The Rocky Hogwarts Picture Show

'It's rather narrow-minded of you, Black, to assume that everyone else in the world is as stupid as you are.' Severus hadn't even bothered to look over his shoulder to impart this, let alone check his stride, and he wasn't about to now. 'Tax your brain cells a minute for me, Black, and indulge in a little hypothesising.' He raised a hand, long fingers flickering and twitching in time with his words. 'Imagine that I let you go. I think we can reasonably assume that events will run roughly thus:

'One: the two of you will run straight back to the Gryffindor common room.

'Two: the two of you will tell everyone in said common room the location of the newly discovered entrance to this common room.

'Three: the two of you and said Gryffindors will proceed down here to wreak havoc, and - ' As much as it pained Remus to do it, he had to interrupt.

'What, you expect us to believe that in the time it takes for us to get to Gryffindor Tower and back, the whole of Slytherin house can't pull out a protective hex between them? The acoustics of the green-tinged tunnel were limited, but still echoed Severus' impatient sigh back to the two Gryffindors.

'That's the problem, Lupin, that I was just about to address. The whole of Slytherin house between us could pull out a protective hex so powerful that any Gryffindor stupid enough to come within ten feet of the entrance would find themselves missing one, two, or possibly more limbs. And I wouldn't give you the satisfaction, even in death, of knowing you'd left me heading to Azkaban for mass murder and/or mutilation.' At this remarkable assertion, Severus fell silent and quickened his step slightly, meaning that Sirius, whose legs were shorter than either of his companions', was on the verge of a jog.

'Remind me again why we're following him,' he muttered to Remus.

'Because I told you what I'd do to you if you didn't,' floated back to them. Sirius made a face at Severus' thin, black-clad back that forced Remus to suppress a giggle. He took Sirius' hand, and the two of them continued to follow Severus in silence down the corridor. The shallow incline of the floor was beginning to steepen, the elegantly sweeping and seemingly random bends were making their presence less and less felt. All in all, every step they took seemed to take them closer to the castle. And yet Sirius and Remus couldn't shake the nagging sense that they were going nowhere, that the walls were moving past them while they were standing still.

Before long, however, Sirius pricked up his ears. Faint strains of crowd noise drifted through the corridor towards them, muffled and distorted by distance.

'You having some kind of a party?' He heard Severus laugh strangely.

'As it happens, you've arrived on a rather special night. It's one of Lucius'...affairs,' the Slytherin finished, somewhat cryptically. Sirius and Remus exchanged glances.

'Lucky him?' offered Sirius, more than a little confused. Remus shrugged, none the wiser. Severus just laughed again and quickened his pace down the corridor. Though Sirius was too busy trying to work out exactly what one of Lucius Malfoy's 'affairs' might be to notice, Remus would have bet money that he didn't have that Severus, as he walked, was whistling something. It confused and disturbed Remus more than a little.

The sound of the crowd was getting louder, and as the corridor approached its destination an oppressive and constricting sense of fear began to set in. What diabolical fate awaited the two Gryffindors at the end of this passage? Neither Sirius nor Remus knew, nor wanted to know. They were, however, soon to find out.

The door that marked the tunnel's end was nondescript save for a handle that, to Remus' DADA-trained eye, looked cursed, as though it would bite you if you touched it the wrong way. Severus made no such mistake, laying an evidently trained hand carefully on the metal and pausing, momentarily. He turned towards the Gryffindors, whose green tinge had little to do with the hanging lamps, an unreadable glitter in his eyes.

'Gentlemen,' he began, then paused. 'In the loosest possible sense of the word,' he added. What worried Remus and Sirius more than anything was that he was almost smiling. 'Welcome to the Slytherin common room.'

The door swung open, and Sirius and Remus surveyed the scene before them with a look that said this would leave permanent psychological scars. There was a momentary stillness, as the common room froze into a tableau.

'Book me a therapist now,' choked out Sirius, eyes wide although they wanted to be closed.

The Slytherin common room was a long, low-ceiling room, lit by green lamps hung on chains that seemed to exist only so you would walk into them if you weren't paying attention. Everything and everyone seemed to carry an emerald tinge without, strangely, looking bilious, Remus thought. As he looked a little closer, he saw that the green seemed not to rest on the skin from the outside, but rather to have been absorbed into the capillaries. It seemed a part of each and every student in the room.

Although this, of course, was not what had struck Sirius. It wasn't even the fact that the room was crawling with students; Remus would have guessed that the entire house was gathered there from first year to seventh. It was the fact that they appeared to have been dancing. All of them. Before the Gryffindors' entrance had paused them. In some sort of formation. That involved pelvic thrusting. Actually, Remus thought, it was probably that that had struck Sirius. It was vaguely unsettling, especially seeing as they seemed to have stumbled upon the Slytherins mid-thrust.

