve detention with me on Saturday night, where you will spend your time cleaning every cauldron I can find.”
Four groans sounded out, three from the would-be band members, and one from Sybil Trelawney. Severus ignored them all as he ordered the entire bunch from his classroom.
“Severus?” Sybil chirped. “Perhaps you could arrange for another teacher to supervise their detentions? Or maybe change it to another night?”
“I see no reason to do that,” Severus replied. “Unless you’re volunteering to supervise them?”
Sybil shook her head rapidly. “But our plans…” she whined.
“It can’t be helped,” Severus interrupted her. “My teaching duties come first.”
Sybil nodded approvingly, but continued to rattle on about how much fun they would have at the karaoke night. Severus ignored her; he often found that was the best course of action.
Of course, if he had taken a little more notice of her, he would have heard her tell him that she would be asking Minerva McGonagall to take over the supervision of the detention for him. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t, and only found out that Sybil had done exactly this when Minerva had approached him to inform him of her agreement to the arrangement on the Friday afternoon.
~o~o~o~
Since his evening was now free, Severus had to come up with a new plan and he decided that the best way to avoid the karaoke night was to avoid Sybil for the whole of Saturday. It had seemed an easy enough thing to do at first. Sybil had remained quietly upstairs in her tower all week. With a bit of luck she had forgotten all about the karaoke, and as long as he confined himself to the dungeons for the day, he would not see her and inadvertently remind her of it.
Thankfully, Sybil spent so long looking at things through her inner eye, she often forgot what day it was. With a bit of luck, she’d not only have forgotten it was Saturday, she would have forgotten all about her invitation.
As plans went, it was flawless - or it would have been if Sybil hadn’t appeared at his office door late on Saturday afternoon. At least he thought it was Sybil; it was a little difficult to tell, because the long blonde wig made her look startlingly similar to Lucius Malfoy. Severus didn’t believe he’d ever had a more frightening thought in his life.
“What do you think?” Sybil asked as she gave him a twirl, nearly toppling over in process.
“Words fail me,” Severus replied, closing his eyes to try to blot out the image of Sybil Trelawney in bright blue platform shoes that clashed horribly with the yellow and pink muggle flares. It only got worse the higher up that he looked. The tie-dyed blouse was various shades of green, the main shade being rather reminiscent of vomit. She was still wearing her usual abundance of jewellery, but had also added a few other items to the collection. Severus silently reflected that it would only take a few more layers to have them piled high enough to cover most of her face.
She was a shining example of why wizards should never, ever, dress in muggle clothes.
“You aren’t dressed yet,” Sybil commented, eyeing his clothes as she tapped the tip of her wand to her lips, accidentally changing the colour of her lipstick in the process. He wondered if he should mention that black lipstick really didn’t go with the rest of her outfit - not that any item she was wearing went with anything else anyway. He decided not to bother. The woman was clearly living in some sort of dream world and the last thing he wanted to do was join her there. He decided to focus on her comment about his own attire instead.
“I am, as you can see, fully clothed.”
Sybil giggled in what she probably thought was a girlish manner, although the hiccup at the end hinted that perhaps they might have been caused by the seer’s recent indulgence in the kitchen’s supply of cooking sherry. “The karaoke starts in a couple of hours,” she said with a bright smile. “I thought we could practice our duet before we head down there.”
“Duet?” Severus gaped at Sybil, wondering if he had somehow agreed to this preposterous idea. He shook his head, knowing that even at his most distracted, nothing could have induced him to agree to a duet with anyone, least of all the loopy Divination professor.
“I was thinking something nice and romantic,” Sybil replied with a simpering glance that was truly terrifying.
Severus knew what he had to do. There was simply no other option, no other course of action, no other escape. He had to run.
And run he did… right out of his office, along the cold stone corridor, up the stairs and well away from the mad woman, who thankfully found it rather difficult to even stand in her platforms, let alone run in them.
