Last time: That was her then. That was Snowdrop's mum... Nicky's mum.

All of the sudden, Harry felt absolutely awful for prying. He turned away and swallowed heavily. His own mother was dead, and for once he no longer felt as though he were the unluckiest child alive.

Perhaps it could be worse to have a living mother who was like the woman unabashedly making a scene at her children's choir concert in front of all of their peers and the other parents.

"I told you she was no one." Nicky said, his voice kept low. In spite of the even tone, his eyes looked glassy, as though he were on the verge of tears. In his hands he was twisting the evening's playbill until it began to come apart.

Harry blinked, not sure what to say. He knew nothing that anyone would have said to him in that situation would have made him feel any better. Instead, he focused on something else that Gammy had said.

"Tomorrow is your birthday, huh?"

Nicky's face crumpled into an expression of mixed grief and fury. "I was a gift, see? A gift like from Father Christmas. From Saint Nick himself."

His eyes took on a manic gleam. "Only I guess I wasn't so much a gift anymore when I was taken away to live with Davey and Cynthia."

With startling clarity, and no little panic, Harry realised that Nicky might very well begin crying, and that couldn't be allowed to happen. Not in the middle of their choral concert. The boy would live to regret the lapse in decorum and would likely be made fun of for years to come. Yet, he had no idea how he might intercede to stop the tears before they began to flow. The whole ordeal made him feel rather useless.

He spared a glance at Snowdrop who sat several seats down. She clearly knew that her mother was in attendance but had adapted to the situation in a much different way than her elder brother. Her sloped little nose was stuck up in the air as she refused to look back at the raised voices behind her. It was certainly an impressive feat given that they were impossible to ignore and from what Harry could see, most of the other parents and students were now craning their necks to get a look at what was occurring with the two Hill women.

With all that going on, Ms. Tibbons couldn't possibly single Harry out if he chose to whisper to Nicky a bit. Their music teacher had glanced over her shoulder, first in irritation and then in mounting panic as she noticed what was happening. Ultimately, however, she was helpless to stop it. As she coached them over and over from the beginning of preparations for their performance: no matter the interruption, the show must go on.

"I asked Severus about that film," Harry began, looking for just about anything by that point to distract the other boy.

"What film?" Nicky asked, looking sullen and irritated that Harry was still speaking to him.

"That Escape thing—"

"Escape from New York?"

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "He said you're daft if you think he looks anything like the actor that plays in it."

"I didn't say he looked like him!" Nicky argued back, looking rather impatient with the exchange. "I said he looked like Bon Scott!" Nicky looked back again, but this time, to Harry's gratification, he was looking at Severus (who seemed just as invested in the petty drama playing out before them as anyone else in the pews, without appearing concerned in the least with feigning interest in year five's performance).

"You said—"

"I didn't say he looked like Kurt Russell, Potter, I said he looked like Bon Scott. And he kinda does, if Bon Scott had flat hair and was taller."

Harry's lips twisted, but he almost had to concede the point. Severus did look a bit like the deceased Australian. "Who's Kurt Russell?"

"Who's Kurt Russell!?" Nicky's voice rose and suddenly Harry was rushing to shush him before he became more of an attraction than his mother.

"Big Trouble in Little China? The Thing, Potter? Overboard, with Goldie Hawn?"

Harry shook his head with his brow furrowed. He was annoyed, as he always was when Nicky began to act all worldly and superior, but if that's what it would take for him to get his mind off of what was happening two rows back, so be it. "I haven't seen many films."

From beside them Jack Sandys began to jostle Harry with his shoulder, and when their conversation didn't cease, he elbowed him in the ribs. "Shhh! Stop talking, Potter!"

Nicky leaned around Harry and stared Jack dead in the eyes for a moment, before he let out a rather accurate imitation of a sheep bleating.

If looks could have killed, Jack would have been guilty of Nicky's brutal murder.

Ducking his head, Harry attempted to hide his grin without much success. No one much liked Jack. He was what Severus called a 'tale-bearer.'

"Anyway," Nicky continued on loudly, without caring anymore what he was interrupting, "he only reminded me a bit of Snake Plissken is all. He doesn't look like Kurt, but he... he..."

"He reminds you of him," Harry nodded, parroting back Nicky's own words, without any additional clarity added to the discussion.

