Slightly Off-Kilter 2 (or What's With the Rubber Duck?)

"Severus! Come!" Albus Dumbledore raced past Severus Snape, his robes billowing. Severus blinked in surprise but responded to the urgency in Dumbledore's tone. He abandoned his tea and buttered bread at Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, leaving behind a tossed down handful of knuts and sickles.

"What is it?" Severus asked as he paced next to the older man.

"Moody and Keillor have brought in Gayle."

"Brought her in? For what? We know she's a spy!" protested the younger man in outrage.

Dumbledore barrelled through the opening in Diagon Alley just as it was opening up, barely missing bashing his head on the moving stonework. "According to Alastor, they found out that Death Eaters caught her. They've been looking for her since late yesterday evening"

Severus screeched to a halt next to the older wizard as Dumbledore stopped next to the large fireplace in The Leaky Cauldron, the inn that served as the bridge between Muggle and Magical London. "She's my fiancee and no one's bothered to tell me that she'd been taken?" he demanded irately.

"Take it up with Alastor, Severus," Dumbledore panted slightly. He stepped into the fireplace, tossed some powder down and said clearly, "Saint Mungo's Hospital." After swallowing hard, for only those with severe injuries of all sorts wound up in St. Mungo's, Severus did the same.

"I didn't do it and you can't prove it. I didn't do it and you can't prove it. I didn't do it and you can't prove it. I didn't do it and you can't prove it."

To say the speech was repetitive was an understatement. That it was getting on everyone's nerves was a given.

"How long has she been like this?" asked Severus, sitting in the chair next to the bed where Gayle Hammersmith, his fiancee and fellow former spy was now forceably restrained. He placed his long-fingered hand over her twitching one in a bid to offer comfort but she only squealed and began muttering her chant louder.

Alastor Moody, arguably one of the best Aurors the Ministry had, shrugged fatalistically. "At least since we found her a couple hours ago. It took us twenty minutes to get her calm enough to transport. I never knew that crazy people were immune to mobile charms."

"She's not crazy!" Severus ground out, leaping to his feet to confront the wily Auror.

"What do you call that, Snape?" growled Moody, gesturing to the blank faced, unblinking figure. "Like it or not, they tortured her until her mind broke. I can't help it if it's the truth."

Severus took a threatening step toward the other man but Dumbledore moved between them. "Regardless, they thought she knew something which means others will be targeted. You had best warn other Aurors and informants, Alastor."

"Already did that. The only one we haven't been able to get to at the moment is Frank Longbottom. He took his wife and kid to some cottage up north. I sent one of the flunkies to warn Frank. That should handle the matter." Moody glanced at Snape, who was still glaring hatefully at him. "I suggest, Snape, that you do more than look at me like you'd like to hex me and think about what's gonna happen to her. If she doesn't regain her mental balance back, she's gonna be stuck in this place for a very long time."

Severus flopped back down in the chair and Dumbledore placed a comforting hand on his shoulder as the young wizard stared morosely at what was supposed to be the person who would make him a happy man.

He was going to kill her and that was the end of it. He didn't care what it took or how much trouble he was going to get into for it, he was going to kill her and enjoy every damned minute of it.

"GAYLE!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. Several students jumped in their seats, giving him wide-eyed and disbelieving looks. Professor Severus Snape had gone stark raving mad lately.

Gayle Hammersmith poked her head out from his office and frowned at him. "I'm not deaf, Professor Snape, there's no need to shout," she informed him sternly. "What do you want?"

"What. Is. This?" Severus pointed at a small object sitting on his desk at the front of the classroom.

"A rubber duck." Gayle gave up all pretence at maintaining professionalism when he asked such an obvious and stupid question.

"I know its a rubber duck." A few students giggled and he glared around the room. "Do I need to deduct points from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?" he threatened. The class went dead silent and students began stirring their potions vigorously. He turned his attention back to the woman glaring at him from her position in his office doorway. "What is a rubber duck doing on my desk?"

"Waiting for you to take a bath, I suppose," Gayle told him with a shrug and disappeared back into his office.

Severus turned to the class, who was once again watching him with wide-eyes and disbelief. "None of you will pass this class if you say one word about the murder I'm about to commit. Is that understood?" Heads bobbed in terror. "Glad I can convince someone around here I'm to be taken seriously," he growled as he stalked into his office.

Gayle's brown head was bent over a very large and very old scroll of parchment. "These Sumerians were geniuses. So were the Egyptians, for that matter, recording this stuff centuries later. And we say Muggles are pretty much useless when it comes to...HEY!" Gayle made a grab for the scroll but missed. Severus held it up over his head where she couldn't reach it.

Not from her lack of trying, but even standing on her tippy-toes she couldn't reach the scroll that was dangling from the tall, lanky wizard's fingers. She kicked him in the shins but it was to no avail. He continued to stare stonily down at her from his great height, fluttering the old papyrus at her mockingly.

She stomped her foot in frustration. "Give it to me," she demanded.

"I want an explanation for the rubber duck. I know I didn't put it there and I'm fairly certain the students wouldn't if their lives depended on it." Severus arched an eyebrow as Gayle blew a stray strand of dark brown hair out of her eyes.

"It's the thirteenth," she grumbled.

"A sure sign that your sanity has returned is the fact that you can now read and comprehend a calendar," sneered Severus. "Now about the duck?"

Gayle kicked him again, this time getting a wince in reaction. "You promised me on the thirteenth of November that you would suffer the most humiliating thing I could think of if you didn't get the job done. Well, the job's not done, its the thirteenth of November and you and Mr. Duck will be on intimate terms until the job *is* done. So THERE!" she ended on a shout. "Give me the damned paper!"

Severus merely stared down at her, frowning. She glared back. "Do you need another draught of my improved sanity potion, Gayle?" he asked in concern.

She leaned over and bit his other arm. When his raised arm automatically dropped to cover the wound, she snatched the papyrus and made a break for the door. She sped down the aisle of startled students and smoking cauldrons in a desperate bid to make it to the classroom door before Severus recovered from the shock of being bitten hard by his girlfriend.

She almost made it. Her howl of pain when the door slammed on her fingers eerily echoed the howl of pain Severus had emitted when she'd bitten him.

"Class dismissed!" he roared from the door of his office. Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws grabbed their books and ingredients, leaving their smoking cauldrons behind, and cleared the classroom in less than three minutes.

The potions master grabbed the duck by its neck and latched onto Gayle's arm as he stalked by her. The door was once again ajar because of the fleeing students. Gayle had been magically stuck to the floor during their exodus. Magically unstuck and in the clutches of the man she'd been trying to get into *her* clutches during both her sane and insane moments, Gayle found herself being dragged literally up the stairs, through the Fat Friar and Nearly Headless Nick (which was a creepy sensation she'd rather not experience again) and eventually to the large stone statue that was the guardian of the headmaster's office and sanctuary.

Severus stood there for several very long seconds before snapping irately, "Chocolate Mousse."

It was in that moment that Gayle realized she probably should have remembered that she hadn't made that deal with Severus himself, but rather with Dumbledore. There was going to be hell to pay and it was going to be so much fun to pay it.

She grinned. And here she'd thought today was going to be rather mundane before she looked at the calendar this morning.