Disclaimer: Severus does not belong to me in any sense. Quite technically, the explanation for his bout of insanity is mine. Albus isn't. Mine, that is. Or the explanation for insanity. Would you like a lemon drop?
They are, in fact, absolutely hideous, and I am extremely glad that I am able to pull on black boots over them, hide the cuffs under my trousers and hide said black trousers under my robes.
I don't know why I am wearing hideously, atrociously bright orange wool socks. If I were, perchance, blind, I might say it was because they were warm and comfortable and wooly, the sort of things Albus Dumbledore would say. But I am not blind, and the socks are disgustingly orange hued.
I really don't know why. Some days I wonder about my sanity—why am I wearing orange socks? I do not wear anything colored—for the sort of nitpicky people that fuss about what they wear and whether it matches say that black is not actually a color—not even Slytherin green. Not dark blue, not dark-anything. I wear black.
Perhaps I'm right to wonder about my sanity. Anyone that spends any amount of time around the woman I am presently courting is probably half-way round the bend already. Yet, she is a wonderful woman, and that explains entirely why I am wearing these repulsively bright socks.
It is Halloween, and she has promised the next pair will be in Slytherin green. Whether I can trust her taste in color, I cannot say, as she informed me these were meant to be light orange. Like apricots, she says. They look more like tangerines to me. They were also intended for her, until she knit the foot too long.
But still, I rather fancy Albus Dumbledore would be jealous. I am courting a crazy sock knitter who is determined to garb my feet in odd shades of wool—exactly the sort of person he would get along with smashingly.
Why do I persist? Let me ask, then, how many would accost an ex-Death Eater with thousands upon thousands of tiny stitches, individually sprung from her fingertips, and then proceed onto hugs, experimental potions, and more standard modes of affection? I would suppose, though I know nothing about the topic, that she is as much a master of her needles as she is a master of herbs and cauldron. My lovely knitting potions mistress. So I humour her, and wear the atrocities this one time, hidden inside black boots. Really, if only they weren't such a hideous shade…
I shall wear the next pair weekly.
As long as her definition of "Slytherin green" does not venture, even at its extremities, into the forbidden territory of chartreuse.
In that case I shall turn them black.
A/N: Inspired by the hazards of mail-ordering yarn, sight unseen. I knit such a pair of socks, but since I dress in colors, they do not horrify me quite as much.