“It’s a good thing Mum and Dad are off with Charlie this year,” Ron commented, lugging his and Hermione’s luggage up the steps to their third-floor bedroom. “This place seems so much smaller than it did when we were kids.”
“It’s just you who’s bigger, Ron,” Hermione chided, elbowing him affectionately in the stomach. “You’ve got no room to complain.”
“I’m not complaining. At least we get a room. If Percy was here, he’d have to bunk in with Kreacher.”
James and Ralph, along with James’ siblings and cousins, spent their days by the fire, playing wizard chess with Uncle Ron or roaming the nearby streets, performing last-minute errands and Christmas shopping with Ginny or Aunt Hermione. Fleur and Bill enlisted James and Ralph’s help in picking out and transporting a Christmas tree, which had looked merely charmingly plump outside, but had taken up twothirds of the main hall when they’d brought it in.
“Seems a shame to do it,” Bill said, producing his wand and pointing it at the tree. “Reducio!”
The tree shrunk by a third, but managed to maintain its density, so that it ended up looking rather more like a Christmas bush than a tree. Ralph, James, Rose, and Victoire spent most of the day before Christmas Eve stringing popcorn, decorating the tree, and wrapping presents. That night, Hermione gathered the entire household with the intention of bundling everyone up and going Christmas caroling. Neither Ron nor Harry, however, were particularly overjoyed about the idea.
“Give us a break, Hermione,” Harry said, dropping into an easy chair by the fire. “We’ve been on our feet all day.”
“Yeah,” Ron chimed in, bolstered a bit, “it’s just the start of the holiday. We haven’t even had a chance to sit down yet, have we?”
“Ronald Weasley, you get your bottom into your coat and hat,” Hermione replied, tossing Ron’s things onto his lap. “We only get the whole family together once a year anymore, if we’re lucky, and I’m not going to let you sit on your bum all night just as if you were at home. Besides,” she added a bit truculently, “you said on the way here that you thought caroling sounded fun.”
“That was before I knew you were serious,” Ron muttered, climbing to his feet and shrugging on his coat.
“You too,” Ginny smiled, grabbing Harry’s hand and pulling him out of the chair. “You can lounge around all Christmas day if you wish. Tonight, we’re going to have some fun, whether you like it or not.”
Harry groaned, but allowed Ginny to work his coat onto him. She punched him playfully in the stomach and he grinned, grabbing his scarf. To Ron’s and Harry’s apparent annoyance, Bill was raring to go, performing scales in the hallway, his hand on his chest. Fleur, dressed as resplendently as her daughter, smiled adoringly at him. As they headed out the door, James heard Uncle Ron mutter to his dad, “I swear he acts like that as much to spite us as to impress her.”
The night had turned out so perfectly and quintessentially Christmas-like that James wondered if his mum and Aunt Hermione had somehow bewitched it. Fat, silent snowflakes had begun to fall, muffling the distant city sounds and blanketing the grimy walls and sidewalks with sparkling white. Hermione passed out sheets of music, and then arranged everyone so that the youngest were in front and the oldest and tallest were in back. “If Mum weren’t still around,” Ron said to Harry in a low voice, “I’d swear Hermione was channeling her.” During a practice chorus, Hermione became annoyed at Ted, who insisted on singing amusing variations of the lyrics, to the great delight of Albus and Hugo. Finally satisfied, she led the troupe through the streets surrounding Grimmauld Place, ringing doorbells and directing the choruses. Most of the Muggles who answered their doors stood and listened with something like strained amusement on their faces. Once, an old man with a large hearing aid yelled at them that he didn’t support any charities except the Hortense Home for Feral Felines, and then slammed his door.
“McGonagall owes him a Christmas card, then,” Ted said, barely missing a beat.
James waved a hand at Ralph before he could ask. “Animagus. I’ll explain later.”
Christmas morning dawned with dazzling brightness, the sun turning the snow-frosted windows into blinding tableaux. Ralph and James met Albus and Rose on their way down the steps to breakfast.
