The Severus Snape Advent Calendar, Take 9

Prologue

"Tea?"

Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, held a cup out to his potions master.

The younger wizard took the cup with a nod of thanks and inhaled the bitter aroma. For a moment he allowed himself to close his eyes in delight before he returned his attention to his host. It was never good to let oneself be distracted during a meeting with Albus Dumbledore.

The headmaster gestured invitingly at an assortment of biscuits, a creamer, a small jug of lemon juice and little bowls of honey and sugar.

"May I ask about the reason for this meeting?" Severus Snape ignored the sweet temptations on the coffee table and took a sip of his black tea. "Your invitation sounded rather urgent."

"It is, Severus, it is," Dumbledore replied with a sigh. "You are, of course, aware of the situation in the muggle world." A terrible illness was raging in the muggle world. Several of Hogwarts' students had already lost loved ones to the virus. "The ministry has decided to not allow the children to go home for Christmas."

"If we aren't careful," Snape pointed out after another sip of tea, "we'll have to deal with a mutiny."

"This is why I asked you here," Dumbledore added a fourth spoonful of honey to his own cup.

Snape raised his brow. "You want me to organise a mutiny?"

The headmaster chuckled. "Quite the contrary, Severus, quite the contrary. I want you to help me prevent it."

"And how, pray tell, are we going to do that?" Snape asked. "Identify the possible leaders and keelhaul them?"

Dumbledore tried his tea and proceeded to add more honey. "I read that honey is a good remedy for that virus," he explained.

"You are aware that you can't have it?" Snape asked, looking at the headmaster's cup in disgust. "Nobody has left the castle since the Halloween Hogsmeade weekend and we haven't had a single case ever. Where would you have got it from?"

"Better safe than sorry," Dumbledore waved the potions master's point aside. "Anyway, I thought if we do something to boost the morale the students would not oppose to staying here."

"What are we going to do?" Something told Snape that the headmaster already had a plan.

"Well," the old man continued, "these last few years the students had a lot of fun with your advent calendar. Maybe we can work with that."

Snape shook his head. "I don't see where I'd get a calendar from. Santa, you, the Dark Lord, the castle itself, the Weasley twins, my apprentice,… everybody who would want to give me one has already done so. The apprentice may be talked into giving me another one but she's visiting her mother in Austria and can't return due to the virus."

"I think I have an idea," Dumbledore pointed out. "I have made these magical bags," he handed Snape something that looked like a mini-version of Santa's sack, "for everybody who lives at Hogwarts. In the evening you drop a little present into your bag. The bags are all magically connected and during the night the presents will be switched randomly. In the morning you look what you have got."

Snape thought it over. "That could work," he admitted. "We could keep the bags in the Great Hall and everybody has to open their present there at breakfast. I think the children would enjoy that."

"Excellent!" Dumbledore cried. "Let's go to lunch and explain our plan to everybody. They need time to make their first present."

"Indeed," Snape agreed.

It was only a couple of hours later – the students and their teachers were just having dinner – that Argus Filch came running to the head table.

"Headmaster!" he cried. "You-Know-Who is standing at the gates and he has a white flag!"

Dumbledore dropped his knife and fork and stood. "Severus, Minerva, kindly accompany me."

The two teachers and their superior rushed down to the gates.

"Tom," Dumbledore greeted the dark wizard. "What brings you to my doorstep?"

The Dark Lord was accompanied by none other than Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange.

"I was informed that you are planning another advent calendar," he said politely, "and I wish to participate. We wish to participate."

"I am terribly sorry, Tom," Dumbledore assured the other man, "but due to the virus situation I cannot allow you onto the castle grounds."

The Dark Lord was not deterred easily. "I am ready to take a wizard's oath that we have not left Malfoy Manor in three weeks. There was no contact to anyone apart from Lady Malfoy and the Lestrange brother who haven't left the manor either."

Dumbledore asked his two most trusted teachers to the side in order to deliberate on the possibility to let the group in. After a short discussion he returned to the gates. "Are you ready to stay in quarantine in your appointed quarters for ten days?" he asked.

The Dark Lord agreed to that and to take a vow not to hurt anybody while at the castle.

Once the vow was taken, McGonagall led the group of newcomers up to the south tower where they were assigned a suite of rooms for the duration of their stay. Dumbledore returned to his office to make three more advent calendar bags and Snape hurried back up to the castle in front of everybody else to make sure that the group did not encounter any students just in case one of them carried the virus.

Once everybody was set for the night, Severus Snape went down to his office to fetch the present he had made during the free period he had had this afternoon. The Great Hall was far from empty when he returned. At least two dozens of students were busy dropping presents into their bags – their names had appeared on the bags when they touched them for the first time.

All the bags hung from small hooks on the walls. Slytherin and Hufflepuff's from one side of the hall, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw's from the other, the teachers' from the wall behind the head table.

The potions master did not linger. If this was going to work it would not do to hoover over the children and scare them away.

Later, when he had retired to the warmth of his bed, Snape mused that this could be fun. True, he had to come up with a present every day but he was also going to get one every day. He just hoped that they were good ones.

On the other hand, even a not so good present was better than no present.