Harry Potter blinked and stared, his hand dropping limply from the door knob, letting the slab of wood swing freely on its hinges as his own aggravated forward momentum came to an abrupt halt. His jaw, previously so tightly clenched and then dropping open so he could yell angry recriminations, sagged loosely as the power of speech completely deserted him. His expression of righteous fury melted into complete and utterly shocked astonishment, as his brain registered the improbable sight his now almost- bulging eyes were relaying to him.

Professor Severus Snape’s head whipped up and about, startled obsidian eyes fixing straight on the unexpected teenage boy now standing so completely dumbfounded in the doorway to his personal potions lab. Long, elegant fingers tightened convulsively, yet still gently about a pastel pink figure as the two stared at each other in perfect silence for nearly an entire minute. The whole of the world for each narrowed to include only the other, as they struggled to absorb a sudden and decisive change in each of their respective realities.

The eruption that followed was really quite predictable. The Headmaster had known exactly what was going to happen, of course, from the very moment he not-so-indirectly sent Harry down to the dungeons with his “subtle” intimations of particularly demeaning and torturous detentions; and the so-sad fact that one Hermione Granger was currently serving her first- ever detention that fine Saturday afternoon with their much-hated greasy git of a Potions professor, Severus Snape, former Death Eater and all-around thoroughly detestable Dark wizard. There really was nothing that could have been done to prevent the explosion, once Harry set off from Dumbledore’s office--not unless Albus wanted to negate the whole thing and outright warn Severus that he was about to have unexpected company.

What would be the point of that, after all the effort he’d just gone to in winding up the, as usual, ridiculously clueless young Gryffindor??

The Headmaster was moderately disappointed to hear nothing up in his office for the rest of that afternoon; not even by way of the surreptitiously placed listening devices he’d set down in the dungeons near Professor Snape’s lab last week. He’d been so certain that this eruption of Mt. St. Snape would have shaken the very foundations of Hogwarts...! The twinkles in his eyes had been nearly blinding when he’d anticipated it. If Minerva had been in the room to see it, she’d have immediately become suspicious and probably have spoiled all of his fun; but she was safely (relatively speaking) preoccupied with her Lions, dealing with an unexpected visit from the Weasley Twins.

The Twins--wWho’d been sworn to secrecy on pain of Albus’ full and complete Displeasure, if they breathed a word to even a single soul about the invitation he’d sent them. Fred and George, able to scent a prank a week and ten miles away in their sleep, had of course enthusiastically accepted his terms.

--

Albus was more than slightly taken aback to see both his Potions Master and Harry Potter sitting in their usual places at their respective tables for dinner that evening, both acting completely normal. The usual twinkles in his old blue eyes were quickly replaced by a speculative gleam, as Albus realized he had a slight mystery on his hands. Had Harry been way-laid on his way to the dungeons, perhaps? Or had Severus Obliviated the boy? There were no glares of record-level acidity being sent the Headmaster’s way, so Severus certainly didn’t suspect his mentor’s involvement in the incident...

If the incident had actually happened.

Harry really was much too calm and collected over at Gryffindor table...and Miss Granger certainly couldn’t be good enough at dissembling to be acting so normally, either, not if she’d been there to witness everything and act as life-saving referee as he’d arranged. He’d expect her to be unable to look up at the Head Table without, at the least, a twitch or a faint blush when her eyes set on the Potions Master whose image should be forever...altered...in her mind.

It went without saying that Severus would never in a million years be that calm, if things had gone anything like as planned. Where had been his explosion?!

With a stifled sigh of frustration, Albus decided he’d have to try again next week. He was already behind his personal prank quota; he had nearly five years to catch up on, all told, what with how distracted he’d been by Harry’s troubles and Voldemort’s anticipated return. It was terrible, simply terrible how lax he’d gotten over the decades! The students didn’t even expect it of him these days. Tsk!

--

The Headmaster didn’t notice the faint smirk that played about the corners of his Potions Master’s lips at sight of the old man’s rather poorly covered disappointment. If he had, Albus would have immediately gone on his guard, for he knew all too well that Severus Snape was perfectly capable of defending himself in anything from a life-or-death duel...to a full-out prank war--at four-to-one odds, or worse.

