Creative Cursing
Everything in the Wizarding world seems a bit bigger, a bit more dramatic than in the Muggle world. Swear words should be no exception! This week we join Severus and Hermione for a crash course in Creative Cursing. Come add to your vocabulary courtesy of our beloved SSHG authors.
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EST. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Need to get in the mood first? Check out THE HISSING HARPIES' MASTER LIST for an extensive list of creative cursing!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
The F Word by mad_queen_mab
Creative Cursing by imhilien
I F***ing Do! by The Hissing Harpies (Or click on the Hissing Harpies tag for access to all 28 parts.)
Awkward Entanglements by lady_rhian
Is She Really...? or What Happens When You Try To Drown Your Sorrows. by savine_snape
The Pink Bezoar by duniazade
Courtesy of Your Fairy God-Jarvey by dracontia aka reginafletcher
The Remarkable Realisation of Severus Snape by laurielover1912
Exceeds Expectations by voxangelus
The Dear John Letters by elise_wanderer
Private Lessons by a_bees_buzz
Overcome With Feeling by plaidpooka
1. Bugger all to fucking hell. No, scratch that. Bollocks. Scratch that, too. Fucking diddy elf ness.
Severus scratched the bridge of his nose. He was tired. Too tired to swear properly. Too fucking tired to swear properly. This really was getting out of control.
He looked down at the paper riddled with his failed attempts as he endeavored to drown out the prattle prattle prattle blah blah blah coming from the girl standing in front of his desk. Her question may be valid. Possibly. But he didn’t dare look up, and to be frank, he didn’t really feel like answering, and if his surliness was only out of spite, well, so be it.
He’d seen her when she walked in. She was wearing one of those shirts again. Rather, she was wearing a shirt that had a few buttons loose… again. How her two dunderhead companions failed to notice this, he had no idea. Ah, of course. The witch had probably charmed her disheveled appearance to be visible only to him.
How bloody fucking clever of her. Also, how bloody annoying.
He’d tried to talk to Minerva about why on earth her favorite sixth year was trying to seduce him.
2. “Blech! This tea is so strong I’m surprised it hasn’t swum out of the pot on its own. And do you brew the sodding coffee for a week, or just over the weekend?” she asked, grimacing at the beaker.
“A little astringent for you, Reggie?” he purred, silkily. He was beginning to feel more himself. Hail, powers of caffeine. He was quite equal to cutting this nasty little rodent down to size without resorting to gratuitous jinxes.
“Alum is ‘a little astringent’, arsehole. This stuff is a fucking liquid black hole. Merlin’s hairy arse in a g-string, it’s a wonder your face hasn’t collapsed on itself. Of course, it goes a long way to explaining your teeth, your expression, and your cheery outlook on life.”
“You get out of bed every morning to try teaching generations of genetic miscues on anything weaker than this, and see how far you get,” he groused.
“Seeing as how you don’t have to do that for a living anymore, that excuse sucks donkey cock. Look, I’ll adjust your toothpaste to counteract the worst of this; but long term, you need to seriously cut back on the tall, dark, and staining beverages. Lose the booze too, while you’re at it. That hangover relief potion isn’t exactly a dental beauty treatment.”
With a minimum of profanity (on either side), they managed to ascend the stairs and deal with the toothpaste charm. But a fully-caffeinated and minty-fresh Snape once again felt sufficiently rebellious to balk at the idea of further improvements.
3. You Self-Flagellating, Self-Righteous, Snivelling Fuckwit,
You think so little of me to consider my unchecked passion, my unconditional love, my deep, almost inexpressible delight in finding you to be nothing more than some misguided desire to be nice to a decrepit old man. Fuck you.
For someone with such an inordinate amount of intelligence, you are remarkably stupid. You refuse to see any but the worst thing in front of that enormous nose of yours. You look at sacrifice and courage and see only debasement. You look at unchecked passion and, face it, Snape, transcendent sex and see nothing but - how did you put it? - “fire and degradation.” You admit - you did admit it, I have it in writing even if you try to deny that you also said it out loud more than once, you plonker - that you love me, and you heard me say it back - more than once and not just screamed at the top of my dear-Merlin-how-can-he-make-me-come-like-this lungs. And yet you pretend that some words have more power than others, that one action makes everything since then impossible.
