It wasn’t like Apparition. It wasn’t like anything Cyril had experienced before. He was in his room one moment, and the next, he was somewhere else entirely, with no feeling of having moved at all.
Cyril recognized where he was immediately: the living room of his childhood home, where his mother and younger brother Mattie still lived. A tall fir tree stood in one corner, near the fireplace, decorated with holly, live fairies, fake snow conjured by magic, and candles enchanted to “burn” with magical flames. More of these candles stood on the mantelpiece. Presents wrapped in colorful paper were piled under the tree.
“H-how’d we get here?” he asked. His father looked at him sternly, and Cyril said, “Right. No questions.” His father had to know that this rule bothered him “ he’d been a Ravenclaw, for the love of Merlin; wanting to know things came with the territory.
His train of thought was interrupted as a trio of small boys came galloping into the living room, screaming, “Presents, presents, presents!” The smallest and most remarkable of the three had a riot of carrot-colored curls and a maniacal grin on his face. His older brothers looked similar to one another, with light brown hair and freckles, but the older one was heavier-set and his hair was several shades lighter. Cyril could only gape, speechless: these boys were Cyril and his brothers as children. Even as he watched, the younger version of him turned and shouted impatiently to lagging parents, “Hurry up! We want to open presents!” None of them seemed to have seen Cyril or his father.
The redhead, Mattie, had been distracted from his eagerness for presents: he was busy poking one of the fairies. He gave a little yell and jumped away, sucking his finger. Cyril watched the oldest of the three “ Henry “ tell Mattie, “Mum says we’re not supposed to play with the fairies.”
“I remember this Christmas,” said Cyril. “I was six. This was the year Henry got his first broomstick and insisted on trying it out immediately.”
His father winced. “Lucky your mother’s a crack hand at healing spells, or we would’ve been at St. Mungo’s that Christmas.”
“What is this?” Cyril asked, watching his parents “ looking less lined, but otherwise the same as ever “ as they walked into the room, cradling cups of coffee and blinking sleep out of their eyes.
“It’s a memory “ a happy memory of Christmas.” His father smiled and pointed back at the tree. “Look, you’re starting.”
Cyril watched as he and his brothers tore paper off their presents, laughing and shouting out what they’d got. Cyril smiled to see that he had a pile of picture books, among other things. Some things never changed.
“I still believed in Father Christmas then,” Cyril mused. “I used to make myself go to sleep an hour earlier than usual, just to make sure I wouldn’t offend him “ he wouldn’t come if I was awake, after all.”
“And you made us leave carrots for the reindeer,” said his father. “I believe this was the year you started doing that.”
“Did you have to Vanish the carrots, or did you eat those too?” Cyril asked, laughing.
“I owled them to the Easter bunny,” his father joked. “Now watch.”
Cyril looked back at the scene by the tree just in time to see himself ripping the wrapping paper off a box. He saw a look of awe come over the younger Cyril’s face, and then a grin as he scrambled to open the box. When he finally succeeded in getting it open, he reached in and pulled out a finely carved wooden dragon, painted green. He pressed a finger against the nape of the dragon’s neck and it sprang to life, spreading leather wings experimentally. It cocked its head, then performed a running leap into the air, its wings pumping. Once it was airborne, it flew in little circles over the ecstatic young Cyril’s head.
“Scales.” Cyril smiled wistfully. “I loved him. I took him everywhere with me. I even took him to Hogwarts the first year.”
“I remember your mum almost didn’t let you,” his father said. “Not a lot of first years take toys to Hogwarts.”
“He was more than a toy,” protested Cyril, his ears feeling hot.
His father changed the subject. “Looks like you guys are all done over there.”
While they had been talking, the boys had finished unwrapping the last of the gifts, and they were hauling their presents to their rooms. Young Cyril now had Scales tucked under his arm, the magic that had animated him dormant. He stopped to hug his parents and say, “This was the best Christmas ever!”
