Author's note: in the next few chapters I get totally distracted by the sub-plot, but it was such fun writing it that I just went with the flow. I do bring it back to the real 'Christmas' theme eventually. I'm going to try and load the remaining chapters a bit more regularly, cos I'm away in January, and by the time I get back Christmas will be a distant memory...

So, Neville's messed up again in Potions, Harry's been injured, a series of trivial or maybe not so trivial things are happening in the school, and no one has a clue what's going on (including you readers, if my reviews are anything to go by!)

DECK THE HALLS

By Bellegeste

CHAPTER 5: LET SLEEPING DRAGONS LIE

Wednesday 18th December

"Harry, what happened? Are you alright?" Hermione felt that she was making rather a habit of accompanying her friends to the hospital wing.

"My wand's gone. I think it spontaneously combusted in my pocket." Harry was more worried about his wand than his bleeding fingers.

"Were you holding it when it blew up? Is that what cut you?"

"Yes - no. I don't know. I don't think so. This is crazy. None of it makes any sense."

He had seen the alarm on his father's face and he'd realised, with a jolt, that Snape was as mystified as everybody else. The thought depressed him. Somehow he had always assumed that the adult wizards had all the answers; that somewhere, in a dusty, magical tome, was the exact spell to set the world to rights. It probably was there, he thought phlegmatically - they just hadn't found it yet. Suddenly he grinned at Hermione:

"Your hair looks fine to me."

She knew now wasn't a good time, but it would be dishonest of her not to say something. If Snape was going to be such a bastard, she didn't see how she could go ahead with the visit.

"Harry, about Christmas…" she began.

"I'm really glad you're going to be there. It'll make all the difference. You're a good sport, Hermione. Sorry, what were you going to say?"

"Oh, nothing," she tailed off, lamely.

x x x

Sick Bay was as crowded as Zonko's on a Hogsmeade weekend. Harry and Hermione pushed past two nosebleeds, a black eye, and Padma and Parvati who each had a pine cone growing out of the centre of their forehead. A huddle of Slytherin Year Fours were there, soaking wet and shivering, chipping away at chunks of compacted snow that erupted from their chests like frozen, white fungal growths. Ginny was there too. Her face, arms and legs had sprouted dozens of lethally sharp, fire-tipped spines. She stood next to the open window, spraying herself with an atomiser, steaming, and warning people, quite unnecessarily, not to come too close. Through the throng of faces Hermione caught a glimpse of Ron - he seemed to be crying.

Just then Madam Pomfrey, less flustered than you might have expected, bustled up to them.

"Haven't been this busy since the Weasley's Skiving Snackboxes!" she declared. "Hermione, are you still in one piece? Good. Perhaps you can assist me with the triage. Sort this lot into three groups: 'in pain', 'in discomfort' and 'merely embarrassed', and I'll take it from there… Oh dear, Harry, that does look nasty - you'd better come with me…"

She ushered Harry away behind a screen. Before attempting to group the walking wounded, Hermione sought out Ron.

"Oh, Ron!" she cried, moved almost to the point of giving him a hug.

"Wotcha!" He didn't seem unduly upset.

"Ron, what is it? Is it Ginny?" She reached up and brushed a tear from his cheek.

"No. She'll be OK. I'm fine. No, honestly, I am. I'm happy, really. It's just my eyes watering. Blessed if I know what's going on. There's one or two of us like this. It's all pretty mind-blowing, isn't it? There's Pritchard who can't stop hopping - he's over there; you'll see him in a second when he bounces up again. And Natalie MacDonald has been doing a non-stop dog impersonation for about three hours. It was funny at first, but all that barking gets on your nerves after a while. I think someone bandaged over her mouth in the end, to muffle the noise."

"Why not use Silencio?" Hermione asked.

Ron gave a hiccoughing laugh and blew his nose.

"Well, you obviously haven't tried doing any magic this afternoon. It's all gone to bollocks. Nothing works. It's wizardry, Sir, but not as we know it. Merlin only knows what - oh, crikey!"

Hermione followed his startled gaze to the door, where a troop of Ravenclaw Year Three were side-stepping into the ward, their stiff, shuffling cha-cha punctuated by an occasional, self-conscious, ungainly mambo. Five of them had wooden legs. Of the remaining seven, two were holding up their arms in a suspiciously rigid pose, fingers splayed; Orla Quirke appeared to have been chiselled from a single tree-trunk from the waist up, and four were sprouting foliage from their ears and nostrils.

