Gift for Gelsey

[gelsey]

Gift for: gelsey

From: featherxquill

Title: Gift Horse
Pairing: Severus/Minerva
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: Severus and Minerva wake on Christmas morning.
Notes: Merry Christmas, Mod, from your Not-So-Secret Santa!



Minerva McGonagall’s lips curve into a smile.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Severus remembers his father saying, back when he was small and he’d opened his present on Christmas morning to find yet another pair of socks. Every year, he’d see some amazing new toy on the telly, and every year he’d beg his parents to get it for him. And every year it was the same: some paltry present for Severus while his father went to the pub and spent half his wage on beer.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. What did that even mean? It wasn’t until much later that Severus understood that it meant be grateful for what you’re given, don’t look too closely at a present and how much it’s worth.

He looks at Minerva now, stretched out in his bed, naked beneath the duvet, long black hair spread out over the pillow. She is awake, but her eyes are closed. She knows, in that way of hers, that he is watching her.

“Happy Christmas, Severus,” she murmurs.

And it’s bollocks, all that noise about not searching for the worth in a gift. Because all Severus saw when he looked at his socks was how unimportant he was to his parents, but when he looks at Minerva’s smile, when her eyes open and her arms slide up around his neck, he sees all her love and understanding quietly declared, and he appreciates her gift all the more for its value.