Severus smiled into the tinny music that spilled forth from carefully positioned pockets of empty air. He waved an imperious hand at the motionless Slytherins, clearly hugely enjoying the discomfort he couldn't help but watch contort the two visitors' faces as he did so.

'Oh, don't let us interrupt you. They're not here for you.' His eyes darkened as his smile glittered. 'Carry on. I insist.' There was an edge to his voice that the students couldn't ignore. Slowly, the eyes turned from Sirius and Remus, and the dancing resumed. Severus' face closed up into an enigma, eyes and smile all but unreadable as he moved, quite calmly, to stand in between Sirius and Remus, who made small noises of protest at their separation. Severus ignored them, and took the arm of each, to the surprise of both, with a grip that was far from convivial.

'I think you could probably both do with a drink.'

'You have drink?' asked Remus, interest vaguely piqued. Severus laughed, strangely and without humour, and began to steer them both into the midst of the students. Remus had, by this point, adopted a state of placid and resigned curiosity, of the 'Oh, so that's what the Slytherins do in their spare time' variety, and was keeping his mind off what Severus probably had in store for them by trying to follow the dance that surrounded him. Sirius, however, was decidedly less content, having managed to find the middle ground between traumatised and glowering. He leant pointedly behind Severus towards a relatively calm-looking Remus.

'Let's get out of here.' Remus tore his attention away from the dancers reluctantly.

'Oh, for Merlin's sake, keep a grip on yourself, Sirius.' Looks like a jump to the left...

'But it seems so...' Sirius looked around him with something approaching a shudder. 'Unhealthy here,' he finished.

'It's just a party, Sirius.' Then what? A step to the right?

'Well, I want to go,' Sirius insisted, voice rising into a whine.

'We can't go anywhere, remember? He'd hex our legs off before you could say "Run!".' You put your hands on your hips, obviously...

'Well, then, at least tell him to get a move on with whatever it is he's planning,' Sirius snapped. Remus' lips quirked up into an absent-minded smile.

'We don't want to interfere with their celebration, Sirius.' And...bring your knees in? Tight, from the look of it...

'This isn't the Junior Chamber of Commerce, Remus!' exclaimed Sirius, voice dangerously and implausibly high. Severus turned slightly at this, one amused eyebrow raised. Sirius flushed. Remus hastened to calm him.

'Look, Sirius, they're Slytherins. They have ways...different from our own. They're probably just going to do some more...' He paused, glancing around the room. 'Folk-dancing,' he finished, dubiously. It's that pelvic thrust, though, that really drives them insane. Sirius gave up all pretence at machismo.

'Look, I'm cold, I'm wet, and frankly, I'm just plain scared.' Remus smiled, finally turning his attention from the dancing and directing genuine sentiment at his boyfriend. What he failed to notice, however, was that the dancing was beginning to die down, the music to fade into a reverent silence, and all eyes were beginning to turn towards the door to which Severus had all this time been leading the Gryffindors.

'I'm here,' he reassured Sirius. 'There's nothing to worry about.' As the last syllables of his words echoed into muteness, Severus stopped before a large, arched, wooden double door. Face just as unreadable, and Gryffindors just as confused, he disentangled himself from their arms and stepped off to one side, still wearing that maddening smile. Sirius looked at Remus. Remus looked at Sirius. The common room had fallen silent. There was a sound like a whip-crack, a flash of green light; the double doors swung open, and Sirius Black screamed like a girl.

There, standing beneath the keystone of the arch, was a sight, Remus thought, you will only ever see once in your life. Seventh-year Slytherin Lucius Malfoy stood, swathed head to toe in a black velvet cape, fine white-blonde hair free from its usual ponytail and swinging around his shoulders. Carrying a four-foot long cane made of gleaming black wood and topped with a silver snake's head. Caked in heavy, glittery, appallingly applied make-up.

Neither Remus nor Sirius would ever have denied that Lucius Malfoy was an extraordinarily attractive man. Aristocratic features fell somewhere between strength and fragility, the grey of his eyes could shift and swirl like a Pensieve. Difficult to tell, though, when his lips were painted carelessly with glutinous bloody lipstick, and dark green (what else?) glittery eyeshadow stretched from false eyelashes to heavily pencilled black eyebrows and outwards on either side almost to his temples. As Remus and Sirius stared, stunned into silence, the scarlet lips curved up into a predatory smile.

