V. One Lost, Found

V. One Lost, Found

It all happened so quickly there was really no time for him to prepare his face...prepare himself...for the reactions of the party-goers. One moment, he stood in the snowy park with Miss Granger's fingers resting on his sleeve, and in the next, the door to Grimmauld Place was thrown open, and he stood in a hallway suddenly crowded with familiar faces he could have happily gone his entire life without ever seeing again.

'Look whom I found!' Miss Granger cried to the group at large, her shining eyes fastened on his face.

'Professor Snape!'

'Severus!'

Arthur Weasley and Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped forward, hands outstretched, and Severus found himself in the unenviable position of accepting these seemingly enthusiastic welcomes or not...and refusing was really not an option, was it? She had brought him here, and it would reflect badly on her for him to reject the advances of her friends. Had he not stood at the side of the Dark Lord and shaken hands with vile, despicable creatures of the Dark? At the very least, these people had fought on the side of the Light...had been loyal to Albus Dumbledore...and for all his faults, the Headmaster had wanted the best for the wizarding world, never mind his methods.

So Severus shook hands, exchanged hellos, and when the flurry of greetings had passed, he followed the crowd into the sitting room, where he saw Miss Granger placing the blue-eyed doll into the hands of a small, silvery-haired girl...no doubt the daughter of Bill Weasley and his part-Veela wife. The child hugged the doll with one arm and threw the other about Miss Granger's neck.

Arthur stood at Severus' shoulder and smiled benignly upon the spectacle of his granddaughter receiving her dolly. 'I thought Hermione had misplaced the doll,' he said quietly.

Severus responded without looking away from Miss Granger. 'She inadvertently left the doll in the park, but retracing her steps, she found it again.'

'How like Hermione!' Molly Weasley marvelled, moving between the two wizards, and Severus was uncomfortably aware of her speculative gaze. 'Isn't it just like her to return for the one who was lost and to search until she found him.'

Arthur looked down at his wife, puzzlement on his friendly face. 'Her, you mean, my love. The doll is a "her".'

'Of course,' Molly murmured, turning away with a suspiciously merry smile. 'That's what I meant.'

'Nick a cup of Christmas punch, Severus,' Arthur encouraged, nudging him towards the refreshments. 'I'll be right back...must see to the sprogs.'

Arthur hurried over to separate two ginger-haired ankle-biters, and Severus sidled to the drinks table, slipping behind Fred and George Weasley before they knew he was there.

'Good evening, gentlemen,' he said silkily. 'Tell me...will you regret it if I drink the punch?'

Two identical grins turned to him. 'The punch is safe,' George assured him, 'but...

'...don't touch the mince pies,' Fred finished.

'Thank you,' Severus said dryly, taking up a cup of punch.

'Any time, sir,' Fred assured him.

'We learned everything we know about potions-brewing from you!' George added.

Severus took a sip of punch and regarded them with one raised brow. 'That is a charge you could not prove before the Wizengamot,' he pointed out.

Then the twins melted away, and he saw the reason why in the person of Minerva McGonagall. Swallowing nervously, he stood straighter.

'Well, Severus?' the old woman demanded in a querulous tone.

'You look well, Professor McGonagall,' he lied.

'What do you have to say for yourself?' she interrupted, glaring up at him. 'Have you forgotten how to write? Is that why you never respond to owls?'

She continued to scold, but he did not hear her. Miss Granger stood across the room with Ronald Weasley, and it was evident he was remonstrating with her. As he watched, Miss Granger raised one hand, as if to halt Weasley's tirade, and in that moment, her eyes met his. When she found him looking at her, her cheeks flushed, and she smiled at him, a gesture which knocked the breath from his lungs.

'It's like that, is it?' Minerva said wryly.

Suddenly alert to danger, Severus tore his attention from Miss Granger and glared down his nose at his former teacher and co-worker. 'I beg your pardon?' he said repressively, but the old witch simply chuckled at him.

'The child always fancied you, though only Merlin knows why,' Minerva said reminiscently. 'When you wouldn't have her, she spent almost two years trying to make things work out with Ronald.'

The crystal punch cup fell from Severus' suddenly nerveless fingers and hit the thick rug, spattering his and Minerva's shoes before rolling out of sight under the sideboard.

'Oh, honestly, Severus,' Minerva said, and with a flick of her wand, she cleared away the spilled drink before sweeping away from him to find more pleasing company.

'She's right, you know, sir.'

Feeling as if he were being assaulted on every front, Severus turned distracted eyes on Harry Potter, who gave him a half-smile before bending to retrieve the fallen crystal cup.

'I suppose you think you know what you're talking about, Potter,' he said, his customary expressionless mien hanging by a thread.

'When the two of you worked together,' Potter explained, shoving his spectacles back up his nose, 'Hermione tried hard to get your attention.'

Severus suddenly wanted to hit Potter right in the face. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he hissed.

