Fic: Jovenalia for shaggydogstail
Title: Jovenalia
Author/Artist: Brighty18
Recipient: Shaggydogstail
Rating: Light R, PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *Foul language, silly traditions, murderous obligate hemiparasitic plants, self-referential nonsense, and everything you never wanted to know about mistletoe*
Word count: About 2,600
Summary: It’s Winter Solstice 1979 and the stars are aligned for wish making. But, beware, even the most solemn of ceremonies can be interrupted by angry foliage...
Notes: Merry Christmas! Here a stab at your #1 (Mistletoe, it’s infested with Nargles) mixed with your Wild Card (creating a Wizarding tradition). This story does reference a few past stories, particulary THIS and THIS and THIS, but it’s also based on the actual star chart for December 21, 1979.
“When the mooooooon is in the Seventh House… and Jupiteeeeer aligns with Mars…” sang Lily as she carefully hung a blown-glass model of the red planet next to a larger one representing Jupiter. The tree branch trembled under the weight, but (thanks to her clever magic) the ornaments remained relatively stable.
“Actually, Love, the moon is in the Twelfth House and Jupiter and is in opposition to it, conjunct to Mars - which is the whole point of Jovenalia!” corrected James, only to receive a light punch to the gut from Lily and yet another eye roll from Remus, his thirtieth of the day, perhaps, if one were actually keeping tabs.
“First off, it was a musical theatre reference, second, a conjunction clearly is an alignment, and, third, Jovenalia isn’t a real thing,” grumbled Remus not quite as under-his-breath as politeness would have normally dictated. “It’s utter rubbish, not to mention a waste of perfectly good Christmas decorations.” He cast a longing look at the overflowing trunk of unused wreaths, garlands, bows, and baubles and sighed. How he missed a traditional holiday!
Sensing a possible meltdown, Sirius wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and whispered in his ear. “Fear not, Moony-love, for in an hour or so, when as Jovenalia is over, we’ll put up all your favorite toy soldiers and sugar plums and whatnot!”
“My sugar plums are beside the point,” huffed Remus, distinctly not pulling away from the embrace. “The point is your holiday is just Pureblood bollocks.”
“Not at all!” cried Peter. “It’s a celebration that only occurs maybe once in a lifetime when the stars are perfectly aligned at the Solstice! We’re fortunate to experience it and have our wishes come true!”
“Yes,” added James, “When Jupiter shares his home with Mars,
With Saturn and the Dark Moon Lilith
And across the way, the Moon not stars
Shine down on all things frilleth
Then raise we up, O Jove above
Our Songs of hope to You
And what we ask, we ask with love,
To make our all wishes come true.”
Remus was about to point out that in no self-respecting dictionary on earth, was “frilleth” actually a word, but before he could get the thought out, Sirius gave him a quick kiss on the lips and said, “See, it’s time for our deepest, darkest wishes to come true, Moony!”
“More like time to don aluminium foil hats or ditch our boyfriends,” muttered Lily. And Remus had to stifle a laugh. Skeptical as he was over this dubious ceremony, at the very least, he was glad to be in good company.
“Admittedly, it does result bad rhyme schemes and an extremely aesthetically displeasing tree,” said Sirius, adjusting the small, crimson globe representing Mercury. “But I do rather enjoy placing Your Anus in my sign of Scorpio.” Much to Remus’ chagrin, Sirius barked out a snorty laugh before adding,“Though, I would probably enjoy Your Anus anywhere, come to think of it.”
“It’s Uranus and this is supposed to be a Christmas Tree not a bloody star chart,” spat Remus through gritted teeth. Truth be told, he and Lily didn’t mind all this nonsense as much as they put on. He did, however, find it quite surprising that, out of the blue, his best friends, who up until now had studiously avoided all things Pureblood, were now all agog over this stupid pseudo-holiday. Wishes coming true, indeed! If that were real, a certain celestial body would no longer have control of his life. Besides, why bother with wishes when he had what he wanted out of life: friends, love, Sirius. What more a werewolf want? Well, besides authentic Christmas decorations.
“Your Anus is glowing all over my sign, it’s sparking and dangling on my mighty pine…” sang Sirius moreorless to the tune of “Away in the Manger.”
“Hey,” said Peter, desperately trying to steer the conversation away from his friends genitalia “Where’s Neptune?” He immediately began rifling through the trunk of yet-unused Christmas - and Jovenalia - ornaments. “Is it in here?” he asked, holding up a small, unfamiliar, wooden box. No one said a word so he opened it up, peered inside, and shrieked as a small, fist-sized sprig of mistletoe popped out and ran straight at Remus, brandishing what appeared to be a tiny wooden sword, clearly wrested from an unfortunate nutcracker.