'How do you do?' Lucius drawled, voice characteristically affected. His eyes raked over the still open-mouthed visitors. 'I see you've met my faithful -' He glanced mischievously over at Sev, who smiled back enigmatically. 'Ah...handyman,' he finished. He nodded towards Severus, who moved forward wordlessly and laid his hands deliberately on Lucius' shoulders. The older Slytherin luxuriated in the touch momentarily as Severus whispered something in his ear, and the entire Slytherin common room caught their breath in expectation. Even Sirius and Remus found themselves waiting for something, although they didn't like to think what.

It all happened in a swirl of black velvet and a sigh of expectations fulfilled. In a single, practised movement, Severus whipped Lucius' cloak from his shoulders, and neither Remus nor Sirius could help the simultaneous gasps that escaped them.

Lucius Malfoy, seventh-year Slytherin who ruled the corridors of Hogwarts through charisma alone, had bloody good legs, thought Remus, distinctly (albeit reluctantly) impressed. Legs that ended in black patent leather shoes with five-inch heels, and seemed to go on forever clad in seamed fishnet stockings and suspenders. And nothing else, up as far as underwear that looked black and satin and Remus had to make a conscious effort not to make an inspection close enough for any more detail. Instead, he let his only partly scandalised eyes take in a boned and laced corset, made of something dark and sparkly, and fingerless gloves to match. He chanced a glance at Sirius, who, much to his displeasure, looked frankly entranced. Feeling Remus' eyes on him, Sirius hastily diverted his gaze to his boyfriend, and smiled embarrassedly. Lucius raised an eyebrow at Severus that said, to anyone well versed in the language of suggestion, 'this could be interesting'. He stepped forward to intervene.

'Let me show you around,' he offered, the incarnation of sinister-edged courtesy. The Gryffindors looked at him warily. 'Maybe we could...play you a sound?' he tried again, revelling in the unadulterated confusion he was causing. Smiling mock-innocently, he decided to play his trump card. 'Or if you'd rather...something visual...' He beckoned Severus to his side, a predatory gleam in his eyes, and Sirius and Remus fell over themselves and each other to decline the offer, although each wondered if the other's haste was compensating for more than a little curiosity.

'Oh, er, no, thank you. We don't want to be any worry,' excused Remus, smiling politely and more than a little nervously.

'Right,' agreed Sirius, eyes darting between the nearest potential escape route and the seams on Lucius' stockings. Lucius hastened to reassure the pair of them, eyes still gleaming with an inscrutable gleam.

'Oh, sweethearts, don't you panic,' he drawled, concern dripping from his voice that was as far from sincere as his make-up was from subtle. Neither Gryffindor looked convinced. 'Look, why don't you stay for the night?' he continued. 'I could show you my favourite...obsession.' Both Sirius and Remus glanced instantly at Sev, who laughed softly and coldly. Lucius shook his head impatiently, unheeding of the ice that tinged Severus' gaze. 'I've been making a man,' he explained, 'with blonde hair, and a...' He let his sentence trail off, suggestively, before picking his thread back up. 'Anyway, he's good for relieving my, ah, tension.' When Lucius spoke, all eyes were drawn irrefutably to him, and no one noticed the coldness that crossed Severus' face at his words.

'So.' Lucius clapped his hands, suddenly, decisively. 'Come out to the Potions lab.' Sirius and Remus sent him a 'you're kidding, right?' look that was only slightly tinged with fear. The idea of joining Lucius Malfoy, dressed like that, so dangerously charming, so suavely insincere, and his creation in the Potions lab was a frankly terrifying prospect. For all Lucius was playing the perfect host, there could be no doubt that he knew why they were there, if perhaps not who they were, and that he and Severus would be executing something fiendish in the end. The pair shuddered at the shared thought, and Lucius noticed.

'Ah, I see you shiver with...' he paused, dragging out the silence until Sirius was practically leaning forward to catch the end of the sentence. 'Anticipation,' Lucius finished, with a crooked smile. He shrugged as Sirius relaxed, disgruntled. 'But, maybe the rain is really to blame.' He nodded suddenly at a small, slight figure who had been, for the last few minutes, talking in low, unintelligible tones to Severus. 'So, we'll remove the cause.' All at once, Lucius turned on his heel and strode towards the door, the crowd of Slytherins parting for him as he headed towards the door of the common room and the Potions labs beyond it. Four pairs of eyes watched him leave; Remus', Sirius', Severus' and those of the shadowy figure lurking in the latter's shadows. Just as Lucius reached the exit, however, he turned back, still smiling crookedly.

'Just not the symptom.'