Three heavily cloaked figures appeared, stark against the whiteness of the snow scattered landscape. Each burdened with a heavy bag, they crunched through the fresh snow to the door of a tall, lopsided house. The tallest figure rapped on the door, and after a muffled exchange, yellow light flooded onto the white snow, and the three figures vanished inside.
Into a far warmer, welcoming world.
“Ron!”
Harry Potter smiled as his best friend, Ronald Weasley, was buried in his mother’s embrace. Then Hermione Granger joined the hug, and Harry found himself being swept in. He glanced up to see Arthur Weasley’s face smiling over his wife’s, and his arm on his shoulder.
“Welcome home, son.”
“Oh, it’s going to be so nice to have all of my children home again.” Molly Weasley’s muffled voice came from the midst of the arms and legs and damp traveling cloaks“damp not only from melting snow. As everyone reluctantly separated, Harry realized that his face was flushed with pleasure.
“Now, all of you hang up those wet cloaks," Molly gestured towards the coat tree next to the door, “And go put your things away. We’ll be eating at eight o’clock. Hermione, you’ll be rooming with Ginny, if you don’t mind, dear, and Harry, you’ll be in Percy’s room. I expect that he’ll be busy at the Ministry tonight.”
Harry glanced at Arthur Weasley, who avoided his eyes. Harry couldn’t help but notice that his ears were bright red, and Molly had turned her face away.
Talking merrily, Ron and Hermione raced up the stairs, but Harry lingered in the kitchen as Molly and Arthur resumed their place at the table, supervising various vegetables which were busily peeling themselves.
“Erm, I have something that I should give you while no one else is about.”
Harry set his bag at his feet and knelt over it. The two Weasleys exchanged glances.
“Here Mrs. Weasley,” Harry rummaged for a moment, then pulled out a flat, square, velvet covered case. “This is for you.”
“Harry,” Molly Weasley replied, suddenly self-conscious, and not reaching out to accept the proffered package, “We don’t exchange gifts until tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, this isn’t a gift. I’m just returning something,” Harry said, grinning.
“Returning…?” Molly eyed him curiously, then finally took the box from his hands. “Arthur, help me with this.”
She set the package on the kitchen table, and the two of them puzzled over the Goblin-crafted clasp for a moment before finally deciphering the appropriate sequence. With a click the catch released, and the lid slowly lifted upwards. Cold fire swept the room as the ambient light was captured and refracted by an incredible assortment of diamonds and sapphires encrusting a narrow silver circlet. Molly Weasley’s gasp cut through the silence.
“Oh, Harry.”
Her face lit with dawning comprehension and joy, Molly couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of the glittering band.
‘Where ever did you find it, son?” Arthur Weasley was a bit more composed, but Harry could see a tear trickling down his cheek.
“Well, it was in … bad shape when we found it,” Harry thought it best to skirt over certain of the details of what had happened after they found the Prewett family heirloom, “So I took it to a Goblin craftsman. I, er, hope that he made it as good as new.”
Arthur Weasley shot Harry a look, but didn’t press his original question.
“Oh Harry, Great Auntie Muriel will be so pleased.” Molly finally managed to tear her eyes away from the tiara, which seemed to glow in it’s own light, then regretfully closed the lid again. “Oh, Harry!”
Suddenly Harry Potter found himself engulfed in a Molly Weasley hug. He could feel the wet through his robes where her tears soaked through, but he really didn’t care.”
“All of our family, and now this.” Harry looked over Molly’s head at Arthur Weasley, who cleared his throat gruffly, taking off his glasses to rub them with his handkerchief. “What can we ever do to repay you, m’boy?”
“I think that this will do just fine, sir.” Harry let his arms encircled the happily weeping woman, who squeezed him even more tightly. “Just fine.”
Slowly Harry made his way toward Ron’s attic bedroom. All that they had been through to retrieve that artifact had been worth it, just to see the look on the Weasley’s faces. Harry found that his face was wreathed in a smile. Though it most certainly hadn’t been easy.
Suddenly his footsteps paused on a landing, outside a door through which he could hear the excited voices of two young women. Ginny’s room. Well, some things are easier than others. I think that I’ll save that one for later. He grinned wryly. Chicken.
