Other Ends

OTHER ENDS 
by Silverfish ~:

I.

"I don't know why you don't believe me," Daniel said, as he hovered over the small machine, measuring the contents carefully. "It's not the same and we're going to resolve this issue once and for all."

Snape paced his potions office, looking warily in the vicinity of the classroom and the outside door for any signs of life. So far, they had been able to enjoy a nice ten minutes of peace, even if a good portion of that time had been spent trying to press the usual point that the coffee at Hogwarts was just as good as the coffee Daniel drank in London. At this point, the argument no longer mattered. He was risking an awful lot of trouble for Daniel's sake, possibly even the removal of his employment if anyone in Hogwarts found out he, Severus Snape, was the one who had not only been the one to purchase the contraption, he was also illegally harboring it within a locked cabinet in his office.

A hiss of steam set him even further on edge. "Can't that thing work any quieter?" Snape growled at Daniel.

Daniel gave him a bemused expression. "For God's sake, Sev, it's just a low end coffee maker. Relax."

"What do you mean by 'low end'?" Snape said, immediately insulted. "I'll have you know that's a Proctor Silex 2001 model, and it comes with a WARRANTY and a TIMER."

Daniel ignored the outburst and held the mug of coffee to his lips, his navy eyes closed in supreme bliss as he gently sipped at it. Without asking, he poured Snape a likewise helping of the brew, which didn't smell all that pleasant to his companion, and urged him to drink it. "You will definitely admit that it's nothing like what you're used to," Daniel said in full confidence.

Snape paused, the black opaque liquid wholly unappealing. He closed his eyes and took a long sip. He gagged and sputtered after he had, the cup of coffee falling messily onto the floor of his potions office, the stain seeping into the already moss laden wood as though it was being consumed. "It's disgusting!" he shouted at Daniel. He wiped at his tongue with the sleeve of his black robe, trying desperately to rid it of the poisonous, bitter taste. "It's like drinking fermented brisbane sap that's had numerous things die in it!"

"I know," Daniel replied, closing his eyes in absolute bliss. "Isn't it fabulous?"

Snape was leaned against his desk, clutching the edge and wondering if he was going to be sick. "You're mad," he said to Daniel.

He heard the creak of his office door open, and in a panic Snape grabbed the still bubbling coffee maker in an attempt to hide it in his locked cupboard again, but he'd forgotten about the battery he'd used to power the contraption up. The hot coffee sloshed onto his arm, and he just managed to save it from dropping to the floor by depositing it onto the surface of his desk, where it messily ruined many of the papers he was marking. A perversely sadistic part of him instantly hoped that one of them was Harry Potter's.

Lupin was standing in the doorway, along with his long time friend Sirius Black, who for once wasn't in the form of a large black dog, but was instead his usual tall, imposing suspicious self. Sirius instantly honed in on the coffee maker, his black brows frowning.

"Is that a Proctor Silex 2001?" he asked.

"It's Daniel's," Snape said, instantly.

Sirius rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "My God, I haven't had a Muggle coffee in ages! I used to have this every morning when I was in their world. Check this out, Remus, it has a *timer*!" He gave Daniel a slightly imploring look and Daniel handed Sirius the fallen mug. Sirius poured himself a generous helping, and Snape couldn't help but gag again as he watched him actually drinking and *enjoying* that utterly disgusting brew.

Daniel quickly ran back into his classroom, and then reentered Snape's office with a large bottle in his hand. "At this time of day, it's best to have the Irish method," he said, and topped off his coffee with an amber liquid Snape had long since learned was whiskey. He poured some into his own cup and shook his head. "I'm not looking forward to my sixth year class this afternoon, I can tell you. That poor Dean Chalmers kid came up to my desk after school yesterday asking me how to best impress a girl. I warned him that I'd avoided the subject completely myself."

Sirius wasn't entirely happy, even if he was drinking Daniel's coffee. He cast a knowing glance at Snape and sipped at the steaming hot, bitter brew. "You have a real addiction to Muggle contraptions," Sirius said to Daniel, but he kept his gaze on Snape. "You realize of course that I will have to confiscate this machine before it does any damage. Severus, as a Wizard you should know better than to harbour such a thing. It's making coffee now, but who knows what kinds of things it will be distilling by the end of the day."

"I can give it a few ideas," Daniel said, and gently clinked his now empty bottle of whiskey against the coffee machine's carafe.

The fact that Snape looked about ready to kill him didn't bother Sirius Black in the least, and he ignored the pickled centinewt on the top shelf, which pressed its eyes against its jar and stuck out both of its tongues at him. Remus was still looking over the coffee maker, transfixed by the red blinking 12:00. "Amazing," he said to it.

