Limits my lederhosen!
Right oh, I have a batch of three stories written in response to this post and, funnily enough, I managed to get none of them under my self-imposed word limit of 1000 words. BaF's one is excusable because it was her birthday as well. In all other cases, the length (and worth) of the story is just because it turns out that way.
Please note, none of these are betaed or even particularly polished. They're just written.
1. A Very Weasley Christmas, for erised1810 who wanted Weasley Christmas before Ron goes to Hogwarts.
Weasley child ages: Bill = 18, Charlie = 16, Percy = 12, Twins = 10, Ron = 8, Ginny = 7
Christmas started, as it always did, with Ron and Ginny racing mop-haired and gleeful-eyed into Bill and Charlie’s bedroom.
Bill stirred as he heard the door crash open and considered doing a Banishing Charm on his younger siblings now that he was allowed to do magic out of school.
“Buggrit all,” Charlie groaned.
“Charlie,” Bill reproved automatically. He could quite sympathise, though, and it was only all the years of being told off for swearing in front of the younger children that stopped him from doing the same. He wasn’t in the mood to be woken up and bounced all over either, but it couldn’t be helped.
He wished that being woken up at half past six on Christmas morning was in the big brother job description but it wasn’t, and there it was.
“D’you little twerps realise what time it is?” Charlie asked, even as he rolled over in bed to allow Ginny to clamber under the blankets with him.
“It’s Christmas time,” Ron said in Bill’s ear, and soon Ron’s cold legs were pressed against Bill’s warm ones.
“You’re a horrible child,” Bill told him. Ron was unabashed.
“No I’m not. I can’t be horrid because Father Christmas came, and if I was horrid he wouldn’t have come, would he?”
“Oh please,” came a voice from the doorway, and Charlie groaned again.
“You can’t mean,”
“You really believe,”
“In Father Christmas,” the twins finished together. Both, Bill noticed, were carrying their own stockings.
“Of course we believe in Father Christmas,” Ginny said fiercely. She sprang out of Charlie’s bed and stood in front of the twins with her fists raised, as though threatening to pummel anyone who said otherwise.
Bill thought it was sweet. His little sister was prepared to uphold her childhood innocence by using physical violence. They’d raised her well. Ron, however, hadn’t been quite as sure as Ginny about Father Christmas this year, and Bill knew, because he could remember Charlie and Percy and Fred and George all doing the same, that this was the last Christmas Ron would have before some of the magic of his world would leave him. Ron was looking worried now, so Bill gave Ron his best ‘trust me, I’m your big brother’ grin, and sent the twins his well-practiced ‘shut up, because I’m your big brother’ glare.
“Sorry, Ginny,” said George.
“Just our Christmas joke,” Fred said.
Ginny gave them a final glare.
“I believe in Father Christmas,” Charlie said from his bed, where he was pretending to rifle through Ginny’s stocking. “Marvellous bloke. I’m going to save up and buy one of his flying reindeer.”
Ginny giggled and went back to Charlie’s bed to reclaim her stocking. “We have to wait for Percy,” she told him, slapping his hand away from the top present.
“Ginny’s right. Ron, was Percy still asleep?”
Ron, who shared a room with Percy, screwed up his nose. “No, but he was pretending.”
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Charlie asked Bill.
“Because these two would have tortured us until we woke up anyway,” Bill said. “And because you want to open your stocking as much as Ginny does, you big git.”
“Bill!” said Ginny, sounding like their mother.
“That’s not really a bad word, Ginny,” Bill said quickly, and trying to simultaneously glare at Charlie and the twins. The effect was probably a bit cross eyed.
Ginny cackled. “You were scared I’d tell Mummy,” she crowed.
Bill resisted the urge to weep into his stocking. “Just for that you can go and wake up Percy.”
Ginny frowned. “Get Ron to do it.”
“Make Fred and George do it,” Ron said quickly. “They’re standing up.”
The twins could move ridiculously fast. Within a second, Fred was in Bill’s bed and George was in Charlie’s. Fred had cold legs as well, and Ron squirmed, elbowing Bill painfully in the side.
Honestly, being Head Boy was nowhere near as bad as being Head Brother of this lot.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to turn the beds into one really big bed so that we can all get in comfortably. One of you lot is going to get Percy up, because until he’s here we aren’t going to open any presents.”
The effect was immediate, and Fred, George, Ron and Ginny all raced out of the room. Bill felt very sorry for Percy. He swung himself out of bed and pushed Charlie out of his. He pushed the beds together with a flick of his wand and then enlarged them so that almost all the available floor-space was taken up with one enormous bed. He enlarged the blankets for good measure, and was just about done by the time Percy was dragged into the room by the twins.
Percy shook them off once he was through the door, and glowered at them. “I was just coming,” he said.
“You’d fallen asleep again,” Ron said.
Percy sniffed. “I was resting my eyes.”
Ginny squealed when she saw the big bed, and threw herself onto it. “I want to sit near Bill,” she said. “And Charlie. But only if he doesn’t steal my presents.”
“Perce, you come here,” Bill said. “Pull up a bit of blanket.”
“Can we open the presents soon?” Ron said in a pleading voice.
“All right,” Bill said. “Everybody got their stockings?”
There was a shriek of dismay. “Mine’s gone,” said Ron.
“Oh dear, Ron,” Fred said.
“You can’t have been good after all,” said George.
“Father Christmas must’ve made a mistake.”
Ron was at an awkward age where he felt he was too old for tears but where he felt the urge to cry all the same. Bill saw his lip tremble.
“Give it back you two,” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Fred said.
“Are you making unfounded accusations, Bill?” George asked.
“How about you give it back or I curse you?” Bill said.
“And then I’ll feed the remains to Kettleburn’s Hippogriff herd,” Charlie said.
“Give it back,” Ron said.
“I think you’re being very childish,” said Percy to the room at large. He was holding his stocking very tightly in one hand, and Scabbers the rat in the other.
“It’s so sad that Ron hasn’t got his stocking, I think I’m going to crrrryyyyy,” Ginny added, having learnt early that all of her brothers would do what she wanted if it meant avoiding an onslaught of tears. Bill had once caught her ‘practicing’ crying out in the orchard. She was very good.
“All right,” Fred said, with a dirty look at Ginny. “No need to get nasty about it.”
Ginny smiled sweetly, and Ron snatched his stocking from George.
Then the seven of them set to work. The presents were little, and Bill’s contained things he needed for school, along with some of the smaller items he’d need for next year. Charlie got a new tin of broomstick polish, Percy a new case for his glasses. Fred got a packet of balloons and George a book on how to make balloon animals. Ron had new comics for his collection, and Ginny got a cuddly Puffskein toy (Mum and Dad had learnt after Ron’s Puffskein which had fallen foul of Fred and George’s Quidditch ambitions). There were nuts and clementines and a packet of sweets each, along with a wriggling sugar mouse which Bill knew that Uncle Bilius sent along each year.
Father Christmas wasn’t real, of course, and there was nothing that spectacular about the presents (although Bill couldn’t deny he was particularly fond of the sugar mice). But when he looked about him, sitting on a massive bed with his siblings huddled against the cold under the blankets, all eating nuts and shouting with laughter when Charlie dropped his sugar mouse down Fred’s pyjamas, he thought that this was possibly worth being woken up for at half past six in the morning.
2. 'Baggage' for magnolia_mama who asked for something with Hermione. I think you once gave me a prompt like this before, Mags, and I never wrote it. And now I can't find said prompt, but here we go.
Hermione twisted her hands on her lap and looked up at the seatbelt sign on the panel above. Then she turned her head to look out of the small oval window of the aeroplane. She watched the ground speed up below her, and then saw it fall away as the plane took off, moving up through the air with a rush that was nothing like riding a broomstick.
She hadn’t quite analysed her choice to take the Muggle plane to Bulgaria. It would give her time - give her owl time to get there and announce her arrival - and she felt better travelling than sitting and waiting to travel.
She tried not to think about running away. She hadn’t really analysed why she was going and where she was going and her reasons for that as well.
In the end she was going because Harry had told her to go.
When she arrived at the airport she watched the people moving through the crowded space. She saw children with brightly-coloured suitcases, and students with heavy rucksacks and business men with briefcases. She saw tourists and locals and people, a whole whirlpool of everyday life and she wondered what these ordinary people would think if they realised that one who walked among them was not as they seemed.
That she was not as she seemed. That she was …
He wouldn’t come. It had been foolish to think he might, and for once Hermione didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether she should get back onto a plane that would take her home to England and to Harry and Ron and the war, or whether she should try to find Viktor’s flat. She knew his address. Her letters had been sporadic, but she had written.