“It’s no use,” Rose said dolefully. “Mum swears she’ll Crucio anyone who tries to open a present before breakfast.”
James blinked. “Aunt Hermione said that?”
“Well,” answered Albus, “not in so many words. But she’s really in a snit ever since she caught us using a pair of Uncle George’s z-ray spectacles on the presents to see what was in them. She just about turned Dementor on him. It was scary!”
“Uncle George is here?” James asked, trotting down the rest of the stairs and heading for the kitchen. “Excellent!”
“Yeah, but he brought Katie Bell with him,” Albus said, pronouncing the name with his most ingratiatingly snarky voice. Albus didn’t so much disapprove of Katie Bell as he disapproved of anyone threatening to alter George Weasley’s impish bachelorhood.
As James and Ralph turned the corner into the old kitchen, they heard George’s voice saying, “That’s the sort of publicity that has allowed triple W to grow to two locations and become the wizarding world’s leading joke shop, you know. You can’t turn down a primo showstopper at a broadcast event like the debate. It’s all about the spectacle.”
Katie Bell, an attractive woman with long brown hair, stirred her tea. “You should’ve heard the way Myron Madrigal described it on the wireless,” she said, stifling a smile.
Ted scowled, then his curiosity got the better of him. “What’d he say?”
“He called it ‘a puerile display of monumental poor taste’,” George said proudly, raising his juice glass in a toast.
“That’s beautiful!” Ted grinned, clinking his glass to George’s.
“James, good to see you!” George said, clapping his juice onto the table and patting the seat next to him. “Have a seat and tell us how the old alma mater is treating you.”
“Great,” James said, sitting down and grabbing a piece of toast. “George, this is my friend, Ralph.” “Oh, we know all about you, don’t we?” George said, leaning toward Ralph and tapping the side of his nose. “Our man on the inside, eh? Infiltrating the slimy underbelly of the Slytherin war machine. Spying and sabotaging left and right, no doubt.”
Ralph rolled his eyes at Ted.
“I didn’t say anything,” Ted said primly. “I happened to mention to him that you were on Team B, way back when we ordered our little surprise package. He figured out the rest on his own when he found out you were here.”
Ralph squirmed. “Well, that’s not really true, you know. I’m just a kid.”
“Never underestimate what a kid can do, Ralphie,” George said seriously.
“That’s right,” Katie nodded. “George and his brother, Fred, caused the best class disruption in Hogwarts history in the middle of the reign of Umbridge the Terrible.”
“Like I said, it’s all about the spectacle,” George said.
“With a little revenge thrown in,” Katie said, smiling.
“How dare you even suggest such a thing?”
Ralph and James exchanged looks.
James, Ralph, Ted, and George were the last at the breakfast table. The younger siblings and cousins fairly dragged them from the table, finally getting the entire household together for the opening of the presents.
“Didn’t you do like I told you?” George said, laughing as Albus pulled him into the parlor. “Open the presents in the middle of the night and then re-wrap them again with the Reparo charm?”
“I tried!” Albus replied earnestly. “I nicked James’ wand and practiced on a box of biscuits. Couldn’t get it to work! Made no end of a mess. Mum just about thrashed me.”
“You nicked my wand!” James cried, lunging after Albus. “I’ll thrash you myself! Give it back!”
Hooting, Albus darted away wi
th James in pursuit.
There was much yelling and shredding of paper, and James couldn’t help thinking that Christmas at Grimmauld Place probably wasn’t much different than Zane’s description of his family Christmas in the States, hinkypunks and all. When the younger Weasleys and Potters had all opened their presents and scampered off to enjoy them, the rest of the gifts were opened with a bit more reserve. Harry had gotten Ginny an unusual new cauldron, which she unwrapped and stared at rather blankly.
“It’s a Conjure-Pot,” he explained, a little defensively. “It makes dinner a snap! You just throw in a few ingredients each morning, whatever you have left lying around the cupboard. It doesn’t matter what. The Conjure-Pot figures out the best dish to make with it, prepares it, and cooks it up during the day. We all come home at night and voila, mystery meal. Great for the working mum on the go.”
