Macarena and Cheese

A particularly imperious-looking Eagle-owl swooped into Severus' sitting room* on an otherwise peaceful July morning. Knocking over the tea kettle and nearly crashing into the stove, he came to rest on the back of Severus' chair, nearly knocking the wiry wizard over. "Get a sense of balance, you airheaded avian," he grumbled. In response, the owl nipped at Severus' fingers as he reached for the message tied to the owl's leg. "OW!" Severus shouted. "Just for that, you're not getting any owl treats from me!"

The owl flew off, venting his displeasure in a way with which all birds are familiar. After Severus had cast a quick Scourgify on his hair, he unrolled the message. It read:

Severus,

Lucius

The Dark Lord was singing? Oh, dear. It wasn't a well-known fact, but at times Voldemort could be every bit as batty as Albus Dumbledore himself. The last time Voldemort been that cheerful, he'd just prank-called a Muggle radio station, telling the puzzled radio announcers that he was the King of Formaggio-Friulano and that if they ate red fortune cookies, red Sumo wrestlers would fall on their heads, fart raspberries and cause them to die. (Even without the use of magic, such were Voldemort's powers of persuasion that he'd actually almost managed to convince them that this was true.) This couldn't be good.

*****

*He called it the "sitting room" largely because it was where he sat when he wasn't doing anything more important; really, it was his kitchen, magically expanded to accommodate a surprisingly comfy chair and footstool. The real sitting room had become so overwhelmed with books that it was dangerous to attempt to sit in there; the last time Severus had tried, he'd nearly been buried under an avalanche caused by a minor disturbance of his complete set of Encyclopaedia Alchemica. Since then, he'd taken to Apparating between the upper and lower floors of his home, as the staircase was located behind a bookcase in the sitting room and it was currently being fiercely guarded by a feral collection of books led by The Potioneer's Guide to Magical Animals.

*****

As it turned out, the situation was worse than he'd thought. Severus Apparated into the foyer at the Manor...he was one of the few with direct Apparition privileges there...and swept up the Grand Staircase, making for the Malfoys' rather gaudy parlour. Long before he actually reached the door, he heard a very distinctive "DAH-DAH-DAH, DAH-DAH" echoing through the house, and the Dark Lord's tuneless, shrill voice singing:

¡Adopte una actitud de la victoria, Voldemort,

¡HEYYYYYY, Vol-de-mort! ¡AIEE!

Not sure whether he should actually go inside...and absolutely certain that he didn't want to...Severus nonetheless grasped the parlour's door handle and opened the door. He was not at all prepared for the sight he encountered then. Voldemort, dressed in his customary black robe, was teaching Lucius Malfoy a series of extremely bizarre hand movements. "Severus!" Voldemort exclaimed when he saw his chief advisor and spy. "How lovely of you to drop by. Do you know, I'm thinking of making this an official part of every Death Eater meeting. So far, we've found that something very interesting happens if we perform this dance near milk...it could save us a lot of the time and effort that's currently taken up by Evil Cheesemaking."

Severus raised an eyebrow. "Evil Cheesemaking, my Lord?"

If he'd had a nose, Voldemort would have sniffed at that. "Really, Severus, we're an evil organization. We could hardly call it ordinary cheesemaking."

"As you wish, my Lord," Severus bowed.

"That's the spirit, my boy," Voldemort smirked. "Now, this is how you do the dance. You put your right hand in front of you like so"...here, Voldemort grabbed Severus' hand and stuck it out in front of him, roughly level with the floor..."and your left hand follows suit, as it does for the rest of the dance. Next, you flip your hands over so your palms face upwards. NO, not at the same time! Right hand leads, left hand follows! Good. Now put each hand on the opposite shoulder...that's right...and then put your hands on your head, one at a time. Now wrap your arms around your waist, right arm first. Now put each hand on one of your arse cheeks..."

"I am not putting my hands on my own arse!" Severus exclaimed.

"Would you prefer to put them on mine?" Lucius leered.

"Don't tempt me," Severus muttered, then blushed as he realized that his friend and the Dark Lord had heard him and were now staring at him with a slight expression of alarm. "What? Er...I thought he meant for me to curse his sorry arse! Yes, that's it!" He knew he sounded desperate, but he couldn't help it. The Dark Lord was known to be extremely homophobic.*

Voldemort was still staring at him, but shrugged. No doubt he was storing away the incident for future blackmail. "As you say, Severus. And yes, you will put your hands on your own arse, even if I have to put the Imperius on you to force you to do so. And you know how good I am at combining it with the Cruciatus; I may even manage to make you writhe in time with the music."

"Very well, my Lord," Severus grumbled, putting his hands on his arse.

"Good!" Voldemort nodded. "Now swing your hips in a circle and hop ninety degrees to your right, clapping your hands as you land."

It would have gone as expected if Severus hadn't been wearing one of his customary near floor-length robes. His foot caught on the hem and as he landed, he stumbled and crashed right into an end table, sending the candle that sat on it flying. Fortunately, it was the middle of the day, so the candle was not lit. However, it did land in a bowl of milk that was lying nearby, and very soon after Severus had finished the dance...in fact, precisely when the candle hit it...the milk turned into a small Gouda.