Severus didn’t turn to see if she was catching him up, he simply continued to run as though his life depended on it. Up a flight of stairs, down a corridor, into a hidden passage, out into another corridor, up another flight of stairs, and down a few more corridors.
On his swift flight through the school he managed to spot three Ravenclaws smoking, two Gryffindors who were clearly up to no good, and a Hufflepuff who had apparently raided the out of bounds kitchens. Points were deducted, detentions handed out and the delicious cream cakes confiscated. They would go down quite well when he was up until midnight trying to decipher the appalling handwriting of his N.E.W.T. students’ homework. It wasn’t like he wasn’t burning off at least twice as many calories right now.
He slowed down his pace a little and only came to a complete halt when he rounded a corner and collided with Albus Dumbledore.
Albus looked at him with a knowing smile as they scrambled to their feet again. “Running from a herd of stampeding Hippogriffs?” he asked.
“Worse,” Severus replied, still panting slightly from the exertion.
“Worse?”
“Sybil,” Severus explained, looking behind him with a panicked expression on his face, fearing that naming her might summon her to his presence again.
“Ah,” Dumbledore said with a nod and another infuriating smile. “Well, I’m glad I found you. I have small job for you to do. Its important work for the Order, so I know I can trust you to cancel any other plans you have for the evening…”
Severus nodded eagerly. “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” he begged. Death Eaters were nothing compared to the horrors of being propositioned by Sybil Trelawney.
Dumbledore stepped back a few paces, his expression one of shock at Severus’s reaction to his request.
After Severus had calmed down a little, Dumbledore took him to the privacy of his office to impart the details of his mission. If only he had known, he wouldn’t have been quite so eager to jump at the chance.
~o~o~o~
The Hog’s Head was half empty, despite the entertainment that was being provided that evening. Severus supposed that not even the prospect of karaoke could tempt most of the regulars away from The Three Broomsticks, where Rosmerta had slashed her prices for the night in response to the frantic advertising of Aberforth Dumbledore.
Aberforth was standing on the makeshift stage, which appeared to consist of various crates of varying sizes, lined up together on the floor. It looked rather precarious, even without the goat butting at the ones at the end, causing them to shift precariously about the floor.
Severus looked around the room, hoping that Sybil had decided not to come here after all. Unfortunately, his bad luck was continuing and she was sitting in the front row, studying the list of songs that the Goblins had lyrics for.
The Goblins were the reason that Severus was even here tonight, even though he sincerely wished that he wasn’t.
The Headmaster had received notification that one of the Goblins with the karaoke team had important information regarding an imminent Death Eater attack. The Goblin in question was reluctant to be seen in the presence of Albus Dumbledore himself, and so was to relay the details he had to Severus.
Unfortunately, Severus had no way of knowing which Goblin was the one he was supposed to be meeting. There were four playing instruments and a fifth holding up the boards with the lyrics for the singers to read from. He had asked how he was to know which one was the one with the information, but Albus had merely replied that the Goblin would approach him.
“And now you’ve seen the prizes,” Aberforth declared with a toothy grin around the room. “And what lovely prizes they are. All donated by one of our favourite patrons Mundungus Fletcher, and the winner takes it all.”
Severus looked at the stand of prizes, and immediately recognised several items as being rather similar to those he had last seen in Lucius Malfoy’s mansion. He wandered across to take a closer look and squinted at a particularly ugly vase. Very similar, he mused. Even has the same crack from where someone had botched an attempt to repair it. Now that he thought about it, he did recall Lucius whining at the last meeting of Death Eaters about someone breaking into his house whilst he and his wife had been abroad for their honeymoon.
He was still contemplating whether to bring his suspicions to Aberforth’s attention, when he felt something poking him in the back of the leg. He was about to deliver a swift kick to one of Aberforth’s overly friendly goats when he realised that it was in fact one of the Goblins.
“You Snape?” the Goblin asked.
