Frosty Christmas

Christmas snowflakes drifted and danced outside the window.

Snape held two hoods in his hands and led Pandora slowly out of the Great Hall, heading for the fourth floor.

"Ah-ha!" A sharp shriek came from overhead, startling them both.

They had not noticed at all that they had passed directly beneath Peeves.

Peeves hung upside down from an ornate chandelier, baring his teeth in a wicked grin at them.

"Are you sure you want to say anything?" Snape drew his Wand and looked maliciously at Peeves dangling in the air.

"Baby fool and strange girl sneaking away from the crowd—" Peeves yelled at the top of his lungs.

But before he could finish shouting, Snape reacted swiftly and pointed his Wand at Peeves.

Peeves immediately clutched desperately at his throat, choking, his face filled with terror.

He flew out through the window, making obscene gestures at Snape and Pandora, but he could not utter a single word because his tongue had stuck to the roof of his mouth.

After getting rid of Peeves, Snape and Pandora continued on and soon arrived at the statue of a humpbacked, one-eyed witch on the fourth floor.

"Hogsmeade," Snape whispered close to Pandora's ear. "There's a Secret Passage hidden here that leads straight to Honeydukes' cellar. The entrance is in that old woman's hump.

"Since everyone has their own business today, do you want to spend Christmas in Hogsmeade?"

Pandora was clearly not one to follow the rules either. The moment she heard Snape's words, her eyes lit up.

She subconsciously touched her Wizard robes, then nodded happily.

Seeing that Pandora agreed, Snape quickly looked around, then pulled out his Wand and lightly tapped the statue. In a low voice, he said, "Part the Ways!"

At once, the statue's hump opened, revealing a hole just large enough for a thinner person to crawl through.

"You go first."

Snape swiftly scanned both ends of the corridor, then followed Pandora headfirst into the hole.

They seemed to slide down a stone chute for a long time, wind whistling past their ears, before landing on cold, damp earth.

Snape hurriedly got up, brushing mud from himself as he raised his Wand and said, "Lumos!"

Only then did they see clearly that they were inside a narrow, low earthen tunnel.

"Follow me." Snape led Pandora onward.

The passage twisted and turned, more like a gigantic rabbit hole.

Snape held his Wand out in front of him, its faint light swaying through the darkness. The ground was uneven, and he occasionally stumbled over its bumps and hollows.

Time passed slowly in the darkness. It felt as though an hour had gone by before the passage finally began to slope upward.

After walking for another ten minutes or so, they reached the bottom of a worn stone staircase that stretched upward beyond sight.

"Come on," Snape whispered to Pandora.

They began climbing the stairs, careful not to make a sound.

One step, two steps... At first, they counted them—one hundred, two hundred... but eventually, they lost count.

Without warning, Snape's head slammed into something hard with a bang.

It was a trapdoor. Snape stood there rubbing his head, listening carefully for sounds above.

After quite a while, he heard nothing. He slowly pushed open the trapdoor and cautiously peered through the gap.

"No one's here. Let's go up—they must all be off celebrating," Snape said quietly.

This was a cellar, filled with crates and other wooden boxes.

Snape climbed up first on hands and feet. Once he had found his footing, he bent down and pulled Pandora up after him.

Then he gently closed the trapdoor. It was nearly the same color as the grayish floor, and no one would notice there was an entrance here without looking closely.

"Put this on." Snape took one of the hoods in his hand and handed it to Pandora. "We'd better be careful outside."

After putting on their hoods, they slowly climbed the wooden staircase leading to the upper floor.

They reached the door at the top of the stairs and quietly slipped inside, finding themselves behind the counter of Honeydukes.

The shop was empty, and the lights were off.

Snape and Pandora moved past the counter without making the slightest sound. "Alohomora."

After opening the shop door with magic, they hurriedly slipped outside.

The street was just as quiet. Only the pub near the station was lit up, and bursts of cheerful noise occasionally drifted from it, breaking the stillness of the night.

"Come on, this weather calls for a Butterbeer," Snape said, turning to Pandora.

They wrapped their robes tightly around themselves and headed toward the Three Broomsticks.

The wind was bitter, and their hands were nearly frozen stiff. At last, they crossed the road, and a few minutes later, swept in with a gust of snow and wind into the pub.

A beautiful Christmas tree stood in the center of the pub, hung with all sorts of colored lights and decorations.

The pub was especially crowded that night. The usual tables had all been removed. Everyone held a drink and wandered around the pub, raising toasts to one another.

Snape had to squeeze through the crowd with great effort to reach the bar. Deliberately altering his voice, he said to Madam Rosmerta, "Two Butterbeers, please."

Madam Rosmerta turned and studied him suspiciously for a long moment, then smiled sweetly and handed him two large mugs of steaming, foamy hot Butterbeer.

As Snape took the mugs, he felt Madam Rosmerta lightly scratch the back of his hand with her little finger.

He immediately felt guilty and secretly glanced at her from beneath his hood.

But she had already turned away, busy preparing drinks for other customers. All he could see was a long ponytail tied behind her back. It was the first time Snape had seen Madam Rosmerta wear her hair like that.

"Do you like it?" Snape asked Pandora, who was taking big gulps of Butterbeer. He had to raise his voice because a raucous Christmas broadcast was playing in the pub.

Celestina Warbeck's singing flowed melodiously from a large wooden radio.

"It's wonderful!" Pandora raised her mug and said happily, "Merry Christmas!"

Snape took a deep drink. It was one of the most wonderful things he had ever tasted. Its rich, sweet flavor spread through his mouth at once, as though warming every inch of him.

Under the cover of the jazzy tune A Cauldron Full of Hot Love, Snape and Pandora chatted loudly and clinked their mugs together with gusto.

"Oh, come stir my pot of soup,

If you do it just right,

I'll brew a hot and fiery love,

To keep you warm tonight."

They soon finished their first Butterbeers.

Then came the second, the third, the fourth... Snape could no longer remember how many times he had gone to the bar.

He had even begun grinning foolishly at Madam Rosmerta.

When he handed another mug to Pandora, she looked somewhat tipsy as well.

"Severus, I have something for you." Pandora's voice drifted slightly under the effects of the alcohol.

"What good thing is it?" Snape swayed faintly to the music.

"This." Pandora pulled a man's wallet from inside her robes and said with narrowed eyes, "It can hold lots of things."

By then, Celestina had begun singing You Hooked My Heart With Magic.

"Oh, my poor heart, where has it gone?

It left me, hooked away by magic,

And now you have torn it apart,

Please give my heart back to me!"

Celestina ended her performance on a long, high note. Loud applause rang out from the radio, and Pandora clapped excitedly as well.