Finding the door with the sign ‘Ronald’s Room’ closed, he tapped lightly. At a muffled “C’mon”, Harry pushed open the door. And paused, startled. It took him a moment to realize what was different. Somehow Ron’s room seemed smaller, more subdued, far less garish without all of the Chudley Cannons posters on the walls. The violently orange Cannons bedspread had been replaced with one scarlet trimmed in gold. There was no sign of the bullfrog on the window sill. In fact, the only decoration, the only picture visible at all was a silver framed photograph of a waving Hermione Granger on Ron’s nightstand. Harry knew that it had been taken at Bill and Fleur’s wedding the previous summer, for it’s twin graced Ron’s nightstand both at Grimmauld Place and in Gryffindor Tower.
“Hey mate, now that we’re alone for a mo’, I wanted to show you what I got Hermione for Christmas.” Ron’s voice was eager, and suddenly Harry desperately hoped that it wasn’t a necklace that read “’Mi-‘Mi”.
Harry sat on the edge of Ron's bed as his best friend crossed the room and rummaged in his bags. Much to Harry’s surprise, Ron turned back with a large, heavy book in his hands.
“A book?” Somehow, Harry couldn’t believe that his friend was quite this dense. “Ron, I know that she likes books, but“”
“Not just any book, Harry,” Ron replied excitedly. He sat down on the bed next to Harry, and thumped the book down on Harry’s lap. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pulled out his wand, and silently waved it towards the door. “Constant vigilance! Can’t have Hermione hearing about this one!”
Harry shook his head in disbelief, and looked down at the tome resting on his legs. His green eyes narrowed as he read the title. “Hogwarts, A History? Ron, she already has this one!”
“Not like this one, mate. It’s the newest edition. It has loads more stuff in it about you. Even has something in it about me and her.” Ron was grinning broadly now.
And Harry couldn’t, for the life of him, understand why.
“But Ron““
“Seriously, Harry, it’s got something special in it.” Suddenly Ronald Weasley’s grin vanished. “Open it and see.”
“Ron, I don’t care what it says about me.” Harry was getting just a bit frustrated with his best friend. He’d been around Ron and Hermione’s relationship too long, and he wondered why Ron just didn’t get it after all this time. “I don’t care what it says about me, or you, or““
“Harry. Open the book.” Ron’s words were dead serious, but now there was a mischievous light in his eyes.
Harry sighed, and acquiesced, lifting the heavy cover. How was he going to get it through Ron’s head“
Harry’s eyes widened.
Inside the book was a small niche, about two inches on a side, cut into the pages. No, enchanted into the pages, for Harry saw how each sentence continued on the other side of the gap. Thank goodness Ron knew better than to cut up a perfectly good book. Hermione would have murdered him. And nestled into the small crevice was a tiny leather covered box.
Harry’s eyes jerked to his friend“who was beaming back at him.
“Wha--?”
“If you didn’t figure it out, neither will Hermione.” Ron laughed happily. “Go ahead. Take it out, open it. It won’t bite. Fred and George have been nowhere near it, I promise.”
Harry eyed the box nestled closely into it’s hidey-hole, then pulled out his wand.
“Accio.” The small box slipped free of the book. In his hand, Harry could see embossed upon it the same mark of the Goblin who had repaired Aunt Muriel’s tiara.
“You didn’t.” Harry didn’t even bother glancing at Ron.
“I did. Open it.”
Harry lifted the hinged lid, and gasped. Ron had managed to do it … right.
On the silk in the center of the box glowed a graceful golden ring. A circle of rich rubies glowed with fire about a large, brilliantly sparkling diamond.
Harry knew that Ron had been delighted to realize that all of the Death Eaters that they had captured had had a price on their heads. Not to mention the generous reward from Zacharias Smith’s astonished father for returning Helga Hufflepuff’s Cup“from whom the trio had originally learned of the Goblin craftsman. Harry even was aware that both Ron and Hermione had been carefully salting away their substantial shares“and now it was perfectly clear what Ron had done with his. Suddenly he wondered just what Hermione had planned.
“Ron, she’ll love it.”
“You think?” Ron suddenly sounded uncertain.
“I think.” Harry knew quite well that Hermione Granger would have been ecstatic with a diamond chip on gold plate, but this was incredible.
“Seven rubies?” Harry looked closer. “For the most powerfully magical number?”
Harry found himself whapped with a pillow. Hastily he closed the lid on the glittering ring. Ron was laughing again.
“What?”
“Mate, you’ve been chasing Voldemort too long,” Ron chortled.
Harry turned toward his friend. Ron let the pillow drop into his lap. Suddenly Harry realized that Ron’s ears were bright red. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, and held a note that Harry had never heard before.
