Chapter 21: The Gifts of Christmas

Chapter 21

Gifts of Christmas

Sage had finally convinced Hermione that there was no way he was going to play his guitar in class. It took a tremendous amount of shaking his head furiously and lots of wild hand gestures, but she finally gave up. She had decided it wasn't worth totally making him mad by saying something about how he could play the guitar in class so that he would have to play. She decided that would be too Slytherin of her. Now she was forced into doing it by herself. She told the professor she would have something they could listen to so she was going to sing.

Now she was not so sure of her decision to sing as she looked out over the crowd of her fellow students. She swallowed hard and looked over every face. He was sitting there, in the back, next to that Amanda girl with the biggest smirk on his face she had ever seen. He thought this was going to be amusing, she growled in her mind. She took a deep breath as the professor began to talk about the song she was going to sing. It had been on the popular muggle radio station.

Sage put one elbow up on his desk and resting his chin on his hand. He could tell that she was nervous by the way she was looking around at everyone as if they were circling wolves. Her eyes met his, she gave him a dirty look, which only made him smirk even more. No one got away with looking at him like that. Well, only his uncle got away with it.

She began to sing in a strong, clear voice. His smirk faded, he blinked his eyes.

"It's a damn cold night, trying to figure out this life…"

She had a beautiful voice and she sang the words passionately as if it were something she longed for. Her eyes were so expressive as she sang. He closed his eyes to listen carefully.

"Take me by the hand, take me somewhere new, I don't know who you are, but I, I'm with you. I'm with you," she sang.

The way the word 'you' was so dragged out by her perfect voice made him fade into the song. He loved music. He loved to play. It was his way to escape, because he got so caught up in it. He could tell that she was caught up in it as well, in her own song. The song had to have meaning for her to sing it with such enthusiasm. It was something she had imagined in her mind many times over. She knew what she wanted and whom she wanted, and now she was singing it.

Then reality came back to him and his eyes snapped open. Her voice had stopped singing and there was silence. Everyone began clapping and he clapped too.

Mandy looked at him and said, "She's good, isn't she."

Sage turned at looked at her and met her hazel eyes. She stared back into his eyes, quite a Slytherin quality. "Yeah, yes, yes she is."

The clapping stopped. Mandy smirked at him, "She fancies you, you know."

Sage's mouth almost fell open but he caught it before it did, "What!"

Mandy gave a slight laugh at his ignorance, "She likes you, Sage."

"How do you know?" He asked this as condescending as he could.

"A girl can tell. She may not even realize she fancies you yet, but she does."

He stared at her, "She doesn't fancy me, Mandy, we're just friends."

"Okay, you believe that if you want, but you'll see. I'm right. You boys miss a lot of things you know. Can't even realize when a girl likes you. You have more than one admirer from what I've seen Sage Snape."

"Ahhh, that's just girls trying to be nice to me so that my uncle won't fail them in potions."

"No, that's just you being male and oblivious, is all."

Sage glared at her in disbelief. He was not oblivious.

"Miss Macnair, Mr. Snape, I do hate to interrupt your social lives, but if you would please pay attention before I take points."

Before the students knew it, the holidays came around and covered Hogwarts in thick, white snow. Sage spent a lot of time beating Ron at Wizard's Chess with Harry looking on trying to get some free pointers. Sage turned out to be the only one who could beat Ron, which made Ron irritable. Ron kept trying to recover his title by making Sage play against him every spare moment, but Sage just kept widening the gap between them.

Hermione's favorite activity was making Sage help her with Transfiguration and Charms, even though she had already finished her homework for the holidays. She had him help her to get ahead, so they spent a lot of time in the common room or in his room studying. Sage hated the library, mostly because of Madam Pince, who always eyed him warily, but also because he didn't like nosy students trying to see what he was reading. The common room was often not a place to study, as Fred and George always were making noise, or someone was playing Exploding Snap

This morning, though, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had convinced him to go and visit Hagrid with them. As they were walking back with Hagrid escorting them, a huge, cold, wet, snowball hit Ron on the side of the head. Fred and George jumped out from behind a bush and began to throw as many as they could before the others had a chance to retaliate. The four younger Gryffindors grabbed snow and began flinging it back at the twins. Ron, by far, was taking the worst of the snow-balling by Fred and George. Soon they were all covered in snow and the dividing lines were forgotten as Hermione slammed Ron with a snowball too. Sage had managed to stop a few from hitting him square in the face by focusing them away from him. Unfortunately his skills did not prevent him from getting walloped as well.

