This chapter is rather hugely indebted to an episode in Susan M. Coolidge's "What Katy Did at School." The Katy series is not exactly high literature - not even so high as the Potter series, if you'll believe me - but it's very sweet and homey, and the "At School" is lots of fun. Mainly because our well-brought-up heroines befriend a girl whoserves about as much time in detention as the Weasley twins. All very tangential, this, but I had better acknowledge where I got the idea, and, if my inventory and imagination fails to be as delightful, you at least know where to get a Box that was immensely satisfying and endless.
To the site admins: for heavens' sakes, just allow us to use symbols! I need the fun little cartoonish way of putting swearwords, and you can hardly do it without an asterisk or the 'a' in the little circle!
Chapter Four – Mrs Snape's Box
The Great Hall was full, of teenagers mainly, and at least half of them were only poking at their food. The talk was barely loud enough to make any headway against the howling blizzard overhead. At least a couple of girls were red-eyed amidst classmates so glum themselves as to be stony-faced and unsympathetic. A few – including, naturally, James Potter, also known to our intrepid hero as "that #!$&! buffoon" – were trying for genial exuberance, but no one was responding more than half-heartedly to their jokes and crackers, and any laughter was abrasive and short-lived. The poltergeist, to be sure, was twice as zany as usual, and kept dropping things from high above that tended to explode. He crept behind a miserable-looking fourth-year Slytherin girl and shouted "BOO!" The girl started sobbing with miserable hiccupping, and some of her friends sitting nearby caught it and commenced crying as well.
In case you couldn't tell, this was Christmas breakfast. You could see why all Dumbledore's detractors were saying dourly that he kept Hogwarts School in such a whirl of merriment that they couldn't for the life of them imagine how students learnt under his frivolous, nonsensical regime.
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When it was first announced that no one would be able to get out through the blizzard to go home for the holiday, Sirius Black had swept up some nondescript and awkward Ravenclaw into an exuberant waltz all the way down the first-floor corridor, face alight, crying out, "Happy Christmas, everyone!"
But that had been the only light-hearted moment in quite a while. The blizzard had now raged and whirled with an unceasing solid whoosh for eight days – and eight days ago was the last anyone had been able to receive an owl. It had already killed one of Hagrid's dogs with one bit of hail whipped by a wind of almost one hundred miles per hour into his eye. The best predictions were that it would last almost a week more, and, although the professors who had done some tests denied it, there were rumours that the storm was magical and caused by them.
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Lily felt someone tugging on her sleeve. About the height of a first year. She turned to find two of them at her side, dull-eyed.
"Hey, what's up?"
"Are we all going to die?"
Lily blinked. She couldn't deny that some of the same thoughts had been going through her head. But why would anyone pick to ask her? Why did they assume that she was privy to some insider knowledge?
"Eventually," her roommate Trish Smethley informed them. Lily levelled her with a glare.
"Of course not," said Nearly Headless Nick stoutly. "You see Dumbledore up there, don't you?"
"Yeah," agreed Lily, thankful. "What he said."
But her general lack of conviction shone through, and the boys went off uncomforted. Lily had to admit, it was hard to blame them. They were six classmates down (still unaccounted for). Professor Williamson's Model Forsythe was being put to work. Curfew was tight as a noose and not very many were all that eager to break it anyway. The Christmas-shopping Hogsmeade trip had only been saved from cancellation by swarms of Hit Wizards.
---
Towards the tail end of breakfast, there was commotion above. Many startled badly. Everyone had actually gotten used to the absence of owl post – painful though it was, for it made them feel that not only was the world outside uncertain and dangerous, but that they were irrevocably cut off from it.
Some girls cried "Ooooh!" and "I'm sure it's for me!", and the air tensed even more when everyone realised that the three owls were all carrying one package. Only one person would get it, then.
