Christmas Stories Part 2
For bartsspace, who wanted Harry and Hermione having a slightly suggestive conversation. Ah well, my friends, I tried.
Harry Potter was woken early on the first of January by a loud Crack and the appearance of Hermione Granger in his bedroom.
He pulled a pillow over his face and then, on second thoughts, pulled his blanket up over his chest.
He heard an amused snort at this.
“Wrong room,” he grunted through the pillow. “Ron’s next door. Go away, Hermione.”
The pillow was rested from his hands, and he blinked up at Hermione, looming over him. She was wearing a tracksuit and a determined expression, both of which worried Harry.
“I know perfectly well where Ron’s room is,” she said. “Honestly, Harry, that sort of Apparition mistake is for beginners.”
Damn it. He thought she’d been asleep when he’d once Apparated into her room instead of Ginny’s.
“Okay, very funny, Hermione. Now go away. Please.”
“I’m not here to make fun of you,” she said. She still wasn’t leaving.
Harry groaned and sat up. Then he remembered that he was Harry Potter and although all was now right with the world, there had once been a war and there might be again. The old instincts and fears came back too easily. He pulled on his glasses and forced himself to be awake.
“Why are you here, then? What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?”
Hermione’s expression softened, and she sat down on Harry’s bed. “No one’s hurt, Harry,” she said gently. “Nothing’s happened.”
Harry felt foolish. “Oh. Then why are you here? Er, at six o’clock in the morning, I mean.”
“Because it’s time to get up.”
Harry demonstrated what he thought of this idea by taking his glasses off again and pressing his face back into his remaining pillow. “Go and bother Ron,” he said. “You’re allowed to bother him in the middle of the night. Not me.”
She tried to take away his second pillow, but Harry clung on tightly until Hermione sent a ticking hex under his arms and he had to let go, rolling on the bed.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he mumbled.
Hermione gave him a Look. It was one of the looks that said ‘I am the smartest witch of the age, I am one of your best friends, I am a girl and I know better than you do. There is nothing you can do to hurt me.’
Harry and Ron often marvelled at how Hermione could fit whole conversations - let alone sentences - into her Looks.
Harry sighed. “I’ll get you back next time you don’t know which Cannons strip Ron wants for his birthday.”
Hermione looked smug. “In which case I won’t tell you which engagement ring Ginny would like.”
Harry was fully awake now. He gawped at Hermione. “How did you know?” he asked. He hadn’t mentioned the idea to Ron yet, or asked Mr Weasley’s permission. He hadn’t even really decided that he was going to do it; only the engagement rings in shop windows looked a lot more interesting these days.
Hermione sat next to him on the bed. “Of course I know, Harry. I always know with you. We’ve known each other for thirteen years, for goodness sake.”
“But I don’t know everything about you!” Harry said, thinking as he did that he was quite happy not knowing everything about Hermione, just as long as he knew most things.
Hermione gave him another Look which plainly said, ‘Yes, but that’s because you’re a boy and therefore predisposed to be useless. But I love you anyway.’
Harry supposed that the fact he understood Hermione’s vast array of Looks even without his glasses on meant that he was doing something right. He squeezed her shoulder.
“Does Ginny know?” he asked.
“No. But I know she’ll say yes. And don’t worry. I won’t tell her if you want it to be a surprise.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Harry said, wondering how on earth a ‘maybe looking at rings perhaps’ had now turned into full-scale engagement plans after three minutes’ conversation with Hermione. Yet somehow it had.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and put his glasses on for the second time that morning. “All right. So the world isn’t ending, no one’s hurt, you’re not looking for Ron and you know more about my romantic plans than I do. Any other reason you’re here, Hermione? Because, you know, normally when girls kick me out of bed, I’ve slept with them first.”
Hermione swatted him. “I have no desire to hear about that kind of thing,” she said crisply. “Especially when you’re dating one of my best friends.”
Harry wasn’t apologetic. “Well it’s too early to be polite,” he said. “And when I said girls, I meant Ginny. And really, Hermione,” he carried on, heartened the fact that Hermione was trying not to smile, “so far the closest you’ve come is giving me a broomstick servicing kit.”
Hermione gave a horrified gasp and then laughed. “You liked that broomstick servicing kit,” she protested.
If this conversation was going to take place at such an early hour of the morning, Harry was bloody well going to make it worth it.
“Well,” he said, very seriously. “What can you expect, Hermione? I was thirteen. Polishing my broomstick was very important to me.”
“Harry Potter!” Hermione giggled helplessly. “And my parents were always telling me what a nice boy you seemed.”
Just then the floorboards creaked outside Harry’s door and Ron’s sleep-bleared face appeared.
“Lo, Harry, Hermione,” he said around a huge yawn. “Anyone want to tell me why my girlfriend just screamed my best friend’s name?”
Ron was obviously half asleep, for he seemed to have no idea why Harry and Hermione found the question so funny.
“Jogging,” Hermione said at last.
Both Harry and Ron blinked at her. “Jogging?”
Harry had a nasty memory of the night before and felt that maybe Hermione’s tracksuit was just as ominous as he’d thought it was.
“Yes, jogging,” Hermione said, standing up and crossing the room. “Harry, last night when we did our new year’s resolutions, you promised that you’d come jogging with me.”
Ron sniggered.
“Oh yes,” said Harry. The situation was rapidly losing its humour. “So I did. Hermione, get out of there!”
Hermione was rifling through Harry’s chest of drawers, and when she straightened up she was holding a faded tracksuit that had once belonged to (but never worn by) Dudley.
“This is priceless,” Ron said, clinging to the doorframe.
“Please, Hermione,” Harry said in desperation. “Can’t I just buy you a treadmill or something?”
“I want to jog outside in the fresh air, and you promised you’d come with me,” Hermione said in a tone that made Harry very sure he was going to lose this one.
