AN: I do not own Harry Potter.

Christmas in April. Enjoy the festivities, I guess. Sorry folks, I got sick, and that's why last week had nothing up.

Winter Holidays

"Harry," an excited Sirius Black wrapped his godson in a hug as soon as he stepped out of the floo network. "How are you doing, pup?"

"I am doing good," grinned Harry, as they stepped to the side to let the others through. "So, this year we have Umbridge as a DADA teacher, and she only requests chapter summaries. There is no practical, or there was none, until we asked two other professors to teach us this year."

Sirius went right for the question that his godson was basically waiting for him to ask, "So who is teaching you DADA? Really?"

"It's Professor's Flitwick and Snape, and they're doing a good job," Harry announced cheekily.

"Wounded!" exclaimed the hide-away, as he flung himself backwards onto the piece of furniture behind him. His head hit the cushioned seat, and he ended up crumpling up in front of the couch. Despite the over-dramatics of it all, he quickly got up to stand in front of Harry again. "So, are they really doing a good job?"

"Yes, and guess what? Snape is better with Flitwick at teaching DADA than he is potions."

"Oh, I could tell you that," huffed Sirius, "I'll tell you as I show you to your room. While he did make up some spells as a teenager, he was constantly pointing out places where in the book that the author was treating an ingredient wrong compared to normal. He already as a youngster knew the active parts of each potion ingredient and basic reactions memorized. Lily had been taught some as well. It made Potions class very competitive."

"So I see Grim Auld Place has been completely redone."

"Yes, I don't suppose you remember, but Hermione was right about something that my relations thought was a hoax. The green did have arsenic in it, and one of the other colours did too. Anyway, the process we did to get the paper off also got my mother off the walls, so we don't have to whisper as we come in anymore. A lot of the old decorations had to be gotten rid of because of the concentration of arsenic that had built up in them. We burnt them. Also, the house is happy now, not just the less disgruntled feeling from shortly after you arrived this summer."

"You can feel it?"

"Hahaha, yes. I've always associated Grim Auld Place with the grumpy feeling from the magic in the walls, and the place is happy for the first time in my memory."

"Wow."

"Are we decorating for Christmas? Or Yule?"

"We had to get some new decorations, but we are. Kreacher is even cheerful right now, and he stuck the bunches of holly and fake evergreen branches along all the stairs and hall ways."

He grinned at Harry's face. "Of course, you can help. We got a big tree for the main parlour that needs to be decorated. So I'm rounding up the troops."

Sirius bounced around the corner yelling, "Tree time!"

It was fun. Harry had never before decorated a tree other than at Hogwarts, and it was an experience. There were a few old decorations that were obviously from the Blacks, old porcelain and china pieces that were delicately painted full of stars. There were some from the Weasleys, home made and bright, that looked very bold next to some of the old ones. Then there were some that were being made today, popcorn strings, orange and gingerbread cookies to help with the scent that were not made for eating. There were candles on the tree, tiny white ones that each of the adults were enchanting before placing so that the tree wouldn't light on fire. Harry could see why this was done as a family/household, and it was exactly as he expected it to feel as a little kid feeling left out at the Dursley's.

He thought back to Cedric and his library. The older boy couldn't be with him much right now, but they were still sending letters. It just wasn't very often because it was just busy this year and he was still getting used to the fact that there were people within a short distance that wanted to hear from him. There was a paragraph there that went through his mind.

"People forget that Dark Magic, the emotional magic, is more than anger and revenge curses. It is the celebration magic, the sombre funeral rites that still are practiced by everyone, even thanksgiving. Even still, we have a Yule ball in the government. We say that we are afraid of dark magic, yet we all use it except for fanatics."

"Unless during war time", thought Harry, "but how many Aurors have to die before civil war is even acknowledged?"

Anyway, there was Christmas/Yule celebration magic. Sirius had introduced the kids to the idea, "a tradition in Grim Auld", he said, of writing down what you want the most in the next year and burning it on Christmas Eve.

Snape had become aware it was more than just his paranoia just before winter holidays. It was a flash of red eyes that he would see in the undergrowth of the Forbidden Forest as he went to get some of the more common ingredients that he used in potions. The red eyes were surprisingly intelligent, but would disappear in a flash as an owl would come out of the blue. Despite seeing this glimpse something that reminded him of the Dark Lord, he wasn't quite sure that the wraith was on the school grounds. That changed the day that he saw the owl kill the red-eyed rodent in front of him and a dark wraith poured out of it, streaming towards the woods.

Winter holidays brought with it the typical holiday extravagance. It was a time for him to catch up on marking, potion brewing, and actually have a little bit of time to himself. As he had extra marking due to teaching another class, even if he and Flitwick split the marking, it was still extra work.

Snape huffed to himself. It seemed the year was going as it was expected for a DADA teacher. The witch running it this year seemed more inclined to gossip than to do anything like work most of the time. She was literally a babysitter, making them read the book and hand in chapter summarizations that could even be written during class time while reading. As expected, she was already impacting his teaching life this year. He hoped that she would be able to go back to the Ministry at the end of the year, but he wasn't really that optimistic. He could just see the curse on the DADA position not impacting her because she was not really teaching DADA. It was also why Flitwick and he were teaching together, because he thought of it as filling in, and he didn't want the curse to target him instead. They were only teaching the higher grades, for both ease of teaching and the fact that OWLs and NEWTs required that the students know how to cast the spells.

The last week of winter break, his fear was renewed. The flash of red eyes that he had been seeing all winter had disappeared from the undergrowth. He snuck out to watch the owls to see if he could see the black wraith appear at all during their hunting, and saw nothing. He hoped the wraith had gone somewhere, but he had a sinking feeling that he knew where the wraith had gone. His thought was that it was hitching a ride on someone, most likely a DADA professor.

Dolores Umbridge was exhausted. She had thought her tiredness was within her scope to handle now that she wasn't dealing with politics all the time. She was not the most liked person, and her pushing policies about limiting the non-pureblood wizards and witches had not helped her as much as she had thought when she started politics. She herself was a half-blood, and she had hidden that effectively, at least effectively enough. Her newest undersecretary had had to do something similar and get recommended to Fudge by Lucius Malfoy himself in order for Fudge to agree that a Weasley would be good enough to be an undersecretary. She was missing the energy that new hires had, and Fudge had basically given this to her as a way to recoup. However, this was not really a job to recoup in. Yeah, she had simplified her courses as much as she could to make it easier on herself, but it still was a lot of work.

Exhausted as she was, she didn't notice the cloud coming from the dead prey of an owl that flew over head.

"Hello," said a voice from the dark cloud.

Instead of paying attention to it, she shooed it away with her hand.

"I'm not a figment of your imagination," hummed the cloud.

"You're not? I should fan you away then," tiredly stated Madam Umbridge.

"Why?" asked the cloud, "I assume, because the position empties yearly, that you are the DADA professor? I could help you with that."

"How?"

"I know a lot about defensive magic, and the kids will benefit more from a practical side as well."

"I suppose it would show the other teachers that I could do my job."

"And I won't tell other people about the help I gave you."

"Fine."