Snape had been sitting and sulking, about as out of touch with the general gloom as Peeves and Potter. Staying at Hogwarts over holiday was always bad enough to begin with, seeing as he hated the place and all, and especially when all the powerful, proper families called their children home as an expected matter of course. But this year was the worst yet. Not a single student had been able to leave, so the place was as jam-packed with insufferables as usual, without even the blessed distraction of classes. Also, that enormous traitor Edmund Avery was chatting away with Henry Moon and Dickon Bright as though they were the best of pals. To top it all off, he'd had a dream last night – not typical of that sort of dream, no, which of course he wouldn't have minded, but all full of strange tenderness – asinine, it was. Nothing could have put him more out of sorts, though this event came pretty close.
The owls collapsed with a frozen, exhausted relief right in front of him – on top of his plate. All the eyes in the hall were on Snape. There was not a student who wasn't envious.
Snape glowered at the frosty-winged owls and impatiently lifted the box up, tapping it with his wand to cleanse it of the marmalade, and shoving his plate roughly aside.
"Ooh, my, how did they get through?" asked Zinnia Hawkins, with a cluck of sympathy for the owls. "Here, little fellow, we'll get you dried off – "
"Lucky bastard!" cried Dickon Bright approvingly. "Open it, Severus, let's see what you got."
"Ooh, please do!" cried Hawkins. "I can't believe it got through – "
"Share the wealth, Sev," said Gunther Shortreed, with a wink.
Snape gave Shortreed a devastating glare. "What House do you think this is, Hufflepuff?"
"Oh, Severus, you don't have to share anything if you don't want to," said Irene Yaxley. "But let's just see it. I want to see someone open up a Christmas present."
People where rushing and elbowing to crowd around him, a half-circle pressing in at his back, a thin line craning over the other side of the table, on which some enterprising classmates perched for the best view, Henry Moon among them – oddly enough, many of these were boys, hungry-eyed boys despite their ample breakfast.
Other students – less ready than the Slytherins to crowd around – had rushed to the windows in wild hopes that the storm had abated enough for more owls to come through. It hadn't. But waves of talk flowed forth again, quick, excited.
"Merlin's beard, what is that stuff?" demanded Yaxley, as the boys set to opening the box with wands and steak knifes.
"Masking tape," said Snape shortly.
"So it's Muggle?"
"Shut the hell up," he muttered, inaudibly, humiliated.
"It must have some kind of magic on it," said Avery quickly, detecting Snape's discomfort. "I mean powerful magic. Nothing else got through that blizzard."
Snape supposed that Avery must be right. Still, she might have sealed the cursed thing shut with magic instead of wrapping it all up with three uneven layers of shipping tape. It was quite a job for them to rip through, especially as the box was so heavy that it was hard to lift or overturn. And how did his mother, supposedly a former Slytherin, not realise that such a goody box sent over breakfast post was a bended-knee invitation for petty thievery?
Here, too, Snape was wrong. Yes, as always, there were light-fingered opportunists, but only two or three trinkets out of simply hundreds. Most backed off, knowing instinctively that the box was consecrated by love.
And, too, possibly cursed, when you considered the woman had bore and raised Snape.
Once the top had been opened, however, some of Snape's anger, born from confusion and a dislike of the unexpected, began to dissipate. He was as curious as anyone to its contents. Normally he knew not to expect to be overawed by his parents' gifts, but he was aware of how improbable it was for him of all people to have a parcel come through to him, and was not entirely blind to the romanticism of the moment. He forgot to even mind the people leaning on his shoulder and craning his necks so that their faces were right next to his.
On the very top was a green-and-silver scarf, very well made, curled up around cheap inkstands from some Not-Over-a-Knut store in every colour of the rainbow, and about six different little packages that smelled delicious, and turned out to contain biscuits and tarts and sweets and nuts and gingersnaps in several varieties. Tucked along the sides, and rather unforgiving in their use of space, were – and for a moment Severus had to give his mother credit – Find of the Century (With an Inventory of Swindell's Famous Artifact Collection), Hogwarts, a History, The Malenfant Grimoire 1977, Clumsy Titles are Just the Beginning: The Politics of Modern Curricula, The Azeri Edition of Oriental Potioneering, and even Modern Magical History in a bright glinted binding, first edition.
