A loud snore, a long familiar snore, punctuated that thought, and Harry sighed and opened his eyes. In the predawn hours of the morning, it was still dark, but moonlight flooded Fred and George’s room. On the cot next to his was Ron Weasley, face turned toward the ceiling, mouth wide open. With all of the guests present, plus Snape and Draco ensconced in Ron’s room at the top of the stairs, he, Ron and Percy had been shoe-horned in with Fred and George.
At another long snort from Ron, Harry gave up all hope”of ever returning to sleep, at least”and quietly got to his feet. Grabbing his glasses, he stepped to the window, and peered out over the bright, snowy landscape. The full moon cast every shadow into stark relief, but Harry didn’t see the gnarled trunks and limbs of the trees in the orchard, or the snow muffled outline of the Weasley’s garden. No, his mind was on the strange tale that Severus Snape had told the night before, of the months that he and Draco had spent hiding, fleeing for their lives”and the battle that had left both men tattered, battered and torn.
In a way, Harry wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t hard to tie certain of his own encounters with Death Eaters with certain of Snape and Draco’s narrow escapes. Reinforcements had to be drawn from somewhere, after all. The two had been very fortunate. Of course, Harry had largely been on the offensive, rather than running, so that was a huge advantage. And as a companion, Harry knew that he’d never trade Ron and Hermione for Draco”or Snape.
Harry turned away from the window, and as he did, Fred and George’s bed caught his eye, and a sudden grin crossed his face. With only two cots able to fit in the room, Percy had been forced to sleep with Fred and George. As the lights had gone out, late the night before, Harry had heard the twins insisting that Percy have the pillows. Now he could see why.
Fred and George were both sleeping with their heads at the foot of the bed. Harry watched as Percy, between them, groaned softly in his sleep, turning his head”from Fred’s feet to George’s. And quickly back again. Harry suddenly had a suspicion that Fred and George didn’t offer a line of foot powders at their joke shop”yet. As Harry passed the foot of the bed, he saw that both Fred and George had clothespins fastened securely over their noses. Shaking with silent laughter, Harry slipped on his dressing gown, opened the door and quietly made his way downstairs.
As he had suspected, the house was was deserted. A warm glow gleamed from the stove in the kitchen, and Harry could see the fixings for the day’s dinner awaiting Molly’s attention. Indeed, the Christmas turkey was sitting on the drainboard, drumsticks crossed and humming a merry carol. Somewhat off-key, Harry thought, but he didn’t want to be critical on Christmas.
Instead, he hastened down the hallway to the living room. With a sweep of his wand, Harry lit the wall sconces, glancing hastily at the couch to make sure that someone hadn’t bedded down there. Confident of his privacy, he stepped over to the Christmas tree in the corner, and pulled back a couple of boughs to find the hidden crevice there.
Harry was immediately startled to find not two, but three ornaments hanging together. His first thought was to wonder just what Fred and George might have packed into a Christmas ornament, but when he leaned cautiously forward found two familiar ornaments with a third. On the outside, his own face beamed back at him over Have a Very Harry Christmas, the ornament that Ginny had hung in the Room of Requirement. Opposite that tiny sphere hung the image of James, Lily and baby Harry. Yet he couldn’t quite make out what was on the third glass globe. It seemed to be a running figure…
Reaching into his pocket, a murmured Lumos brought a flare of light to his wandtip. Stretching his wand between the branches, his breath caught as he recognized the figure portrayed. Ginny Weasley. Hardly unexpected, but more specifically, a slight, ten year-old Ginny, tears in her eyes and laughing as she ran, calling out to her brothers on the Hogwarts Express.
Only in this case, on this branch, the ornament was positioned so that Ginny was crying and laughing, calling out, running after Harry. His heart seemed to seize in his chest. Either Molly Weasley had a camera with her that day, or this was a fragment of a memory. Harry certainly didn’t recall Molly taking any photographs that day.