After Potter’s precipitous entrance into Snape’s lab, the somewhat...entertaining...sight of the Great Gryffindor Golden Boy, The One Shining Hope of the Whole of the Wizarding World; writhing on the ground in thrall to a completely uncontrollable explosion of laughter--too hysterical to even notice that his Evil Snarky Potions professor was about to pop a vein and hex the living daylights out of him--had given Miss Granger enough time to jump between them, and calm the Professor in question enough that Potter’s life expectancy hadn’t been unexpectedly cut short.

Severus Snape had known, the instant the Potter brat had burst so unexpectedly into his lab, just exactly how he’d come to be there. Miss Granger had been quick to swear herself blue in the face that she certainly hadn’t told either of her best friends a thing about where she really was going to be that evening, and he’d easily believed her. She’d been a bit too embarrassed by the whole thing to have been lying about that, and his own knowledge of her character didn’t let him seriously consider the possibility anyway. Besides, some-one had certainly wound the boy up tight; he’d been in a temper to rival some of Severus’ own when the door slammed open.

Having been at Hogwarts almost continually since he was eleven years old, Snape had plenty of prior experience with the Headmaster’s quirky sense of so-called “humor”. Tiresomely enough, every so many years he had to convince Dumbledore that he wasn’t a worthwhile prank target.

Snape had realized through the haze of his fury that hexing Potter just then would be a wasted effort, anyway; the boy was likely to die laughing before Snape did anything to him.

Miss Granger’s tearful pleas--even if those tears weren’t exactly fear-ful--had brought his full attention back to her, and her unexpected promise to be the Bonder for Potter to swear a Wizarding Oath to Snape to not tell a soul, alive or dead, about what he’d just seen. Ever.

Snape had furiously stared into her eyes for a moment, Potter’s still- hysterical laughter ringing in his ears and merging nauseatingly with too many memories of the boy’s father’s raucous amusement from their shared school days, and forced himself to consider her offer. He’d intently searched her steady gaze for any tinymerest trace of humor at his expense. Instead he had found embarrassment, resignation, and--yes, there was a trace of humor; but at the situation itself, not specifically at him. She was as much the butt of the joke as he, after all, though the long-term consequences of this getting out wouldn’t be quite as...damaging...to her reputation, as to his. That realization, along with knowing in his gut exactly who just had to have been the one to set them all up, helped him rein in his temper.

Retribution should be meted out to the responsible party, after all. Preferably using the same tools that person had used in the first place. And in the most unexpected manner possible...

There were many reasons that Headmaster Albus Dumbledore had been so frustratingly lenient on those self-styled “Marauders” back in their school days. It was not just because the boys had been in Gryffindor. Albus Dumbledore had shared more than simply House affiliation with them, after all--though the Marauders had done things a bit more...recklessly, and violently, than the Headmaster had done back in his own student days. Albus Dumbledore had never done anything that would have resulted in either the death or permanent cursing of another student. The main difference between Albus Dumbledore and Sirius Black, especially, had been that Albus regularly thought things through--well before doing them.

Snape supposed he couldn’t truly still be upset that Albus had come down harder on him for his retaliations to the Marauders, all things considered. After all, what with fighting four-to-one odds, Snape had been forced to play rather dirty pool to try and protect himself. Some of his methods of defense had been rather...Dark. Though he’d been careful to never start anything!

He hadn’t needed to. Sirius Black could always be counted upon to throw the first hex, without Snape even saying a word. Usually from behind, the hypocritical coward!

It was a shame Albus hadn’t realized the “prank war” between the Marauders and Snape had been anything but a ‘friendly rivalry’. It wasn’t until the Shrieking Shack incident in their fifth year, when Snape was so nearly killed, that Albus got a clue that he’d been missing something rather important in their interactions.

It was a rather funny situation in which he and Miss Granger had been caught; Snape had to admit that, once the first fierce rush of near-mortal humiliation had passed. It was no wonder the boy had collapsed in laughter! Snape realized with disgust that had their situations been reversed, he’d quite likely have embarrassed himself with at least a good five seconds of unconstrained and toothy grinning...maybe even with a bark of laughter.

He, the Black Bat of the Dungeons; and Miss Granger, the Gryffindor Know-It-All: both standing at the long worktable in his private potions lab--sorting through a rather impressively large collection of six-inch-tall, pastel-colored, satin-smooth plastic figurines...

