The miraculous girlwithsixarms wrote the entire segment about the hot Italian club, which you know you want to visit because it sounds like the best club ever.
And now it's time for our beloved Harry and Sev, who belong to someone else, not me, to visit Italy. (And perhaps they can plan for other exciting adventures on the high seas! Arr, matey.)
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Severus took him on a magnificent walking tour of both the Muggle and Wizarding parts of Florence. They saw Michelangelo's David in the Galleria dell'Accademia, and Harry subsequently insisted on purchasing a magical, moving, palm-sized copy that spouted lewd phrases in 16th century Italian. Severus wouldn't translate, but Harry got the message loud and clear from David's accompanying gestures.
Sadly, Harry had to put it away when they reached the Duomo. Damn, but the cathedral wasamazing. The front of it was glorious enough, hard, imposing stone, towering above, dwarfed by the bell tower beside it, but the gleaming interior was something out of a dream. Harry wished he could reach up and touch the impeccable paintings and the detailed woodwork.
Wizarding Florence wasn't to be outmatched. Through a squat old church, dedicated to the patron saint, John the Baptist, was the way to an incredibly ancient part of the city. When they exited the side door of the deserted church, they were in a wide square, with a magnificent fountain in the center.
Harry had never seen anything so grand.
Made of clean white marble, it reared toward the sky, a monolithic edifice of four leaping horses captured in a moment of stillness, looking like they might spring into life in any minute for all they were carved of stone. In the center of the fountain stood an ethereal woman made of long, fluid lines. One of her hands rested on the neck of the highest horse while the other was outstretched and emanating water. It poured from her palm and then rolled down the sinewy bodies of the horses, making them gleam so they almost blinded amazed eyes in the evening summer sun.
"It's a Conti," Severus said reverently as Harry gaped at it. He blinked, snapped out of his daze.
"Conti?"
"He was a Wizarding contemporary of Michelangelo's. His work is spread across Wizarding Italy, and is even seen in a few Muggle establishments. The Italians are very protective of it, understandably, so it rarely changes hands."
Harry wished he could sketch it, if only to forever have the most miniscule part of its majesty. A street-vendor nearby was selling tiny replicas. It was the strangest thing. Even though they had all the magic in the world, the replicas had no sense of the glory and grandeur of the real thing.
The art wasn't the only marvelous aspect of Florence. The food, too, both Wizarding and Muggle, was divine. And Harry was developing quite a proclivity for the delicious fizzy water and wine they served at all the restaurants. Though he liked his wine sweet, none of the "dry" stuff Severus was so fond of.
Relaxed and sated from their late dinner (more like a feast) and a bottle of red wine, Harry somehow managed to convince Severus to go with him to a Muggle club. He even managed to get Severus some appropriate clothes.
Dressed for the occasion, Severus was decked out in fitted black jeans and an elegant button-down that highlighted his strong shoulders and lean frame. Harry tugged him into the club in navy jeans and a faded red t-shirt, ready for some drinking and dancing.
Harry and Severus got far more than they'd expected. As soon as they entered the door, they were deafened by overwhelming noise and sandwiched between gyrating bodies. Getting slowly squashed into jelly by the nearly-nude people beside him, Harry tried to make his way, Severus in tow, to a place where there was slightly more room to breathe. On the balcony of the club, they found a spot overlooking the main floor.
"Wow!" Harry gaped. The Muggles were incredibly creative. Even Severus looked astonished. Although you wouldn't notice if you didn't know to look for it. His eyes had widened almost imperceptibly, and his lips had narrowed a little.
Suspended from the ceiling were narrow cages. In the one closest to Harry, a blonde sailor in an extremely non-regulation uniform twined herself around a buxom pink bunny rabbit with a fluffy tail.
On a raised platform at the far end of the room, dancers in fishnet costumes of neon green, pink and blue twirled batons of fire around themselves and each other, while on the dim floor below there was a tall woman wearing nearly nothing but glitter and giant feather-trimmed fairy wings who danced wildly, being pulled to and fro by the manicured hands of drag queens who paid homage to everyone from Madonna to Marie Antoinette.
At the bar, tiny pixielike girls tottered around on ridiculously high platform boots and black-haired boys glinted with silver metal while a lean man in a giant metallic red cone bra decanted drinks and a woman dressed in what appeared to be mainly harnesses popped open bottles on her ornate belt buckle.
Grinning, Harry grabbed Severus by the wrist and they wound their way down the stairs, through a crowd of road warriors and modern-day medusas, to the center of the pulsing dance floor. Amidst a press of bodies, Severus snaked up to Harry and led him gracefully and confidently through the pounding and vibrating dance music that nearly overtook the beating of Harry's own heart. Harry felt Severus's hands running through his hair, and others pressing up against his back and saw still more hands waving sinuously all around them. Just as Severus was lifting Harry by his hips, the beat of the music spluttered and changed with a tremendous roar from the masses around them and the sudden sound of hundreds of stilettos and platforms jumping in unison as fists pounded the air.
"D-d-d-d-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuneba-a-a-a-a-anger."
It was chopped and nipped and distorted, but there it was.
"Hey, Severus!" Harry yelled in Severus's ear to be heard, a huge grin lighting up his entire face. "MY SONG IS A DANCE HIT!"
He jumped triumphantly in Severus's arms.
"We're going on a cruise!"