Ambushing the ambushees, serpensortia, shelling

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 35200

The peaceful Tabouli (the odd can(n)on on behalf of LOLLIPOPS aside) eyes her recent digests with alarm...

> Eileen, Officially bloodthirsty

Cindy and now Elkins (slathering and bouncing in their chairs):
> Ambushambushambush!!

Elkins (further into her increasingly vicious post):
> YAY!!!!!!!!!!!  Bloody ambush!  Bloody ambush!  Bloody ambush!


The three HPFGU warmongers bounce menacingly in their chairs, chanting their battle slogan, plotting murder and mayhem in the Potterverse.  Their eyes are wild, their mouths are frothing, their chants grow ever more menacing, and the future of the Potterverse slides behind a dark cloud.  Fortunately for the Potterverse, heroic Captain Tabouli espies their sinister festivities through her ship's telescope, and makes her stealthy way inland to the Owlery, in the hope of saving Wizardkind.   A mere hour later she has managed to convince Pigwidgeon, Errol and Hedwig to sacrifice their lives and feathers for the cause, and is swiftly, silently closing in on the savage sofa springers, ready to smother and bind them all in...

F.E.A.T.H.E.R.B.O.A.S.!  (Foaming Enthusiasts of Ambush, Torture, and Hostility, Embracing Really Bloodthirsty Operations And Savagery))

(as she leaps from her hiding place swinging her feathered lasso, it fleetingly occurs to Tabouli that if Pigwidgeon and Hedwig ever warmed to one another they could call each other Pig and Wig...)

Elkins:
> So in other words, we don't want to blacken the black to make Snape 
seem white in comparison, but merely to highlight his grey?

Poor ol' Severus, eh?  All out on-list dissection is enough to turn anyone grey (Tabouli suppressed a mental image of Filch putting lavender highlights in Snape's greying hair)

Elkins:
> And Snape's prompting of Draco's Serpensortia spell in the duelling 
club scene of CoS can be read as evidence that he *has* given the boy 
a bit of tutoring on the side<

Now this is something that has always intrigued me.  What made Snape suggest that particular spell?  House pride, because it's a serpentine Slytherin speciality?  I mean, presumably he was relishing the thought of deliberately and publicly putting Harry in mortal danger, but was there any more to it?  And when Harry turns out to be a Parselmouth, Snape doesn't seem surprised... he looks "shrewd and calculating".  Does Snape know something we don't?  (actually, he knows a helluva lot we would dearly like to know)  Did he pick that spell in order because he wanted to test a theory he had about Harry, or Voldemort, or the failed curse?

<Elkins grins and tosses a seashell lazily -- if with no real malice -
- out to sea in the general direction of the Good Ship 
L.O.L.L.I.P.O.P.S.>

(the eagle eyes of the LOLLIPOPS crew members on watch immediately spot this disrespectful gesture, and lazily extend the daintiest of can(n)ons, known affectionately as the Golden Peashooter.  With an elegant puff of pink smoke, a pearl sized can(n)onball blows Elkins' seashell into fragments.  The crew grin, and make mental notes to tell the Captain after her return from saving the world from the Federation of FEATHERBOAS.)

Tabouli.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]