It was foolish, though, to think that the correspondence they had kept up over the years warranted his attention. They lived in such very different worlds now. Why should he want something as dark as she was impeding upon his starry life. For Bulgaria were now the holders of the Quidditch Cup, and on the day that Viktor had caught the Snitch for his country’s team, surrounded by the screams of many nations of fans, Hermione had been on British soil, fighting a British war and, maybe even at the same moment that Viktor’s hand had closed over the tiny golden ball (although this thought was vastly improbable and fanciful and unlike Hermione), Hermione had killed a man.
Hate was more frightening when you were the one hating, rather than the one being hated. Hermione thought she had hated before: she hated Voldemort; she hated those who thought that Muggles should be killed and that Muggle-borns deserved to be. Her parents had been early casualties, and Hermione thought that she hated their murderers, hated the Death Eaters who had killed her innocent parents because of her.
But she had never felt the ripping force of hatred, corrosive and evil and deadly which had been torn out of her very soul, it seemed, when she had turned standing over Ron’s inert form, and screamed out the foulest curse she knew, sending green death slamming into the Death Eater (she hadn’t then known his name) who’d had his wand on Harry.
Ron would be all right, but he was still drifting in and out of consciousness. Hermione should be with him. He would not understand.
Harry had understood. The fact that she had chosen that curse, and the fact that she’d been able to carry it out - she thought that changed her, distorted her into some form on monster. Harry had followed when she’d fled from Ron’s bedside. He’d patted her back as she retched, and he’d talked.
“It’s all right, Hermione.”
“It’s not. How can it be? I’ve even read that once you’ve performed the curse once you can do it again and again - that it’s not hard any more. It should be hard to kill someone!”
“Of course it is,” said Harry. “And look how hard it is for you. You’re not like the Death Eaters who can just kill and not be bothered by it.”
She buried her face in her hands, not wanting to talk about it and yet craving absolution.
“And if you hadn’t done something fast, I’d be gone, and so might Ron,” Harry said.
She turned, then, and pressed herself into his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath her cheek, moving with the steady rise and fall of life. Harry’s scent was familiar and comforting, and she remembered that one day Harry would have to do this too. He would have to kill (or be killed, but that was a worse thought) and when he did it he would have been planning for it for years.
“You need a break, Hermione,” Harry said. “You haven’t had time to yourself in ages. Go away for a few days. Get out of here.”
‘Here’ meant Grimmauld Place, it meant the war, it meant Britain.
“What about you and Ron?”
Harry pulled her tighter against him, still one of the few times he’d ever hugged her rather than the other way round. “We’ll still be here when you get back. You should go and see Krum.”
“Viktor?” Hermione sighed. “Ron wouldn’t like it.”
“I’ll handle Ron,” Harry said. Hermione wondered when Harry was planning to get away and have some time for himself, but she kept quiet. Harry squeezed her shoulders and released her.
“Besides,” he said. “If you get Krum to sign a Snitch for Ron, I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”
Unforgivable, Hermione thought now. The curse she had performed was unforgivable.
Viktor wasn’t coming, but she didn’t want to go home. She kept a tight grip on the small overnight bag she’d brought with her and began pushing through the crowd in the hope of finding a taxi rank.
Viktor’s apartment was at the top of a large tower building, and Hermione imagined that he might like the height. It might be like flying. She knocked on the door and stood nervously, listing all the reasons why this was a bad idea. He might be out - he’d just won the Quidditch World Cup, of course he’d be out, and if he weren’t out he might be in with friends or a friend, and in any case wouldn’t want a battle-worn girl whom he hadn’t seen for four years turning up on his doorstep.
What if he was in the bath?
But the Viktor who answered the door was fully dressed, looking casual in a set of dark green robes. He was different to the young man in Hermione’s memory. Slightly taller and much broader. He’d grown into his nose a bit more, and the surly expression which she’d discovered was shyness had gone.
He stared at her.
“Viktor, I’m sorry - you probably don’t remember me, but I-”
He cut her short. “Hermione!”
Oh, so he did remember. He even remembered the right way to say her name
He took her hand (for a fleeting horror-struck second she thought he was going to kiss it), and used it to pull her into the flat and into a hug.
“It is good to see you, Hermione. It has been too many years.”
She smiled, then, at Viktor who was simply pleased to see her. “It’s good to see you too,” she said. “I’m sorry for such short notice - did my owl even get here?”
He shook his head. “I had no owl,” he said, “but you are most velcome to be here. Vould you like a drink?”
“A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you.” She followed him into a compact kitchen where he filled a kettle and brought it to the boil. “I’m sorry about the owl,” she said. “I must have underestimated how long it would take to get here. She’s usually very reliable. Oh, well done on your win, by the way.”
Viktor shrugged. “Pah, Qvidditch.” He filled two cups with hot water and added leaves which released a heavy fragrance into the room. “Qvidditch is - it is good to vin, of course, but it is not important. Not compared to vat is happening wiz you.”
The war.
Hermione bowed her head over her cup and watched the leaves floating in spirals, leaving trails of colour behind them.
“The war isn’t a very nice topic of conversation,” she said at last.
He looked at her keenly for a moment, then shrugged again. “So, vat vould you like to do zis afternoon?” he asked. “And for how long vould you like to stay?”
“Oh, well, I don’t need to stay at all if it’s a bother,” Hermione said, conscious again that she had turned up at an international Quidditch star’s flat unannounced. “I could find a hotel for a night. I can’t stay long. Ron is - he was badly hurt in the last fight and I need to get back to him.”
Viktor nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I am sorry to hear that Ron vas hurt. Please, you can stay here tonight. I haff no plans.”
He didn’t ask her why she was here, and Hermione was grateful. They spent the afternoon at an exhibition in a local art gallery that Viktor claimed he wanted to see. Hermione wandered through the rooms and tried to lose herself in the paintings. She almost succeeded, the artist was a good one, and the wistful-faced women in one of his large canvases beckoned to her, as though calling to one of their own.
When she found herself in a room full of battle scenes, Hermione was glad that the paintings in the gallery did not speak, as she could not have borne the cries. The subjects were legendary battles. She recognised some from Bible stories she’d read as a child. There were no wands, no flashes of green light, but even so, the twitching of a felled horse, the grey look of pain on a young man’s face - Ron’s skin was so pale against the mud where he lay - these brought her too closely back and they left the art gallery soon after. Viktor did not ask her what was wrong, but took her to a small café where they drank strong coffee and ate some form of thick, spiced stew.
When they got back to the flat Viktor lit a fire and added a powder to it which burnt a darker red, and which made the air in Hermione’s lungs feel clean and clear.
“Ve can talk,” Viktor said, “Ven you are vanting to.”
Hermione took a deep breath and talked.
Viktor said nothing for a few moments after she had finished. “Ah vell,” he said at last. “Did you find out who ze man vas?”
Hermione nodded. “Dolohov,” she said. “He, he wasn’t very nice. He’d tried to kill us all before. He was the one who killed Ron’s uncles in the last war.” She twisted an errant strand of hair round her finger. “He killed a lot of people,” she said, trying to make her voice sound strong and matter-of-fact and competent, and not the quavery scared little voice it sounded like in her head. “I’m not … sorry … that he’s dead. I just wish I hadn’t killed him.”
Viktor leant forward, facing her so that his clasped hands nearly rested on her knees. “He vould haff died,” he said. “Or he vould haff been put in prison. Or given ze kiss from a Dementor.”
“Only if our side wins,” Hermione said. It was something she never would have let herself say to Harry or Ron. They had to win, or else Harry was dead and probably the rest of them as well.
“Naturally,” Viktor said. “But your side - or razzer our side vill vin in ze end. And if I vere zis Dolohov I vould choose a qvick death.”
“Our side?”
Viktor nodded. “Ven I vas seventeen I signed a five year contract viz the Bulgarian Qvidditch team. I had to play viz zem until ze Vorld Cup. At ze time, Qvidditch vas all I vanted to do. But now I am not a Qvidditch player. I am free now to help viz ze var.”
“But, Viktor, it’s not your war. Voldemort’s only focusing on Britain.”
He sat up straight. “Ze man vas called Dolohov,” he said, spitting out Dolohov’s name so that it sounded like a curse. “Zat is not a British name. Karkaroff too. Who knows if zis Voldemort vill be happy wiz one land if he conquers Britain. I liked Diggory. I like your friend Harry. I haff many reasons vhy it is my var.” He looked at her with a sad smile. “Zen zere is you, Hermione.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Viktor. I-”
He held up his arm and she fell silent. “No, I know. But you vere very kind at Hogvarts, and ve haff been good friends, I zink. So it vill alvays be my var a little bit for you.”