As they were walking back together laughing, Sage was crafting a perfect snowball in his hand to pop Hermione right in the hair before they went back inside, but he was distracted by someone walking towards them.

Professor Snape was stalking towards them through the snow. "What do you think you're doing, all running around out here, with Black on the loose. Unescorted to say the least!"

They all suddenly noticed that Hagrid must have beat a hasty retreat shortly after the snowball fight had occurred. Everyone else looked ready to run but Sage had a wicked grin on his face. Harry saw and quickly figured out what Sage was meaning to do. He was in the middle of opening his mouth to try to convince Sage it wasn't a good idea when the tall, black haired boy, threw the tightly balled projectile straight at Professor Snape. Immediately, Sage rearmed himself before the snowball even hit Severus square in the chest, the idiocy of it taking him entire by surprise.

"What the!" Severus exclaimed, "SAGE!"

Fred, George, Ron, Harry, and Hermione ran for their lives. Sage sent another snowball flying at his uncle before the man had a chance to react.

"SAGE SEVERUS SNAPE, STOP NOW!"

Just as he yelled the last word a snowball nearly crashed right into his forehead, but he magicked it to smithereens, covering himself with a fine mist in the process. The Potions master had no other recourse but to blast the boy into a bank of snow with a curt flick of his wand.

The group of students who had run stopped right at the door and turned around to watch. The professor held Sage down in the snow yelling about detentions, cleaning cauldrons, and his cheek. Sage put his hands up in defeat. The elder Snape released him and started stalking away in a huff. Sage jumped up and fell into step next to him, just in time to notice his friends escaping through the door.

"Your friends can all serve detention with you for a night for being out here by themselves."

Sage looked up at him, "Sir, I was just having fun. I didn't mean anything by it."

Severus shook his head, "You won't be having fun at my expense. You can't be doing those kinds of things with students around. You know that I have an image I need to keep up."

"Uncle, it gets kind of tiring pretending that you're just a mean bastard."

Professor Snape wheeled around on him, stopping him by the shoulder. "I can do without your attitude. You cannot just act so familiar here and in public. The Dark Lord will come back again. You know that I must keep up my act now above all. I have Slytherins watching me, junior Death Eaters, reporting back what they see, and Slytherin families do not act like this. You wouldn't throw a snowball at your father, uncle, whoever, without expecting to get a curse sent your way if you were in one of their families. You will treat me accordingly or this whole thing falls apart."

Sage let out something resembling half a growl and a sigh. He figured he shouldn't be surprised that his uncle was always so serious, but Sage was beginning to have a way of becoming less serious himself when he was around such company. Gryffindors weren't exactly the beacons of propriety. They definitely had an influence on him. He found himself wishing that his father were around. He had a feeling that Jace would have enjoyed a good snowball fight.

Christmas had finally come around and Sage was a little out of sorts as his present for his uncle hadn't yet arrived. He had managed to get some things for his friends, as he was really beginning to think of them that way. Tomorrow was Christmas morning and they would all unwrap presents together and then Sage was going to have breakfast with his uncle. Time was running short on the present, which he obviously couldn't replace at this point.

He was having a hard time concentrating on Hermione as she was asking him questions about higher magic. His mind kept floating back to not having the present.

"Sage, can you teach me a summoning charm?"

He stared at her, not having fully heard the question, "What?"

"A summoning charm, Sage. What's wrong, you aren't here with me?"

He put his chin in his hand, "My present for Professor Snape hasn't come yet. It should have been here by now."

She patted his arm reassuringly, "It's still early, I'm sure that Aries will get it here on time."

Aries was his owl.

Sage shrugged, "I hope so. I was pretty proud of what I managed to find for him. He's been in a sour mood since the snowball incident and has been yelling at me non-stop. The present would put him in some better spirits….hopefully, at least."

She smiled at him, "I'm sure he isn't really mad at you. He's just being parental. What did you get for him?"

Sage's mouth curved into small smile.

