disclaimer: this is just for fun. the characters used in this story are not mine, they belong to JK Rowling.
It was once again time for the annual Hogwarts Teachers' Gingerbread House Contest. Every year the staff paired up and competed to make the best ever gingerbread house that anyone had ever seen. It was December 23rd and most of the students had left for home to enjoy the Holiday break with their families. Apparently none of the teachers had families that needed attending to, because they all sat at the big table at the front of the hall ready for breakfast. Many had already paired up for the contest and were furtively planning out grand ideas for the gingerbread mansions. Professor Flitwick sat between Professors McGonagall and Snape trying to work up the courage to ask one of them to team up with him. Unfortunately, he was intimidated by both. One was uptight, stern, and exacting while the other was Snape. Flitwick thought about it. As far as he knew, no one had ever teamed up with Snape for any teacher activities. It seemed that he was to be avoided at all costs. Usually he ended up being the leftover and teamed up with himself or sometimes Dumbledore would join the festivities and take on the arduous task of pairing up with the Potions Pofessor. Flitwick decided he had better ask Minerva. He turned to her and caught her eye.
"Ahem. You wouldn't...um...you wouldn't want to pair up for the...uh... the Gingerbread House Contest, would you?"
"Oh, it's very kind of you to ask, Filius, but I've already paired up with Albus."
Flitwick's smile fell off. "You have?"
"Yes, I'm sorry, but he was so excited about participating this year that I couldn't refuse. We've already started mapping out the house."
"If Albus is joining us this year that means there's an even number of staff members," Flitwick mused, "and everyone else seems to be paired up, which means there's only me and someone else left." He sighed. He knew who that someone else would be. Steeling himself, Flitwick turned to the person to his right. Snape was carefully inspecting his scrambled eggs.
"Severus-"
"Do your eggs taste alright?"
Flitwick was unready for this question. "Uh... well, they seemed fine to me, though I do like them a little bit soggier."
Snape was looking suspiciously at his eggs again. Maybe this wasn't the best time to ask, thought Flitwick. But then again, if he didn't ask now he probably wouldn't have the nerve later.
"Severus," he started again, but Snape didn't seem to be listening.
"Severus," Flitwick squeaked a little louder. Snape glanced at him and then looked back to his eggs.
"I heard you the first time."
"Severus, would you like to be my partner in the Gingerbread House Contest?"
Snape looked at Flitwick warily. Why was the little professor asking him that? No one had ever volunteered to be his partner before. He wasn't quite sure how to respond.
"Um... yes?"
This seemed to make Flitwick happy and Snape figured he had answered correctly. He was about to continue his egg investigation when Flitwick tapped him on the arm.
"When and where shall we meet to begin our house?"
Snape thought about that. He usually worked in the dungedons and when Dumbldore teamed up with him they usually worked in the Headmaster's office. Well, the Headmaster's office wouldn't do now, so the dungdons seemed like the logical place.
"Dungeons around ten?"
Flitwick agreed and they both went back to their breakfasts.
Meanwhile on Flitwik's other side Dumbledore and McGonagall were making their own plans for what they hoped would be the prize winning gingerbread house.
"We have to start construction soon, Albus."
"Yes, after the annoncement go grab your candy and meet me in my office. Don't forget the blueprints we drew up last night." Dumbledore took a bite of his scrambled eggs and frowned. He tested another forkful.
"Minerva, what do you think of the eggs today?"
"I don't eat eggs."
"Oh yes, that's right. I forgot." There was a pause as Dumbledore srcutinized his eggs.
"Maybe a little salt and pepper?" suggested McGonagall.
The Headmaster sprinkled a liberal amount of salt and pepper onto his eggs and tasted them once again. "Ah, that seems to have done the trick."
Most of the students who were staying at Hogwarts over the holidays had already finished and left the hall to have snowball fights outside. The staff left mostly in pairs and hurried to the staff room where Dumbledore had called an after breakfast staff meeting. Everyone knew that today Dumbledore would announce the official start of the contest and after that they would all run to gather their supplies and meet in a suitably secret spot in which to build the house. Snape was the last to arrive in the lounge still finishing his coffee. He took a seat on the couch next to Minerva and looked up at the Headmaster. With all of them assembled Dumbledore stood up and began his speech.