...of ponies. Pudgy little Muggle cartoon-style My Little Pony™ dolls, made for Muggle children to play with. Complete with long silky manes and tails, and big, liquid eyes. The vast majority with some form of sickeningly sweet smile on their little pony faces.

And accessories. Mustn’t forget the accessories!

Little plastic brushes and combs, plastic-jeweled halters and saddles; fake straw hats; little plastic flowers and hair clips...a couple pony dresses, for Merlin’s sake...! Every last item in pastel or bright colors, with not a hint of black or any other even slightly somber color to be found.

Pony-specific accessories like the bright pink little plastic comb that Snape had been using to detangle the artificial cream-color silky mane of the pastel pink pony it went with, when Harry Potter burst so unexpectedly through his door with the obvious intent of ranting and railing against Snape’s supposed abuse of Miss Granger--who had been meticulously tending to a pale lavender pony’s rather knotted yellow tail with its bright purple little comb.

They’d already checked over and cleaned up a good two-thirds of the seemingly vast collection. Unfortunately, they’d been unable to simply spell them all into good shape--they needed to examine each and every one of the little beggars for all sorts of different types of damage, enough kinds that a fix-all charm like Reparo wouldn’t be able to handle the differences. Not to mention that for some reason unknown to Wizard-kind, Muggle-made plastic was highly resistant to all but the most powerful of magics--mainly the destructive ones.

There were three mangled little piles of shredded, pulverized, and oddly contorted plastic bits to prove that.

After the third pony-doll had been accidentally destroyed--or so Severus maintained, in spite of some rather impressive glares from Miss Granger; the girl had certainly learned well from him!--they’d given up completely on using magic, and just started fixing up the horrible little things by hand. Each one destroyed had to be replaced, after all; Merlin help them... Miss Granger would undoubtedly be the one shopping for those three replacements; there was no way in Hell Severus Snape was going to be caught anywhere near a Muggle toy store! He’d quit Britain altogether and take his chances in Switzerland, first--or maybe even America, perish the thought!

Snape and Miss Granger had agreed completely and wordlessly on one thing, regarding the man who had both “gifted” Severus Snape with such an...unanticipated...collection, and suggested that Miss Granger would be most suitable--both for her knowledge of Muggle things, and for her discretion--to help him organize the fifteen thrown-together boxes. Albus supposedly hadn’t known a thing about what was in those boxes, other than their Muggle origin.

They’d both easily deduced the tone of what Harry Potter had thought had been going on in the potions lab when he’d first burst in, wand drawn, with such an air of indignation and righteous fury about him. If whips and chains had been involved in the brat’s fevered imaginings, it had been in an entirely inappropriate way--and likely involved lots of leather, lace, silk ropes, and satin sheets. If the boy’s imagination could stretch that far, Snape thought caustically.

Oh, yes, they two were united--Albus Dumbledore Must Die!

Or at least suffer some painfully humiliating event--preferably a long-lasting one. Something that would keep the doddering old relic from messing with Snape (or Miss Granger, he supposed...that was only fair) for at least the rest of that school year. All two months of it. Hmmm...that would be a tall order...

Miss Granger had quickly followed through on her gabbled promise of making Potter swear silence, and had promptly “volunteered” her now only mildly snickering friend to help finish their task. The boy had finally managed to regain enough control over himself to enquire as to how they’d come to be going through all the pony dollies in the first place.

Miss Granger had her wand out and a Silencio cast on a snickering Potter before Snape’s quickly ascending temper could reduce the boy to a pile of smoking ashes even without the use of magic, Prophesied Savior of the Wizarding World or not. Snape was rather impressed with her speed--not to mention the Glare she leveled at the brat; it rivaled one of his own worst.

Snape listened with a bit of reluctant interest at her choice of wording as she explained that Albus Dumbledore, in his infinite so-called “wisdom”, had decided that as the only Professor on staff with anything even vaguely resembling a knowledge of Muggle culture thanks to his Muggle father (and why on Earth had Albus told her that?!!) Professor Snape was the perfect one to fix up whatever was in the fifteen boxes sent to the Headmaster in accordance with the will of a little Muggle girl he’d befriended several summers ago, who’d recently supposedly died so tragically along with her family in a car crash. The amount of dry sarcasm in her tone levered Snape’s eyebrows up nearly to his hairline. Her gaze was rather flat, and her face deceptively bland when she mentioned the Headmaster had “volunteered” her to help Snape, as there were a few too many boxes to expect an already over-worked professor to deal with.

