The Professors' Christmas Holiday

Minerva's eyes were twitching with irritation as she was watching her colleagues. Sometimes she really wondered how grown up, educated people could act like a bunch of small, idiotic children. Well, better this than sugar high, Minerva decided and sighed heavily.

When five minutes had passed and neither the chatting nor the daydreaming of her colleagues had ceased, she decided that a more severe action was called for. Taking her wand in her hand, Minerva concentrated on the spell she was about to use and then waved the wand like a miniature sword.

A loud, booming sound erupted from the top of her wand, startling all of her colleagues greatly. With a sadistic grin, Minerva put her wand down and then placed in the bag of her robes. The room was silent, a frightened silence ensuing between them. Realizing she quite enjoyed the way things went, Minerva wanted to try how much she could frighten them.

With a sickly sweet smile on her lips and her normally cold and stern eyes blinking happily at them, the results were horrendous. If her colleagues hadn't been grown men and women, they would have run away screaming.

"Now that I have your undivided attention, I will come to the matter at hand. Something tragic has happened, a tragedy as it has never hit us before. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but it might be you won't get any from presents from me this year. They have been stolen. All of them."

The collective gasp and gazes of horror made her smile inwardly. Finally they realized the importance of this meeting. While they were all grown ups and rational thinking persons, her colleagues were like kids when Christmas or their presents were concerned. And as Minerva was known for her special and thoughtful presents, they wouldn't want to miss them for anything in the world.

"We have to get them back."

Her stern gaze was directed at the men and women sitting in front of her, staring at her with hide eyes and listening to her intently. If one hadn't known what they were talking about, they would have thought Minerva was the leader of a rebellion and their next strike was planned.

"To improve our functionality we will split into several teams. The Heads of Houses will search through their dorms. This way the parts of the castle the students spend most of their time in, will be controlled. Hagrid will search through the outlands for anything looking suspicious. The others will divide the remaining parts of the castle into areas and will search through them."

Nods of agreement met her stern gaze. The astronomy teacher would take the towers and the upper floor, Severus would search through the dungeons and Slytherin common room, Pomona would search through the Hufflepuff' common room and the green houses, Filius would have the Ravenclaw common room and the tower, the others would have to divide the rest between themselves and she would take the Gryffindor common room and the tower. Sybille, her eyes started to slightly twitch again, wouldn't participate in the search but would instead contact her inner eye for help.

What a good this would do.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Christmas won't wait for you to finish up your cups of tea and start the search. If you want to receive a Christmas present from me, you have to start the search now!"

As soon as she had finished she was left alone in the meeting room. Smiling contentedly at herself, Minerva left the room and made her way to the Gryffindor common room. She could start immediately with her search, as it wouldn't do to spend the time doing nothing. Frowning in disapproval as she remembered last night, she decided to have a little chat with Mister Weasley about his last night's adventurous tour through the deserted castle.

Feeling a sparkle of sadism, Minerva idly contemplated the thought of letting Mister Potter and Miss Granger join the talk.

Severus sighed in annoyance as he stood leaning over the cauldron, waiting for the potion to cool down. Unlike what many others thought and said, when Severus Snape said he had a potion to brew, he had a potion to brew. He was a Potions Master, for Merlin's sake, he wouldn't choke about something like that.

Normally he would have been able to enjoy the brewing, it calmed him down better than a can of camille tea could ever do. But this time, he couldn't. Angry thoughts flashed through his mind, preventing him from enjoying his task.

A group of young Slytherins had decided while waiting for their Professors' approval to go ice skating on the lake, it would be much more fun and more Slytherin to do this inside instead. So after they had done some research on the topic, someone had created a slim layer of water on the floor of one of the dungeon's corridor, while the others had cast a spell to make the temperature drop.

Until this step, everything went perfectly fine and Severus had to grudgingly respect that their idea was quite good and well thought through. Sadly. the group miscalculated the temperature and underestimated the difficulty of reaching the ice free area of the corridor, as the had all been standing at the dead end of it when they had cast the spells. There was no door on the left or the right side, the only escape being at the other ice free end.

So when they started to skate, they underestimated the slipperiness of the ice and immediately made a most unwelcome contact with the icy floor. Standing up turned out to be difficult, but not as difficult as skating on it. When they realized it wouldn't work the way they wanted it to, they tried to vanish the ice with heating spells. But as nearly twenty students had spoken the freezing spells, the temperature of the ice was too cold for any heating charm to warm. With a lot of dread the Slytherin group finally realized that their only way of escape would be squirming over the icy floor like flobberworms to reach the ice-free end.

When all of them had two hours later arrived at the other end, all of them were nearly freezing to death, the were bleeding at their hands, where the skin had come into contact with the ice and most of them had bruises at their knees and elbows. Needless to say, they would have wished to go directly to the Hospital Wing. But as they were Slytherins and there was nothing more important than their ego and their reputation, they had decided against it.