“I miss that,” the older Cyril commented. “The waking up on Christmas morning feeling like it’s the most magical thing that’s ever happened to you, despite all the magic you see every day. Dragging you and Mum out of bed obscenely early. Ripping paper off presents and using the result to have confetti fights.” He laughed. “Listening to Christmas carols on the wireless while you sang along in the cheesiest voice you could muster.”
“Then I think that is what this memory was meant to remind you of: the magic of Christmastime.” His father smiled. “Now I think it’s time to move on to the next one.” He grabbed Cyril’s arm and the next moment, they were in another memory.
Cyril looked around, and smiled. They stood in the fifth floor corridor of Hogwarts, next to the staircase that led up to Ravenclaw Tower. A suit of armor that stood against the wall singing Christmas carols had only a very spotty knowledge as to how “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” went, but it seemed to be having good fun. Cyril grinned.
“Must’ve been a difficult enchantment to do,” Cyril’s father said, staring at the armor bemusedly. “Are they all like that?”
“Every suit in the castle,” said Cyril. “Peeves spent most of this Christmas filling in the gaps in the songs. You can imagine what that sounded like.”
“Yes,” his father said, laughing. “I can certainly imagine that. I take it you know which Christmas this is, then?”
“Sixth year,” Cyril said. “The year the Triwizard Tournament happened.”
“Ah,” said his father, a knowing tone in his voice.
“What?” Cyril glared at his father. He was almost certainly purposely baiting Cyril. His father’s only answer was to point up at the spiral staircase.
Cyril drew in a quick breath. Sarah stood at the top of the staircase, her golden curls pinned up so that they fell in a sort of waterfall over her neck. Her blue eyes were made up somehow so that they looked bigger than ever and extremely bright, and she wore elegant pale blue dress robes that bared her shoulders and hugged her figure. She was looking back over her shoulder, talking to someone behind her, as she began to walk down the stairs.
Cyril was unsurprised to hear his own laugh and see himself, in warm brown robes, coming down the staircase after Sarah. Younger Cyril caught up with Sarah, murmured something in her ear, and she laughed and held out an arm. He took her arm and they proceeded down the staircase in as grand a manner as possible, each hiding smiles. Sarah turned around at the bottom step and said to Cyril, “I’m glad you finally plucked up the courage to ask me to the ball.” He raised his eyebrows, surprised, and she said, “It was getting to the point that I almost asked you out, to put you out of your misery.”
“That obvious, was I?” the younger Cyril said ruefully.
“Well, yes.” She grinned. “Cyril, it’s me. We’ve been friends since…forever. You don’t have to worry about what I think of you, because you know I think well of you.”
Cyril smiled nervously. “It’s just, it’s different when it’s a date. It changes things.”
“Well, stop worrying about it and have fun,” Sarah said. “Now let’s go to that ball.”
The present day Cyril and his ghostly father followed the pair as they walked to the Great Hall, Sarah chatting about who had asked whom to the ball and which song she hoped the Weird Sisters would play, while the younger Cyril tried not to seem nervous.
Cyril, watching his younger self, was beginning to wish that his father was not there. This memory could very well lead into a moment that he didn’t exactly want to share with his father, or anybody. Not that it was particularly compromising, but it was…private, a memory that had always belonged to him and Sarah alone.
But he could worry about that later; first, the ball.
The younger Cyril and Sarah paused a moment in the entrance to the Great Hall, looking for their friends. Patricia Stimpson, a brown-haired Gryffindor girl who was friends with Sarah, waved at them. Next to her sat Algie Alderton, Cyril’s best friend and fellow sixth-year Ravenclaw, looking quite surprisingly dapper wearing crimson dress robes, his long, curly blonde hair scraped out of his face in a horsetail. Cyril and Sarah crossed the room hurriedly to join them; they were a bit late, and people were already digging into their food. The older Cyril and his father followed.
“Where were you?” Patricia asked.
