Chapter 8 – Dead Man’s Handshake

Myrtle swung her legs over the edge of the bed canopy. She looked radiant hunched over, determinedly squeezing her pimples. Pumblechook found girls with raging acne irresistible. She was deep in thought. He’d just finished telling her about the mystical rhyme he had found with the wand at Ollivanders, hoping that she might provide a solution.

“It’s a very funny poem,” she mused, wiping gunky spectral zit pus down the front of her robes.

Captivated, he watched her. Pumblechook felt a stirring in his groin he hadn’t experienced since he’d haunted the decidedly risqué Folies-Bergère in 1911. The involuntary growl that vibrated in the base of his throat sounded sex-starved, predatory and lustful.

Myrtle picked another zit and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively as she purred back at him. Smiling, she sang out a poem all of her own making.

“Seven Doxies in a bed,
Pumblechook eats eight instead.
A witch’s hat, a wand and cape,
Hermione Granger fancies Snape.”

Does she?

“Well, he fancies her at least,” Myrtle replied smugly. She slid off the bed canopy, floated gracefully to the floor and joined him on the threadbare rug in the centre of the room, pouting. “While you left me all alone to go to Diagon Alley, I read his diary.”

Pumblechook believed in upholding the law. He was a prison officer, bounty hunter, judge and jury all rolled into one. But he had a weakness – wicked women. Was reading someone else’s diary an offence? Would Myrtle have to be punished? Another rumble in his throat and his sudden desire to throw her on the bed and smother her in Dementor love answered that little quandary. Unable to resist, he lunged for her.

You bad girl…

Myrtle giggled and escaped his grabbing hands, teasing him as she flew across the room to the bureau. “Here it is!” she cried, picking up a leather bound notebook. “The personal diary of Professor Severus Snape. It’s Charmed and warded against tampering, theft and unauthorised opening by any and all living creatures; what a shame he forgot about mischievous spooks.” She pulled at the cover, straining to prise the book open. “This is the tricky bit,” she wheezed, pulling the diary against her chest and tugging at the hard cover with all her strength.

Myrtle, perhaps you shouldn’t…

With a thunk and a sparkle of magic, the book sprang open and fell onto the carpet, its pages fluttering and separating with all the tempting allure of the skirts those can-can dancers wore on the Paris stage. Pumblechook wiped his brow and sighed. He was definitely feeling horny.

“Ooops,” Myrtle chirped innocently, sucking the tip of her transparent finger. “It seems to have fallen open by accident.” As Pumblechook took long, deep breaths and tried to calm his chilly ardour by thinking about the intricacies of cricket scoring, Myrtle swooped down on the open pages of the diary and flicked them back until she found the most recent entries.

“The good stuff starts back here,” she said, flitting over a few more pages. “December 21st 1996. Listen to this, Pumbles, the Professor’s absolutely tortured!”

Pumblechook lay down heavily on the edge of Snape’s bed. The unbearably soft mattress sank beneath him. He was helplessly sucked down into it like a wasp stuck to a marshmallow.

“‘She came to me’,” Myrtle started to read, mimicking Severus’ deep, silky voice. “‘I was in my office marking essays and there came a knock at the door. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe she would ever seek me out, and at such a late hour. I thought my heart would burst as her expectant little face looked up at me. Instinctively, I rebuffed her. I actually berated my angel. I was so vexed that she was only there to deliver the message that Rubeus needed me. I sent her away, crushing her with my harsh words. After she left, the silence and emptiness of my office echoed around the walls’.”

Myrtle quickly turned the page. She made herself more comfortable by lying on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows and twirling her pigtails. The hard floor and dirty carpet just added to the sexiness of her provocative pose. As she bent her knees and swung her legs, she showed her clumpy school shoes to their very best advantage. Pumblechook’s eyelids twitched as he watched this display of erotica. His need for her was such that he felt he might implode.

“‘I followed her’,” Myrtle continued, reading from the tight script on the new page. “‘She crossed the lawn and slipped into Hagrid’s hut. I was filled with such jealousy that I would have churlishly wrestled the giant to the ground had he dared to touch her. But the threat was far, far greater. On entering the hut, I saw my perfect innocent one, standing before a hideous Dementor!’” Myrtle looked up, confused. She screwed up her face and her glasses popped up and off the bridge of her nose.

