21
The next day was the twenty-first of December and Snape was glad for it. Christmas couldn't come too soon because our potions master was tired of being forced to wait motionlessly for somebody to find him, and on an empty stomach!
The twenty-first saw puppet Snape sit on a shelf in the divination classroom. Even in the small hours, in absolute darkness, the air was heavy with perfume, stuffy and oppressive like a thunder storm waiting to happen.
The room smelled sickly sweet of jasmine and lilies of the valley with an undercurrent of cheap alcohol. It was disgusting and an affront to a potions expert's nose.
The sun rose and the warmth it provided made the stench even worse. Snape started to wonder when Trelawney got up. She rarely came down for breakfast in the Great Hall, so for all he knew the resident seer – a fraud as far as Snape was concerned – could sleep in until lunch every day. Divination was never scheduled before lunch. Snape was not sure why but it had to do with the inner eye not working properly in the morning.
It seemed as if Trelawney didn't sleep in until lunch after all. Long before the bell rang for the first lesson, a house elf appeared with a small breakfast tray and put it on a low circular table, right beside a crystal ball and a deck of card.
A little later, Trelawney entered the classroom. She was wearing her usual eclectic choice of clothes and jewellery. She gasped when she spotted the small black figure on her shelf.
"Snape in a Cape!" she cried and shrieked when Snape came crashing down from the shelf. "First you almost give me a heart attack and then you break all my favourite cups!" the witch cried.
"You could have got me down before you turned me back," scolded Snape. "Nobody made you turn me into a human on top of your china cupboard. – There!" he held out a gaudily wrapped present. As soon as the witch had taken it, he turned on his heel and rushed downstairs to get a bite before lessons.
"You are avoiding me on purpose," Bellatrix accused Snape as soon as he sat beside the apprentice. "You are disloyal to the cause."
"Firstly," Snape went into lecture mode immediately, "Santa chooses my hiding place, not I, and secondly, our Lord and Lucius both earned splendid gifts. You are only whining because you are not skilled enough to find me."
"Who do you accuse of whining! I'm our Lord's most faithful servant! I do not do whining!"
"Things would really be easier if you let Bella find you," the Dark Lord pointed out. "She's very unhappy."
"Things would be easier if Bella DID find me. I'd get a proper breakfast for example," Snape snapped. "Ow!"
"Did you just hex my master after the ordeal he is going through so that you can have a fun advent?" the apprentice glared at the Dark Lord.
"I will not be snapped at," the dark wizard sneered. "And it was only a stinging hex. – Ow!"
"It was only a stinging hex," the blonde said aloofly. "Can you pass the eggs please?"
The Dark Lord handed her the platter with a polite nod. It would not do to land on the Naughty List so close to Christmas.
Snape was through his third helping of scrambled eggs – his apprentice insisted he had a hearty meal – when Sybil Trelawney made one of her rare appearances in the Great Hall.
"Severus," she breathed, "I took it upon me to come and inform you what I got from Santa." She showed off a very light shawl with a woven picture of a crystal ball on it. "It's a portable vision panel for the inner eye. It's not just a picture, it works!"
"Really?" the Dark Lord was immediately interested. "What did you see? Was I in your vision?"
"Sybil," Dumbledore intervened, "why don't you sit and have some of these excellent pancakes? Tom, do not pester Sybil before breakfast. The inner eye doesn't work before lunch. Everybody knows that."
"Then how does she know it works?" the Dark Lord asked distrustfully.
"I saw it in the cards," Trelawney informed him. "The cards are always connected with the future but at a prize. You don't get very detailed readings." She sat and Dumbledore loaded her plate with pancakes and fruit.
Snape used the woman's distraction to whisper to the Dark Lord that it was a waste of time to try and get a prediction from her as everybody knew she made almost everything up.
"She didn't make up what she said about me and Potter," the Dark Lord hissed.
The apprentice leaned closer. "Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day," she pointed out.
"Why are we talking about that woman," Bellatrix intervened, "when I still haven't got a present?"
The apprentice offered to try and develop a searching strategy with her while Snape was teaching. The Dark Lord declared that he was not interested in watching two women scheme and was going to assist Snape in his lesson. "My pointing stick is getting bored," he said.
Lucius tried to join the potions lesson, but Bellatrix pointed out that he was not only the Dark Lord's chief strategist but also her dear brother in law and therefore obliged to help her.