…2…

On December the second, Severus Snape was woken at an ungodly hour – at least in his book, actually it was a little past eight – by a soft but insistent knock on his door. He tried to ignore it but it was no use. Whoever was outside didn't give up. With a roar of frustration, the potions master left his cosy bed, threw on a bathrobe and stormed to the door.

"What!" he roared at the hapless person wanting to see him so early.

It was Albus Dumbledore himself, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Finally," the old man snarled, the ever-present twinkle missing from his eyes. He sailed past Snape into the living room of the man's quarters. "What are you doing in a bathrobe at this time of the day?"

"It's Sunday," Snape pointed out. "And I'm not on duty this morning. You woke me."

"Really, Severus," Dumbledore looked at his potions instructor over the rim of his glasses. "It's December. You have an advent calendar; the whole school is waiting for you."

"If you think I'm going to get up at the crack of dawn to open that blasted window every day until Christmas, you are sorely mistaken," Snape stood his ground.

"Ah," Dumbledore smiled benignly. "Here you err in two ways. Firstly, of course you are going to get up every day because I have reassessed our timetables and I realised that it is essential to the working of this school that you are on duty in the Great Hall every morning." He raised a hand to stop Snape's protest. "And secondly," the headmaster hurried to say, "you are not going to be there to open the window but to say whose turn it is. Remember, you have to share."

"The calendar was given to me," Snape growled. Not that he was suddenly eager to consume unknown potions provided by the Weasley twins but he hated being told what to do – often enough he had to obey either Dumbledore or Voldemort – and he was not going to follow this order without a fight. "It's my right to open windows."

"You can open one, like most years," Dumbledore cried. "Yesterday you didn't want to open it."

"I thought about it and changed my mind. I'm entitled to change my mind about my own advent calendar!"

"That's the problem with you youngsters," Dumbledore snapped. "You feel entitled. One," he repeated.

"Five!" Snape entered the negotiations.

"Two!" Dumbledore conceded.

"Six!" the potions master bargained.

"None!" Dumbledore was not going to be blackmailed. "I'm not going to be blackmailed!"

"You cannot be blackmailed in regards to my advent calendar. MY advent calendar! Ten!"

They met in the middle and when they finally shook hands on a deal of three windows for Snape, both wizards looked smug.

"This doesn't change, however," Dumbledore once again looked over the rim of his half-moon spectacles at the potions master, "that you are late for your duties in the Great Hall."

"You changed the schedule after I went to bed!" Snape raged at him. "I cannot be late for a duty I do not know about."

"Ah, ah, ah," Dumbledore wiggled his index finger at Snape, "once again you are wrong, my dear boy. You really must read your contracts more diligently. As head of house you are on duty 24/7. I can expect you to expect changes on short notice."

"I have a right to sleep!" Snape cried.

"It doesn't say so in your contract. Now stop arguing and put on something more suitable for breakfast. You cannot go to the Great Hall in your bathrobe."

"Watch me!" Snape spat at the old wizard. He stormed out of the door before the headmaster could stop him and stomped up to breakfast in his black bathrobe and pink bunny slippers (a gift from a girl who had apprenticed under him a couple of years ago).

There was an uproar in the Great Hall when the potions master stormed in in his unusual attire, the headmaster a couple of steps behind him.

"Oh, shut your mouths," Snape snarled at the student body at large as he made his way down the aisle between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables.

"Nice slippers, Sir," cried Draco Malfoy from the Slytherin side of the hall.

"They were a gift from an admirer," Snape spat at the boy. "My admirers may have questionable taste, but at least I have some. Unlike you." He walked to his usual seat in a flurry of bathrobe – he had to admit that the effect was more dramatic with teaching robes – and grabbed the coffee pot as soon as he had settled down in his chair.

"You have admirers, too, Draco," Pansy Parkinson reassured the blond. "I can buy you bunny slippers for Christmas if you'd like some. I think powdery blue would go better with your complexion than pink."

"I'm surrounded by imbeciles," the blond boy cried.

"Well, imbeciles tend to gather around the dumbest," Potter pointed out from the Gryffindor table.

The Malfoy boy didn't grace the remark with an answer. Instead he threw a stinging hex across the hall. Potter shielded easily against it and threw his own jinx at the blond. It never reached its goal because Dumbledore threw up a shield from the head table and collected the two boys' wands with one wave of his own.

"Really boys," he scolded. "Severus, this would be a good moment to open your window."

"I don't want todays window and I don't think we should open any windows before Potter and Malfoy have been expelled for throwing curses in the Great Hall." Snape was not one to miss an opportunity.

"Nonsense," Dumbledore looked at the boys benignly, "it was all in good humour. Now tell us who is to open the window if you don't want it."

"Hagrid!" Snape decided on the spot. "Hagrid should open today's window."

"Thank ye, professor!" the half giant cried. "That's so kind of ye!" He rummaged in his pocket and blew his nose in the huge handkerchief he retrieved from there. It took Hagrid a couple of minutes to calm down enough to open the window.

Today's chocolate was wrapped in green. Hagrid showed it to the assembled students before he unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. "This is good!" he cried. Only instead of his rich baritone voice, he suddenly sounded like a little girl. "Oh my!" he continued. "It's a good thing I don't have to teach today!"

The students laughed good naturedly.

"Hagrid," Harry Potter cried, "I have a question about that assignment you gave us last lesson!" All around the hall, students followed his lead and soon Hagrid was holding court at the end of Gryffindor table, answering questions about hippogriffs and flobberworms in his newly acquired angelic voice.

Those who had had their questions answered left the Great Hall in a merry mood. Harry Potter possessed the cheek to walk past the head table and point out to Snape that these were "truly remarkably cute slippers".

The potions master considered hexing the brat but it would probably – whom was he kidding, certainly – not go over well with Dumbledore, so he resigned himself to making the boy pay in his next potions lesson.

Potter's remark made him think of the young witch who had once given him those ridiculous slippers. Maybe, he thought, it would be nice to write her a Christmas card. Last he had heard of her, she had moved to Vienna.

Later that day, Severus Snape could be seen walking down to Hogsmeade wrapped in his warmest winter cloak. It would not do to use a school owl to take a card to Austria. No, this required a long distance owl. Once he had sent off his card, the potions master went to the Three Broomsticks for a nice cup of hot chocolate. He lingered as long as it would be considered acceptable. The Three Broomsticks was busy but it was a good kind of busy since no adolescents were involved.

About an hour before dinner would start in the Great Hall, Snape left the pub and in a bout of nostalgia went to the apothecary's to get some peppermint oil, his former apprentice's favourite potions ingredient.

After dinner he opened the small phial and put it on the mantle in his quarters. Soon the whole room smelled like it had smelled when the vivacious blonde had intruded on his privacy on a regular basis.