Revenge is a Dish Best Served...

Chapter 3

Revenge is a dish best served…

Disclaimer: See Prologue

~

Advertisement: Witch Weekly 27 November 2003

“Hair feeling a little flat? Dull and lifeless hair will be a thing of the past once you boost your locks with H.G. Inc Super Maximising Hair Treatment. Designed to transfigure your hair from lank to lively, we guarantee to give your hair a lift – or we’ll give you your money back!”

***

Harry was still suffering the ill effects of Hermione’s experimental‘Snape’ shampoo several weeks after he used it, and in desperation he had turned to the Witch Weekly cosmetic help pages for advice. He’d found no help at all in the kind words offered by some faceless witch who thought he should be happy with himself just the way he was, but the advertisement for the H.G. Inc Super Hair Maximising Treatment that glittered beside the advice column had certainly caught his attention. He had sent away for the treatment, ticking the express option on the little form that he’d clipped from the magazine, and he was thrilled when a neatly wrapped brown paper parcel arrived only two hours later. Pleading ill, he rushed home and locked himself in the bathroom, hoping against hope that this would be the cure for the disaster that Hermione had visited upon him.

He pulled the neatly wrapped package from his robes, and even though he knew he was alone, he did a quick search of the room, almost certain that someone was lurking in a cupboard, ready to catch him being vain. It was not in Harry’s nature to be particularly vain, but having lank and greasy Snape hair had turned out to be rather depressing, and his self esteem – low enough given his current occupation – had taken something of a nose dive. He cast a disparaging glance at his reflection in the mirror, shuddered, and untied the string on the parcel. The effects of Hermione’s shampoo were unfortunately permanent, and even though Hermione had initially blamed Harry’s hair for the failure, she had eventually admitted that the potion was flawed and she would need to do some serious work on the formulation before she could sell it. It had been weeks, and Harry had been stuck looking like a parody of his former Potions master. To make matters worse, Hermione seemed to have lost interest in finding a cure for his hair disaster and was concentrating a new humiliating Snape doll – still, Harry did feel a little guilty as he unwrapped his new shampoo. For a brief moment he thought he should perhaps give her another chance to fix it.

Another downside to having foul, greasy Snape hair was that Harry’s love life was suffering along with his failing self esteem. Unbeknown to Hermione, Harry had a lover, and while that lover had found the greasy hair a novelty at first, it was a novelty that had fast worn thin, and nothing Harry had tried would make the mess any better. He had even tried to get the formula Hermione had used to create the shampoo in the first place, in the hopes that his lover could concoct a remedy (Hermione had been remarkably unforthcoming with the recipe, asking Harry so many questions that he had dropped the subject altogether). When he had seen the advertisement for the new hair maximiser, Harry had decided that it couldn’t make it any worse. Of course, he knew that he shouldn’t buy anything from an advertisement in a magazine, but he had reasoned that Witch Weekly was a reputable publication… certainly more reputable than The Quibbler anyway.

He took the bottle of shampoo out of the unwrapped box. The bottle looked rather feminine, long and slender, made of clear glass, and with a purple liquid inside. The white label on the front of the bottle was ringed with a swirling silver border, and a little caricature of a rather bossy looking girl with a tiny body and an enormous head covered in rather untamed brown hair stared back at him. She tapped her wand smartly, and ‘H.G. Inc’ swirled out of the tip as seductive violet smoke.

Harry raised both eyebrows and grinned at the image of the girl on the bottle. “You know, you look a lot like Hermione,” he said, and the girl winked and tossed her wild mane.

“So she looks like Hermione,” he mused silently. “Doesn’t mean she is Hermione.”

Harry cast another glance at his reflection and quickly opened the bottle. He sniffed suspiciously. It smelled alright. It smelled like flowers. Harry looked back to the mirror and shuddered at the curtains of greasy black hair, and then looked back to the bottle. The shampoo smelled alright, and it really couldn’t make his hair any worse.