“Well, it’s rubies for obvious reasons, same with the gold.” Ron cleared his throat. If anything, his voice was now even quieter. “But there’re seven of them because we’ve known each other for seven years. And a diamond because … because I want her to be with me forever.”
Harry stared at his friend in amazement.
“All right. I’ve been in here almost an hour, and you’re not drinking anything from any hip flask until I see just who you really are.”
Harry’s only answer was a pillow in the face. The two of them laughed uproariously as Harry slipped the box back into it’s slot, then closed the cover over it.
“I can only think of one thing to make it better, mate.”
“Oh, what’s that?” Ron looked at him quizzically.
Harry tapped the book with his wand. The lettering writhed, then read Hermione, A History.
Harry Potter trotted down the stairs, a square box gripped carefully in his hands. He could still recall the words on the invitation that had arrived via Lorrel, the now retired Errol’s successor.
“And Harry, dear, since we’re having a blended Christmas with so many visiting, we’re asking that everyone bring an ornament for the tree. That way we’ll have a little bit of home for all of us. Now, mind that you don’t forget! Molly”
And Harry had the perfect item. He hadn’t expected much from Godric’s Hollow, other than a chance to be close to his parents again, but he’d found a few things in their magically rebuilt home.
Hermione had gasped when she had run across it. An ornament from Harry’s very first Christmas, obviously carefully packed away awaiting his second. A sparkling glass globe“complete with a Wizarding picture of a beaming James and Lily Potter holding their infant son.
Harry.
He reached the bottom of the steps, and spared a hand to wave at the jolly crowd surrounding the kitchen table sipping eggnog who had all called “Harry!” Quickly, however, he ducked toward the living room.
Where he stopped, startled, at the sight that greeted him. He barely registered Ron and Hermione in the room.
Fleur Weasley was draped languorously across her husband Bill’s lap at one end of the couch.
But that wasn’t what had caught Harry off guard.
For at the other end of the couch, Nymphadora Tonks was draped languorously across Remus Lupin’s legs, in obvious and blatant mimicry of the woman next to her. And as Harry’s eyes swept to her, Tonks met his eye, grimaced“and suddenly her short bubblegum pink hair was long and silvery. With a deliberate wink Tonks sighed … and rested her head on a smirking Lupin’s chest.
Fleur seemed completely oblivious“until she slowly rested her head on Bill’s chest. Complete with an identical sigh.
Choking down a chuckle, Harry turned to share the laugh with his two best friends … only to find Hermione leaning against an upholstered armchair. Eyeing Ron ... speculatively. For his part, Ronald Weasley seemed to be completely unaware of absolutely anything going on in the room“but his ears were crimson as he stared at his feet.
It struck Harry how amazingly similar that armchair was to those by the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room.
Suddenly Harry decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and headed like an arrow for the tree in the corner. Very fortunately placed so that no one in the room could see his face, for he thought that his cheeks were about to split with mirth. Fighting back a sputter, Harry buried his face in the fragrant pine boughs, barely registering the ornaments that drifted past his eyes.
Until he saw something that swept every thought from his mind.
There, in a crevice between two branches, hidden deep in the shadows, his own face stared back at him from a golden bauble. Harry didn’t even have to read the words.
“Have A Very Harry Christmas!”
In the stunned recesses of his mind, Harry offered Dobby a heartfelt apology.
Sliding the lid from the wooden box in his hands, Harry slipped his ornament onto the branch next to Ginny’s.
Ron and Harry sat with Tonks and Remus Lupin, as well as Molly and Arthur Weasley in the kitchen. The men had decided that it was their responsibility to clean up“which, Harry reflected, was a far different matter than in a Muggle household, for the brush merrily scrubbed away at the pots as they chatted over hot cocoa.
Harry was pleased at the change in Remus Lupin. The full moon might be some time away, but evidently his time with Tonks had been good for him, for not only was he dressed in crisp and obviously new robes (Harry could only assume that risking your life as a highly skilled Auror paid very well“especially in time of war), but many of the creases on his face had relaxed.
“That’ll be Fred and George this time,” Ron said, laughing, and he and Harry left the table to open the door.
They were startled to find two cloaked figures, one leaning heavily against the other. Harry’s eyes were drawn to the ragged blond hair…
Through no conscious volition of his own, Harry found his wand leaping into his hand.
Very slowly Severus Snape raised his right hand. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter. Sir.” There was no sarcasm in his weary voice. Harry tore his eyes from that gray, lined face to see two wands, held by the tip, proffered to him.
‘Arthur. Arthur! Help me with this poor boy!”