“Can’t you take Ron?”
“No way, mate,” Ron said. “You’re not getting me out into the fresh air before breakfast.”
Harry reflected that the air was likely to be very fresh considering it was midwinter. He sighed. “But she’s your girlfriend,” he said to Ron.
Ron nodded, still grinning. “Yup, and you can give her back - preferably sweaty - ” he dodged Hermione’s arm as she made to hit him, “at a more reasonable hour of the morning. Until then she’s all yours.” With that he ducked back into his own bedroom.
Hermione glared at the empty doorway. “Right,” she said in her most business-like tone. “You have three minutes to get dressed, Harry.”
Harry debated getting two and a half more minutes’ sleep, but decided against it. He pulled on his tracksuit and left the room. He kicked Ron’s door and yelled, “I’m going to marry your sister!” before he and Hermione Apparated out into the still-dark morning.
vicki595 asked for an HP/Narnia crossover and for some reason the result is quite weird.
Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. A story has been written about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air raids.
This is not that story.
This is the story, rather, of four children whose names were Peter, Remus, James and Sirius. They too live during a war, but they have not been sent away.
Instead they find the way themselves.
“Moony! Umph. That’s your elbow in my mouth.”
“It’s not my elbow.”
“No, your elbow’s in my stomach.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, Padfoot, that was me.”
“Which one of you two is …?”
“Shhh! Peter can hear something.”
“Must be Mrs Norris. Have you got the map?”
“Can’t see. Lumos! That’s better.”
“Right, light us up like a beacon why don’t you?”
“Which part of we’re invisible do you not understand?”
“Oh yeah. Sorry, Prongs.”
“We may be invisible, but we’re not soundproof, so I suggest we shut up.”
Three boys and a rat cower under the cloak as the sound of footsteps approach.
“Where are they, my sweet?”
“That bloody cat.”
“Shut up, Padfoot.”
A swooshing noise comes from overhead, and the three boys try to groan in silence. Peeves.
Filch raises his voice. “Peeves, that you making that racket? I’ll Exorcise you, you mangy poltergeist.”
Peeves cackles. “Peevsie is coming to warn you, Filch. There’s creepy crawlies in the night time. Can’t see ‘em but I knows they’re there.”
The footsteps pass.
The three boys stir. “Quick, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where to?”
“Through this door. We can hide in the classroom till they’ve gone.”
A door opens and closes.
“Hang on; I don’t think we’re in a classroom.”
“Oh, bloody hell, nice one, James. You’ve holed us up in a broom cupboard.”
The rat leaps from James’s shoulder and turns into a boy before he hits the ground.
“Oof! Wormtail, you prune, what did you do that for? It’s cramped in here as it is.”
“And Filch might be back any second.”
Remus has taken the map from James’s pocket and is examining it. He frowns at the others. “Filch is down on the Charms corridor now,” he says. “But the room we’re in isn’t on the map. Look.”
James and Sirius’s dark heads immediately bend over the parchment in Remus’s hands, but Peter looks at their surroundings instead.
“It ought to be here, look, and there’s nothing. No door or recess marked.”
“Yes,” says Peter, “but we’re not in a broom cupboard after all. The walls are wooden.”
“Walls are … Prongs, we’d better not be in the Vanishing Cabinet. This thing gives me motion sickness.”
“Well considering you’re not losing your lunch like last time, Moony, I don’t think we’re in any danger of that.”
“No,” says Peter, proudly displaying his next discovery. “We’re in a wardrobe.” And sure enough, slung over his arm is a long fur coat.
An idle examination of the coats leads the four further and further into the wardrobe. So far, in fact, that when Remus looks over his shoulder he cannot see the chink of light that should show where the open door is.
“Did one of you shut the door?” he asks. Sirius, looking lordly in black fur to his ankles, turns his head.
“I did, yeah. We don’t want Filch finding us, do we?”
Remus says nothing, but has to press down a sudden swell of fear. After all, as anyone knows - anyone bar Sirius, that is - it is a terribly bad idea to shut oneself in a wardrobe.
“If we’re stuck in here forever, Padfoot, we’re eating you first,” he says. But only very quietly.
But ‘in here’ seems to be less ‘in’ than they’d originally thought. They’ve passed row upon row of coats and still haven’t come up against the back of the wardrobe. This is not as strange to these four boys as it would be to most. Hogwarts, of course, is not known for furnishings that keep to the rules.
James, who is ahead, is mildly surprised, however, to find that where the coats leave off, trees simply begin.
“Hey,” he hisses at the others. “Have any of you heard of wardrobes that turn into forests?”
Sirius shakes his head.
“One of the coats wasn’t a portkey, was it?” Peter asks.
James rolls his eyes. “We’re all here, aren’t we, Wormtail?” he says in scathing tones. “And besides, I can tell when a portkey whips me off my feet, thank you very much.”
The three of them look at Remus, who takes a step forward and shrugs, eying the wooded landscape.
“I’ve heard of one,” he says at last. “But there ought to be snow. And a lamppost.”
*
They move further into the land and come across the promised lamppost, although there is no sign of snow. In fact it is a bright clear day, the air crisp and fragrant with earth and leaves. Both Peter and Sirius transform to sniff at this new world more thoroughly. James strolls with Remus.
“One thing,” says James. “It’s a nice day.”
“Yes,” Remus says, breathing deeply. “It’s beautiful.”
“Exactly. Moony, it was the middle of the night when we left. Where the hell are we?”
Remus shrugs. “I don’t think the puzzle is ‘where’ so much as ‘how’.”
James shakes his head and watches Wormtail who scuttles from tree to tree and squeaks in alarm when a rat the size of Mrs Norris, standing on its hind legs, pops out of a hole, looks at Peter pityingly and mutters, “Poor thing,” before disappearing again.