***

Draco Malfoy was laughing, laughing so hard his sides hurt, and even the man standing in the centre of the room with his hands on his hips looking murderous could not stop him. In fact, as Draco drew breath and tried to focus on his father, he found himself laughing even harder, clutching his ribs and falling back into the lounge, desperate to breathe.

His mother was doing a better job of controlling her mirth, though only marginally. “It… um… it isn’t as awful as you think… darling.”

Lucius Malfoy turned from his son to his wife and glared at her, his eyes blazing a trail of total incredulity. “Not so bad?” he all but screamed. “Not so bad!? Are you insane, woman? It’s a fucking disaster!”

Narcissa Malfoy’s mouth twitched uncontrollably, and she patted her son’s knee for support, which was pointless because it caused Draco to look at his father again, and that only brought the laughter to a hysterical fever pitch. Draco was convinced that if he didn’t stop, he might just wet his pants.

“I’m sure we can…” She choked back her laughter and actually began to cough from the effort. “I’m sure we can… do… something about it… I’ve got some Sleekeasy’s…”

“Well, it certainly gave you the body you wanted,” Draco said, attempting to say something constructive in the face of his father’s horror. Unfortunately, it only caused his mother to lose all control and collapse into Draco’s arms, laughing so hard that she was starting to cry.

Lucius sneered and then scowled, his lip curling into something of a snarl – which would have been frightening had he not been standing in the centre of the rug with hair that resembled some kind of albino afro. He evidently failed to see what was so amusing about his suddenly looking like a dandelion gone to seed, and he looked very much as though he had to physically restrain himself from hexing his treacherous family. It crossed Draco’s mind that he was treading on very dangerous ground indeed, but one more look at his father had him deciding that it was just too funny to stop. Lucius glared at them for a moment longer, but when this brought on fresh peels of laughter, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, declaring that he would be sending something particularly nasty through the post to the proprietors of H.G. Inc.

***

“That bastard!” Hermione cried as she paced the floor of Harry’s bedroom. “That dirty fucking bastard!” She glared at the shampoo bottle with its barely disguised caricature of her on it and squeezed so hard that the bottle fractured with a resounding crack. She turned the oozing mess over in her hands and found the tiny disclaimer on the back, and then she hurled the whole thing at Harry’s bedroom wall.

Ron winced as several of Harry’s pictures tumbled to the floor with the impact of the bottle, and then he bit his lip in anticipation of what was going to come next. He and Harry both knew that Hermione had no sense of humour at all about her looks, and even less about her hair. Ron himself was caught between the desperate need to laugh at his best mate – who no longer resembled Professor Severus Snape, but would now have no trouble passing as an 80’s Goth singer – and the desperate need to calm Hermione down before she did something really rash… like going to Hogwarts and punching the Potions master in the nose.

“That…” Hermione spluttered, “that… that… that…”

“Bastard?” Ron offered, and she turned on him.

“He stole my idea!” she cried. “That greasy shit stole my idea!”

“Well, you have to admit, he asked you to stop and you didn’t,” Ron said, hoping that she wouldn’t hex him. “I mean, what did you expect? Did you really think that he’d get your solicitor’s letter and just let it go quietly?”

Hermione almost growled audibly, and Ron took a step back from her. In truth he would never have thought Snape would come back at her in quite a way as this. He was pleased that Hermione had never studied Legilimency because he was feeling the first traces of a budding respect for the greasy git, and if Hermione ever found out, his life wouldn’t be worth living. It really was ingenious of Snape, beating Hermione at her own game. Ron honestly never thought that Snape had it in him.

A whimper from the bed had them both looking at Harry with no sympathy whatsoever.

“That’s my shampoo.” Hermione pointed at Harry’s bushy head. “He stole my shampoo!”

“Well,” Ron replied logically, “technically, he didn’t. I mean, that shampoo does the opposite of what your shampoo does… and yours isn’t on the market yet. So if you released it now, it would look like you stole his idea.”

Hermione gaped at him and cried: “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

Ron sighed; he hated being the logical one. Hermione was supposed to be the logical one. Ron wanted nothing more than to be back in front of the television drinking his beer and getting the questions on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ horribly wrong, but in recent months he was increasingly becoming the voice of sanity in the house, and Hermione was becoming just plain scary.