"Yeah." Nicky sat back in his seat with a scowl, staring up at the risers as year five held the final note a few measures too long before Ms. Tibbons signaled for them to stop by raising her arms and crossing them over herself in a big 'X'.

Polite, sheepish applause followed. Clearly absolutely none of the parents had been paying attention to the second choral performance, perhaps with the exception of the parents of the students on stage.

While they trickled down to begin exchanging seats with Harry's year, and Harry and his classmates made to rise, he saw Papagena Hill pushing her way out of the pew with the Ford Cortina's keys clutched in her hand. She charged down the central aisle like a bull ready to gore and was out the doors to the nave in record speed.

Beside him Nicky let out a sigh of relief. They turned so that Harry was queued behind Jack as they filed out of the pew to the right, while year five was set to come in and take their seats from the left.

"I didn't think she'd leave. Usually she stays 'til..."

"'Til what?" Harry asked, ignoring Jack's glower.

"'Til someone calls the fuzz," Nicky admitted. Then there was no more time to speak, for they were supposed to stand in different sections for singing. Ms. Tibbons had decided that Nicky had one of the deeper voices in class and had arranged to have him in the back with the rest of the boys whose registers were more robust, and Harry was elsewhere in the stands, accompanied by the boys with purer vocal tones.

Ms. Tibbons tapped her conductor's baton—and it was a real one this time, not like the drumstick she so often used in class. Who knew where she'd gotten it—on her music stand and nodded to the organist to begin the opening chords for I Saw Three Ships.

Their songs were rather simple and boring. Harry had memorised them without any issue, although he knew that many in the class had struggled. When held up against the more lyrically complex music he preferred, he felt there was no comparison. He'd easily committed to memory whole albums that he and Severus liked to listen to, mostly so that he could pull them up in his head whenever he was bored in Mr. Fowler's class.

Harry didn't try especially hard to sing his very best. If anything, he attempted to blend his voice to those around him with variable results.

Carl, to his left, was singing too high, and Bruce, to his right, was flat. Harry hid a grimace. Perhaps he would have to try and compensate for them after all…

Where previously he had been attempting to be a part of their section, he now projected his voice louder, confident that he was singing at the correct pitch.

When he glanced to Ms. Tibbons he saw her throw a decidedly sharp look in his direction as his voice drowned out the other two. After a moment's thought, Harry mulishly continued to sing louder than the boys to either side of him. There wasn't anything that their teacher could do about it while they were on stage, in any case.

He gave a smirk worthy of Severus himself.

That earned him a warning glower from his teacher, which he ignored. When he looked for Severus in the pews, he noticed that the man was sitting back against the dark stained wood with his arms crossed over his chest, directing a raised eyebrow at Harry, presumably in curiosity over the boy's self-satisfied mien.

It was one thing to sing louder, Harry then decided as the song came to an end and the organist began Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. He cleared his throat into his closed fist. This time he was going to sing louder and better.

Except it didn't occur to him that one could not simply improve the quality of their voice by merely decreeing it should be so. In any case, in Harry's mind, singing better should be the result of simply trying harder, without any thought paid to technique or that more could sometimes be less.

His opening words came out like something out of a bullhorn, and he immediately stifled himself with a hand slapped over his mouth, his eyes wide. He'd only meant to force the notes out harder, thinking they must have been destined to emerge flawless with such extra effort. It was horrifying to hear that instead he had let out a rather loud and attention-grabbing croak. He had to clear his throat again before he could join in with the chorus once more, this time as reserved as he'd begun.

When he glanced at Severus again it was to see that the older wizard was smirking at him rather unpleasantly, and that his lips were twisting in that particular way that usually meant he was holding back laughter.

A git. A bloody big git, that's what he was.

Harry felt his face flood with crimson even as his voice grew in power once more, echoing a bit of Ronnie James Dio without his express say-so. He held a note with vibrato while everyone else failed to hold the note as long as was required for the full two measures.

This time when Ms. Tibbons looked at him it was with a sort of grudging respect, although she did take two fingers and point them first at her eyes and then at him as if to say 'I'm watching you. Look out, Potter.'

Harry gulped and nodded, not wanting a repeat of the croak he'd managed early in the song. When the number drew to a close and polite applause rang out, he was relieved. There was only one more song and then he could get off the stage.

