"Out of Respect"
By: Catnip2
Not far down the hallway a collection of healers and patients sang a happy melody in several different keys. Even in the small private room leading off of the Janus Thickey ward, it was possible to tell that many singers did not even know the words of the song. The smell of pine needles, cookies, and several kinds of liquor filled St. Mungo's Hospital of Magical Maladies and Injuries.
It was the undoubting atmosphere of Christmas Eve.
The Janus Thickey ward was relatively silent, as anyone who could enjoy the festivities had gone to do so, save one rather uninterested man. Despite the happy feeling in the air that came so rarely to the hospital, the dark haired, greasy wizard sat in his chair, as grumpy and unpleasant as ever. In fact, the cheerfulness seemed only to increase his nastiness. While turning the page of his rather uninteresting book, Severus Snape glanced briefly at his reason for being here.
A woman lay silent and still in the bed by which Snape was sitting. She was a sickly pale with hollow cheeks and a rather sunken expression. It was usual for anyone who saw her to think she was dead, and not merely unconscious. Snape often thought it himself, but knew he was never that lucky. She was by no means an attractive looking woman, but her features were delicate and gave her a rather innocent appearance. If anyone ever thought of her as innocent, however, a look to her left forearm quickly banished such ideas.
Snape noticed the visible and familiar skull and snake, and mentally cursed whoever had placed her so it would show. With a frown he picked up her wrist and hid her arm under the blanket that covered her. The uncommon touch momentarily brought her voice back to his ears, a very distant memory that never seemed to go away.
"He wouldn't have wanted this!" she had yelled so long ago. She had pleaded with him, and he had waited too long to listen. Snape chanced a look at the woman's face. She had aged 14 years in that bed, but he could still see the little girl he had once known her as.
"Now, as anyone who actually did the homework would know, red caps are particularly nasty things, that love beating people to death," began a wizard with an odd smile over his face. He stood at the front of a classroom, looking over the note taking students with almost a look of pride. His small, round glasses reflected the early afternoon sun and he twitched his nose characteristically, brushing his large salt and pepper moustache over his lip. His kind eyes fell briefly on one greasy haired Slytherin student who looked back at him, waiting for the man to continue.
"In fact," the wizard obliged, "red caps get their name was soaking their hats in their victims' blood. Now, you can't expect a red cap to just jump on your back and try and pound your skull in, though they may, actually… you can expect any number of things from them, including rock throwing, or boulder-" he stopped briefly, "do you find something about skull bashing amusing, Mr. Potter?"
A boy in the back looked up immediately, shoving a parchment under the table as he did so. Two of the three other people at the table with him fell quiet immediately, the third not having been saying anything to begin with.
"No, Professor Bisset…" James Potter said. The 14-year-old Severus Snape turned around in his chair and sneered at the bespectled boy.
"Well then," Bisset said with a slight shrug, "maybe you'd find five points from Gryffindor more to your liking," he twitched his nose again.
"Not really…" Potter said rather casually.
"Oh? How about ten?" Bisset asked, a small smile still on his face, as if he was genuinely trying to please the boy. This time James decided against saying anything and kept quiet. Snape turned back around in his chair with a grin, catching the face briefly of the girl he happened to sit next to. She had long, black hair that hid her face rather completely, so usually only the tip of her curved nose could be seen. In this moment, however, Snape saw her round eyes that, to him, conveyed a sense of cluelessness. How Snape had ever come to sit next to her he did not know. Satisfied with James's attention, Bisset went on.
"Red caps have also been known to hurl boulders off of mountain tops and castle towers at the unsuspecting. How they accomplish this, who knows? Red caps fall under the category my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher referred to as 'little people,' which included goblins and dwarves. Her things were always mysteriously vanishing from Gringotts, as you can imagine. Now, who can tell me where red caps most love to live?"