Harry didn’t know how long he stood there, staring in wonder.
At a rustle behind him, Harry spun, awkwardly trying to conceal the spot that he’d been gaping at. His heart rushed into motion, but only pounded harder in his chest when he recognized Ginny standing next to the couch. Suddenly it was beating so hard that he thought the windows would soon start rattling.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Ginny said quietly, tilting her head to regard him in a manner that reminded Harry oddly of Luna Lovegood.
Whatever nonsensical comment Harry was about to offer in reply died in his throat, for at that moment the rising sun chose to flood the room, the dawn rays sweeping over Ginny igniting her red hair with fire, defining her features in fine relief.
“Sweet Merlin, you are beautiful.” Harry heard the words fall from his lips of their own volition, but frankly he could find no argument with them anywhere in his heart.
Ginny’s eyes widened slightly, and she took a step towards him before she responded.
“Have you been taking lessons from Bill, Harry? On what to say to a girl? “ Ginny glanced down at her teal dressing gown, and smiled. “Not that I’m complaining of course.”
She stopped about an arm’s length away. Harry couldn’t think of anything to say, but that was okay, all that he wanted to do was to drink her in. From this angle, the sun caught her eyes, those beautiful brown eyes, such a rich and velvety brown. The more you looked into them, the more enchanting those brown eyes became, and Harry thought that he was sinking, falling forever into them, deeper and deeper into Ginny as the two limpid pools grew larger and larger”
“Hem-hem.”
With a start, Harry broke free of the depths of those beautiful eyes, and stared around, gasping for breath as his hand automatically raised his wand. But it was Molly Weasley, wrapped in a floral apron, standing in the doorway. And suddenly Harry realized just how close Ginny was, her face upturned, her lips inches from his. Hastily he stepped back”into the needles of the Christmas tree as Ginny spun in place.
“Dolores Umbridge was in my year at Hogwarts. Dreadful little witch,” Molly paused. “But it’s so sweet of you two to get up early to help me with breakfast and Christmas dinner.”
Molly’s words were casual, but Harry could see a steely glint in her eye, and even more ominously, she was tapping her wand in her hand.
“But don’t you think that you should get dressed before putting on an apron?
“Er”yes ma’am, yes,” Harry and Ginny chimed in unison, both suddenly a bright red that had nothing to do with the sunrise.
Hastily, both Harry and Ginny made a break for the door, Ginny in the lead. Harry might have been mistaken, but he almost thought he had seen a hint of a smile quirk Molly’s cheek as he brushed past.
The two ran up the stairs, making as little noise as possible. At the first landing, Ginny paused at her door, and turned to him.
“Here’s your Christmas present, Harry.” Her hand dove into the pocket of her robe, and he had an instant to register a flicker of incredible softness sweeping across Ginny’s face, before her expression suddenly turned fierce. “While you’re out there saving the world, Harry Potter, don’t you dare forget me!”
In a flash Ginny was in his arms, her lips pressed to his, and the world”and his heart”stopped for a few incredible moments. Then, just as quickly, she was gone, her bedroom door clicking shut in a swirl of crimson hair as he stared blankly at the mute wooden surface, a small package the only thing left in his grasp.
“As if that's likely to happen,” he finally managed to whisper, as slippered footsteps towards the base of the stairs stirred him into motion. Skipping lightly up to the landing outside Fred and George’s room, he stepped to the window and examined the brightly beribboned and bowed object in his hand. It felt oddly familiar, and he felt his hands shaking as he carefully unwrapped the foiled paper, then shook the object out into his hands.
A gold locket. How could she know? Oh, certainly this small, gracefully embossed, delicately engraved locket wasn’t Salazar Slytherin’s locket, which Harry, Ron and Hermione still sought, but the coincidence was too incredible.
