Author's note: Just tweaking a couple of details on this one that my eagle-eyed reviewers have brought to my attention. Thanks. btw, 'Bonxie' is a genuine Shetland name. (I just thought it was cute).

DECK THE HALLS

By Bellegeste

CHAPTER 2: A BIRD OF ILL OMEN

Sunday 15th December

With Christmas less than a fortnight away, the owl service was getting busy. The skies fluttered with best wishes, winging their way through the frosty dawn, gliding tawny whispers, gilded in the sunrise. Every morning the wide, stone window ledges of the Great Hall fluffed with speckled shapes, jostling to get through the open fanlight and deliver their greetings.

For the past month or more Professor Grubbly-Plank had been preparing for the owl invasion, stepping-up her breeding programme of rats, mice, moths and mokes, the timing carefully tailored to provide the Owlery with a constant supply of fresh maggots, 'pinkies' and 'fuzzies' to fuel the feathered messengers on their return flights home.

The atmosphere of end-of-term excitement was daily more apparent. Ripping open their cards and letters, reading their families' carefully elaborated plans for holiday travel or tactful hints for last-minute presents, the students were buzzing with happy anticipation.

x x x

"Well I never! A 'bonxie'!" Professor Dumbledore looked up from his weekend porridge in surprise. His gaze followed the compact, brown bird in its headlong rush from ledge to table. Tracing the gull's erratic flight-path through the Hall, the old wizard's hand webbed the air, porridge spoon aloft, a drizzle of Highland Honey mirroring the bird's progress in a sticky trail from pot to dish and back across the table.

"A Doxy, did you say? Leave it to me, Albus. I'll nab the blighter!"

Professor Grubbly-Plank levered herself to her feet, her eyes darting from left to right, wand at the ready, searching for a glimpse of dark, hairy legs and shiny wings.

"No, no, Wilhelmina. Sit yourself down. A 'bonxie'. No need for your expertise. I dare say you'd call it a Great Skua, but our Shetland friends in the north prefer a more affectionate term."

The gull was now circling the Hall at height, broad wings flashing white as it wheeled in tight arcs round the candle chandeliers. Its black eyes scanned the flock of upturned heads.

"In my parents' day," Dumbledore, finishing a mouthful of sweet, cold porridge, was saying to his breakfasting colleagues, "Great Skua were virtually extinct. Only a handful of breeding pairs were left, or so I understand. I believe their numbers have, er, rallied. Quite a while since I've seen one in these parts. Most unusual to find a trained one though. Or even semi-trained," he added, wincing, as the gull suddenly dived, hurtling towards the Slytherin benches. Like a sturdy, sepia meteorite it crashed onto the table in an explosion of broken crockery, aqua-planing through the scattered bowls and tea-cups on a sea of spilt milk and pumpkin juice, a spectacular sliding-tackle that ended in flapping pandemonium in front of Draco Malfoy.

Peering over his half-moon spectacles, Professor Dumbledore crooked a gnarled finger towards the flustered Skua with a gentle flicking motion in the direction of the window. The bird, suddenly calm once more, opened his stout, hooked bill, gave a single, low, barking cry, and took flight, soaring effortlessly out and away into the December morning.

Millicent Bulstrode let out a shrill shriek of disgust,

"There's guano in my grapefruit!"

"Ahem. The child should be thankful it wasn't an albatross," commented the headmaster mildly, for staff ears only, his eyes twinkling. "Perhaps, Wilhelmina, we should be adding fish to the Owlery menu from now on. Is that an omen, do you think, Sibyll?"

Professor Trelawney consulted the heavens, squinting through her cats' eye lenses and blinking rapidly, as though the mere tic of an eyelid was the one thing preventing her rolling eyeballs from dropping out of their sockets altogether.

"The Giant Skewer is indeed a bird of ill-omen," she intoned in a voice wringing with woe, "and the 13th - Friday 13th – truly an ominous date. The signs, I fear, Headmaster, are not propitious…" She shook her head in lamentation.

"Well, Sibyll, it is fortunate for us that today is a Sunday, and that the 13th was, if I remember correctly, last Friday…" Dumbledore smiled. At the far end of the table Remus choked.

With an indulgent wave of his wand the old wizard restored order to the shell-shocked Hall and turned back to his own breakfast, prodding the rubberised porridge with a sigh.

At the Slytherin table, Draco furtively slipped a small, tightly rolled scroll of cloth into his cloak pocket.

x x x

Monday 16th December

"Mr Longbottom!"