Peter transforms after this, feeling unsafe in rat guise, and joins Remus and James in laughing at Padfoot, who is barking at the squirrels up in the trees and wincing in surprise when one of the squirrels starts to pelt him with acorns.
They carry on walking, and on the edge of the woods meet a hunched figure who has darkness drawn about him like a cloak and who flinches when he sees them. His head moves in sharp motions, and he fixes his yellow eyes on Peter.
“Rat,” he hisses. “I smell rat.”
Peter sidles behind James and Remus. The yellow eyes follow him.
“Who are you?” James asks, although Remus thinks that a better question might be ‘what are you?’ even though he thinks he knows.
The yellow eyes snap to James and an ugly smile spreads across the pinched face.
“I am hunger,” he says, with a caress in his voice. “I am pain, I am long sleep, I am blood.” He lingers over the word as though he can taste it in his mouth.
“You’re a werewolf,” Remus says flatly. The yellow eyes meet his and lock there. The grin widens.
“Brother,” the werewolf says.
Remus shudders but does not look away.
“Not likely,” James snarls, and he moves towards the werewolf. But before Remus can hold James back, and before James can reach him, the werewolf retreats into a partial darkness between the trees and is gone.
After that they leave the woods. They walk over the flats until they hear a sounding horn and the baying of hounds. Padfoot immediately barks back and runs around the others in circles. The fleetest of the hounds, far beyond the rest of the pack, races up. Padfoot greets him with a volley of barks.
The dog gives him a very human look. “Oh I do think we can dispense with all the growling and bottom-sniffing thank you very much.” His voice is breathless but perfectly human.
Sirius transforms in pure shock, and stares at the dog. “Quite all right,” he says at last. “I never like the bum-sniffing much, myself.”
The dog’s eye twitches in what is plainly the canine equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “My compliments to the strangers. I apologise, but I must run,” he says. “The hunt is on, not that we can find anything. King Peter is most disappointed. He wanted to hunt the white hart today.” The dog gives a sharp bark of farewell and heads back to the approaching group. Behind the dogs, the four boys can see figures on horseback.
“The white hart, eh?”
“Prongs, no,” says Remus.
“They’re hunting” says Peter in dismay. “You can’t.”
But that is the wrong thing to say, because James must always prove that he can. And he does.
Soon they are back in the woods and the horns are blaring and the hounds yapping. James is clearly having the time of his life, skidding between trees and ducking branches as if he were avoiding Bludgers on the Quidditch Pitch. Sirius transforms and joins the hounds, while James lures the four swiftest hunters winding through the wood.
Remus, who can only watch from afar, sees that they are heading towards the lamppost and he and Peter follow on foot.
A long arm clutches Remus’s wrist as he passes a cluster of trees on the edge of the glade in which the lamppost stands. For a horrid second he thinks it is the werewolf come to claim him, but it turns out to be James, pressed close against the bark and breathing fast.
“They got too close,” he says with a grin that shows he’s rarely felt more alive. James always has to feel alive and to Remus the thought of the yellow-eyed werewolf is like a drip of cold death.
James and Peter are watching the four finely-dressed figures, two men, two women (two Kings and two Queens, Remus knows suddenly) as they examine the lamppost and then carry on, speaking like people did in old-fashioned story books.
Like a story book.
Padfoot joins them behind the tree and transforms back to Sirius. The four of them follow the strange people who are heading back towards the wardrobe. For all their rich clothes, handsome faces and straight bearings, the four adults look oddly childish as they walk slowly ahead, hand in hand, until they reach the wardrobe.
The door is open now; Remus can see the light.
The four child-adults do not notice their audience as they push past trees and then fur coats and out through the wardrobe door.
Remus has a brief glimpse of four children, an impression of an empty room and boys in ties and girls in pinafores before he and James and Sirius and Peter have followed the others through the wardrobe and discover themselves standing, exposed, in a Hogwarts corridor
And
‘With Eyes Closed’ for aggiebell90 who wanted Neville at Christmas time.
Neville knew that it was Christmas Day because Gran served cream in his morning porridge, something she only did on very special occasions. He grinned at her, and she looked surprised for a moment before taking a sharp breath through her nose and pursing her lips tightly together.
When she did speak it was to say, “We’re going to see your parents after breakfast, Neville,” as though she wanted to wipe the smile from Neville’s face. Normally he would have stopped smiling.
But today was different. Today was Christmas and Granddad - who winked at Neville from the other side of the table - had told him that little boys’ wishes came true on Christmas day.
Neville had been wishing very very hard. He did wonder why he hadn’t wished for it last Christmas - he could vaguely remember last Christmas: a big tree and his Uncle Algie talking in a very loud voice and having to wear an uncomfortable set of robes all day - and came to the conclusion that he hadn’t been old enough to think of it at the time. After all, he’d only been five last Christmas.
This year he was six and big enough to understand how miraculous and wonderful a wish come true could be. He felt proud. This was something that only he could do, even though it was something his whole family wanted. He was the only little boy in the Longbottom family. His grandparents and his great aunts and uncles were too old to make magic Christmas wishes.
He had the faint stir of worry that perhaps the magic wouldn’t work for him because he hadn’t done any magic yet and Gran was always saying that by his age Neville’s father had been setting fire to his bed every time he didn’t want to go to sleep. But Neville’s granddad said that Neville had plenty of time and that it was nothing to worry about, and ‘be quiet, Augusta, you’re upsetting the boy,’ which Neville wasn’t meant to have heard, but he had.
Once he’d finished his porridge - and only then - Neville was allowed to open the stocking that hung over the fireplace. He eyed the bulges in it with apprehension. He hadn’t wished for them, and he hoped that these unasked-for presents wouldn’t take away from the big wish that Neville had made. What if there was only enough magic for one good thing to happen to him on Christmas day?
