Severus Snape POPs! Open RP.

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

The Unpopcorning of Severus Snape
approved by the mods, etc.

He was coiled small, his knees pressed to his forehead, his forearms pressed close to the outsides of his calves. It must be so. How else could he be so compact, so dense? It was dark. It was silent, and the only difference was an occasional disorienting tumbling when some small earthquake rolled him over and over down a very rocky hill. He didn't understand why he couldn't put out a hand or foot to stop himself on these occasions. And sometimes he detected from the force of gravity that he was upside-down and he wondered why the blood did not rush to his head.

It was always as if he had just curled up, but time must have passed because he noted events - the variations of sudden rolling, the occasional temperature changes. Could it be a petrification spell? But that would not have rendered him blind, or deaf. What was it? Sometimes he tried to puzzle it out, to count occasions of movement, but he lost track, conciousness, concentration. That was not like him at all, and he wondered at himself. It must be a curse, but there was no pain.

The temperature rose. Higher this time. He was surprised he wasn't sweating, his robe clinging to him, but he was able to detect no robe. Was he naked? No.... Merlin, it was hot. And he felt so... tight. Why couldn't he move? He expected his breath to arrest with the heat, his lungs to seize with the pressure. But he did not seem to be breathing. Pressure? He seemed to be... Was it infection, a swelling within him? No pain. No pain. He was confused.

Merlin. He felt... Why didn't he ache? Why didn't it hurt? Dark curses he could understand. He had invented enough, felt enough, but...

Then suddenly he was aware. It smelled like a fair... He had once been to a fair. He unclenched his arms from his legs, straightened his spine, curled around himself, lifted his head and...

BANG! There was an explosion beneath him, no through him, no... It was too sudden to analyse. Severus was launched into the air, his arms and legs thrown splayed, his hair flung up and spread wide, his mouth open in a wide O of almost shock, though it was not unpleasant, more startling. He crashed down into a pile of hard yellow kernals, bruising his skin , so tight over his bones. And now his black robes stuck wet to him, no, not wet...

He passed his hand through the hair soaking over his face, sticking and obscuring his vision, dripping into his eyes. Rich shining yellow drops flew behind him, almost beautiful. A door. There was a door. He waded over to it and was surprised to find it unlocked. It was the old stone corridor of Hogwarts. He wandered out disoriented, hoping to find the dungeons.

Comments

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"Call me Ryuuzaki."

L's expression reveals no easy familiarity, and no puzzlement. But then, L's expression seldom reveals much, aside from the occasional smile, or glare. Still, this version of him has never met Professor Snape.

"Do you know where you are?"

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if he were mad, this was one of his wardens. He decided that straightforward replies were best to the small questions, as if he had had concussion. "Ryuuzaki." He pronounced the unfamiliar name precisely and carefully. "I am Professor Seerus Snape and I am at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." He realised he did not know the answer to the next question - the time and date. He was cautious, in case this might be used against him. Then he wondered if he was guilty of paranoia.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

L's eyebrows lift, with faint, careful surprise.

"Most of us who arrive butter coated do not recognize our surrounding. You are maybe not a unique case, but you are the first one of your kind that I have met."

He lifts his hand to his mouth, and begins tracing his bottom lip with his thumb.

"Shall we walk? You would probably be more comfortable clean."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

"Please... Ryuuzaki. Do many become butter-covered?" Perhaps it is a new treatment, for amnesia, or perhaps worse. Perhaps events had driven him to insanity? They never had before.

"I would be glad to clean up."

Conversationally he says, "It is the only home I have ever really had. I am... relieved to recognise it. Coming home, after whatever has transpired." He does not pretend to remember what has happened.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"It seems to be a way to arrive. Either you are sorted, or you are popcorn. My working hypothesis is that it means you have already been here, in some form; it was known that I was in Ravenclaw, before I arrived, leading me to believe that the hat somehow knew me."

The hat unnerved him greatly, but none of that.

"Although, from the sounds of things, the school has only begun acquiring students of other ages, from other worlds, relatively recently."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

"I was sorted once, long ago. I am in Slytherin." Severus is still proud, still glad. He wonders... "I was head of Slytherin once. Do you know others?" Old students, old pupils. He might have friends here, acquaintances, the children he had taught and watched over, taught in other ways. Old friends, become teachers. Old friends who had been teachers.

He has no questions about other ages, other worlds. He will wait and see. New people - he will have to learn them.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"Mello is in Slytherin. Although he lives with Near, who is in Ravenclaw also. La Fee Verte operates a bar in the dungeons called the Little Green Apple. Hazarding a guess, I would say that that was probably her house. I know the way there."

In case Snape is still disoriented from his wild popcorning experience.