“I took a little longer getting ready, that’s all,” said Sarah. “It’s not like it really matters; we’re not that late.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” Algie assured her, his mouth full. Patricia hit him lightly on the arm, trying not to smile, and he swallowed and said, “It’s not like this is really a date. I don’t have to impress you.” He smiled cheekily at her and she rolled her eyes.
Cyril, meanwhile, had been looking around trying to figure out the secret of getting the plates to give you food. Usually it just…appeared. “Hey, how do we work these things?” he asked Algie.
“Just tell it what you want. There’s a menu.” Algie indicated a slip of creamy white cardstock with his fork. Cyril picked it up, perused it for a moment and ordered.
The older Cyril glanced around the room; the stage was being set up, so the dancing ought to start soon, but this was still the very beginning of the Yule Ball. “I feel like this is going to be a very long memory,” he said wryly.
“I find it quite intriguing.” His father was looking around with interest. “We never had anything like this when I was at Hogwarts. In fact, I’ve never seen this room without the house tables; it looks so…odd.”
“Hmm. I guess I’m less in awe of it, given that I’ve lived through it before. I’ve seen this room covered in purple sleeping bags before, though, so this is nothing.”
“Purple sleeping bags?” His father raised a transparent eyebrow.
“Fifth year, when Sirius Black got into the castle,” said Cyril dismissively, craning his neck as he watched to see if the champions were getting up yet. At the table, his younger self was occupied in wolfing down his food while his friends chatted. He’d been unable to eat lunch that day, he remembered; he’d been screwing up the nerve to ask Sarah to the ball all throughout the meal, and his stomach had rebelled at the thought of food.
Finally, the Weird Sisters began to play, and the champions proceeded down to the floor to open the dancing.
Cyril watched as Sarah dragged a younger version of himself away from the ruins of his meal. The twenty-year-old Cyril winced in embarrassment; his sixteen-yet-old self had a rather foolish smile on his face and kept tripping over his own feet. This almost didn’t matter, for after a minute or so they stopped trying to look like they knew how to dance and simply swayed on the spot, like many other couples on the dance floor.
“You look happy,” his father said, and Cyril jumped and flushed bright red. He’d almost forgotten that his father was there, seeing everything that he was seeing.
He mumbled, “Yeah, I guess.”
“Looks like more than ‘I guess’ to me.” His father had a slight smile on his face as he watched Sarah Fawcett wrap her arms tightly around his son, who returned the favor rather nervously. Cyril nodded. It certainly was more than “I guess.” He remembered that moment pretty well “ butterflies exploding in his stomach and his mind racing, trying to think of the right thing to say or do. He’d dated before “ taken Julia Gorse to Hogsmeade several times, and spent two months kissing Fiona Sweeney between classes before she broke up with him over a stupid argument “ but with Sarah it had been different. Sixteen-year-old Cyril had not known how to describe it to himself, except that he simply liked her more than he’d liked any other girl before.
Twenty-year-old Cyril knew that, even then, he’d been head-over-heels in love with Sarah Fawcett.
For an hour or so they watched the younger Cyril dance with Sarah, chat with Algie and Patricia, and even do a terrible swing number with Patricia while Algie and Sarah danced circles round them. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of fun had all round, but after a while Algie and Patricia begged out, saying their feet hurt, and returned to the table. Sarah and Cyril were feeling a bit worn out themselves, so they wandered out into the rose garden conjured specially for that night.
Fairies lit on hedges and statues, lending an ethereal air to the moonlit garden. There was no one in sight; the place felt serene and deserted, the only noise the clamor of voices inside, fading as they walked, and the breeze rustling in the leaves. The older Cyril and his father came behind them on ghostly feet, silent watchers.
Cyril stopped suddenly, and turned to his father. “Could you maybe…wait here? It’s just…”
His father smiled. “I understand. Go on. It’s your memory, not mine.”
Cyril followed his younger self and Sarah, feeling oddly like an intruder. They sat close together on a small stone bench, Cyril holding one of Sarah’s hands between his own. Neither was speaking; they simply sat in peaceful silence for a while. Finally Sarah stirred, and said, “Cyril?”