Hermione nodded, but to that she could think of nothing to say.
Viktor came with her back to England the next day, and at once went to talk to Harry. Hermione hoped that the two of them would have time to talk a little about Quidditch: Harry needed a break as much as she had done, and hearing about the Quidditch World Cup final from the winning Seeker might take his mind off things.
She went straight to Ron’s bedside. Ginny was there, yawning, and she looked at Hermione with weary eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Ginny said. Hermione at once felt the mantle of responsibility about her shoulders and found it oddly comforting. She was needed to help protect people, to help fight. Even after performing something so vile as the Killing Curse, Hermione could still do things that were good.
And this was brought home to her when Ron stretched in his sleep, muttered, ‘My knee’, and rolled over, still asleep, with a smile on his lips, and Hermione’s hand in his.
3. 'The Last Word' for bringandfly who asked for drunken Sirius trying to persuade drunken James that Lily isn't the girl for him.
It was shaping up to be a good Christmas.
Well, James reflected as he watched a weeping girl being comforted by a group of friends and tried to remember the names of the casualties of last night’s attack, ‘good’ was a relative term these days.
He went over to the girl, and her friends drew away from her, looking relieved. James’s knees cracked as he knelt.
“Is your last name Frobisher?” he asked. He wished he could remember her first name.
She nodded. “Megan,” she supplied, following it with a large sniff. James felt very inadequate at this sort of thing, even though it happened too frequently. At least this was a younger student - the older ones couldn’t be comforted so easily.
“Do you have a brother or sister at the school, Megan?” James asked.
She shook her head. “N-no. My brother’s, my brother’s …”
James didn’t have to ask. He put both his hands on the little girl’s shoulders and wished that Lily was about to provide the right kind of comfort.
“Do you have a grown up to go and stay with?” he asked.
She sniffed again. “My auntie,” she said.
James breathed out. “All right,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “It’s a horrible horrible thing that’s happened, Megan, and you’re going to have to be very brave. Your auntie will help you. And you’ve got to help your auntie as well, all right?”
Megan Frobisher wiped her eyes with her fisted hands and nodded grimly. James sent her back to her friends and carried on down the corridor, thinking that for one more family Christmas was not going to be a happy time. And for how many families would Christmas be the last good time they had together? How many families were going to be destroyed? He couldn’t stop himself from hoping that his wouldn’t be one of them.
It had already happened to Remus. Greyback had killed Remus’s parents at the last full moon. Remus, of course, was too old to be comforted with vague talk of bravery, and James had felt even more helpless than usual in the face of his friend’s grief. Remus had not slept properly since; he’d been spending his nights staying up with the recently-bereaved, and this was another reason for James to feel worried. Remus was so pale these days that it looked as though he’d just transformed.
Even so, Christmas was going to be good. James was determined, and besides, Sirius had said he had a Plan, which was always worth a laugh. In his Head Boy capacity, James had offered to stay at the school, but it turned out that everyone was going home - or to an approximation of home - and so James, Sirius and Remus were going to stay in the house that Sirius had bought over the summer. They’d go to James’s parents’ house for Christmas dinner, but apart from that they would just be themselves, together. No responsibilities, no one looking up to them. Not even Peter with his wide-eyed belief that James would make everything better in the end. Peter’s mother was insisting that Peter came home to her. Under the circumstances, James could see why. It was a time to be together with loved ones because by next Christmas they might no longer be there.
He wondered if it would be all right to give Lily her Christmas present.
*
“This is the Plan,” said Sirius grandly. It was Christmas Eve and the three of them had spent most of the evening eating mince pies and drinking mulled mead. Remus was stoking the fire, and James was enchanting a couple of the fairies to waltz across the ceiling. Both of them stopped to look at Sirius.
“Sirius,” said Remus in a gentle tone, “that’s not a plan. That’s a bottle.”
“Of booze,” James added.
“It’s a bottle of Offalbright’s Oblivion,” Sirius said. He plonked it down on the table. “And it’s a Plan if I say it’s a Plan.”
“It’s not one of your better ones,” James said, and ducked the hex that Sirius sent his way.
Sirius summoned three new glasses, which zoomed to his hand rather faster than he seemed to have anticipated. He blinked at them stupidly for a moment. “Excellent,” he said at last, and poured a heavy dose into each glass, sliding the largest along to Remus.
James looked at his. The liquid was bright purple and fizzed slightly. The fumes from it were already making him feel even more light-headed.
“Drink up, Moony,” said Sirius.
Remus examined his drink and seemed to find it as appetizing as James did. “You’re trying to get me drunk,” he said to Sirius at last. “And it won’t work, remember.”
Sirius rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, we know you can drink a giant under the table,” he said.
“If you could find a big enough table,” James put in.
“Even so, Moony. It’s Christmas.”
“Eve.”
“Christmas Eve. And it’s not polite to be more sober than your host.”
“Come on,” said James, sitting up. “We can all die together.”
Remus gave his ‘I’ve tolerated you for six years so I might as well do it for a bit longer’ look, and raised his glass.
And as one, they drank.
James didn’t know what dying felt like, but it must feel something like this fiery burn sliding down his throat, steaming up his nostrils and coiling in a smouldering heap in his stomach.
Sirius poured out another shot each. James drank again, and he had been wrong. This wasn’t dying, this was living, living in a world where colours were bright and pain was a thing far away.
“See,” said Remus. “No difference.”
“Remus,” Sirius said, very firmly. “You will drink. You will drink some more. And after that you will drink again.”
Remus drank. James drank too, and the world became an even better place for the next hour or so. But he didn’t drink as much as Remus who, quite suddenly, lay down on the rug and began to snore.
Sirius beamed. “Excellent,” he said again. “I thought as much.”
James prodded Remus with his shoe. Remus grunted but did not wake up.
“He’s asleep,” he said, before realising that this observation was possibly unnecessary.
“Exactly,” said Sirius, who sounded as though not only was the world a wonderful place, but that he, Sirius, had just been crowned King of it. This thought actually sobered James up slightly in its hideousness.
“You made him do that,” James said.
Sirius smirked. “Werewolves can still pass out under the table.”
“That was the Plan wasn’t it?”
“Yup. It had simplicity and alcohol on its side.”
James laughed, and for a while didn’t think that he would be able to stop laughing. He thought that he was drunk, and that he wasn’t doing any good drunk, that he couldn’t help when he was drunk, and he was unable to push away the image of Lily’s half-amused and half-disapproving face if she knew what he was doing now. He took a long slug of his drink.
Sirius flopped onto the sofa next to him and slung an arm clumsily about James’s shoulders. James didn’t shrug him off, but leant his head against Sirius’s, feeling slightly dizzy and very tired.
“You’re thinking about Evans,” Sirius said, his voice slurred and next to James’s ear.
“Am not,” James said.
“Thinking of Evans,” Sirius repeated. “You always do, and you pull your sorrowful hero face.”
“Do not,” said James, and he did not think of the shape of Lily’s mouth when she laughed. And she’d be laughing at them now, he was sure.
“Yeah, you do,” Sirius said. “I just don’t know why.” He pushed James’s shoulder. “She’s stupid woman. Not worth you.”
James yawned. “Nah. Evans’s all right.” Her eyes were a different shade of green when she laughed as well.
“No, really,” Sirius said, and he shifted on the sofa to give James an overly earnest look. “Really,” he said again. “You’re all moony - ha ha, Moony - over her, and she’s not interested.”
“I know,” James muttered.
“But I mean,” Sirius waved his arm about, “she’s not worth the bother. She’s not even that good looking.”
James felt a lot less sleepy. “She is! She’s the best looking girl in our year.”
Sirius snorted. “Her nose is freckly.”
“I like freckles.”
“An’ her hair’s all red.”
“I like red hair.”
“And her bum’s too big.”
“There’s nothing wrong with …” James stopped short. He didn’t want to admit to the amount he’d watched the way Lily’s hips moved when she walked, her robes swishing about her legs. He definitely wasn’t going to mention the way Lily sometimes wore those tight trousers. Jeans. Sirius was never to know James’s feelings about the jeans. And nor was Lily. She’d hex him to pieces, probably.
Sirius cackled. “I know you fancy her, Prongs, but can’t you choose someone better?”
There’s no one better, James wanted to say, but didn’t.
Sirius pinched James’s cheek.
“Ere, gerroff,” James spluttered, pushing Sirius off the sofa. “You’re not my aunt Juliana.”
“You’re a handsome boy, Jamesie,” Sirius said in his best Aunt Juliana voice. “You could get someone good. Evans is no good. ‘Member the way she used to shout?”