Harry felt Molly Weasley jostle past him, but found himself rooted to the spot. He could feel a crescendo of emotions crashing through him, and couldn’t make any sense of them. Even as his eyes rose to the tired, black ones of Severus Snape.
The man who had killed Albus Dumbledore.
“No time for a stretcher,” Arthur Weasley was lifting Draco Malfoy, who seemed to be unnaturally light for a seventeen year old Wizard.
“Arthur, take him to Ronald’s room. It’ll be quieter up there. I’ve got to get some extra blankets, and some hot soup…”
Indeed, as Harry tore his eyes away from Severus Snape, he could see that his old enemy was shivering, and there appeared to be blood smeared across his cheek. Even stranger, he wasn’t even protesting entering a house that he had more than once referred to as a hovel.
Molly’s anxious voice quickly vanished into the depths of the house.
Harry found himself staring into Severus Snape’s hated face again. And…why had he said ‘Merry Christmas’? Harry knew that Ron Weasley’s wand had dropped, and he found his own shaking. Merry Christmas? It’s all about…Christmas?
Harry felt a presence at his shoulder, then a body squeezed past him.
“Hot cocoa, Severus?” Remus Lupin silently offered a steaming mug.
Harry was struck by the dichotomy. Remus Lupin, standing in the snow in his new robes, offering warmth. Severus Snape, worn and tattered, in faded robes patched and mended, even with a large rent at one side, face worn and wan. His once greasy hair was streaked with gray and raggedly cut. Harry was forcibly reminded of a train trip four years previously. And just who that man had become.
“I believe that depends on Mr. Potter, Remus.”
Suddenly Harry realized that Severus Snape had not yet moved, except when he was relieved of the burden of Draco Malfoy. He still held two wands extended in his hand. Extended to Harry. Wand tips pointing back toward himself.
Christmas. Forgiveness.
Slowly Harry’s left hand reached out, and grasped the two wands. After a long moment, he deliberately drew them back from Snape’s grasp, and let his wand hand fall. Beside him he heard a sigh of relief from Ron“echoed by several others unseen behind Harry.
With two small pops, Harry saw Fred and George Apparate just beyond Snape and Lupin, arms full of packages. Their faces were suddenly dumbstruck.
Good grief, I’ve got an audience.
“Merry Christmas." Harry paused. "Severus.”
With the hot cocoa now inside the exhausted one-time Professor, Remus Lupin had hustled a weakly protesting Severus Snape up the stairs to where Draco was being tended, bearing enough hot chicken soup for both men. Harry felt strange seeing Severus Snape, not only in the confines of The Burrow, but so utterly surrendered, if not defeated.
Most of the older residents of the House that night were either tending to Draco, had retreated to bed, or had found other pursuits before the fireplace in the living room, (Charlie Weasley had finally arrived, and was playing Wizard Chess against Bill and Fleur), but the younger set was huddled around the kitchen table.
Harry was more than aware of Ginny Weasley sitting in the chair next to him, and he had been surprised when she had marched from the living room “ and promptly ejected Ron from that particular seat. To Fred and George’s shouted laughter. He had a strange suspicion that Ginny had just been somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the Christmas tree.
The mugs on the table had progressed from hot cocoa, to mulled butterbeer, to eggnog spiced by something from a bottle that Fred and George had slipped from their robes, and Ron, amazingly enough, was talking about Rosmerta’s finest mead.
Suddenly there was a pounding on the heavy wooden door.
“I wonder who that could be.” Ron murmured, then looked sharply around. Without a word, everyone at the table rose, drawing their wands.
The group arranged themselves carefully, Harry and Ron flanking Ginny, with Fred and George over her shoulders. Hermione slipped behind the overloaded cloak rack, out of sight of the doorway, eyes wide but wand extended.
Harry nodded at the others, and with a wave of his wand, the door flew open. A solitary figure was revealed, silhouetted against the snowy backdrop, and Harry heard Ginny gasp.
“Merry Christmas, everyone.” Percy Weasley, his arms loaded with packages, stood hesitantly in the doorway.
The silence stretched, then Ginny’s wand fell. Harry allowed his to fall as well. Ron dropped his wand as Hermione stepped from behind the hall tree to join him. George and Fred’s, however, remained pointed straight at Percy. After a long moment, a harsh voice rasped in Harry’s ear.
“Well, all that I know is that there had better be something awfully good there““
“--with my name on.” George finished as their wands dropped. "Now get in here, you prat."
Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.