The old coot had known very well that magic was going to be useless for the task. Snape’s eyes narrowed; he wondered if there had ever been a little Muggle girl in the first place to “gift” the Headmaster with these...plastic...things. They were obviously all used, some well-used; but the number of them was a bit much for one single girl to have played with so extensively as to put so much wear on them. Possibly the old meddler had replaced all the toys in a Muggle day care, preschool, orphanage, or some other such establishment with brand new toys. Thus the old man could arrange for the cumulative entertainment value of seeing Snape’s face when he assigned the task, especially when Snape discovered he would be forced to accept the assistance of one of the Potions Master’s least favorite Gryffindor students to straighten out the mess the overly cutesy toys had become; as well as the “fun” of sic’ing his favorite, oh-so-gullible, hot-tempered Gryffindor on his surly, snarky, overly defensive and oh-so-proper Potions Master. The old man had likely not even considered Miss Granger’s reaction to the whole experience, except he might think she’d simply deal with events as they happened; maybe defusing tempers somewhat, so that Snape and Potter wouldn’t actually kill or maim one another.

That wouldn’t go over at all well with the school’s Board of Governors.

Lip curling as he restrained a growl of annoyance, Snape wrenched his full attention back to the two teenagers before him. A couple of strategic nods from the boy had confirmed Miss Granger’s guess as to what exactly the Headmaster had said to Potter, to send him barreling down to the dungeons in such a state, intent on “rescuing” her. The boy didn’t seem at all interested in making a sound as he watched his best friend with wary eyes, obviously quite familiar with how her temper manifested. He also didn’t seem inclined to get any closer to her than he absolutely had to be.

Snape was intrigued to realize that Potter was well and truly scared spitless of Miss Granger in a temper.

He’d never actually seen this byplay in action before, though Minerva had chuckled at mentioning it before. A second, and then a quite long third look at the girl’s glacial expression and disturbingly flat brown eyes gave Snape, himself, an urge to swallow heavily as unease suddenly skittered across his skin, raising his neck-hairs. Not to mention the inexplicable desire to slowly edge away...her face might be icy, but there was a sense of intense heat seeming to radiate from that girl with the strength of her slowly building anger, that Snape hadn’t felt from a Gryffindor since his student days with the fiery-tempered Lily Evans.

If Miss Granger started in with the maniacal laughter, Snape was leaving--having to put up with one insane female like Bellatrix Lestrange was more than enough, thank you very much!!

Giving himself a mental shake and forcibly hauling his thoughts back to Dumbledore and Revenge, Snape let some of his anger show as he drawled in a dangerously low voice, “If you are through stating the blatantly obvious, Miss Granger, I believe that we have things. To. Do.”

He glared at the door as he snapped out that last, his peculiar emphasis and the direction of his furious attention making it clear--to Miss Granger, anyway--that he most certainly was not talking about those damnable pony dollies scattered across his lab table. The girl drew in a small sharp breath as she recognized his Slytherin invitation to share in his Revenge, brown eyes widening in shock before briefly warming with gratitude. Then she aimed her own, only marginally less frightening glare at the door, making Potter wonder why the heavy slab of wood didn’t incinerate on the spot.

Potter was quite deaf and blind to anything approaching subtlety, but Miss Granger’s quick mind and current fury at the Headmaster--which Snape was rather warily certain wasn’t simply for her own embarrassment, or even the manipulation of Mr. Potter; and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to understand its source--let her not only follow his only half-vocal plotting, but make her own contributions as well.

They’d set Potter to helping them finish with the blasted toys to keep him busy and out of the way--and discourage him from any possible thought of warning the Headmaster. Not that Potter was likely to cross Miss Granger that way; the boy did have something of a sense of self preservation, after all, Snape was mildly surprised to note, part of his attention perpetually on the Gryffindor as the boy methodically brushed and scrubbed and combed, and straightened toys.