Sirius screeched in what James guessed was an impression of Lily shouting. Whatever it was hurt James’s head. James kicked him.
“Sh’only shouted ‘cause we were idiots.”
“We were just havin’ fun.”
“Yeah. Funny idiots.” James slid onto the floor to join Sirius, and Sirius immediately hooked his legs over James’s stomach.
“She don’t want go out with you anyway.”
“I know.” James watched the ceiling spin above him. Fairies waltzed in front of his eyes. “Don’t want to talk about her,” he said.
Sirius pressed his heel into James’s side. “Okay,” he said.
There was a pause.
“Marlene fancies you,” he said.
James groaned. “Shut up. No she doesn’t.”
“She might. She likes you at least.”
“Evans likes me. Sometimes.”
Lily liked him lots of times, James told himself. Only the other day she’d called him an arrogant toe-rag and not mentioned the bullying part at all. And she’d been smiling when she said it.
And then his chest had gone all tight and there had been something burning in his stomach like with the Offalbright’s Oblivion because his head had felt light, but not, because he hadn’t felt dizzy or sick or drunk. He’d just felt good and that was so rare these days.
He let a single word pulse through his body.
“S’not even funny now, Prongs. Jus’ wish you’d give up,” Sirius murmured before his snores joined Remus’s.
*
James woke up feeling supremely uncomfortable owing to Sirius’s legs on his stomach, the infestation of Cornish pixies rampaging about his head, the taste of old socks in his mouth and the tingling Lily Evans feeling in his veins.
He pushed Sirius off and staggered to the cupboard which was well-stocked with Hangover Potion. Having gulped that down (and fought to keep it down), James felt rather better. But he’d also decided something between falling asleep and waking up, and he knew he had to act on it before the others - still snoring - woke up and prevented him from doing something so monumentally foolish.
Because Apparating to Lily Evans’ house on Christmas morning was a very stupid thing to do.
It felt even more stupid when he was staring at the most vicious-looking Muggle he’d ever seen. It was an icy morning, and James had Apparated to the doorstep without a coat, so he was already chilly, but Lily’s sister - he assumed it was her sister - had a glare that seemed to freeze the blood in James’s veins.
“Lily!” the girl shrieked over her shoulder. “There’s some sort of vagabond waiting for you.”
There were days when James would have minded being called a vagabond, but today was not one of them. He hadn’t changed before he left: the ice-eyed Muggle probably had a point.
He thought vaguely of body odour and rumpled clothes and bad hair and good impressions, but then Lily appeared at the door - long red hair and blue jeans - and James’s capacity for coherent thought was cleared away for a few seconds.
He blinked.
“Er, Merry Christmas.”
She looked puzzled, but she was not frowning, and definitely not shouting (ha, take that, Sirius), so James risked a smile.
He got one in return. “Do you want to come in?” Lily asked.
By the time he’d got through the door her expression had changed to one of fear. How bad was his hair?
“It’s not bad news, is it?” she asked. He could tell that she was trying to sound off-hand, but she failed, and he loved her for it.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Er, sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. Shouldn’t have come, really. Bad idea. I just, er, forgot to give you your present.”
Her expression changed from fear to embarrassed pleasure. “Thanks. You, um, didn’t have to, you know.”
“I know,” he mumbled, pulling the battered box out of his trouser pocket. “I wanted to.”
She took the gift and slid her fingers under the wrapping paper.
James felt a bit more confident. “After all, you need some reward for putting up with me as Head Boy this year. You were dreading it, weren’t you?”
She did not deny it, but looked up from the present. “You haven’t been too bad, James,” she said, and grinned. “Rewards are always welcome, though.”
The last of the wrapping paper fell away, and her face went pink as she held up the slim golden bracelet.
James felt his skin heat up too, because she must know now. Jewellery wasn’t something the Head Boy gave to the Head Girl. It wasn’t even something that one friend would give to another. Not like this. It was a present from a boyfriend, someone in love. The shop assistant had joked about James’s ‘young lady’ when he’d bought it. But he’d had to buy it, because he couldn’t stop imagining the gold band encircling Lily’s freckled wrist.
“It’s beautiful,” she said in a small voice. She slid it over her hand, and it fell to her arm, and James stared and felt his heart pound.
She reached out with her braceleted arm and touched his hand.
“It’s - thank you,” she said.
He looked away. “It’s nothing,” he said in a decided voice. “We’ve - well, I’ve probably annoyed you enough over the years. I wanted to tell you that - that’s all over now.”
Lily examined the bracelet again. “You can’t be telling me you’re buying bracelets for everyone you’ve ever annoyed,” she said. “Severus Snape would be appalled,”and she laughed again. Her eyes did look lighter when she laughed.
James shifted his weight. “All the pestering for dates, I mean,” he said. Now that she had the bracelet, now that she must know how he felt, he needed to offer some sort of atonement. Maybe after this he would feel more able to take Sirius’s advice. Maybe he would be able to move away from Lily and move on.
Somehow, though, he didn’t think so.
Lily wasn’t laughing any more. “No more pestering for dates?” she asked, her voice light. “You haven’t pestered for ages.”
James allowed himself a grin. “What, missed my charms, have you?”
Lily smiled. “They added meaning to my life, Potter. You must know that.”
He gave the expected response: “I always thought as much,” with a teasing expression, and tried to ignore the feeling that was like the dying of hope.
He hadn’t known hope existed. He’d become reconciled last year some time that Potter charm and wanting something to be so was not enough. He’d never be enough when it came to Lily.
And he was still standing face to face with her.
“Er, I should go,” he said.
“Wait. You haven’t had my present.”
He had begun to turn towards the door but stopped, frozen in a half twist. “You got me something?”
“Well, no.” She was red again. “It’s a made up one. I thought you could ask me out again. For old time’s sake, you know.”
“Don’t be daft, Evans.”
“Come on, one last time.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when I asked you out.”
She went pink again. “I think I can stomach it once more.”
“Right.”
“Make sure you make it a good one.”
James swept his hand through his very tangled hair, and tried to think himself back into his fifteen-year-old self, when asking Evans out was a sport with an underlying touch of panic because of the feelings he couldn’t control. He still couldn’t change his feelings but he controlled his behaviour much better now.
Fifteen. Cocky. Charming.
He smiled widely and stepped forwards. “The very last time I ask you out has got to be special, Evans. It’s the end of an era.”
She folded her arms across her chest (it seemed as though she was remembering her behaviour at fifteen as well). “I prefer it when you call me Lily.”
“When I asked you out I called you Evans.”
“You said this would be special.”
He held up his hands. “All right, then. Lily. Oh beauteous one,” he began, trying to get into the swing of the declarations he had been fond of making to her in front of large crowds. “Oh flower of my heart,” he said, and then stopped. He couldn’t. He shrugged.
“Lily, will you go out with me?”
She didn’t say no right away, as he’d been expecting. Instead she was looking at him with her bottom lip caught between her teeth, as though he was a potion and she was trying to work out a missing ingredient.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, “that for tradition’s sake, I should say no.”
James felt the need to speak very carefully. “No - or some variation thereof - was the traditional answer,” he said.
She still wore that considering look.
“What would you say if I said yes?”
Many many different words and feelings rose up in James at once, and he pushed them away in case it was a joke.
“I might say ‘Who are you and what have you done with Lily Evans’,” he said.
She pushed him. “I don’t like that answer.” She left her hand on his chest.
“How about, ‘took you long enough to come to your senses?’”
She laughed and shook her head, but now she was close enough for her hair to brush his nose when it moved.
“How about this?” And he kissed her, and she was kissing him back, and somewhere in James’s mind he thought that this had quite possibly been worth waiting for, and that it was shaping up to be an excellent Christmas, and that Sirius had been so very very wrong.
*
Sirius and Remus were still asleep when James burst through Sirius’s door, but he did not allow them to stay that way for long. He did, because he was a good friend in an exceptionally good mood, bring the Hangover Potion from the cupboard for them first.
Slowly, Sirius and Remus pulled themselves into sitting positions and swore at James, who pressed mugs of potion into their hands.
When he was sufficiently recovered, Remus looked at Sirius with bleary eyes.
“I thought you had a plan,” he said, and yawned in the satisfied manner of one who has slept for a whole night through.
Sirius gulped at his potion and thrust the mug back at James.
Then he smiled. “Been to see Lily, Prongs?” he asked. He turned to Remus. “I had two Plans,” he said, with the air of one who has just been crowned winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award. “And they both worked perfectly.”
Please feel free to sign up if you would like a story (although most won't be as long as these ones, I was bored today - can you tell?). Bart, I am working on yours, but I just don't think I am dirty innuendo-minded enough to do it justice! We shall see.
