Dumbledore was mad. Exceptionally, infuriatingly, and admiringly - in an unfortunate way - mad.
Severus was seated in Dumbledore's office, staring dumbstruck at the Headmaster's beaming face. "But… but…" But he couldn't find any other words. To compensate, he flung his arms wide in a gesture that he hoped would say it all.
"Yes, quite," Dumbledore replied, still beaming.
"But how is this possible?" Severus spluttered. "How did you manage it?"
"Oh, the same way I manage a great many other brilliant things, I expect." Severus just glared. "Oh, go on, then. But don't tell Voldemort." Severus rolled his eyes. "I happen to have the acquaintance of a former student, you see. Well, he of course would be no help whatsoever, but I spoke with his very charming sister, and she was happy to be of assistance. I suspected that she might have been the same sort of student that your friend James Potter was," Severus glared harder, "judging by her brother's record. And that, Severus, is always a dangerous judgment to make. Siblings can often surprise you. However, this time the gambit worked. She knew more about Durmstrang's secrets than I could possibly have hoped for. So, with the assistance of some very trusted and capable Order members, in the dead of night, we stole into the school, we roused the students, and we stole right back out again."
Severus stared. "That's… well, that's brilliant." Dumbledore beamed again. "But the Dark Lord was furious. I've never seen him so angry."
"Alas, a necessary consequence. Who did he take it out on?"
"Your favourite, actually. Regulus Black."
"Really?"
"Yes. I was also surprised."
"Hmm. That does not bode well." Severus sat up a little straighter, but Dumbledore said no more on the subject. "So, I can count on you to help the Durmstrang students get adjusted to their new home, can I?"
"Of course. They're doing well on their own, though. You'd have thought they'd never seen food before."
"Excellent. Please keep me informed. Now. I have something here for James which I thought you could bring to him. I'm sure that when he sees it he won't mind that I haven't bought him anything new for Christmas. And I have a book for Lily, a rather good one, and something of my own design for Harry. I'll give them to you now, so that you'll have them ready for when you visit the Potters for the last time before Christmas, shall I? In case circumstances keep me away. What's wrong, Severus?"
Severus was horrified. Christmas shopping! How could he have forgotten? "No, I'm fine. I'll take those with me now, sure." Without another word he seized the three packages and practically ran out of Dumbledore's office.
Christmas shopping! They'd expect him to do their Christmas shopping! Not for their friends, surely, and if so he'd put his foot down, it would be too dangerous. But how could he weasel his way out of shopping for them, for the boy?
That was indisputably asking too much of him. He simply could not do the Potters' Christmas shopping. He would not.
And he was supposed to see them the next morning, for the first time since he had shoved their shopping into Lily's arms while still invisible, all over that preposterous idea of Dumbledore's that James Potter was starting to consider him a friend. What was he supposed to do, when Lily looked at him with those eyes of hers and said, "Well, I think he could really use another sweater, yes, a Christmas sweater with a smiling hippogriff in a heart on the front."? He was NOT going to buy James Potter a Christmas hippogriff heart sweater!
And what would people say if they saw him shopping in the children's section? The Dark Lord may not believe him capable of treachery and loyalty to Dumbledore, but if he caught him rummaging through a bin of teddy bears he might start to get suspicious. Not that the Dark Lord frequented shopping centers, but somebody was bound to notice him doing very un-Severus Snapelike shopping, and in these times people would use whatever information they could to have leverage over others.
Severus paused, looked around to confirm the hallway he was currently stalking through was completely empty, and gave up, sagging miserably against a wall – which turned out to be the trick wall, and he tumbled right through it, thus giving four or five first years the shock of their lives.
The next morning, Severus was still smarting from landing on a game of Exploding Snaps. He was standing, completely disguised, on the Potters' front porch, having a very difficult time making himself ring the bell. How was he supposed to walk away from this without a list, the top of it reading "Christmas hippogriff heart sweater"? He clenched his fists for a moment, hoping to relieve his irritation and anxiety, but when all that happened was that his fingernails bit into his palm, he grunted and rang the doorbell.
Like the last time, it was Lily who answered. She started uncertainly through Severus. He cleared his throat. "It's me."
"Ah," she said, as though she hadn't already been aware of that. "Would you -" she paused, looking even more uncertain than she had before. "Um, would you like to come in? We made cookies. You could help us eat them, there are rather a lot. That is, if you aren't busy, and if you are of course we can just quickly -"
"No, I'm not, uh, busy, no. I have plenty of time today, I can come in. Sorry about last week, again, I had… classes, to prepare for, and Dumbledore was -"
"Not at all, we don't want to be a burden, although, how can we not be, I mean, with all that you're – please, come in, you've been on the porch long enough!" She stood back and Severus slid through, un-charming himself as she shut the door quietly behind him. She took his coat, and as she put it away in the closet she said, so quietly he almost missed it, "I'm glad you can stay, James was a little disappointed when he missed you last week."
What?
Severus blinked several times, hoping that any shock and horror which may have registered on his face might be blinked away. Lily didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong, though. She just smiled and gestured towards the kitchen. "The cookies are in there… We're a little early this year, but there hasn't been that much else to do, you know."
Somehow he made it into the kitchen. James Potter was sitting at the table with his back to Severus, but judging by the short, chubby leg ending in a tiny shoe sticking out over his lap, he was holding his son. He turned when he heard them.
"Ah, it's you."
"Who else would it be?" Severus managed to ask.
James Potter laughed, and made no retort. Instead he said, "Did you see how we've been keeping ourselves busy?" He gestured at the table in front of him. "Sit down. Start eating, please, or Harry and I will turn into beluga whales or something just as big."