Still, he pulled out the presents one by one and opened them under his grandparents’ gaze. Granddad seemed to get more excited about each present than Neville did, whereas Gran sat very still, a certain tightness lingering about her mouth, and did not take her eyes away from Neville’s fumbling hands as the wrappings fell away beneath them.
Each time a present was opened, Neville held his breath and then let it out in a hiss of disappointment. He had hoped that there would be a sign to show that his Christmas wish was going to come true. But the gaudy wrapping paper slipped off to reveal ordinary things. A paint box with paints that were Charmed not to get on your clothes. Books with exercises for learning to read and write. A set of coloured balls on wooden sticks stuck together, which was what Granddad called an ‘Abacus’. And then the final present, firm and heavy in Neville’s hands, and this must be the sign, mustn’t it?
It was a lump of coal.
Neville stared at it, his eyes stinging in a way that meant he was about to cry, but he couldn’t cry because Gran didn’t like it, and it was Christmas and his wish was going to come true because it just had to.
Gran spoke, her voice a little too brisk. “Father Christmas must know that you still don’t know your alphabet properly, Neville.”
Neville felt his cheeks go red with shame. He could almost do his alphabet properly, only sometimes the ‘d’s and the ‘b’s twisted about in his head until he wasn’t sure if his name was Neville Longbottom or Longdottom. And then Gran would frown and Neville’s throat would go tight and all the other letters would jumble up and come out all wrong until his hands shook so much he couldn’t hold the crayon properly anymore.
Granddad shot Gran a cross look that Neville probably wasn’t meant to have seen.
“I’m sure that Father Christmas doesn’t mind too much about that,” he said in a cheerful voice that made Neville feel sad. “Look at all the other nice presents he brought, eh lad?”
Neville looked, but somehow he didn’t see.
Granddad didn’t come to the hospital with Neville and Gran. He didn’t like to Apparate or Floo long distances any more, and he said he’d get started with the turkey instead, and told Neville to send his parents Granddad’s love.
Neville did, but his father only blinked blankly at him, and his mother just stroked her chin and looked at a spot somewhere over Neville’s head. Neville sat in the chair he always sat in when he visited his parents on their ward. The hospital was decorated for Christmas; big paper chains swung across the ceiling and there was tinsel around all the beds. The Healer gave Neville a cracker and asked if he would like to pull it with his father. The Healer had to hold Neville’s father’s hands around the end of the cracker while Neville pulled.
Gran looked away.
When the cracker went off with a bang that made Neville jump, neither of his parents flinched. Inside were a Father Christmas hat and a pack of ‘Droobles Best Blowing Gum’. The Healer shrank the hat to fit Neville and gave it to him. He was given the gum as well, but Gran took it out of Neville’s lap and put it on the table between his parents’ beds instead.
“Not before lunch,” she said, and then excused herself to go and powder her nose. Neville caught a glimpse of a crumpled expression on her face.
Someone further down the ward began to shout: high, excited yelps of noise which had scared Neville last time he visited. The Healer sighed and turned away to see to her patient.
Neville leant forward in his chair. Surely now was the moment that the wish was going to come true. Gran was gone, the Healer was gone; it was just him and his mother and father. Now was when it was going to happen. Now he was going to save his parents and make his family happy and normal again. He waited, wishing as hard as he could. He shut his eyes, because wishes were meant to come true when your eyes were closed, weren’t they? But he kept opening them after a second or so just to see, just to see.
Were his parents looking at him yet? Were they smiling? Where they waking up and blinking and looking about them, wondering why they were in the hospital?
Would they know who he was?
Neville worried about this for a minute, closing his eyes to wish and then opening them again to check.
Nothing happened.
The minutes passed and the shouting from the bottom of the ward stopped. Neville heard the Healer’s voice talking calmly to the patient. He opened his eyes for the last time and saw that his parents were sitting in front of him just as they always had been. His father had opened the packet of gum, unwrapped a piece and was now rolling the gum between his fingers. Even Neville knew you weren’t meant to do that with sweets. How could his father not know what to do? His mother was smoothing the bedcovers that she was sitting on, and Neville tried to pretend that she was back to normal and making the bed that she would no longer have to sleep in. It didn’t work.
At home Gran made the beds, and Granddad sometimes played with sweets - pretending to hide them behind his ear - before giving them to Neville. But somehow Neville knew that his parents were never going to do ordinary things like his grandparents did. Like ordinary people did.
And, for the first time, it didn’t make him sad. It made him angry.
He’d spent all that time, ever since Granddad had told him about Christmas wishes, wishing with all his might that his parents would come back. And now he knew that he had only been meant to wish for a paint box, and then he would have been happy, but he wasn’t happy because he wanted his mummy and daddy, and they wouldn’t look at him.
“Why won’t you look at me?” he shouted at them, surprising himself by how loud he had made his voice. “Can’t you see me? Why won’t you look at me?” He snatched the stupid Christmas hat from his head and flung it at his father’s feet. “I’m here! I’m here! Why can’t you see me?”
His father squeezed the gum and his mother smoothed the blankets. Neville wanted something else to throw at them. He wanted to scream until his voice gave out. He wanted to scream until they stopped ignoring him.
“Neville!”
Gran’s voice made the anger within him fall away and he turned to her, white faced and scared.
But all she said was, “we’re going to go now, Neville.”
Neville nodded, and Gran began to walk out of the ward. Neville followed her until something caught his elbow.
It was his mother.
She held his elbow with one hand and held out the other. In it was the wrapper from the ‘Droobles Best Blowing Gum’ that his father had unwrapped.
“Neville! Come along - Alice?” Gran had stopped. She walked back to Neville and his mother and rested her hand on Neville’s head. Neville felt the weight of it, and the felt too the clawed curl of her fingers against his scalp. “It’s all right, Neville,” she said, her voice cracking slightly.
Neville stared wide-eyed into his mother’s blank face and closed his hand over the gum wrapper.
