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Isabel loved buttons. Snape supposed it was, then, not altogether bad that he hadn’t abandoned his neatly starched shirts for turtlenecks and jumpers and the like. Because having all those buttons meant that she liked him better than Sands. The gentleman in question was currently sitting on the floor, slouched against the front of a chair with an expression of bored resignation, his legs out in front of him and his hair full of little grasping fingers.
The twins were just of an age to want everything in their little lives to be be-frilled and be-ribboned, and long hair held a singular attraction for girls of nine. And so Sands was sitting quietly, submitting to Rosalinda and Melisenda’s ministrations. Snape found the entire situation endlessly amusing, in no small part because he had endured that particular torture at the hands of a girl when he was nine and longhaired himself. He had discovered that he appreciated the humour of the scenario much more when he wasn’t on the receiving end of it—and doubly so because Sands was.
There was a whoop and a shriek from the kitchen, and Nataniel and Esteban came thundering into the living room, still chasing the saucer that he’d Transfigured for them earlier; it scuttled just out of their reach on its six spindly legs. Undaunted, they barrelled after it, nearly cracking their empty skulls together when they both dived for it as it darted under the sofa.
Little Sheldon Jeffrey was watching the commotion with all the indulgence that a worldly-wise ten-year-old (nearly eleven, mind) could muster, sitting next to Sands and still tinkering with the puzzle-box that Snape had made him for Christmas. He had no doubt that he would solve it shortly and get to the enchanted compartment inside; the boy was, at times, shockingly quick on the uptake, and he lived for knotty little puzzles and problems like that. Snape occasionally caught himself thinking that the brat would make a fine Ravenclaw.
Salvador was babbling his baby nonsense in his mother’s arms as she jiggled him. Mr. Santiago was sitting next to her, watching all the racket with a beatific smile on his face.
God help him if he ever turned into such a sentimental fool.
A sharp tug on his shirt pocket made him look down; Isabel was looking back up at him, her dark eyes hopeful as she pulled on his buttoned pocket. Smirking, he swished his wand, and watched as her eyes lit up as something began to move inside. She fiddled fruitlessly at the button, too small and finicky for her chubby little fingers, before giving a happy laugh when she finally sprang it open and out popped a red and white peppermint beetle that trundled up her arm and into her waiting, giggling mouth.
“I need another ribbon!” Rosalinda said, holding her hand out over Sands’s head to her sister.
“What colour?” Melisenda asked, holding a long lock of hair between her fingers as she dug through the tangled pile of ribbons that Snape had obligingly conjured for her.
“Pink,” Snape suggested over Isabel’s clapping for the streams of sparkling smoke that he was spiralling in the air from the tip of his wand.
“Oh, yes, by all means, pink,” said Sands, waving his middle finger in Snape’s direction.
“Okay!” said Melisenda amiably, and Sands was duly adorned with a sloppy pink bow.
A tinkling crash told him that the boys had caught his saucer. He left Isabel to trying to grab the showers of glitter that floated above her head and Summoned the pieces. The boys clattered after the bits as they arced through the air and landed on the end table, one or two with a leg still attached, twitching feebly, and watched in obvious delight as he repaired the dish and sent it running back under his teacup where it belonged before Vanishing the legs altogether. They clapped when he was done; Snape didn’t make it a habit to do magic often outside of his workroom, even after eighteen years here, but it was Christmas, and after four glasses of mulled wine earlier, even he was feeling expansive.
“Oh!” Snape looked up. True to his prediction, Little Sheldon Jeffrey had solved the puzzle already, damn the boy, and was holding up the book that had leapt out with surprised pleasure. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome,” said Snape indulgently. The boy obviously didn’t take after his namesake in manners. “You look like Medusa, Andrews” Snape remarked to said namesake.
“And you look like shit. And I don’t need eyes to know that.”
Snape didn’t deign to reply, but rather went back to idly twirling sparkling patterns over Isabel’s head while she sucked contentedly on her sweet.
“There!” The twins proudly pronounced their work done. Little Sheldon Jeffrey was doing an admirable job of stifling his laughter.
Sands looked ridiculous. How fortunate for him that he couldn’t see it, Snape supposed. He’d never live it down. Not that Snape was going to let him even in his current condition.
“Good work, ladies,” Sands said amicably enough. “It’s tough, making me more beautiful than I already am.”
“Now all you need is a skirt to complete the look,” said Snape.
“Yep—and once I’ve squeezed my tight little ass into it, you can kiss it.” Sands tugged on one of his numerous plaits. “I think I’ll look pretty hot in a leather mini. Maybe a matching bustier, too,” he remarked, cupping an improbably large illusory bust and making the girls giggle and Little Sheldon Jeffrey finally lose his composure.
“I doubt you’d manage it,” Snape said dryly. He quite deliberately looked the children in the eyes when they turned his way. “Your ribs are far too ticklish for women’s undergarments.”