Life drained from Neville's round face. Confronted with Snape he became a mindless, stuttering zombie, clumsy, inarticulate and even more forgetful than usual.

"So, what did you have for breakfast, boy? Lovage and Scurvy-grass? Or is that befuddled gawp your natural expression? Been soaking your brain in Shrinking Solution?"

A dry, choked gargle escaped from Neville's throat. He gulped, floundered.

"Explain, if you would be so good, Mr Longbottom, why your Wit Sharpening Potion is that singularly unappealing shade of liver… Is Miss Granger's potion brown? No. Is Mr Malfoy's? No."

They faced each other, from opposite sides of the cauldron: Neville, shrinking back, fearful; Snape, intimidating, severe, making no allowances.

"As you are hardly renowned for your originality, Mr Longbottom, I must assume that this aberration is unintentional."

"Sorry, Sir. Yes… er, no… Um… What?"

"A mistake, boy! An error, blunder, fault, clanger, howler, inaccuracy, miscalculation… You have got it wrong again, haven't you, boy?" Smoothly sarcastic. For Merlin's sake, Severus! Are you parodying yourself? No wonder the kinds mock you behind your back. Drop the pomposity, man, and teach the little shit!

"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir." Neville was trying his best, but he was so nervous that nothing seemed to go right. Even when he could have sworn that he had measured the ingredients perfectly and followed the instructions down to the last comma, his potion never turned out like everybody else's.

Snape ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. Hadn't he been patient with this stupid child? Hadn't he allowed him to join the NEWT class even though his results were sub-standard? Hadn't he agreed to give up several evenings to help the boy catch up? Hadn't he allocated him far more than his deserved share of attention during lessons, monitoring his brewing, supervising his slicing and stirring? He couldn't spoon-feed the little chump! And the minute his back was turned, what did he do?

"We are working on this potion for your benefit, boy. The least you could do is brew it correctly. What was the last ingredient you added?" Snape demanded. "Ginger root? Ground Scarab Beetle? Armadillo bile?"

Neville's mind went blank. Empty, void, vacant, clueless.

"I don't know, Sir."

"You don't know?" A hiss of incredulity.

The rest of the class held their breaths in silent sympathy. Things were not looking good for Neville. They could see the vein throbbing in Snape's temple, a sure sign that his patience was exhausted, an explosion imminent.

"Then remove it! Extract it; subtract it. There may still be time to salvage the remaining constituents. What are you waiting for? Tempus fugit!"

"But, Sir, how do I…?" Neville peered up at the Potions master helplessly.

The temptation to throttle the gormless child was overpowering. Snape clenched his fists and forced himself to take a step backwards. He tried to think of the boy as some weak, mentally deficient creature, who required special understanding. Euthanasia was all that sprang to mind.

"Dragon's blood! Get your wand out, boy. Extraho novissimus…" Snape prompted, feeling he deserved the Order of Merlin, at least, for self-restraint. Neville lifted his wand tentatively, but as he raised it above the cauldron, the Maple-wood glowed red-hot in his hand and he dropped it with a squeal. The wand slipped into the bubbling brown sludge…

Without thinking, Neville plunged his hand into the potion to grab his sinking wand. It had belonged to his mother, and he could not bear to lose it. He'd lost his father's wand that day in the Department of Mysteries when Dolohov had snapped it. He couldn't lose his mother's too - whatever would his gran say? He pulled the wand out of the cauldron with a whoop of triumph, his cry distorting into a howl of pain as his arm erupted into a blistering lava-field of scalded skin.

Snape reacted instantly.

"Glaciescum protego!"

A silvery bubble of soothing, neutralising, ice-cold liquid enveloped Neville's arm as far as the elbow. The rest of Neville froze too as he stood there petrified, blinking like a rabbit blinded by the glare of Snape's wrath.

"You stupid boy! What did you put in there - Bobotuber Pus?"

"I'll take him to Madam Pomfrey," Hermione volunteered, already shepherding her friend towards the door.

Snape nodded angrily, shocked that he had allowed the situation to slip out of his control. Potions accidents were not common, but the occasional foul-up was inevitable. Even so, there would be questions asked, incident report forms to fill-in. He should have known better than to tell the fool to use his wand - in the hands of a dunderhead like Longbottom, the combination of wand magic and Potion magic could be lethal. It could have been worse - Snape consoled himself with the thought. Longbottom might have exploded his cauldron and barbecued the entire class with on skewers of white-hot metal, splattering them with molten potion… The wretched boy had been back in his class for only a couple of days! He should never have let Sprout talk him into it.

