Overheard at the Hogwarts Association of Romantic Bisexuals and Lesbians

Reports of Voldemort-sympathizers among the HARBL prompted the Hogwarts faculty to send an observer to their most recent meeting. Minerva was the logical choice, but stubborn as ever, she insisted she liked a good hard pounding as well as the next slag; and Hagrid declined this opportunity to acknowledge his true self. I drew short straw.

With my drab attire and poorly coiffed hair, there was little chance I could pass myself off as bisexual — though, if there were no other way, I might have invited young Weasley along; the boy would provide believable cover. But there was another way. I swallowed a polymorph draught and soon became the dentists’ daughter: Granger.

I set out for the HARBL assembly, sharing my most simpering smile with each passing classmate. How difficult was it to feign the malapert’s identity? Not difficult at all. I had borrowed the library’s dustiest tome and now hugged it to my apricot-sized breast, spouting inane trifles like, “There’s little truth Rabastan Lestrange waterboarded Frank and Alice Longbottom; he himself admitted to using the cruciatus curse!” Blah, blah, blah. I needn’t have bothered; by custom, everyone ignores the impudent child.

Mere feet from the oaken door, I espied Granger herself heading for the meeting, her face a mask of lusty purpose. Who knew! And now, I had to think quickly, for fast approaching was Edvardus Moot, the transsexual Hufflepuff Chaser.

“You!” I cried out, eager to get in the first “You!”

“You!” quoth the real Granger.

Came my riposte, “The warp of your cardigan has come loose,” and when she looked down, I struck her with my ebony wand, then hustled her into a vacant broomstick closet. After applying a hasty Immobulus spell to the vain little oaf, I hastened to the meeting.

My first shock came at the sight of an all too familiar face.

“Minerva!” said I.

“Miss Granger,” Minerva said with a nostril-flaring sniff! “We have become most familiar, haven’t we?”

Remembering myself, or more properly, my changed form, and not wishing to become any more familiar with the old witch, I replied, “Sorry, Professor McGonagall. I was merely pleased to find you here.”

Minerva eyed me in typical pop-eyed fashion. “In seventeen years, I have yet to miss a Chapter Meeting. Now, my dear: Angelina, Alicia, and I were dissecting the nature versus nurture argument, and Alicia shared a most fascinating quotation with the group. Alicia, would you care to repeat yourself for the tardy Miss Granger’s benefit?”

“This is from the memoir of the poet Robert Graves,” said the sultry Spinnet. She produced a three-by-five card inscribed with her cuneiform script and declaimed thus:

In English preparatory and public schools romance in necessarily homosexual. The opposite sex is despised and treated as something obscene. Many boys never recover from this perversion. For every one born homosexual, at least ten permanent pseudo-homosexuals are made by the public school system: nine of these ten as honourably chaste and sentimental as I was.

Minerva stared down her considerable nose at me. “What say you to that, girl?”

“I’d say that if Alicia prepared half as well for my — for Professor Snape’s Potions class, likely she would not be on academic probation!”

Alicia’s mouth formed a roundish O. Angelina Johnson snickered.

“Professor Snape. Now there’s a confirmed pseudo-homosexual.”

“How do you mean?” said I, striving without success to keep the venom from my lips.

“The way he cavorts with that delicate blond — Malfoy. Yet I have it on the highest authority that Professor Snape has never once consummated the affair. It’s all for show, an artifice to discourage the attentions of Pansy Parkinson. If Pansy knew the man’s true colors, she’d be on him like a remora on a bull shark.”

Imagine my astonishment! Fortunately, Minerva came to my defense.

“Angelina! I will not let you sully the Hogwarts Association of Romantic Bisexuals and Lesbians with such scurrilous gossip. You will not say another word. Severus would never conduct an improper relationship with a student. You would more likely find Professor Dumbledore rimming Parvati Patil.”

A dreamy expression possessed Minerva, and for an instant, she seemed a much younger woman. After a long silence broken only by Minerva’s sighs, Angelina laid a hand on her withered wrist and shook her gently.

“So, you’re saying Professor Snape is a real homosexual?”

She became stern Minerva McGonagall once again. “Gracious, no. Severus is all man. When he was a young Slytherin, I rode him like a Shire horse.”

I found myself — me, Severus Snape, deft master of my own tongue — spluttering, “But, but, how could that be?”

“In my younger days, I was a considerable beauty –”

She was cut short by my coughing fit.

“A handsome woman, by all accounts, desired by men and women alike — Hermione, dear, treat yourself to a glass of sherry before you have apoplexy.”

“Tell us more, Professor!” This from Cho Chang, heretofore silent in one of the room’s darker corners.

“No, please don’t.” I had no desire to hear Minerva’s boasts at my expense! But my protest fell on deaf ears.

“Very well,” Minerva said. “I admit it; in those days, I had few suitors of either sex. And I was horribly jealous of Severus and that girl of his, Pontinella Crow. Outside of the classroom, the two treated me with scarcely hidden scorn. McAbominable, they called me — such cheek! So I determined to slake my thirst on both of them.”

A prescient horror chilled my tongue. “But . . . how?”

“Child, really. What good is it being a Master of Transfiguration if one doesn’t exercise one’s art now and then? First I came to Pontinella looking like Severus, then I came to Severus looking like Pontinella.”

“You said the professors don’t have illicit relationships with –”

“I said Severus would not carry on with a student. The man is such a prig. Why, he would only perform in the missionary position. I had to cast Immobulus on him just so I could get on top.”

I fled from the room, hungry for fresh air, desperate to spew sherry on the ramparts. On my way out, I heard Minerva’s cackling words, “Dear me. The girl is not herself.”

***

And they wonder why I’m so bitter.

S.