“Hmm?” The younger Cyril looked over at Sarah, smiling slightly, and she pressed her lips against his. He made a small noise, whether of surprise or pleasure not even he knew, and kissed her back.
After a minute or two, Sarah pulled away and smiled at him. “I’m glad we came together,” she said softly, as if not wanting to disturb the hush of the garden. “I really, really like you.”
Cyril nodded jerkily; words simply wouldn’t come. This time, he kissed her, and they passed another several happy minutes in this way.
Twenty-year-old Cyril, watching one of his most precious memories come to life, backed away, more quickly with every step, and hid behind the nearest hedge. What was this? What was happening? Was fate trying to throw all his best memories into his face, mocking him for letting his life get as screwed up as it was? Nothing in this past year even came close to matching the happiness he had felt just watching his younger self kiss Sarah “ a ghost of the joy the younger Cyril was feeling.
His father appeared before him, just like that, and Cyril didn’t even pause to be surprised. “Dad,” he said, feeling like a child again, scared and asking his father for help. “Dad, nothing’s right anymore. Nothing’s like this.”
His father looked grave. “Why do you think I came to you? I’m supposed to be showing you all the good memories, helping you remember how wonderful Christmas can be if you let it.”
“But…I don’t see how it can be this year,” Cyril said, his voice cracking. “Not without…” He looked back over his shoulder. His younger self and Sarah were emerging from their nook, with mussed hair and wide smiles. He swallowed hard and looked back at his father. “Without Sarah.”
“Shh.” His father placed a comforting, if slightly insubstantial, hand on Cyril’s shoulder. “We’ll talk about this later. But first, there are other visits to make.”
“Okay.” Cyril nodded. “Let’s go.”
His father reached for his arm again and in another moment, they had disappeared.
Cyril felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He knew immediately where they were: the flat he and Sarah had rented together after she’d left Hogwarts. They stood in the dark bedroom, but Cyril knew where they really should be: in the sitting room-cum-kitchenette.
He turned to his father, suddenly angry. “Why are we here? Is this supposed to be an improvement over the last memory?”
“What are you talking about?” His father’s brow was furrowed, his gaze worried. Cyril stormed out into the main room, and pointed to the couple sitting at the candlelit table, laughing and holding glasses of wine.
“This! It’s not a happy memory at all. How is this supposed to make me like Christmas? Don’t you remember when we rented this place?” He gestured around the room. “We only ever had one Christmas in this flat, and it was the worst Christmas of my life, this one included. This is the night…”
He paused, glancing at the smiles on his and Sarah’s faces. They had no idea what was in store, and for a moment Cyril wished he could warn them. “It’s the night Sarah’s family was killed,” he finished softly.
His father looked saddened. “I…I hadn’t realized,” he said apologetically.
They stood in awkward silence, watching as the Cyril of a year past raised his glass, grinning.
“To our first Christmas living together,” he declared.
“No, I have a better one,” said Sarah, laughing and raising her own glass. “To our first of many Christmases together, and may each one be happier than the last.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Cyril, and they clinked glasses.
“What exactly happened, anyway?” Cyril’s father asked him. “I was still running when it happened. I never knew until…well. I never really heard anything about it.”
“They were…harboring Muggle-borns. In the basement.” Cyril looked at his father. “I…we all thought it was wonderful, what they were doing. I used to hope you’d found someone like them. It was too big a risk, though. We never quite expected what happened. It was foolish, but we didn’t. They…the Snatchers found out. They’d been tracking a couple of Muggle-borns “ just teenagers, they would’ve still been in school if it weren’t for You-Know-Who “and they stumbled across the Fawcetts’ house.”