4. Time passes. Severus rediscovers the versatility of fuck.
She says: "Fuck off, Ron. I'm not going to snog you beside Snape's sickbed."
And, later: "I'll be just fine, Gin. Your brother's a lousy fuck anyhow."
"An interview? Go fuck a Nargle, Skeeter. He's fucking brilliant at potions, remember, and I'm sure he could find use for beetle bits."
"He's been loyal all along, Minister. You've got to pardon him. Trust the Pensieve; Harry's not going to fuck you over."
Then, whispered, her breath warm in his ear: "It's been three-fucking-weeks, Professor, won't you please wake?"
5. "So everybody's settled and happy," Toby said, putting his feet up on the table and knocking over the stacked invitations. "How's about some tea, love? I could murder a bacon butty…"
Severus glared poisonously. "I could murder something, too."
"Bring us a butty, sugar snatch!" Fluffy croaked.
"Porphyria's push-up bra!" Hermione peered at the cage. "What the hell is that?"
"That's Fluffy," Toby volunteered.
"Pet Fluffy!" the bird agreed, whistling suggestively. "Show Fluffy your pretty titties!"
Hermione gawped. "That perverted parrot has to go!"
Severus sniggered. "What sort of hard-hearted harpy would refuse my dear father's thoughtful wedding present, hmm?"
6. "Mother of MERLIN!"
Here we go. Snape could cuss for England.
"Of all the lack-witted idiots to darken my classroom doorstep, Marchbanks has to be the worst -"
I smirked into my cauldron, stirring in the ground cayenne. Jolly good, Neville will love to know he's been displaced in the professor's affectionate regard.
"-and most inept since Longbottom! Quarter-inch dices! Is that so difficult to comprehend? There are rulers available for reference in the store cupboard!"
Spoke too soon. Poor Neville. Dear Professor, if Marchbanks is so awful, why didn't you just make him scrub the floor with his toothbrush or something equally disgusting?
"School full of morons, can't trust any of them to do what they're told or to work independently -"
All right now, I quite resent being lumped in with the rest of the unwashed masses at this school!
"- What are their parents teaching them at home? A little hard work never killed anyone! A little attention to detail is all I'm asking. Frigga's splintery broomstick!"
Oooh, that's a new one. I knew I'd learn to brew potions as Snape's assistant, but I never dreamed I'd get such a delicious education in the finer Wizarding curse words. He is really in fine form now, pacing across the flagstone floor of the lab, long-fingered hands gesticulating with every word, his eyes full of passionate fire…
What? No. No, no passionate fire. No long fingered hands. No fine form. I am not going there.
7. “I’ve never seen you before, Turpin,” Hermione began, “how long have you lived with Professor Snape?”
“I’ve been here with gloomy arse for a year now. He got me from my first mistress--wasn’t she a fucking bitch. Even I don’t have the mouth to describe that earth-vexing harpy.” Turpin looked to his master with obvious affection. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him, the hinny. Best day of my life when narky arse nicked me.”
Giving Professor Snape a look of incredulity, Hermione rather loudly said, “You stole him?”
“Oh…” continued Turpin, “he didn’t just nick me, he hexed that bloody twunt arse over tits. I never saw anything like it.” Turpin stared at Severus with pride. “You were the scariest thing I ever saw in my life; I might've run for it if I hadn’t been on fire.”
“On fire?” Hermione asked.
At last bringing a halt to even pretending to grade essays, Severus turned serious eyes upon Miss Granger. “Turpin’s former owner--and for once his description is not exaggerated--was upset with him because he didn’t answer a question fast enough. When I first took note of what was happening she was using Cruciatus on him. Before I could intervene, she had set his tail on fire.”
“He put me tail out, he did…and picked me up. Been in this hellhole ever since,” the jarvey said softly.
“Wanker,” said Severus, with blunt affection.
“Toss-pot,” replied Turpin, in kind.