“My name is HL-986. You killed my cousin. Prepare to die!” shrilled the mistletoe, thrusting its sword at the worn toe of Remus’ boot.
“Pardon?” asked Remus, entirely failing to get the Muggle pop-culture reference seven years too early.
“I said 'My name is HL-986. You killed my cousin. Prepare to die!' ”
Remus knelt down and inspected the mistletoe more closely. Yes, to an extent it did look familiar, but then didn’t all obligate hemiparasitic plants look alike? “Look, you, you’re a parasite! And not even Kingdom Anamalia!” he told it, running his finger over a trembling leaf. “And I can’t quite work out how you might have blood relations if you haven’t any blood to begin with,” he added almost kindly.
“We are all cousins!” screamed the contrary Viscum Album Magicalis, “and GT-507 was my best friend as well!”
“Ahhh, GT-507!” chorused the Marauders.
“He was an awful fellow,” sighed Peter wistfully.
“Rife with anger management issues, I should say,” added James.
“And we didn’t precisely kill him,” clarified Remus, “we just released him back into the wild.”
“Yes, yes, just like on those Muggle wildlife shows on the telly, but without the radio collar,” said Sirius.
“You could not have collared him,” growled HL-986, “he didn’t have a neck; he was simply foliage.”
“Quite right,” said Sirius, nodding.
HL-986 launched a berry at Sirius, but missed him by several feet, hitting Lily in the nose. “AND I’M POISONOUS! I CAUSE DIARRHEA! ” he reminded them all needlessly.
“Indeed,” said Lily drily. “Now how did you come to know my mates, again?” She flashed him her sweetest, berry-melting smile.
HL-986 paused as if struck dumb (which was quite a feat when one has no mouth to speak of). Then he cleared his throat (or whatever resembled one) and began. “Years ago I hung in the Hogwarts Library - hence the “HL” - I was the nine hundredth and eighty-sixth member of my fine lineage to do so. And, if I do say so myself, I was stupendous at my job. Caused many a kiss, I did. You should have seen the day that Madame Pince and Argus Filch…”
“Ew!” interrupted James, squeezing his eyes shut and placing his hands over his ears.
“Gross!” added Peter.
“Erm.. anyway,” continued HL-986, “each year when we were stored away in the Hogwarts basements, my dear, sweet cousin…”
“Poisonous arsehole more like it,” muttered Sirius.
“...Gryffindor Tower 507, regaled me with terrible tales of the countless tribulations he suffered at the hands of you, Myopic Bastard,” he said, waving a branch at James.
“And you, Fat Little Fool,” he added pointing at Peter with a wilted leaf
Next he turned toward Remus and Sirius. “And these two, the Swotty Hypocrite and the Vainglorious Nutcase.”
“Merlin, you lot are creative name callers,” said Lily. She leaned down and patted his stem, causing the mistletoe to giggle and blush red to the tips of his berries. “But what did they actually do to him to derve such vengeance?”
“What did he do to us more precisely,” huffed James. “Well, yes, we did hit him with a Singing Curse and once, I’ll admit, I turned him yellow, but he made Wormtail cry and Moony and Padfoot kiss and…”
“I’d hardly call that magic,” Lily interrupted.
“And he sent Remus and Sirius to Fairy Land!” offered Peter.
Lily huffed and shook her head. “I don’t even want to know what that means,” she said, “but I bloody well hope it’s not some sort of homophobic reference.”
“Quite the contrary, I assure you,” replied HL-986. “The residents of Fairy Land vary greatly in sexuality and gender expression.”
Sirius narrowed his eyes, glaring down at the angry clump of parasitic vegetation. “And last year,” he snarled, clearly holding back the bile, “he cursed Remus into entirely destroying my fabulous Christmas color scheme and creating culturally appropriate Santas! Your darling cousin deserved to be thrown out in the cold, he did!”
“That’s what you think,” growled HL-986. “He may well have frozen to death.”
“Wait, doesn’t mistletoe live in the forest? How could something that lives in trees freeze to death? So how do we even know he’s dead?” asked Peter. The others hummed and nodded in agreement.
“SHUT UP, YOU!” screamed the enraged parasite, “DO NOT TRY TO DEFEAT ME WITH LOGIC!”
