Thank you for reading! Please let me know if you enjoy! I don't own any of Harry Potter!
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Seventh year Hogwarts student Severus Snape wouldn't have necessarily described himself as nervous.
No, perhaps pleasantly anxious would have been a more accurate phrase.
Whether or not those two expressions carried a difference, his heart raced as he stood on the platform next to Lily Evans and waited with her to board the Hogwarts Express.
"Don't be nervous, Sev." Lily smiled over at him reassuringly as she reached a gloved hand out and gripped his fingers.
There was that word again, nervous.
The December day was so cold that her breath was visible as she spoke.
"I'm not nervous." Severus confidently replied as he returned Lily's squeeze and nodded at her.
"Good." She grinned, "Tuney will be off with her boyfriend…...You know my parents already like you, there's nothing to worry about! We'll have a wonderful time!"
As Severus gazed at her bright smile, he tried to let go of his qualms and return her happy expression.
He managed something between a grin and a smirk as the Hogwarts Express finally pulled up to the platform and opened its doors.
"Alright, Sev, let's go!" Lily exclaimed.
They walked hand in hand, with their trunks rolling behind them, as they made it up to the front door and boarded the train.
Severus and Lily found a private car to share, in which they sat and chatted while the Hogwarts Express pulled away several moments later.
Sometime during the journey, Lily tired and made herself comfortable as she fell asleep on Severus's shoulder.
He sat with the car door open and an arm around Lily as he held her securely against him.
James Potter passed by at one point.
The jealous scowl that he flashed the couple made Severus smirk.
It calmed him down to see his enemy's defeat.
Severus and Lily had started dating the previous summer.
While graduation remained a mere six months away, Severus felt honored that Lily and her family had invited him to spend the holidays at their home.
Lily had dreamed about sharing such a long, uninterrupted amount of time with her boyfriend.
Although that notion excited Severus as well, there was something else that he looked forward to accomplishing during his days with Lily's family……...
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Mr. and Mrs. Evans were remarkably kind, much like their daughter.
Severus had been a guest at their house many times over, during his years as Lily's best friend before they had decided to share their hearts romantically with each other.
Mr. Evans fondly shook Severus's hand upon his and Lily's arrival.
Mrs. Evans embraced Severus like a son and mentioned to him how very glad she was that he had come.
The Evans' house was warm, inviting, and pleasantly fragranced.
As Severus sat with Lily and her loved ones during that first night of Hogwarts' winter recess, he felt genuinely grateful while he admired the glistening ornaments on the Christmas tree.
It would be the first family Christmas that Severus had ever experienced.
That evening, his dark eyes shifted over to Mr. Evans warily while Lily and her mother sat on the sofa and discussed their shopping schedule.
Severus felt his blood quiver in anticipation as he hoped that the kindness that Mr. Evans had shown him would continue.
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On the morning of Christmas Eve, Severus woke to a gentle sound from downstairs.
He blinked his eyes and sat up wide awake in bed.
The sound continued.
Severus furrowed his brow as he stood, pulled on his robe, and walked over to the door.
By deftly cracking the door to his room open, Severus slipped out into the hallway, and glided down the stairs to investigate.
The sun hadn't risen yet.
He could see the soft glow of a light shining through the darkness by the stairwell and he followed it.
That light led Severus to the kitchen and as he walked into the room, he found Lily standing at the counter while she furiously stirred something in a bowl with a large spoon.
A flour-dusted half apron hung protectively over her pajamas.
Severus tried not to stare at the pinpoints that Lily's hardened nipples made through the satin in the early morning chill.
He did notice that her hands were stained a vivid shade of green.
"...What are you doing?" Severus asked with a frown.
Lily had been so busy with her task that she hadn't noticed his presence until he spoke.
She promptly jumped in surprise.
"Sev!...You scared me!" Lily gasped as she blew out a breath and laid a green hand over her chest, careful not to let it touch her pajamas.
"Sorry…...I heard a noise and….I wanted to make sure that everything was…...alright." Severus replied as he peered over and saw that Lily's bowl held a huge lump of something that appeared to be the same shade of green as her hands.
