Lucius was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. He was as dead as a doornail, as Muggles say. Now, in wizarding houses, it must be added, a doornail need not be dead at all; it may very well come alive, as may the door, the table, the chairs and any other piece of furniture upon which a well-executed Locomotor Charm has been cast.

But not old Lucius, no. He had kicked the bucket, so to speak, and there was nothing to be done about it. And it may be said that his house elves, at least, breathed all the easier for it. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Lucius was as dead as a (Muggle) doornail.

Did Severus Snape know he was dead? Of course he did. These two worthy gentlemen had been partners in crime, and the expression may well be taken literally by the gentle reader. And the day Lucius Malfoy was conveyed to his final resting place, it was Snape who followed the coffin, Snape who watched it lowered into the earth, Snape who Flooed Draco and bullied him into paying for the costly memorial service.

It must be emphasized that Lucius was dead, or his following appearance in the story may be misinterpreted as a simple visit between old and perhaps not-so-fond acquaintances.

Snape went back to his laboratory after the funeral and brewed another of his many potions, without wasting further thoughts or sentiments on Lucius. Who was, after all, dead as a doornail.

Oh, but he was a hard-hearted git, Severus Snape! A sneering, scowling, stalking old sinner! No smile upon his features unless he came upon the happy opportunity to remove points from Gryffindor’s ever-dwindling supply; no kind word on his lips unless drawn from him by a certain Dark sorcerer, who had required his followers to ply him with sycophantic niceties. All the better for Snape that the sorcerer had long died, then, for niceties did not pass easily under Snape’s overlarge nose. His brow was knit in a perpetual frown, his lank black hair framed a face hardened by the years, and his billowing black robes served as an exclamation mark for every biting comment and subsequent dramatic exit he made.

Nobody ever stopped in Diagon Alley and said, “How are you, Professor Snape? How’s things back at the school?” (unless they were guileless Hufflepuffs, but a Stinging Hex or two usually took care of those unfortunates). No first-year ever asked him for help in finding the Great Hall, no fellow teacher ever inquired as to his plans for the summer holidays, no old friend visited him in his dark dungeons, now that Lucius was dead.

But what did Snape care? It was what he liked, and if he wanted any dunderheads to disturb him in his well-earned peace, he would let them know, thank you very much. In the meantime, they had better stay away.

Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Snape was busy brewing in his dungeon lab. It was a cold day outside Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the biting frost crept into its ancient walls, the icy wind finding every crack and crevice through which to blow and make the poor students draw their scarfs more tightly around their necks.

For all Snape cared, they could have tightened those scarfs by another ten inches or so, and saved him the trouble of preparing lessons, the pestilential little brats.

The door of Snape’s main lab was open so that he could keep an eye on Potter, the young apprentice teacher who assisted him with his brewing. Snape had a very small fire burning in his fireplace, just enough so that he could see the faded letters in his ancient potions tomes. It was his strong opinion that too much light and warmth disturbed the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, or something along those lines. Or perhaps he just liked to see Potter shiver with cold.

Suddenly the door banged open, and Snape let out a soft but blasphemous swear, which I shall not repeat to spare the ears of my more delicate readers. “D--- it, Draco! What happened to knocking before you enter?”

“Merry Yule feast, Godfather!” came the voice of the young man who had just sauntered into the dungeon. “Never expected to find you here, of all places.”

“If you’re trying to be funny, it isn’t working,” said Snape and turned back to his cauldron. “And do spare me the Christmas humbug, will you.”

Now, Snape’s godson was a handsome young man, who could make the young witches’ heads turn even now that he no longer wore the expensive robes of his boyhood days. At this moment, his face was aglow with having ridden a broomstick through the icy storm outside.

“Christmas?” Draco said outraged. “I’d never use such a common Muggle term, Godfather. You’ll notice that I said ‘Yule feast’.”

“It’s still humbug, whether you call it merry Christmas, merry Yule feast, or merry non-denominational winter holiday!” grumbled Snape. “Why would you be so merry, I wonder, after estranging your late father and losing the family fortune?”

“And why would you be so miserable, I wonder? Your potion brewing earns you more than enough money, not to mention your senior teacher’s salary.”

“As if you didn’t know that the stingy governors haven’t given me a raise in years! And what can I be but miserable, surrounded as I am by bratty children, incompetent colleagues” – this was delivered with a withering look in Potter’s direction – “and other idiots.”