Neville's wand lay on the floor where he had dropped it, forgotten, in a puddle of offal-coloured slime.

x x x

In the greenhouse

"Lavender blue, dilly-dilly, lavender green…"

Professor Sprout trilled busily to herself as she worked. For such a stumpy, short figure she had an incongruously clear, bell-like singing voice. Oh, what the deuce! Who was she trying to fool? It was shrill and squeaky, she knew it, but here, at night in the deserted Greenhouse, with no one to listen, she could indulge her operatic fantasies and warble away to her heart's content. While the rest of her body appeared to have been constrained and moulded by the contours of a small barrel, her voice had escaped, stretching and elongating in compensation. It was the only part of her that was thin, and she was going to make the most of it.

"Green grow the rushes, O! I'll sing you seven, O…"

She set out trays of tiny pots, filling them with her own special blend of compost, sifted in the optimum ratio of loam to grit to peat and a trowel-full of Magigrow for good measure. A Ladybird was crawling around the rim of one large, terracotta pot, a shiny, scarlet and black-spotted button, moving purposefully, completing meaningless circuits and then progressing on for another lap. As Sprout watched, the red carapace clicked apart and, in a spurt and fizz of invisible wings, the beetle was away - back to a burning nest? Sprout recited to herself:

"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home:
Your house is on fire, your children are gone…"

Now she took out her wand and ran it a few times through her wayward hair, dislodging a couple of dry leaves, scratching her head as she counted the rows of containers. Another two dozen should do it, she thought.

"On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

A partridge in a pear tree…"

She always sang this one lustily - especially when she got to the 'five gold rings' - even if the words of some of the other verses eluded her, she could really let rip there. Nearly Christmas, eh? Her favourite time of year.

"Deck the halls with boughs of holly…

'Tis the season to be jolly…"

She loved the Yuletide, when the outside world - her world, the plant world - came alive inside the castle. With the halls and corridors swagged and festooned with evergreen, and the 'tang' of pine in the air, the endless cycle of growth and rebirth filled her with optimism and fresh hopes for the coming season. In the Greenhouse itself, the sultry, musky scent of Hyacinth evoked for Pomona Sprout the essence of Christmas. Not for her the grease-laden reek of roasting fowl, or the dyspeptic sweetness of Plum pudding, but the clean, herbal smell of chopped parsley:

"Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme…" she hummed happily.

And the colours of Christmas! The bowls of Hyacinths on the sill thrust their dusty blue or pink rods through a curtain of Zygocactus, its sectioned, tapeworm stems heavy with dangling bells, aggressively red, challenging the blood-leaved Poinsettia for attention. Queening it above them, the Amarylis, proud, painted, high-class vamp of the flower kingdom, stood splendidly aloof on its single stem, vibrant, waxy, exotic. She loved them all.

Using the tip of her wand as a dibber, Professor Sprout pressed holes in the compost, the perfect depth and diameter to welcome the delicate new hair-roots. Pricked-out now, the little Sneezewort seedlings would just be in leaf and ready to harvest for Poppy to make Pepper Up Potion, in time for next term's crop of colds. With the blunt end she firmed the soil. Not quite the done thing, she appreciated, - the KOWS (Keep Our Wands Sacred) lobbyists would have a fit. Silly kows! She wiped the wand on the seat of her trousers, and slid it down inside her Wellington boot. She and her wand made a good team! Herbology didn't call for much in the way of clever magic, but that wand had served her faithfully, despite being used as a gardening tool. Over the years the Mulberry wood had aged and darkened - hadn't they all? They would grow old together.

"Here we go round the Mulberry bush…

…On Christmas Day in the morning."

It was her song, a secret tribute to her wooden friend.

x x x

"Silencio!"

The spell cut her off in the second chorus. Professor Sprout had not heard him come in, and her dancing words tripped in her throat, falling silent. A 'Protego!' was barely out of her mouth when his whirling curse caught it, linking elbows and whisking it off and away, carol and rhyme gyrating round and back and, finally, sealing the song on her lips.

