How I Spent My Spring Holidays, By Prof. Severus Snape

Chapter Six: His Favourite Lane

"Why Cleethorpes?" I hear you ask. Why, indeed. Perhaps I merely welcomed the chance to cruise over the Peaks of Derbyshire with the wind in my hair, rocked by the steady undulations of a dragon's flapping wings. And surely the southern counties have nothing to compare to the wild and untamed beauty of the Peaks. Nature and culture in harmony, you see. Wildness and artifice, and all in the one perfect county! (And, by the way, that was not plagiarism. That was homage. The difference is subtle, but highly important to all those who publish their narratives on the Muggle ineptnet.)

Still, it is not the object of this work to give a description of Derybyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which my route thither (or even hither) lay. (Once again, that last sentence was strictly homage.) Navigating by the grim, industrial waterways of the Trent and Humber, I journeyed for nearly three hours until I reached the garish seaside towns of Grimsby and Cleethropes. I flew with supreme disinterest over the splendours of the tacky folk crafts contained in Waltham Windmill and the garden of earthly delights that is Pleasure Island. These attractions held no temptation for me. Nor did I feel swayed to direct the Welsh Green towards the lakeside cornucopia of flora that is the Cleethorpes Fuchsia Fantasy. Kings Road was my chosen destination, and only one establishment along that boring Muggle carriageway was my aim.

I landed the dragon in a small car park near the rear entrance. A faded sign announced that adult shoe hire was sixty pence. I wondered, briefly, how tedious it would be to be unable to transfigure your own footwear. I have never owned more than one pair of shoes in my life, because it is such a simple thing to expand them, repair them, even change their style or colour by means of the most basic spells. Poor, dim-witted Muggles must surely have boot boxes full of shoes that they hardly ever wear.

The dragon blew a weak puff of smoke and laid its head on the bitumen. The beast was quite exhausted but, thankfully, also still completely under my control. I contemplated transforming it into a mini-cab until my business inside was done, and drew Ravenclaw's wand from my pocket for that purpose.

"Got yeh!" a voice behind me exclaimed. The wand was ripped from my hand while a vice-like grip simultaneously encircled my waist, forcing the wind from my lungs as I was wrenched three feet off the ground.

"Gerroff!" I choked.

"Only if yeh behave yerself," the voice answered. I dropped to the ground, but on turning noticed two highly improbable things. Firstly, a pink parasol was floating in mid-air and poking me in the ribs. Secondly, on the dark asphalt behind me stood two of the most enormous bowling shoes I had ever seen, entirely disconnected from anything that looked like legs.

Putting two and two together, I said calmly, "Good afternoon, Hagrid."

The swish of a voluminous Invisibility Cloak was followed by the sudden appearance of a half-giant. "Yeh could see me?" he asked, clearly puzzled.

"Your shoes and your wand," I replied crisply. "Now if you would be so good as to return my wand, I have an appointment -"

Hagrid's huge body began to quake with an insolent laugh. "Not on yer nelly! Yeh're me prisoner, Snape, until Dumb - er, that is - till s-someone tells me otherwise."

"You should at least let me hide the dragon," I reasoned. "This place is crawling with Muggles. They will surely notice."

Hagrid gazed at Mopsy the Welsh Green with unalloyed love. "A Taffy!" he cooed, overjoyed. "Yeh're far from home, me little beauty." He made a motion to approach the beast but then, remembering that he was supposed to be guarding me, poked me with the umbrella again. "She's fairly done in," Hagrid said crossly. "What've yeh bin doin' ter her, yeh cruel git?"

"Flying her," I said with pride. Hagrid's hirsute jaw fell open.

"Flyin' a dragon," he gasped. "Crikey, how I'd love ter fly a dragon."

"Be my guest," I suggested silkily. "The beast is currently under my command. Return my wand, and I can instruct it to take you wherever you desire."

For a moment Hagrid appeared torn. Then his beetle black eyes sparked with indignation. "I can't fly her now!" he bellowed. "She's completely knackered - thanks ter yeh - the strain'd kill her." His great shaggy head inclined towards the beast and he said soothingly, "Jus' wait here a minute, pretty girl. I'll take this old scumbag inside and come straigh' back ter yeh. I'll bring yeh a nice bucket o' tripe, an' a stoat sandwich too."

Then Hagrid marched me into the building at the point of his wand. We passed a long counter behind which dozens and dozens of the ugliest shoes I have ever seen had been placed on display. A Muggle family was transacting shoe hire there, and cowered in alarm when Hagrid lumbered past. The staff behind the counter seemed unconcerned. Why should they be? Hagrid was a habitué of Cleethropes Ten Pin Bowling and had been for decades.