This was directed at Draco, who, it must be said, didn’t even flinch at the insult. “Calm down, Uncle Severus. All I wanted was to invite you to Christmas dinner at our flat.”

“Our flat! Why you insisted on marrying that girl…”

“Astoria may not have a lot of money, but she’s as pureblooded as they come. And she doesn’t call me ‘bunbuns’ like Pansy used to.”

“Be that as it may… I told you, I won’t stand for the Christmas nonsense.”

“Yule feast!”

“Yule feast then!” shouted Snape, who was quickly losing what little patience had been in his possession. “I don’t care! If it were up to me, any dunderhead who goes around yapping about ‘merry Christmas’ should be boiled in his own cauldron and buried with the Elder wand through his heart!”

“Like He-Who-Must-N-”

“Exactly like Him,” Snape said with a dangerous glint in his dark eyes. “Now if I may, I shall return to my work without further disturbances.”

“Have it your way, Uncle Severus. I for my part will always remember the Yule feast as the one time of the year when my father had time for me… the only time when he left his Dark robes at the door and sat under the Christmas tree with his little son, hexing the house elves for my innocent amusement. This is a feeling I shall never forget, Uncle. And therefore I shall celebrate the Yule feast, every year without fail, in the hope that one day all wizardkind – yes, even you, Uncle! – may join me!”

Potter stuck his cold-reddened nose through the door. “Hear, hear, Malfoy! For once in your life you’re talking sense!”

“Shut up, Potter,” was the less-than-kindly reply, but it was drowned out but Snape’s sharp remark: “I should assume, Potter, that you have better things to do than to eavesdrop and add your two Knuts to conversations that are none of your concern… or is potion making so undemanding to you that you wish to look for alternative means of employment?”

At this, Potter’s nose was hastily withdrawn, and the vigorous cutting of ingredients resumed.

“So,” said Draco. “Are you coming or not? Astoria wants to know how many place sets to order.”

“Not,” replied Snape curtly. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Well, if you change your mind you know where to find me.”

“Yes,” muttered Snape, watching balefully as the form of his nephew withdrew to the door. “In a dingy London flat half as big as your father’s drawing room, idiot boy.”

He returned to his brewing, commenting then and again on the idiocy of his godson who had forsaken the Malfoy fortune and name for a stupid little witch. No one heard these comments, which may be considered fortunate, seeing as they cast aspersions of the unkindest nature on the general state of mankind.

It was not long, alas, that Snape’s work was to be interrupted yet again. Potter had opened the door to let in two people – a witch and a wizard with whom Snape was familiar, if not voluntarily so. The slightly rotund gentleman with the red cheeks was known to his associates as Neville Longbottom, while the young lady answered to the name of Miss Lovegood. They had old-fashioned ledgers in their hands and expressions on their faces which did not bode well for Snape’s general peace of mind.

“Is there something I can do for you, Longbottom… Miss Lovegood?” he asked in the coldest of voices, which made the rotund gentleman tremble.

“We’ve come on behalf the Werewolf Protection Association,” answered the sweet young lady, undaunted by the scowl on her former teacher’s face. “You know, of course, the stigma and shame the poor victims cannot escape in their daily lives. It has come to our attention that you have developed an advanced version of the Wolfsbane Potion… one that stops the transformation altogether and allows the victim to sleep through the full moon in their human form.”

“Yes,” said Snape, his hard face unmoved.

Finally, the young gentleman had gathered enough of his spirit about him to speak up. “W-we were wondering, sir, in the – the spirit of the season, if you might be willing to… release the recipe to the public? So – so everyone could benefit from it.”

Snape turned his cold eyes upon the young man. “And why would I do so, Mr. Longbottom?”

“Many hundreds suffer every month from the cruel curse cast upon them,” Miss Lovegood replied in his stead. “Many of them children, sir.”

“Well, is there no longer a closed ward in St.Mungo’s?”

“Yes…”

“And is it no longer the custom to lock a werewolf into a cage during his transformation? Are they not kept away from normal people for everyone’s safety?”

“I’m sorry to say they still are.”

“Well, what a relief,” said Snape. “Then I should say you’re not in need of my advanced potion.”

“But sir-!” Neville Longbottom’s voice rose to a desperate pitch. “Many would rather die than be locked up in a cage!”

