Pig Bogeys on My Jeans

Chapter 6 Pig Bogeys on My Jeans

To: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic

Severus Snape

He watched the owl flap off into the darkness.

With any luck, Shacklebolt would have no inkling of how long it had taken him to craft the letter...nearly two hours of careful word choices, edits, and deletions, and of the substitution of demand for substance.

It was, he supposed, like riding a bicycle. Perhaps in time it would chafe less, and not make him so sore and irritable.

He wondered how soon he could return to Hermione's laboratory without exciting her suspicions, and reluctantly concluded that he would have to wait several days at the very least. He had pushed, as hard as he dared, for human trials of the Invisibility Potion (for which, naturally, his presence would be required).

Far from being Homo sapiens, Wilbur had turned out to be an intimidatingly robust specimen of Sus scrofa domestica, wearing a red bandana tied about its neck.

"A pig, Miss Granger? You test your potions on a pig?"

"Rather him than me. Cast a Muggle-repelling charm, would you? It won't do to have the neighbors see him vanish into thin air," she said, climbing over the stile.

He waited while she retrieved a plastic bowl from a corner of the pen and knocked it against the fence to empty it.

"Right, then," she said to Snape. "Five drams of potion in one pint of milk." And to the pig: "Get back, you greedy thing."

He measured out the quantities and handed the mixture across to her. "Not really best research practice, you know, mixing it with milk like this."

"Did you want to hold him, then, while I pour it down his throat? I thought not. Get back, Wilbur! Now look what you've done...you've got pig bogeys on my jeans." She looked up at Snape. "Ready?"

He nodded, thumb poised over his watch. "Go."

She poured the milk into the bowl and they both watched as Wilbur slurped it down. Nothing happened at first, and Hermione squatted down beside the pig and scratched him gently between the ears.

"There!" said Snape. "It's starting. Seven seconds."

The pig seemed to dissolve from the inside out, fading rapidly from view until the bandana hung suspended in apparently empty air.

"Shit," said Hermione.

"Something wrong?"

"I can still see his feet."

"Really?" Snape craned forward, peering into the mud, and realized she was right: there were four black cloven hooves just barely visible in the afternoon sunlight.

"Maybe we didn't get the dosage exactly right," she said. "Let's give him another dram and see what happens."

It was fascinating to watch the invisible pig drinking the second portion of milk: the liquid rose from the bowl in a fitful stream, only to vanish immediately.

"Disappears as soon as it's swallowed," said Snape. "I wonder . . . "

Hermione held up a hand. "Don't even go there. It's too disgusting."

"I suppose you're right."

"Look," she said. "His feet have gone."

"So they have. It was just the dosage, then."

The disembodied red bandana began to move about the pigsty, Wilbur having evidently lost interest in the empty bowl.

"Damn it," said Hermione. "I can still see him."

Snape squinted at the area around the bandana. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. It's just a kind of grainy outline, but it's definitely there."

He saw it then: a diaphanous pig-shaped shell, slightly more substantial around the hooves and snout. How very odd . . .

"Dirt!" he cried, and the ghost-pig startled and trotted off to a corner of the pen.

"What?"

"Dirt," he repeated. "It's not the pig that's visible, it's the dirt on his skin."

"You know, I believe you're right." She laughed. "That's easily enough remedied. Aguamenti!"

A stream of water poured out of her wand and splashed onto the phantom pig, who began galloping vigorously about the pigsty.

"Doesn't seem too fond of his bath," said Snape.

"What did you expect? He's a pig."

The stream of water ended, and there was a sudden explosion of droplets.

"Shakes himself like a dog, doesn't he?"

"So it would seem."

"Hard luck for him, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"Being your experimental subject. I'm guessing this isn't the first potion you've tested on him. I think I might be a bit resentful if I were your pig."

She snorted. "Grateful is what he ought to be."

"And why is that?"

"If it weren't for me, he'd be dead. I got him from Fernando...he raises a couple of litters every spring for the restaurant."

"So you saved him from ending up as trotters?"

"Not even that. Fernando was going to drown him when he was a few days old...he was a runt, destined apparently to be shoved off the teat until he starved. Hence the name 'Wilbur.'"

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

She peered at him. "You were never actually a child at all, were you?"

"That remark fails to shed any light on the pig's name, I must say."

"Never mind. At any rate, I took him, and raised him, and now he earns his keep testing potions for me."

"And for this he should be grateful?"

"Of course he should. He's alive, isn't he?"

"You seem to assume that any existence is preferable to none, Miss Granger."

"Well, short of abject misery, yes."

"More fool you, then," he said with sudden bitterness.

She was looking intently at him. "Are you suggesting," she said slowly, "that he would be better off dead?"

"Quite possibly. You would have to ask him."

She turned her attention back to Wilbur, now discernible only as a faint porciform sheen of moisture.

"That may yet come to pass," she said. "I've got to figure out something to do with him. He's getting too big to manage, and a few of the neighbors have started to look at him with a glint in their eye. Every time I come home from a trip I expect to find that someone's made him into chops in my absence."

"They might find him very oddly flavored, after all that potions testing."

She grinned. "Serve them right for poaching."

Some hours later, after the pig had fully rematerialized, they returned to the lab, where Hermione began decanting the remaining potion into bottles.

Snape picked one up, read the label, and looked a question at her.

"Until I decide to market it, I give it a code name."

"But 'Love Potion No. 9?'"

"My Aunt Jean. She's from the sixties. She used to sing me all manner of weird things when she came to visit."

He had been fully prepared to return the next day and continue testing, but she demurred, insisting instead that she had to spend the next few days filling orders. "I have a very strict schedule when I'm not traveling. Mondays and Tuesdays are for research; Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are for serving mammon."

Mammon in this case was represented by a long list pinned to the storeroom door: several dozen entries including items like Bld rplnsh ptn 7gal...Hosp Sta Dimpna and Eqn vrmifg 12 oz...F G Hernández, Los Cabos. He ran his finger down the list and stopped over Plyjc base 15 units...Salamanca distr.

"Polyjuice potion, Miss Granger?"

He saw her guard go up slightly. Tread carefully.

"Just the base...I leave the final ingredient up to the client."

"Still a Ministry-regulated substance," he said mildly.

"Not in Spain."

"Ah." He briefly considered offering to come and help her, but discarded the idea almost immediately: best not to seem too eager.

Or to appear to have too much time on his hands. "I should be getting back," he said. "I have a monograph to finish."

"Thanks for your help today," she said, and held out her hand.

He took it and pressed it briefly. It was warm, and dry, and small. "A pleasure."

Now, sitting in his room with a cigarette and a glass of port, he thought about the feel of her hand in his, and about the name and address written on the scrap of parchment now tucked away in his dresser drawer.

He would wait until Sunday, he decided, to contact her again. In the meantime, there was work to be done.

A/N: 50 points each to the Houses of the reviewers who guessed that Wilbur would turn out to be a pig. And love and kisses to my fabulous beta/Britpick team, corianderpie and exartemarte.

The various neurological dysfunctions were adapted from Oliver Sacks' wonderful The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. All except for Restless Leg Syndrome, which I got off the telly.

Santa Dimpna is my Spanish version of St Mungo's.

Oh, and if porciform isn't really a word, well, it ought to be, so there. Readers are going to just have to get used to my habit of dragging the English language out behind the barn for a quick shag.