This Epilogue Does Not Suck

Disclaimer: If this were written by the owner of these characters, you would be reading interminable camping scenes right now. Aren't you glad we don't make any money off them?

WARNING: You know the drill. Don't drink and read crackfic. It's not the law, but it's a good idea.

EPILOGUE

Not nineteen years later, but a mere week after the climactic RST we so kindly wrote for you.

A cloud of billowing, blue smoke preceded the NEWT-level Potions class out into the corridor.

"Sev...sir! Are you all right?" Hermione patted at a few portions of the professor's clothes that were still smoldering. She most definitely was not copping a feel in the hallway.

"Yeah, right," the Narrator muttered.

"I'm feeling better already, Miss Granger." He craned his neck in an attempt to look at his back. "Are you sure that ALL of the fire is out? It feels like it might be returning."

"Oh, good grief. How transparent can you..."

The Narrator was cut off by a screech from Draco. "Sir! Your robes!"

The smoldering spot flared, sending several students shrieking down the corridor.

"We'll decline to speculate on whether those were shrieks of fear or shrieks of joy at Snape being on fire," the Narrator said.

Hermione whipped out her wand. "Epivestis Evanesco!"

"Wait...how many languages was that spell cobbled together from?"

No one bothered to answer the Narrator because they were too busy staring at Snape in shock.

"No... Please tell me those aren't... He's not wearing..." Draco was far too traumatized to complete the thought.

"They are called 'bell-bottoms,' Mr. Malfoy," Snape said, entirely put out.

Harry heroically placed himself in Draco's line of sight to spare him the ghastly vision. "Don't look! Just don't look, love!" He cuddled Draco's head to his chest, shuddering as he glanced at Snape's trousers. "Sequins... They're not fit for human eyes..."

Appalled that he had just been 'unveiled' in the middle of the corridor, Snape folded his arms across his chest and glared at the surrounding witnesses, daring anyone of them to comment further.

"Actually, Draco, your father has a matching pair. You should ask him about the Disco of Doom sometime. Perhaps he'll show them to you."

Draco choked back a sob. "No! I refuse to believe he would have worn those willingly! It must have been," he subsided to a whimper, "You-Know-Who's work."

Harry traced his fingers along the dense, artistically coiffed hairline. "It's okay, snuggle-dragon. I mean, presumably your father was mostly straight. Doesn't that make him entitled to the occasional fashion mistake?"

"These were the height of style at the time, and the shirts with butterfly collars sold the look," Snape countered rather vindictively. "When they caught on, all Death Eaters had to start wearing black robes over them so as not to be mistaken for the hoi polloi."

Hermione gave Draco a quizzical look. Granted, the style was a bit dated, but ooh, the scintillating dark prisms that all the pretty sequins painted on the stone walls! "It's okay, Draco. I'm sure they were... expensive," she said, trying to come up with something he might find comforting.

"Enormously for the time," Snape huffed. "And quite fashionable as well."

"Of course," Hermione said, lost in the play of sparkling candlelight on the Disco of Doom Couture. "But, they were merely part of your cover, right? You would have chosen something different to wear otherwise..."

"Yes, it was just part of my cover!"

Hermione plowed on. "I mean, you would have chosen earth tones or tie-dye, right? Sir? Maybe flowers on your shirts?"

Snape was so appalled that he missed her hopeful tone of voice. "Do I look like a Dumbledore-wanna-be? I assure..."

"Because I always thought that all of that peace and love stuff was very... romantic. Sort of sexy, even." She blushed slightly.

Never missing a beat, Severus picked up somewhere altogether different than where he had originally left off. "I assure you that if things had been different then, if I had been more free to express myself, of course I would have been much more inclined to promote peace and love..."

The Narrator interrupted, "And that which encourages flowers to grow, namely, bullshit..."

"Unfortunately, I was unable to express such desires, uh, openly." Snape glared in the general direction of the disembodied voice.

The mention of tie-dye did nothing for Draco's equilibrium. "This is what you saved us from, my love! Kiss me, you hero, you!" Which was completely gratuitous on Draco's part because for the past week, Harry had spent approximately half his waking hours kissing Draco and really needed no prompting.

"Plenty of free love in this corridor," the Narrator said with a snicker.

Hermione gazed at Snape admiringly.

"I would have said 'lustfully,' but no one asked me; I'm just the Narrator," came the petulant remark.