*Hugs to all*
P.S. The Swiss don't have mince pies. Can you imagine the horror?
Please note, none of these are betaed or even particularly polished. They're just written.
1. A Very Weasley Christmas, for erised1810 who wanted Weasley Christmas before Ron goes to Hogwarts.
Weasley child ages: Bill = 18, Charlie = 16, Percy = 12, Twins = 10, Ron = 8, Ginny = 7
Christmas started, as it always did, with Ron and Ginny racing mop-haired and gleeful-eyed into Bill and Charlie’s bedroom.
Bill stirred as he heard the door crash open and considered doing a Banishing Charm on his younger siblings now that he was allowed to do magic out of school.
“Buggrit all,” Charlie groaned.
“Charlie,” Bill reproved automatically. He could quite sympathise, though, and it was only all the years of being told off for swearing in front of the younger children that stopped him from doing the same. He wasn’t in the mood to be woken up and bounced all over either, but it couldn’t be helped.
He wished that being woken up at half past six on Christmas morning was in the big brother job description but it wasn’t, and there it was.
“D’you little twerps realise what time it is?” Charlie asked, even as he rolled over in bed to allow Ginny to clamber under the blankets with him.
“It’s Christmas time,” Ron said in Bill’s ear, and soon Ron’s cold legs were pressed against Bill’s warm ones.
“You’re a horrible child,” Bill told him. Ron was unabashed.
“No I’m not. I can’t be horrid because Father Christmas came, and if I was horrid he wouldn’t have come, would he?”
“Oh please,” came a voice from the doorway, and Charlie groaned again.
“You can’t mean,”
“You really believe,”
“In Father Christmas,” the twins finished together. Both, Bill noticed, were carrying their own stockings.
“Of course we believe in Father Christmas,” Ginny said fiercely. She sprang out of Charlie’s bed and stood in front of the twins with her fists raised, as though threatening to pummel anyone who said otherwise.
Bill thought it was sweet. His little sister was prepared to uphold her childhood innocence by using physical violence. They’d raised her well. Ron, however, hadn’t been quite as sure as Ginny about Father Christmas this year, and Bill knew, because he could remember Charlie and Percy and Fred and George all doing the same, that this was the last Christmas Ron would have before some of the magic of his world would leave him. Ron was looking worried now, so Bill gave Ron his best ‘trust me, I’m your big brother’ grin, and sent the twins his well-practiced ‘shut up, because I’m your big brother’ glare.
“Sorry, Ginny,” said George.
“Just our Christmas joke,” Fred said.
Ginny gave them a final glare.
“I believe in Father Christmas,” Charlie said from his bed, where he was pretending to rifle through Ginny’s stocking. “Marvellous bloke. I’m going to save up and buy one of his flying reindeer.”
Ginny giggled and went back to Charlie’s bed to reclaim her stocking. “We have to wait for Percy,” she told him, slapping his hand away from the top present.
“Ginny’s right. Ron, was Percy still asleep?”
Ron, who shared a room with Percy, screwed up his nose. “No, but he was pretending.”
“Why didn’t we think of that?” Charlie asked Bill.
“Because these two would have tortured us until we woke up anyway,” Bill said. “And because you want to open your stocking as much as Ginny does, you big git.”
“Bill!” said Ginny, sounding like their mother.
“That’s not really a bad word, Ginny,” Bill said quickly, and trying to simultaneously glare at Charlie and the twins. The effect was probably a bit cross eyed.
Ginny cackled. “You were scared I’d tell Mummy,” she crowed.
Bill resisted the urge to weep into his stocking. “Just for that you can go and wake up Percy.”
Ginny frowned. “Get Ron to do it.”
“Make Fred and George do it,” Ron said quickly. “They’re standing up.”
The twins could move ridiculously fast. Within a second, Fred was in Bill’s bed and George was in Charlie’s. Fred had cold legs as well, and Ron squirmed, elbowing Bill painfully in the side.
Honestly, being Head Boy was nowhere near as bad as being Head Brother of this lot.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to turn the beds into one really big bed so that we can all get in comfortably. One of you lot is going to get Percy up, because until he’s here we aren’t going to open any presents.”
The effect was immediate, and Fred, George, Ron and Ginny all raced out of the room. Bill felt very sorry for Percy. He swung himself out of bed and pushed Charlie out of his. He pushed the beds together with a flick of his wand and then enlarged them so that almost all the available floor-space was taken up with one enormous bed. He enlarged the blankets for good measure, and was just about done by the time Percy was dragged into the room by the twins.
Percy shook them off once he was through the door, and glowered at them. “I was just coming,” he said.
“You’d fallen asleep again,” Ron said.
Percy sniffed. “I was resting my eyes.”
Ginny squealed when she saw the big bed, and threw herself onto it. “I want to sit near Bill,” she said. “And Charlie. But only if he doesn’t steal my presents.”
“Perce, you come here,” Bill said. “Pull up a bit of blanket.”
“Can we open the presents soon?” Ron said in a pleading voice.
“All right,” Bill said. “Everybody got their stockings?”
There was a shriek of dismay. “Mine’s gone,” said Ron.
“Oh dear, Ron,” Fred said.
“You can’t have been good after all,” said George.
“Father Christmas must’ve made a mistake.”
Ron was at an awkward age where he felt he was too old for tears but where he felt the urge to cry all the same. Bill saw his lip tremble.
“Give it back you two,” he said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Fred said.
“Are you making unfounded accusations, Bill?” George asked.
“How about you give it back or I curse you?” Bill said.
“And then I’ll feed the remains to Kettleburn’s Hippogriff herd,” Charlie said.
“Give it back,” Ron said.
“I think you’re being very childish,” said Percy to the room at large. He was holding his stocking very tightly in one hand, and Scabbers the rat in the other.
“It’s so sad that Ron hasn’t got his stocking, I think I’m going to crrrryyyyy,” Ginny added, having learnt early that all of her brothers would do what she wanted if it meant avoiding an onslaught of tears. Bill had once caught her ‘practicing’ crying out in the orchard. She was very good.
“All right,” Fred said, with a dirty look at Ginny. “No need to get nasty about it.”
Ginny smiled sweetly, and Ron snatched his stocking from George.
Then the seven of them set to work. The presents were little, and Bill’s contained things he needed for school, along with some of the smaller items he’d need for next year. Charlie got a new tin of broomstick polish, Percy a new case for his glasses. Fred got a packet of balloons and George a book on how to make balloon animals. Ron had new comics for his collection, and Ginny got a cuddly Puffskein toy (Mum and Dad had learnt after Ron’s Puffskein which had fallen foul of Fred and George’s Quidditch ambitions). There were nuts and clementines and a packet of sweets each, along with a wriggling sugar mouse which Bill knew that Uncle Bilius sent along each year.
Father Christmas wasn’t real, of course, and there was nothing that spectacular about the presents (although Bill couldn’t deny he was particularly fond of the sugar mice). But when he looked about him, sitting on a massive bed with his siblings huddled against the cold under the blankets, all eating nuts and shouting with laughter when Charlie dropped his sugar mouse down Fred’s pyjamas, he thought that this was possibly worth being woken up for at half past six in the morning.
2. 'Baggage' for magnolia_mama who asked for something with Hermione. I think you once gave me a prompt like this before, Mags, and I never wrote it. And now I can't find said prompt, but here we go.
Hermione twisted her hands on her lap and looked up at the seatbelt sign on the panel above. Then she turned her head to look out of the small oval window of the aeroplane. She watched the ground speed up below her, and then saw it fall away as the plane took off, moving up through the air with a rush that was nothing like riding a broomstick.
She hadn’t quite analysed her choice to take the Muggle plane to Bulgaria. It would give her time - give her owl time to get there and announce her arrival - and she felt better travelling than sitting and waiting to travel.
She tried not to think about running away. She hadn’t really analysed why she was going and where she was going and her reasons for that as well.
In the end she was going because Harry had told her to go.
When she arrived at the airport she watched the people moving through the crowded space. She saw children with brightly-coloured suitcases, and students with heavy rucksacks and business men with briefcases. She saw tourists and locals and people, a whole whirlpool of everyday life and she wondered what these ordinary people would think if they realised that one who walked among them was not as they seemed.
That she was not as she seemed. That she was …
He wouldn’t come. It had been foolish to think he might, and for once Hermione didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether she should get back onto a plane that would take her home to England and to Harry and Ron and the war, or whether she should try to find Viktor’s flat. She knew his address. Her letters had been sporadic, but she had written.