"I put together this list of potions books he has, and there are hundreds, believe me, then I sent the list out to various bookstores all around the world. I asked the booksellers if they had any old books on potions that were not on my list. I didn't get many responses and the ones I did get were not very promising. Then a few weeks ago, I got one from a bookseller in the Czech Republic, and they had the perfect book on potions."

Hermione looked at him in a state of awe. Sage had gone through a lot of trouble to find Snape such a good present.

"What's it called?"

"You see that was the problem. It was in a very ancient language, some form of Arabic. So I had to find someone to translate it and the book hasn't come back from the translator I found in Germany."

They chatted about the book for a few more minutes before moving back to summoning charms. Before long Hermione was saying 'Accio' and retrieving things from her room upstairs. She enjoyed having Sage around to teach her new things. It was much easier to learn from him than to learn from a book.

Hermione had just opened up Sage's present and was already thumbing through the book on Transfiguration he had gotten for her. He knew that she had a passion for it and could learn much faster than McGonagall was teaching. Before he knew it, she had put down the book and given him a hug. Sage's look of shock faded before she let him go. Ron stared at her for a minute but kept his mouth shut. She hadn't hugged him when she opened his present.

Sage opened Ron's present and was not shocked to see the largest heap chocolate covered caramels he had even seen in his life apart from in Honeydukes. Ron always thought with his stomach and he also knew that Sage had an affinity for anything with caramel, and chocolate covered ones were one of his favorite even though he hated straight chocolate. Ron opened up a Chudley Cannons shirt from Sage. Harry opened up a little box from Sage that held a small silver and gold replica of a snitch with a silver chain to put it on. Ron opened a book from Hermione. Harry opened up Chocolate Frogs from Ron. Finally Sage was last to go when he opened up what Hermione had gotten him. It was a small silver medallion with three runic symbols on it and a black leather cord. He studied the symbols before he figured out what they meant: Balance, Focus, Power. They were three symbols carved on a druidic rune where Merlin was said to have been born. He stared at it, then at her. She was looking at him with apprehension.

"Will you tie it on for me," he asked.

She jumped up and over to him. She put her arms around him and said, "Do you really like it?"

"Of course I do."

Her bushy hair was tickling his face and he was thankful when she released him. She took the necklace from him and tied it around his neck. Just when she had finished tying it on for him, the portrait hole opened and Professor McGonagall came in carrying something followed by a black and grey owl. Aries hooted and landed right on Sage's lap, soaking wet from snow.

"Mr. Snape your owl would not stop irately tapping on my window since he could not get into here as the windows are locked. Although I am not a delivery service, I figured that I would bring this to you as it is most likely a Christmas present."

"I'm sorry Professor McGonagall. He couldn't wait until breakfast later, it's my present for my uncle."

She handed him the package and then went back out through the portrait hole. They all figured that Aries had to have woken her up because she looked both aggravated and sleepy. Hermione got up and then came back with a little hand towel as Sage opened the parcel. Aries flapped his wings, sending droplets everywhere, and then Hermione rubbed the towel over his feathers. He nipped at her hands as a gesture of gratitude and then proceeded to stare at Sage.

He held the newly translated version, bound in new black and green, and the older version in faded out grey lay next to him on the floor. The book's cover read, Powerful Potiones for the Darke Wizard.

"Dark Wizard," Harry said.

"You know my uncle fancies the Dark Arts. There is something to learn from all magic, Potter. Besides how can you fight against or defend yourself against something you know little about. It is much better if you are aware of all possibilities."

"Very wise," Hermione said. "Did Professor Snape tell you that?"

"Yes, he did, Dark Knowledge is only a danger when it is in the wrong hands. There is nothing inherently dark about anything, the wizard who uses it for dark purposes makes it Dark Magic. It's not as if you use it or read it and become evil."

"I guess not," Harry said. He was wary of anything with a Dark in front of it because of his run-ins with Voldemort. Besides, Snape couldn't be bad if Dumbledore let him teach at Hogwarts, and the man had saved his life once. "But could you please not call me Potter like that, it reminds me of Snape.

Sage shook his head. He, like Severus, had figured out that the best way to grab Harry's attention was to call him Potter. He wrapped up the books, told everyone that he would see them later, and went down to see Severus.