"It is my pleasure to announce official beginning of this year's Hogwart's Gingerbread House Contest. Due to some unforseen circumstances we have had to make some changes this year, but nothing too dramatic. We were unable to obtain the gingerbread for which to build the basic house structure. Instead we will have to use graham crackers. Now the pro about graham crackers is that due to the fact that they can be broken apart on the dotted line there are many more possibilities for the structure of your houses. And I myself am partial to graham crackers, more so than gingerbread. Each team can pick up their kit from the library as soon as I have finished speaking. The kit includes: 1 box of graham crackers, the sugar for making the frosting, those plastic bags and nozzles you put the frosting in so you can squeeze it out, -does anyone know what those are called? I've never figured that out- a cardboard surface on which to build your house, a bag each of gumdrops, M&Ms, and those swirly mints- the name of which I can't remember. That will get you started. It's been mentioned before, but I'll say it again, the theme is Literary Living Spaces. Houses and buildings described in novels, poems, and plays. Be imaginative. Alright, I believe that's it."
Dumbledore watched with a smile on his face as most of his staff quickly made their way to the door. He knew they'd be jostling eachother all the way down to the library. Apart from him only Flitwick and Snape remained. The former had discovered years ago that an excited pack of teachers hurrying down the hall was quite dangerous to join when you're only about half the size of most of them. The latter seemed to deem the last drops of his coffee more important than all the commotion around him.
After he felt that a safe period of time had gone by Flitwik took his little feet down to the library to get his and Snape's kit. Theirs was the only kit left. He wasn't too worried about starting a little later than the other teams. He and Snape had today and tomorrow to complete the house. Judging was held on the third day precisely at noon. He took the kit up to his room and put it next to the pile of candy he had stashed up over the past month. Then he sat down to think up some ideas. Last year he and Sybill had made quite a nice rendition of a 1920's Art Deco Hotel. The theme had been Architecture through the Ages. They had come in second place, first place going to Minerva and Hooch for their take on a Gothic Cathedral. Third place if he remembered right went to Binns and Pomfrey for their Temple to Poisedon. Flitwick looked toward his bookshelf for ideas on literary houses. he scribbled ideas onto his paper.
At ten o'clock exactly there was a knock on Snape's door. He opened it to find Flitwik levitating the kit and a box of candy on the doorstep. The charms professor entered and set his items down on the table Snape had set up specifically for the purpose of constructing a graham cracker house. The first thing they decided was to separate all the building materials, graham crackers over there, the frosting ingredients to the left and the candy in a pile on the right. Flitwik looked at Snape's contribution to the house.
"Werthers?"
"Something wrong with Werthers?"
"No, no," replied Flitwick remembering Snape's Werthers pyramid from last year. He sincerely hoped this bag wasn't a leftover.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"Here's a bag of swedish fish," replied Snape tossing it onto the table.
"Alright, let's look at some of these ideas. Have you read La Morte D'Arthur? We could build Camelot."
Snape grimaced.
"Yes, I know it's not very original. Well, how about the Pink Dollhouse from The Mouse and His Child?"
"The what?" said Snape staring at Flitwick as if he had three nostrils.
"The dollhouse that all the wind-up toys live in after defeating Manny Rat. You've never read The Mouse and His Child? It's a wonderful book. You see thereís this wind-up tin mouse and his child and they get thrown out one day and land in the dump where Manny Rat picks them up because he uses wind-up toys as his workers. They escape from Manny and go on a journey to become self-winding or in other words self-sufficient. It sounds juvenile but it's really a book about a journey to find something beyond what is visible. And in the end the mouse and his child discover that it's impossible to be completely self-winding because everyone needs friends and family"
Flitwick stopped suddenly. He had gotten a little carried away and he realized and Snape was regarding him a little warily.
"Well, let's scrap that idea," he said more calmly. &"I have more to my list. There's Manderly from Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, there's Notre Dame where the Hunchback lived..."
Clearly Snape wasn't interested in any of these ideas.
"What do you suggest then?" asked the Charms teacher annoyed.
"I've got the Haunted Palace from Poe's poem of the same name, the House of Usher, and the Workhouse from Oliver Twist in my list - what are you rolling your eyes for?"
"Can you think of anything more morbid and dark? A workhouse? We might as well make a prison or a slum. And The House of Usher is about someone who is buried alive, for goodness sakes!"
"Well, the Hunchback of Notre Dame isn't a bedtime story either, the ending is quite depressing."
"This isn't working out," sighed Flitwick. &"If we can't agree, let's just pick at random."
"What do you mean?"
"We'll take a bunch of books off your shelf and a bunch off of mine, mix them up in a pile and then grab one without looking."