"Oh, everything's fine, Sev. I'm sorry if I woke you! Mum and I have a really busy day of baking ahead and I thought I'd get an early start." Lily explained, "I'll try to be quieter if you want to go back to sleep."
"No….it's fine, don't worry…..Is that what that is?" Severus asked as he gestured to the contents of the bowl, "...Something to bake?"
"It is!" Lily nodded, "These are….Well, these will be butter cookies. They're our family's tradition. We make them every year, little green Christmas trees with the cookie press. It's a lot of fun! Here, look, I'll show you!"
Severus frowned as Lily dropped her spoon, used an elbow to open up the lower cabinet by the stove, and carefully retrieved a strange apparatus that he had never seen before.
"What is that thing?" Severus asked his girlfriend with a frown.
"It's a cookie press, Sev!" Lily laughed.
As she opened the small machine and began to cram the green dough from the bowl down inside a long tube, Severus asked curiously, "Why don't you just use magic to make cookies? Isn't all of this unnecessary work?"
"Sev….." Lily chastised as she looked up at him with an amused grin, "It's the work that makes the cookies. Using magic would have them all tasting…….stale. The effort comes from love and love is what makes a good cookie, not the flour, not the sugar. That's what Mum says, anyway. Now, come here, I want you to see this."
Severus blinked but he did as Lily asked and walked around the kitchen counter to stand beside her while she snapped a few things down on the little machine and pressed a small, metal plate over its nose.
"Hold this." Lily instructed Severus while she handed him the cookie press and took out a baking tray.
Severus let her freely move his arms while she positioned him over the metal pan and laid one of his hands on the lever of the machine.
"Now," Lily giggled as she placed her hands over his, "Just press down and-"
Lily guided Severus to push down on the lever.
A quiet click sounded.
Severus watched a little piece of dough in the shape of a Christmas tree plop onto the flat baking tray.
He looked at Lily in slight bewilderment as she moved the cookie press over slightly and nodded, "Ready to do it again?"
Press.
Click.
Plop.
Press.
Click.
Plop.
Severus had little use for most of the muggle world, but as Lily stood next to him, with her arms wrapped around him, and her hands over his, he couldn't truthfully say that he held the same disdain for the cookie press, especially not with the joy that the device appeared to bring his beloved flower.
A short while later, a dozen glistening blobs of green cookie dough in the shape of Christmas trees sat on the baking pan.
Lily opened the oven and slid the tray in before she turned to Severus and smiled, "Thanks for your help, Sev! When they come out, we'll put some sprinkles on them, then they'll be ready to eat….I hope you like them!"
"I'm certain that I will." Severus replied as he gazed down at Lily intently.
She blushed under the intensity of the look in his dark eyes while they stood alone in the morning stillness.
Before her parents woke, the young lovers took advantage of their private moment.
Severus's hands wrapped around Lily's waist as her arms slipped over his shoulders.
Silently, they found each other's lips and shared a deep, meaningful kiss.
The delightful scent of the baking cookies filled the kitchen as Lily pulled away and looked up into her boyfriend's black eyes as she spoke, "I want you to promise me something, Sev."
"...Anything." Severus replied in a husky whisper while he drowned in Lily's pools of shimmering emeralds.
"One day….." Lily chuckled as she looked at Severus's chest then back up to his eyes, "When we have our house…...and our babies…….our family……..promise me that we'll make these cookies every year. Every year! Until we're both too old to bake anymore."
Under his robe and pajamas, Severus's manhood swelled with his heart as he heard Lily openly dream about their future.
His voice was solemn with heavy promise as he vowed to his darling, "You have my word, Lily. Every year, for the rest of our lives, you and I will make these cookies on Christmas Eve."
"It'll be our tradition." Lily declared.
"Yes…...our tradition." Severus agreed.
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Those little Christmas tree cookies tasted as good as they smelled.
Severus admired Lily's foresight in making several batches because as the day wore on, Lily, her parents, himself, Petunia, and her boyfriend, Vernon Dursley, who had unfortunately come for Christmas as well, gobbled the treats down.
That night, while Lily and her mother listened to Vernon ramble on as Petunia sat fascinated at his side, Severus approached Lily's father in the den across from the living room.