"Books?" said Shortreed in disappointment. "Man, Snape, tough luck."
"Severus likes books," said Avery stoutly. "Keep on, Sev, I still want to see – "
In the middle was a brand-new schoolbag, with every pocket bulging with something or another – new quills (also from Not-Over-a-Knut), several photographs, two different Gobstones sets, a pocket-watch chain, finely wrought in silver, and then a pocket-watch itself, the Wizarding sort, a planetary watch. Snape was most interested in the pocket watch, which looked quite old; on the back were the initials S. E. P. He fingered the P.
"For 'Prince,'" he muttered. "I think it was my grandfather's."
"Bloody hell, Severus, never mind the watch," said Avery impatiently. "There's another one of those little packages, bet there's something to eat in there."
"You just ate breakfast!" Snape said irritably, but obediently dug in for the package Avery had his eye on and tossed it to him. Avery put it underneath his nose. "Cinnamon crumble!" he shouted, to universal interest and pleading looks at Snape, who said they might all divvy it between them. "I'll cut it up!" announced Avery, whipping a knife around rather carelessly (Irene ducked just in time). "Carry on, my Prince, that box is still over half-full."
Inside the main body of the schoolbag was a set of deep green dress robes, very shoddily made, and a photograph album that had been cramped in too forcefully now featured a great bend in the first half. Underneath the new schoolbag were –
Shortreed swore as he leaned back and crackled. "Flowers? Flowers?"
Snape was, for once, actually thinking along the same lines as Shortreed, and he lifted the petal-iced, dark-red roses and brittle baby's breath gingerly. Hawkins and Yaxley admired them so sincerely that he promptly offered them each some. But he glowered when Hawkins made a move to kiss him on the cheek. As if they ever paid him any mind when he wasn't receiving stuffed boxes! (Besides, Hawkins was dead ugly.) This was true – in large part because they were a little afraid of him, always sensing that he was thinking the worst of everybody – and only a stuffed box gave them at last a pretext for being as friendly to him now as they usually were.
"All right, ladies, there you are," said Bright impatiently. "Go on, go on!"
Snape looked at him. "Easy!"
Bright had a bright red patch of excitement on each cheek. Almost everybody's eyes were a little feverish. Even ultra-snobby Portia Stubblebine could not hide her avid curiosity.
Word of the box's variety and inexhaustibility travelled fast, and James and Sirius did debate going over for a little fun – for whenever Snape was the centre of attention it posed a golden opportunity no at-war tactician could pass up – but they debated it halfheartedly, and if Remus had objected even in his typical hinting, diffident way, they would have dropped the plan with a sort of relief, but Remus was inspired to a piercing glare that he himself forgot soon after, but that his friends never quite did. "It's a Christmas box," he said, ever so pointedly, "from his mother." Remus could never stand up to them when quailing meant interrupting the education of their peers, failing his Dumbledore-given prefectorial duties, public humiliation of the innocent, a breach of international law, or endangering lives, but, gulping gargoyles, Christmas parcels from one's mother are sacred.
It was especially lucky they didn't come over just then, for Snape was already close to squirming. Without much regard for proprieties, his roommates were still searching through his new schoolbag. Henry Moon had discovered a pair of red worsted mittens. There was a great round of "awww"s from the girls. That it was mostly sincere did not make the scene more tolerable for Snape.
"Put down my bag," he snapped at his roommates, Avery, Moon, and Bright. "Whose Christmas box is this anyway?"
Avery, grinning almost crazily in his delight, tossed him the bag, but held onto the mittens, which Severus obviously wanted out of sight, but was too embarrassed to speak of them aloud. "These are awesome. The mittens are even tied together with yarn so that you don't lose one of 'em – I haven't seen that since my little brother outgrew his!"
"Shut up."
"Give them back to him, Av'ry," said a new voice, and, unseen, Snape scowled to realise Professor Slughorn had come over. "He doesn't want to lose track of it, after all…"
"Care for some fudge, sir," said Snape, as rudely as he dared. Avery was delighted, and had to hide a snigger.