Cyril inhaled shakily. “They…they murdered everyone. Her mum and dad, the Muggle-borns…her brother, he was just visiting, having dinner with them on Christmas Eve because he was going to have Christmas dinner with his girlfriend’s family.” He looked at Sarah again. “She found out first thing next morning. The Ministry sent her a…a notice saying that they were very sorry, they would have liked to avoid the deaths as the Fawcetts were a good pureblood family, but the Snatchers had gotten carried away. She packed up all her stuff and left, and she hasn’t looked at me like…like that ““ he gestured at Sarah, who was smiling at Cyril as she talked, ““ since then.”
“But that hasn’t happened yet,” his father said. “Not to this Cyril or this Sarah. Those two are still having their first Christmas Eve in their flat.”
“But ““ Cyril looked back at his father, confused.
“Forget what happened after. Concentrate on the memory itself. Not happy? Maybe the events happening elsewhere were tragic, but in that moment and in that place, how can you say you weren’t happy? Look at your face, Cyril. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happier.” His father smiled at him. “At the end of the night, did you say to yourself ‘This is the worst Christmas of my life’?”
Cyril shook his head. “No. I…definitely think I said something along the lines of ‘this is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.’ And…it was.” Cyril looked at his younger self again. There was that foolish smile, the one he’d seen on himself at the Yule Ball. Sarah’s voice, with a laugh in it, brought back a flood of happy memories of years past: their first trip to Hogsmeade as a couple, wrapped up in scarves and cloaks, warming themselves with mugs of butterbeer and kisses; meeting in Hogsmeade again during Sarah’s seventh year at Hogwarts, all the joy of seeing each other for the first time after several months’ separation; spending their first night in the flat, plotting their future together even as the world fell down around their ears.
Cyril was distracted from these memories by his past self. He had reached across the table for Sarah’s hand, silently asking for her attention. “I actually have something to tell you,” he said, with a note of quiet pride in his voice. “It’s not certain yet, but if I impress them at the interview…there’s a possibility I could hire on at St Mungo’s, get some training and become a Healer.”
Sarah grinned and said, “That’s wonderful news, Cyril!” She raised her glass again. “One last toast then “ my boyfriend, the Healer!”
“I’m not one yet, let’s not count our chickens before they hatch,” said Cyril, laughing.
“But you will be,” said Sarah. “I believe in you. Besides, you’re brilliant, you care, there’s no reason they won’t want to hire you.”
Cyril smiled shyly. “To my becoming a Healer, then,” he said, and took a sip of his wine.
“We were so optimistic,” an older, sadder Cyril said. “The world had gone all to hell and there we were talking about how…how we were going to have more Christmases together and how I was going to try and get the job of my dreams and… how could we have just ignored everything that was happening out there? I was desperately worried about you, both of us were afraid of the Death Eaters, and we just…dropped all of that and had fun.” He shook his head.
“Think about it a moment and I think you’ll see why,” said his father. “Look at that tinsel, look at that tree. It was Christmas Eve. If there’s a night for forgetting your worries and just enjoying spending time with those you love, it’s Christmas. That’s all you and Sarah were doing that night. Not…betraying her family or any of that.”
Cyril sucked in a surprised breath. His father had hit on the heart of the matter, the reason he and Sarah hadn’t spoken a civil word since the Christmas he was reliving: the guilt of not having been there, not having been able to do anything about it, when Sarah’s family was slaughtered by men from the Ministry “ the guilt, in fact, of having spent the night of their deaths laughing and speculating happily about the future.
“Don’t poison your life with this,” his father said softly. “Neither of you could have done anything about it except be killed yourselves “ and I, for one, am very glad that you were here, enjoying your Christmas, instead of in Ottery St. Catchpole being murdered by the same sort of scum who killed me.” He looked at Cyril, a ghost of pain in his eyes. “It’s not the sort of end I’d wish on anyone, least of all my son.”
“I…I think I get why we came to this memory,” said Cyril. “I’m…glad.” He smiled. “And I’m even gladder you were here. You’ve always given the best advice.”
“Good. Then I think we’re done with memories.” His father placed his hands on Cyril’s shoulders. “There’s something else I have to show you. This will be unnerving.”