There was an uncanny uniformity about the shambling, Pinocchio group. There was a certain 'brown-ness' about them. Hermione looked more closely. Their clothes were grained with whorls of deep, reddish-brown - rich, glossy, curving traces, rippling out from dark mahogany knots. They looked as though they had been tightly tie-dyed in creosote, the wood-stain Hermione's dad had used last summer on the garden fence.

Bringing up the rear of the drab dancers, was the stumbling, distraught figure of an equally nut-brown Professor McGonagall.

"What have I done? Merciful Merlin, what have I done?" she repeated shrilly, wild-eyed and trembling. "Oh, whatever will I tell their parents? Never, in all my born days… Oh, this won't do - it simply won't do…" Her voice was tangoing towards genteel hysteria.

Madam Pomfrey steadied her with a comforting arm.

"Now then, Minerva, we've seen far worse. You're over-wrought. Come and lie down, and I'll give you something to help you relax."

Hermione suddenly remembered she had a job to do. She climbed onto a chair and shouted:

"If any of you are in pain, bleeding, missing limbs or in respiratory distress please line up behind Ginny Weasley. Those of you who are disabled in some way but not in imminent danger, form an orderly queue over by the fire exit. The rest of you, who aren't actually hurt but look extremely silly, get together at the back of the room and laugh at each other. You may have a long wait."

X X X

Five perfect potions. Boot, Brocklehurst, Parkinson, Abbot and Malfoy had all produced acceptable Calming Draughts. It was not difficult: the trick lay in blending the ingredients to a perfectly smooth paste before applying heat. There was really very little that could go wrong. Snape allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation. He need not have worried after all. The end of the lesson was in sight. If he could just get Longbottom to complete his potion without mishap, they could all go. He'd have time to check on Harry and then rendezvous with the rest of the staff for an update on the situation, before joining in the search for Professor Sprout.

"Longbottom!"

"Sir?"

"You have now observed the correct method five times. That should be sufficient even for you. You are to duplicate the procedure precisely. I shall be watching you. You may begin."

Neville read through the recipe again; he verified - again – the labels on his ingredients; he gave the scales another preparatory wipe (they seemed a bit sticky); he polished his spoon…

"Get on with it, boy!"

Neville wished Snape wouldn't stand so close. The man was looming over him like - well, like Snape (Neville couldn't think of anything worse) - sending him into a fumbling fluster. He was monitoring his every move, every measurement, every drop, grain, shred and granule, molecule and atom that passed from Neville's bottles into the mixture. If he came any closer he'd be in the cauldron.

Since his accident on Monday, Neville had been reluctant to do any brewing. Madam Pomfrey had worked her usual sublime miracles with Better Balm, and his arm was blister-free and perfectly usable (though the pink, new skin was tight and awfully itchy), but Neville was now more than ever convinced that he and Potions were incompatible. It had never been his favourite subject, he'd never shown the least aptitude for it, and now any residual speck of confidence had sizzled to nothing, along with the skin of his right hand. He couldn't believe that he - even he - had been so stupid as to scald himself in the first place - what sort of duffer would be so daft? Worse still, he had the illogical feeling that he might end up doing it again - that the irresistible lure of malign fate, fused with an absurd, masochistic compulsion, would draw his hand ineluctably back into the bubbling liquid…

So, as each new ingredient slipped from his fingers into the cauldron, Neville would flinch, jumping backwards out of harm's way, while Snape craned forward to assess the effect of the latest addition. They made a curious see-sawing double act.

Draco was also standing well back, prepared to leave the room at a moment's notice. He was not sure how violent the reaction would be. The only details he'd been able to glean from Longbottom were that, during the blanching process, a catalytic reaction occurred on contact with liquid, during which harmful substances were expelled and subsequently neutralised by heat. Professor Sprout always took care of this herself, and Neville had no further information, other than to assure Draco that Shark-Lily, once properly treated, was perfectly safe…

Neville dropped the fine, white shreds of grated rhizome into the cauldron and leaped back. The root entered the cold liquid with a screaming hiss, ejecting its toxins in a plosive, mustard-yellow vapour cloud, which billowed up out of the cauldron just as Snape was leaning in towards it. He recoiled as though a Great White itself had bitten him in the face, but it was too late. The noxious steam was already swirling in his lungs.

