Bah, Hippogriff!

Summary: "If you say bah, humbug," she told him, "I will be personally responsible for your death by decapitation." When three ghosts visit our favorite ex-Potions Master, will he change his ways of evil?

Yeah, right.

A/N: Hello, all! I'm Avada Cruimperio! This will be a five to eight part story, based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I hope you all like it! If you enjoy it, check out my other story, 'Making Friendship Bracelets for the Death Eaters'. Have fun!

Severus Snape scowled as he Flooed to work. All he saw in the other fireplaces were flashes of red and green, and the horrible sound of children's laughter. He shuddered.

He tumbled out of the fireplace, and glanced around. No one else was at the Death Eaters' headquarters today. Probably because it was Christmas Eve, and they were all out torturing Muggles, and wearing Santa hats.

He sat down at his desk, brushed off a couple of spiders, and sat down to file some paperwork on Lucius' attempts to kill people by poisoning their birthday cakes. Of course, Lucius hadn't realized that writing 'DANGER: YOU WILL DIE IF YOU EAT THIS CAKE' on it in icing might have made people a little wary of buying it…

He heard a thud behind him, and turned around to see Narcissa and Draco Malfoy brushing the soot from the fireplace off of their shoulders.

"What are you doing here?" Snape muttered, turning back to his work.

"We're here to recruit you for some good old Christmas-time Muggle torturing!" Draco said brightly.

"I have work that needs to be done," Snape said, "and just because it is Christmas, there is no excuse not to do it."

"Rubbish!" said Narcissa. She walked over to him and set a green felt hat with bells on his head. "You look lovely, Severus."

"Get this ridiculous thing off me!" Snape yelled, throwing the hat to the ground and stomping on it.

"Whoa." Draco whispered to his mother. "Someone definitely has some anger issues!"

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to come, Severus?" Narcissa asked.

"Yes, thank you, Narcissa, I am quite positive I would not like to join you."

"All right, then," Draco said. "Merry Christmas!"

Snape sneered at them as they Disapperated.

He sighed. Christmas. What a load of rubbish. His time was much better spent catching up on his workload. But speaking of working, it was so dark in there. Perhaps some lighting would help. "Lumos."

But his wand didn't light up. He frowned. "Lumos."

Again, nothing. "Lumos! Lumos, Lumos, Lumos!"

He turned around, frustrated, to switch on the lights, when-

"Boo!" said Evan Rosier. "I'm a ghost! Do I look menacing? Betcha you're really scared now!"

"You would be slightly more intimidating, Rosier, if I was a Muggle and had never attended or been employed at Hogwarts, where ghosts roam the halls and befriend the students." Snape went back to his desk and continued writing, ignoring the ghost of his departed co-worker.

Rosier looked slightly put out. "Oh. Well, I have a message for you, from some guy named… ah, crud, what was it… Freight? No… Pate?" He snapped his fingers. "Fate! That was it. Anyways, he told me to give you this message." He cleared his throat. "Ahem. You must change your evil ways, or suffer in hell for all of eternity. 'Kay?"

"Lovely," Snape muttered, dipping his quill in the ink.

"Okay, apparently you're not going for that one. So, I guess when the clock says it's one, then you're going to be visited by three spirits, et cetera, et cetera - Snape, are you even listening?"

"No," said Snape, who was now consulting a book on dessert recipes.

"Fine," said Rosier. "I give up. I'm going now."

Snape continued leafing through pages.

"I said, bye. This is your friend, who died over a decade ago and you haven't seen since, telling you he's leaving," Rosier said.

"Well, then go already!" Snape shouted. "I have better things to do than listen to your incessant chatter! If you were like this when you were alive, it's a wonder I didn't kill you years before the Aurors did!"

Silence.

Snape turned. Rosier was gone.

"Good," Snape muttered. "What a bloody idiot."

x0x0x0x

Later that night, Snape had fallen asleep. He was having a wonderful dream about Potter falling off his broomstick and landing on a bed of nails, when he suddenly felt as though a bucket of ice had passed through him.

He jerked up in bed, and let out a stream of words, the only ones repeatable here being "of", "and", and a word beginning with "mother".

"Who's there?" he demanded.

"Hello," said a voice on his right.

He turned, and groaned. "Oh, Merlin, not you!"

Moaning Myrtle, the ghost living in a toilet at Hogwarts, batted her eyelashes at him. "I've missed you," she said.

"Please, someone kill me," he begged.

She frowned at him. "That kind of attitude is exactly why I'm here. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"No, you're not," Snape told her. "You're a vile little girl, and I commend Voldemort for having the insight to kill you."

Myrtle's lower lip quavered, and she began crying. "You're so meeeeean!" she howled.

Snape rolled over and buried his face in his pillow. "Stop crying," he mumbled. "Every time one of your bloody ghost tears lands on me, it's as if an ice cube's rolling down my back. And for Merlin's sake, it's the middle of winter. I'm cold enough as it is."

"You certainly are," Myrtle muttered.

Snape raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"Nothing. But now, you have to listen to me. Tonight, I will be taking you back into your memories of Christmas past. Take my hand, and we'll begin our journey."

"Right," Snape muttered. "Let's go into the past with a ghost, Severus! That'll be so much fun!"

"Now is not the time for sarcasm," Myrtle said haughtily. "Just take my hand."

"I've already explained this to you. I'm not going with you. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't, because there is no way that I would touch your hand."

"Do it!" she screamed. "Or I'll start crying again!"

"Go ahead, cry. I don't care."

"Do it for the name of Christmas! You've done so much evil in your life, this is your chance to redeem yourself."

He sneered. "Christmas -"

"If you say bah, humbug," she told him, "I will be personally responsible for your death by decapitation. Now let's get going. We don't have that much time."

"We?"

"We."

"Whee!" yelled Wormtail from across the hall.

She grabbed his hand.

And they were gone.