“Think about it,” Ron explained patiently, ignoring Harry, who was actually crying at the sight of his reflection in the mirror, “you still haven’t released your shampoo because you can’t get the formula right. Snape obviously got his right, either that or he just doesn’t care, and he’s released it. You can hardly dispute that.”

“He’s only doing it to get back at me!” Hermione hissed viciously. “The petty little shit!”

Ron almost choked from the effort not to scoff at her. He thought that Hermione calling someone petty was pretty rich, given that she had created the Snapeorium because she didn’t get a job. He turned back to Harry, who was distributing fistfuls of Sleekeasy’s through his hair, and couldn’t help but ask him: “What kind of an idiot are you? The bottle has her fucking picture on it!”

“That picture looks nothing like me!” Hermione cried.

“Okay, well, it has a likeness of someone that looks like Hermione on it – and there’s a fucking disclaimer on the bottle! Jesus, Harry, how thick are you?”

Harry had no answer; he just made a strange whimpering noise and continued to persevere with the Sleekeasy’s.

“Err, mate,” Ron said uneasily, “I think that’s making it worse. Maybe you should cancel your dinner tonight.”

Harry shot Ron a warning look and made a despairing noise in his throat.

Ordinarily, Hermione would have caught the interplay of looks between the boys, but she had not been in a normal mood for quite some time, and at that moment she was in a rage. “This is war!” she declared fiercely. “If this is how he fucking wants it, this is war!”

***

“Are you under there?”

Harry looked out from under his hood and ventured a smile.

“Why are you wearing your hood inside?”

Harry swallowed hard and tried to make his voice sound calm and normal. “Um, I had a bit of an accident… with my hair.”

“I’ve seen the Snape hair, remember?”

“This is… worse… than that.”

“Worse than looking like Severus Snape?”

Harry looked up at his lover of six months and grimaced at the reason he couldn’t tell Hermione that he was with someone. It had taken him forever to get Draco Malfoy, but if Hermione ever found out, she would probably use Avada Kedavra before she had time to think of a more suitable curse to perform. Harry had never expected Draco to get the job that Hermione had coveted, and while the position had certainly made Draco happy, Harry had often thought that it would have been far easier had it been Draco who had received the disappointment. He would have been able to tell Hermione about his relationship at the very least. As it was, he hadn’t even found the courage to tell her that the witch from Wiltshire was actually a wizard. He tried once again to smile at Draco, but he didn’t feel as though there was much to smile about. They’d been seeing each other for six months, and he’d given him Snape hair for over a month, and now there was this mess. Oh yeah, Harry, he mused silently, you’re a real catch.

Draco leaned across the table and pushed the hood back from Harry’s face – and then sprang back from the table, almost knocking his chair to the floor. Around them, people had stopped eating and had taken the opportunity to stare at the mass of black hair that looked as though it had literally exploded from Harry’s head.

“Holy fucking shit!” Draco exclaimed; his eyes positively goggled at the spectacle sitting across from him.

“I know, I know…” Harry wailed. “Oh God, don’t laugh!”

But of course, Draco had already begun to laugh. In fact, he began to cackle at the hilarity. “Oh my God!” he cried, unable to contain himself. “Oh, wow, that’s… that’s fucking amazing!”

Harry moaned pathetically, and Draco reached forward and tried to run his fingers through the mop, probably wanting to see if it felt as bad as it looked. Harry slapped his hand away irritably.

Draco chortled, ignoring the irritable mood in his mirth. “Don’t tell me, H.G. Inc. Hair Maximizer?”

“How did you know?”

Draco settled back into his chair and decided to put Harry out of his misery. “Dad used it,” he said, his grin growing wider at the memory of his father standing in the middle of the drawing room rug.

A smile finally began to tug at the corners of Harry’s mouth. “Really?”

“Oh yeah.” Draco grinned evilly. “You should see it. Mum had to tie it up in these two huge bunches to get it off his face. He looks like a very large Powder Puff girl.”