"Mrs Snape made it," said Bright eagerly. "Didn't she, Snape?"
"Oh, I very much doubt that," he said darkly, but no one was actually paying him much attention. Slughorn, profusely congratulating Snape on his treat, accepted the proffered square. Angry beyond words at the congratulations, Snape upturned the rest of the package onto the table. There were several gasps – and then greedy hands reaching out. It was really marvellous that so little was stolen with how much it was all passed around from hand to longing hand.
Snape spent several minutes looking for the red worsted mittens, with vague thoughts of setting fire to them. Unable to find them, he finally gave an ear to Avery's exclamations. It was incredible the delight Avery took in each item, most of which were notable for their extreme commonplaceness.
"A bottle of wood polish, Sev!" (Avery was one of the few people who could call Snape "Sev" and not be put onto the Half-Blood Prince's ever-lengthening enemy lists.) "And underwear! Long underwear!"
"Thank you, Avery," said Snape, coldly. "Why don't you go and advertise that more loudly."
Wrong suggestion, with Avery as wound up as everybody else at the Slytherin table's impromptu celebration.
"A WHOLE PACKAGE OF LONG COTTON UNDERWEAR!" hollered Avery. If Snape had known where his wand was just then under all his mother's fluff he would have hit Avery with Sectumsempra on the spot. Avery went on unaware of his close call. "A little velvet drawstring pouch here – hell, I swear that woman bought Not-Over-a-Knut's whole inventory for you – "
Only Avery, of all their old group, could say that as though it were a good thing.
" – one of those potion ingredients replenishing kits – smells terrible, must be top-of-the-line – a toenail clipper, blimey, I wish my mother sent this stuff – here's some random silver key – and a couple of unicorn figurines – "
"I collect those," said Portia Stubblebine, thawing out to a remarkable degree. "They were made about twenty years ago, look how strong the spellwork is still. Roswick Enchantments. Let them run across the table."
Rather nonplused, Snape complied.
"Your mum must 'a collected them," said Henry Moon. "When she was our age."
"They're lovely," said Snape, trying very hard to sound neutral. "For girls."
"Hey, Severus. I would just h'about kill for one of those biscuits."
"Help yourself. It can't be that good, I see Slughorn left."
"Yeah, well, that's him," said Moon, reaching over the table for the cellophaned plate.
"Shampoo!" announced Avery, who was still taking inventory with a vicarious greed on Snape's other side. Snape kicked him, hard, underneath the table. Avery appeared not to feel anything. "Oy – and bubble bath!"
There were more flowers in the bottom, which some of the girls sorted out and bouquetted together again for Snape. He fingered for a moment, thinking. He was toying with the idea of giving them to Lily Evans. The more half-seconds he devoted to the fantasy, the more serious it got. She would – she would – how would she react? It almost didn't matter in a way, just to give them would have been satisfaction enough. And, if nothing else, it would just make the #!$&! buffoon's Christmas, wouldn't it!
Henry Moon had bitten into the fudge with a satisfaction far out of proportion to the actual object in his hand. It was not really the food they all found so wonderful, not even the boys – who nevertheless felt it safer to speak as though it were.
"Your mother," he said, with feeling, "is fan-bloody-tas-tic."
Snape flared. That was the thing he hated most of all – that now no one would realise the miserable home-life he had risen above. A notch off his resume. No one would believe it now, because Snape's mam was so fan-bloody-tas-tic, just for having once in a fit of boredom sent him a great useless boxful of junk.
"You so think now," saidSnape fiercely, eagre to set the record straight. "She's a pathetic cowering woman who normally is so preoccupied with her little miseries that she has no strength to spare for me. She's weak."
"Yeah" – wide-eyed and mouth full of biscuit – "but she's a terrific cook."
"She is not. She stole them from the old hag next door."
His will to give the flowers to Evans vanished like mist in the sunrise. What his Housemates would say – what Evans would say – and, while Snape certainly wasn't scared of the #!$&! buffoon's reprisal, why bring that additional hassle on himself for a silly, pointless little whim? She was a Mudblood. Was he planning on winding up like his mother? His pathetic, damnable, thrice-cursed mother?