It was foolish, though, to think that the correspondence they had kept up over the years warranted his attention. They lived in such very different worlds now. Why should he want something as dark as she was impeding upon his starry life. For Bulgaria were now the holders of the Quidditch Cup, and on the day that Viktor had caught the Snitch for his country’s team, surrounded by the screams of many nations of fans, Hermione had been on British soil, fighting a British war and, maybe even at the same moment that Viktor’s hand had closed over the tiny golden ball (although this thought was vastly improbable and fanciful and unlike Hermione), Hermione had killed a man.
Hate was more frightening when you were the one hating, rather than the one being hated. Hermione thought she had hated before: she hated Voldemort; she hated those who thought that Muggles should be killed and that Muggle-borns deserved to be. Her parents had been early casualties, and Hermione thought that she hated their murderers, hated the Death Eaters who had killed her innocent parents because of her.
But she had never felt the ripping force of hatred, corrosive and evil and deadly which had been torn out of her very soul, it seemed, when she had turned standing over Ron’s inert form, and screamed out the foulest curse she knew, sending green death slamming into the Death Eater (she hadn’t then known his name) who’d had his wand on Harry.
Ron would be all right, but he was still drifting in and out of consciousness. Hermione should be with him. He would not understand.
Harry had understood. The fact that she had chosen that curse, and the fact that she’d been able to carry it out - she thought that changed her, distorted her into some form on monster. Harry had followed when she’d fled from Ron’s bedside. He’d patted her back as she retched, and he’d talked.
“It’s all right, Hermione.”
“It’s not. How can it be? I’ve even read that once you’ve performed the curse once you can do it again and again - that it’s not hard any more. It should be hard to kill someone!”
“Of course it is,” said Harry. “And look how hard it is for you. You’re not like the Death Eaters who can just kill and not be bothered by it.”
She buried her face in her hands, not wanting to talk about it and yet craving absolution.
“And if you hadn’t done something fast, I’d be gone, and so might Ron,” Harry said.
She turned, then, and pressed herself into his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath her cheek, moving with the steady rise and fall of life. Harry’s scent was familiar and comforting, and she remembered that one day Harry would have to do this too. He would have to kill (or be killed, but that was a worse thought) and when he did it he would have been planning for it for years.
“You need a break, Hermione,” Harry said. “You haven’t had time to yourself in ages. Go away for a few days. Get out of here.”
‘Here’ meant Grimmauld Place, it meant the war, it meant Britain.
“What about you and Ron?”
Harry pulled her tighter against him, still one of the few times he’d ever hugged her rather than the other way round. “We’ll still be here when you get back. You should go and see Krum.”
“Viktor?” Hermione sighed. “Ron wouldn’t like it.”
“I’ll handle Ron,” Harry said. Hermione wondered when Harry was planning to get away and have some time for himself, but she kept quiet. Harry squeezed her shoulders and released her.
“Besides,” he said. “If you get Krum to sign a Snitch for Ron, I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”
Unforgivable, Hermione thought now. The curse she had performed was unforgivable.
Viktor wasn’t coming, but she didn’t want to go home. She kept a tight grip on the small overnight bag she’d brought with her and began pushing through the crowd in the hope of finding a taxi rank.
Viktor’s apartment was at the top of a large tower building, and Hermione imagined that he might like the height. It might be like flying. She knocked on the door and stood nervously, listing all the reasons why this was a bad idea. He might be out - he’d just won the Quidditch World Cup, of course he’d be out, and if he weren’t out he might be in with friends or a friend, and in any case wouldn’t want a battle-worn girl whom he hadn’t seen for four years turning up on his doorstep.
What if he was in the bath?
But the Viktor who answered the door was fully dressed, looking casual in a set of dark green robes. He was different to the young man in Hermione’s memory. Slightly taller and much broader. He’d grown into his nose a bit more, and the surly expression which she’d discovered was shyness had gone.
He stared at her.
“Viktor, I’m sorry - you probably don’t remember me, but I-”
He cut her short. “Hermione!”
Oh, so he did remember. He even remembered the right way to say her name
He took her hand (for a fleeting horror-struck second she thought he was going to kiss it), and used it to pull her into the flat and into a hug.
“It is good to see you, Hermione. It has been too many years.”
She smiled, then, at Viktor who was simply pleased to see her. “It’s good to see you too,” she said. “I’m sorry for such short notice - did my owl even get here?”
He shook his head. “I had no owl,” he said, “but you are most velcome to be here. Vould you like a drink?”
“A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you.” She followed him into a compact kitchen where he filled a kettle and brought it to the boil. “I’m sorry about the owl,” she said. “I must have underestimated how long it would take to get here. She’s usually very reliable. Oh, well done on your win, by the way.”
Viktor shrugged. “Pah, Qvidditch.” He filled two cups with hot water and added leaves which released a heavy fragrance into the room. “Qvidditch is - it is good to vin, of course, but it is not important. Not compared to vat is happening wiz you.”
The war.
Hermione bowed her head over her cup and watched the leaves floating in spirals, leaving trails of colour behind them.
“The war isn’t a very nice topic of conversation,” she said at last.
He looked at her keenly for a moment, then shrugged again. “So, vat vould you like to do zis afternoon?” he asked. “And for how long vould you like to stay?”
“Oh, well, I don’t need to stay at all if it’s a bother,” Hermione said, conscious again that she had turned up at an international Quidditch star’s flat unannounced. “I could find a hotel for a night. I can’t stay long. Ron is - he was badly hurt in the last fight and I need to get back to him.”
Viktor nodded. “Of course,” he said. “I am sorry to hear that Ron vas hurt. Please, you can stay here tonight. I haff no plans.”
He didn’t ask her why she was here, and Hermione was grateful. They spent the afternoon at an exhibition in a local art gallery that Viktor claimed he wanted to see. Hermione wandered through the rooms and tried to lose herself in the paintings. She almost succeeded, the artist was a good one, and the wistful-faced women in one of his large canvases beckoned to her, as though calling to one of their own.
When she found herself in a room full of battle scenes, Hermione was glad that the paintings in the gallery did not speak, as she could not have borne the cries. The subjects were legendary battles. She recognised some from Bible stories she’d read as a child. There were no wands, no flashes of green light, but even so, the twitching of a felled horse, the grey look of pain on a young man’s face - Ron’s skin was so pale against the mud where he lay - these brought her too closely back and they left the art gallery soon after. Viktor did not ask her what was wrong, but took her to a small café where they drank strong coffee and ate some form of thick, spiced stew.
When they got back to the flat Viktor lit a fire and added a powder to it which burnt a darker red, and which made the air in Hermione’s lungs feel clean and clear.
“Ve can talk,” Viktor said, “Ven you are vanting to.”
Hermione took a deep breath and talked.
Viktor said nothing for a few moments after she had finished. “Ah vell,” he said at last. “Did you find out who ze man vas?”
Hermione nodded. “Dolohov,” she said. “He, he wasn’t very nice. He’d tried to kill us all before. He was the one who killed Ron’s uncles in the last war.” She twisted an errant strand of hair round her finger. “He killed a lot of people,” she said, trying to make her voice sound strong and matter-of-fact and competent, and not the quavery scared little voice it sounded like in her head. “I’m not … sorry … that he’s dead. I just wish I hadn’t killed him.”
Viktor leant forward, facing her so that his clasped hands nearly rested on her knees. “He vould haff died,” he said. “Or he vould haff been put in prison. Or given ze kiss from a Dementor.”
“Only if our side wins,” Hermione said. It was something she never would have let herself say to Harry or Ron. They had to win, or else Harry was dead and probably the rest of them as well.
“Naturally,” Viktor said. “But your side - or razzer our side vill vin in ze end. And if I vere zis Dolohov I vould choose a qvick death.”
“Our side?”
Viktor nodded. “Ven I vas seventeen I signed a five year contract viz the Bulgarian Qvidditch team. I had to play viz zem until ze Vorld Cup. At ze time, Qvidditch vas all I vanted to do. But now I am not a Qvidditch player. I am free now to help viz ze var.”
“But, Viktor, it’s not your war. Voldemort’s only focusing on Britain.”
He sat up straight. “Ze man vas called Dolohov,” he said, spitting out Dolohov’s name so that it sounded like a curse. “Zat is not a British name. Karkaroff too. Who knows if zis Voldemort vill be happy wiz one land if he conquers Britain. I liked Diggory. I like your friend Harry. I haff many reasons vhy it is my var.” He looked at her with a sad smile. “Zen zere is you, Hermione.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, Viktor. I-”
He held up his arm and she fell silent. “No, I know. But you vere very kind at Hogvarts, and ve haff been good friends, I zink. So it vill alvays be my var a little bit for you.”
Hermione nodded, but to that she could think of nothing to say.