“At least that’s what the sign on the display at Tristan’s and Tupperworth’s said,” Ron remarked, grinning. Harry clipped him on the back of the head.
Fleur sniffed. “Vere I come from, eet is considered improper for a man to buy cookery as a gift.”
“That’s because where you come from, my dear,” Bill said gently, “the men do most of the cooking.”
“Oh, just open the next one,” Harry said, annoyed.
Ginny’s next present turned out to be a pair of mer-pearl earrings, which went over much better. Ginny seemed simultaneously distraught and overjoyed by them.
“Harry! How did you pay for these? Mer-pearl! I never expected…!” Her eyes glittered as she blinked back tears.
“Just put them on,” Harry smiled. “If it makes you feel any better, they’re fake. Leprechaun-pearl. They came as a bonus gift with the Conjure-Pot.”
“No, they didn’t,” she smiled, and kissed him.
Ron had gotten Hermione a small but apparently expensive bottle of perfume called Whimsies’ Enchantment, which Hermione was very pleased with. Ginny and Hermione had gone together to buy Harry and Ron tickets to the Quidditch World Cup.
“We knew you’d both been wanting to go for the past several years,” Hermione explained as Harry and Ron congratulated each other. “But you never think ahead to get advanced tickets. We’ve got eight total tickets, so you can take the kids, if you wish. They’d love it. And your wives, of course, if you wished. It’s up to you.”
But Harry and Ron had fallen into a debate about what teams would be in the Cup and barely heard the last.
James opened his present and was surprised to see that his parents had gotten him a new broom.
“Wow,” he breathed. “A Thunderstreak! Mum, Dad, you got me a Thunderstreak?”
“Well,” Harry said slowly, “I knew you’d had some trouble getting started on the broom, but I spoke to your friend, Zane, and he said you were coming along really well. I thought you might like to practice on your own broom. Those school brooms are too old. Slow, unwieldy, and the handling’s gone all mushy. You try this out and I think you’ll notice the difference straight off.”
“Course, if you don’t want it,” George offered, “you could always trade with Ted. That old Nimbus of his may be slow as a flobberworm, but it has loads of antique value.”
Ted hurled a ball of wrapping paper at George, hitting him square in the face.
James felt a little sorry for Ralph, who had not heard from his dad since the message that he’d be travelling over the holidays. Ralph shrugged it off, saying his dad had probably sent his Christmas gift to the school. James and Ralph were both surprised when Ginny handed Ralph a small, wrapped package.
“It’s not much,” Ginny smiled, “but we thought you might enjoy it.”
Ralph unwrapped the package and looked at it. It was a very dog-eared and dilapidated book, the words on the cover almost illegible with age. It was called Advanced Potion-Making.
“That belonged to a great Slytherin, like you’ll be, no doubt,” Harry said somberly. “Frankly, I thought I’d lost it, but it turned up a few weeks ago. I didn’t know what to do with it until you came for the holiday. Then it just made sense that you should have it. Don’t let Professor Slughorn see it, though. Just use it as a… reference.”
Ralph flipped carefully through the old book. The margins were crammed with hand-written notations and drawings. “Who wrote all this stuff inside?”
“Doesn’t really matter,” Harry said cryptically. “You don’t know him. Just take care of it, and be careful how you use some of the stuff in there. It can be a little… dodgy, sometimes. Still, it just seems right that it should be in the hands of a good Slytherin man. Happy Christmas, Ralph.”
Ralph thanked Harry and Ginny, a bit puzzled at the serious looks both he and the book were getting. He recognized that, mysterious as the book was, it was apparently rather meaningful. He wrapped it in a piece of cloth Ginny gave him and placed it in the bottom of his trunk.
James was delighted when Neville and Luna Lovegood arrived that afternoon. The two had been seeing each other for the past few months, but James had heard his mum tell Andromeda Tonks that it wasn’t going anywhere. James couldn’t guess how his mum knew such things, but he never doubted that she was right. For James’ part, Neville and Luna seemed just a bit too brotherly and sisterly to be a couple.