“It’s all right,” Gran said again.
Neville tried to pretend it was.
Harry Potter was woken early on the first of January by a loud Crack and the appearance of Hermione Granger in his bedroom.
He pulled a pillow over his face and then, on second thoughts, pulled his blanket up over his chest.
He heard an amused snort at this.
“Wrong room,” he grunted through the pillow. “Ron’s next door. Go away, Hermione.”
The pillow was rested from his hands, and he blinked up at Hermione, looming over him. She was wearing a tracksuit and a determined expression, both of which worried Harry.
“I know perfectly well where Ron’s room is,” she said. “Honestly, Harry, that sort of Apparition mistake is for beginners.”
Damn it. He thought she’d been asleep when he’d once Apparated into her room instead of Ginny’s.
“Okay, very funny, Hermione. Now go away. Please.”
“I’m not here to make fun of you,” she said. She still wasn’t leaving.
Harry groaned and sat up. Then he remembered that he was Harry Potter and although all was now right with the world, there had once been a war and there might be again. The old instincts and fears came back too easily. He pulled on his glasses and forced himself to be awake.
“Why are you here, then? What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?”
Hermione’s expression softened, and she sat down on Harry’s bed. “No one’s hurt, Harry,” she said gently. “Nothing’s happened.”
Harry felt foolish. “Oh. Then why are you here? Er, at six o’clock in the morning, I mean.”
“Because it’s time to get up.”
Harry demonstrated what he thought of this idea by taking his glasses off again and pressing his face back into his remaining pillow. “Go and bother Ron,” he said. “You’re allowed to bother him in the middle of the night. Not me.”
She tried to take away his second pillow, but Harry clung on tightly until Hermione sent a ticking hex under his arms and he had to let go, rolling on the bed.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he mumbled.
Hermione gave him a Look. It was one of the looks that said ‘I am the smartest witch of the age, I am one of your best friends, I am a girl and I know better than you do. There is nothing you can do to hurt me.’
Harry and Ron often marvelled at how Hermione could fit whole conversations - let alone sentences - into her Looks.
Harry sighed. “I’ll get you back next time you don’t know which Cannons strip Ron wants for his birthday.”
Hermione looked smug. “In which case I won’t tell you which engagement ring Ginny would like.”
Harry was fully awake now. He gawped at Hermione. “How did you know?” he asked. He hadn’t mentioned the idea to Ron yet, or asked Mr Weasley’s permission. He hadn’t even really decided that he was going to do it; only the engagement rings in shop windows looked a lot more interesting these days.
Hermione sat next to him on the bed. “Of course I know, Harry. I always know with you. We’ve known each other for thirteen years, for goodness sake.”
“But I don’t know everything about you!” Harry said, thinking as he did that he was quite happy not knowing everything about Hermione, just as long as he knew most things.
Hermione gave him another Look which plainly said, ‘Yes, but that’s because you’re a boy and therefore predisposed to be useless. But I love you anyway.’
Harry supposed that the fact he understood Hermione’s vast array of Looks even without his glasses on meant that he was doing something right. He squeezed her shoulder.
“Does Ginny know?” he asked.
“No. But I know she’ll say yes. And don’t worry. I won’t tell her if you want it to be a surprise.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Harry said, wondering how on earth a ‘maybe looking at rings perhaps’ had now turned into full-scale engagement plans after three minutes’ conversation with Hermione. Yet somehow it had.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and put his glasses on for the second time that morning. “All right. So the world isn’t ending, no one’s hurt, you’re not looking for Ron and you know more about my romantic plans than I do. Any other reason you’re here, Hermione? Because, you know, normally when girls kick me out of bed, I’ve slept with them first.”
Hermione swatted him. “I have no desire to hear about that kind of thing,” she said crisply. “Especially when you’re dating one of my best friends.”
Harry wasn’t apologetic. “Well it’s too early to be polite,” he said. “And when I said girls, I meant Ginny. And really, Hermione,” he carried on, heartened the fact that Hermione was trying not to smile, “so far the closest you’ve come is giving me a broomstick servicing kit.”
Hermione gave a horrified gasp and then laughed. “You liked that broomstick servicing kit,” she protested.
If this conversation was going to take place at such an early hour of the morning, Harry was bloody well going to make it worth it.
“Well,” he said, very seriously. “What can you expect, Hermione? I was thirteen. Polishing my broomstick was very important to me.”
“Harry Potter!” Hermione giggled helplessly. “And my parents were always telling me what a nice boy you seemed.”
Just then the floorboards creaked outside Harry’s door and Ron’s sleep-bleared face appeared.
“Lo, Harry, Hermione,” he said around a huge yawn. “Anyone want to tell me why my girlfriend just screamed my best friend’s name?”
Ron was obviously half asleep, for he seemed to have no idea why Harry and Hermione found the question so funny.
“Jogging,” Hermione said at last.
Both Harry and Ron blinked at her. “Jogging?”
Harry had a nasty memory of the night before and felt that maybe Hermione’s tracksuit was just as ominous as he’d thought it was.
“Yes, jogging,” Hermione said, standing up and crossing the room. “Harry, last night when we did our new year’s resolutions, you promised that you’d come jogging with me.”
Ron sniggered.
“Oh yes,” said Harry. The situation was rapidly losing its humour. “So I did. Hermione, get out of there!”
Hermione was rifling through Harry’s chest of drawers, and when she straightened up she was holding a faded tracksuit that had once belonged to (but never worn by) Dudley.
“This is priceless,” Ron said, clinging to the doorframe.
“Please, Hermione,” Harry said in desperation. “Can’t I just buy you a treadmill or something?”
“I want to jog outside in the fresh air, and you promised you’d come with me,” Hermione said in a tone that made Harry very sure he was going to lose this one.
“Can’t you take Ron?”
