TBAY: There's Nothing Like SUCCESS

[Porphyria]

No: HPFGUIDX 41101

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it 
made." -- Jean Giraudoux

Porphyria groaned, clutching her head as consciousness slowly gathered 
around her. She’d been deposited on a velvet-curtained canopy bed in a 
guest room in Diana’s castle. The afternoon light gently streamed through 
the leaded-glass window, causing Porphyria to wince and roll over. Not 
quite sure what happened, she recalled she’d been conversing with Eloise, 
and then... Straining to make out her surroundings she noticed a fluffy 
black silhouette come into focus. It was sitting on the pillow next to her 
head.

“Are you still here!” she screamed at the unfortunate creature.

SUCCESS panted amiably and did a little dance on the pillow. SUCCESS is 
Eloise’s theory (Snape, Unfortunately Comatose, Couldn't Ensure Stone's 
Safety).

“Grrr, so much for dispelling you with logic,” muttered Porphyria. She 
made a little show of petting it, and then roughly seized it by the scruff 
of the neck.

“You know what I always hated about you, SUCCESS?” she asked, muffling a 
frightened yelp from the little fluff ball. “You make Snape look bad. 
Snape has enough trouble getting respect in these books, he doesn’t need 
to be dosed with a Sleeping Draught by some lame DE wannabe.”

SUCCESS let out a whimper between Porphyria’s clutched fingers. “And that’
s not all, SUCCESS,” she continued with menace in her voice, “you are 
*superfluous*! No one needs you! You are nothing but a useless ball of 
fluff!”

The creature looked heartbroken. It beseeched Porphyria with its liquid 
brown eyes. Not feeling sentimental, she rubbed her aching head, rolled 
over and weakly gazed out the window to the gazebo and croquet grounds in 
the garden. “Superfluous?” Porphyria thought to herself. “Superfluous?”

Now I’m going to tell you something unsavory about Porphyria. You see, she’
s a bit of a *mooch.* She’s been lounging about Diana’s castle for months 
now and she’s grown rather accustomed to it. And lately Diana had been 
saying something about installing a marble-lined jacuzzi in the Castle’s 
dungeon. Hmmm. Perhaps provoking Eloise was not the most politic decision.
...

As she rolled about in bed she noticed that the owl post had left her some 
missives from other list-members regarding her recent Snape/Quirrell 
theories. One in particular caught her eye. It’s from Richelle! She writes:

“Perhaps Snape finally tipped off Dumbledore. Dumbledore
says ‘No sooner had I reached London than it became clear to me that the
place I should be was the one I had just left. I arrived just in time to
pull Quirrell off you.’ I had thought before that he found he hadn't really
been summoned by the MoM. But what if Snape had sent a message? Telling
his suspicions?”

“Oh, thank you Richelle, thank you, I can use this!” cried Porphyria and 
hauled herself out of bed, Richelle’s post clutched in one hand and the 
pesky SUCCESS in the other. She stormed into the drawing room and 
discovered Eloise polishing the crystal.

“Oh, so you’re awake are you?” cooed Eloise with a tinge of acid to her 
voice. “I think you’re having a little trouble handling your Scotch, 
darling.”

“Never mind that, I’ve come to talk -- talk about this,” she replied, 
hurling herself down on the sofa and yanking the disheveled SUCCESS onto 
her lap. “I think we can make a deal.”

Eloise regarded her with a look of deep skepticism, but let her continue.

“Tell me again what you were saying before we were...interrupted by my 
untimely collapse.”

Eloise rose one eyebrow, then began:

“Isn't it to Dumbledore's advantage if Snape gets the opportunity to 
affirm his 'loyalty' to Voldemort? If he makes out the case that he 
thought Quirrell was being disloyal to Voldemort, that he was out for 
himself? <...> Are you *sure* that he couldn't have talked his way out of 
such an encounter, possibly even taken advantage of it?”

“Hmm perhaps," replied Porphyria. "But Snape would have had all year to 
provoke such an exchange if he thought it would be to his advantage. I 
suspect he didn’t want to see ol’ snake-face any earlier than he had to. 
It would have been a terrible risk. It’s not clear that Voldemort could 
have been killed in his vapor form, and if he asked Snape to, say for 
instance, kill Harry, then Snape would find himself in the ridiculous 
position of  ‘tripping’ over a design in the tile floor and ‘knocking 
himself out’ on the way to grab Harry. Which wouldn’t have been much 
better than sitting out the whole thing. But what was that other thing you 
said?”

“Quirrell still might not have wanted to take the risk.”

“OK, we’ll go for the redundancy version. Hear that, SUCCESS? You earn 
your existence, not because you’re needed, but because you have the luxury 
of being *wanted.* You are superfluous like the lap dog you vaguely 
resemble, but Diana loves superfluity and Eloise has a soft spot for you.”

SUCCESS didn’t know whether to feel chuffed or miffed.

“OK,” Porphyria continued, “this is the way the Theory goes:

“Snape sits at dinner between Quirrell and Evil!McGonagall. One of them 
distracts him with talk of a sale on black robes at Madam Malkin’s while 
the other slips a tab in his Turkish coffee.”

“Turkish coffee?” asked Eloise.

“Yeah, it’s Snape’s favorite drink. It’s complicated to brew, you need to 
do it in a cevze, it’s black as coal and it’s flavored with jasmine, 
ground cloves and coriander. Trust me, he loves it.”

“Whatever! Keep going.”

“OK, so he takes a sip from his demitasse and starts to feel something 
weird -- a bad clove perhaps? But no, he’s the Potions Master and he knows 
what it feels like to be dosed. He yanks himself up from his chair and 
hauls himself into his office, fading fast. He summons his, um, cinnabar 
hawk owl Hecate and scrawls out a desperate message to the London-bound 
Dumbledore; chrome-green ink splattering everywhere in his desperate 
attempt to beat the effects of the Sleeping Draught. He barely gets the 
letter tied round the owl's leg as his shaky hands start to fail him and 
he collapses on his office floor. Luckily Hecate is reliable and meets 
Dumbledore just as he touches down in London.

“There!” Porphyria sniffed and leaned her sore head onto a cushion. “You 
get to keep the Superfluous!SUCCESS and I get to have a moment of 
Useful!Snape. Fair enough?”

Eloise gathered SUCCESS up into her arms and stroked him protectively. 
“Perhaps. But I’m not letting you near him again.”

“Hmmff,” thought Porphyria to herself, “little twerp isn’t worth his keep.
”

~~Porphyria, who isn’t worth her keep either.

For an explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, visit
Hypothetic Alley at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin20Files/hypotheticalley.
htm

and Inish Alley at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?method=reportRows&tbl=
13


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