How did David Lee Roth do it, he wondered then. How did any of them? Did they croak on stage? Did they ever mess up so bad that no one ever forgot or let them forget it?

The third song, O Come All Ye Faithful, went over without any unfortunate hiccoughs, though he was still certain that his voice was grander, louder, and more accurate than Carl's or Bruce's.

At least now Severus was lazily clapping for him, Tobias still snoozing by his side.

On the other side of the aisle, Gammy seemed to have recovered herself and was enthusiastically slapping her palms together as she stared between the three children she often oversaw.

Lola… well. Lola would put the audience at a football match to shame.

Harry felt nothing more and nothing less than sheer relief as they finally were allowed off the stage. He unbuttoned the topmost button of his shirt and tugged his collar away from his throat, hoping he might breathe easier without it pressing against his trachea. Severus had insisted on starching his shirt for the first time and Harry wasn't at all a fan of how it felt, even though the older wizard had insisted that it would make him look more presentable on stage.

When they made it back to the pews, everyone had risen and was milling about, any semblance of orderliness having been lost. The children all migrated over to their parents and siblings, and some of the adults had caught up to the teachers who were in attendance and were eagerly grilling them about their children's performance: either at school or for that specific evening's event.

It was a rather relaxed atmosphere, given that school wasn't to resume for another two weeks after they left the church that evening. Harry might have been excited for the holiday if he didn't instead feel so very indifferent to Christmas morning.

Severus hadn't gotten a tree or anything. The house looked much the same, but Harry had still made some small, token efforts at doing something special for his kuya, even if they likely wouldn't amount to much. He probably wouldn't have even succeeded in that had Gammy not offered to help him order something to her house months earlier.

Tobias had awoken by the time Harry made it over to the Snapes' place in the audience, but he was waylaid before he made it by an effusive greeting by Lola before the Padiernoses departed back to their flat above Rice Bowl.

It took her several minutes of fussing over him and ineffectually attempting to push Harry's fringe away from his forehead before she chuckled, shook her head in exasperation, and tweaked his ear.

Harry would have been embarrassed over it if he wasn't so very pleased by the attention. Even so, as she walked away, he couldn't help but to draw a hand back through his hair in order to bring it back to the way it had been before she'd begun to try and smooth it.

"I know I've told you not to deliberately mess your hair up before," Snape drawled as Harry drew nearer. It was true, Severus had, in the past, gotten quite irate over Harry's—usually unconscious—habit. On this occasion, however, the older wizard seemed placid. He was still seated with one arm thrown casually over the back of the pew and one ankle resting on the knee of his opposite leg. He didn't quite appear bored, but he did seem comfortable, and not in the least bit angry, and Harry was grateful that Snape didn't seem inclined to make a big issue over his pet peeve in front of everyone Harry knew in town.

Instead of answering Severus directly, for really there was no answer to offer except an insincere apology, Harry shifted from one foot to the other. "How was it?" He asked, aware that his own class had sounded, to his ear, atrocious.

Snape stared at him, his mouth tilting down at the edges. The older wizard's eyes suddenly looked slightly doleful; his expression all but screaming 'Don't make me lie to you.'

"It was..." he began, finding a loose thread on his shirt cuff and fiddling with it, "as I would have expected from a group of seven to eight-year-olds."

"Oh..." Harry sighed. He opened his mouth to apologise but before he got the chance, a chipper voice from behind him spoke and spooked him.

"How was it!? Did you like it? Harry did wonderfully, don't you agree?"

Harry turned to see Ms. Tibbons, breathless with excitement and eyes shining beatifically. She had come up to their pew and seemed to have singled out Snape for his opinion, looking on the dazed wizard with an expectant expression that bordered on worshipful.

The Adam's apple in Snape's throat bobbed as he swallowed and prepared to answer. He looked desperately uncomfortable.

"I was impressed by Harry's performance," he conceded, nodding his head to himself as though satisfied by his own evasiveness. "I've never seen a Nativity done with quite so much... bleating."

Harry winced. In retaliation for his being cast as a member of the shepherds' flock, Jack had taken it upon himself to play the part of a rather vocal and impassioned sheep, once he'd gotten over his stage fright. He'd bleated throughout the entire performance, even when he was meant to be entirely silent: during the presentation of Christ and while the Wise Men were offering their gifts.