Snape nodded in agreement and they headed for his bedroom. It took a while to get the door open, as Snape had quite a lot of wards and magical locks to undo before entering. When they finally made it inside Flitwick looked around curiously. He'd been in Snape's office often enough but never in his living quarters. The room was similar in size to his own, but darker and more cluttered. They stood in front of a very large bookcase that took up the whole wall. Above each column of shelves there was a label. Flitwick read them off silently to himself. Potions, Charms, Transfiguration, Poetry, Novels, Books I'm Obligated to Keep Because They Were Gifts, Books I've Never Read But May Read Someday, Books Albus Would Most Surely Not Want Me to Own, Plays, Miscelleneous Non-Fiction. He was very interested in the shelf of Books Albus Would Most Surely Not Want Me to Own, but didn't have time to examine it closely. It looked to be mostly Dark Arts books, but Flitwick had noticed a very worn paperback entitled How to Terrorize Students: Book Three of the Sadistic Teacher's Manual. Unfortunately, he was obliged to follow Snape to the Novels section where they began skimming the titles. There seemed to be a lot of Victorian authors, as well as Gothic and Romanticist, yet there were hardly any contemporary titles.
"I've read that one," said Flitwick pointing toward Jane Eyre. Snape took it off the shelf.
"Oh, and Dorian Grey," said Flitwick as he noticed a shelf that seemed to be devoted to all things Oscar Wilde. He wasn't surprised when right below there was a shelf devoted to the more somber of the nineteenth century Russian authors.
It took about fifteen minutes to find eight books they had both read. With his arms full of books Snape redid all the spells locking his room and the two professors made their way to Flitwick's living space. Flitwick's bookcase was smaller, the shelves only went as high as he could reach. Much of his reading material was much lighter in tone and there were quite a few what muggles would call 'fantasy' novels crammed onto the shelves along with the likes of Albert Camus, Geoffrey Chaucer, and James Joyce. Bending Snape began to read off the titles.
"This one," said Snape pulling out A Christmas Carol.
"And this one," he pulled Peter S. Beagle's the Last Unicorn off the shelf. He also pulled out a book of poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was some minutes before he spoke again.
"Is that the entire of collection of Dr. Seuss?"
"Uh, no," said Flitwick. Snape seemed a little relieved but stiffened when he continued, "But I'm only missing Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? and I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew. I believe Professor Spout has the complete collection including those he wrote under the names Theadore Geisel and T. Liesig."
Snape muttered something under his breath about Hufflepuffs and then looked back at the bookcase.
"Well, I don't know if Dr. Seuss counts as literary, but I have read The Lorax and The Butter Battle Book," said Snape taking the former off of the shelf. He caught Flitwick's expression and glared. "Well, not recently!"
They looked at the four books Snape had picked. The Butter Battle Book didn't have any buildings in it so they had ruled that one out. Four against eight didn't seem very fair.
"That's all?" asked Flitwick.
"Well, I've read others, but they don't seem to lend themselves easily to the theme." Snape paused. "Although, I suppose the ship in Moby Dick could count as a literary living space. There's no rule that says it can't float around instead of remaining stationary." He took Herman Melville off the shelf. He seemed to consider for a moment and then grabbed another book off the shelf.
"You've read The Wizard of Oz?" asked Flitwick trying not to sound skeptical.
"No, but I've seen the movie."
Flitwick hid his surpise that Snape even knew what a movie was let alone having seen one. Flitwick had seen some movies when Lydia Hatfield, the Muggle Studies professor had invited the staff down to her office to watch a series of early films that were all named after a man who was thin. Flitwick never found out to whom the title was referring because the movies seemed to center on the antics of a detective, his wife and their small dog. Snape meanwhile had found two more books that could by creative reasoning fit into the theme. They took the sixteen books and laid them out so that they formed a circle.
"You pick," directed Snape. Flitwick stepped into the circle of books and closed his eyes. Snape took out his wand and said a quiet spell. All of the books rose, staying in their circle formation and began to rotate around Flitwick as if he were the sun and they were planets. Snape sped them up until they flew around the little professor's head at a nice even speed.
"Stop," said Flitwick.
The books stopped abruptly and hovered. With eyes still closed Flitwick reached out an arm and felt around. As soon as his hand knocked into a book it fell out of its place in the circle and hit the floor with a little thump. Flitwick opened his eyes and looked down at the chosen book.
"The Wizard of Oz," said Snape. He didn't look overly happy.