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

Severus knows none of these names, but... the Dungeons. a Bar. That would be familiar and he could ask further. On the other hand... He wrings a little more butter from a corner of his robe.

"Perhaps to become clean first? I would be very glad to visit the dungeons, to make acquaintance of your friends." It seems unlikely they would allow a patient to run a bar.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"I assume the dungeons are where your quarters will be, and where you will be likely able to have access to a shower. Unless you think you were moved out, and you would prefer Ravenclaw?"

L doesn't mind, in particular, either way.

"I am not sure La Fee is precisely a friend, merely a proprietess. I am also not sure where Mello is. But there are no doubt people I could introduce you to, who might do better at answering your inevitable questions. I am relatively new."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

"I hope and assume I will reside in the dungeons." He looks strangely at the young man. "You are the second person to suggest I might hae ceased to be a Slytherin. Why would that be? I have always been a Slytherin. It is my own house. I used to be head." He speaks not offensively, but with some confusion. What has happened?

"I might be considered to be new as well. Even though I am old. Does Hogwarts still have the baths?"

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"I do not assume things lightly. You probably will be in Slytherin, within the bounds of ninety seven percent, unless there are circumstances I am not aware of."

He takes a turn that will most definitely lead them in the direction of the dungeons.

"If it does, I am not sure of their locations, except within Ravenclaw."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

Mystified, Severus follows him. He does not remember the castle and the thought saddens him. Perhaps when he has become more accustomed to being alive, perhaps when his ears are free of running butter. It is distracting.

"I used to know. How is it that one's sorting might change?"

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"It is not that I think it would. It is that I am not sure that it is impossible for it to occur. We shall proceed to Slytherin."

Since that is the most likely choice.

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

"Have others been resorted?" Severus remembers that long ago day, and the smile that had spread at his sorting, eleven years old. He cannot imagine sitting in front of the children now, those who had been his - the children of his Slytherin children - watching him enter another house. And how Minerva would have laughed. Severus frowns.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"I arrived less than three weeks ago. I could not say."

He shrugs, lightly.

"I do not think there is such thing as magic, on my world. People here are from different worlds, you see."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

This is strange to Severus. "Is there magic for you here, at Hogwarts?"

He is mystified yet again. "Your world... is it... where is it? Hidden from muggles, in the midst of them like the wizarding world?"

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I am perfectly capable of doing magic. Well, as capable as someone can be, with three weeks of exposure."

But better than the average student with as much time, by virtue of a photographic memory for spells.

"It is faintly complicated, but I am fairly sure it is a seperate reality entirely. I am a detective, by trade, on an international level, and I can find little indication of my existence. This would not be entirely impossible; I always cover my tracks, and in the future I might have decided to eliminate record of my existence completely. Or it might mean that there is simply no such thing as L in the here and now."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

Severus is immediately intrigued, as he is a spy himself. "So... you can do magic, though you never have before. Extraordinary!"

He considers how to approach the other topic. "I have always thought the best way to hide was in the open, in plain sight." An old idea, but perhaps it will say something.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"I prefer to solve my puzzles by stepping back from the board and looking down upon them. It also affords me more safety."

He will die, fairly soon, he knows, but he's lasted twelve years so far, and that isn't that bad. (Especially since he's only twenty.)

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

Puzzles, he thinks, frowning. Does he mean magic or spying? "I myself," He speaks of either one. "Prefer to work puzzles closely, expanding their secrets by manipulating them."

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"That can be dangerous."

He shrugs.

"And I have too much I need to accomplish to risk it. My successors are not trained yet."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

"I have... had no successors. And it is how I have always worked. Trying, testing, observing as closely inside the procedure as I can get." He is still trying to speak of puzzles, or maybe even potions, and spying at the same time.

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"I operate on a global scale. I doubt it would be logistically possible to pursue each problem with such intimacy, tempting as it might seem."

Also, frightening. He's used to his ivory tower.

"It is exceptionally... it is taking adjustment, working with and meeting strangers, for the first time, really, since I was a child."

[methleigh.livejournal.com]

Working with and meeting strangers always takes adjustment. "You had more opportunity to meet others as a child than when you were older?"

He think about global scales. "Even a large problem has key pieces that are flesh and blood. Perhaps they could be said to be comets, and their ephemeral and less important tails the mass of humanity, even their intimates and hangers-on."

[ijk-mno.livejournal.com]

"My work takes my time these days, and has since I took up the position, which I did when I was quite young." Even by his standards, which makes twelve a perfectly reasonable to have that responsibility thrust on you.

"Crime... is not really like comets. Crime is the intersection of a suitable target with a motivated offender in the absence of capable guardianship. But there are ways to understand it, and there are ways to solve it."