Lucy's heart thumped standing outside the door to the library. It was her favorite room in the house and she had gone a bit overboard on the decorations. She'd even made it snow lightly in the room. "Well here it is. I should warn you I've been slowly going through the stuff in this room so there are a few boxes lying around but they're mostly shoved out of the way." She turned the doorknob and allowed Dinah to enter ahead of her.

"Wow!" Dinah, wide-eyed, surveyed the room from top to bottom. "It's beautiful. You really put a lot of effort into this."

"Thanks! It's where I spend a lot of my time so I figured I could decorate it as much as I liked. There are even presents for Teddy under the tree already."

"That's great," Dinah stepped forward and fingered the needles on the tree, her gaze shifting to the presents below. She smiled, "Not just Teddy, huh?"

"No, not just Teddy," she grinned back at Dinah, "Some for the rest of the Lupin clan, the Weasleys, Hermione, and you and Severus. Sirius doesn't know about the one for Severus. He'd probably flip. The only presents that aren't down here are for George and Fred, because they peek. Oh, and one of Sirius's presents is upstairs, but that's not really something everyone would want to see."

"Well I won't pry too much," Dinah grinned, a different thought crossing her mind, "So you at least managed to decide on a gift for Severus? What did you end up going with? Or can't you tell me?"

"Oh, I can tell you. I don't think you'll tell him and it's not as if I expect him to be terribly impressed anyway, maybe slightly surprised, but not impressed. It's one of four copies I found in the family library - mine, not Sirius's - of a book written by Elladora Ketteridge on the many and varied uses of gillyweed. It's dreadfully boring I think, but it is signed by the author, and it sort of seemed like something he'd be interested in."

"Wow!" Dinah laughed, "My gift certificate can't compete with that."

Lucy shrugged, "It's nothing really. I'm sure he'll like your present more, after all, I'm not the one almost kissing him. Elladora Ketteridge is pretty much the only person in my family to have become well-known and that's just because she ate a weed one day. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude. It's just…" she frowned down at the presents, "You can tell me I'm crazy if you want, but would this bother you? There are six presents for Sirius under this tree and one he's really going to like upstairs. He knows this, well not about the upstairs one but he knows the others are here. He has three under here for me and none of them are sparkly and pretty. Unless he's doing that stupid box inside a box thing."

"I'm not sure," Dinah mused, kneeling down in front of the three presents. She experimentally lifted one up and shook it, "It sounds generic enough."

Lucy knelt down next to Dinah and poked at two of the presents, "These two are large and soft. I'm not as materialistic as I might be sounding at the moment, you know," she squirmed around on her knees. "It's just that I want to know what's in them."

Dinah laughed, "I think it's probably human nature to judge books by covers - or in this case, presents. Especially when they come from a significant other. I don't really have that problem since I don't really expect much out of Severus in the first place. It's a great way to not be disappointed."

"I suppose you're right. I guess I can comfort myself with the fact that they can't be much worse than receiving a birthday present I neither wanted nor needed on a day that was nowhere near my birthday," she smiled and stood, "That and he's getting at least one of his presents tonight so I should be getting one of those in return. I figured we'd give you guys your presents tonight so you can have them before you have to leave. If you planned to leave soon, that is. Don't get me wrong I'm not kicking you out or anything. I've loved having you here. I just wasn't sure what you guys were planning and we sort of left it open-ended…not that I'm pushing for you to set a departure date either." Lucy smiled; she was starting to babble again and she knew it.

Dinah laughed, "I'm not sure how long we're planning to stay either. Well, when are your relatives coming?"

"Oh, not until the 22nd. They're going to stay through until the younger ones have to return to Hogwarts. Sirius and I will probably go up to Hogsmeade a couple days before. Nothing's written in stone though. Truthfully, I don't mind if you want to stay while the family's here but I don't think Severus will enjoy the experience."

Dinah shook her head vigorously, "No. He doesn't want to go anywhere near Harry Potter if he can help it. It was difficult enough for him when we met with Harry and Dumbledore in school a few weeks ago. Not that he hates him... not quite, anymore. And he knows that Harry understands him more now, but it's just so awkward for them to be in the same place."

"I understand…I think. It'd probably be too much time with Sirius, anyway. And add Remus on top of that…excuse me a moment," she went quickly to the door and shut it firmly. A soft scratching could be heard coming from the other side; "No, you're not coming in. You'll just climb the tree and break the bulbs." Lucy turned back to Dinah, "Sorry, I'm not shutting us in here but if Dora comes in she'll get up the tree and I'll have a devil of a time getting her out."

"I know how that goes," Dinah smiled. "Godric does the same thing. Well, I'll talk to Severus today and let you know when he wants to leave. I'm flexible but I'm sure he has some kind of an opinion."

Lucy snorted, "Sirius gets no opinion in this. He's already threatened to turn into Snuffles for the duration. It'd serve him right if you two decided to stay until just before the family showed up. He can be so unreasonable about things, I swear."

Dinah laughed, "Well, we'll see. I'd love to stay, but I don't know about Severus. Although I must say I'm really pleased. He's been extremely polite and even somewhat sociable on this visit. At least with you."

"I'd agree. Though Sirius hasn't exactly made it easy for him to be social. Neither one of them has been as bad as I thought they might be."

"Which is good because I'm sure we can both imagine some really horrible scenarios," Dinah laughed.

"Oh, yes I have quite the imagination. Mostly it ended up with a few deaths and a giant hole where this house used to be." Lucy sat down heavily on one of the couches, "Can I ask you a question about a couple students? I don't mean to change the subject so abruptly or bring up work when we've been having such a good time but this has been bugging me for awhile now."

"Sure. Which students?"

"Porter Lee and Andrew Speasy. You mentioned them earlier. From what I understand there are others involved but I only have those two in my class."