"Evanesco!" he spluttered, brandishing his wand at the cauldron. "Stand well back, all of you!" He rounded ferociously on Neville, dangerous as a cornered Chimaera.

"Longbottom!"

"I'm sorry, Sir. That wasn't supposed to happen, was it, Sir?" Neville whimpered.

"Longbottom! You are the most crass, incompetent, ungifted, unreliable, idiotic, worthless imbecile it has ever been my misfortune to teach. You are - "

He was interrupted by a volley of staccato sneezes from the adjacent desk. Brocklehurst was clutching at her collar, wheezing for breath, her eyes streaming.

Malfoy, with a sneer of distaste, took another step back.

"Yeah, that'd be right, Brocklehurst - give us all flu, just in time for Christmas. That's all we need," he muttered unsympathetically.

"What is it, girl? Did you inhale the vapour? Are you ill?" Snape transferred his attention to the snuffling student.

"No, Sir. It's not that," Brocklehurst gasped. "I'm allergic to roses!"

Snape pivoted in sick horror.

Neville's cauldron, clear of all traces of Potion, would have graced a Florist on Valentine's Day. The flowers burst from the cauldron in glorious profusion: Shrub roses in scarlet, puce and carmine clusters; loose-petalled pinky-salmon Ramblers, twining their prickly brambles around the rim, twisting in an out of the metal handles; arching sprays of Hybrid Tea roses, vibrantly vermillion; abundant, blushing crimson Grandiflora, heavy-headed on their upright stems; blood-red buds gathered by the romantic dozen… …every imaginable shade of red and pink - and every embarrassing tint in between.

Snape was appalled. He couldn't take his eyes off them.

"Sir! Mandy can't breathe!" Hannah Abbot was starting to panic.

"What? Yes. Yes, of course."

He crossed to the cupboard of emergency antidotes and scanned the rows of bottles. The toxic vapour snapped at his synapses. His head was splitting. The handwritten labels were a throbbing, pulsating blur; already he could feel the serrations of the shark's teeth sawing into his brain, a gathering tension behind the eyes, a distant drumming growing louder, more insistent. With an effort he selected a phial.

"Miss Abbot. Give her three drops on the back of the tongue. Then get her into the fresh air. Or take her to Pomfrey. Then go. All of you - GO!"

Snape groped his way to his desk and sank into the chair, a hand clamped to his forehead. The world around him swam. The herbal trepan was tightening its screws into his skull, crushing rationality, imploding his mind into an infinitely dense nucleus of pain.

The girls left in a fussing threesome, their arms protectively around each other's waists, Mandy still wheezing faintly. Boot, looking for an excuse to join them, picked up Brocklehurst's bag and trailed after them. That left only Draco and Neville.

"Now you've done it, you blundering squiboid! You've gone and poisoned Professor Snape!" Draco accused Neville loudly.

Neville still didn't understand what had happened. All he knew was that his potion had gone wrong again. There was a tragic inevitability about it. He was destined to fail. And, yes, evidently he had poisoned Snape.

"My gran gets migraines sometimes," he said, trying to be helpful, hoping to redeem himself. "She says to lie down in a darkened room with a cold compress. And don't eat chocolate. Or cheese." Neville bumbled and twittered.

"Brilliant! Like I was going to give him cheese!" Malfoy could not disguise his contempt. "Oh, piss off, Pongbottom, you gibbering turd-brain. You're worse than useless; you're a bloody liability. Piss off, and go and sniff sorrel, or whatever it is you herby geeks do for kicks. You're no help here."

Draco was anxious to get rid of Neville. Just a few minutes more and he'd have access to Snape's private Pensieve! He had to get Snape back to his rooms before the soporific stage of the Shark-Lily kicked in. He needed him to open that warded door…

"Neville's right, Sir. You ought to go and lie down. Come on."

Snape was in no condition to argue.

X X X

"Neville! Wait! Where are you going?"

He slowed down a little, but kept stumping on down the corridor. Hermione had to run to catch up with him.

"What's the rush? Where are you going?" she asked again.