“That’s me,” Severus confirmed. It seemed his luck had turned and he would be out of here in just a few minutes. Sybil was glued to the first performer, a Banshee who was screeching her way through a song he didn’t recognise.
“You’re up next,” the Goblin told him firmly, pointing towards the stage.
“I’m not here to perform in a karaoke contest,” Severus replied with a sneer.
“You said you were Snape.”
“I am.”
“Then you’re up next,” the Goblin repeated, before shuffling off back to the rest of the band, taking over from the Goblin that was currently holding up the lyrics.
He was obviously his contact, but for some reason he wasn’t prepared to just tell him what he needed to know. Oh no, he had to make it difficult and force him to perform on a stage, with Sybil Trelawney in the front row.
Severus quickly scanned his memory for a song that wouldn’t give Sybil the wrong idea about him; something morbid and depressing and definitely unromantic would be best.
It seemed that the Goblin with the message for him had other ideas.
Severus leaned down from the crates, trying his very best to ignore Sybil’s applauding and squealing in excitement, and whispered his choice of song in the Goblin’s ear.
It seemed that the Goblin had other ideas, however, and ignored him completely.
Severus looked at the lyrics of the chosen song with dismay. Super Trouper was not his first choice of song. It wasn’t even in his top ten and was sure to give Sybil all the wrong ideas. He wondered whether he could get away with directing his performance at another female customer in the pub, but it was rather difficult to tell the sex of most of Aberforth’s regulars at the best of times. Now, with all the candles concentrated around the stage, it was near enough impossible.
The Goblin held up the lyrics board, and Severus had a sneaking suspicion he knew just how uncomfortable Severus was with this idea, and was taking a great deal of personal pleasure over it.
He knew the song, and didn’t really need to look at the board, but the Goblin was frantically gesturing to the words, and a few lines into the song Severus realised why.
The word Glasgow suddenly flashed a different colour. Only he could see both that, and the small, almost minuscule nod of the Goblin that he had seen it correctly. A little further into the song and the word tonight flashed a different colour, now giving him both the place and a rough time. Half way through the chorus, and the word one flashed, giving him a more precise time for the attack.
He would have liked more information about the location, but at least Dumbledore could ensure that the Order concentrated their efforts on Glasgow that night. It was a start and they could at least find make sure that wizards of power who were located in that city were adequately protected.
It would also help to quell Voldemort’s fears about Severus’s own loyalty. He suspected that he was falling out of favour with the Dark Lord, which was making his new spying activities much more difficult. He hadn’t been called to the meeting where this attack had been planned, and as such the Dark Lord would be able to look elsewhere for the leak within the ranks of Death Eaters.
As missions went, it was one of the easiest he had undertaken, if only Sybil wasn’t gazing up at him with an adoring expression on her face.
He wondered how long it would take her to forget about this, and suspected it might be some considerable time.
…
Severus brushed the last of the dust from the cover of the LP.
He had reported the information from the Goblin to Albus Dumbledore and knew that several lives had been saved that night and two Death Eaters had been caught trying to escape from Glasgow by way of an illegal port key.
Sybil had continued her quest for him for what had seemed like years, though was in fact merely a few months.
He had made sure that he hadn’t listened to any of his ABBA LPs whilst in Hogwarts, just in case she had heard the music and renewed her attentions towards him.
He slipped the LP into his desk drawer, where he would find it easily and remember to take it home to Spinners End in the holidays.
From what he recalled of Wormtail, he had hated ABBA with a passion, and if that wasn’t reason enough to take it home and play it, he didn’t know what was.
-
Rating: PG
Genre: Humour
Word Count: 3320
Warnings: Extreme silliness.
Notes: Written for the HPN Snape & ABBA Super Trouper challenge. The first paragraph of the fic was written by the challenger and not myself.
Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognise.
Challenge: It has to be at least 2,000 characters long and have at least 6 ABBA references (I put these in bold). And, there must be a performance of the song Super Trouper and featuring Professor Snape.