"Oh," Dinah's face fell and she sighed. It seemed she was fully aware of the issues involved between those two children. "Porter's the more loudmouthed of the two, but his friend John Wortham is actually the leader. All three are in my first class of the week, of all the convenient times."

"Lovely," Lucy said sarcastically. "I just worry about Andrew. I can't figure out how to get through to him. I don't mean in class really, he actually does fairly well there. He's just so angry all the time and I want to fix him. I want him to understand that being like that won't bring him anything good. Not that Porter's not an issue too. I just…anger can be so destructive, being idiotically cocky can get you beat up but those kids are probably too cocky to care."

Dinah nodded. "Severus has been trying. He sees a lot of himself in Andrew, to be honest. He doesn't want to see the boy go the wrong way, but it's hard. I'm sure you don't have him in any of your classes, but Joseph Cantrell has really got his claws into Andrew. I think that's making it a lot harder for any of us to get through to him."

Lucy leaned her head to one side, considering. "I don't have Joseph in my class no, but I have heard of the Cantrells .His family used to be Death Eaters if I'm not mistaken. I think they're also related to the Malfoys somehow, but that's not surprising; to be pureblood is to be related to all other purebloods, it seems. That tends to happen after a few hundred years of selective breeding, I suppose. Which means I'm probably related to him somehow…Sirius, too. If you look hard enough at our family trees Sirius and I are related distantly, but I try not to think about that too much."

Dinah smiled, "That would be disturbing. You learn a lot about the various genetic effects of inbreeding when you study anthropology. But I just wish there was a way to get through to the purebloods about that sort of thing. Well, not all purebloods," she quickly added, "Just some."

"Oh, I don't mind. I've never really cared much for the categorizing that goes on. Neither does Sirius really but I think that's more because his parents were so into being pureblood that he's sort of repelled by the idea. As far as my family goes there are half-bloods and Muggle-borns in the family tree and we don't deny it so I'm not sure if we could really be called pureblood. To me it's really more of a term that others use to categorize me and something I use mostly out of habit, not because I actually care about it."

She nodded, "Makes sense. Well," she stood up from the floor, "If I stay in here longer I'll be inclined to snoop around at my gifts. So we should probably..."

"Go stare at the house-elf heads?" Lucy said, joking.

Dinah laughed, "No thank you, those are rather gross. Actually, I wasn't sure what I was going to say. I don't want to imply that I'm bored here because I'm not. I just didn't know if you wanted to do anything else right now?"

Lucy shrugged, "I don't particularly like them either. I need to get rid of them but I haven't figured out what to do with them. Anyway I didn't have anything planned really. We could go out somewhere if you wanted," she started wringing her hands. "I just prefer to stay here when Sirius is out. I think it has something to do with me not being here when the battle at the Ministry happened. I was supposed to be here…I've talked about it with both Sirius and Dumbledore though and I know I couldn't have stopped him from leaving. I'm working on my separation issues, though. You're lucky you didn't have to go through that with Severus. I mean he died too, but you guys weren't together then…"

"That always confuses me," Dinah said softly. "I mean, it's horrible to say I'm glad I wasn't with him then. Because it sounds like I don't want to be with him or something. I honestly wish I could have met him much sooner than this... but I would hate to have lived through thinking he was dead."

"I don't think it's horrible to say that, but then I know what it could have been like. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I can remember sitting down on Charlie's couch and just staring. I didn't want to start crying because I didn't think I'd ever stop."

Dinah bit her lip, looking disturbed at the thought, and was about to respond when the door clicked open and Severus stuck his head in, "Dinah?"

Dinah eyes widened and she stood up, looking relieved at his speaking of her name. Lucy remembered Dinah confessing just yesterday that Severus didn't use her name as often as, perhaps, she would like him to, so her reaction made some sense.

Severus had paused after stepping further into the room. As his head scanned the decorations and falling snow, he looked more baffled than anything else. But his attention shifted as Dinah exclaimed "Severus!" and rushed into his arms.

Lucy couldn't hide her own surprised expression as Severus glanced down at Dinah, his arms moving to hover over her without quite touching her. He looked more confused than anything.

Finally, he lightly touched her shoulder and said in an awkward tone, "I see you finished decorating the front room."

Dinah lifted her head and smiled, "Yeah. Did you have a nice walk?"

He nodded, taking a step back to increase the distance between them, but he was almost smiling at her, "As nice as walks generally go." He glanced at Lucy, "Your - er, Sirius isn't back yet?" He grimaced when he spoke her boyfriend's name, but he managed to get it out, which was probably a plus.

She shook her head, "No, not yet. I don't really expect him back until dinnertime, though. Tonks can't cook and Remus, while he can cook, tends to like things a bit on the rare side. By the way have you happened to notice a ring lying about somewhere? It's a gold band with a single blue topaz. It was my mother's and I seem to have misplaced it."

Severus shook his head. "No, I've seen nothing."

Lucy sighed, "Thanks anyway. I…" she wasn't really sure what to say, she felt a little weird watching them hug, "I'm just going to go…find something to do. Unless you need me for something."

"Oh..." Dinah flushed and shot a glance at Severus. He had stepped further away from her, but he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Her eyes widened some more and she hurriedly turned back to Lucy, "No, nothing. I think I'll just go upstairs and... organize my clothes. Severus, will you help?"

He shrugged and turned on his heel, leaving the room, Dinah hurrying after him.

Lucy laughed to herself. Organize her clothes indeed. That sounded like something her or Sirius would have said if…if they were in the company of others and wanted to be alone for awhile. Oh well, perhaps something good would come out of this. She shrugged, closing the door. She grabbed a book at random and settled on the couch to read, peeking at the presents and promising herself she would leave them alone.