"Impressive, Severus," Lucius noted. "It even made use of the wax from the candle."

Voldemort gave Severus a blank stare. "A creditable first attempt, Severus, but I will ask you to try not to repeat the 'falling down on your nose' section of your performance. It's so difficult to do that and keep on the beat, you know."

Snape tried to resist the impulse to yell at his Master. "Of course, my Lord," he ground out, picking himself up and giving Voldemort a little bow.

"So, Severus, what do you think? Shall we make this dance a regular feature of our Dark Meetings?"

Severus was at a complete loss as to what to say. "Well, my Lord, as I see it..."

*****

*Voldemort was homophobic in the classic sense...that is, he was actually afraid of homosexuals, though bisexuals merely made him a little uneasy. Lucius, being married and having produced a son, could plausibly be bisexual, but Severus, a lifelong bachelor, had no actual proof of heterosexuality aside from his plea for Lily Potter's life so many years before. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that when Voldemort got scared, the person who scared him got a free demonstration of the power of the Cruciatus Curse, as Walden Macnair had once found out when he'd sneaked up on Voldemort and shouted "BOO!" sometime in the late seventies.

*****

Just as he was about to say something that may have been incredibly ill-advised, he was awakened by an unusually clumsy Eagle-owl crash-landing on his bed. Warily accepting the owl's proffered message, he unrolled it and groaned as he saw what Lucius had written.

Severus,

Lucius

"I am not dancing the bloody Voldemort Macarena, no matter what Lucius says about the matter," he grumbled as he threw on a clean set of robes, making sure that they were a set that was cut slightly shorter than his usual in case the summons did lead to dancing. After all, even if the rest of the dream was destined to come true, he didn't want to have to live through tripping over his own robe again; his nose still hurt from the imagined impact. No, he wasn't going to dance that infernal dance unless he had no other choice.

But if he was lucky, perhaps he'd be able to save a bit of cheese for his lunch if it did come to that, anyway.

*****

Author's Notes: All the out-of-character behaviour in this fic can be attributed to the fact that it's all just a dream. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. ;)

This particular bit of insanity was inspired by one of Ravenscara's prompts from August 14th, though I obviously didn't follow it to the letter. "Choose a techno song that has a weird dance that Voldemort makes the Death Eaters do for every meeting. Severus has to fight against it and Lucius cons him into doing it." Now, I was thirteen years old when the Macarena craze really hit; as I remember, not only could you not escape the song on most radio stations, but a friend of mine actually brought a battery-powered cassette player (Remember those?) to school and threatened to drive us mad with constant replaying of that song and other popular ones from the time...so what could we do but dance to them? :D It was one of the songs played both at my Grade 8 graduation and my high school graduation five years* later. And even though it's been about nine years since I actually danced the darn thing, I still remember it perfectly. And even though I'm a total klutz most of the time, I could probably still dance the Macarena in my sleep and be perfectly safe, though I wouldn't want to test that theory. ;)

Incidentally, the version of "Macarena" that I listened to when I was writing this is the Bayside Boys remix; it's the version I was most familiar with when I was growing up, though I liked the original as well.

I don't speak very much Spanish, so I was forced to rely on dictionaries and a website explaining Spanish grammar and verb conjugations to help me with the new Spanish lyrics for the refrain of "Macarena". (If anyone who does speak Spanish has a better suggestion or translation, I'd appreciate being told so.) The phrases are supposed to translate into English as follows:

Adopt a posture of victory, Voldemort,

And make us fear you for your maleficent glory!
Adopt a posture of victory, Voldemort!

According to my dictionary, "maleficent" means "causing, or capable of causing, harm or destruction, especially by magical means," which I thought was very appropriate for Voldemort.

Oh, and I really can't take credit for the "King of Formaggio-Friulano" bit; "formaggio Friulano" is "Friulano cheese" in Italian, and my use of it was inspired by an item at SkippysList.com, "I am neither the king nor queen of cheese". And...er...I really can't take credit for the "red Sumo wrestler" thing either. My friend who brought the tape player to school also once brought a set of walkie-talkies to school when we were ten years old and, not realizing that they broadcasted on the same frequency as the school's P.A. system, started talking about eating different-coloured fortune cookies...mostly red, blue and green...and what colour of Sumo wrestler would fall on your head if you ate a particular colour of fortune cookie, and what would happen to you afterwards, a fate which usually involved being farted on, smelling something really strange as a result, and passing out. Walkie-talkies were banned on the schoolyard after this particular incident, and I've always wondered what the reaction to it was in the staff room that day.

By the way, this is probably the first time I haven't had trouble coming up with a title for a fic.

*I should probably mention that until about seven years ago there were actually five years of high school for most Ontario students; the fifth year was optional, as it was geared towards students who intended to go to university rather than taking an apprenticeship, going to college, entering the workforce or military or...doing pretty much anything else, really. Needless to say, the year when the OAC ("Ontario Academic Credit") year was dropped in 2003, competition for spots at university was particularly fierce, and a lot of students ended up taking a fifth year of high school anyway to avoid the worst of the competition and improve their transcripts a bit, thus causing a repeat of the problem in 2004.