8. As the warm water pounded rhythmically upon her skin Hermione replayed the previous evening’s events. She’d gone out in the hope that she would ‘stumble’ across Severus and be able to strike up an intelligent conversation with him. She’d ended it playing tonsil tennis with Neville Longbottom.
“Blistering Baldric’s Bollocks, way to go Granger,” she chided herself. “That’s how not to go about ensnaring a snarly Potions masters.”
Turning the taps off, she ran the palms of her hands over her face before squeezing the excess water from her mass of damp hair.
She definitely needed to go Cold Turkey.
9. “As long as you don’t mark us down if we don’t put the answer you’re expecting. I don’t want the other students’ marks compromised.”
Oh, Merlin be buggered, she’s a shop steward as well. Once she gets the bit between her teeth ... She’s gone slightly pink. It rather suits her.
“You are the most presumptuous and opinionated meddler I have ever had the ill-fortune to come across, Miss Granger. Very well. If you are so concerned about the results of this test, you will stay behind and mark each paper in tandem with me, to ensure the utmost fairness.”
That’ll shut her up.
“Good idea.”
“What?”
“I said good idea. That’s a very fair and sensible thing to do.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, woman, get a life! I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that. She has very deep eyes. Large too. And the shadow between her breasts is ... Oh sweet Merlin, don’t start ... Not that ... Not now ... it’s nearly the end of the lesson. I won’t be able to stand up at this rate. Stop looking at her, you pathetic sex-starved moron!! Bloody hell, it’s been too bloody long. I knew I should get out of this fucking place.
10. Severus took the quill from her hand and scratched a few words onto her parchment.
Next to the word Clunny, spiky letters spelt out RavenCLaw’s C- Next to Oddslocks, he wrote GODrick’s ball-
Without lifting her head from the parchment, she stole her quill back and wrote, HH?
Taking the proffered quill, he wrote, Puffanny.
SS?
Salazar’s slimy snake. It doesn’t abbreviate well. But you’ve missed Godskin.
Godrick’s bodkin?
Very good.
The quill was snatched from Severus’ hand before he could scrawl another word.
“Severus Snape, what do you think you are doing?” demanded an outraged Molly Weasley.
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EST. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Need to get in the mood first? Check out THE HISSING HARPIES' MASTER LIST for an extensive list of creative cursing!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
The F Word by mad_queen_mab
Creative Cursing by imhilien
I F***ing Do! by The Hissing Harpies (Or click on the Hissing Harpies tag for access to all 28 parts.)
Awkward Entanglements by lady_rhian
Is She Really...? or What Happens When You Try To Drown Your Sorrows. by savine_snape
The Pink Bezoar by duniazade
Courtesy of Your Fairy God-Jarvey by dracontia aka reginafletcher
The Remarkable Realisation of Severus Snape by laurielover1912
Exceeds Expectations by voxangelus
The Dear John Letters by elise_wanderer
Private Lessons by a_bees_buzz
Overcome With Feeling by plaidpooka
1. Bugger all to fucking hell. No, scratch that. Bollocks. Scratch that, too. Fucking diddy elf ness.
Severus scratched the bridge of his nose. He was tired. Too tired to swear properly. Too fucking tired to swear properly. This really was getting out of control.
He looked down at the paper riddled with his failed attempts as he endeavored to drown out the prattle prattle prattle blah blah blah coming from the girl standing in front of his desk. Her question may be valid. Possibly. But he didn’t dare look up, and to be frank, he didn’t really feel like answering, and if his surliness was only out of spite, well, so be it.
He’d seen her when she walked in. She was wearing one of those shirts again. Rather, she was wearing a shirt that had a few buttons loose… again. How her two dunderhead companions failed to notice this, he had no idea. Ah, of course. The witch had probably charmed her disheveled appearance to be visible only to him.
How bloody fucking clever of her. Also, how bloody annoying.
He’d tried to talk to Minerva about why on earth her favorite sixth year was trying to seduce him.
2. “Blech! This tea is so strong I’m surprised it hasn’t swum out of the pot on its own. And do you brew the sodding coffee for a week, or just over the weekend?” she asked, grimacing at the beaker.