The Karaoke Mission
After a hard day's work of teaching potions, Professor Snape is cleaning up his classroom as dusk falls. As he's organising through his papers, he finds an unexpected treasure... his old Super Trouper LP. He didn't know that he still had it. He gently brushes off the dirt that had collected on the cover. It had been many years since he last listened to this recording. As he gazes upon the cover, memories flood back to him...
He shuddered involuntarily as the first of those memories returned.
“Severus!” The voice called down to him from one of the higher staircases, and Severus quickened his pace slightly without looking up.
“Severus!” The voice was louder now. A quick glance from the corner of his eye revealed that Sybil Trelawney was hard on his heels, and the staircases were apparently moving according to her wishes, not his own.
He still didn’t know how she had found out about his liking for the muggle music group known as ABBA, though he suspected Dumbledore might have had something to do with it. Unfortunately, it was against school policy to perform memory charms on fellow staff members, tempting though it was, and Sybil showed no signs of conveniently forgetting this nugget of information.
Apparently, their shared love of ABBA had convinced the barmy old fraud that they were perfect for each other… and nothing Severus said seemed to change her mind.
He nearly made it to the sanctuary of the dungeons, but nearly wasn’t quite good enough. He was halfway down the stairs to the dungeons when he caught the telltale whiff of the Sybil’s perfume, that told him he was caught.
“Didn’t you hear me calling?” Sybil asked in a chiding tone of voice that immediately grated on the last of his fraying nerves.
“Apparently not,” Severus replied coldly as he continued on his way. “Did you want something important?”
“Oh, yes,” Sybil replied in an entirely inappropriately suggestive tone.
“And?” Severus prompted, his patience running short rather rapidly.
“The Hog’s Head is having a karaoke night next Saturday!” Sybil announced brightly.
Severus wondered how she wanted him to react to this particular piece of news. His initial reaction was to thank her for the warning, but something told him that that was not what her intention had been.
It seemed a response wasn’t necessary, for which he was extremely thankful, because Sybil simply rattled on about the news. And on and on and on. After ten minutes or so he simply tuned her out and went into his office, where he set about marking the fourth years’ essays. Sybil followed him inside and hovered over his desk, but he found that ignoring her was the best policy for the moment.
He was nearing the end of the pile of essays when suddenly he realised that there was a strange noise coming from somewhere close by.
Sybil was humming to herself as she examined the jars on one of his shelves, but she wasn’t making the strange banging noise that he could hear echoing through the dungeons.
“Do you hear something strange?” he asked Sybil, hoping, rather than expecting, a sensible response.
Sybil nodded vaguely. “It’s a sign,” she announced knowingly. “Here we are, making plans to go to the karaoke together, and now this…”
“It isn’t a sign,” Severus snapped as he threw down his quill, accidentally dripping a rather large blot on the essay he had been reading. He frowned at the stain, checked the name at the top of the page, saw that it was particularly hopeless student named Benny, and realised that it was probably not covering up anything important. No sense worrying about it, not when he could hear the sound of banging and clattering coming - if he was not very much mistaken - from his classroom.
“Can you hear the drums?” Sybil asked airily. “Fernando,” she added with a dreamy sort of sigh.
Severus glared at her, reminded her that his name was not, had never been, and never would be Fernando, and then swept from the room.
Sybil followed behind him, singing that there was something in the air. Severus suspected it was her perfume, the fumes of which were strong enough to knock out a Hungarian Horntail from a hundred paces.
The sound was louder in the corridor and he knew that it was coming from his classroom. “I’ll be locking that, too, in future,” he muttered to himself as he opened the door and glared at the noisy culprits.
“Professor Snape!” the tallest of the sixth years hissed at his two friends.
“And what precisely are you doing in here?” Severus asked icily as he looked at the upturned cauldrons that were scattered across the desks.
“We’re starting a band,” the most foolish of the trio replied.
