There came a time in every Hogwarts student’s experience when they were required to serve the community in some capacity.  It had been implemented in the sixties under a much more progressive Ministry than what had been seen in subsequent eras.  This servitude usually occurred between the student’s sixth and seventh year, but what with the minor inconvenience of the war and all, Harry was now looking at his first summer free of the Dark Lord in just such service.  He flipped the now dead Snitch, his surviving portion of the legacy of Albus Dumbledore, in the air and caught it deftly just before it smashed into his face.  He frowned as he said, “It just doesn’t seem... fair, is all I’m saying.”

Ron leaned against the trunk of the scruffy elm that the trio plus Ginny now claimed as their own, his arms folded over his chest, his knee lifted in an attitude of laconic ease.  It was one of the more heroic poses that he had affected since the inception of his relationship with Hermione Granger some five weeks before.  “Naw, it’s not at that, but it’s only a few weeks and then you’re off to Auror’s Academy.”

Harry flicked the snitch up in the air one more time, watching it fall before catching it deftly between his fingers.  “It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to do it under him.”  Harry indicated the blackly gliding figure that was even now making its way to them.  As the figure drew nearer, his beaky nose preceding his scowling visage by miles, Harry said, “You’d think he’d forgive me for being born. Not to mention that I was the one to take him to Pomfrey so he didn’t die.”

“Riiiight, mate,” Ron answered.  “That one’s mental.”

“I suppose,” Harry frowned. “But he did... you know... love... my mum and all.  I mean, he did everything for her.”

“And not for you, remember that.” After a moment in which Harry watched the flapping, black figure grow even closer, Ron’s voice cut through the uncomfortable silence that had settled between them.  “It’s just a bit... stalkerish, if you follow what I’m saying.”

“A bit, I suppose,” Harry replied as he flicked the snitch up again, then caught it.  “I guess if she were alive it might seem wrong.  I mean if he was in love with your mum... and did all those things for her... there might be some sort of issue.”

“Hey!” Ron exclaimed in an affronted tone, even as he turned a little green at the thought. “My mum’s not so bad!  I mean, she was a good enough looking bird when she was younger.  It could have happened.”  At that last bit, Ron gave a little defiant shiver.

Harry snorted, “Not what I’m saying at all, mate.  And can you imagine? Him and your mum?  Someone would end up dead.”

Ron pushed his lips forward in a pout. “It’s just not right, you saying things like that.”

“Just think, instead of Weasley red, you could be greasy git black,” Harry teased.  “You have to admit, Ronald Snape does have a bit of a ring to it.”

“Shut it, Harry,”  Ron said, trying to maintain his scowling visage even as a snort of laughter escaped him.  “That’s just... No.”

Snape chose that moment to call out to them, “Potter, Weasley, you are late.  I suggest you both return to the Great Hall, or suffer the consequences.”

Harry, flicked the Snitch up one more time, but before he could catch it, Snape directed it to his open palm with a swish of his wand and a look of disgust.  “Now, gentlemen.  Even those with great fame must fulfil their ministerial obligations.”

“Hey!”  Harry said, his hand out.  “My snitch.”

“Will be returned to you after the meeting.  Until then, it is mine.” With that parting shot, Snape turned around in a perfectly executed pirouette, his robes flying about him in a graceful arc. 

“Git,” Ron said as he pushed away from the tree, “The man does have a way with his robes though, don’t you think?”

Harry rolled his eyes at the statement, but rose quickly enough.  He just wanted to get this part of his life over so he could get on with the rest of it.

&*&*&

Harry knew he was going to be on Snape’s team and he knew that the work would be difficult because of it.  He did not know, however, that he would be on the same team as Draco Malfoy.  Surely Little Lord Pain-in-the-Arse’s father could have bought him out of it. Lucius Malfoy had bought the family out of a lengthy stay in Club Azkaban, after all. If so, then Harry would be spared the dubious companionship of both the Slytherin git and the Slytherin git-in-training.  He also didn’t realise that he would be on the team that was outfitting a clearing in the Forbidden Forest for a German contingent of Hags that had been displaced by the war. 

Hags.  Awful-looking, baggy-skinned, old hags.

He couldn’t be lucky, like Ginny and Hermione had been, and somehow be sent to the Ministry to clear out the statues erected by Voldemort.  Yeah, the work was hard, but they were able to stay in the Leaky Cauldron and see the sights of both magical and non-magical London.  But the worst blow had been Ron’s assignment.  His best mate had been given the onerous duty of escorting the small displaced Veela community to their new nests on the Riviera.  Ron waxed poetic about the tone of their skin, the firmness of their bosoms, (Harry still didn’t know how he knew about that) and the nude Muggle beaches he went to on his many off days.