Snape settled behind his desk, shrinking a little within this mixed company of past enemies and...well he wasn't going to come right out and say what Daniel *was* to him, not even in his thoughts. He couldn't help but feel cruelly misjudged, however, and this was an affliction of Sirius Black's suspicious personality mixed with Snape's own past experience and paranoia considering the man. He'd nearly killed him once, after all, with that James Potter's help, and even now he couldn't figure why Remus remained such a close friend with him. Sirius and James had exploited the monstrous side of Remus Lupin for their own perverse amusement--something which Snape was sure a real friend wasn't supposed to do.

"I think you're being way too hard on him," Remus asserted, and Sirius frowned. "You know, this might be an interesting thing to watch. I'm just as curious as Daniel to see what it turns into here."

"I'll keep it under lock and key," Snape said, quickly. He narrowed small black eyes at Sirius. "I imagine you have come here not for Muggle beverages, but on some important development concerning the war?"

Sirius raised a black brow. He sighed and took another gulp of coffee, wincing just a little at the addition of whiskey, which Daniel had been generous with. "There's been two Muggle murders which Dumbledore feels may be related to Aristotle Crowley."

Snape felt his face go pale at this news. Daniel didn't seem to be listening at all, and was now busy tapping the side of centinewt's jar, making the creature spin in happy circles over the attention.

"Someone broke into a war museum in Tokyo, Japan," Sirius continued. "Two of the guards on duty were killed, though the Muggle doctors were at a loss as to how. I know well enough, from the description in the Muggle news, their hair had turned white, and their eyes were wide open as though they'd had a terrible shock. The heart had simply stopped, but there is no evidence of any heart disease in either of the two guards. It has all the classic symptoms of death by Adevra Kedavra."

There was a collective shudder by the wizards in the room, with only Daniel unaffected by this news. He was busy with the centinewt, which performed tricks for him as he ran his finger along the surface of its glass home.

"None of the security alarms went off, which is easy enough for even a first year student to pull off. The only thing stolen was a small model of a regulation ten bomb, not the nuclear variety from what I understand, but just the shell of the usual explosive type, which can be just as dangerous in the wrong hands, I imagine. The Muggles are baffled as to why this was so important that two men had to die for it--It's made of something called plastic, and as a replica and not the real thing it has no use whatsoever. I'm not entirely sure of this surmising." Sirius stroked his chin in thought, black brows coming together. "There was one other odd thing," he said. "The fish had died."

Daniel paused in mid tap on the centinewt's jar.

"They had an artificial pond in the center of the main lobby, full of koi. They were all belly up when the men were found."

"Very strange," Remus agreed.

Snape said nothing. He kept his overt attention away from Daniel, but observed him through his periphery, noting well that Daniel had grabbed his large bottle of amber whiskey and was now topping off his coffee mug contents with it. From the way he had gulped the last one down, he would be lucky if he even had a drop of his muddy brew inside of the mug. Without a word, Daniel left Snape's office and entered his classroom, allowing in a shaft of horrible, piercing white light to temporarily illuminate Snape's room before the door closed and calm darkness took it back again.

"He seems a little upset, don't you think?" Remus observed.

"Yes," Sirius replied, his voice as dark as his appearance. "I wonder why."

***
The day was not good, not at all, not in any form of happiness or calm or peace or even pleasant argument. This was fast turning into a day of terrible proportions, and no amount of bitter Muggle beverages would cure it. Knowing this, Daniel rested his head in his hands while his sixth year students were busy reading their latest assignment 'Beyond The Formaldehyde Curtain' to better understand how to write a proper English essay, or at least become good taxidermists.

Explosives and dead fish. This was not a good portent. He debated going to Dumbledore with it, but then wondered if even people in the wizard world could be considered mad with the kind of information Daniel held inside of himself. He imagined they could, they did have a prison here, didn't they? One where monstrous black wraiths painstakingly sucked the soul from a person.

"Mr. Deschamps?"

He looked up from his miserable ponderance to see Dean Chalmers looking down at him with deep concern. He was a skinny kid, with a bit of acne near his ears, and messy auburn hair that looked as though he'd walked through a huge, static charge. His green eyes were large and right now a little fearful.

"What is it?" Daniel asked.

"I was wondering," Dean Chalmers began. He looked behind him to ensure none of the other students could overhear what he had to say. He whispered to Daniel, "I have a question about girls."

Daniel groaned. Of all the damn things he didn't need right now, this was tops on the list. He pulled open a drawer on his desk and took out yet another, this time full, bottle of whiskey, and thumped it onto the surface of his desk, along with the coffee mug from that morning. Without pause, he twisted open the cap and poured himself an entire mug of whiskey. He recapped the bottle and thought about putting it back in the drawer, only to reconsider and then place it on the surface of his desk again. He gave Dean Chalmers a pained look, and in exactly two seconds downed the entire contents of his mug before speaking to him again.

