*****

Snow was falling steadily outside the Three Broomsticks--- appropriate for Christmas Eve. But Rosmerta wasn't feeling particularly cheery. Not that any of us has much reason to be. Not with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named steadily gaining power every day. Too much to hope that he and his Death Eaters were taking time off for the holidays. More likely, they'd step up the pace of their atrocities--- that was their idea of celebrating.

At least they were a little safer in Hogsmeade: Albus Dumbledore was just a stone's throw away up at the school, and everyone knew that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named feared Dumbledore as he feared no one and nothing else.

But that was scant comfort when you were sitting in a nearly empty inn on Christmas Eve. Christmas was a time for family, but there were always those stranded away from home... or those who didn't have anyplace else to go. And in these times she couldn't afford to miss a customer. Business was bad enough.

So here she sat, on Christmas Eve, minding the bar for a few glum and silent patrons, those who had nowhere else to be on this night of all nights.

Like herself. And where would you go, Ros, if you weren't tending bar, hmm? She didn't like the answer. A disgrace to her House, really--- a Hufflepuff with no family, at least not one that wanted her around at the holidays.

One of the patrons, a rather scruffy-looking warlock, held out his glass, wordlessly. Equally silent, she gestured with her wand and the bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky upended itself over the tumbler. He dropped a handful of sickles on the bar; she scooped them up and set them in the cashbox. Ho, ho, ho.

The wireless behind the bar was playing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." She wished she could bring herself to turn it off, but it didn't seem right. Not on this night of all nights.

The door blew open, and she looked up, hoping for a distraction--- then chided herself for the thought. Boredom wasn't a bad thing in these times.

The newcomer was shrouded in black wool--- long cloak and a thick balaclava shielding his face equally from the elements and from others' sight. "Happy Christmas," she called out, her standard greeting for the last week, even if it fell flat at the moment.

The newcomer started, as if he didn't expect to be addressed. She wondered about that, until he unwound the balaclava from his face and she got a look at him.

Oh. Severus Snape. She remembered him from his school days; he'd come in here a few times, never saying much, usually nursing a butterbeer at a booth in the back while poring over some thick and obscure tome. Never making trouble, not like the Gryffindors or even his own housemates. Never with anyone else, always by himself. Poor thing. She wondered what he was doing here on Christmas Eve of all times.

Probably hasn't got anywhere else to go. But then, with his mother, she could hardly blame him for not being home with family. Lucretia Andropolous Snape was notorious in wizarding circles; she'd heard the Dark witch's name taken in vain no few times in this very pub.

He shrugged out of his cloak, then headed, silently, for that booth in the back that he'd always used as a student. Literally in the back in the corner in the dark, almost invisible to the rest of the room and shadowed even from behind the bar. She got the impression he preferred it that way.

The wizards at the bar glanced at him without interest; Rosmerta couldn't help a certain professional curiosity... not to mention compassion. And besides, she couldn't very well let him take up a table, even that one, without buying something.

She eeled her way out from behind the bar, bumping the door open-and-shut with a practiced swish of her hips; a couple of the patrons gave her the eye, and she felt a little better. The day she couldn't get a man's attention.... She headed over to the little corner booth to find Severus sitting with his head in his hands, looking thoroughly exhausted.

"Severus?" It was always good to get his attention before coming too close; as a student, he'd been, bar none, the jumpiest customer she'd ever had in here, and that was saying something.

True to form, he started; she thought she saw that right hand snake toward his robes for his wand--- Then he looked up, just slightly, his face obscured by that unsightly mat of greasy hair. "Oh."

"What'll you have?"

Another start, as if he hadn't expected the question. His face still half-hidden, he made a vague noise. "Whatever---" She thought she saw a thin smile. "Something expensive."

Typical Slytherin, was her first thought; it took her until she got back to the bar to realize that it might have been his version of being nice.

She studied her bottles thoughtfully, feeling a little warmer toward him from that thought. Now, then.... Well, he'd been out in the cold; something warm....

She mixed up a [ ], lit it with a flick of her wand, then carried it carefully back over to his table. "Here you go--- it's five galleons."

Another of those faint smiles as he drew out his money pouch, still without looking up. "Th-thank you." Was it her imagination, or was his voice shaking with something more than cold?

He took the mug from her, brushing his hair back from his face as he gulped at the concoction, then set it down--- and her suspicion was confirmed as she got a good look at his face.

