A Christmas Nightmare

1. REGULUS' GHOST

Regulus was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

Snape knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Snape was his sole friend, his sole lover, his sole mourner. Snape never told anyone about him, however, not even Dumbledore, not even the rest of the Black family. He buried himself in his work, lived one day at a time, didn't look back to the past, didn't care for the future. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a feared teacher at Hogwarts, was Snape! A sarcastic, brooding, vindictive old (well, actually not quite so old, given the other members of the staff) sinner!

No pupil (or at least no pupil except Malfoy, that sucking slimeball) ever stopped him in the corridor to say, with a smile, "Good morning, Professor, and how are you today?"

No children asked him what it was o'clock or if he please might give them some help with their essays. Even the house-elves were hiding from him and whispering dark stories about the disgusting things he kept in the glass jars in his office.

But what did Snape care! It was the very thing he liked: to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance - in short, to be left alone.

Once upon a time - of all the good days in the year, upon the last evening before the Christmas holidays - Snape sat in his office, once more correcting a seemingly neverending essay by that Gryffindor know-all Granger, every now and then lifting his head to keep an eye on the Weasley boy, who was scrubbing a cauldron with mighty effort, though not much succes.

Snape grinned sardonically. Mr Ronald Weasley had thought it a splendid idea to celebrate the last school-day by throwing a christmas cracker into Goyle's Pepperup Potion. Ten evenings of detention served him right!

"A Merry Christmas, Severus!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore.

I never knew he could walk that noiselessly, thought Snape. I didn't even hear him open the door. And - Merlin's bollocks, why did he weave pink lametta into his beard?!

Aloud he said: "Nonsense. I don't care a knut for Christmas, as you know very well. Besides, itstill two days until Christmas Eve."

"Christmas is nonsense, Severus? You can't be serious!"

"I am. What's Christmas time to you but a time for correcting abysmal essays for the whole day instead of in the evenings only? A time for finding yourself a year older, and your classes not an hour wiser? If I had my will," said Snape bitterly, "every idiot who goes about "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

"Severus!"

"Sorry," Snape murmured. "Please, Albus, keep Christmas in your way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it! But you, Severus - you don't keep it at all!"

"Let it be, Albus. Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the veneration due to ist christian origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleseant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people as if they really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Severus, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, Christmas be blessed!"

Ron involuntarily applauded.

"Another sound of you," hissed Snape, "and you'll keep your holidays by staying in detention!

You're quite a powerful speaker,ir," he added, turning to Dumbledore. "I always wonder you didn't accept a job in the Ministry."

"Looking at Fudge, sometimes I wish I did...Anyway, Severus, I came to ask you: would you, just once again, join us for the Christmas dinner?"

Snape hadn't turned up there since a certain incident in Potter's third year, which had involved a christmas cracker and a vulture-hat.

"I'd rather eat a whole damned bathtub of flubberworms before I come to the feast!"

"But why?" asked Dumbledore innocently. "Why?"

"Umbridge stays here during the holidays, doesn't she? I am sure she won't miss the feast. No, Albus, I won't come."

"rry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. I think some company would do you good - but I have defended Christmas as well as I could, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last.So a merry Christmas, Severus!"

"Please, Albus."

"And a happy New Year!"

"Albus!"

Dumbledore left the office not in the least disencouraged.

Ron, who had politely opened the door to let Dumbledore out, had let two other people in.

It was Hermione, holding a scoll and a quill as well as an enormous collecting box; and Colin Creevy, hiding behind his beloved camera.

"Ehm...Professor Snape?" asked Hermione.

"Yes?" he snapped.

"I wondered...I mean... well, at this festive season of the year, Professor," she said, finally remembering the prepared speech, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for those who suffer at the present time, and have been suffering for countless years. There are many thousands of these poor creatures still enslaved in the wizarding world, and even if S.P.E.W. can make only little difference, we hope for your...kind...support?"

Ron groaned. Snape was the last person he'd ask for supporting Hermione's obsession.

"S.P.E.W.?" asked Snape cooly.

Hermione's voice now wavered a little. "Ah...that means "Society for the Promotion of

Elfish Welfare", sir - what shall I put you down for? Oh, and you'll get a nice badge and a photo by Colin here..."

She shoved the box under his nose and Colin raised his camera expectantly.

Snape stared at her, incredulous. At last he said in a soft, menacing tone:

"Are you insane? The house-elves are perfectly happy with their conditions." His cold eyes bored into hers, clearly showing his contempt. "You might want to spend your evening with a more useful occupation, Miss Granger - or at least play your silly tricks on somebody who believes you. I suggest trying Longbottom."

And with these words he slammed the door right in their faces.

At length ten o'clock arrived and Ron's detention was over. He hadn't scrubbed the cauldron wholly clean and dreaded Snape's reaction when he found out. But Snape didn't even look up from his work.

"You may go now," he said tonelessly. "Return tomorrow, same time."

