Disclaimer: I don't own Severus obviously, or I wouldn't have to write about him/obsess over him so often. I don't own Lucius either (who would want to?) OR the storyline (well, I've fiddled with it) So there.

It was New Year's Eve, which was a stupid date in Severus's opinion. It was also 10:30 pm. Severus decided to make that his bed time.

And he would have too, except when he got to his bed chamber, he noticed that some house elf had unmeaningly sealed his fate by DUN DUN DUN…leaving the fire on!

Severus rushed in there real quick, but to no avail.

"Severus!" said the head of loud-mouth Lucius Malfoy. "Just the man I wanted to see!"

Severus put on a smile which cramped his face to the max.

"I was wondering if you would come to the Manor for some festivities…you know, it's New Year's Day!"

Severus's eyes did a quick-as-lightning-and-hardly-noticeable scan of the room. If only house elves forgot to close windows as often as they forgot to put fires out. If only there were windows in this monogamous room.

Wait-didn't monogamous have something to do with marriage?

Lucius had stopped rambling on and it appeared that he was waiting for an answer.

Severus succumbed to his will, which he thought was a premium bad choice, but he liked it better than the idea of being brought to a misty graveyard where a hopelessly ugly snake man proceeded to fry him to death.

Those Malfoys.

And so, with one last longing glance back at the pack of instant oatmeal lying nearby that would have been his dinner, Severus took some floo powder and walked into the fireplace looking like a crab.

"Malfoy Manor" he said, making sure to make his words sound extra muffled.

Amazingly enough, Severus found himself in the Malfoy's fireplace, which was screened in. He also noticed that it was very squishy in there, due to the fact that Lucius was still there.

"Severus!" Lucius crowed, his face dangerously close to Severus's. Severus thought how much he hated floo powder.

Severus and Lucius just sat there for a while, squished together in the fireplace. Severus cleared his throat.

"OH YES!" Lucius said, coming to. Severus thought he could do with a curiously strong Altoid.

Lucius opened the screen after about 20 tortuous minutes of saying he'd 'got it, he'd done this a million times before.' Severus was starting to wonder if being fried to death was really that bad when the screen broke and he fell out of the fireplace onto the floor, which he almost kissed in joy.

Then he realized that Lucius Malfoy was still next to him and that Malfoy Manor was actually just a bigger cage.

"Now for…" Lucius paused dramatically, giving Severus ample time to realize he was talking to him. "A TOUR!"

And with that, Lucius tore up the stairs. Severus followed at what he hoped was a safe distance, trying to think whether this was the eighteenth or nineteenth tour of Malfoy Manor he had gotten.

Lucius stopped at a room with a desk in it. Like the rest of the house, it was so fancy it made Severus want to ralph. The desk had numerous papers and a pickle jar on it.

"This is my office," Lucius blared, "the pride and joy of my life." Severus thought how Lucius said that about just about everything, including his own son.

The tour took Severus through a lot of Malfoy history that, just like the Malfoys, he wished he didn't know. Lucius skipped up ahead of him, making comments like

"THAT'S my favorite towel"

"I toasted muffins in that toaster"

And "I used to slide down this banister in nothing but my stocking feet Christmas morning when all the house was asleep."

When the tour took them into the kitchen, and Severus had still not found a fire escape or trap door, Lucius closed the door and babbled to Severus in an excited tone that his non-existent wife who Severus bet he just made up not to sound like a loser and the Pointy Face Brat weren't home and so they could have a blast. He then took out some parchment.

Severus seriously wondered if they were going to do something as lame as make up resolutions. He also wondered how he was going to survive the night if Lucius didn't whip out some firewhiskey soon.

"Resolutions!" Lucius bellowed, handing Severus a piece of parchment so quick that Severus got a papercut.

Holding his bleeding finger under the table, Severus waited for the crazy guy to get on with it. But Lucius just kept staring at him, looking on the edge of his seat.

Severus cleared his throat.

"Shall we…begin?" he asked, giving Lucius a there-are-wars-to-be-stopped-and-people-to-feed-so-do-get-on-with-it look.

Lucius leaned forward.

"You mean…should we do resolutions?" he asked, looking ready to spaz out.

"…Yes."

"Severus old boy, that is the best idea I've ever heard!" he shouted.

"Right."

"I think we should make our resolutions this year be a joint effort."

"Of course." Severus felt his eye start to twitch, and wondered if this was how former mass murderers felt when put on the street with lots of people once more.

"The first resolution should beeeeeeeeeeee….. oh oh! I got it! Kill more muggles and mudbloods! No! Kill double the amount since this year! Yeah! Write that!"

Severus looked down at his parchment and wrote

Get Lucius off Prozac.

"Oh! Here's another one!" Lucius bellowed. "Ready…okay…torture more house elves!"

Severus paused and then added

Then find out where he's been getting it.

After a painful hour of having his hearing permanently damaged and wanting desperately to kill something, Severus was rewarded when Lucius opened up a secret compartment labeled "SECRET COMPARTMENT" and took out some firewhiskey.

There were ten bottles.

Severus decided that maybe this night could get a little more manageable.

Severus grabbed a bottle and quaffed it down, and was starting on the second when he started to giggle and choked on that fiery stuff. He then glared at the narrator for using words like 'quaffed' and 'giggled' hence making his drink go down the wrong pipe.

Lucius took the drinks and went into the next room. Naturally, Severus followed. Thus followed the stupidest few games of wizard chess Severus had ever played, except he didn't really care that much. Lucius kept doing 'new maneuvers' like 'quadruple skips' and 'bowling' which was where he knocked all of Severus's men within a four inch radius out. Those chess games made Severus start reminiscing about his school days in the Slytherin common room when Lucius would have him do his homework in exchange for a game of wizard chess in which Lucius always cheated, but beat him up if he tried to do the same.

By the time Severus had reached for his sixth firewhiskey, it was the middle of game number blah-de-blah. Lucius, who had had four, was smiling crookedly at him.

Severus crawled across the chess board, stood up, and walked over to a chair, grinning from ear to ear.

"Goodbye, come back for more," Lucius said in a slurred voice, a lot less hyper than before.

Severus backed up and fell backwards over the chair, breaking a glass sculpture of a snake.

"Ha ha, snake," Severus giggled.

"Hey," Lucius said, sounding like he was trying to be angry. From Severus's position on the floor, Lucius looked like an evil tooth fairy. Severus cracked up. Lucius muttered some words that started with "don't you dare" and ended with "gluestick."

Severus took off his socks and shoes and tried to stand up, only to fall down again and again, giggling insanely and singing 'happy birthday to you' between breaths. Lucius grabbed Severus and heaved him upright. "Did I ever tell you how beautiful you really are?" Severus jabbered. Lucius looked touched, in a bizarre and drunken way. Severus stumbled to the nearby stairs leading downwards, and waved at Dobby who was coming up them. Severus saw that elf's eyes widen before he lost his balance and fell. The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was a kid's voice. "Professor Snape?"

a/n: I'm really sorry that I haven't updated in so long, but I had a weird kind of writer's block on this story, and you can't say YOU haven't gotten that (or maybe you can…) Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and please review!