When Lily had said that there were "rather a lot" of cookies – well, that didn't quite cover it. The entire kitchen table was covered in a heaping mound of them, obviously charmed to stop from cascading onto the floor. As he awkwardly took his seat, the timer went off and Lily pulled yet another batch of chocolate broomsticks from the oven.
"You'll have to take some back with you. And take some for Hagrid and Dumbledore," Lily said as she levitated the hot cookies on to a cooling rack.
James grinned. "And that's about all we can give them, what with being cooped up inside this house. No twice-around the Leaky Cauldron line-ups at Diagon Alley this year. And no beating Margarene Pyggleton over the head with a comedy bicorn horn in a race to buy the last toadstool shiner in Hogsmeade; too bad, Lily."
Lily rolled her eyes. "That was not me. I don't even use toadstool shiner, and I certainly don't know anyone who does."
James grinned slyly at her. "But they were marked down by seventy-seven percent, surely that's reason enough to send poor old Margarene to St. Mungo's with a great plastic thing welded to her nose."
"Ugh," was Lily's only reply, and she swatted the air as if discouraging a bothersome fly.
"So how is it out there this year?" James asked, turning back to Severus, who was unfortunately in the middle of chewing an overlarge bite of a ginger newt, which he had taken to distract himself from the coexisting feelings of discomfort and irritation brought on by being in the Potters' kitchen as a guest, which were only exacerbated by the smarting Exploding Snap wounds, and now Severus wished that he had let Madam Pomfrey look at them instead of flapping ludicrously at her until she finally gave up and yelled at him for being ridiculous.
He tried to swallow some of the newt, and said, "I nnudnunt gno, gni dunnut gno nnn shulps."
James raised an eyebrow. "Well, that clears that up, thanks."
Severus swallowed properly, and glaring, said, "I haven't been out much."
"Ah," James said, leaning back in his chair and setting the boy on the floor. The boy happily stomped off – Severus didn't know one could stomp with all four limbs while crawling, but evidently it was possible – and James's face lit up with that familiar mischief, or evil, Severus was more inclined to call it. "Do Death Eaters have a Gift Grab? Do you get killed if you steal a gift from Bellatrix?"
"James," Lily said wearily, elongating the name so that it was more of an admonition than anything else.
"What?" James replied, elongating the word to match Lily's admonition. "I'm just having some fun. He understands, don't you, Snape?"
Not one bungling little thing.
But James didn't even look around for Severus's answer. Instead, he and Lily argued some more, laughed about what they'd buy for all of James Potter's friends if they could. They swapped stories about Christmas shopping and lamented their inability to partake in the fun, though Lily noted that Christmas was probably not very jolly this year, what with the war escalating the way it was. Though once in a while he was required to nod, assent or dissent, and smile – stiffly, though neither Potter seemed to notice – Severus stuffed more and more ginger newts into his mouth in hopes of eating the whole blasted table full of cookies so that he could leave. Neither Lily nor James seemed at all aware of how uncomfortable he was, and neither of them seemed the least bit discomfited by the fact that a man who had been, a few short months ago, their enemy was now sitting at their table eating their Christmas cookies. Then the boy seized two chocolate broomsticks and stuck them in his ears, declaring loudly, "I mah-zic moo-sic moose, mummy, I mah-zic moo-sic moose! Zoom, zoom, zoom, boom zoom boom boom moose yum yum yum moose yummy yummy," and he subsequently yanked one of his "antlers" out of his ear and began to eat it. Severus seized his chance.
He cleared his throat as Lily and James looked at their son with a mixture of astonishment and alarm. "I should, er, be going, but thank you for the cookies."
"Not a problem, we've got plenty more," James said, grinning at the mound which, despite Severus's best efforts, was still mounding over the kitchen table.
"Before you go," Lily began, turning to one of her cupboards. Here we go, thought Severus with dread. "I'll put together two baskets for Hagrid and Dumbledore." She turned back, holding two festive containers in her hands and looking much more uncomfortable than the prospect of making up two baskets of cookies warranted. Uh oh. "And, Severus, well, we were thinking – we were thinking that maybe –"
"We were thinking that maybe you could join us for Christmas dinner, only if you want to, of course," James interrupted casually, raising his eyebrows at Lily's discomfort. "We know you've got a Hogwarts feast to attend, so obviously if you'd rather just stay there for Christmas, well, no hard feelings, but Christmas coincides with your next visit anyway, and we're starving for a little company here."
This is what it must feel like to be permanent-sticking charmed to the ground in front of a charging manticore. "Er," Severus said, without knowing what might come out next – a violent bout of laughter, some curses, some swearing…. "I'll have to get back to you on that. Dumbledore will expect me to – and the Dark Lord might summon me to – and I'm supposed to show up at my mother's – but I might find some time in between all of that, and Hagrid will probably have something obscenely huge for the boy – so perhaps I'll drop in, but don't make formal plans around me."
"Thanks, that information will really be a big help in trying to plan a magnificent Christmas dinner," James said snarkishly, "but we're glad you can make it."
Lily handed Severus the two baskets of cookies and smiled at him. "We'll try to be as good as Hogwarts."
"It'll be difficult if everything's covered in stinksap," James said, prodding the Mimbulus in his cupboard distastefully.
Severus left them putting away their new groceries carefully away around the Mimbulus, and he as he left he tried valiantly to give himself a stroke.
"Dumbledore."
"Severus?"
"I cannot be James Potter's friend."
"I suppose you cannot."
"I hate him. I've always hated him."
"Yes you have."
"And he's married to my – I just, I just hate him."
"And so you've said."
"Dumbledore."
"Severus?"
"I cannot be James Potter's friend!"
In the end, Severus went to the Potters' for their Christmas dinner. And it was not unpleasant.
Merry whatever you may be celebrating, and I shall see you all happy and well-celebrated in the new year!