"I knew there was more to you than just Fanon or Canon!" Hermione said excitedly to Snape.

"Fanon...?" Snape repeated in a murmur.

Hermione gave Harry and Draco an admonishing look, which was totally wasted given that they were enthusiastically polishing each other's tonsils at the moment. "So, really, that explains them. There was no need to claim the influence of..."

"Hermione! No You-Know-Who references. You'll only upset my snuggle-dragon more," Harry warned before returning to coo over his traumatized beloved. And petting him.

"And petting and petting and..." the Narrator trailed off.

"Twenty points each from Gryffindor and Slytherin for engaging in FOREPLAY in the corridor!" Snape bellowed.

"Foreplay? Really?" Luna's all-too-interested voice piped up. "Can we watch?"

"Luna sort of drifted around the corner, Ginny in tow. Walking was far too ordinary for Luna," the Narrator said.

"That's very poetic, but I really do walk. As far as I know, only You-Know-Who gets to 'drift.'" Luna addressed the general direction of the voice.

"Will everyone stop with the You-Know-Who-ing?" Hermione said in frustration.

"Hermione, give it up. It's the most feared name in our world. You're just not going to convince people to let it drop in ordinary conversation that easily," Ginny said with an admonishing shake of her head.

"What's all this about You-Know-Who 'drifting?'" Harry asked.

"Oh, it was all over the book that looked like Hogwarts: A History but wasn't," Ginny said helpfully.

"So, now YOU have my book!" Hermione turned on Ginny accusingly.

"No, I read it through and gave it to Luna."

"Well, where is it?" Hermione demanded.

Luna was oblivious, being completely transfixed by Snape. "This definitely explains the billowing. Those things are so wide, they probably create their own weather system," Luna said, studying Snape's trousers with the sort of fascination she usually reserved for new species.

"If you could summon the monumental effort necessary to focus for just one second, Miss Lovegood, I believe that Miss Granger requested the return of her book."

"Oh, did you want the book back? I think Ron has it."

"Never mind." Hermione shrugged. Finally, the word was out! "Anyway, I have all the material I need regarding my OTP," Hermione said a little smugly.

"No points to Gryffindor for subtlety," the Narrator remarked, observing the lascivious look she directed at the Potions master.

"It had a lot of other interesting pairings," Ginny said, glancing sidelong at Harry and Draco.

"Back off, Ginger! He's mine." Draco wrapped around Harry possessively.

Ginny gave him a quizzical look but addressed her comment to Harry. "So, how is the whole 'out' thing working for you?"

Draco blinked. "She knows?"

"She told me," Harry said.

"Oh. Well, that's all right, then. But, are you sure you won't look at Severus again?" Draco asked pleadingly.

"Of course. One, I have the most gorgeous Slytherin in history already. Two, if I were seen with a man wearing bell bottoms, my ranking would slip further," Harry reassured him.

"I think she should have mentioned it sooner," Luna remarked. "I can think of any number of examples from the natural world. Black swans. Penguins. Certain bands of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, which would actually help explain their dwindling numbers..."

"Ranking?" Between Harry's apparent non sequitur and Luna's, Draco was confused.

"Ginny, I've been meaning to ask you...if I'm only the third gayest current inhabitant of the castle, who are the top two?" Harry was dying of curiosity about the rankings and rather hoping to cut Luna off at the pass.

"Well, number one is Dumbledore, of course," she began.

"Wait...Dumbledore is GAY?" Draco's eyes went wide and Luna-like with incredulity.

"What is there to miss?" Harry and Hermione wondered aloud.

"And you're actually a close second, Malfoy," Ginny finished, looking slightly apologetic.

Draco blinked a few times. Then, a smile spread slowly over his face. "You mean I've... beat... Potter...?"

"You git! Don't rub it in."

"I won! I finally won!"

"This is not helping our relationship." Harry sulked in a sort of also-ran gay manner.

"SQUEE! I'm the gayest!" Draco embarked on a weird happy dance right in the middle of the corridor.

Snape watched in horrified fascination, fervently wishing he could summon the Sorting Hat and have his usually favorite student transferred to Hufflepuff for the embarrassing display.

"Second! SECOND gayest!" Harry argued.

"CLOSE second. And Dumbledore isn't going to last forever!"

"Especially if he doesn't come up with a pay rise for us teachers for dealing with this shit," Snape muttered.