Now trembling all over, as he hadn’t when he had faced Bellatrix Lestrange and her ilk, Harry thumbed open the catch. Obediently, the locket opened in his hand as if it were meant to. In a swirl of light and color, a figure emerged to stand in the palm of his hand. A familiar figure. And not clad in school robes, Muggle clothing, or even her Quidditch robes.
Ginny. Radiant and beautiful, her long hair swirling free about her face. Ginny, a grown up Ginny, rather than the girl chasing the train, a grown up Ginny clad in the beautiful gold gown, as she had been at Bill and Fleur’s wedding the previous summer. The very dress that Auntie Muriel had complained about.
Harry stared, mesmerized, his heart in his throat.
A click behind him, perhaps several sunlit years later, brought him to his sensed. Quickly he closed the locket, and slipped it into the pocket of his dressing gown.
“Oy, don’t go downstairs yet, Mum’ll put you to work,” was the urgent whisper from Fred and George’s doorway.
Turning, Harry saw Ron beckoning to him. “Besides, there’s presents!”
Heart racing, Harry followed Ron back into Fred and George’s room. What an hour before had been silence and snoring was now bedlam, as the sound of paper being ripped and shouts of surprise and satisfaction rent the air”no one seemed to notice what Harry was sure was his furiously burning face.
Harry worked his way through his own pile of presents as everyone was preoccupied with their own. Fred and George were shouting and pounding Percy on the back over their presents”and heartily promising him that he’d never have to sleep on the pillows ever again. Indeed, they were quite considering telling him what city they lived in. As Harry opened a Self Grooming Hairbrush from Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, he suddenly realized that the twins' attention being so focused on Percy was fortunate for Ron--for his best friend was hunched over something, standing in the corner of the cramped room.
Moments later, as Harry set a Thief-Proof Bottomless Money Bag from Bill and Fleur atop the Official Quidditch Set that he had profusely thanked Fred and George for, Ron sat down on the cot next to him, gripping something tightly in his hand. Harry noticed that Ron’s ears were bright red”so was his whole neck. Indeed, Ron looked as though he’d been standing under a bright sun for hours. Under cover of Fred and George now helping Percy open his gifts, Harry heard Ron mumble something. Harry thought he saw Ron’s lips move, but he couldn’t make out what he had said.
“Er, what’s that?”
Ron leaned closer.
“Uh, mate, I asked you what a French bakeeny is.”
“A what? A French bikini?”
“Hush!” If anything, Ron’s ear’s were even redder as he glanced at Fred and George, who were now spattered in bright red ink and howling happily as they pummeled a grinning Percy on the back. “Yeah mate, a bakeeny, What is it?” This times Ron’s whisper was so low as to be almost inaudible.
“Well,” Harry puzzled over how to best describe the phenomenon. “It’s…a kind of swimming suit that Muggle girls wear to the beach. It’s got two pieces, and they’re usually really”“
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Ron interrupted, looking especially furtive.
Staring at his friend, at the sweat now beginning to bead on Ron’s brow, Harry felt a dawning comprehension.
“Ron, mate, what did Hermione give you for Christmas?”
“What?” Ron started guiltily, then shook his head, clearly relenting. “Oh, just this.”
Raising his hand, Ron proffered a finely wrought, heavy golden locket. When Harry reached out to touch it, the locket felt strangely warm in Ron’s hand. He noticed that it was studded with rubies, and he had a sudden suspicion there were seven of them. Ron touched the locket, and it sprang open in the palm of his hand.
“It’s a True Memory Locket, they’re rare.” Ron’s voice was hushed, but now in awe, and Fred, George and Percy were now watching curiously. Ron touched somewhere inside the locket, and a picture of Hermione sprang forth and spun in place, a fifteen year“old Hermione with her teeth straight and her hair sleek, in her dress robes at the Yule Ball. Harry was thankful that there was no sign of Viktor Krum present. A second touch, and a bushy-haired, almost-fourteen Hermione, clutching a purring Crookshanks, appeared. Another touch, and a shrieking, twelve year-old Hermione, covered in fragments of lavatory recently created by a twelve-foot Mountain Troll, materialized. Next was a furious Hermione, open hand swinging forward in an obvious slap. Yet another touch and an older, more mature Hermione, a Hermione in the beautiful dress and high heels of Bill and Fleur’s wedding revolved above Ron’s hand, dancing with a tall, red headed young man.