“Well, we can certainly defeat you with something,” Remus suggested calmly. “I mean, you’re not all that powerful, are you? You’re nearly incapable of photosynthesis.”
“SCREW YOU!!!” shrieked the mistletoe, waving his wooden-sword in a vaguely threatening manner. Unfortunately, the gesture merely produced laughter from the former Marauders and a pitying smile from Lily.
Then, without warning, from somewhere deep within the apartment, a muffled chime sounded.
“Hurrah! It’s time!” shouted James.
“Time for what?” asked Lily a bit warily.
“Time to send you all to a watery grave!” cried HL-986.
Sirius grinned. “Time to get dressed! It’s the nearly the exact moment of the Winter Solstice, so Jovenalia is almost upon us.” He then turned to the mistletoe and asked, “And why, precisely, would our grave be watery? We’re on dry land. Hell, it’s not even raining.”
“Theatrical license,” replied the plant with what (had he eyes) could well have been taken to be an eye-roll.
“Be that as it may…” began Sirius, but he found himself yanked away toward the bedroom to change into his Jovenalia regalia.
Ten minutes later the quintet emerged dressed in a rather violent shade of violet and arranged themselves around the tree.
“What in bloody hell are you wearing?” asked the mistletoe.
“I’m asking myself the same damned thing,” Remus grumbled a little too audibly. “Seriously,” he thought to himself, “who the hell wears purple velvet, spangled-drenched robes at 11:10 in the morning? Hell, who would wear such a thing at 11:10 in the evening?” He was trying to to think of a single occasion where such a sartorial monstrosity might be even vaguely appropriate when he noticed that the peak of James’s hat was currently sporting a glowing model of the planet Jupiter which rotated slowly. “Well, it could be worse,” he admitted aloud.
To Remus’ great dismay, another chime sounded, and James motioned for everyone to circle closer to the tree and join hands. “Now we may begin,” he intoned in a curiously low voice.
Clearly feeling ignored, HL-986 began hopping up and down on his leafy limbs. “What in bloody hell are you doing?” he cried. “You’re busy looking ridiculous when you should be preparing for your imminent death - or at least acute gastrointestinal distress!”
Studiously ignoring the overwrought hemiparasite, James, Peter, and Sirius shut their eyes and began to sing to the tune of “O Tannenbaum”: “Oh Jupiter, oh Jupiter, you are my favorite planet…”
Lily (who couldn’t quite bring herself to participate), looked over at Remus and gave him a wink. “Just go with it,” she mouthed silently.
“The things we do for love,” he mouthed back.
The three Purebloods continued to sing. “Oh Jupiter, Oh Jupiter. We raise you up our…”
“DAMN IT!” screamed HL-986. “What the hell are you doing?” Using his haustorium as well as his leaves, he raced to the top of the tree and began viciously poking his wooden sword at the circle of wizards. Luckily, his weapon was tiny and his limbs weak, so he missed each face by a proverbial mile.
Oblivious, Sirius, Peter, and James continued their ceremony which now seemed to involve everyone slowly circling the tree as they recited the planets of the solar system: “Mercury, messenger of the Gods... Venus, great Goddess of Love… Earth, yup, that’s where we live… Mars, bringer of wrath...”
“You can face my wrath!” HL-986 shouted. He dropped his tiny sword and began hurling berries at the circle of purple-robed wizards. “Have some Phoratoxin, you stupid arses! Enjoy the blurred vision and nausea!”
But Remus had had enough. “You’re really not all that poisonous, you know,” he whispered, dodging a berry. “Most people who eat you live to tell the tale.”
“Shhhh, love,” admonished Sirius. “It’s almost time for the wishes.”
“I am, too, poisonous!” retorted the mistletoe. “I can cause drowsiness and vomiting!”
“So can walking in a circle,” Lily pointed out, but was immediately shushed by James.
“But there’s more,” cried the plant, “I can make you kiss people you don’t like!”
“Yeah, well, so can Firewhiskey,” said Peter.
The mistletoe threw back his head (or what passed for one) and screamed, “MY NAME IS HL-986! YOU KILLED MY COUSIN! PREPARE TO DIE!” The last syllable echoed faintly across the now-silent apartment. No one said a word. No one knew quite what to say.
Finally, James, broke the silence, “Now close your eyes and make a wish…”
“Ha!” said the mistletoe, “I wish you all stomach pain and muscle weakness! I wish that you feel the strength of my poison! I wish…”
“...SILENTLY!” finished James.