"To the Greenhouse." His tone was flat but determined. "I need to look something up. I may even have to borrow Professor Sprout's files. Then they can expel me for that too."

"Neville, what's happened?"

The boy's jaw set stubbornly.

"Nothing. But I'm not a squib or an imbecile, and my name's Longbottom. Sorrel doesn't even taste nice. How's Harry? Why are you all wet?"

Hermione thought it wiser not to delve too deeply. Her eyes dropped to her splashed clothing. She was indeed wet.

"Oh, it's my own fault, I suppose. I'm on my way to get changed into something dry. Ron warned me. He said that all the spells were going haywire this afternoon, but I didn't believe him. Or, at least, I didn't really believe that my magic would go weird… Well, you know what Ron's like! It could have been a joke… But, it wasn't," she concluded ruefully with a shiver.

"So? And…?" Neville was waiting for the explanation.

"Oh. So I thought I'd try Aresco! on Ron - he's got this thing where his eyes keep watering - but instead of drying up the tears, my wand turned into a kind of hose-pipe affair and started squirting everybody. Madam Pomfrey got in a bit of a strop, actually. Sent me out. And, Harry's alright, by the way. I think he's gone back to the Common Room to sit quietly - the hospital wing's like a mad-house."

She could tell Neville wasn't really listening. He was looking at her, but his thoughts were elsewhere, his eyes troubled.

"Flu - is it an airborne virus?" he asked unexpectedly.

"Er, isn't it passed on in droplets when you cough, or something?" she answered, puzzled. "Why? Are you feeling flu-ey?"

He shook his head slowly, thinking.

"What's your wand made of?" Another non-sequitur.

"Laburnum. Why? What is this? Neville, have you got an idea? Do you know what's going on?" She was interested now, thrilled at the prospect of being the one to solve the mystery (with a little help from Neville).

"That figures!" He gave a strangely enigmatic chuckle.

"What? What figures? Neville, if you've got an idea you must tell Dumbledore. Or Snape. If it's to do with Potions, you ought to tell Snape."

An expression of dour, quashed resignation replaced his flash of levity.

"I, er, don't think Professor Snape would really want to see me right now," he mumbled despondently. "Or ever again, for that matter."

"Oh, Neville - what have you done?"

"Nothing! I didn't do anything! It just happened." He was aggrieved.

Hermione linked her arm with his and wheeled him round until they were walking in the opposite direction, back towards the dungeon.

"Whatever it is you didn't do, you can come to Snape and apologise for it. And then you can tell him about your idea."

"He'll say it's rubbish. He called me incompetent. Anyway, he's got a headache," muttered Neville, dredging for excuses.

But Hermione, riddle-solver extraordinaire, was not easily diverted.

The door to Snape's room was ajar. That in itself was suspicious. They knocked and waited. Neville, his face suffused with relief, turned to leave, but Hermione dragged him back. Then they knocked again and cautiously pushed the solid, dark green door wide open.

"Draco?"

They caught him in the act. He was bending over the couch, tucking a blanket around Snape who seemed to be fast asleep. He stood up guiltily as they entered, and put his fingers to his lips.

"Shhh!"

Phew! Nearly caught red-handed! Never moved so fast in my life! Nice, 'caring' touch, that blanket… Granger'll go for that. What the hell are they doing here anyway? Damn them! Another couple of minutes and I'd have got to the juicy stuff… Still, I suppose I've got what I came for - what my Dad wanted…

"Draco, what are you doing here?" Hermione whispered. "What's wrong with Snape? Are those cobwebs in your hair?"

The Slytherin gave them his most supercilious sneer.

"Ask No-Brain here - it's all his doing. Ask him what happens when you don't blanch your Shark-Lily, eh?"

"Oh, Neville! You didn't!" Hermione realised she had missed an eventful lesson. Neville began bleating excuses. Taking advantage of the distraction, Draco slipped past them into the corridor. He smoothed a casual hand over his hair, cupping away the silvery fistful of Snape's random thought fragments that had drifted up out of the Pensieve.