Severus glared at him. “A foolish waste of time, but it does not explain why you are in here,” he replied.
“We need drums,” the same boy explained, gesturing to the cauldrons with a hopeful smile.
Severus approached the desk and returned the largest of the cauldrons to its correct position. “This, as most sixth years would know by now, is a cauldron. It is not a drum, or any other type of musical instrument.”
“Yes, Sir,” the third boy replied sheepishly.
“In order to familiarise yourself with these items, you will all serve detention with me on Saturday night, where you will spend your time cleaning every cauldron I can find.”
Four groans sounded out, three from the would-be band members, and one from Sybil Trelawney. Severus ignored them all as he ordered the entire bunch from his classroom.
“Severus?” Sybil chirped. “Perhaps you could arrange for another teacher to supervise their detentions? Or maybe change it to another night?”
“I see no reason to do that,” Severus replied. “Unless you’re volunteering to supervise them?”
Sybil shook her head rapidly. “But our plans…” she whined.
“It can’t be helped,” Severus interrupted her. “My teaching duties come first.”
Sybil nodded approvingly, but continued to rattle on about how much fun they would have at the karaoke night. Severus ignored her; he often found that was the best course of action.
Of course, if he had taken a little more notice of her, he would have heard her tell him that she would be asking Minerva McGonagall to take over the supervision of the detention for him. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t, and only found out that Sybil had done exactly this when Minerva had approached him to inform him of her agreement to the arrangement on the Friday afternoon.
~o~o~o~
Since his evening was now free, Severus had to come up with a new plan and he decided that the best way to avoid the karaoke night was to avoid Sybil for the whole of Saturday. It had seemed an easy enough thing to do at first. Sybil had remained quietly upstairs in her tower all week. With a bit of luck she had forgotten all about the karaoke, and as long as he confined himself to the dungeons for the day, he would not see her and inadvertently remind her of it.
Thankfully, Sybil spent so long looking at things through her inner eye, she often forgot what day it was. With a bit of luck, she’d not only have forgotten it was Saturday, she would have forgotten all about her invitation.
As plans went, it was flawless - or it would have been if Sybil hadn’t appeared at his office door late on Saturday afternoon. At least he thought it was Sybil; it was a little difficult to tell, because the long blonde wig made her look startlingly similar to Lucius Malfoy. Severus didn’t believe he’d ever had a more frightening thought in his life.
“What do you think?” Sybil asked as she gave him a twirl, nearly toppling over in process.
“Words fail me,” Severus replied, closing his eyes to try to blot out the image of Sybil Trelawney in bright blue platform shoes that clashed horribly with the yellow and pink muggle flares. It only got worse the higher up that he looked. The tie-dyed blouse was various shades of green, the main shade being rather reminiscent of vomit. She was still wearing her usual abundance of jewellery, but had also added a few other items to the collection. Severus silently reflected that it would only take a few more layers to have them piled high enough to cover most of her face.
She was a shining example of why wizards should never, ever, dress in muggle clothes.
“You aren’t dressed yet,” Sybil commented, eyeing his clothes as she tapped the tip of her wand to her lips, accidentally changing the colour of her lipstick in the process. He wondered if he should mention that black lipstick really didn’t go with the rest of her outfit - not that any item she was wearing went with anything else anyway. He decided not to bother. The woman was clearly living in some sort of dream world and the last thing he wanted to do was join her there. He decided to focus on her comment about his own attire instead.
“I am, as you can see, fully clothed.”
Sybil giggled in what she probably thought was a girlish manner, although the hiccup at the end hinted that perhaps they might have been caused by the seer’s recent indulgence in the kitchen’s supply of cooking sherry. “The karaoke starts in a couple of hours,” she said with a bright smile. “I thought we could practice our duet before we head down there.”
“Duet?” Severus gaped at Sybil, wondering if he had somehow agreed to this preposterous idea. He shook his head, knowing that even at his most distracted, nothing could have induced him to agree to a duet with anyone, least of all the loopy Divination professor.