“No way, mate,” Ron said. “You’re not getting me out into the fresh air before breakfast.”
Harry reflected that the air was likely to be very fresh considering it was midwinter. He sighed. “But she’s your girlfriend,” he said to Ron.
Ron nodded, still grinning. “Yup, and you can give her back - preferably sweaty - ” he dodged Hermione’s arm as she made to hit him, “at a more reasonable hour of the morning. Until then she’s all yours.” With that he ducked back into his own bedroom.
Hermione glared at the empty doorway. “Right,” she said in her most business-like tone. “You have three minutes to get dressed, Harry.”
Harry debated getting two and a half more minutes’ sleep, but decided against it. He pulled on his tracksuit and left the room. He kicked Ron’s door and yelled, “I’m going to marry your sister!” before he and Hermione Apparated out into the still-dark morning.
vicki595 asked for an HP/Narnia crossover and for some reason the result is quite weird.
Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. A story has been written about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air raids.
This is not that story.
This is the story, rather, of four children whose names were Peter, Remus, James and Sirius. They too live during a war, but they have not been sent away.
Instead they find the way themselves.
“Moony! Umph. That’s your elbow in my mouth.”
“It’s not my elbow.”
“No, your elbow’s in my stomach.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, Padfoot, that was me.”
“Which one of you two is …?”
“Shhh! Peter can hear something.”
“Must be Mrs Norris. Have you got the map?”
“Can’t see. Lumos! That’s better.”
“Right, light us up like a beacon why don’t you?”
“Which part of we’re invisible do you not understand?”
“Oh yeah. Sorry, Prongs.”
“We may be invisible, but we’re not soundproof, so I suggest we shut up.”
Three boys and a rat cower under the cloak as the sound of footsteps approach.
“Where are they, my sweet?”
“That bloody cat.”
“Shut up, Padfoot.”
A swooshing noise comes from overhead, and the three boys try to groan in silence. Peeves.
Filch raises his voice. “Peeves, that you making that racket? I’ll Exorcise you, you mangy poltergeist.”
Peeves cackles. “Peevsie is coming to warn you, Filch. There’s creepy crawlies in the night time. Can’t see ‘em but I knows they’re there.”
The footsteps pass.
The three boys stir. “Quick, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where to?”
“Through this door. We can hide in the classroom till they’ve gone.”
A door opens and closes.
“Hang on; I don’t think we’re in a classroom.”
“Oh, bloody hell, nice one, James. You’ve holed us up in a broom cupboard.”
The rat leaps from James’s shoulder and turns into a boy before he hits the ground.
“Oof! Wormtail, you prune, what did you do that for? It’s cramped in here as it is.”
“And Filch might be back any second.”
Remus has taken the map from James’s pocket and is examining it. He frowns at the others. “Filch is down on the Charms corridor now,” he says. “But the room we’re in isn’t on the map. Look.”
James and Sirius’s dark heads immediately bend over the parchment in Remus’s hands, but Peter looks at their surroundings instead.
“It ought to be here, look, and there’s nothing. No door or recess marked.”
“Yes,” says Peter, “but we’re not in a broom cupboard after all. The walls are wooden.”
“Walls are … Prongs, we’d better not be in the Vanishing Cabinet. This thing gives me motion sickness.”
“Well considering you’re not losing your lunch like last time, Moony, I don’t think we’re in any danger of that.”
“No,” says Peter, proudly displaying his next discovery. “We’re in a wardrobe.” And sure enough, slung over his arm is a long fur coat.
An idle examination of the coats leads the four further and further into the wardrobe. So far, in fact, that when Remus looks over his shoulder he cannot see the chink of light that should show where the open door is.
“Did one of you shut the door?” he asks. Sirius, looking lordly in black fur to his ankles, turns his head.
“I did, yeah. We don’t want Filch finding us, do we?”
Remus says nothing, but has to press down a sudden swell of fear. After all, as anyone knows - anyone bar Sirius, that is - it is a terribly bad idea to shut oneself in a wardrobe.
“If we’re stuck in here forever, Padfoot, we’re eating you first,” he says. But only very quietly.
But ‘in here’ seems to be less ‘in’ than they’d originally thought. They’ve passed row upon row of coats and still haven’t come up against the back of the wardrobe. This is not as strange to these four boys as it would be to most. Hogwarts, of course, is not known for furnishings that keep to the rules.
James, who is ahead, is mildly surprised, however, to find that where the coats leave off, trees simply begin.
“Hey,” he hisses at the others. “Have any of you heard of wardrobes that turn into forests?”
Sirius shakes his head.
“One of the coats wasn’t a portkey, was it?” Peter asks.
James rolls his eyes. “We’re all here, aren’t we, Wormtail?” he says in scathing tones. “And besides, I can tell when a portkey whips me off my feet, thank you very much.”
The three of them look at Remus, who takes a step forward and shrugs, eying the wooded landscape.
“I’ve heard of one,” he says at last. “But there ought to be snow. And a lamppost.”
*
They move further into the land and come across the promised lamppost, although there is no sign of snow. In fact it is a bright clear day, the air crisp and fragrant with earth and leaves. Both Peter and Sirius transform to sniff at this new world more thoroughly. James strolls with Remus.
“One thing,” says James. “It’s a nice day.”
“Yes,” Remus says, breathing deeply. “It’s beautiful.”
“Exactly. Moony, it was the middle of the night when we left. Where the hell are we?”
Remus shrugs. “I don’t think the puzzle is ‘where’ so much as ‘how’.”
James shakes his head and watches Wormtail who scuttles from tree to tree and squeaks in alarm when a rat the size of Mrs Norris, standing on its hind legs, pops out of a hole, looks at Peter pityingly and mutters, “Poor thing,” before disappearing again.
Peter transforms after this, feeling unsafe in rat guise, and joins Remus and James in laughing at Padfoot, who is barking at the squirrels up in the trees and wincing in surprise when one of the squirrels starts to pelt him with acorns.
