It was a dark and stormy night - rather like most winter nights at Hogwarts in fact, although the weather had not yet had the decency to turn to snow and at least provide some aesthetic relief with each passing storm front.

Severus Snape ground his teeth as the sound of chattering children echoed through his classroom; the last lesson of the day was over at last and the infants were escaping with barely suppressed relief. None of them stopped to realise that his relief was, at least, equal to theirs. This term seemed to be longer still than most, and there were still two or more weeks until the quiet peace of the holidays would blanket the school.

Snape had been barely restraining himself from counting down the days - but Dumbledore had yesterday given him, and each of the other members of staff, some Muggle contraption which he had called an Advent Calendar. The calendar itself was typical of Dumbledore - garish, emblazoned with the Muggles' Santa Claus on set against a somewhat over-coloured Alpine scene; this particular S. Claus looked suspiciously like a relative of Dumbledore, and Snape half-wondered whether Dumbledore had posed for the picture himself. The headmaster had certainly seemed utterly delighted with the calendars as he had handed them out at the staff meeting, under the guise of 'continuing Muggle education' for the teachers, and cheerfully instructing them on the use of the things. If 'use' was in fact the correct term; Snape was fairly sure it had been a while since he had seen anything quite as useless but, all the same, he had taken a rather vicious delight in tearing off the days, yesterday and today. At the time, he had sneered at the gift.

Sneering was still the expected reaction; any other would probably have caused consternation. Voldemort had gone, the world had righted itself after wobbling rather precariously for a few months, but some things had to stay the same.

If, sometimes, Snape found himself weary of presenting the same persona to the world, he didn't show it. Those who met him thought him unchanged, still the greasy git of student nightmares, unkempt and uncaring. He had endured Dumbledore's insistence on highlighting his contribution to the cause, to Voldemort's downfall and his work with the Order of the Phoenix before that, but nothing could make him actually appear to like it.

Truth was, he didn't much like it. Despite rumours and convictions to the contrary, he didn't want public acknowledgement of his work, his actions - it brought a scrutiny and attention that he was uncomfortable with. Drawing the attention of others had, historically, brought him nothing but grief, literally and metaphorically.

The last echoes of the chatterers in the corridor outside the classrom died away, leaving the stones of the dungeons echoing with silence. Snape breathed deeply, wishing away the tensions of explosive lessons, and surveyed the room. It was clean enough - nothing that the house elves couldn't handle this evening - and he had nothing more that he needed to do here. Collecting the stack of parchments that represented the sixth years' homework, handed in earlier that day, he left the classroom and headed for his rooms.

His bootheels rang against the stone floors, a familiar rhythm. Snape thought he saw Peeves turn around at the end of the corridor at the sound, then turn again and head away. Good. He was in no frame of mind to deal with the irritating pest - not that he was ever in a frame of mind to deal with him. Fortunately, the poltergeist was generally kept in order by Slytherin's resident ghost and rarely ventured into these parts; the occaisional foray for daring, but Peeves preferred to stay away on the whole.

Snape reached the sanctuary of his rooms at last. He dropped the pile of parchments onto the table in the corner, picking up the most recent copy of Ars Alchemica in order to make room for the papers. Marking could wait. He had intended to drop the magazine onto another pile - one of the never-ending 'to read' piles scattered through the room - but decided instead that this was as good an opportunity as any to catch up with whatever the academic community had been investigating this month.

Crossing to the hearth, Snape dropped the magazine onto the sofa as he passed. The stove was still hot, stoked by the house elves at some point that afternoon, but he added another couple of small logs to the dwindling fire. Whilst the flames could have been - and usually were - kept alight magically, he liked the scent given off by a real fire. Theoretically, another charm or two could have added the scent to a magical fire but he would still know that it wasn't truly real. Enough of this world seemed to be made up of constructs and illusions, even in peacetime, that Snape took a perverse - and undisclosed - pleasure in concrete reality.

He measured out coffee from a small steel can kept on a shelf in the hearth wall, filling the coffee pot with water and reassembling it. Placing the pot on the stove, he shrugged off his robes and settled into the sofa, stretching his legs out along the cushions as he unbuttoned the long jacket he wore and loosened a couple of buttons on the cuffs.

He was halfway through the second article when the bubbling of the pot changed to a low gurgle as the last of the steam forced its way through the coffee grounds. Snape groaned softly as he forced himself to move, to get up and pour coffee into a stoneware mug. Returning to the sofa he noticed an envelope lying on one of the leather armchairs that also faced the hearth; he had missed the owl call that morning, dealing with various tedious and unimaginative Slytherin rule infractions. Rather than chase Snape around the castle, the owls were directed to leave mail in his rooms when he wasn't in the Hall - the other teachers had similar instructions in place with the owls.

Picking up the envelope, he recognised the handwriting - Hermione Granger. He frowned; it had only been a couple of months or so since her last letter, and these days they rarely corresponded more than twice a year. The envelope was also oddly heavy - certainly heavier than could be accounted for by her usual letter of news.

For a moment he wondered what it was that she was writing to him about, then caught himself. Pointless speculation - particularly when any questions could be answered by opening the letter. Snape re-settled himself on the sofa, taking a sip of the scalding black coffee before setting it down on the floor and turning his attention back to the letter.

A sheet of paper, violently pink, made him wince. Surely Hermione hadn't ... no, there was another sheet of parchment, in the more usual off-white that Hermione used, in the envelope as well. He set aside the pink, hoping he wouldn't have to look at it again but knowing better. Hermione wasn't likely to be sending him lurid paper without purpose.

Five minutes later, he picked up his coffee mug again and drained it, then got up from the sofa to refill it. He had been trying not to drink so much coffee - Dumbledore's proddings and Madam Pomfrey's mutterings about caffeine had made some impression on him, although neither the Headmaster nor the mediwitch knew it - but right now, he needed more coffee.

Memories that had been, more or less, suppressed for ten years surged back. In a lifetime of strange experiences, those few months stood out - and, although he did his best to convince himself that it had been a horrific experience, he would never choose to permanently wipe them out. If he wished that there had been some other way to deal with the aftermath, that was something unmentioned, undiscussed. There were only two people with whom he could discuss it, in any case - and Snape knew only too well the likely implications of discussing the situation with Dumbledore, even ten years after the event. Especially ten years after the event.

The pink parchment caught his eye, searing the retina again. Snape suppressed a wince. Parvati Patil had clearly not matured significantly since leaving school. Cosmetics. This time he did wince, and the irony in the fact that the parchment was lying on top of Ars Alchemica was not lost on him. He had no wish to revisit the past.

With no particular hope that his response would be effective, he picked up a quill and blank parchment from the floor near the sofa and began to write.