Do ut des

[danzanelfuoco]

Calendario dell’Avvento (Kaos Borealis)

03/12: Secret Santa

Harry Potter

Snarry

SAFE

Severus Snape was not a festive man. After all, there weren’t that many things to celebrate in his life. 

He had always tolerated Christmas, maybe out of nostalgia of what he had had his first years at Hogwarts - a house, a friend, a scrap of happiness, however ephemeral. 

As the years passed, thought, he found all the decorations and cheers and carols were grating on his nerves to the point where he would gladly entomb himself in his chambers for the whole Holiday. 

Ah. And he thought he was a bitter man before. 

Minerva, however, wouldn’t let him, of course. As Headmistress, she had ordered him to at least attend the meals - and if she could order him to also be happy about it, she undoubtedly would, but be as it may, he took a wicked pleasure in his stone cold silence and deadpan expression, enjoying it even more when that had Minerva purse her lips in displeasure and sadly sighing. He still hoped one of this years she would renounce her Dumbledoresque attitude toward him and just let him be. 

He could leave of course, resign - but to go where? 

He didn’t have anywhere else to be, any other place to call home, except Hogwarts - he hadn’t planned in surviving the war. 

So he had endured the decorations and the cheers and the carols. 

But not this year. 

This year he wouldn’t do it.
It was enough for the Headmistress to have hired Harry bloody Potter for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. She wouldn’t force him at his same table. 

Why on Earth Potter had decided to stay at the castle, instead of spending the holiday surrounded by red-headed idiots who kept spawning as soon as you looked away was another mystery, but Snape had already had enough of investigating Potter’s motive to last him a lifetime. 

He didn’t care at all. 

That’s when Potter knocked at his door. 

Severus pondered to leave him there as an idiot. He should do it, just to get rid of him. 

But Potter was a pest, he knew. If he ignored him, he would go length to find a way to circumnavigate his door to talk to him - he shuddered at the thought of being ambushed in a hallway by the invisible cloaked brat. It was just more convenient to cave in, talk to him, and if necessary tell him in a profusion of details where to shove whatever he wanted from him. 

“What do you want?” 

“Merry Christmas, Severus.” 

Severus closed his eyes and counted to ten - let’s make ten thousand. He knew Hogwarts staff was at a fist name basis - he had felt awkward for about a year calling McGonagall Minerva, as if he hadn’t been her student just a few years before - but he had tried to drill into that thick skull of his that he was Snape to him. As usual Potter was selectively deaf. 

Severus would have gone on endlessly in his head, if only Potter hadn’t trusted in his hand a small packet, so awfully wrapped he wondered how it wasn’t falling open in his hands. 

“What’s the meaning of this?” 

He scowled at the thing as if he was a particular disgusting and dangerous variety of Blast-Enden Skrewst. 

“Your Christmas gift. For the staff Secret Santa,” he said, and his tone was weary, as if reminding him of something he hadn’t really being paying attention to, could set him off. Severus at least appreciated the survival instinct. It was new. 

“You can give this to whoever I was supposed to buy a gift for. I don’t intend to part in this… preposterous charade.” 

“I really doubt I would appreciate this…” 

Of fucking course, Snape would draw Potter in return.

… not as much as I think you would do.”
Oh, his nerve. So he presumed to know him enough to give him a gift he would appreciate? 

“Fine,” he sneered. “I’m gonna open it.” 

“Shouldn’t you wait to open it on Christmas?”
“Shouldn’t a Secret Santa be secret?” He could have added something more, he could have taunted him about not being able to not take the lighting spot, even for something so silly as a secret santa. It would hurt him, he knew, for he knew it was also untrue. He didn’t know why Potter had knocked at his door with his gift instead of sending it via House-Elves as most Christmas Gifts were delivered, but he knew someone who secluded himself in a cold Scottish castle was hardly trying to parade himself. 

“Are you really gonna open it right here right now?” Potter asked, as Severus fought against the slippery ribbon that was keeping the whole thing from falling apart. 