Once again, silence reigned. Remus closed his eyes and pondered about what to wish for. He briefly considered making the moon disappear, but reconsidered because of what that might do to the tides. For a fleeting moment, he thought about making himself not a werewolf, but, in truth, he lacked the confidence that there was anything that powerful. Other than that, he had all he needed: good friends (even if they were a bit batty), a good education, a warm cozy apartment with the man he loved… and then it hit him.
“Time to open your eyes!” James said brightly, and Remus felt Sirius squeeze his hand.
“Oh,” cried Peter sadly, “My wish didn’t come true.”
“Whatever did you wish for?” asked Lily.
“NO! Don’t say it!” broke in James. “There might still be time! If you say it aloud before it happens, it won’t come true!”
“Hey, look,” said Sirius, pointing happily at the convulsing form of HL-986, “Our little mate seems to be a bit preoccupied!” He carefully reached into the tree branches and gingerly picked-up the trembling sprig. As he did so, thousands of tiny, silver specs floated off into the pine-scented air.
HL-986 writhed and scratched, whimpered and whined. “Mmmmnnnnth,” he cried piteously.
“Well,” said Remus with a smile of geniune surprise. “It seems my wish came true already.”
“What did you wish for, love?” asked Sirius, slipping his arm around his boyfriend.
Remus sighed and snuggled into Sirius’ hideous, purple robes. “Nargles!” he replied. “My crazy Uncle Hifflerump always cautioned me to be wary of mistletoe, lest it be infested with nargles.”
And so passed the first (and only) Jovenalia of Remus’ life. Though relieved and happy when the real Christmas decorations appeared, he would be forever grateful for - and just a tad bit incredulous about - his Jovenalia wish.
Author/Artist: Brighty18
Recipient: Shaggydogstail
Rating: Light R, PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *Foul language, silly traditions, murderous obligate hemiparasitic plants, self-referential nonsense, and everything you never wanted to know about mistletoe*
Word count: About 2,600
Summary: It’s Winter Solstice 1979 and the stars are aligned for wish making. But, beware, even the most solemn of ceremonies can be interrupted by angry foliage...
Notes: Merry Christmas! Here a stab at your #1 (Mistletoe, it’s infested with Nargles) mixed with your Wild Card (creating a Wizarding tradition). This story does reference a few past stories, particulary THIS and THIS and THIS, but it’s also based on the actual star chart for December 21, 1979.
“When the mooooooon is in the Seventh House… and Jupiteeeeer aligns with Mars…” sang Lily as she carefully hung a blown-glass model of the red planet next to a larger one representing Jupiter. The tree branch trembled under the weight, but (thanks to her clever magic) the ornaments remained relatively stable.
“Actually, Love, the moon is in the Twelfth House and Jupiter and is in opposition to it, conjunct to Mars - which is the whole point of Jovenalia!” corrected James, only to receive a light punch to the gut from Lily and yet another eye roll from Remus, his thirtieth of the day, perhaps, if one were actually keeping tabs.
“First off, it was a musical theatre reference, second, a conjunction clearly is an alignment, and, third, Jovenalia isn’t a real thing,” grumbled Remus not quite as under-his-breath as politeness would have normally dictated. “It’s utter rubbish, not to mention a waste of perfectly good Christmas decorations.” He cast a longing look at the overflowing trunk of unused wreaths, garlands, bows, and baubles and sighed. How he missed a traditional holiday!
Sensing a possible meltdown, Sirius wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and whispered in his ear. “Fear not, Moony-love, for in an hour or so, when as Jovenalia is over, we’ll put up all your favorite toy soldiers and sugar plums and whatnot!”
“My sugar plums are beside the point,” huffed Remus, distinctly not pulling away from the embrace. “The point is your holiday is just Pureblood bollocks.”
“Not at all!” cried Peter. “It’s a celebration that only occurs maybe once in a lifetime when the stars are perfectly aligned at the Solstice! We’re fortunate to experience it and have our wishes come true!”
“Yes,” added James, “When Jupiter shares his home with Mars,
With Saturn and the Dark Moon Lilith
And across the way, the Moon not stars
Shine down on all things frilleth
Then raise we up, O Jove above
Our Songs of hope to You
And what we ask, we ask with love,
To make our all wishes come true.”
Remus was about to point out that in no self-respecting dictionary on earth, was “frilleth” actually a word, but before he could get the thought out, Sirius gave him a quick kiss on the lips and said, “See, it’s time for our deepest, darkest wishes to come true, Moony!”