"What do you need to know?" Daniel asked.

"I was w-wondering," Dean Chalmers continued, still whispering, "what my parents might think of a girl...If I took her to m-meet them."

Daniel sighed, and balanced his chin in his palm. "Unlike my parents, I'd say they'd be infinitely relieved," he said. He tapped his chin as though thinking of something. "She is a *girl* girl, right? Not a...you know...not quite a girl one?"

Dean Chalmers gave Daniel a blank expression. "I'm pretty sure she's all girl," he said. He frowned, as though a seed of doubt had been planted.

"You'd better make sure," Daniel said in all seriousness. "Granted, the packaging is what's important most of all, I should think, especially at your age." He patted Dean Chalmers on the shoulder, the young man looking an awful lot more worried than when he'd gone to Daniel for advice in the first place. "I'm sure everything will work out just fine."

***
Minerva McGonagall was beside herself with rage, her speech full of Gaelic curses and bloodthirsty descriptions of what she'd like to see done to Daniel Deschamps before he was, wholly and completely, sacked from Hogwarts forever. Sirius Black was seated beside Dumbledore's desk, a concentrated appeal given from his end in support of McGonagall's wishes.

"He actually told Dean Chalmers to 'check and make sure' Victorianna Briton was a girl! You do not want to know what he did to actually do such a stupid thing, but I will tell you it involved a rather unnecessary 'cop of a feel' which has now resulted in Dean Chalmers missing his hands and possibly spending the next two months in the infirmary while they grow back. I can't blame poor Victorianna, I'd have done worse myself!" McGonagall's mouth was a thin line of fury that was so tight it would have split atoms, and quite possibly was.

"His drinking habits have gotten far out of control," Sirius added. "I'd warned you before that he was a drunkard, and not a good influence on the students here at Hogwarts."

Dumbledore was gruff at this accusation. "Sirius, I do believe you were once being hunted down for murder, and I did not see any reason to doubt your innocence then, as I do not doubt Mr. Deschamps now. He may have exercised a little poor judgment, but he has hardly done anything to warrant firing. As for his drinking habits, well, to be honest I had tried to find other English teachers in our wizard world, but their substance abuses seemed to include much worse things than the occasional indulgence of amber Muggle alcohol." Dumbledore shook his head at this odd fact. "I half wonder if that Shakespeare fellow was involved in the Dark Arts."

Sirius felt his cheeks redden a little at this, but he wasn't about to see any kind of comparison between that incompetent man and himself. "Headmaster, he is a danger to himself and the students here, especially during these unstable times. With He Who Must Not Be Named gathering his forces so closely to Hogwarts, perhaps he should be sent back to his Muggle world for better protection? We don't have much need of his so-called 'expertise', it certainly hasn't given us Aristotle Crowley, it's been months and he's still out of our grasp."

Dumbledore nodded his assent at this, his expression one of worry. His concerned teapot poured a cup for him and toddled back off of his desk to rest on the tea trolley beside him. Dumbledore took the hot, sweet smelling brew with a gentle 'thank you'.

"Sirius, Minerva," Dumbledore said to both of them, "you may not feel all that disposed towards Mr. Deschamps' personality, and I admit he has made a few foolish choices while he's been here. But I am not about to fire him, nor deny the benefit of his Muggle form of specialization. We all know that Aristotle Crowley uses bomb making equipment of Muggle origin, and he's already infiltrated our school once. I suspect he will try again, and Mr. Deschamps will prove to be indispensable in ridding us of his threat. Besides," Dumbledore took a long sip of his tea, "he seems to have made a very genuine friendship with Professor Snape, a rare thing to be sure. I am not so cruel to wrench from our Potions master the one person who has managed to breech Snape's stubborn hold on his own company."

Sirius shrank a little at this, for certainly Dumbledore was saying that such a cruel act was weighing on Sirius' own shoulders with his request that Daniel be removed. Sirius coughed and tried to argue further. "There's a lot about him we don't know..."

"Ah," Dumbledore said, a mischievous glint in his eye, "I suspect you know more than most, Sirius Black. As does, I agree, Mr. Deschamps when it comes to our Death Eater wizard Aristotle Crowley, though in what capacity is yet to be revealed." Dumbledore sat back comfortably in his seat, his tea balanced on his chest. "I, for one, fully intend to enjoy this mystery's unraveling."

Twinkling eyes dismissed both Sirius and Minerva, neither of whom were fully convinced of the rightness of their headmaster's decision. The door to Dumbledore's office closed gently, and he was left alone with his sympathetic teapot and dozing portraits.