Viktor came with her back to England the next day, and at once went to talk to Harry. Hermione hoped that the two of them would have time to talk a little about Quidditch: Harry needed a break as much as she had done, and hearing about the Quidditch World Cup final from the winning Seeker might take his mind off things.
She went straight to Ron’s bedside. Ginny was there, yawning, and she looked at Hermione with weary eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Ginny said. Hermione at once felt the mantle of responsibility about her shoulders and found it oddly comforting. She was needed to help protect people, to help fight. Even after performing something so vile as the Killing Curse, Hermione could still do things that were good.
And this was brought home to her when Ron stretched in his sleep, muttered, ‘My knee’, and rolled over, still asleep, with a smile on his lips, and Hermione’s hand in his.
3. 'The Last Word' for bringandfly who asked for drunken Sirius trying to persuade drunken James that Lily isn't the girl for him.
It was shaping up to be a good Christmas.
Well, James reflected as he watched a weeping girl being comforted by a group of friends and tried to remember the names of the casualties of last night’s attack, ‘good’ was a relative term these days.
He went over to the girl, and her friends drew away from her, looking relieved. James’s knees cracked as he knelt.
“Is your last name Frobisher?” he asked. He wished he could remember her first name.
She nodded. “Megan,” she supplied, following it with a large sniff. James felt very inadequate at this sort of thing, even though it happened too frequently. At least this was a younger student - the older ones couldn’t be comforted so easily.
“Do you have a brother or sister at the school, Megan?” James asked.
She shook her head. “N-no. My brother’s, my brother’s …”
James didn’t have to ask. He put both his hands on the little girl’s shoulders and wished that Lily was about to provide the right kind of comfort.
“Do you have a grown up to go and stay with?” he asked.
She sniffed again. “My auntie,” she said.
James breathed out. “All right,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “It’s a horrible horrible thing that’s happened, Megan, and you’re going to have to be very brave. Your auntie will help you. And you’ve got to help your auntie as well, all right?”
Megan Frobisher wiped her eyes with her fisted hands and nodded grimly. James sent her back to her friends and carried on down the corridor, thinking that for one more family Christmas was not going to be a happy time. And for how many families would Christmas be the last good time they had together? How many families were going to be destroyed? He couldn’t stop himself from hoping that his wouldn’t be one of them.
It had already happened to Remus. Greyback had killed Remus’s parents at the last full moon. Remus, of course, was too old to be comforted with vague talk of bravery, and James had felt even more helpless than usual in the face of his friend’s grief. Remus had not slept properly since; he’d been spending his nights staying up with the recently-bereaved, and this was another reason for James to feel worried. Remus was so pale these days that it looked as though he’d just transformed.
Even so, Christmas was going to be good. James was determined, and besides, Sirius had said he had a Plan, which was always worth a laugh. In his Head Boy capacity, James had offered to stay at the school, but it turned out that everyone was going home - or to an approximation of home - and so James, Sirius and Remus were going to stay in the house that Sirius had bought over the summer. They’d go to James’s parents’ house for Christmas dinner, but apart from that they would just be themselves, together. No responsibilities, no one looking up to them. Not even Peter with his wide-eyed belief that James would make everything better in the end. Peter’s mother was insisting that Peter came home to her. Under the circumstances, James could see why. It was a time to be together with loved ones because by next Christmas they might no longer be there.
He wondered if it would be all right to give Lily her Christmas present.
*
“This is the Plan,” said Sirius grandly. It was Christmas Eve and the three of them had spent most of the evening eating mince pies and drinking mulled mead. Remus was stoking the fire, and James was enchanting a couple of the fairies to waltz across the ceiling. Both of them stopped to look at Sirius.
“Sirius,” said Remus in a gentle tone, “that’s not a plan. That’s a bottle.”
“Of booze,” James added.
“It’s a bottle of Offalbright’s Oblivion,” Sirius said. He plonked it down on the table. “And it’s a Plan if I say it’s a Plan.”
“It’s not one of your better ones,” James said, and ducked the hex that Sirius sent his way.
Sirius summoned three new glasses, which zoomed to his hand rather faster than he seemed to have anticipated. He blinked at them stupidly for a moment. “Excellent,” he said at last, and poured a heavy dose into each glass, sliding the largest along to Remus.
James looked at his. The liquid was bright purple and fizzed slightly. The fumes from it were already making him feel even more light-headed.
“Drink up, Moony,” said Sirius.
Remus examined his drink and seemed to find it as appetizing as James did. “You’re trying to get me drunk,” he said to Sirius at last. “And it won’t work, remember.”
Sirius rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, we know you can drink a giant under the table,” he said.
“If you could find a big enough table,” James put in.
“Even so, Moony. It’s Christmas.”
“Eve.”
“Christmas Eve. And it’s not polite to be more sober than your host.”
“Come on,” said James, sitting up. “We can all die together.”
Remus gave his ‘I’ve tolerated you for six years so I might as well do it for a bit longer’ look, and raised his glass.
And as one, they drank.
James didn’t know what dying felt like, but it must feel something like this fiery burn sliding down his throat, steaming up his nostrils and coiling in a smouldering heap in his stomach.
Sirius poured out another shot each. James drank again, and he had been wrong. This wasn’t dying, this was living, living in a world where colours were bright and pain was a thing far away.
“See,” said Remus. “No difference.”
“Remus,” Sirius said, very firmly. “You will drink. You will drink some more. And after that you will drink again.”
Remus drank. James drank too, and the world became an even better place for the next hour or so. But he didn’t drink as much as Remus who, quite suddenly, lay down on the rug and began to snore.
Sirius beamed. “Excellent,” he said again. “I thought as much.”
James prodded Remus with his shoe. Remus grunted but did not wake up.
“He’s asleep,” he said, before realising that this observation was possibly unnecessary.
“Exactly,” said Sirius, who sounded as though not only was the world a wonderful place, but that he, Sirius, had just been crowned King of it. This thought actually sobered James up slightly in its hideousness.
“You made him do that,” James said.
Sirius smirked. “Werewolves can still pass out under the table.”
“That was the Plan wasn’t it?”
“Yup. It had simplicity and alcohol on its side.”
James laughed, and for a while didn’t think that he would be able to stop laughing. He thought that he was drunk, and that he wasn’t doing any good drunk, that he couldn’t help when he was drunk, and he was unable to push away the image of Lily’s half-amused and half-disapproving face if she knew what he was doing now. He took a long slug of his drink.
Sirius flopped onto the sofa next to him and slung an arm clumsily about James’s shoulders. James didn’t shrug him off, but leant his head against Sirius’s, feeling slightly dizzy and very tired.
“You’re thinking about Evans,” Sirius said, his voice slurred and next to James’s ear.
“Am not,” James said.
“Thinking of Evans,” Sirius repeated. “You always do, and you pull your sorrowful hero face.”
“Do not,” said James, and he did not think of the shape of Lily’s mouth when she laughed. And she’d be laughing at them now, he was sure.
“Yeah, you do,” Sirius said. “I just don’t know why.” He pushed James’s shoulder. “She’s stupid woman. Not worth you.”
James yawned. “Nah. Evans’s all right.” Her eyes were a different shade of green when she laughed as well.
“No, really,” Sirius said, and he shifted on the sofa to give James an overly earnest look. “Really,” he said again. “You’re all moony - ha ha, Moony - over her, and she’s not interested.”
“I know,” James muttered.
“But I mean,” Sirius waved his arm about, “she’s not worth the bother. She’s not even that good looking.”
James felt a lot less sleepy. “She is! She’s the best looking girl in our year.”
Sirius snorted. “Her nose is freckly.”
“I like freckles.”
“An’ her hair’s all red.”
“I like red hair.”
“And her bum’s too big.”
“There’s nothing wrong with …” James stopped short. He didn’t want to admit to the amount he’d watched the way Lily’s hips moved when she walked, her robes swishing about her legs. He definitely wasn’t going to mention the way Lily sometimes wore those tight trousers. Jeans. Sirius was never to know James’s feelings about the jeans. And nor was Lily. She’d hex him to pieces, probably.
Sirius cackled. “I know you fancy her, Prongs, but can’t you choose someone better?”
There’s no one better, James wanted to say, but didn’t.
Sirius pinched James’s cheek.
“Ere, gerroff,” James spluttered, pushing Sirius off the sofa. “You’re not my aunt Juliana.”
“You’re a handsome boy, Jamesie,” Sirius said in his best Aunt Juliana voice. “You could get someone good. Evans is no good. ‘Member the way she used to shout?”
Sirius screeched in what James guessed was an impression of Lily shouting. Whatever it was hurt James’s head. James kicked him.
