Chapter Seven
Danu sits cross-legged on the paper think mattress of the borrowed bed she has been sleeping on for the last five nights. She has been up for hours, quietly reading the book Snape loaned her by the soft glow of sunrise shining through the window next to her bed. She has always found it difficult to sleep here, even before she was made aware of her magical abilities.
While used to sharing a sleeping quarter with others, she is unused to the sound around her and lack of privacy while she slept. At Hogwarts, she could pull the curtains around her bed, and the girls sharing the room with her had always been courteous enough to place the Quieting Charm around themselves in case of snoring, or in last night's case, excessive nocturnal farting from the girl two beds over.
On her third day back at Bernadette's, she was somehow volunteered to help the smaller children with crafts. They had laid out large buckets of colorful modeling clay, paints that had once been vibrant but were now browned and murky from repeated use, tubs filled with every type of bead once could imagine, and large spools of thin faux leather cords, clear elastic, and hemp twine. While she was forced to keep her wand and schoolbooks locked in the headmistress's office per Dumbledore's recommendation, she kept the vile of Blood-Replenishing Potion tucked safely in the pocket of her cardigan, remembering Snapes recommendation to keep it on her person at all times. She can feel the weight of the vial slap gently across her thigh with each step she takes. While helping a small girl make a beaded bracelet, she has an idea.
Danu slips a tube of glue and long strip of faux leather cord into her pocket while no one is looking and excuses herself to the restroom. Stopping momentarily on her way out to pluck a single ornament off of the Christmas tree just outside of the recreation room. Once safely inside of the restroom, she pries the silver cap from the top of the ornament and shoves the rest of it deep into the garbage can. Once she has bent the silver cap to fit around the bottom of the blood-red vial in her pocket, she removes it and adds a generous dollop of glue before fitting it back in to place around the vial. Next, she slips the leather cord through the ornament topper, and ties a knot around the end, making sure the cord is long enough to slip over her head, and hangs down low enough to be hidden beneath her clothes.
Today is Christmas. Soon, the dozen children remaining at Bernadette's for the holiday will be awake, eager to see what magic Santa left for them this year. She often feels pity for the other children, and something like guilt, knowing that magic is real and having the ability to give them an actual Christmas "miracle" but being unable to. If only she could use her wand, levitate the ornaments on to the tree, turn a child's hair red and green to match the decorations, inflate another's stuffed toy, then they would be able to experience real magic and have a Christmas that they will never forget.
The day is dreary, a cold rain falls, bringing a chill to her body despite the fact that the room is warm. Danu grips her mug of cocoa tighter, as if willing it to warm. She has yet to figure out just how they manage to always serve the cocoa lukewarm, perhaps it's to save them all from burning their tongues. From the tiny televisions set, Tiny Tim delivers his final lines of, "God bless us, everyone." Danu yawns and stretches in her seat, the small child asleep with his head on her lap stirs and follows suit. The lights come back on in the room and they all rub their eyes at the intrusion. Caregivers swarm the room, passing out small packages wrapped in brightly colored paper, envelopes of bright red and green, and candy canes of every color.
Danu smiles warmly at the woman with blond hair handing her a pile of gifts, almost wishing she had something to give her in return. She notices a package on the bottom of her meager pile wrapped unlike any of the others in the room and realizes that she has one girl too many. She turns the brown paper over in her hands, searching for the name of its sender on the paper. There is only her own name, written in tight, neat letters in jet-black ink. She carefully breaks the seal of the package to reveal a hardcover special edition copy of The Hobbit.
Upon opening the book to run her fingers over the title page, a tiny scrap of parchment falls out onto her lap.
"It was time to put it out of its misery" was all it read. She smiled to herself, knowing immediately who it was from.
Monday morning, all of the children link hands and make their way four blocks to a small shop that gifts them all vouchers each Christmas. This year, each child received 15 pounds to buy anything they wished from the store. The younger children, already having filled every page of their coloring books opted for new ones, some of them opting to purchase dolls that undoubtably would be missing shoes before the end of the day. Danu takes her time though, analyzing each useful thing inside. She decides on a new pencil sharpener for herself, the novelty of using nothing more than a quill day after day wore off long ago. Just when she thought her next purchase would be a copy of a heavily published romance book, her eyes landed on a silver tin of orange spice tea. Noticing that the main ingredients listed are cinnamon and clove, both of which Snape smells heavily of. She wonders whether or not he would like it. He did get her a gift; it would be rude not to return the favor.
After much thought and deliberation, Danu decides to purchase the silver tin of tea, along with two separate types of cinnamon candy, unsure which he would like best. She has seen him discreetly pop cinnamon disks into his mouth when he thought she wasn't looking. After purchasing the items for Snape, she barely had enough remaining to purchase her pencil sharpener.
She stays up late that night, carefully wrapping each of his gifts in leftover paper she smuggled out of a supply closed, and reading the last few pages of Rebecca, making note of topics to discuss with Snape upon her return. The weight of the Blood-Replenishing Potion warm against her bare skin, she fiddles with it through the thin fabric of her shirt. She no longer feels anxious in his presence, in fact, she realizes that she is almost excited to see him again.