Pumblechook, aroused by the twitching specs, was unable to reach out for Myrtle while being held fast by the bed. He groaned in frustrated agony.

“This hideous Dementor, Chookie, did you see him?”

No, although I wish I had. Perhaps he could have helped me and returned me to Azkaban. The mattress had closed around him, holding him snugly, trapping him up to his chest within the endless folds of the revolting satin and ribbon comforter.

“I’ll skip the Dementor bit then.” Myrtle shrugged her shoulders and read on. “Ooh, this is good! ‘She reached inside my pocket. Mother of Merlin! I never for one moment thought she would comply’. Here the writing goes a bit squiffy,” Myrtle explained, lifting the book closer to her eyes. “‘Her fingers! Her small, slight fingers brushed against the sensitive skin of my groin through the silken lining of my pocket. I am in agony. Such sweet torture as this I cannot bear’.”

Pumblechook couldn’t bear much more of this unprovoked bedding attack. Only his face was now uncovered and the bony fingers of his left hand.

“He’s very poetic in his suffering, isn’t he?” Myrtle remarked while scanning the diary, picking out the juicy bits. Pumblechook couldn’t respond, even if he’d wanted to. The soft mattress had sucked him in so deeply he was in danger of suffocating. The more he struggled, the further down he sank.

“There’s a bit here, further on, about her woolly hat. He says it’s an ‘abomination in rib stitch’ and his ‘angel should be crowned with nothing but the halo of her cinnamon curls’. And listen to this! ‘In this cursed house she sleeps just feet away from me. From across the hallway I see candlelight seep from around her doorframe. Never shrouded in darkness, Hermione dreams peacefully, oblivious to my nighttime vigil by her door’. Wow, he really does wax lyrical, doesn’t he Chookie?” There was a pause. “Chookie?”

Mmmm muuummmmffle!

Just then, the door creaked open. Pumblechook lay as still as death, grateful for the carnivorous crimson coverlet that had obscured him completely. He held his breath and waited.

“Damned cold, draughty house,” Severus grumbled, his footsteps tapping across the room toward the sash window. “Damned Regulus and his confounded conundrums,” he groused as the wardrobe door was flung open. Pumblechook could only hear a rustling and a thudding as Snape presumably changed his attire. The footsteps receded once more to the doorway. “Damnable drunk Irishmen!” he exclaimed just before the bedroom door was wrenched open and Severus left, slamming the door behind him.

There was a moment’s silence. Then a cold hand grasped his and tried to pull him free. “Come on, Chookie, fight for all your worth!” Myrtle cried. “Resist the mattress’ hold on you; quash the quilt!” She heaved with all her inutile strength, trying desperately to save him. Slowly, he could glimpse candlelight again, see the intricately turned uprights of the four-poster. His darling Myrtle, her face contorted with effort, had her heels dug into the bed frame and was hauling him free by his hand with all her might.

There was a loud cracking sound, and with one last desperate effort, he was free. Myrtle toppled backwards as the mattress released him. She tumbled several somersaults as she was thrown across the floor and landed in a crumpled heap, her robes over her head. It was only when she sat up, laughing, that Pumblechook saw she was still holding his hand, torn away as she’d pulled him free. Lifting his arm, he chuckled at the preposterous sight; his wrist now ended in a sinewy stump. He waved it in the air which made Myrtle laugh harder and harder until she was rolling on the ground begging him to stop.

Cheekily, Myrtle levitated to her feet and swept toward him, wiping dry imaginary tears from her eyes. She offered him back his limp appendage.

“Can I give you a hand?” she asked sweetly.

***************

Temporary loss of limb didn’t bother Pumblechook in the slightest. He’d mislaid a leg in Berlin while fighting Grindelwald in the forties. After the battle, he recovered his leg from the jaws of a gnarling German shepherd and slotted it back in his pelvic bone without any fuss. His hand re-attached in the same manner, with a quick click and twist. Flexing his fingers, he floated down to the kitchen, leaving Myrtle upstairs rooting around for more clues to the romance she suspected was going on right under their noses.