Snape was always secretly impressed that Sands’s eyes could widen, despite being non-existent. Nataniel and Esteban’s eyes had widened as well, although with a certain fiendish delight to which Snape could well relate, just before they rushed Sands.
Sands went down with a yell; the girls joined in the fray a second behind, and when Sands started blistering the air, Little Sheldon Jeffrey abandoned his wise older brother routine and tossed in his lot with his siblings.
Salvador started to wail, not liking the sudden hullabaloo, and his father took him and managed to calm him, despite his own laughter. Belicia got up and went to the kitchen, giving Snape a mildly reproving look, tempered by her obvious amusement, as she passed. He merely arched an eyebrow at her as Isabel started laughing at the roiling tussle of arms and legs on the floor.
“All right, all right, I give!” Sands bellowed at last, sagging flat as his giggling tormentors let up. He was pulled back into his previous sitting position, the boys jostling for places under his arms, the girls giving him wet kisses on the cheek, and Little Sheldon Jeffrey holding him up.
Sands lolled back against the front of his chair. “I have been duly captured and am now defecting into the hands of the enemy,” he said ponderously, “which means that you’re on your own, buttmunch,” he threw at Snape.
“How dreadful.”
Sands sneered at him and tossed a hand in his direction. “Look at that smug bastard, sitting up there on his high-horse,” he said to the children. A nasty grin curled his lip. “The first one to pull him out of it gets money.”
A great shout went up; Belicia, who had been returning to the room, deftly snatched up Isabel just before Snape got mobbed. He swore as he was assailed by five sets of grasping, childish hands; between their greater numbers and his own loss of coordination (dammit, what was he thinking, drinking that much when this rabble was over here?), he didn’t stand much of a chance.
“Let go of me at once!” he snarled in a tone that once would have sent his students scurrying for cover—but it went ignored by the hordes surrounding him.
Sands was laughing; Snape could hear that daft prick shouting encouragements across the room. Sands was going to pay for this.
Snape put up an admirable fight, he thought, but five against one was hardly fair, particularly when the girls already knew that his ribs were ticklish too, and so it didn’t take long for him to go down with a thud and a tear of rending fabric.
He lay on the floor, assessing his situation; the boys were attached to his legs, Little Sheldon Jeffrey was half-under him, and the girls were lying across his chest; all of them were breathing heavily and still giggling.
“Good work, team—cracking good, as the British would say,” Sands called, and Snape snorted. “Unfortunately, I didn’t see who got him down first—so I guess I’ll have to give all of you money.”
The boys were gone like a shot; the twins lingered for a moment, giving him a dual hug and a kiss on each cheek, before helping Little Sheldon Jeffrey pull him to his feet, and then the three of them ran for Sands’s open wallet.
Snape dusted himself off. His left pocket had been torn in the scuffle; someone had been using it as a handhold, he suspected. Belicia was standing next to the chair, giving him an insolent raised eyebrow. He scowled at her and sat back down, and found Isabel once again deposited in his lap.
“There—money for all,” said Sands. “Now get your sorry butts in there and finish off that goddamn pie—I don’t want it sitting around in my house in this hot weather,” he instructed, and the children moved en masse for the kitchen.
Belicia huffed through her nose and looked exasperatedly at her husband; she didn’t like the children eating so much sugar, Snape knew, but he also knew that it was a cold day in Hell when Santiago said anything against his employer. He did not disappoint in that regard, so the children got their pie.
Snape starting unbuttoning his shirt with “help” from Isabel. The pocket itself wasn’t torn, he found when he took it off; the stitching had just been ripped out. Easily mended. He took out his wand and cinched it up neatly, and was annoyed to find himself suddenly thinking of going down into the kitchen of Grimmauld Place and finding Lupin mending a jumper. He waved the memory away and set his wand on the end table so he could put his shirt back on.
He was buttoning up his shirt as Isabel squirmed in his lap, poking about on the end table, when suddenly, a gunshot crack, the tinkle of broken crockery, and the sting of flying debris on his cheek sent him nearly leaping out of his chair.
He swore loudly, swinging wildly around to grab for his wand—and for a split second, just stared, because there it was, clutched in Isabel’s little hand, the tip faintly smoking; his teacup was gone, nothing but a singe mark left on his saucer.
She stared up at him, frozen and wide-eyed, but he only had time to blink before complete chaos erupted.
“What was that?!” Sands was already on his feet; a gun had materialized in his hand, and he barely even stumbled over the rumpled rug as he flew in the direction of the window behind Snape. “Where are they?! Where the fuck are they?!”
Snape heard someone shriek in surprise, and the children all came boiling out of the kitchen. With one frightened glance at Sands, and then back at Snape, Isabel started to cry, dropping the wand in his lap and cowering under his elbow. The baby, equally startled by the steadily escalating noise, began to howl over the panicky babble as the white-faced children ran to their parents, giving the madman with the gun a wide berth.