If anything was going to make Harry laugh, the mental image of ‘Lucius Malfoy, Powder Puff Girl ’ was going to do it.

“Which reminds me,” Draco continued, picking up the drinks menu, “Dad’s on the war path, so we can’t go to my place tonight. We’ll have to go to yours.”

The trace of a smile faded from Harry’s lips, and he began to fidget uncomfortably. “You know we can’t,” he said quietly. “Hermione will be there.”

The mirth faded from Draco as effectively as it had from Harry, and a frown creased his brow, marring his features. “I thought you were going to tell her,” he said. “You said you would tell her.”

“I am going to tell her,” Harry replied, still uncomfortable, “but she’s been a bit… odd… lately.”

Odd was an understatement and Harry knew it. Terrifying was a more apt description: she had both Harry and Ron sneaking around their own house for fear of upsetting her. Harry could only imagine what would happen if she found out that Harry was shagging Draco Malfoy. If she didn’t kill him, she would probably start a new business selling a Pottermania line of fake stick on scars and crap plastic glasses held together with sticky tape – not to mention the Harry ‘n’ Draco salt and pepper shakers that fitted into each other. When it came to revenge, Hermione reigned supreme.

“I’m working on telling her,” Harry lied, but Draco didn’t believe him for a second. He sat back and folded his arms, glaring at Harry with something that looked like disgust.

“I got that job because I’m a better Potions maker than she is. If she can’t accept that, then she has a problem.”

Harry remained silent, as though agreeing would cause Hermione to spring from the woodwork with a hex made especially for him.

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. “Harry, this is daft. I told my parents about us! And after three days, Dad recovered enough to take the Leg-Locker curse off me.”

Harry shrugged.

Draco glared, his face expectant, and when Harry said nothing, he threw his hands up in exasperation. “You killed the Dark Lord for Christ’s sake! How can you be scared to tell a tiny little woman that you’re seeing me?”

“You don’t know Hermione,” Harry told him. “She can be really vindictive when she wants to be.”

“I see,” Draco said calmly, a horrible forced smile on his face. “She’s vindictive? I can see why that would have you terrified, Harry. I suggest you grow a set and tell her about us, or there might not be an ‘us’ to tell her about.”

“Draco, don’t… I’ll tell her, just give me some time.”

“Of course, I’ll give you plenty of time.” Draco tapped his finger absently on the table top. “And just to let you know, we won’t be having any sex until you tell her.”

Harry’s mouth fell open. “W-w-what?” he stammered, horrified at what he had just heard. “Are you insane? That’s not fair!”

“I think it is,” Draco said pleasantly.

Harry looked around wildly and grabbed Draco’s wrist. “They make me chase trolls for a living,” he pleaded desperately. “Please, Draco, sex is all I have to look forward to – you can’t do this to me!”

“Oh,” Draco said with a cold smile. “I think I can.”

“Drrrayyyyyyyccco!” Harry whined petulantly.

“Harrryyyyeeee!” Draco replied in kind.

Harry pouted like a child and stamped his foot.

“Are you going to tell her?” Draco asked reasonably.

“No!” Harry said, sounding very much the child he was acting like.

“Well then, it looks like Mrs Palmer and her five lovely daughters will be entertaining you for quite a while.”

***

Advertisement: The Quibbler 30 November 2003.

“Just in time for Christmas! New from the Snapeorium: the all-singing, all-dancing Potions Master Action Figure**. Relive all those classic moments from Potions class and hear your favourite long-winded rants as you’ve never heard them before! Who could forget the infamous ‘Bottle Fame, Brew Glory’ speech? Hear all new renditions of “If You’re a Dunderhead and You Know it Raise Your Hand,” “I’m Going to Poison You for Christmas,” and our personal favourite (great for those who missed it or for those who just want to hear it again) “Harry Potter, Our New Celebrity.”

Limited stocks available, so be quick to get yours now!

**Please note, figure is anatomically correct and may not be suitable for children. Comes with complimentary magnifying glass.”

***

“Oh, isn’t he cute!”