The members of the Order were downstairs, celebrating their victory at the wand maker’s and trying to decipher the clue to the location of the next piece of severed soul. As Pumblechook pushed open the kitchen door, he was greeted by raucous merrymaking by the ‘let’s party tonight and worry in the morning’ brigade, and the considerably more sober, ‘let’s solve the riddle as there’s no time like the present’ group.

Beside the fireplace, Headmaster Dumbledore read the clue parchment as several witches and wizards crowded around him, discussing, arguing and concentrating hard, trying to solve the conundrum.

On the kitchen table, Moody lead the celebration party in a drunken rendition of Wild Rover while clapping his hands to the rhythm and stomping his good leg against the solid wooden table. Severus stood nearby, watching Moody warily, before flicking back his gaze to the Headmaster. In between, he watched Hermione. She was sitting on her own at the end of the table, yawning and sipping at her drink.

“Bushmills,” Moody slurred, saluting the assembled with a squared bottle of single malt Irish whiskey. “It’s the stuff of Kings!” Pumblechook edged toward Severus, just as Mad-Eye shoved his bottle under the professor’s rather large nose. “You want a swig, Snape?”

“Not at the moment, thank you,” Severus declined politely. “And if you spill that on me again, I’ll…”

“What about you, Tumbley-chook?” Moody asked, ignoring Severus’ threat. “D’you fancy a sip o’ the amber to wash down that foul strip o’ soul?”

The bottle was flung at him. Pumblechook took it quickly, happy to be considered ‘one of the boys’. Slipping it under his shroud, he knocked it back, taking deep, thirsty gulps of the liquor.

Moody was aghast. “Blow me, the boy’s thirsty!” he cried.

Poor Pumblechook, there was very little left of his diseased liver to cope with an onslaught of alcohol; what remained could hardly process a pickled egg, let alone a half a bottle of neat spirit. Swaying, he passed the whiskey to a redheaded lad sitting beside him, and then did a slow, confused, double take when he saw the same redhead standing by the sink, being fussed over by Mrs Weasley.

“Give the bottle back to Moody, Fred,” Kingsley enjoined.

Pumblechook pointed at Fred. The boy drifted in and out of focus as the Dementor swayed in a drunken haze. He then swirled slowly around to the other Fred and pointed at him, too. Damn, this whiskey was great stuff. It was hallucinogenic; he was seeing double!

As Pumblechook grasped the backs of the kitchen chairs to pull himself over toward Snape, Moody tapped his leg against the table again and started to sing.

“I've been a wild wizard for many a year
And I spent all my Galleons on whiskey and butterbeer,
And now I'm returning with gold in great store
And I never will play the wild wizard no more.”

The crowd clapped and cheered, joining in the chorus,

“And it's no, nay, never,
No nay never no more,
Will I play the wild wizard?
No never no more.”

While they sang, Pumblechook reached Severus and smothered him with an affectionate hug. So delighted with the attention, the professor became rigid and swore an oath that would turn a hag’s warts purple. His foul language was drowned out by Moody singing at the top of his lungs.

“I went to an ale-house I used to frequent
And I told Rosie Raven my money was spent.
I asked her for credit, she answered me nay
Such a custom as yours I could have any day."

Hellooooooooo, Sevveriz, Pumblechook slurred, griping his friend tightly around the shoulder. Howz yer love life?

Severus leaned in to Pumblechook. “I’ve nothing to say on that subject,” he whispered, looking furtively at Hermione.

“House of glass!” a Scottish witch protested from Dumbledore’s side. “Of course it means the Greenhouse!”

Shrugged off by Snape, he drifted over to Hermione. As the room exploded in laughter and chatter, Pumblechook knelt down beside her.

I have a special riddle, just for you.

“Do you?” she asked, leaning into him.

I know a man who’s Dark and lean;
he thinks of you as his fairy queen.
No, don’t look round, don’t stare or gape.
Your admirer is none but Sn-

He suddenly felt an iron-tight grip on the back of his neck…

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Beta’d by Southern_Witch_69 and Gardengirl