After dinner, Grandmum Weasley appeared in the fireplace to wish everyone a happy Christmas.
“We’re having a perfectly delightful time here with Charlie,” she said from the grate. “And Prague is just lovely. I think you boys need to have a talk with your father, though. He’s gotten rather enamored with the Muggle architecture here and is talking about staying on a few more weeks. He’s become so unpredictable now that he’s retired from the Ministry. Oh, it is so difficult having you kids all over the world like this. How am I supposed to keep track of my grandbabies?”
“How are Charlie and Claire and the kids, then, Molly?” Hermione asked, gently steering the topic to pleasanter subjects.
“Quite well, although Charlie insists on taking little Harold and Jules to work with him on occasion. How these poor children can endure the sight of such creatures and not have constant nightmares is simply beyond me.”
James, who’d met his younger cousins, Harold and Jules, a few times, knew that it was likely that they, in fact, might give nightmares to the dragons rather than the other way around.
Late that evening, as most of the household was beginning to drift to bed, James and Ralph found themselves seated near the fire with Luna Lovegood, who was telling them about her latest expedition into the Highland Mountains in search of the Umgubular Slashkilter.
“Still no positive identification,” she said, “but I discovered a vast network of their tracks and leavings. Their diet seems to consist almost entirely of blusterwermps and figgles, so it’s pretty easy to identify their dung by smell alone. Sort of pepperminty. Not at all unpleasant.”
“Unglubulous… slashkillers?” Ralph attempted.
“Close enough,” Luna said kindly. “They’re a species of flightless raptor, distantly related to hippogriffs and octogators. I took a mold of one of their tracks and a stool sample from one of their leavings. Would you like to smell it?”
“Luna,” James said, leaning forward in his chair and lowering his voice, “can we ask you a question about something? I’d rather nobody else knew about it.”
“I specialize in things nobody else knows about,” Luna said mildly.
“I mean, I want to keep it sort of a secret.”
“Oh,” Luna said, her face placid. James waited, but Luna merely watched him, smiling politely. Luna, he recalled, occasionally had a rather unique approach to conversation. He decided to plow on.
“This isn’t about Slashkilters or Wrackspurts or anything. Really, it’d be a better question for your dad, if he was still around, but I bet you know the answer, too. What can you tell us about… about Austramaddux and Merlinus Ambrosius?”
Luna was the only completely unshockable person James knew.
She merely looked into the fire and said, “Ahh, yes, not exactly my specialty. A lifelong hobby of my father’s, though. Austramaddux was the historian who recorded the last days of Merlinus and his promised return, of course. The subject of much speculation and intrigue for centuries, you know.”
“Yeah,” James said, “we know. We read about him and the prediction of his return. What we’re wondering is how it could happen? What would it take?”
Luna looked thoughtful. “It’s a pity my father isn’t here. He could speak on the subject for days. He did once, in fact, at a gathering of alternative magical publishers and broadcasters in Belfast. Gave a speech on the implications of the Merlinus conspiracies and their hypothetical plausibilities, if I recall. It went on for three and half days, until he fell asleep at the podium. Actually, I think that he was asleep long before anyone realized it. He was a notorious sleep-talker. Gave more than a few of his speeches in a nightgown. Most people thought it was eccentricity, but I think he was just multi-tasking.” She sighed fondly.
James knew he wouldn’t have much time before someone else, George, or worse, his dad or mum, would come back into the room. “Luna, what did he say about it? Did he think Merlin’s return was possible?”
“Oh, he certainly did. Had a hundred theories about it. Hoped he’d live to see the day, in fact, although even he wasn’t any too sure that when Merlinus returned, he’d be anything like what we’d call a good wizard. Wrote a whole series of articles for The Quibbler explaining the three relics and offering a hundred Galleon reward for anyone with valid clues to their whereabouts.”
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