Four Christmases | Harry Potter for Grown-Ups

Three - 25 December 1985

Of all the things Albus Dumbledore could have ordered Severus Snape to do over the Christmas holiday, learning Occlumency from Minerva McGonagall would not have made the list of ten most likely.

He wasn't especially surprised that she knew Occlumency—in the years since he'd returned to Hogwarts, he'd learned some surprising things about his former professor, and not all from Dumbledore—but he was surprised that she'd agreed to teach him.

While she tolerated him and was cordial, even speaking to him of her own free will upon occasion, he doubted very much that she wanted to tiptoe through the tulips of his memories. She had to know that whatever she might find there would be disturbing.

Then again, maybe she wanted the chance to find out the truth of a few things. Like where he was on the night of 27 July 1981.

Well, let her. That was one memory he wouldn't try to hide.

Dumbledore had told him how to access the Room of Requirement, and when he got there, she was already inside, standing with her back to the door, calm and benign-seeming as the Black Lake. And like the lake, there were monsters hidden in those depths. He'd never seen them, but Severus had no doubt that they were there. She'd lived through two wars, and from what little Dumbledore had said of it, the first had been nearly as horrific as the last. He wondered if the next would be worse still and if she'd survive it, too.

She turned, and he had enough time to register that her wand was drawn before she said "Legilimens!" and he felt incredible pressure inside his head, helpless to stop it as she shuffled through his superficial memories as quickly and adroitly as a cardsharp with a new deck.

The memories were grainy and washed-out, and he had a fleeting vision of sitting on the Evanses' rumpus-room carpet watching old Super-8 films with a delighted Lily, laughing with her at her toddler antics and at the sour look Petunia wore, even then.

Shit.

He felt Minerva pause at the memory, so he concentrated on emptying his mind, but it was too late. She'd already shifted around him and moved on, sifting and discarding, sifting and discarding.

He saw himself at lunch just hours ago with the Headmaster and the other staff, Minerva like a stone goddess to his left, himself scowling as everyone else pulled Christmas crackers. The scowl deepened when Dumbledore placed the paper crown on his head, to the barely concealed laughter of the eight students at table with them. He watched himself snatch it from his head and crumple it in his fist.

It was a moment before he remembered that Minerva expected him to fight back against the intrusion into his memory, although he wasn't sure how. Before he could muster any defence, he felt her withdraw.

"It's amazing you survived for even a few months with Tom," she said.

"Until the last few, I had nothing to hide from him. By that time, he saw no point in testing me, as I had offered no resistance before. I was no threat."

"Legilimens!"

She was in his head again, and they were in his private quarters. It was that very morning; he knew it because there was a slim book entitled A Christmas Carol and a note in Dumbledore's looping hand on the table next to his tumbler of Firewhisky. The detritus of red-and-gold wrapping littered the floor at Severus' feet.

This time, he made an attempt to push her out of his mind and felt her rush around his feeble defence. The scene inside his head changed abruptly, and he knew too late that she had been lulling him into complacency by looking at the previous, relatively harmless memories that were at the forefront of his mind. But now she was deep inside him, looking at something he did not want her to see. He was standing in a snowy lane, soaked and shivering, watching Lily through the window of the cottage. She and Potter were trimming a fat Douglas fir, laughing. Potter leant over to kiss her and—