"Floo me when you stop being INSUFFERABLE." Harry turned his back with a very dignified pout.

"If Draco could see it, he'd probably claim copyright infringement," the Narrator remarked.

"Granger! Harry's abandoning me out of overcompetitiveness!" Draco's wibble, under control since the incident in Potions last week, returned in full force.

Hermione ignored Draco. "Harry... Harry used 'insufferable'... correctly... in a sentence." Hermione began to sniffle from a slightly warped sense of maternal pride. Within moments she and Draco were crying on each other's shoulders for very different reasons.

"Ron chose that moment to walk by. Surprisingly, he was not in the dungeons as a random act simply to further the plot...he'd actually arranged to meet Luna there," the Narrator said.

"Oi! What are you doing all over Hermione like that, Malfoy?" He looked over at Luna and hastened to add, "Not that I'm dating her or anything...it's the principle of the thing."

"It's really, really, not what it looks like," Harry said.

"Yes, it is," Draco sobbed. "Harry's being an insensitive bastard to me, and she's comforting me in my hour of need. So, sod off."

Hermione patted Draco on the shoulder for good measure and offered a clean hanky. "Harry won't leave you over this. If he's finally mastering an advanced vocabulary, he'll work out that it would be foolish to ruin things now."

"HE'S SMARTER THAN HE LOOKS," the Narrator, Ginny, Luna, and Ron all said in exasperation.

"Too right, I am," Harry said petulantly.

"No comment," Snape grunted.

Luna stepped in at that moment because it looked as if she had the best shot at being the Voice of Reason. "Look, Harry, there's nothing wrong with being third. I mean, someone should really be the more masculine one in the relationship. Otherwise, you'd end up all out of balance because there was no yang in your yin."

Ron rubbed his face. "Let me get this straight..."

"And he uses the term loosely," the Narrator muttered.

"Harry is dating Malfoy. They've just had a fight because Ginny is keeping statistics on the relative gayness of everyone in the castle for reasons I really don't want to know. So Hermione is comforting Malfoy, Harry is sulking because Hermione insulted him again and because of the rankings thing, and Luna is giving you advice on what to do with your yin-yang."

"That about sums it up," the Narrator said brightly.

"Don't forget the disembodied voice," Luna said.

Ron sighed. "Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed."

The Narrator glanced at the clock on the wall impatiently. "Say, can we pair Ginny off with Neville and Ron with Luna and get to the part where everyone has lots of oddly named babies? I have to go to work in the morning."

"If you mention mpreg, expect Crucio. Really," Draco said, glaring ominously in the direction of the voice.

"Or, in Harry and Draco's case, adopts?" the Narrator picked up again without missing a beat.

Harry sighed. "All that Potter-Malfoy, Malfoy-Potter naming trouble... It's almost always worth three chapters of fighting."

Draco pouted sorrowfully in Harry's general direction. "Not that we'll ever get to that point, now."

"Oh, Draco, Luna was right. One of us has to be the more masculine one. And since you're so pretty, I suppose it has to be me," Harry said in the best conciliatory tone he could manage.

Draco's pout quivered into a coy little smile. "I am the pretty one, aren't I?" he said, admiring his hair in a hastily conjured mirror.

"Gorgeous. And I wouldn't ask you to bear a child with those slender hips of yours, anyway. Though, we'll have to work at keeping them slender when you're done with all the chocolate I'm going to get you this weekend," Harry cooed at him. Draco giggled happily.

"Wow, somebody's mastered the art of 'making up with the boyfriend to ensure the continuing shag supply,'" the Narrator said in an almost-admiring tone.

Draco was still caught up in relationship issues. "Are you sure my ranking won't slip from being seen with you?"

"No...look at all the fan fiction. My scruffiness complements your polished look," Harry explained.

"Oh, good," Draco said.

"Thoroughly relieved that there was no principle in play which might oblige him to sacrifice constant sex," the Narrator said, barely able to refrain from laughing.

Hermione was royally ticked off that she couldn't indulge in public play with her 'shag supply' and felt more pedantic than usual as a result. "This is ridiculous. Even with magic, male pregnancy is impossible. Pregnant males in fan fiction are just another manifestation of Ma..."

"Don't say it!"

"MARY SUE!" Hermione shouted, fed up.

A collective shudder ran through those assembled.

Snape's expression was thoroughly disgruntled. "My lo...Miss Granger...it is not appropriate to go about tossing around references to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. You never know what might happen."