It was all so frustrating! Lucius had been quite specific about the memories he required; following his instructions had enabled Draco to find them without too much trouble, but he'd had to forgo the opportunity to scroll through Snape's other secrets. And Draco had been promising himself this treat for days! From the first moment he'd read his father's note, the tantalising idea of ransacking the Pensieve had spurred him on. He could only imagine the leverage it would give him, the power! Snape's memories, he'd told himself, would be X-rated: they'd be a seething morass of violence and sadism - there'd be Death Eater stuff there for certain; and sex - yeah, it would be the real thing; phew! he'd heard rumours about what the Dark Lord's inner circle got up to, but he'd never thought he'd get a ringside view; hell, he might even get the dirt on Potter's mother. Now, there's a thought! What if there was something he could use against Potter too? Some kind of father/son thing that they'd hushed up?

But just as he was savouring that exquisite moment of anticipation, before plunging himself headlong into the most sordid, vicious, salacious, smutty experience of his life (or so he hoped; oh, how he hoped!), those two interfering, Gryffindor busybodies came knocking on the door. Damn and blast! Talk about bad timing! Hell, all he'd seen was a glimpse of some crying kid on a broomstick, flying in circles up in the clouds… what was so secret about that? Then, for a second, he saw some woman shouting in a strange language, waving her arms – a tall, dark woman, quite a looker. Could that have been Lily Potter? No, wasn't she supposed to have been a red-head? Then there'd been something more promising: yes, yes, this was good - Snape, sitting by a fire, holding some potion bottles, and Potter was in the room… Potter was coming towards him… What were they saying?

Knock! Knock!Knock!

Aaaargh! He should never have left the door open. But he'd been scared that it might be spelled to 'self-ward' automatically on closing - Snape was paranoid enough for that - and the last thing he wanted was to get locked in. He could have talked his way out of it, he supposed, but it would have been awkward. It would have raised eyebrows and questions. Could he get rid of Longbottom and Granger? Somehow he doubted that. They were annoyingly tenacious. And Granger had been giving him suspicious looks… Better to cut his losses and get out while he could. At least he'd had time to push the Pensieve back out of sight before they came blundering in.

"What are you doing here, Draco?" Hermione asked again, more insistently.

Malfoy tried to sound offended:

"If that's all the thanks I get for doing my Good Samaritan act, then next time I won't bother. What happened to you, Bogbottom - made yourself pretty scarce, didn't you? Scarpered, and left me to it. What were you doing - going to fetch some cheese? Someone had to look after Snape, and as all the rest of you had buggered off…"

His self-righteous martyrdom didn't fool Hermione, but she couldn't disprove anything. The injustice of Draco's accusations and the blatant lying, had rendered Neville speechless.

"Anyway, he's asleep now," Malfoy continued. "I shouldn't wake him up, if I were you. 'Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus', as they say. Stupid motto, but oddly appropriate here, wouldn't you say? Actually, do wake him up - I quite fancy watching you two getting disembowelled! No? Oh well, I'll be off then."

He had an important rendezvous with a seagull in the Owlery…

x x x

"He's up to something," said Hermione suspiciously. "But I can't work out what it is. I mean, since when has Malfoy ever been nice to anyone for no reason? I thought he was looking shifty the other day - it was probably him who Hot-Hexed your wand."

"I wouldn't bet on it." Neville seemed to think it unlikely. Hermione was put out - it would have been immensely satisfying to incriminate Malfoy.

"Look, we'll bounce your idea off Snape, and you can see if you can grovel your way out of a detention. And then I think we'd better go and bottle up those Calming draughts. He'll be even more grumpy if all those potions are wasted too. Maybe you'll be able to claw back a few House points… Come on then."

But she was going to have to pull Neville bodily across the threshold. He hung back.

"Look, it's only a hunch, OK? I've got no proof yet. I really need to do some tests first. If I'm wrong…"

Draco's comment about 'the sleeping dragon' echoed in his head. The idea of tickling it sent chills of fear down his spine. In Neville's mind, the 'sleeping dragon' was an extremely fierce one, and the prospect of merely waking him up was terrifying enough.

Hermione tip-toed into the room. She stood by the side of the couch and gazed down at Snape. Asleep, he was not threatening. It was perhaps the first time she had ever seen him relaxed: the frown lines were smoothed from his brow; his mouth no longer tensed into a thin-lipped scowl; she noticed how very long and dark his eye-lashes were. He looked deceptively peaceful.

"No, you're right," she whispered to Neville. "Let him sleep."

End of Chapter. Next Chapter : NEVILLE'S THEORY. If Neville's explanation is right then Snape may have a problem...