He couldn't have been more than twenty-one... yet the lines on his face should have belonged to someone much older. The mouth was compressed to a slit, his skin the color of old parchment, areas around his eyes swollen. And those eyes... cinders, or tunnels, cold and dark and wretched.

All Rosmerta's professional instincts went into overdrive. I might not have been a mediwitch like Mum and Dad wanted, but I can still do some good.... And twenty years at the Three Broomsticks had taught her a thing or two about human nature. The things some of her customers had told her over the years--- she was amazed at the things they'd tell her!

But Severus Snape had never been the confessional sort, and it didn't look like he was about to start. And really, it wasn't her business. "Let me know if you need anything else," she told him, waiting a moment, then moving off when he'd immersed himself in his drink.

She went back to the bar, but kept an eye on him, more out of curiosity than anything else. He didn't have one of those musty old books of his with him, but he didn't seem to care; he was drinking like a man who's just come out of a desert. He finished the first one in five minutes flat--- and those were large drinks.

She looked at him over her bar, raised her eyebrows. He didn't catch the gesture, so she wriggled her way out from behind the bar and went to him. "Another?"

The eyes that looked up at hers were already showing the effects of the alcohol. "I don't think I'd better... much as I'd like to." Flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. "Unless you're going to toss me out if I don't."

She laughed at that, a good laugh. "No, lad--- you've paid your cover, I reckon. Though if you want to switch to something milder---"

He shrugged. "All right." She looked at him, puzzled by the passivity. But then, he'd always been an odd duck... and she knew the stories, about strega-raised men. Different about women. And he looked like he'd a lot on his soul tonight.

"Right, then." She patted him on the shoulder--- and he twitched. Odd little flinch, as if he weren't used to being touched. Well, he probably wasn't.

She went behind the bar, and on impulse mixed him the extra-strength hot chocolate that Albus Dumbledore had introduced her to, at the party when he'd been made Headmaster, with the chocolate liqueur along with the milk and syrup.

A part of her wondered why she was fussing over him; well, it wasn't as if she had anything else to do tonight. And he looked more in need of it. Something you couldn't ignore, on this night of all nights.

She went back to his table with the hot chocolate; he was lying with his head buried in his arms like a man who's had one too many. "Severus?" Maybe the extra-strength wasn't a good idea.

He looked up again, bleary-eyed but still this side of drunk. "Mmm?"

"Here you go, lad---" she set the drink down on the table. He reached again for his money pouch.

Ah, blast, Ros, it's Christmas. "No charge, laddie--- I said you've already pair your cover."

He stared at her for a moment, blankly, then mechanically let the money pouch slip back into the pocket of his robes. "Th-thank you."

"'Tis the season, isn't it?" She started to move away. "Just don't tell that lot---" she gestured at the bar.

His voice stopped her. "It's... like making potions, isn't it? What you do?" She turned back to him, surprised. "All the ingredients... and you have to know what to give someone... just the right mixture...." He trailed off, staring out at something she couldn't see.

She couldn't help feeling rather flattered. "That's the first time anyone's compared what I do with real magic, lad." And she remembered from his school days that he'd been equally famous for potions-making and intellectual snobbery (she could still hear James Potter and Sirius Black sneering about it).

"Oh, it is..." Vague tone to his voice; almost absentmindedly, he sipped at the hot chocolate. "Potions-making... I can bottle glory, you know... brew fame... even stopper..." soft choke--- "even stopper death."

Rosmerta laughed uneasily. "Well, then, you're ahead of me, lad," she said. "Closest I've ever gotten to stoppering death is stopping drinks for some bloke who's had a few too many to get home."

That got a laugh out of him, to her surprise, and evidently his as well. She shrugged lightly. "Well, at least I like to think I've done some good."

"Good?" It was a harsh laugh, almost derisive. "Just because you make magic doesn't mean it's good magic."

Ros had dealt with too many surly drunks to be offended--- and, on closer examination, she rather thought there was more to that statement than appeared on the surface. "You should hear my parents on the subject," she told him wryly.

"I suppose they wanted something grander than a barkeep for a daughter?"

"You could say that." She shied away from the memory of the last argument before she'd left home. If old Rick, the last owner of the Three Broomsticks, hadn't had a place for her... well, he had, and that was all there was to it. "It may not be much of a profession, but I'm good at it. And sometimes all a body needs is a friendly ear to make their problems seem less."