"Oh, honestly. Who believes in the sort of super powers these M..."

"You-Know-Whos," Ron said warningly.

"...are vested with, anyway?"

"Who would want some of those 'powers'...especially having color-changing hair or looking like you're a half-cat?" the Narrator said, then snickered a little naughtily. "Oops."

"All right, that's it. Who the bloody HELL does that disembodied voice belong to, anyway? And don't say, 'The Narrator,'" Ron demanded.

An expectant silence fell.

"Well?" Snape asked, drawing the syllable out until it stretched into a sort of anticipatory infinity that no ellipses could hope to convey.

"Ah... well... Just call me 'Mary,'" the voice called out as it receded rapidly down the corridor.

Snape pulled Hermione protectively close lest she get any absurdly heroic Gryffindor ideas about chasing after the evildoer. Fortunately, everyone was too traumatized to notice.

Rita sat in an overstuffed, garishly decorated armchair, her plump feet resting on a matching ottoman. She was chewing on the end of her glasses, her face crinkled in concentration. A scroll of parchment and her favorite acid-green Quick-Quotes Quill floated about the side table, which was currently adorned with a half-empty glass of wine and an open compact mirror.

"I said I'd get even with the snide bastard, and I will," Rita said, her nose wrinkling ferally. "But, killing him off is too easy. No, this has to be a total loss of dignity."

A hissing laugh emanated from the mirror beside her.

"We need to make him out to be an utter marshmallow," Voldemort hissed malevolently. "Something cloying... sappy... pathetic. Imagine his reaction if those wretched students of his suddenly saw him as a sentimental ninny! I still owe him for being such a half-arsed Death Eater. You know, I think he only joined so that he could get free admission to our disco. It was the place to be back in the day."

Rita laughed...a high, grating sound not unlike nails on a chalkboard.

"Oh, Voldie, my dear, you are an inspiration," Rita gushed, looking down at the mirror. "Now, I just need to create the proper scenario."

"You've written us into a corner, picturing Snape as ugly as he actually is. A torrid love affair would be perfect, but in his case, completely unbelievable," Voldemort grumbled.

"You are such a wizard, Voldie ol' boy. As I'm sure many a witch would attest, Severus Snape simply oozes sexual appeal," Rita replied, her voice edged with longing.

"Rita, you are one twisted individual if you fancy Snape," Voldemort scoffed.

Rita gasped.

"Fancying... You evil genius, you!" Rita exclaimed.

"Yes, I am, but perhaps you can enlighten me as to how I've demonstrated my brilliance this time," Voldemort said, clearly puzzled.

"In my sn...investigating...I came across evidence that Snape had a teenage crush on his childhood best friend that lasted years, even through her marriage to another. That friend," she said smugly, "was none other than Lily Evans, Harry Potter's Mudblood mum!"

"Oh, that's superb!" Voldemort hissed in pleasure.

"Now, all we've got to do is play it up a bit," Rita said, bouncing with excitement. "Let's see... Something that could take care of the dungeon bat and the old codger in one fell swoop... AHA!"

"Please, do continue," Voldemort urged quickly.

"Okay, first, we have Snape kill Dumbledore in front of Harry Potter, making everyone think Snape's in league with you and further idolizing the manipulative old coot. Oh, how I've longed to find a way to finally use one of my numerous...and gruesome...'Dumbledore Dies' scenes," she said with vicious glee. "Then, in the last book we change around everything everyone thinks they know about the characters and the Wizarding World in general!"

"I like it! But, let's not stop with the old man. We must kill off all the annoyingly fluffy characters," Voldemort suggested, the pitch of his voice raised slightly in excitement. "Those 'isn't life grand' Weasley twins have to go slowly...piece by piece, even."

"Yes... Better yet, in the end kill off just one of the twins, leaving the other alone and mourning..." Rita said, her voice turning husky.

"And Malfoy's old house-elf too. If he'd just followed the rules and kept his mouth shut five years ago, I'd be ruling the world rather than stuck inside the mirror of Rowena Ravenclaw's nose powder compact. I can almost hear the weeping already."

A shudder of sadistic pleasure ran down Rita's spine. "Yes! Yes!" she shouted, her breath starting to come in shallow huffs. "And that mangy werewolf, who actually turned down a night out with me in order to spend it with that pink-haired, shape-changing freak!"