He tapped a bit of purple ribbon with his wand so that it tied itself messily around the remaining carnations, got up, and took them over to the Slytherin fourth-year girls.
"For the love of Merlin," he said ungraciously, giving them to the girl Peeves had scared, "stop crying."
She blinked her red eyes at him. "Me?"
"Happy Christmas."
And it was then that Snape saw at last saw Dumbledore, who had been sitting at the Slytherin table on the outskirts of things, his chin on clasped hands so that he had watched the opening like a little child. Snape stopped short as their eyes locked. He had never, in fact, spoken to Dumbledore before, although he had been threatened with interrogation by the headmaster more than once when his teachers suspected Snape the source of some ugliness, not always without reason. Snape never did quite know just what to think about Dumbledore. On one hand, Snape admired excellence of mind and of status, and Dumbledore had both. There was also a Gryffindorish bit of unorthodoxy, but Snape wasn't nearly so much a purist as he liked to pretend (he was too intelligent for it). Also, although various teachers had spoken of suspending him, they had evidently never gotten approval from Dumbledore for it. On the other hand, suspicion of Dumbledore ran high amongst his crowd in general. He was said to be manipulative and all the more dangerous for his mask of benign eccentricity. And he had to thrust himself in everything, especially the things that weren't his business at all.
Well, anyway, Snape told himself, he had nothing to feel worried about. Hell, he had just been doing something nice.
Dumbledore didn't mention it, though. He smiled at Snape, who wished that their eye contact was not quite so full as it was, but who would not back down. "A very happy Christmas to you, Mr Snape."
Snape suddenly realised that the red worsted mittens were dangling from Dumbledore's hands. "What are you doing here?"
"Why, I had to come and see. It's an absolute marvel this box came through, you realise. You see how all your classmates want to share in this – well, so did I, really." Dumbledore looked down and then altered his tone slightly as though he had only just then remembered what he held. "Ah, yes. You'll forgive me my little liberty? Homemade mittens, I do confess jealousy."
Well. You could see why people said Dumbledore was cracked.
"Keep them," he said shortly. "They're too small for me."
"So I will. Thank you very much."
Snape looked suspicious. "You're really going to keep them?"
"Of course I will. They must be hand-knitted, I know that your mother can no longer cast spells… but then," he reflected further, examining the mittens and not looking at Snape, "but then, how did she get the box through?" He looked up again at Snape, who was wondering if he were being accused. It was undeniable that his mother scarcely did magic anymore – to Snape's eternal shame. Having trudged through most of her adult life in varying stages of depression, Eileen Snape could still make potions, and normally see magic, and occasionally even got a broom to operate for her, but spell casting she almost never managed anymore. Rather discomforting that Dumbledore knew it, though. Lucius Malfoy had always used to complain about him being a nosy old bastard.
Even had he wanted to reply, Snape could not have thought of a thing. Dumbledore waited for a polite length and even a little longer, but Snape was dumbstruck at having this thrown in his face.
"It's not everyday," Dumbledore concluded at last, "such things happen. All the best to your mother." He shook his head. "Remarkable."
Snape hightailed it back to his seat. Dickon Bright and Irene Yaxley, on opposite sides of the table, were pulling apart long strips of gooey taffy. But Avery, Moon, and Zinnia Hawkins were trying to regather everything and put it back into his box, chatting as they did so with an unusually warm camaraderie as they accidentally scattered gingersnaps and roseleafs to the floor. There were things they had all missed the first time through. A teakettle full of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavoured Beans. A little wind-up frog. Bookmarks. A pair of bootlaces. How she had packed everything into that box was as much a mystery of how she had sent it through the storm (she'd had to redo it about eighteen times). While Snape scowled and punched his pillow because his shameful blood-traitor mother had the nerve to make herself so conspicuous (what would Malfoy start saying?), it was too late. "Mrs Snape's box" was known for years by lonely war-uneasy Hogwarts students as an example of the minor miracles that motherlove could accomplish.