It came as no surprise to me when we turned left at the end of the counter and proceeded in the direction of lane twelve. This had been the favourite lane of Albus Dumbledore, a place where he would frequently come to escape the weighty pressures of Supreme Mugwumpdom by boisterously knocking over skittles. I was also not overly surprised to see some of Dumbledore's cronies sitting in the lime green plastic chairs at the end of the lane. Apparently Alastor Moody, Hagrid and Aberforth Dumbledore had gathered to commemorate their fallen comrade by bowling a few frames in his honour. I must confess to being slightly surprised by the white borzoi hound that was standing next to Aberforth, since the animal's angular muzzle seemed to be drinking from a half-pint of lager that had been placed on the floor for it. But Aberforth was eccentric (to put it mildly) bordering on barking (to put it truthfully), and if he chose to feed a dog beer then that was nothing out of the ordinary.

However, the one thing that surprised me mightily was that a fourth wizard was taking aim at the pins. Tall and thin, he had to stoop low to release the ball, but did so with a vigour that belied his great age. Yet as he followed through I noticed the blackened, burnt flesh of his left hand, and thought I could detect a stiffness in the way he straightened up.

He did not acknowledge my arrival until the last pin had fallen, then turned and said, "Welcome Severus. Did you come willingly?" A pinging noise on a small televisum screen near the lime green chairs confirmed that Albus Dumbledore had just bowled a strike.

I suppressed my strong instinct to ask him what business he had being alive and replied, "I came according to your instructions. Plus, you might recollect that you made an unspecified threat of punishment should I choose to stay away." Dumbledore's moustache quivered with mirth, something that it often did when I was addressing him in a serious manner. It was a habit which annoyed me greatly, yet I continued to speak in an even tone, "But I must confess that I was motivated to seek you out here, far more by curiosity than by fear. I am no coward."

"Of course you aren't," Dumbledore agreed, perhaps a little too quickly. "And yes, I can imagine my presence must inspire all sorts of questions. Now is not the time to answer them." His bright blue eyes flashed fiercely and I realised he was not in the mood to offer explanations for his utter lack of morbidity. "You brought the wand?" he asked.

By way of an answer, Hagrid approached and held the unicorn horn wand out reverently. "Excellent," Dumbledore said. "Ravenclaw always insisted on courtly manners - I assume I was correct in guessing her 'magic word'."

"Then why did you not take the wand yourself?" I asked. "You were in the cave - why leave the wand there? Why, for that matter, have you been sending Potter on a fool's errand to retrieve it?"

"What makes you think we should tell you?" Moody asked gruffly, his magical eye glaring at me. "If we've got a plan, what makes you think we'd be telling Voldemort's spy?"

Dumbledore waved for Moody to be silent. "You know as well as I do, Severus, that your appearance in that cave was entirely serendipitous. When I learnt that you had taken Sirius' motorcycle for a little spin - no, don't look affronted, I have agents everywhere - I checked the Muggle news for tales of odd doings. I soon found you." He tapped the televisum screen with his wand, and it began to replay a film of me, driving the small red and yellow convertible around the A41 roundabout. "It is wonderful," Dumbledore observed, "how the theft of a simple Noddy car by a green faced man can capture the public's imagination." how the theft of a simple Noddy car by a green faced man can capture the public's imagination."

He took two steps to the machine that dispensed bowling balls, and swirled his wand above it in an intricate maneuver. "I then realised that your ramblings were leading you in the direction of Lizard Hill. You are correct, Harry had also been sent there. But he was sent on no fool's errand - indeed it was my intention (communicated through Alastor - I haven't seen Harry for some months now) that Harry be the sole person to retrieve Ravenclaw's wand. I hoped he would have a chance to talk with her ghost, to glean some of her wisdom, and to learn from her that hubris is no good thing."

Two opalescent, violet bowling balls came out of the machine. The way that they glowed indicated that these were obviously not of Muggle manufacture. "I Apparated to the tomb to check how far up Lizard Hill you intended to venture. When it became obvious that you had no wand, I could hardly send you into a dragon's cave without one. So I used a Time-Turner to return to the cave three hours beforehand, and wrote my instructions on the wall. I am glad to see you followed them."

Dumbledore tapped each of the purple bowling balls just once. They melted away, revealing a small golden cup with two finely wrought handles on the left, and a gigantic coiled snake, sleeping soundly, on the right. "Since you are in such an obedient mood, Severus," Dumbledore continued, his voice low but severe, "I will ask you to bend to my will and do me one more vital service."

TO BE CONTINUED...