She'd meant it as a leading question, but he didn't take the invitation. "Most people think you're selling something besides the liquor, you know."

She'd heard that one too. "Well, all they'd have to do is ask me and they'd find out different, wouldn't they?"

"Would they?" Nasty look.

"That they would--- though I'm not sure why it's their business, tell the truth." She wasn't sure why she bothered arguing with him; it wasn't like her. But maybe it was just the night and the dark sort of sadness that was building in her. "Even a whore can do some good, I reckon, if she wants to." She looked him in the eye. "Hard to find a person, or even a profession, that doesn't have some chance to do something worthwhile."

She'd expected him to argue--- but instead, his eyes fastened onto hers. "Any person?" he echoed.

"Well, I suppose," she said without thinking. "It all depends on if they want to do good, I reckon--- there's nobody so bad they couldn't find a away to make the world a little better if they worked at it."

He stared at her bleakly. "Anyone? No matter what they've done? No matter---" a soft gulp--- "no matter who they hurt, or how many?"

Somewhere in the back of her mind, an alarm bell went off, the professional sense of someone about to tell her more than she wanted to know. "What's past is past, lad," she said gently. "And if a person wanted to do good, I reckon there's plenty of it to do, especially nowadays."

She wasn't sure if he heard the last; his eyes were glazed over. "I didn't... I didn't think I was hurting anyone."

A nasty suspicion began to form in her mind. "Well, that's something," she said quietly.

"Something." A harsh laugh. "I'm not any better than the rest of them. And nothing's going to change that." He looked shrewdly up at her. "There's some stains that never come off, you know. Marks on your soul."

Rosmerta had heard all kinds of things in her years at the Three Broomsticks, but she had a feeling this was one of the most important conversations she'd ever had. Nothing to go on but instinct, but she knew there was at least one life in the balance here. "Stopper death," indeed.... "Be that as it may," she said gently, "I don't think there's anyone so stained they haven't got some good they can do."

He gave her an inscrutable look. "Would you say that---" his voice was strangely sober--- "if you had a Dark Wizard in here? Someone with blood and worse on his hands--- someone who---" the calm broke along with his voice--- "someone who'd told himself he was doing the right thing, that he wasn't a monster because he never---" harsh laugh--- "'hurt anyone'--- just--- just made them hate themselves?" He looked up at her with a kind of wretched challenge. "Would you say that to a Death Eater?"

And she knew. Like that, she knew.

She leaned her hands on the table and looked him in the eye. "If a Death Eater came in here," she said, "feeling as bad about his crimes as you do, I'd say there was a lot of good left in him--- and a lot of good that he could still do," she said seriously.

For a long moment, he held her eyes, the bleak bleary look coming back into his eyes--- no, that wasn't the drink, she corrected herself. Those were tears in the hollow dark eyes.

He leaned back in the booth, not looking at her, the dark eyes unfocused. Then, abruptly, he looked back up at her. "Thank you, R-Rosmerta." Stammer, as if he weren't used to calling people by name. "You're the first person to listen to me in a long time."

"I don't know I did that much listening---"

"You did enough." Abruptly, he got to his feet, setting down the mug with a thump, like he suddenly had a purpose. Thin, sardonic smile on his lips, but it didn't look nasty. "You said it yourself--- there's good to be done in all kinds of ways, isn't there?"

And wit that, Severus Snape swept off toward the door, moving a little unsteadily, but with certainty. At the door, he looked back at her. "Happy Christmas, Rosmerta." A moment's pause to collect his cloak and muffler, then he was gone.

She stared after him, feeling a strange sort of warmth spread over her. "Good in everyone," she whispered.

She'd found it in some unexpected places tonight.

But then, what could you expect on this night of all nights--- Christmas Eve?

She headed back to the bar, where one of the wizards was holding out his mug. "Fill 'er up, Ros?"

"Sure," she said absently, taking the mug and holding it under the tap, then handing it back to him. He held out a few Sickles.

She looked down at the silver, then at the door where Severus Snape had just left. A little good here and there... especially on this night of all nights.

And folding the man's hand around his money. "No charge, mate. Not tonight."

And for the rest of that night, no one paid for a drink.

On that night of all nights, it seemed the right thing to do.