"Outside!" He seized her by a sturdy arm and forced her into the darkness.

x x x

Draco swore under his breath as another pin bent. The cloth scroll insisted on curling up at the edges and he'd had the idea of tacking it onto a board - like a curing mole-skin - to keep it flat. He'd used his wand as a staple-gun before (that time he'd nailed Creevey's ear to the tree trunk), but today the pins simply wouldn't go in straight. Perhaps the cloth was impregnated with a preservative Charm that repelled tacks.

Apart from the pin problem, Draco was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He'd made a good start; his Dad would be proud of him.

When the Skua had first deposited the tiny, damp roll of material into his lap, Draco had no idea who it was from. He was not expecting his father to make contact. He had not thought it was possible to get a message out of Azkaban. Now he examined the 'note' anxiously. As the fabric dried, it was becoming increasingly creased, and the dark, mahogany lettering was fading. Draco barely recognised the cramped, scratchy handwriting as his father's; the angular, wavering strokes were so different from Lucius' customary bold penmanship. He had the sickening suspicion that it had been written with a sharpened fingernail, dipped in blood.

Draco knew he had to destroy the scroll, to obliterate any evidence, but he wanted to read it just one more time. It was the first news he had had of his father in six months. At least he now knew that Lucius was still alive and that the Dementors had not sucked out his soul; that he was rational and still capable of plotting revenge…

He had spent hours pondering his father's request. The three things he had asked him to do would not be easy - not without getting caught - and he didn't have much time, certainly not long enough to brew up Polyjuice or anything like that. It was already the last week of term. For ages he had been completely stumped, blundering though an evil maze of dead-ends and unfeasibly ruinous hypotheses. He had been lost for ideas. But then that hapless, Gryffindor twit, Weevil Fatbottom, had materialised in Potions like the answer to a saboteur's prayer.

Since the P'n'P incident, Snape had been stricter than everi. (Snape's inebriate loss of self-control in the Ravenclaw lesson at Hallowe'en had been dubbed by some malicious Slytherin as 'Snape: Pissed and Paranoid'. This title, being far too long for everyday usage - and Snape's outburst was, for a considerable time, the subject of daily discussion - had quickly been abbreviated to P'n'P. Even some non-Slytherins had found themselves using them term for convenience, though their motives were kinder - it saved them from actually having to voice more specific words such as 'humiliation' or 'breakdown'…).

Dumbledore had persuaded Snape to take a couple of days off, but after that brief, enforced leave, he had grimly returned to Hogwarts, sober and emotionally sutured. Defying ridicule, he had adopted an offensive stance to reassert his authority: discipline was henceforth more stringent, standards more demanding, his barbed tongue even more mercilessly vituperative. As the weeks went by, the past indignity was overshadowed by the far harsher reality of the present and, gradually, Snape's 'lapse' was relegated in the minds of the students to the status of apocrypha, Trelawney's predictions or wishful thinking.

A week ago, Draco would have said it was well nigh impossible to penetrate the defensive wards and burgle Snape's private rooms, but now, thanks to Longbottom, he had the germ of a plan. He reckoned he could have managed the 'disruption' and 'mayhem' parts of his father's request adequately enough on his own, but, unwittingly, Neville had played right into his hands on both counts. He was such a no-hoper, smirked Draco, such a tongue-tied drongo! But feed him a simple question about anything plant-related and he turned into a living encyclopaedia! Then again, gullible and naïve and with a memory like a Dugbog - the stupid sap was just asking to be exploited. It had been child's play to 'borrow' his bag for five minutes while he was grubbing about in the greenhouse with the rest of the sad, herbal oiks, and make that strategic substitution, plus a touch of label swapping… He, Draco, would swap them back later, and no one would be any the wiser…

Draco ripped the note off the board, pins pinging, and looked at it for the last time. Crumpling the cloth into a ball he was about to place it on the floor when he stopped, and on impulse, lifted it to his face and sniffed. …salt, the smell of the sea, a fishy, sea-bird sourness… nothing familiar… Shrugging away disappointment, he dropped it to the floor and aimed his wand.

"Incendio!"

A spit of flame leaped out and waltzed in slow zig-zags down to ignite the crushed cotton. The note flared with a fiery chuckle, blackened, shrivelled and, it seemed to Draco as he watched the rising, smoky spirals, whispered his name.

End of Chapter. Next Chapter: A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME. The staff compare notes on the spate of magical problems affecting the school… Lupin finds Snape's predicament amusing…

i Snape's outburst occurs in Repercussions. He was pretty much at the end of his tether there. It's significance here is that it led Snape to intensify his security measures, making it difficult for Draco to gain access to his office.