“Then they’d better do so,” said Snape, “and make sure they can’t bite anyone else and pass on the disease! I’ve work to do, in case you haven’t noticed. Goodbye!”

The two left, not without wishing the poor apprentice in his antechamber a merry Christmas. He returned the greeting cordially, seeing them to the door and promising to donate what little money he could afford to their honest cause.

Snape grimaced. “It figures, Potter, that you would throw away the salary I pay you out of my own pocket to those mongrel-loving frauds! I suppose you’ll want the whole day off tomorrow?”

“If it’s convenient, Professor.”

“It is not convenient, Potter, even though your absence does wonders for my temper. And I suppose you’ll expect a Christmas bonus on top of it?”

“All apprentice teachers get one…”

“Well, all apprentice teachers had better do the work they’re paid for, then! How like your father you are, Potter, a whining and lazy layabout! But I fear I shall not hear the end of it if I don’t give you the day off. You’ll make up for it the next day, you hear me!”

Potter assured him that he would, and Snape stalked out of the laboratory, making his way deeper into the dungeons. If the gentle reader be so inclined, imagine a maze of dank corridors never graced by sunlight or warmth, and accordingly of as gloomy and dismal a nature as the man who was currently proceeding further into its depths.

This was where Snape lived, and it suited him well. If it struck his fancy, he would suddenly appear in some dark doorway or another, frightening a poor first-year who had lost his way. None of them ever stumbled upon the corridor that led to his chambers, for Snape had made sure to cast many Obstacling Charms to keep away unwanted human company. As we shall see, these charms did not fulfill their purpose quite as well if the company in question was not of the flesh-and-blood persuasion.

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the portrait that guarded the Potion Master’s entrance door. Indeed, a Muggle would have startled at its occupant’s inclination to scowl and stroke his long black beard, but as wizards are well used to moving paintings, this did not concern Snape in the slightest. He spared old Salazar but a glance as he indicated for the door to be opened.

Only it was not old Salazar who stared back at him. It was Lucius. Lucius, who was not, as the reader may be surprised to hear, dead as a doornail, but who appeared as he had in his lifetime, a haughty and proud countenance that stared down upon whatever unworthy creature dared to cross his path. There was a strange and ghostly glow about him, superimposed as he was on Salazar Slytherin’s haggard form, and he seemed to be part of the picture and yet beyond it…. beyond, indeed, the realm of human life altogether.

Snape did pause at this frightful apparition, but it did not stop him from ordering the door opened, or from entering his chambers when it was. He turned, half-expecting to see Lucius’ blond ponytail and ridiculous bow sticking out into the hall, but there was nothing on the back of the door but his very own coat hook.

“Foolishness,” Snape muttered, and made his way into his chambers. They were a gloomy affair, these chambers Snape had occupied for so many years, built many centuries ago by a wizard with a similarly misanthropic nature as the hero of our tale. There was a large central room that held nothing but a shabby old chaise longue, a worn carpet, book shelves and two arm chairs facing one another in front of the fireplace. A bedchamber adjoined it, but the current scene finds Snape in what he deemed his living room, taking a seat in one of the armchairs and warming his long, potion-stained fingers over the flames.

Flames which, to Snape’s astonishment, seemed to outline the shape of Lucius’ face in the glowing coals.

“Nonsense!” he muttered, but spared the door a furtive glance. It was still locked as it should be.

Getting up, Snape took several turns about the room and made sure his warding charms were in place. Satisfying himself of this state of affairs, he returned to his armchair and picked up a potions journal.

“Humbug and nonsense.”

It may evoke some sympathy even for this cold, harsh man to learn of his fright when he first became aware of the sound outside his chamber door. It was a clanking, dragging sound that seemed to come from deep within the castle, from some place even he, master of the dungeons, had never visited.

The sound approached, moving along the maze of corridors, coming closer and closer. Time seemed to stand still as Snape listened to what seemed to be chains dragging across rough stone floor. Ghosts there were enough in Hogwarts castle, but none had ever ventured into his corner of the dungeons! And he felt cold despite the warm fire directly in front of him.

The cold increased then, as suddenly as if the wind outside had sent at icy gush into the chamber. The noise had reached Snape’s door, and, yes, it was inside the door now, coming closer even as the terrified man stared at the apparition in front of him.

