Remember

Severus Snape hated holidays. Ever since he had been a child, nothing but pain and heartache had come along with Christmas. The one good thing he had found about Christmas while working at Hogwarts was the fact that most of the ungrateful brats he was required to teach went home for the holidays.

According to his pocket watch, the train should have just departed from Hogsmeade to take the brats back to London, and he couldn’t have been happier. He had just finished preparing the Defense Against the Dark Arts syllabus for January, and he was finally ready to start his two week break from the classroom.

He quickly headed out of the classroom, setting the wards before heading down the hallway to the Transfiguration classroom to finish the last piece of school-related business; one of his Gryffindor students was in serious danger of failing his course. He had to warn the Head of Gryffindor house so she could deal with it when the students returned from break.

He came to the classroom door and knocked. When he got no response he pushed the door open and headed to the back of the room, where the Transfiguration teacher’s office was located. He heard her humming some horrible Christmas carol before he reached the door. While he had a scowl on his face and would have normally alerted her to his presence, he instead found himself leaning up against the door frame watching her work.

As always, she had a huge stack of parchments in front of her on the desk, and from the looks of it wasn’t happy with what was on the parchment. She was marking the paper with long slashes of red ink, just as he had taught her to do. Her hair was falling out of the bun she had styled it in that morning, and the loose strands were framing her face, making her even more beautiful to him.

“Can’t those papers wait?” Severus questioned from the door.

He saw the surprise and happiness in her eyes as she looked up at him and smiled. “Why, Professor Snape, I didn’t expect to see you standing there.”

“The term is over and the brats are gone. Where else did you expect to find me?” he pointed out in the voice she told him she always found so sexy.

“Definitely not under the mistletoe,” she laughed as walked towards him.

He scowled up at the offending piece of greenery hanging over his head that he hadn’t even noticed. She had managed to get him under the damn mistletoe for three years in a row now, and it always irritated him. He always forgot to look where he was going when he was around her, and every year he paid for it by having to give into one of the Christmas traditions she loved.

As perturbed as he was, he actually smiled when she leaned into his body. He looked down at her and wiped a smudge of ink off her face before allowing his lips to fall onto hers. He kissed her passionately, feeling the Christmas blues lift immediately.

He remembered that the woman in his arms had changed his life three Christmases ago, when she had caught him under her blasted mistletoe for the first time.

“I love you, Severus Snape,” she said to him as they broke apart.

“And I love you, Hermione Snape,” he said as he looked down into his wife’s big brown eyes, deciding that one again this year he definitely would be looking forward to Christmas.