“A little astringent for you, Reggie?” he purred, silkily. He was beginning to feel more himself. Hail, powers of caffeine. He was quite equal to cutting this nasty little rodent down to size without resorting to gratuitous jinxes.
“Alum is ‘a little astringent’, arsehole. This stuff is a fucking liquid black hole. Merlin’s hairy arse in a g-string, it’s a wonder your face hasn’t collapsed on itself. Of course, it goes a long way to explaining your teeth, your expression, and your cheery outlook on life.”
“You get out of bed every morning to try teaching generations of genetic miscues on anything weaker than this, and see how far you get,” he groused.
“Seeing as how you don’t have to do that for a living anymore, that excuse sucks donkey cock. Look, I’ll adjust your toothpaste to counteract the worst of this; but long term, you need to seriously cut back on the tall, dark, and staining beverages. Lose the booze too, while you’re at it. That hangover relief potion isn’t exactly a dental beauty treatment.”
With a minimum of profanity (on either side), they managed to ascend the stairs and deal with the toothpaste charm. But a fully-caffeinated and minty-fresh Snape once again felt sufficiently rebellious to balk at the idea of further improvements.
3. You Self-Flagellating, Self-Righteous, Snivelling Fuckwit,
You think so little of me to consider my unchecked passion, my unconditional love, my deep, almost inexpressible delight in finding you to be nothing more than some misguided desire to be nice to a decrepit old man. Fuck you.
For someone with such an inordinate amount of intelligence, you are remarkably stupid. You refuse to see any but the worst thing in front of that enormous nose of yours. You look at sacrifice and courage and see only debasement. You look at unchecked passion and, face it, Snape, transcendent sex and see nothing but - how did you put it? - “fire and degradation.” You admit - you did admit it, I have it in writing even if you try to deny that you also said it out loud more than once, you plonker - that you love me, and you heard me say it back - more than once and not just screamed at the top of my dear-Merlin-how-can-he-make-me-come-like-this lungs. And yet you pretend that some words have more power than others, that one action makes everything since then impossible.
4. Time passes. Severus rediscovers the versatility of fuck.
She says: "Fuck off, Ron. I'm not going to snog you beside Snape's sickbed."
And, later: "I'll be just fine, Gin. Your brother's a lousy fuck anyhow."
"An interview? Go fuck a Nargle, Skeeter. He's fucking brilliant at potions, remember, and I'm sure he could find use for beetle bits."
"He's been loyal all along, Minister. You've got to pardon him. Trust the Pensieve; Harry's not going to fuck you over."
Then, whispered, her breath warm in his ear: "It's been three-fucking-weeks, Professor, won't you please wake?"
5. "So everybody's settled and happy," Toby said, putting his feet up on the table and knocking over the stacked invitations. "How's about some tea, love? I could murder a bacon butty…"
Severus glared poisonously. "I could murder something, too."
"Bring us a butty, sugar snatch!" Fluffy croaked.
"Porphyria's push-up bra!" Hermione peered at the cage. "What the hell is that?"
"That's Fluffy," Toby volunteered.
"Pet Fluffy!" the bird agreed, whistling suggestively. "Show Fluffy your pretty titties!"
Hermione gawped. "That perverted parrot has to go!"
Severus sniggered. "What sort of hard-hearted harpy would refuse my dear father's thoughtful wedding present, hmm?"
6. "Mother of MERLIN!"
Here we go. Snape could cuss for England.
"Of all the lack-witted idiots to darken my classroom doorstep, Marchbanks has to be the worst -"
I smirked into my cauldron, stirring in the ground cayenne. Jolly good, Neville will love to know he's been displaced in the professor's affectionate regard.
"-and most inept since Longbottom! Quarter-inch dices! Is that so difficult to comprehend? There are rulers available for reference in the store cupboard!"
Spoke too soon. Poor Neville. Dear Professor, if Marchbanks is so awful, why didn't you just make him scrub the floor with his toothbrush or something equally disgusting?