"But sir, tomorrow...it's holidays tomorrow, I'm going home, you can't..."

"I know very well what I can and what I can't!" barked Snape. "Stop babbling, Weasley! Next detention when school starts! And if you don't show up in time I'll give you an addition-al evening!"

Ron promised he would, and Snape dismissed him with a growl. The Weasley boy would go for a last snowball fight with his troublesome brothers (and might h a window, judging from his Quidditch abilities) in honour of its being Christmas holidays...

After getting a short look on Longbottoms essay and deciding that tomorrow would still be time to torture himself with this hopeless mess, Snape closed his office. He noticed that someone - probably Dumbledore - had left a little book on his desk. He put it into his pocket and went down to his rooms.

Now there was nothing special about the knocker on his door and Snape had never bothered to look at it closely. He had little inclination to daydreaming, as for a teacher it could be disastrous to let his attention wander while teaching, yet when he touched the lock of the door with his wand he found himself looking straight at the knocker - but the knocker had turned into the Dark Sign, a skull with a hollow glare and a snake winding out of its mouth, the Dark Sign glowing in a sickening green.

Snape blinked and it turned back into his plain old knocker.

He swallowed, then stepped through and slammed the door shut.

The bang echoed through his rooms, a dull, frightening sound. Snape was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He double-locked the door and, in complete darkness, slowly walked down the stairs. Darkness is good for hiding, and Snape had always loved it. But he was slightly perturbed by the appearance of the Sign and wanted to check his rooms.

Living-room? Nobody under the table or behind his arm-chair, a fire already crackling in the fireplace (the house-elves had finally remembered his wishes!), his Pepperup Potion bubbling in a small cauldron (Snape had a cold, which didn't exactly put him into a better mood).

Bedroom? Nothing inside his favourite night-gown, nothing hiding under his bed. Kitchen? The safe with his most dangerous potions was as he had left it that morning. Everything seemed OK. Satisfied, Snape undressed and put on his night-gown and his night-cap and sat down before the fire to take his remedy.

Ears still smoking, he remembered the book Dumbledore had forgotten in his office. Reluctantly he opened it and began to read. It was a ratherboring story about an old muggle called Scrooge...Soon he found himself having difficulties in keeping his eyes open.

When he rolled his head to shake off the weariness, he glanced at the old bell, one of the few items decorating his walls. What the...?

The bell began to swing, faster and faster until it was ringing madly. At the same time Snape could hear a dull noise far above, as if someone were knocking at the walls of the corridor.

"Peeves! If this is you, I'll make sure you get tortured by the Bloody Baron!" roared Snape.

But the noise grew louder and louder, knocking its way down the stair, towards his door -

He wheeled around, his wand ready - a pearly white ghost floated into the room. The flames in the fireplace shot up and down as if to greet it.

It was his face. It couldn't be.

Regulus with his long hair tied at his neck, his ridiculous glittering earrings, his open smile-

Looking through his robes, Snape could see the wall behind him. When they had met first, many people had told Snape that Reg, though good-looking, had no guts, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. This couldn't be. Although he felt the dead cold eyes searching his face, the silent cold evaporating from the ghost's smooth transparent skin, he still couldn't believe it.

"So!" said Snape, sarcastic and cold as ever. "What do you want? Who are you?"

&bdYou know me very well. I was your lover, Regulus Black! Don't you recognize me? Don't you believe me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because Regulus died more than a dozend years ago under the hands of the Dark Lord's torturers. If he became a ghost, why didn't he visit me before?" Snape meant to sound cool and logical. Instad he found his voice shaken with bitter reproach.

"I cannot tell you all I would," answered Reg's ghost softly. "I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. Soon I must go on... My task is to tell you about yourself, Severus. You still are a blind man, blind to so much that really matters. You do not know what I know: no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! And yet I was like you!"

"But you saw your mistakes, your sins in the end, Regulus - does this not matter, that you finally chose the Right Side?" whispered Snape.

"The Right Side!" cried the ghost. "I should - we should have known all along! The Right Side - Severus, what we did - all those killings, all that suffering - my final decision was but a tiny fraction of the universe that is the Right Side!"

Snape buried his face in his hands, helpless, crying.

"Please listen to me, Severus! I don't have much time left!"

"I will - but make it short if you can't stay, please, Reg, I cannot bear your sight."

"I am here tonight to tell you that you may have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate, of living truly on the Right Side and no longer in the gray shadows between Good and Evil. Listen, Severus, you will be visited by three spirits. The first will come to you at midnight, the second as well, and the third at one o'clock. Do not fear them. They will come to show you something you must see, and to teach you something that you have long forgotten.

Look to see me no more, Severus, and remember instead what we have shared in our past."

Slowly the ghost hovered towards the door and vanished.

Snape tried to say something, but could not utter a single word. He was exhausted by the day's work and the storm of emotions that Reg's appearance had aroused. He fell into his bed, embracing sleep like a long-lost lover, wishing that he could sleep forever, and not remember the world.