And had instead visited him.

That was why Severus had been forced to brew several batches of healing and warming draughts on a normally work free morning. And now, five hours later, he had finally brewed the last cauldron and would, after bottling it up and sending a house elf to bring it to the Slytherin common room, be able to enjoy his free day. He knew that Minerva wanted him to search through his Slytherins' common room for her missing presents, but frankly, he could care less.

Of course he wanted her to find them, especially as her present for him was missing, too. But after attending to the needs of his Slytherins for the last five hours, Severus decided the common room and the dungeons could wait a little.

With a flick of his wand, the draught emptied out of the cauldron and filled itself into the several open bottles waiting for it. Another flick and the cauldron was standing on the floor, waiting for the house elves or some unfortunate student to clean it up, while the bottles were closed. He called for a house elf and instructed the miserable creature to bring all these bottles to his Slytherins, to wait for them to finish them up and then to return the bottles to his study.

Deciding to go for a walk, Severus left his quarters and turned left. But he had not walked for two seconds, he was forced to stop again. There, on the floor in front of him, where small, glittery heaps on the floor every once and a while. The came from the upper floors and lead to the more darker and colder parts of the dungeon.

His interest spiked, Severus conjured a warm winter cloak and made his way to follow those heaps. His wand was leading him the way, the glitter reflecting brightly the light. The deeper he reached into the dungeons, the bigger the heaps of glitter got. Idly Severus asked himself in what he had gotten himself into following them. Perhaps he should have told someone where he was going or wait for someone to accompany him. Frowning at this strange and uncharacteristic thought, Severus brushed it away. He was a Death Eater for Merlin's sake, he had lived through much worse. His only goal at the moment was to find the culprit and to punish him accordingly.

Because there was no bigger mistake and sin than letting glitter lay around in the dungeons.

It was just wrong.

Somewhere in the loneliest and darkest place of the castle, the Grinch was sitting on his couch, staring into the brightly shining fireplace with glee, a cup of strong, black tea in his hands. Behind him, there was a small Christmas tree, decorated with golden, ever burning candles, red unbreakable globes and small wooded figures. Under it there was a nicely handmade, red carpet, filled with dozen and dozen of presents.

Looking at the pictures hanging at the white wall, the Grinch sighed. He enjoyed watching those pictures. The small, grey kittens playing or walking around made him relax immensely. He knew most visitors were scared by his kittens, but he liked them, he thought of them as cute. After all, most people thought his lovely cat to be ugly, too. Frowning angrily the Grinch remembered that not all people or wizards were able to notice real, breathtaking beauty.

Like every year Minerva's presents were the ones wrapped with the most thoughtfulness and consideration. Severus Snape's was wrapped in a shiny, silver-green paper, Filius Flitckwick's was wrapped in a dark blue one with a bronze loop, enchanted so it would create different figures every once and a while, Pomona Sprout's paper was of a floral paint and the Headmaster's had candy stuck to it. Like always she had known how to wrap each present, so it would delight the person send to.

And like every year she had forgotten him again.

It made him angry, furious if he would be honest with himself. He wasn't angry at the others for not thinking about him and giving him a present. Well, at the beginning he had been, but as they never associated with him anyways he wasn't too sad about they did. But with Minerva it was different. Besides the Headmaster, she was the only one to speak to him freely, the only one to ask how he felt because she was interested in it, the only one who cared for him. But like every other year, she wouldn't give him a present. It hurt him, hurt him quite deeply to see all others would receive one, but he wouldn't.

So he had decided it wouldn't do this year.

And that was why he had stolen her presents. If he didn't get one, nobody would. He would punish her for forgetting him all those years and would therefore keep the presents for himself. At Christmas he would open them, one by one and would pretend they were all for him, one present for each year without. Perhaps she would finally realize she had forgotten him each and every year. But even if she didn't, it wouldn't matter.

Because this year, he would finally receive a present from her.

Smiling benevolently at himself, the Grinch emptied his tea cup, placed it for the house elves to take away on his couch table, lit the fire and then threw a thick white blanket over the presents. It wouldn't do for anyone to enter his quarters and see the missing presents. This would scarcely happen, but one couldn't be careful enough. Having made sure nothing was to be seen, the Grinch started to hum contentedly and went to go to bed.

FelesMagica

Woohoo. I did it. Didn't take me as long as I expected it to. I'm currently working on five other, long term stories, that is why. But, you see, I did it. So, Blonde Slytherin, you're next. Good luck with it!

Just some little information: I called the one who stole the presents Grinch, like he or she had been in the chapter before. I know I spoke of him as a "he", but you could easily decide to make the Grinch a "she". I just thought it to be more fitting.

If someone has questions about the content of my chapter or what I meant with something, feel free to pm me. I will answer all questions.

I can't wait to read what is going to happen next and who you want the culprit to be. Ah, the excitement!

Thanks a lot, Stalker of Stories, for beta-reading my chapter!