𝙳𝙴𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙰𝙿𝙾𝙽𝚄𝙼 » 𝚂𝚂/𝚁𝙻

𝚇𝙸𝚅 >> 𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙸𝙰'𝚂 𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙸𝙴𝚂

< 1 MONTH, 3 WEEKS, 3 DAYS >

Remus leaves early in the morning, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt and buttoning his vest over it with a casually enlivened tempo pulsing through his fingers. He grabs the coat he left behind as he heads to the door, and Severus barely looks up from his work.

"You're all remedied and mended then, I presume?" Snape presupposes impartially. Remus clutches a hat that Severus wasn't even aware he'd brought here with him and rests it on top of his head.

"There's an Order meeting tonight. I'm hosting again," Lupin explains. "Wouldn't it be dubious if I told them that I was now living in Professor Severus Snape's bedroom so they should just dally on over there?"

Snape discounts the sentence. "There's a meeting?" he asks, his tone sounding most emotionally discommoded. "It's Christmas Eve."

Amused and jocular light shines itself from each button on Remus' coat as he fastens them. "I thought you said you didn't celebrate."

Severus' nose twitches obscurely, perhaps out of displeasure; perhaps out of knowing that he has lost. "I don't."

Remus nods. "Well then."

Opening the door, he steps out into the hall and turns around, tipping the brim of his hat like a man in a film from the fifties and giving a timelessly comme il faut smile. "I'll see you tonight."

Snape repudiates. "I'm not coming."

But Lupin only gives him that same knowing look, backing farther into the hall and pulling the door shut behind him.

"Goodbye, Severus," he replies dismissively, and the shadow of his dress shoes on the lacuna beneath the door sturdily walks itself away.

Severus scoffs to himself, tossing one of his students' papers to the side and holding the bridge of his nose between his first two fingers. Why is it that they had to contrive a meeting today? Today of all days. It's Christmas, for the love—

His eyes snap open.

"Fuck. It's Christmas."

Bursting out of his room, stacks of papers cascading behind him as he hauls his grading materials with him on his way, he streaks for the Great Hall with the most vehemence he feels he's exploited in quite some time. His cloak torrenting behind him, he crosses the school with the fleetness of a raven, whirling into the inordinate dining room from which all the tables have been momentarily cleared.

"Professor Snape," Minerva greets him as he rushes in, setting up a large phonograph in the corner of the room and getting ready to leave. "Truly didn't think you would arrive. I've just finished with the Gryffindors. Slytherins have been sent this way, so be prepared very shortly."

Severus sighs, setting his work down on a low cabinet behind him and traversing the room. He almost attempts the waltzing steps again, but, as McGonagall is still present, he escheats to circulating it only in his head, trying to keep the bloody werewolf and his stupid little sentences out of it. One-two-three, one-two-three, over and over in his strident and silent head.

He stands stilly by the door as the students begin to file in and Minerva begins to take what appears to be attendance — which is surely irritating; Severus is fully capable of doing this himself — while each child begins to line up on either side of the wall. It is in this moment that Snape happens upon the enlightening realization that Minerva isn't actually going to leave the room, and he naturally assumes that this is due to her wanting to see him dance so that she can mock him sedulously for it and make sport of how much better he would have been if he had only let her be his instructor. She leans over the phonograph stand like a statue of an old Greek goddess, wearing a tight smile and parading a look in her eye that he knows well enough to be able to docket forthwith as humorous pride.