The twit infuriated him by laughing. 'I know what I'm talking about,' he said. 'We were roommates, then...I heard about it in more detail than I wanted to.' The expression in his eerie green eyes changed. 'I don't know where she found you, but I'm glad to see you, sir. You belong here, with the rest of us. Still, she's my best friend, and I won't have her hurt.' He frowned. 'So if you're not up for it, you'd better leave her alone.'

'Are you two becoming reacquainted?'

The retort, to tell Potter to bugger off and mind his own business, froze on Severus' lips as he looked down at Miss Granger, who stood now at his side, as if it were her natural place in the world.

'Yes,' he replied, feeling tremendous relief to have her attention again. 'Did the doll reach her final destination?'

'She did,' the young woman agreed, turning her back on Potter, thus excluding him from the conversation.

Severus saw Potter roll his eyes and shake his head before crossing the room to join a throng of the younger Order members. Severus didn't want to stay here, at the party, and share Miss Granger with all these people. He wanted her on his own, wanted her undivided attention, wanted things he could neither identify nor articulate. Gathering his courage, he said, 'Miss Granger, would you...'

But she cut across him, taking his hand and pulling him behind her as she walked out of the sitting room. 'I need your help in the kitchen,' she said.

Stupidly, he followed her into the corridor and down to the entry hall, then down the narrow stone stairs to the kitchen, conscious only of her bare hand clasping his, this first contact of flesh on flesh burning through him with white-hot intensity. In the kitchen doorway, she stopped and turned to face him. The becoming flush in her cheeks had gone pale, and in the faint light of the oil lamp, her eyes were anxious, even as her lips trembled. Severus drank in every detail, the fruition of a moment long anticipated yet never expected ringing so persistently in his mind that he was unable to think clearly.

'Look out for the nargles,' she said, her voice sounding strained and breathless.

Severus noted that she had twined the fingers of the hand he held with his, an action of tremendous consequence with too many possible interpretations for him to quickly analyse...but she was waiting for his response, and he forced himself to concentrate. 'What's a nargle?' he asked, hearing his own voice, rough and uneven, without recognising it.

'They infest the mistletoe,' she said, and he followed her gaze up to see the beribboned sprig hanging from the doorway.

He was rattled, but he was not beyond reason...he could see that she had deliberately led him away from the others, brought him to a relatively private spot, and stopped with him beneath the mistletoe. It was an invitation, a celebration, and a challenge all rolled into one; the only question was how he would respond.

With an exercise of will beyond any he had ever assayed, he bent his face and pressed his lips to hers. Oh, he was not adept at kissing, but it seemed not to matter at all. The whimper she uttered when she wrapped her arms about his neck was galvanic. His arms gathered her to him, and he dared to trace the soft cleft of her lips with the tip of his tongue. She opened to him, and he lost himself in her. Their tongues touched, sliding each along the length of the other, and then they began to practice the art of thrust and parry, duelling as they had ever done on their long winter walks, communicating with racing hearts and desperate hands the things between them for which there had never before been words.

When at last their lips parted, they stood with foreheads pressed together, lightly gasping, clinging as if to the only solid entity in a world of suddenly shifting realities.

She found her voice first and said, 'Why were you in the park?'

Without thought, he cupped her cheek with the palm of his hand and said, 'I was looking for you.'

She turned her face into his hand and pressed a kiss there. 'Yes, I would,' she said.

He gently raised her chin until her eyes looked into his. 'Yes you would? What?' he asked.

'Upstairs,' she answered, as if that were a full and acceptable answer.

His lips curved into a half-smile, and he shook his head, almost apologetically, to show he did not understand her.

Slowly and very distinctly, she reminded him, 'You were asking me, "Miss Granger, would you" when I interrupted you and brought you down here.'

He laughed, the sound soft, scarcely more than an exhalation of breath. 'But I didn't finish the question,' he pointed out, feeling euphoria building in him, an elation beyond anything he had ever experienced.

'It doesn't matter,' she said serenely, twining her arms about his waist and pressing her cheek to his chest. 'Regardless of the question, the answer is yes.'

They walked along Grimmauld Place, hand in hand, unmindful of the cold. They had no definite destination, except to go there together, no definite planned activity, except to do it together, no immediate intentions to be anything, except together.

Upon the earth on Christmas Eve, two walked side by side beneath stars no longer indifferent, but now complicit in the magic of the night, and the moon shone upon the twin tracks of footsteps in the snow.

A/N: Love and thanks to Shug and DeeMichelle for beta reading and to MagicAlly for Brit-picking, even if I didn't always take their advice!

The title of this piece comes from a song by Sting, which appears on his new Christmas album. The inspiration came from the lyrics of the song, combined with a Christmas skit from a very old television program. In the skit, a bum (homeless person in today's parlance) finds a Raggedy Ann doll lying in the snow in the park, and he fantasizes that she is a real girl who is sitting, walking, and dancing with him. At one point, she even becomes "real" ... well, you can see how that would make me think of Severus.

SubHub had a strong hand in shaping this story, and many details come from our own winter courtship, during which we did quite a bit of walking, both in and out of the snow. I had a cranberry-coloured coat.

Thanks to you all for your reads and reviews. Merry Christmas!