It had been all Harry could do to keep a straight face.

"Oh... oh, that?" Ms. Tibbons wrung her hands, her face flushing. The red of her skin clashed terribly with her pink blush. "I..."

She looked as though she wished to say more, but likely it was inadvisable to call out Jack's behaviour to an unrelated party. Instead, she only gave a small wry smile and shrugged helplessly. "One must roll with the punches, isn't that what they say?"

"Indeed," Snape offered her a small smile and Harry frowned to see it.

Since when did Snape's eyes soften like that around the edges when he spoke to... well... anyone?

"I believe it was Freddie Mercury who said 'Don't Lose Your Head...'"

Harry wrinkled his nose at that. First of all, the way in which Snape spoke was... what? Gentle? Slightly amused? Harry couldn't put his finger on it, but the man's voice, which never lacked for emotion, was filled—filled to overflowing—with something he couldn't identify.

Secondly, since when did Severus like Queen? On too many occasions to count Severus had complained long and loud about Brian May's show-tuney compositions and Freddie Mercury's self-satisfied theatrics and persona. He loathed Queen.

Ms. Tibbons giggled and twisted a frizzy tendril of permed hair around her index finger. "He did! He did, and it was Paul Stanley that sang 'Hell or High Water,' wasn't it? That's a bit what it's like," she giggled again, "conducting at this... erm... at this age. One must simply get on with it, no matter what is happening outside of her control." Her eyes widened at the admission. She looked desperate for Severus' approval.

"It was Gene singing on that track, actually," Snape drawled, lifting an eyebrow as he sat back and began to bounce the leg that was perched at the ankle over the other. "But that's an easy enough mistake to make."

Harry rolled his eyes to the ceiling and was all the more disgusted when no one seemed to notice.

Tobias was watching the two flirting ninnies with a look of slightly demented glee. He was rubbing one hand over the bottom portion of his face, likely an attempt to cover his grin, as he muffled his uncouth chortles behind his knobby fingers.

It was one thing for Severus to pay Harry's eye roll no mind. For him to miss the way his father was having a lark at his expense told the full story of how very... Harry came up blank. He had to search for an adequate word and only came up with one by mere chance. A ridiculous word he'd heard in a cartoon about a deer that he'd watched only once at his old school in Surrey.

Twitterpated. How very twitterpated Severus was behaving.

If Severus didn't have the good sense to be embarrassed, then Harry was fully content to feel embarrassment on his kuya's behalf.

"Oh, there's Ms. Shaw," Ms. Tibbons covered her small moue of disappointment with the palm of her hand as she frowned. "I've got to go speak to her... and I should probably speak to Mr. and Mrs. Drake over near the manger... excuse me."

She hurried off, the points of her low court heels clicking along the polished floor.

Severus leaned back in the pew, seeming rather satisfied. He stretched his arms out and latticed his fingers together at the back of his skull, looking like a lounging, overgrown tom cat.

"Gene may have been the one who sang for 'Hell or High Water,' but he also sang 'Murder in High-Heels.'"

"Ach, ye cannae call 'em 'high heels,'" Tobias argued, crossing his arms and shaking his head. "Nowt t'ol aneuff."

"Well, I shouldn't like to see her break her neck," Severus argued, ignoring the increasingly irate expression blossoming across Harry's face. They were both totally ignoring him as the Snape men sized up his music teacher from across the room. "They're sensible, I'd say."

"Sensible ain't sexy," Tobias snorted.

"Hey," Harry interjected, waving a hand before their eyes in order to interrupt their focused gazes following around Ms. Tibbons' bobbing head of blonde frizz.

"Besides, she's not totally sensible," Snape continued on without sparing Harry a glance. "No bewer with hair like that's totally sensible."

"Hey!"

"Aa cannae be arrished wiv motts laik tha'. She's well smart though, like. Found thee a barrie yan."

Severus looked away and frowned. "We'll see."

"Hey—!"

"Yes, Harry?"

Harry was red in the face with his fists clenched by his sides when the two finally looked up at him: Tobias as though he'd finally realised he was there and Severus with a lazy expression that told Harry that he'd been aware of the boy's objections all along.