Fred and George, leaning on the end of the bed, were strangely silent, let alone a startled Percy buried beneath them.
“It’s got about a hundred images right now, but it holds around a thousand.” Ron’s eyes were shiny, and Harry was starting to wonder why. “And it says this. Go on, mate, read it.”
He closed the locket, and handed it to Harry, turning it over. Engraved on the back was fine, flowing script, Harry read it aloud.
“Forever my heart is in the palm of your hand.”
Harry couldn’t help but touch the locket hanging warmly inside his own shirt, next to his heart.
“Little bro, if you don’t ask that woman to marry you, George and I will have to introduce you to some of the finer Weasley’s Wizarding Wheeze’s products.” Fred’s voice was simply conversational, as if discussing the weather. “And you really don’t want to know what we’ve done with itching powder. Seriously.”
At that moment, a huge shriek rose up through the floorboards, echoed through and beneath the door from the stairwell. At first, Harry thought of an angry, forgotten Molly Weasley, and guiltily he started. But then he recognized the familiar contralto tones, and the sheer joy and exuberance beneath them. Answering Ron’s blossoming grin with his own, Harry turned back to Fred, George and Percy, now standing by the bed, wands drawn towards the footsteps now thundering up the stairs.
“I think he just did.”
Late that night, all of the guests having departed, even Snape and an abashed Draco off to a secure location, a half elated, half frustrated Ginny Weasley began taking down decorations. Harry, Ron and Hermione had left on their mysterious mission”though no one could seem to separate the latter pair. Fred’s twentieth murmured “Get a room” had drawn a Stinging Hex from a furious Molly Weasley.
Yet Harry had departed without giving Ginny a Christmas present. Of course, his presence was more than enough. They had sat together at breakfast and dinner, surreptitiously holding hands beneath the table. In between, they had managed a solitary walk in the snow frosted garden. They had sat together on the couch, legs touching, singing hymns and carols. She really didn’t need anything, as long as she had those moments to treasure.
Finally, whistling happily, Ginny finished packing away the tinsel and fairy lights, and most of the ornaments, especially the precious few brought by guests, had been replaced carefully in their accompanying boxes. All except for three, the three hidden in a secluded portion of the tree. Smiling, but tears now misting her eyes, carefully Ginny took down the sole remaining Have a Very Harry Christmas ornament that she had made dozens of several years before. Then, tenderly, she stowed away the crystal sphere with the three Potters. Finally, Ginny reached up and unhooked her own glass bauble, the one that she had moved from the far side of the tree after seeing Harry’s.
And something rattled and rung against the fragile glass.
Ginny froze, then hesitantly, almost fearfully wiped the tears from her eyes, cupping the glass ornament in the palm of her hand.
Dangling from the plain wire hook, resting atop the clear glass, was a shining golden band. Bright stones glittered around a huge, sparkling diamond, fiery rubies and dazzling emeralds”the color of his eyes”but Ginny only had eyes for the engraving she glimpsed on the interior of the glowing band. With a shaking hand, she slipped the ring from the hook, very carefully placing the suddenly heirloom globe that she would now never, ever misplace, carefully into it’s padded box with growing reverence before turning to examine the tiny, elaborate inscription.
That forever Sought was Chased to my Heart
Just like a Seeker, Ginny thought dazedly, before she realized that the voice screaming “Yes! Yes! Yes!” was her own.
Arthur and Molly, dashing down the stairs, wands drawn, found their seventh child, their feisty, independent, powerful witch of a daughter, fainted dead awy on the living room floor”a radiant smile wreathing her face. <
Merry Christmas!