“Sh’only shouted ‘cause we were idiots.”
“We were just havin’ fun.”
“Yeah. Funny idiots.” James slid onto the floor to join Sirius, and Sirius immediately hooked his legs over James’s stomach.
“She don’t want go out with you anyway.”
“I know.” James watched the ceiling spin above him. Fairies waltzed in front of his eyes. “Don’t want to talk about her,” he said.
Sirius pressed his heel into James’s side. “Okay,” he said.
There was a pause.
“Marlene fancies you,” he said.
James groaned. “Shut up. No she doesn’t.”
“She might. She likes you at least.”
“Evans likes me. Sometimes.”
Lily liked him lots of times, James told himself. Only the other day she’d called him an arrogant toe-rag and not mentioned the bullying part at all. And she’d been smiling when she said it.
And then his chest had gone all tight and there had been something burning in his stomach like with the Offalbright’s Oblivion because his head had felt light, but not, because he hadn’t felt dizzy or sick or drunk. He’d just felt good and that was so rare these days.
He let a single word pulse through his body.
“S’not even funny now, Prongs. Jus’ wish you’d give up,” Sirius murmured before his snores joined Remus’s.
*
James woke up feeling supremely uncomfortable owing to Sirius’s legs on his stomach, the infestation of Cornish pixies rampaging about his head, the taste of old socks in his mouth and the tingling Lily Evans feeling in his veins.
He pushed Sirius off and staggered to the cupboard which was well-stocked with Hangover Potion. Having gulped that down (and fought to keep it down), James felt rather better. But he’d also decided something between falling asleep and waking up, and he knew he had to act on it before the others - still snoring - woke up and prevented him from doing something so monumentally foolish.
Because Apparating to Lily Evans’ house on Christmas morning was a very stupid thing to do.
It felt even more stupid when he was staring at the most vicious-looking Muggle he’d ever seen. It was an icy morning, and James had Apparated to the doorstep without a coat, so he was already chilly, but Lily’s sister - he assumed it was her sister - had a glare that seemed to freeze the blood in James’s veins.
“Lily!” the girl shrieked over her shoulder. “There’s some sort of vagabond waiting for you.”
There were days when James would have minded being called a vagabond, but today was not one of them. He hadn’t changed before he left: the ice-eyed Muggle probably had a point.
He thought vaguely of body odour and rumpled clothes and bad hair and good impressions, but then Lily appeared at the door - long red hair and blue jeans - and James’s capacity for coherent thought was cleared away for a few seconds.
He blinked.
“Er, Merry Christmas.”
She looked puzzled, but she was not frowning, and definitely not shouting (ha, take that, Sirius), so James risked a smile.
He got one in return. “Do you want to come in?” Lily asked.
By the time he’d got through the door her expression had changed to one of fear. How bad was his hair?
“It’s not bad news, is it?” she asked. He could tell that she was trying to sound off-hand, but she failed, and he loved her for it.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Er, sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. Shouldn’t have come, really. Bad idea. I just, er, forgot to give you your present.”
Her expression changed from fear to embarrassed pleasure. “Thanks. You, um, didn’t have to, you know.”
“I know,” he mumbled, pulling the battered box out of his trouser pocket. “I wanted to.”
She took the gift and slid her fingers under the wrapping paper.
James felt a bit more confident. “After all, you need some reward for putting up with me as Head Boy this year. You were dreading it, weren’t you?”
She did not deny it, but looked up from the present. “You haven’t been too bad, James,” she said, and grinned. “Rewards are always welcome, though.”
The last of the wrapping paper fell away, and her face went pink as she held up the slim golden bracelet.
James felt his skin heat up too, because she must know now. Jewellery wasn’t something the Head Boy gave to the Head Girl. It wasn’t even something that one friend would give to another. Not like this. It was a present from a boyfriend, someone in love. The shop assistant had joked about James’s ‘young lady’ when he’d bought it. But he’d had to buy it, because he couldn’t stop imagining the gold band encircling Lily’s freckled wrist.
“It’s beautiful,” she said in a small voice. She slid it over her hand, and it fell to her arm, and James stared and felt his heart pound.
She reached out with her braceleted arm and touched his hand.
“It’s - thank you,” she said.
He looked away. “It’s nothing,” he said in a decided voice. “We’ve - well, I’ve probably annoyed you enough over the years. I wanted to tell you that - that’s all over now.”
Lily examined the bracelet again. “You can’t be telling me you’re buying bracelets for everyone you’ve ever annoyed,” she said. “Severus Snape would be appalled,”and she laughed again. Her eyes did look lighter when she laughed.
James shifted his weight. “All the pestering for dates, I mean,” he said. Now that she had the bracelet, now that she must know how he felt, he needed to offer some sort of atonement. Maybe after this he would feel more able to take Sirius’s advice. Maybe he would be able to move away from Lily and move on.
Somehow, though, he didn’t think so.
Lily wasn’t laughing any more. “No more pestering for dates?” she asked, her voice light. “You haven’t pestered for ages.”
James allowed himself a grin. “What, missed my charms, have you?”
Lily smiled. “They added meaning to my life, Potter. You must know that.”
He gave the expected response: “I always thought as much,” with a teasing expression, and tried to ignore the feeling that was like the dying of hope.
He hadn’t known hope existed. He’d become reconciled last year some time that Potter charm and wanting something to be so was not enough. He’d never be enough when it came to Lily.
And he was still standing face to face with her.
“Er, I should go,” he said.
“Wait. You haven’t had my present.”
He had begun to turn towards the door but stopped, frozen in a half twist. “You got me something?”
“Well, no.” She was red again. “It’s a made up one. I thought you could ask me out again. For old time’s sake, you know.”
“Don’t be daft, Evans.”
“Come on, one last time.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when I asked you out.”
She went pink again. “I think I can stomach it once more.”
“Right.”
“Make sure you make it a good one.”
James swept his hand through his very tangled hair, and tried to think himself back into his fifteen-year-old self, when asking Evans out was a sport with an underlying touch of panic because of the feelings he couldn’t control. He still couldn’t change his feelings but he controlled his behaviour much better now.
Fifteen. Cocky. Charming.
He smiled widely and stepped forwards. “The very last time I ask you out has got to be special, Evans. It’s the end of an era.”
She folded her arms across her chest (it seemed as though she was remembering her behaviour at fifteen as well). “I prefer it when you call me Lily.”
“When I asked you out I called you Evans.”
“You said this would be special.”
He held up his hands. “All right, then. Lily. Oh beauteous one,” he began, trying to get into the swing of the declarations he had been fond of making to her in front of large crowds. “Oh flower of my heart,” he said, and then stopped. He couldn’t. He shrugged.
“Lily, will you go out with me?”
She didn’t say no right away, as he’d been expecting. Instead she was looking at him with her bottom lip caught between her teeth, as though he was a potion and she was trying to work out a missing ingredient.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, “that for tradition’s sake, I should say no.”
James felt the need to speak very carefully. “No - or some variation thereof - was the traditional answer,” he said.
She still wore that considering look.
“What would you say if I said yes?”
Many many different words and feelings rose up in James at once, and he pushed them away in case it was a joke.
“I might say ‘Who are you and what have you done with Lily Evans’,” he said.
She pushed him. “I don’t like that answer.” She left her hand on his chest.
“How about, ‘took you long enough to come to your senses?’”
She laughed and shook her head, but now she was close enough for her hair to brush his nose when it moved.
“How about this?” And he kissed her, and she was kissing him back, and somewhere in James’s mind he thought that this had quite possibly been worth waiting for, and that it was shaping up to be an excellent Christmas, and that Sirius had been so very very wrong.
*
Sirius and Remus were still asleep when James burst through Sirius’s door, but he did not allow them to stay that way for long. He did, because he was a good friend in an exceptionally good mood, bring the Hangover Potion from the cupboard for them first.
Slowly, Sirius and Remus pulled themselves into sitting positions and swore at James, who pressed mugs of potion into their hands.
When he was sufficiently recovered, Remus looked at Sirius with bleary eyes.
“I thought you had a plan,” he said, and yawned in the satisfied manner of one who has slept for a whole night through.
Sirius gulped at his potion and thrust the mug back at James.
Then he smiled. “Been to see Lily, Prongs?” he asked. He turned to Remus. “I had two Plans,” he said, with the air of one who has just been crowned winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award. “And they both worked perfectly.”
Please feel free to sign up if you would like a story (although most won't be as long as these ones, I was bored today - can you tell?). Bart, I am working on yours, but I just don't think I am dirty innuendo-minded enough to do it justice! We shall see.
*Hugs to all*
P.S. The Swiss don't have mince pies. Can you imagine the horror?