"Mr. Evans, sir?" Severus asked as he peered into the open doorway.
"Severus!" Lily's father called out as he looked up from his newspaper, "Come in! Nevermind that Mr. Evans nonsense, you can call me William!"
"Thank you, sir, er…...William." Severus nodded.
"Come here and sit down, boy! What's the matter? Are the women driving you mad?" Mr. Evans asked Severus with a laugh.
Severus politely sat down in the chair across from his love's father as he shook his head and replied, "N-No, not at all."
"Is Vernon driving you mad, then? You can be honest with me…..Why do you think I've come to sit in here?" Lily's father teased as he cracked a wide smirk.
Severus shook his head, "No, I-I actually want to discuss something with you…...to ask you something."
"Oh?" Mr. Evans grinned knowingly, "And what might that be, my boy?"
William Evans had once been a young man in love too.
He already knew what Severus was going to ask, he had seen the looks that the boy in front of him had given his daughter and the way that he treated her.
"I….." Severus stammered while he looked into Lily's father's eyes, "I want to ask you, sir...William, for your daughter's hand in marriage."
William Evans chuckled.
Severus's heart skipped a beat in terror as Lily's father reached out and clapped him on the shoulder.
Was he laughing at him?
…….Or at the idea of allowing their union?
"Severus, my boy….." Mr. Evans said with a genuine smile, "Nothing would make me happier."
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After Severus's first family Christmas, the years began to pass, and with them, events came.
He and Lily graduated.
He secured a position as one of the youngest professors that Hogwarts had ever employed.
Lily gained a husband and lost her last name on the day that she became Lily Snape.
Harry Snape was born a year later.
Two years after Harry's arrival, his brother William entered the world.
Each Christmas Eve, those green, Christmas tree cookies were baked in the Snape household, just as Severus had promised Lily.
As time passed, interruptions became unavoidable.
During Harry's sixth Christmas Eve and William's fifth, Lily frowned as she looked out of the window.
The fever that she had caught wasn't serious but it did confine her to her bed.
Tears welled in her eyes as she watched the children laughing in the street and thought.
A knock came on the bedroom door suddenly and Lily called out in her raspy voice that had thickened with congestion, "Come in……."
The door creaked open.
Lily smiled as she heard the quiet murmurings of two little voices be overruled by her husband's low drawl, "No….no, you two stay out in the hallway…...Thank you….Yes, stand there. Mummy and I don't want you both ill too."
When the door opened fully, Lily smiled tiredly as her two little boys blinked at her from the hallway while Severus strode into the room with a plate in his hands.
"Hey, Sev." Lily sniffed through her stuffy nose.
He glanced at her as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
She scooted away from him as she replied, "You shouldn't have come in, we certainly don't need you sick."
"I've taken some elderberry extract." Severus nodded as he reached out and felt Lily's forehead with the back of his hand, "Your fever's come down."
Lily closed her eyes for a second and smiled before she blinked at Severus while she waited on him to speak.
"We wanted to bring you these, my love." Severus explained as he nodded at the plate in his hands.
Lily sniffed again and looked down.
"Sev……!" She breathed as a bright smile broke out across her pale face.
There, in Severus's hands, lay a full plate of those green, Christmas tree-shaped butter cookies.
"You made our cookies!" Lily exclaimed while Severus offered her one.
"The boys and I remembered our tradition, my love." Severus replied while he pushed the warm morsel between Lily's lips and into her mouth, "Did you think that I'd forget? It'll take more than a fever to make me abandon my vow to you, any of my vows to you…..Lily."
Lily's grin widened as she held Severus's hand and imagined him corralling Harry and William in the kitchen long enough to make and bake their family's treats.
As Lily settled back against the pillows and chewed the warm softness of the cookie, she gripped Severus's hand with hers while he gazed at her lovingly.
It may have been the smiles of her young sons, or the softness in Severus's dark stare, but to Lily, she could almost feel herself healing while she ate that little Christmas tree cookie.
Her mother had been right all along.
It wasn't the flour or the sugar that determined a cookie's goodness, it was the love with which it was made.