He wanted desperately to say something about what had just happened but couldn't think of anything at all, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides until he finally conceded defeat and came to see that short of demanding an explanation from Severus—which wouldn't go over well in the least—he would receive no quarter.

In point of fact, he wasn't quite sure what it was that most bothered him about what had just happened. Being ignored had been annoying, yes, but his irritation had started far earlier than that. It had begun as soon as he'd seen the way Snape was treating Ms. Tibbons far differently than he did anyone else Harry had ever seen the man interact with before.

It had started when he felt something electrifying at the notion. Something that inside him seemed to scream: 'You!? No! Not you! It should be me!'

Harry frowned. Whatever it was had taken him by complete surprise. He didn't care for it at all. In fact, he wasn't sure what it could have meant. He was aware enough to know that he thought Ms. Tibbons rather pretty, in her own way, but he wasn't stupid. Ms. Tibbons was at least fifteen years older than him. What would he even do with a bird like that?

His eight-year-old mind supplied no answers, which only frustrated him more.

He breathed deeply several times before he dared to speak. It usually helped when he had wanted desperately to say something to his relatives and had had to restrain himself.

"Did you say Hi to Lola?" Harry asked, his voice carefully modulated. Almost too carefully modulated. He forcibly relaxed his hands, shoulders, and the glower on his face and sat down beside the two men.

"I greeted her while you were getting ready for the play," Severus answered with a roll of his eyes. "She says she's put aside a goose for us for Christmas Day. I told her not to bother, but she was insistent." He finished with a frown, looking decidedly put out.

"Eh, goose is geet barrie scran 'n our book," Tobias interjected, perking up at the mention of special food for Christmas.

To Harry's surprise, Tobias usually dug into Mrs. Padiernos' cooking with more gusto than either he himself or Severus did, which perhaps hinted that the older man missed the way Severus' mother used to cook for them. Either that or he simply had never encountered a dish he didn't like.

At that, after years of starving alongside the river, perhaps it was the later.

"Well then, plan to attend Mass tomorrow evening," Severus said as he rose, grabbing up his coat from where he'd stuffed it beside himself. He took Harry's coat too and held it out to the boy. "I expect she won't be feeding us on Sunday if we don't show our faces at the Christmas service."

"Is Rice Bowl even open on Christmas?" Harry asked as he pulled the sleeves over his arms and did up the front of his coat.

"No."

They headed for the doors and braced themselves to step out into the cold night. Backbarrow was coated in thin snow cover and more was coming down in enormous fluffy clusters.

"Oh, look!" Harry cooed, pointing up.

"Enjoy it now," Severus rolled his eyes. "In Cokeworth it'll all run to mud."

Harry frowned back at him. Couldn't Severus let him enjoy something? Just that once?

"It's not as though it hasn't already snowed this year," Snape kept up his griping, holding a hand to shield his face. A few flakes had already fallen onto the top of his head and he blinked away a fat bit of fluff that had somehow affixed itself to his eyelashes. It melted against his face and for a moment it almost looked as though the grumpy wizard had shed a tear.

"Why is Lola cooking for us if Rice Bowl is closed?" Harry asked, doing his level best to ignore Snape playing the perpetual curmudgeon.

"Sev'rus always were her favourite," Tobias informed him. "Even when 'ee were in bovver."

"Where's Bovver?"

Severus frowned down at him. They were now a few steps from the Marina and Severus went fishing in the pocket of his peacoat for the keys. Finally, his eyes slightly widened when he understood what Harry meant.

"It's not a place. 'Bovver.' Bother. To be in bother means to be in trouble."

Oh... it was another of those strange words that Tobias used. He was getting a bit better at speaking, as Severus would say, in proper English—or at least a close enough approximation that Harry could mostly understand him—but he still peppered his speech with Cumbrianisms often enough that Harry felt as though he were only able to half communicate with the eldest Snape.

"Climb in, Harry—"

Snape's directive was interrupted, however, by a loud shriek coming from a few meters down the street, behind them.

(To be continued in Part III...)

A/N: Originally the song that Snape referenced is "The Show Must Go On" by Queen, but then I looked it up and it came out in '91, so I had to look through their discography and choose "Don't Lose Your Head," which doesn't quite fit the dialogue as well, but meh.