No, Harry’s luck held, and he was stuck with the two Slytherins, building gingerbread houses with burning hot caramel, sticky, insect drawing fondant, and all manner of cloying sweets.  He was sick of the smell of gingery spices, and hated the way his skin felt at the end of the day.   There had to be a name for the greasy-sticky feel of it.   Steasy?  Gricky?  Something like that.  It was an entirely horrible way to feel, and no amount of soap or cologne could quite get the scent of burnt sugar and other sickly sweet odours out of his pores. 

He never, ever wanted another sweet in his life.  Not even chocolate.

Snape was in the process of placing a pane of clear, heat-hardened sugar that had been artfully tinted to show a St. George and his dragon.  It was to serve as a window in the hole Harry had cut for it in the half-metre thick gingerbread.  Harry held the sugar pane in place with a lazily cast spell but lost his concentration when Draco yelped.  Fortunately, Snape had a similar spell on the clear sugar, and so the pane did not crash to the now candy cobbled forest floor to shatter.  Making a new one would set them back a few days at least.  Harry pushed away from the building as Draco’s vocalisation was followed by a definite thud, a painful exhalation, and then ominous silence.  Draco really was related to Tonks.  The boy might be fairly graceful on a broom, but Harry had discovered that Malfoy could injure himself just by standing still in an empty room.  No wonder his mum had asked Snape to help him; the boy was a menace.  Harry wandered to the end of the wall thinking that the situation would have been comical if the blond git’s accidents didn’t put them behind each time.   In a strange way, however, it had given Snape and Harry something over which to bond. Once Draco started exhibiting his clumsiness, both men had, if not a common enemy, at least a common problem.

Snape cursed softly and said, “Hold the pane in place whilst I check on him. Again.”

“No, I’ll do it,”  Harry said, poking his head around the side of the aromatic biscuit building.  “You got to leave with him last time.”

Last time had taken half a day and a trip to St. Mungo’s to straighten Draco’s twisted spine.  If the git hadn’t been screaming so much and in such agony, Harry might have found it funny.  He chuckled despite himself.  It had been a little funny the way Malfoy had been twisted about, his head dangling between his legs, his face gone so red it was almost purple.  Snape had been the one to take him to get help, whilst Harry was left to deal with the more than a little frightening Hag who was overseeing their project.  Apparently they were building a gingerbread castle for a type of Hag called a Queen.  The three men had yet to meet the recipient of the house, and Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to in the first place.  If Hags were ugly, their queens must be hideous.

He rounded the corner, only to see that Malfoy hadn’t injured himself. Yet.  He was, however, dangling from the gingerbread plank roof by his hands, which were coated in the greasy sugar crème that they had been using for mortar and glue.  A sheet of fondant covered the git’s face, the pliable, nearly plastic confection effectively cutting off his access to air from either his mouth or his nose.  Harry stifled a laugh as he noticed that Malfoy was trying to chew a hole through the fondant, working frantically on it as each breath moulded the fondant tighter to his face. “Wait, Malfoy, I’ll get you down,” Harry called to him.

To that statement, Malfoy shouted a muffled, “Memm fmme mmmowm moaow!”

“Not if you’re going to be a git about it,” Harry said in a voice shaking with mirth. “What’s that?  I think I hear Snape calling.”  He had already replaced the ladder, and shook it to make it sound as if he were leaving Malfoy to eat his way out of the predicament, when a scowling Snape rounded the corner.  Snape gave a small smirk at the scene and Harry said with amusement,  “Put your foot on the rung. It’s right in front of you.”

Malfoy kicked his feet about, raining bits of sugar, fondant shingles, and oversized candy on both Harry and Severus, until he finally made contact with the aluminium step.  Once both feet were firmly planted, he gripped the top rung with one hand whilst frantically clawing at the fondant with his other. Disaster was imminent as Malfoy, forgetting that his hands were still well-greased from the butter crème icing, slipped.  Harry saw it all as if it were in slow motion.  One of Malfoy’s hands went to his face to remove the obstructing sugar sheet as his other hand clutched frantically for purchase.  Things might have been all right for the git if he hadn’t tried to stamp his foot in frustration at the same time.  His other foot slipped between the rungs of the ladder, and suddenly he hung upside down by an expensively booted ankle.  The fondant fell with a loud plop! to the ground.

 “At least you can see now,” Harry remarked helpfully.

As the git twisted around to try to gain some sort of purchase so he could right himself, his boot gave way, the leather tearing neatly from the sole.  Italian craftsmanship just wasn’t the same anymore apparently, and Draco slid down the ladder, making contact with each rung, one painfully struck arse cheek at a time.  As he neared the ground, Harry cast a Levicorpus to save him a little pain, but only just a little. 