They wanted something public, that couldn’t be avoided or turned aside at all. Something so memorable, though not necessarily embarrassing--the Headmaster being disturbingly immune to most forms of embarrassment, except for the few times he’d nearly gotten someone killed; which wasn’t useful at all for creating a prank against him--that Dumbledore would think more than twice about pulling something like this on them, ever again.

Snape personally didn’t care if the Headmaster thought the entire rest of the school fair game, staff included; so long as the old coot left him alone--and Miss Granger, whose input was...rather inventive. Her extensive research over the years had yielded some interesting charms and hexes and such that might come in...handy...in their endeavor. He quickly decided that it was a Very, Very Good Thing that she had not been a year-mate with the Weasley Twins, and wasn’t inclined to Bond with them in any way. Hogwarts might not still be standing had that happened!

(Surprisingly enough, Miss Granger never once brought up including the other two thirds of the Golden Trio on their short list of two to be held immune from Dumbledore’s pranking--not even with one of them standing not fifteen feet from her. Snape wondered briefly if that ought to disturb him, then shrugged it off as unimportant. He’d simply remember for future reference that anything that did not threaten the boys’ lives or education, Miss Granger apparently couldn’t care less about.)

Potter proved to have been listening at least to the basic gist of what they were saying, by his occasional snort of suppressed laughter. After about a half hour of more and more elaborate schemes, he finally looked up, head cocked to the side, and casually said, “You ought to just have Hermione send the Headmaster a Howler during dinner in the Great Hall. Then, if that doesn’t work, there’ll be plenty of time to get into a full-out prank war with him...”

Hermione glared at Potter, going off on him like a verbal Bludger. Snape frowned almost thoughtfully as he stared at the boy, a light slowly seeming to go off in his pitch-black eyes as he listened to the girl. She really did have quite the creative grasp of language; and her tonal control...that ear-piercing shrillness... As Potter ducked his head and cringed, seriously considering running for his life, Snape turned to stare contemplatively at Miss Granger as she proceeded to harangue the boy to within an inch of his life. He imagined that voice, amplified...delivering a similar furious and erudite lecture to the Headmaster, in front of nearly the entire school...

...and smiled his most evil smile.

Potter caught a glimpse of it, stared full into it for a moment with a deer-in-headlights kind of look, and promptly fainted.

Snape brought himself back to the present in the Great hall from the rather pleasant memory of watching the Boy Who Lived toppling like a falling tree as his eyes rolled back in his head, and let his midnight-black eyes flick over to the entrance the postal owls used to deliver mail to the Great Hall. It was almost time; students and teachers alike were nearly finished eating. All but a handful of the school’s inhabitants were present to bear witness.

A pristine white shape floated in almost casually as he watched, a distinctively bright red envelope clutched carefully in her claws. A revived Harry had of course volunteered his owl, Hedwig, to deliver their Revenge; he wasn’t exactly happy with the Headmaster himself, and wasn’t adverse to the whole school knowing it.

Dumbledore noticed his Potions Master’s intense stare and looked up at the enchanted ceiling, easily spotting the snowy owl as she soared serenely through the slightly cloudy sunset represented there. Others quickly noticed the upwards attention and looked for themselves; all but a handful of oblivious students and Professor Trelawney had their eyes fixed on Hedwig aswhen she came to hover before the Headmaster, growing whispers of speculation hushing in awed expectancy at the prospect of Albus Dumbledore--receiving a Howler; from Harry Potter--?! All had recognized the owl as Potter’s, of course. No one had the vaguest clue why Potter, of all people, would be sending the Headmaster such a thing!

The Headmaster’s face was--well, it wasn’t quite priceless, but it was certainly entertaining. Snape kept his face bland and almost innocently questioning as he raised his brows at Dumbledore in inquiry, as the rest of the staff gaped. Albus had the most curious mix of surprise, confusion, and trepidation on his face as he debated if he should actually touch the too-red envelope. The twinkle was conspicuously absent as old blue eyes flicked towards Gryffindor table, fastening on Potter as he stared intently.