“I was thinking something nice and romantic,” Sybil replied with a simpering glance that was truly terrifying.
Severus knew what he had to do. There was simply no other option, no other course of action, no other escape. He had to run.
And run he did… right out of his office, along the cold stone corridor, up the stairs and well away from the mad woman, who thankfully found it rather difficult to even stand in her platforms, let alone run in them.
Severus didn’t turn to see if she was catching him up, he simply continued to run as though his life depended on it. Up a flight of stairs, down a corridor, into a hidden passage, out into another corridor, up another flight of stairs, and down a few more corridors.
On his swift flight through the school he managed to spot three Ravenclaws smoking, two Gryffindors who were clearly up to no good, and a Hufflepuff who had apparently raided the out of bounds kitchens. Points were deducted, detentions handed out and the delicious cream cakes confiscated. They would go down quite well when he was up until midnight trying to decipher the appalling handwriting of his N.E.W.T. students’ homework. It wasn’t like he wasn’t burning off at least twice as many calories right now.
He slowed down his pace a little and only came to a complete halt when he rounded a corner and collided with Albus Dumbledore.
Albus looked at him with a knowing smile as they scrambled to their feet again. “Running from a herd of stampeding Hippogriffs?” he asked.
“Worse,” Severus replied, still panting slightly from the exertion.
“Worse?”
“Sybil,” Severus explained, looking behind him with a panicked expression on his face, fearing that naming her might summon her to his presence again.
“Ah,” Dumbledore said with a nod and another infuriating smile. “Well, I’m glad I found you. I have small job for you to do. Its important work for the Order, so I know I can trust you to cancel any other plans you have for the evening…”
Severus nodded eagerly. “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” he begged. Death Eaters were nothing compared to the horrors of being propositioned by Sybil Trelawney.
Dumbledore stepped back a few paces, his expression one of shock at Severus’s reaction to his request.
After Severus had calmed down a little, Dumbledore took him to the privacy of his office to impart the details of his mission. If only he had known, he wouldn’t have been quite so eager to jump at the chance.
~o~o~o~
The Hog’s Head was half empty, despite the entertainment that was being provided that evening. Severus supposed that not even the prospect of karaoke could tempt most of the regulars away from The Three Broomsticks, where Rosmerta had slashed her prices for the night in response to the frantic advertising of Aberforth Dumbledore.
Aberforth was standing on the makeshift stage, which appeared to consist of various crates of varying sizes, lined up together on the floor. It looked rather precarious, even without the goat butting at the ones at the end, causing them to shift precariously about the floor.
Severus looked around the room, hoping that Sybil had decided not to come here after all. Unfortunately, his bad luck was continuing and she was sitting in the front row, studying the list of songs that the Goblins had lyrics for.
The Goblins were the reason that Severus was even here tonight, even though he sincerely wished that he wasn’t.
The Headmaster had received notification that one of the Goblins with the karaoke team had important information regarding an imminent Death Eater attack. The Goblin in question was reluctant to be seen in the presence of Albus Dumbledore himself, and so was to relay the details he had to Severus.
Unfortunately, Severus had no way of knowing which Goblin was the one he was supposed to be meeting. There were four playing instruments and a fifth holding up the boards with the lyrics for the singers to read from. He had asked how he was to know which one was the one with the information, but Albus had merely replied that the Goblin would approach him.
“And now you’ve seen the prizes,” Aberforth declared with a toothy grin around the room. “And what lovely prizes they are. All donated by one of our favourite patrons Mundungus Fletcher, and the winner takes it all.”
Severus looked at the stand of prizes, and immediately recognised several items as being rather similar to those he had last seen in Lucius Malfoy’s mansion. He wandered across to take a closer look and squinted at a particularly ugly vase. Very similar, he mused. Even has the same crack from where someone had botched an attempt to repair it. Now that he thought about it, he did recall Lucius whining at the last meeting of Death Eaters about someone breaking into his house whilst he and his wife had been abroad for their honeymoon.