"School full of morons, can't trust any of them to do what they're told or to work independently -"
All right now, I quite resent being lumped in with the rest of the unwashed masses at this school!
"- What are their parents teaching them at home? A little hard work never killed anyone! A little attention to detail is all I'm asking. Frigga's splintery broomstick!"
Oooh, that's a new one. I knew I'd learn to brew potions as Snape's assistant, but I never dreamed I'd get such a delicious education in the finer Wizarding curse words. He is really in fine form now, pacing across the flagstone floor of the lab, long-fingered hands gesticulating with every word, his eyes full of passionate fire…
What? No. No, no passionate fire. No long fingered hands. No fine form. I am not going there.
7. “I’ve never seen you before, Turpin,” Hermione began, “how long have you lived with Professor Snape?”
“I’ve been here with gloomy arse for a year now. He got me from my first mistress--wasn’t she a fucking bitch. Even I don’t have the mouth to describe that earth-vexing harpy.” Turpin looked to his master with obvious affection. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him, the hinny. Best day of my life when narky arse nicked me.”
Giving Professor Snape a look of incredulity, Hermione rather loudly said, “You stole him?”
“Oh…” continued Turpin, “he didn’t just nick me, he hexed that bloody twunt arse over tits. I never saw anything like it.” Turpin stared at Severus with pride. “You were the scariest thing I ever saw in my life; I might've run for it if I hadn’t been on fire.”
“On fire?” Hermione asked.
At last bringing a halt to even pretending to grade essays, Severus turned serious eyes upon Miss Granger. “Turpin’s former owner--and for once his description is not exaggerated--was upset with him because he didn’t answer a question fast enough. When I first took note of what was happening she was using Cruciatus on him. Before I could intervene, she had set his tail on fire.”
“He put me tail out, he did…and picked me up. Been in this hellhole ever since,” the jarvey said softly.
“Wanker,” said Severus, with blunt affection.
“Toss-pot,” replied Turpin, in kind.
8. As the warm water pounded rhythmically upon her skin Hermione replayed the previous evening’s events. She’d gone out in the hope that she would ‘stumble’ across Severus and be able to strike up an intelligent conversation with him. She’d ended it playing tonsil tennis with Neville Longbottom.
“Blistering Baldric’s Bollocks, way to go Granger,” she chided herself. “That’s how not to go about ensnaring a snarly Potions masters.”
Turning the taps off, she ran the palms of her hands over her face before squeezing the excess water from her mass of damp hair.
She definitely needed to go Cold Turkey.
9. “As long as you don’t mark us down if we don’t put the answer you’re expecting. I don’t want the other students’ marks compromised.”
Oh, Merlin be buggered, she’s a shop steward as well. Once she gets the bit between her teeth ... She’s gone slightly pink. It rather suits her.
“You are the most presumptuous and opinionated meddler I have ever had the ill-fortune to come across, Miss Granger. Very well. If you are so concerned about the results of this test, you will stay behind and mark each paper in tandem with me, to ensure the utmost fairness.”
That’ll shut her up.
“Good idea.”
“What?”
“I said good idea. That’s a very fair and sensible thing to do.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, woman, get a life! I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that. She has very deep eyes. Large too. And the shadow between her breasts is ... Oh sweet Merlin, don’t start ... Not that ... Not now ... it’s nearly the end of the lesson. I won’t be able to stand up at this rate. Stop looking at her, you pathetic sex-starved moron!! Bloody hell, it’s been too bloody long. I knew I should get out of this fucking place.
10. Severus took the quill from her hand and scratched a few words onto her parchment.
Next to the word Clunny, spiky letters spelt out RavenCLaw’s C- Next to Oddslocks, he wrote GODrick’s ball-
Without lifting her head from the parchment, she stole her quill back and wrote, HH?
Taking the proffered quill, he wrote, Puffanny.
SS?
Salazar’s slimy snake. It doesn’t abbreviate well. But you’ve missed Godskin.
Godrick’s bodkin?
Very good.
The quill was snatched from Severus’ hand before he could scrawl another word.
“Severus Snape, what do you think you are doing?” demanded an outraged Molly Weasley.