Minerva McGonagall looked at the unusually bushy haired Sinistra and pursed her lips. “Sin, dear,” McGonagall said in an almost motherly tone, “I am more than willing to put that night you slept with him down to momentary lunacy, but not if you keep making comments like that.”

Sinistra blushed and pushed her unruly hair back from her eyes. “It was last year’s Christmas party and I’d had a lot to drink… I would like to forget about it, thank you very much.” She smiled at the figurine. “And really, there is something very sweet about him when you can pick him up and put him away.”

Minerva looked dubious. She’d heard the ‘I was drunk’ excuse before, but she remembered the Christmas party well enough, and no amount of drink would have been enough to let Severus Snape near her person… and Sinistra really hadn’t seemed all that drunk. She shuddered at the thought.

She decided to ignore her suspicions and play with her new toy instead. She twisted the base of the figure and set it correctly. “Just wait till you see this, “ she said, unable to contain a giggle. “It’s hilarious.”

She placed the figure on her desk, and the two witches watched it expectantly.

“What’s supposed to happen?” Sinistra whispered.

“Shhh, he’ll do it, just wait.”

A tune began to emanate from the base of the figurine, and slowly, the miniature Snape began to sway in time. Then, seductively, it stepped down off its base and approached them. Heavy lidded, and with the gravel tones of a French blues singer, it opened its mouth and began to sing.

“I can show you how to bottle faaaaaaaaaame…”

Sinistra snorted with laughter, and McGonagall clamped a hand over her mouth with a hushed: “Shhh, it gets better.”

Mini Snape began to undulate, singing in earnest and, to both witches’ eternal mirth, began to unbutton his robes.

“He’s not?” Sinistra hissed in complete disbelief.

“Shhh!”

He discarded his hat. He untied his sash and twirled it above his head before throwing it to his fans. Soon the desk was littered with tiny articles of clothing, and the skinny white Snape wore nothing more than a rather grubby looking pair of greying underpants – in which he wiggled his arse with gusto.

“Oh my god!” Sinistra could not contain herself any longer, and a cackle of laughter burst from her lips. McGonagall almost hurled her away from the desk.

“Don’t! He gets all indignant if you laugh, and he stops!”

And having him stop would just be too cruel. Sinistra struggled to maintain composure as Snape gave one last wiggle of his hips, tore off his underpants and threw them to his quaking admirers, causing McGonagall and Sinistra to burst into hysterical fits of laughter.

The miniature Potions master paraded across the desk, full of smug self satisfaction as Minerva, laughing, handed Sinistra the magnifying glass and she leaned in to look.

“Oh!” Sinistra peered at the figure and lost control again. “It’s a tiny little man with a tiny little dick! Oh, you have to get him back together again so we can show Poppy. She’ll love this!”

And they were rolling around again, laughing hysterically and deciding that whoever had made it had to be a woman, for only a woman could be so cruel.

“Well,” said a silky voice from behind them, “I’m glad you are able to find amusement in such a humiliating toy.”

The laughter stopped immediately as the full size Snape swept up behind them and snatched up the doll before Minerva could get to it.

“It’s only a toy, Severus,” Minerva snapped crisply, “and it’s mine, so kindly give it back.”

“Tsk tsk, Minerva,” Snape said in his quiet, silky way. “I would have at least thought you would have tried to blame it on a student.”

“Just give it back,” Minerva replied with some disdain.

“Certainly.” He smiled thinly and stretched out his hand, pressing hard with his thumb as he did so, and they all heard the doll break with a resounding ‘snap.’ Unbeknown to Minerva, it was the tenth one he’d broken that day, and he had been congratulating himself on just how well he had kept his temper.

“Brittle little thing, isn’t it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and casting a pitying look at the broken toy. “That’s poor quality, you see. You should be careful about what you waste your money on, Minerva.” Minerva sneered and snatched the remains from his hand, and Snape turned and swept to the door, pausing there and looking back. “Oh, Sin, love the hair,” he hissed, “although I must say it is hardly original. I’ve seen at least a dozen other people with that style today.”

~