In the spot to Potter’s right, Miss Granger was casually dabbing her lips with a napkin, which she then precisely and much too calmly placed on her now empty plate. Back straight and head held high as she primly pursed her lips and folded her hands in her lap, she raised icy brown eyes to stare directly at the Headmaster, whose face rather abruptly drained of color as swallowed, hard. Snape’s eyes narrowed in satisfaction as he braced his elbows on the table and rested his chin on folded hands, never looking away from the now quite nervous-looking Headmaster whose now wide eyes held not even the faintest trace of a twinkle.

Albus hesitantly took the threatening envelope from an impatiently waiting Hedwig, holding it between the thumb and forefinger of one hand as if he thought it might bite him. The owl hooted in satisfaction and flew off, giving the impression of a mature woman in full skirts flouncing off in a huff. Snape kept the smirk from his face with effort as he watched the Headmaster so carefully lay it down on the table, seeing the old man’s grimace even through his beard as Albus tried to open the thing without really touching it, before it could explode open on its own.

The entire thirty minute, nicely amplified and shrill-voiced tirade that came from the red paper lips of the opened envelope would remain in student memory until the last witness graduated, and would be preserved verbatim forever in the annals of Hogwarts: A History. Everyone clearly heard every word. Miss Granger explicitly detailed how humiliating, denigrating, insensitive, and even downright insulting Albus had been, casting aspersions on his ancestry, his social skills, Merlin’s beard, she even verbally eviscerated the parenting skill of his mother and father! No Headmaster in the entire thousand-year history of the school had ever been lectured so thoroughly or brought so low by an angry parent, let alone a student! (Albus had sunk very low down in his chair, indeed; he was practically under the table--as was most of the student body, and several of the teachers.)

No one even thought to wonder just what it was that Dumbledore had done, to provoke such ire; Miss Granger had been very careful, with Professor Snape’s advice, to leave out those specifics in the interest of preserving something of their dignity within the school. Not to mention Snape’s cover as a spy! He had no wish to end up Crucio’d because the Dark Lord decided not to have a sense of humor the next time he called Snape to him.

No one present that night would ever knowingly cross a certain Gryffindor girl ever again, especially those peering over the table-tops to see her face as she glared at Dumbledore with such icy fury. Even a sweating Draco Malfoy swore solemnly to himself, from his place crouching on the floor beneath Slytherin table, that he’d rather endure Crucio from the Dark Lord for an entire week, than to ever get on Granger’s bad side! Merlin’s beard, he realized he’d much rather join the side of Light and fight against the Dark Lord, than face her for real! He busily started a mental litany, thanking every ancestor and all of the gods, both major and minor that he could think of, that he apparently had never truly offended that terrifying little spitfire!

Especially when the Howler finally finished and exploded like a Weasley Twins firework, to leave the word “IDIOT!!!” floating in blinking, bright purple, two-foot letters over an arrow pointing decidedly down at a now Slytherin-green Headmaster when the smoke cleared. And he was completely green; from his hat and robes to his hair, beard, and even skin. Snape’s lips twitched minutely from his furious scowl as he contemplated Albus’ reaction when he discovered he was most certainly stuck that way, for two full weeks--glamour charms, transfiguration, and even potions wouldn’t remove or even hide it; changing clothes would leave him still wearing green, as the hex-like charm Snape and Hermione had decided on and specifically adapted was anchored to the Headmaster’s own magical core, radiating out to temporarily color whatever he was wearing.

Rising with his co-conspirators as Albus stayed slumped in shock, staring still without twinkles at the pile of ash the furious Howler had become, Snape carefully kept all traces of satisfaction or amusement off his face as he spun with a billowing snap of his black robes to leave the Great Hall through the teachers’ exit. So far as anyone else knew, he was rushing off so he could collapse in laughter without ruining his reputation--which was actually quite close to the truth. Miss Granger and Potter marched out the other direction with heads held high, going straight back to Gryffindor Tower as the student body stared after them in terrified awe.

Snape paused and held the door from closing completely. A sudden commotion of hooting and wing-beats along with the muted thunder of furious whispers preceded fifteen distinct THUMPS! as school owls returned fifteen boxes to their owner, the cardboard boxes carefully dropped from just enough height to be certain they burst upon impact to bury the dumbfounded Dumbledore in a small mountain of pastel pony dollies.

The Potions Master smirked in satisfaction all the way back to his dungeon quarters.