He had not counted on Snape casting the same spell at exactly the same time.  Malfoy’s scream soared at least two octaves above high C as he was forced into a topsy-turvy version of the splits, each spell jerking him as if he were a Christmas goose’s wishbone.  Harry could almost feel the agony in his own groin as he ended the spell. Unfortunately, Snape did the same.

The two men watched in horror as Malfoy once again plummeted to earth, this time from a greater height.  A silver bit of laughter wafted over the scene, and Draco’s progress was arrested once more as he seemed to drift to the ground, landing with a soft plop!  Malfoy punctuated the save with a little scream-pitched sigh.  Both Harry and Snape turned to see a woman so lovely she seemed unreal, standing in the clearing, a shaft of light gilding her perfect features.  Her hair was not merely blonde, but molten gold.  Her skin not only tanned, but lovingly kissed by the sun.  Her cheeks looked as if roses had brushed some of their hectic colour lightly on them.  She was flanked on each side by a hag, their looks a foil to her beauty.

Harry might have laughed at the sight of Severus Snape’s star struck, open-mawed expression if his own jaw wasn’t hanging just as laxly, and he stricken just as dumb.  Even Malfoy, who was attempting to rise, seemed awestruck by her beauty (even if he was surreptitiously clutching at his groin and trying not to appear as if he were rubbing the area most affected by the twin Levicorpi he had just experienced.)  The woman lifted her hand in a liquidly graceful gesture.  She smiled sweetly, (an expression that might have had a cartoon character’s heart beating out of his chest and little cherubs flitting about his head) as Snape looked dumbly at the extended appendage. Her German accent was soft as she said, “Hello.  You must be Professor Snape.  I have heard a great deal about your bravery.” 

Snape shook his head as if to clear it and then took her hand, his expression soft and solicitous as he bent over her fingers, bringing his lips to a point just above them.  “I am pleased to meet you, Miss...?”

“I am called Leobgytha, das Leidenschaftliche.  You are building my residence, I believe.” She raised her blue-white eyes to Snape’s, and Harry was astounded to see the older man flush and break into a tight smile as he rose from his gracefully executed bow.

“Indeed, Your Highness.”  Snape’s voice seemed to have put on a husky, dark octave.  “Leobgytha, it means gift of love in old Saxon, does it not? And the rest?  I do hope it is just as descriptive of your charms.”

The Queen tittered but gave no answer as she blushed prettily under Snape’s warm scrutiny. 

“And these two young men are...” she asked as she turned her attention from Snape.  She let her gaze rest on first Harry,  then Draco.  “Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, unless I have been misinformed.”

She held out her hand to both the young men.  Harry mimicked Snape’s courtly bow as Draco scrambled to his feet and did the same.  The smarmy git manfully limped back and smirked at Harry, as if to say there would be no contest for the lady’s heart between himself and the Gryffindor.  Harry elbowed him and Malfoy elbowed back, catching Harry in the abdomen, which Harry then reciprocated to Malfoy.  They both stopped as Snape’s thunderous gaze settled on them both. He turned his complete attention back to the lovely Queen as he snapped, “Gentlemen, back to work.”

The Queen inclined her head as he proferred his arm to her, “You Highness, could I interest you in a tour of your new dwelling?”

“But of course,” she said as she laid her hand lightly on his arm.  “And please, let us dispense with formalities.  Call me Gytha, Mr. Snape.”

Harry thought he might sick up as the Professor leaned toward the Queen with a look of avarice and lust. His hand covered hers as he said, “And I am Severus, my dear.”

The Queen’s liquid laughter spilled from her mouth as she drew closer to him.  She ran an acquisitive finger over his lips, down his jaw and onto his chest.  Both she and Snape looked at each other intently, as if they were going to do something embarrassing like kiss, (bleurgh!) or break into song (bleurgher!).  She answered his presumption with her petal pink lips poised close to his thin, pale ones. “My dear... I do like how those words sound coming from you.  Remember, my Severus, that possession is nine-tenths of the law.” 

She looked down at their entwined hands even as she pulled closer to him.  It seemed as if she wanted to crawl into his skin, or for him to do the same to her, in a filthy, hormonal kind of way usually reserved for teenagers.  Harry shook his head, as if to clear it of a spell.  His stomach seemed to roll over in the same queasy manner it had before.

The two flanking hags cast their hoary gazes at the boys, their expressions at once triumphant and fearsome.  Harry took an involuntary step back as Draco pulled on his sleeve, a mirroring expression of unease on his face.  “Come on, Potter.  I know I don’t want to see this.  I’ll help you with the finials for the gazebo.  The sooner we get this project done, the sooner we can leave.”

It was the first thing Malfoy had ever said that Harry agreed with.  With one last look at the couple as they entered the nearly finished interior, Harry felt a stab of anger.  If the git was so devoted to Harry’s dead mum, what was he doing swanning about with the very live Queen?