“Yes, so I can properly tell you how presumptuous…” but his words died on his lips. “But it’s…” 

“Black Mistletoe,” Potter supplied. “It’s an ingredient used in potion -”

“I know what Black Mistletoe is, Potter,” the Potion master scolded the student who had barely passed his potions NEWT, but his voice didn’t hold any harshness. He was still a little shocked from the gift. 

It’s an ingredient used in potion, had said the boy. Yes, and diamonds were rocks. 

And a diamond it’s what it must have costed him, because Black Mistletoe was something so rare - harvested the night of the winter solstice, but only if there was a new moon darkening the sky, from a plant whose seed had sprout during an eclipse. 

‘Why?’ He wanted to ask. ‘Why would you give me something so valuable?’

And then ‘What do you want for it? What was the grand scheme behind gifting me something so priceless?” but Potter was not the scheming type, he wasn’t Slytherin enough. 

“I can’t accept this,” Severus said instead and tried to hand him back the branch, but Potter took a step back, almost as if he feared to get burned if he were to touch it. 

Had he poisoned it? Severus asked himself, before thinking better of it. No, that was just his old paranoia, coming back as a habit. Potter was too straightforward for poisons. And surely even he wouldn’t be that stupid to spoil such a valuable ingredient just to spite his old professor.

“Yes, you can. And you will.” 

“Because the great and mighty Harry Potter says so?” Snape taunted him. 

“Because you deserve it,” Potter said and, to Severus astonishment, he looked like he truly believed it, “but if you don’t believe me, than yes. Because the great and mighty and famous - you don’t wanna forget famous, right? - Harry Potter said so.” 

He was mocking him. Harry Potter was mocking him.
No. Not mocking, it wasn’t malicious. He was… jesting. 

As if this was an old joke between friends. 

“Still, I can’t accept it. Even if I were to take part in this absurd idiocy and give you a gift, I could be never able to repay…” 

“Severus,” Potter interrupted him and oh, Severus didn’t know if he was more annoyed at the interruption or at the name, “you wouldn’t even know where to start looking for a gift for me.” 

It was true, wasn’t it? 

And besides, Potter was filthy rich - as the mistletoe in his hands proved - nothing Severus could put his hands on would be something he couldn’t have bought himself if he so wished. 

“But if it what it take to have you accept my gift is finding me something in return, then I’m gonna tell you what I want.” 

Severus shook his head, “I won’t stand for a symbolic price such as a galleon or something along those lines. And I can’t give you nothing you could ask me as valuable as this, and you know it.” 

“Then I’m gonna ask you something as invaluable as that mistletoe,” Potter smiled, and Severus was taken aback. So there was a plan. He wouldn’t have put it on Potter, but it had been a do ut des all along. 

He didn’t know why it stung, but at least this was familiar ground. Hidding behind a calculating gaze, he pushed his inner spy forward to deal with him. “Name your price.” 

Potter didn’t miss a beat, didn’t take time to think about it. 

“Your company.” 

Severus blinked. And then he blinked again. 

“My… company?” 

Are you out of your fucking mind? and That’s it, we’ve lost him! and Who is gonna tell Minerva we need another DADA teacher so soon? and I’m gonna kill him, even if he didn’t realize what he just asked 

“Yes, your company. Your… time.” 

“And do you want me to disrobe here or are you more comfortable with scheduling an appointment?” Severus snarled, because if Potter was for real, he would just decapitate him on the spot, and if he just had misconstructed his sentence, then he would embarrass him enough to get rid of him and the three generation of Potter that were bound to come to disrupt his quiet in the future. 

But Potter didn’t wrinkled his nose and demanded back his gift since he had refused -as he would do if it were the former - , nor had started spluttering incoherently, freaked out just by the idea existing in the realm of possibilities - if it were the latter. 

No. Potter blushed. 

“I was thinking more of a cup of tea. You know, perhaps without you insulting me into New Years Eve. But since you are so against it… never mind. But keep the mistletoe, please. I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.” 

Then he left. 

He left and didn’t brought the damn plant with him. 

So much for talking about familiar ground. 

Snape closed the door at the empty hallway. 

TBC 

(gosh, every time I write this I think of tubercolosis, isn’t there another way to say this isn’t finished yet?)