1. Chapter 1 by SnapeLives
Gawd, that Aberforth! Why does he get Hagrid into these stupid Sunday wizard's poker games? He knows Hagrid always loses and then drinks himself into a stupor over it! And that leaves me to muck out the poo on Monday mornings!
–Wingardium leviosa!†shouted Mary, as she swished and flicked her wand.
Another load of Thestral apples fell into her cart. Well, at least I've got some good use for this stinky stuff, she thought. Her mind went all ga-ga thinking about how nice her garden would grow with these super-charged droppings.
The only other thing that could drive her to distraction, as much as plants shooting up towards the heavens because they slurped up this great fertilizer, was Severus Snape's gorgeous, greasy hair. Gawd, that hair! thought Mary dreamily, as she stumbled along, her head in a trance and her cart of poo bumping along behind her.
She managed to make it to the Hogwarts garden, just barely, when who should she see sweeping down the path, getting his robes dirty again, but Severus Snape, his gorgeous, greasy hair flying in the wind. Mary almost crumpled to her knees, she was so in awe. Oops, no that's not the right line; that's for another story when Snape thinks he's God.
–Hello, Severus!†she called in her chirrupy voice. –Come to pick some plants with me?â€
Snape put on his thundercloud face. –No, I most certainly have not!†he growled.
Mary woke up from her trance. She thought she had heard a blood-sucking bugbear growling in the forest. –Oh,†she said, looking crestfallen. –Well, did you need something?â€
–No, I don't! I'm out for my morning exercise. Dumbledore told me to 'go take a hike' because he needs 'quality time' with that stupid phoenix of his,†Snape snarled.
–Oh, I think the two of you spend way too much time together, anyway,†Mary said, starting to charm the poo out of the cart and dump it around her plants.
–Hey, watch where you fling that crap!†yelled Snape. A big clump of green droppings had barely missed his toucan beak-sized nose.
–Now, now, Severus,†chided Mary, –It's just food for the plants. You should be respectful of it. It feeds the earth and the worms and the earthworms, and they turn it into food for the plants and the plants turn it into work for the house-elves and the house-elves turn it into your dinner!†She smiled her sweetest smile at him, which looked rather like Dopey smiling at Snow White. The only difference was, Mary couldn't wiggle her ears.
–Why are you smiling at me like that?†Snape grimaced. He couldn't stand people smiling at him, especially a doofus smile like that.
–Because, my dear Severus, I just realized that I know the meaning of life and you don't,†said Mary, her eyes starting to glaze over once again.
Snape's eyebrows shot up into those greasy, black strands of hair.
Mary forgot what she was going to say because she was watching those black and greasy eyebrows. –Uh, what was the question?†she asked.
Snape whacked his forehead with his hand. What has this girl been sniffing? Probably all that Thestral dust and dandruff has gone to her head. –You just said you know the meaning of life and I don't,†Snape sneered.
–Oh yeah! Now, I remember!†trilled Mary happily. –The meaning of life is: If you manage to muck through a little poo, there will be beautiful flowers to smell for you!â€
Snape finally cracked. He threw off his robe, grabbed a handful of the green droppings and rubbed them in his hair.
–Aw, Severus...Slytherin green!†yelled Mary, hyperventilating. –Gawd, how gorgeous!†And she chased after him down the garden path all the way to the lake, where Snape jumped in just to get away from her, but he forgot that he couldn't swim.
Luckily, the merpeople heard the splash and smelled the stench of the greasy, grimey Slytherin falling in their previously unpolluted water. They threw him back up on the bank.
–I give up! I give up!†yelled the dripping-wet creature with matted hair.
Mary loaded him into her cart and hauled him off to dry by the fire in Hagrid's hut, whose walls were vibrating to the tune of –It's Been a Hard Day's Night†from Hagrid's snores.
As Snape started drying out, his hair got all poofy, which drove Mary mad and she sat down with Fang and howled. However, Snape's robes and body shrank to half their size, and he now looked like a prune topped with a huge, black pygmy puff.
When Mary woke up from her trance-within-a-trance, she thought there was a gigantonormous hairball of Fang's on the floor and promptly swished and flicked it out the door, where Snape was picked up by a hippogriff looking for fluff to line its nest with.
The real meaning of life, thought Snape as he was carried away, the wind blowing through his finally clean hair, is that you need to watch where you step. And that's about it.
Epilogue: Snape actually was happier in his new home in the trees. He babysat hippogriffs and flew with them at night. (It had to be at night or Dumbledore would have seen him and made him do all that other horrible stuff.)
Mary couldn't, for the life of her, figure out what had happened to that guy with the windblown, greasy hair. She dyed Hagrid's hair black and greased it with some leftover grease from Hagrid's frying pan when he was passed-out and was her happy self again.