A Potion Induced Advent's Time
by Healer Pomfrey
Please refer to the content/warnings/disclaimer note above page 1.
December 9
On Thursday afternoon, Poppy finally deemed Harry well enough to take the toddlers to Diagon Alley; however, she forbade him to apparate with two children and instead took Severus through the Floo to the Leaky Cauldron, where she waited until Harry arrived with Minerva and helped him to place the children into the buggy, before she excused herself, instructing Harry to be back at the Leaky Cauldron by five o'clock.
"Floo call me or send me a Patronus if you want to go home earlier for some reason," she said kindly, causing Harry to smile at her in relief.
"Thank you so much for helping me through this," he said gratefully. "I really appreciate it."
"You're welcome, Harry," Poppy replied, smiling, and stepped into the fireplace to hurry back to Hogwarts.
"Well, let's head out into Diagon Alley and take a look at the big Christmas tree," Harry suggested and pushed the buggy through the snow. 'I just hope they'll be back to their usual old selves by Christmas,' he thought. 'Otherwise, we need to go Christmas shopping, which probably won't be much fun, seeing how crowed the street is already.'
He was pulled out of his musings, when they reached Flourish and Blotts. The Christmas tree in front of the bookshop was indeed gorgeous. It was almost as big as the largest tree, which Hagrid used to put up in the Great Hall, and it was beautifully decorated with colourful baubles that displayed various patterns of the magical world.
Seeing that Severus eagerly tried to climb out of the baggy, Harry grudgingly took the children out, afraid that otherwise Severus might fall out and hurt himself.
"Minerva, Severus, please stay close to me. I don't want you to get lost in the crowd," he said in concern, causing the small wizard to sneer at him.
'We're not real toddlers, and we know our way back, thank you very much,' the Potions Master telepathically informed him.
'Well then please behave accordingly,' Harry thought but refrained from sharing his opinion with the child, deciding, 'I'm glad that we get along relatively well, so better not worsen that by criticizing him if not absolutely necessary.' He quietly observed how the children stood in front of the tree, letting their eyes wander over the decorations. 'What are we going to do here?' he mused. 'It's so difficult. If they were proper two-year-olds, I could take them to the zoo, but somehow I can't imagine Snape with his older self's brain watching the baboons to be fed.'
Suddenly, Harry was brought back to reality when a huge commotion began around them. When he tried to recall the scene later on, he had no idea how it happened or if he would have been able to stop Severus from doing magic on time; everything happened too quickly. When he looked up, he saw that all the colourful ornaments on the tree were replaced by black, bubbling cauldrons that were standing on the branches. Before he even realised what had happened, the cauldrons began to spit out chocolate frogs, which were jumping away quickly. While Harry stared at the tree in horror, several hundred chocolate frogs were jumping and running along Diagon Alley, and the wizards and witches, who were peacefully doing their Christmas shopping, were screaming and running away in shock, trying not to triple over the frogs.
'Oh no,' Harry thought, terrified, unable to scold the children, let alone take any action to stop the few dozen cauldrons from further spitting out chocolate frogs.
'They're only chocolate frogs, completely harmless,' Severus suddenly thought to him and with his traditional sneer on the young face pointed at Minerva, who was happily munching one of the delicious escapees, her face completely covered with chocolate.
"Severus, you're very naughty," Harry whispered, trying hard to prevent himself from laughing at the sight of the adults, who were fleeing from the invasion of frogs. 'But he's right,' he secretly agreed with the boy and decided to unobtrusively leave the place, before the Christmas tree was surely going to become the centre of attention sooner or later. He hurriedly pocketed the buggy and grabbed Minerva with his right hand, Severus with the left, pulling both children close, before he apparated away.
メリークリスマス
On Friday morning, a copy of The Daily Mirror was lying on the dining table, and Harry couldn't help laughing out loud as he got a glimpse at the main headline.
'Mass Panic on Diagon Alley due to Chocolate Frog Attack by Unknown Attacker'
'If you tell anyone that it was me, I'm going to use your limbs as potions ingredients as soon as I'm back to my normal age,' Severus thought to Harry, causing him to laugh even more.
"I already told Poppy last night. Why do you think we have a copy of the newspaper here?" Harry gave back, smirking, knowing that Poppy would keep their secret.
メリークリスマス
Unbeknownst to Harry, Severus felt very much reassured by his success and decided to thoroughly enjoy the time, when he was a toddler and could do things, which he would never be able to do once he was back to his usual adult self.
tbc...
Thank you for all your kind comments - I am very sorry for the delay; I wasn't able to post last night, but I will post the next chapter on time again.