"We'll kill her too. SSThhSSAH!" Voldemort lapsed into Parseltongue from ecstasy. "And... and orphan their illegitimate mongrel offspring!"

"Oh, you evil monster," Rita purred, her hand slipping under the waistband of her skirt to stoke the fire her companion's words were building inside her.

"And use every speck of dirt you can dredge up on Dumbledore. We'll track him back to when he was in nappies, if we must, to find something incriminating. Just cram it in willy-nilly; we can reconcile it with something like the plot later," Voldemort huffed, the edges of his mirror starting to fog.

"Don't forget Snape! We'll have him die a long, torturous, and meaningless death...at YOUR command."

Voldemort's loud, lusty moan interrupted Rita and allowed her to catch her breath.

"But... first, he'll pawn off a Pensieve-load of memories on our 'hero'... Snape's childhood with his mum, Lily."

Rita was out of breath, but Voldemort quickly continued the idea.

"And of how much he lurved her, always and forever, how his undying and unrequited love for her made him renounce evil and injustice. How he tried to repent for the one half-arsed act he actually managed to perform for me, relating the prophecy that led me to look for them," the snake-man continued, the sound of scales rubbing together echoing out of his mirror like background music.

Rita, who had finally regained the ability to speak regardless of her voice's moan-like quality, picked up the thread again.

"And of how much he respected Dumblyshorts and did everything just like the old loon told him, even killing him upon his order like a silly marionette on a string. And how it pained him to have to kill the only man he'd loved like a father... He'll be the fantasy of every doomed, loser-loving, soap opera-watching housewife on Earth, to his utter mortification!"

Another throaty groan ripped through the room before Rita could continue.

"And at the very end of the book, we'll write a ridiculous epilogue showing how utterly pointless the whole war was because nothing will have changed. We'll fix everyone up with their first or second-year crushes and pop out a few look-alike kids!"

Rita's words were coming fast and furious now.

"Oh, Merlin, yes. Rita, my dear, you are wondrous. Such a twisted... wicked... warped little mind you have," Voldemort panted.

"But, the true icing on the cake..."

"Tell me, Rita! Tell me, my fetching little Eris," Voldie pleaded.

"The icing... will be... Potter's youngest kid... He'll name... him... Albus Severus!"

Another moan exploded from Voldemort's mirror.

"After the... bravest men... he ever... knew!" Rita finished with a shout as she writhed in her chair.

Voldemort's shouts mingled with Rita's, his exclamation of, "You, demon, you," so loud that it rattled his mirror.

"Damn it, I knew I should have made more than one Horcrux. I've nowhere else to go while this place airs out," Voldemort grumbled once the shouts and panting finally slowed and he'd recovered enough to speak.

"You know, 'love of the fandom' just doesn't quite cut it when I have to deal with this shit. Wrap it up, you two sadists. Everyone else has gone on with their lives...get one of your own, and do the same." The Maryator (formerly known as the Narrator) yelled in the direction of the authors, "Same goes for you four!"

Four female voices responded with variations on the theme of, "Look, we aren't the sadists who get off on imagining naming innocent children badly. We just write about them."

"What the bloody hell was that? I can't see a thing," Voldemort's voice demanded from his position within the foggy mirror.

Rita shrugged, still slumped over. "Haven't a clue. I didn't see anyone." She picked up the mirror and wiped at the fog with the hem of her untucked blouse.

Voldemort looked up through the now only hazy mirror to Rita's face.

"The only problem is, who would believe such a trite ending?"

Rita smiled.

"Trust me. They do it in fan fiction all the time," she said, pulling what appeared to be a worn copy of Hogwarts: A History from under the side table. "I know what the fans read!"

"Can I put in just one more ellipsis for the road?" an Editor asked hopefully.

"No. Have a drink, luv," another said.

"And they all lived cracktastically ever after," the Maryator concluded.

Authors' Notes:

Draco's fritzing gaydar inspired by Red_Rahl, whose "Discussing Albus" cartoon provided the line that Harry and Hermione paraphrased. (Dracontia's note: It still has me LMAO.)

Snapemylove is the genius behind the majority of the Rita/Mirror!Voldie scene. We punks just pawned off the ebil images on her and told her to make them happen.

The term 'Maryator' is SeverusLovesUs' brilliant inspiration.

Eris: a demi-goddess from Greek mythology who delighted in promoting discord. Hey, we may be whack-jobs, but we're well-read whack-jobs.