He was still contemplating whether to bring his suspicions to Aberforth’s attention, when he felt something poking him in the back of the leg. He was about to deliver a swift kick to one of Aberforth’s overly friendly goats when he realised that it was in fact one of the Goblins.
“You Snape?” the Goblin asked.
“That’s me,” Severus confirmed. It seemed his luck had turned and he would be out of here in just a few minutes. Sybil was glued to the first performer, a Banshee who was screeching her way through a song he didn’t recognise.
“You’re up next,” the Goblin told him firmly, pointing towards the stage.
“I’m not here to perform in a karaoke contest,” Severus replied with a sneer.
“You said you were Snape.”
“I am.”
“Then you’re up next,” the Goblin repeated, before shuffling off back to the rest of the band, taking over from the Goblin that was currently holding up the lyrics.
He was obviously his contact, but for some reason he wasn’t prepared to just tell him what he needed to know. Oh no, he had to make it difficult and force him to perform on a stage, with Sybil Trelawney in the front row.
Severus quickly scanned his memory for a song that wouldn’t give Sybil the wrong idea about him; something morbid and depressing and definitely unromantic would be best.
It seemed that the Goblin with the message for him had other ideas.
Severus leaned down from the crates, trying his very best to ignore Sybil’s applauding and squealing in excitement, and whispered his choice of song in the Goblin’s ear.
It seemed that the Goblin had other ideas, however, and ignored him completely.
Severus looked at the lyrics of the chosen song with dismay. Super Trouper was not his first choice of song. It wasn’t even in his top ten and was sure to give Sybil all the wrong ideas. He wondered whether he could get away with directing his performance at another female customer in the pub, but it was rather difficult to tell the sex of most of Aberforth’s regulars at the best of times. Now, with all the candles concentrated around the stage, it was near enough impossible.
The Goblin held up the lyrics board, and Severus had a sneaking suspicion he knew just how uncomfortable Severus was with this idea, and was taking a great deal of personal pleasure over it.
He knew the song, and didn’t really need to look at the board, but the Goblin was frantically gesturing to the words, and a few lines into the song Severus realised why.
The word Glasgow suddenly flashed a different colour. Only he could see both that, and the small, almost minuscule nod of the Goblin that he had seen it correctly. A little further into the song and the word tonight flashed a different colour, now giving him both the place and a rough time. Half way through the chorus, and the word one flashed, giving him a more precise time for the attack.
He would have liked more information about the location, but at least Dumbledore could ensure that the Order concentrated their efforts on Glasgow that night. It was a start and they could at least find make sure that wizards of power who were located in that city were adequately protected.
It would also help to quell Voldemort’s fears about Severus’s own loyalty. He suspected that he was falling out of favour with the Dark Lord, which was making his new spying activities much more difficult. He hadn’t been called to the meeting where this attack had been planned, and as such the Dark Lord would be able to look elsewhere for the leak within the ranks of Death Eaters.
As missions went, it was one of the easiest he had undertaken, if only Sybil wasn’t gazing up at him with an adoring expression on her face.
He wondered how long it would take her to forget about this, and suspected it might be some considerable time.
…
Severus brushed the last of the dust from the cover of the LP.
He had reported the information from the Goblin to Albus Dumbledore and knew that several lives had been saved that night and two Death Eaters had been caught trying to escape from Glasgow by way of an illegal port key.
Sybil had continued her quest for him for what had seemed like years, though was in fact merely a few months.
He had made sure that he hadn’t listened to any of his ABBA LPs whilst in Hogwarts, just in case she had heard the music and renewed her attentions towards him.
He slipped the LP into his desk drawer, where he would find it easily and remember to take it home to Spinners End in the holidays.
From what he recalled of Wormtail, he had hated ABBA with a passion, and if that wasn’t reason enough to take it home and play it, he didn’t know what was.
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