Lucius. Alive and yet so obviously not, illuminating the gloomy chamber with an unearthly light that emanated from an invisible core within him. He was dressed in stately robes, and his hair looked nearly as immaculate as it had in his living days, somewhat mussed on top by the folded kerchief bound about his head and chin.

The chain he wore was wrapped around his middle and linked to his cane, which he had carried with him everywhere in his time on Earth, and whose snake-fanged head had been pointed at many an innocent victim. Purses heavy with Galleons, Dark devices too horrible to describe, treasures taken from hapless victims and a robe and Death Eater mask added to the weight that slowed the apparition in its progress.

“Lucius,” Snape said. “Unannounced as ever.”

“Snape,” the ghost spoke in Lucius’ unmistakable haughty tones. He had untied the kerchief about his head, and was currently trying to flatten his hair. “I would of course not presume to interrupt your busy social schedule.”

“What’s with the flashy entrance, Lucius?” Snape asked. “What do you want?”

“Straight to the point as usual,” Lucius said, having arranged his hair in a satisfying manner and now turning his full attention upon Snape. “It’s those crude half-blood manners that will always keep you from the higher echelons of wizarding society.”

“The higher echelons have done well without me, and I without them,” Snape said. “I repeat, what do you want?”

Dragging his chain along, Lucius sat down in the armchair facing Snape’s and crossed his legs. “I know what you’re thinking, Severus. You don’t believe in me.”

“Well, I do believe in ghosts,” Snape said, truthfully enough for a man who had spent more than half his life in a haunted castle. “I simply do not believe that you would return as a ghost, Lucius. You’ve always been too lazy for that kind of thing.”

“What am I, then?”

“You may be a hallucination, brought on by a potion left too long to stew, or by one of Potter’s abominable concoctions.”

The ghost sighed at this and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now, don’t be so obstinate, Severus. You know as well as I do that I’d have better taste than to haunt your mouldy old dungeons, had I been given any choice in the matter.”

“You have not?”

“Not exactly,” Lucius replied ruefully. “This chain, here – it’s a symbol of sorts, see, of my ‘wordly vices’.” He formed quotation marks with his fingers as he said it.

“In that case it should be a lot longer.”

“I grow weary of that joke, Severus,” the apparition replied sourly. “The Bloody Baron seems to find it exceedingly amusing. In any case, I have been sent here to warn you.”

“Warn me? Of what?”

“Of your own end, Severus Snape,” Lucius replied in a darker tone. “Your own vices, your own chain that you have been laboring on all these years! It will be heavy to carry – very heavy indeed! I have neglected my business in my time on Earth-”

“Not exactly,” Snape interrupted dryly. “At last count, the Malfoy fortune amounts to-”

“Fortune!” cried the ghost, shaking his cane and making the chain rattle. “My true fortune was in my heart, Severus, for me to spend and give away freely! My business was wizardkind – and, yes, Muggles too – the poor in Knockturn Alley – the outcasts – the downtrodden – all my business!”

Snape narrowed his eyes. “Who told you to say that?”

Lucius lowered the cane. “Why do you ask? It is my deepest sorrow, the curse I carry-”

“Lucius,” Snape cut across him. “I may have grown older, but I’m not yet senile.”

“Never mind who told me,” Lucius said, tossing his hair back. “I’m only the messenger. Know, Severus, that you shall be haunted by three spirits tonight, three chances to redeem yourself. Expect the first one when the clock strikes one.”

“Lucius, if this is one of his schemes-”

“No more!” cried the ghost, rising from his seat by the fire. “Ask no more of me! I am but a shadow, doomed to obey. Expect the ghosts, Severus, and may you shun the forlorn path I tread! Look to see me no more.”

He drifted, unheeded by Snape’s protests, towards the door through which he had come. Snape followed him and watched as the apparition melted away through the wood, its chain dragging behind him. He opened the door to the dark corridor without, and drew back  in fright.

The darkness was filled with ghosts, drifting back and forth, moaning and groaning in the most frightful manner. One of them resembled a toadlike woman in a pinkish dress, who dragged a long chain of framed ministerial decrees behind her. Some carried cauldrons and bottles, others were chained to huge tomes, and one man was bowed down deeply under the burden of a hundred heavy broomsticks.

Snape banged the door shut, his heart racing despite himself. He tried to sneer at the foolishness of the scene he had just seen before his very eyes, but found that he could not. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the conversation with Lucius, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed and fell asleep upon the instant.