“Everybody get down!”
The children dropped to the floor, still crawling wildly towards their parents like worms. Belicia went to her knees, clutching her children to her, her eyes wide and dangerous, a glint of steel between her fingers. Santiago, still holding the baby, seemed to be trying to calm things down, but to no avail.
“Shut up, just everybody shut up, goddammit, so I can hear—”
Snape plucked his wand from between his leg and the cushion and with a deft flick, Silenced Sands. He whirled around, mouth moving pointlessly, when Snape rose to his feet and shouted, “There is no danger; everyone be silent! Now!”
Snape imagined that the rough, grating sound of his voice, so seldom raised above a rasping murmur, did as much to shock the children into silence as did the words that he wrung from his tattered throat. The children went quiet and still; even little Isabel did her best to stifle her strangled sobs. “Sands,” he said firmly, using his name, “Sit. Down.”
Sands glared at him, alert and stiff and making no move from where he stood, pressed up against the wall by the window with his gun aloft, and pointed at his mouth.
“Put the gun away, and I’ll lift the spell,” Snape replied smoothly.
They stared at each other for a moment, in a contest of wills, before Sands tucked the gun back from where it came and crossed his arms, waiting. As promised, Snape broke the charm.
“Now,” said Sands evenly, over Salvador’s snuffles and Isabel’s hiccups, “what was that?”
“An accident. My teacup exploded.”
Sands just looked at him for a moment, before swelling with ire. “You mincing, cock-cooking, shit-eating fuckmook.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Snape coldly. “Now, sit down, you eyeless arse-tart, and stop shouting. You’re not helping matters.”
“Then what just happened?” Sands demanded.
“Sit. Down.”
Sands sat, his body still tense. Snape sat himself, Isabel back in his lap, tucked under one arm. “Now,” he said calmly, “there was a small accident, and there is nothing to worry about. Isabel,” he said seriously, and she looked up; her eyes were red and there were tear tracks on her round little cheeks. “That is why you do not touch my wand.”
She nodded tearfully. “I’m sorry!” she wailed, and buried her head under his arm again.
“Quite all right—just don’t do it again without permission.”
Sands had gone perfectly still. “Excuse me?”
Snape patted Isabel’s quaking back. “You heard me. Isabel was playing with my wand and blew up my teacup.”
“Is that so,” said Sands.
And then Rosalinda laughed, albeit shakily, and Little Sheldon Jeffrey ruffled the tuft of Isabel’s hair that was poking out from under Snape’s arm, and, with the resilience of children, the rest just giggled a little, and the incident was all but forgotten.
It wasn’t until later, when the older children were all back in the kitchen with their third dessert and Salvador was napping to recover from the trauma, that Sands brought it up again. “Only a witch or wizard can use a wand, you know,” he remarked to Mr. Santiago and Belicia. “If I waved it around, or, say, poked a teacup, nothing would happen.”
Belicia looked at him with a furrowed brow. “But—Isabel just—”
“Quite,” said Snape.
“Yeah. How about that?” remarked Sands.
Isabel was quiet, her tears dry, leaning back in the crook of Snape’s arm and playing with his buttons. “Isabel,” he said quietly, and she looked up. “Do you remember the sparks that I made earlier today?” She nodded, and he drew out his wand. “I want you to try.”
Her eyes went fearful, and she shook her head firmly. “Not without permission,” he said. “I’m giving you permission this time.” He took her hand and curled her reluctant fingers around the handle. “Now—remember how I made the sparks?” She nodded, and he leaned down so his mouth was just near her ear. “You liked the gold ones, didn’t you?” he murmured. “Like the star on the tree.” She nodded again, and he moved his hand to her elbow; she didn’t let go of the wand.
“I want you to think about the gold sparks, and think about the gold star. Think hard—that’s all there is to magic. Think hard, and don’t be afraid—and you have to want to make the sparks. Can you do that?” he asked.
She furrowed her brow, but nodded. “Now, think it, want it, and wave the wand, and do it.”
She scowled furiously, her face screwed up in a not unreasonable approximation of him at his worst, and she tightened her fingers on the handle until the knuckles were almost white, and she waved the wand.
And with a little crackling sputter, a spurt of weak golden sparks spat from the tip.
“Well done,” he whispered, just where she could hear it, and then he took back his wand. She looked up at him, uncertain but pleased; the corner of his mouth quirked upwards, and after a moment she smiled in return, hesitantly at first but then with greater surety.
He looked up to find Sands regarding them shrewdly. “No wonder she lives in your pocket,” he said.
Snape sneered at him, and then turned to the stunned Belicia and her blinking husband. “It would seem,” he said, “that your daughter is a witch.”
Isabel started, and then looked up at him. “What? Me?” she asked.
“You,” he affirmed.
“I—I’m like you?”
“Exactly.”
She looked at him, her soft brown eyes wide with wonder, and then she smiled, and he felt himself smiling back.