Unofficial Portkey Archive

Title: Harry Potter's Day Off

Author: Arachne

Author's notes: This is it! Last chapter! Thank you to all who took the time to review. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. :-)

EPILOGUE

Dazed, dishevelled and utterly defeated, Severus Snape clutched his wand and limped aimlessly down the cobblestoned road that led from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade, his silhouette stretched out before him in the twilight. He had been so close. So close ...

Lost in both thought and destination, he walked unseeingly through a cloud of midges, the bloodthirsty and microscopically small mosquito-like flies commonly known as the scourge of Scotland. Snape spat the tiny black insects out of his mouth as he frantically flung out his left arm to chase the swarm away. Suddenly, a bright purple, triple-decker bus materialised on the road beside him, its spotty, uniformed conductor peering down at him curiously.

"Oi! Professor Snape! Wot choo doin'?" Stan Shunpike's coarse Cockney accent cut into the Banishing Charm Snape hastily muttered to disperse the midges. He gave the young conductor a withering glare. "'Choo get in'er scrap?"

Snape kept walking as the Knight Bus crawled alongside him.

"'Don' 'choo wan'er lift?"

Dragging his injured foot behind him, Snape took a few more steps then finally stopped. Beside him, the Knight Bus followed suit. He took a deep breath, then turned towards the entrance to the bus, where Stan Shunpike gestured at him eagerly. Trying to muster what remaining dignity he had left, Snape straightened his robes and slowly climbed aboard.

The passengers were silent with horror and shock as they watched Hogwarts's esteemed Potions Master, muddied and bloodied, limp down the aisle to the only available armchair. It was next to a doughy-looking, myopic young witch, whom Snape was disturbed to note bore a close resemblance to Sybil Trelawney. He sat stiffly in the chair beside her, staring straight ahead as if trying to block the entire experience from his mind. She looked up at him and rubbed her nose, pushing her enormous milk-bottle glasses further up on her face.

"I'll bet you never smelt the Knight Bus before."

Snape's eyes drifted over to her vacantly. A shade too young for a first year, he no doubt would be seeing her pudgy, pasty face skulking around Hogwarts in the coming academic year (she would be Sorted into Hufflepuff; of this, he was quite certain)--assuming he still held his job by then.

"Jelly Slug?" The young witch held up a brightly-coloured package as he continued to stare at her silently, contempt rolling off him in thick waves. She popped one in her mouth and held another out to him. "They've been in my pocket. They're really warm and squidgy."

He plucked the offending sweet from her hand and hurled it down the length of the Knight Bus. Nonplussed, the little witch rubbed her nose with the back of her hand again, filling the bus with the distinct sound of boogers being violently snorted back up her nostrils.

Snape shuddered and winced, turning his head across the aisle, where a skinny little wizard with a freckled face looked back at him meekly. On the young boy's lap was a souvenir Quidditch pennant from that afternoon's Puddlemere-Cannons match, on which the he had scrawled SAVE HARRY! in large block letters. Snape glared at him malevolently, his eyes alight with fury, then turned to face the front of the bus. It jerked forward noisily as a large tree jumped out of its way, and continued on towards Dufftown.