They carry on walking, and on the edge of the woods meet a hunched figure who has darkness drawn about him like a cloak and who flinches when he sees them. His head moves in sharp motions, and he fixes his yellow eyes on Peter.
“Rat,” he hisses. “I smell rat.”
Peter sidles behind James and Remus. The yellow eyes follow him.
“Who are you?” James asks, although Remus thinks that a better question might be ‘what are you?’ even though he thinks he knows.
The yellow eyes snap to James and an ugly smile spreads across the pinched face.
“I am hunger,” he says, with a caress in his voice. “I am pain, I am long sleep, I am blood.” He lingers over the word as though he can taste it in his mouth.
“You’re a werewolf,” Remus says flatly. The yellow eyes meet his and lock there. The grin widens.
“Brother,” the werewolf says.
Remus shudders but does not look away.
“Not likely,” James snarls, and he moves towards the werewolf. But before Remus can hold James back, and before James can reach him, the werewolf retreats into a partial darkness between the trees and is gone.
After that they leave the woods. They walk over the flats until they hear a sounding horn and the baying of hounds. Padfoot immediately barks back and runs around the others in circles. The fleetest of the hounds, far beyond the rest of the pack, races up. Padfoot greets him with a volley of barks.
The dog gives him a very human look. “Oh I do think we can dispense with all the growling and bottom-sniffing thank you very much.” His voice is breathless but perfectly human.
Sirius transforms in pure shock, and stares at the dog. “Quite all right,” he says at last. “I never like the bum-sniffing much, myself.”
The dog’s eye twitches in what is plainly the canine equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “My compliments to the strangers. I apologise, but I must run,” he says. “The hunt is on, not that we can find anything. King Peter is most disappointed. He wanted to hunt the white hart today.” The dog gives a sharp bark of farewell and heads back to the approaching group. Behind the dogs, the four boys can see figures on horseback.
“The white hart, eh?”
“Prongs, no,” says Remus.
“They’re hunting” says Peter in dismay. “You can’t.”
But that is the wrong thing to say, because James must always prove that he can. And he does.
Soon they are back in the woods and the horns are blaring and the hounds yapping. James is clearly having the time of his life, skidding between trees and ducking branches as if he were avoiding Bludgers on the Quidditch Pitch. Sirius transforms and joins the hounds, while James lures the four swiftest hunters winding through the wood.
Remus, who can only watch from afar, sees that they are heading towards the lamppost and he and Peter follow on foot.
A long arm clutches Remus’s wrist as he passes a cluster of trees on the edge of the glade in which the lamppost stands. For a horrid second he thinks it is the werewolf come to claim him, but it turns out to be James, pressed close against the bark and breathing fast.
“They got too close,” he says with a grin that shows he’s rarely felt more alive. James always has to feel alive and to Remus the thought of the yellow-eyed werewolf is like a drip of cold death.
James and Peter are watching the four finely-dressed figures, two men, two women (two Kings and two Queens, Remus knows suddenly) as they examine the lamppost and then carry on, speaking like people did in old-fashioned story books.
Like a story book.
Padfoot joins them behind the tree and transforms back to Sirius. The four of them follow the strange people who are heading back towards the wardrobe. For all their rich clothes, handsome faces and straight bearings, the four adults look oddly childish as they walk slowly ahead, hand in hand, until they reach the wardrobe.
The door is open now; Remus can see the light.
The four child-adults do not notice their audience as they push past trees and then fur coats and out through the wardrobe door.
Remus has a brief glimpse of four children, an impression of an empty room and boys in ties and girls in pinafores before he and James and Sirius and Peter have followed the others through the wardrobe and discover themselves standing, exposed, in a Hogwarts corridor
And
‘With Eyes Closed’ for aggiebell90 who wanted Neville at Christmas time.
Neville knew that it was Christmas Day because Gran served cream in his morning porridge, something she only did on very special occasions. He grinned at her, and she looked surprised for a moment before taking a sharp breath through her nose and pursing her lips tightly together.
When she did speak it was to say, “We’re going to see your parents after breakfast, Neville,” as though she wanted to wipe the smile from Neville’s face. Normally he would have stopped smiling.
But today was different. Today was Christmas and Granddad - who winked at Neville from the other side of the table - had told him that little boys’ wishes came true on Christmas day.
Neville had been wishing very very hard. He did wonder why he hadn’t wished for it last Christmas - he could vaguely remember last Christmas: a big tree and his Uncle Algie talking in a very loud voice and having to wear an uncomfortable set of robes all day - and came to the conclusion that he hadn’t been old enough to think of it at the time. After all, he’d only been five last Christmas.
This year he was six and big enough to understand how miraculous and wonderful a wish come true could be. He felt proud. This was something that only he could do, even though it was something his whole family wanted. He was the only little boy in the Longbottom family. His grandparents and his great aunts and uncles were too old to make magic Christmas wishes.
He had the faint stir of worry that perhaps the magic wouldn’t work for him because he hadn’t done any magic yet and Gran was always saying that by his age Neville’s father had been setting fire to his bed every time he didn’t want to go to sleep. But Neville’s granddad said that Neville had plenty of time and that it was nothing to worry about, and ‘be quiet, Augusta, you’re upsetting the boy,’ which Neville wasn’t meant to have heard, but he had.
Once he’d finished his porridge - and only then - Neville was allowed to open the stocking that hung over the fireplace. He eyed the bulges in it with apprehension. He hadn’t wished for them, and he hoped that these unasked-for presents wouldn’t take away from the big wish that Neville had made. What if there was only enough magic for one good thing to happen to him on Christmas day?
Still, he pulled out the presents one by one and opened them under his grandparents’ gaze. Granddad seemed to get more excited about each present than Neville did, whereas Gran sat very still, a certain tightness lingering about her mouth, and did not take her eyes away from Neville’s fumbling hands as the wrappings fell away beneath them.
Each time a present was opened, Neville held his breath and then let it out in a hiss of disappointment. He had hoped that there would be a sign to show that his Christmas wish was going to come true. But the gaudy wrapping paper slipped off to reveal ordinary things. A paint box with paints that were Charmed not to get on your clothes. Books with exercises for learning to read and write. A set of coloured balls on wooden sticks stuck together, which was what Granddad called an ‘Abacus’. And then the final present, firm and heavy in Neville’s hands, and this must be the sign, mustn’t it?
It was a lump of coal.
Neville stared at it, his eyes stinging in a way that meant he was about to cry, but he couldn’t cry because Gran didn’t like it, and it was Christmas and his wish was going to come true because it just had to.
Gran spoke, her voice a little too brisk. “Father Christmas must know that you still don’t know your alphabet properly, Neville.”
Neville felt his cheeks go red with shame. He could almost do his alphabet properly, only sometimes the ‘d’s and the ‘b’s twisted about in his head until he wasn’t sure if his name was Neville Longbottom or Longdottom. And then Gran would frown and Neville’s throat would go tight and all the other letters would jumble up and come out all wrong until his hands shook so much he couldn’t hold the crayon properly anymore.
Granddad shot Gran a cross look that Neville probably wasn’t meant to have seen.
“I’m sure that Father Christmas doesn’t mind too much about that,” he said in a cheerful voice that made Neville feel sad. “Look at all the other nice presents he brought, eh lad?”
Neville looked, but somehow he didn’t see.
Granddad didn’t come to the hospital with Neville and Gran. He didn’t like to Apparate or Floo long distances any more, and he said he’d get started with the turkey instead, and told Neville to send his parents Granddad’s love.
Neville did, but his father only blinked blankly at him, and his mother just stroked her chin and looked at a spot somewhere over Neville’s head. Neville sat in the chair he always sat in when he visited his parents on their ward. The hospital was decorated for Christmas; big paper chains swung across the ceiling and there was tinsel around all the beds. The Healer gave Neville a cracker and asked if he would like to pull it with his father. The Healer had to hold Neville’s father’s hands around the end of the cracker while Neville pulled.
Gran looked away.
When the cracker went off with a bang that made Neville jump, neither of his parents flinched. Inside were a Father Christmas hat and a pack of ‘Droobles Best Blowing Gum’. The Healer shrank the hat to fit Neville and gave it to him. He was given the gum as well, but Gran took it out of Neville’s lap and put it on the table between his parents’ beds instead.
“Not before lunch,” she said, and then excused herself to go and powder her nose. Neville caught a glimpse of a crumpled expression on her face.
Someone further down the ward began to shout: high, excited yelps of noise which had scared Neville last time he visited. The Healer sighed and turned away to see to her patient.
Neville leant forward in his chair. Surely now was the moment that the wish was going to come true. Gran was gone, the Healer was gone; it was just him and his mother and father. Now was when it was going to happen. Now he was going to save his parents and make his family happy and normal again. He waited, wishing as hard as he could. He shut his eyes, because wishes were meant to come true when your eyes were closed, weren’t they? But he kept opening them after a second or so just to see, just to see.
Were his parents looking at him yet? Were they smiling? Where they waking up and blinking and looking about them, wondering why they were in the hospital?
Would they know who he was?
Neville worried about this for a minute, closing his eyes to wish and then opening them again to check.
Nothing happened.
The minutes passed and the shouting from the bottom of the ward stopped. Neville heard the Healer’s voice talking calmly to the patient. He opened his eyes for the last time and saw that his parents were sitting in front of him just as they always had been. His father had opened the packet of gum, unwrapped a piece and was now rolling the gum between his fingers. Even Neville knew you weren’t meant to do that with sweets. How could his father not know what to do? His mother was smoothing the bedcovers that she was sitting on, and Neville tried to pretend that she was back to normal and making the bed that she would no longer have to sleep in. It didn’t work.
At home Gran made the beds, and Granddad sometimes played with sweets - pretending to hide them behind his ear - before giving them to Neville. But somehow Neville knew that his parents were never going to do ordinary things like his grandparents did. Like ordinary people did.
And, for the first time, it didn’t make him sad. It made him angry.
He’d spent all that time, ever since Granddad had told him about Christmas wishes, wishing with all his might that his parents would come back. And now he knew that he had only been meant to wish for a paint box, and then he would have been happy, but he wasn’t happy because he wanted his mummy and daddy, and they wouldn’t look at him.
“Why won’t you look at me?” he shouted at them, surprising himself by how loud he had made his voice. “Can’t you see me? Why won’t you look at me?” He snatched the stupid Christmas hat from his head and flung it at his father’s feet. “I’m here! I’m here! Why can’t you see me?”
His father squeezed the gum and his mother smoothed the blankets. Neville wanted something else to throw at them. He wanted to scream until his voice gave out. He wanted to scream until they stopped ignoring him.
“Neville!”
Gran’s voice made the anger within him fall away and he turned to her, white faced and scared.
But all she said was, “we’re going to go now, Neville.”
Neville nodded, and Gran began to walk out of the ward. Neville followed her until something caught his elbow.
It was his mother.
She held his elbow with one hand and held out the other. In it was the wrapper from the ‘Droobles Best Blowing Gum’ that his father had unwrapped.
“Neville! Come along - Alice?” Gran had stopped. She walked back to Neville and his mother and rested her hand on Neville’s head. Neville felt the weight of it, and the felt too the clawed curl of her fingers against his scalp. “It’s all right, Neville,” she said, her voice cracking slightly.
Neville stared wide-eyed into his mother’s blank face and closed his hand over the gum wrapper.
“It’s all right,” Gran said again.
Neville tried to pretend it was.