“More like time to don aluminium foil hats or ditch our boyfriends,” muttered Lily. And Remus had to stifle a laugh. Skeptical as he was over this dubious ceremony, at the very least, he was glad to be in good company.
“Admittedly, it does result bad rhyme schemes and an extremely aesthetically displeasing tree,” said Sirius, adjusting the small, crimson globe representing Mercury. “But I do rather enjoy placing Your Anus in my sign of Scorpio.” Much to Remus’ chagrin, Sirius barked out a snorty laugh before adding,“Though, I would probably enjoy Your Anus anywhere, come to think of it.”
“It’s Uranus and this is supposed to be a Christmas Tree not a bloody star chart,” spat Remus through gritted teeth. Truth be told, he and Lily didn’t mind all this nonsense as much as they put on. He did, however, find it quite surprising that, out of the blue, his best friends, who up until now had studiously avoided all things Pureblood, were now all agog over this stupid pseudo-holiday. Wishes coming true, indeed! If that were real, a certain celestial body would no longer have control of his life. Besides, why bother with wishes when he had what he wanted out of life: friends, love, Sirius. What more a werewolf want? Well, besides authentic Christmas decorations.
“Your Anus is glowing all over my sign, it’s sparking and dangling on my mighty pine…” sang Sirius moreorless to the tune of “Away in the Manger.”
“Hey,” said Peter, desperately trying to steer the conversation away from his friends genitalia “Where’s Neptune?” He immediately began rifling through the trunk of yet-unused Christmas - and Jovenalia - ornaments. “Is it in here?” he asked, holding up a small, unfamiliar, wooden box. No one said a word so he opened it up, peered inside, and shrieked as a small, fist-sized sprig of mistletoe popped out and ran straight at Remus, brandishing what appeared to be a tiny wooden sword, clearly wrested from an unfortunate nutcracker.
“My name is HL-986. You killed my cousin. Prepare to die!” shrilled the mistletoe, thrusting its sword at the worn toe of Remus’ boot.
“Pardon?” asked Remus, entirely failing to get the Muggle pop-culture reference seven years too early.
“I said 'My name is HL-986. You killed my cousin. Prepare to die!' ”
Remus knelt down and inspected the mistletoe more closely. Yes, to an extent it did look familiar, but then didn’t all obligate hemiparasitic plants look alike? “Look, you, you’re a parasite! And not even Kingdom Anamalia!” he told it, running his finger over a trembling leaf. “And I can’t quite work out how you might have blood relations if you haven’t any blood to begin with,” he added almost kindly.
“We are all cousins!” screamed the contrary Viscum Album Magicalis, “and GT-507 was my best friend as well!”
“Ahhh, GT-507!” chorused the Marauders.
“He was an awful fellow,” sighed Peter wistfully.
“Rife with anger management issues, I should say,” added James.
“And we didn’t precisely kill him,” clarified Remus, “we just released him back into the wild.”
“Yes, yes, just like on those Muggle wildlife shows on the telly, but without the radio collar,” said Sirius.
“You could not have collared him,” growled HL-986, “he didn’t have a neck; he was simply foliage.”
“Quite right,” said Sirius, nodding.
HL-986 launched a berry at Sirius, but missed him by several feet, hitting Lily in the nose. “AND I’M POISONOUS! I CAUSE DIARRHEA! ” he reminded them all needlessly.
“Indeed,” said Lily drily. “Now how did you come to know my mates, again?” She flashed him her sweetest, berry-melting smile.
HL-986 paused as if struck dumb (which was quite a feat when one has no mouth to speak of). Then he cleared his throat (or whatever resembled one) and began. “Years ago I hung in the Hogwarts Library - hence the “HL” - I was the nine hundredth and eighty-sixth member of my fine lineage to do so. And, if I do say so myself, I was stupendous at my job. Caused many a kiss, I did. You should have seen the day that Madame Pince and Argus Filch…”
“Ew!” interrupted James, squeezing his eyes shut and placing his hands over his ears.
“Gross!” added Peter.
“Erm.. anyway,” continued HL-986, “each year when we were stored away in the Hogwarts basements, my dear, sweet cousin…”
“Poisonous arsehole more like it,” muttered Sirius.
“...Gryffindor Tower 507, regaled me with terrible tales of the countless tribulations he suffered at the hands of you, Myopic Bastard,” he said, waving a branch at James.
“And you, Fat Little Fool,” he added pointing at Peter with a wilted leaf
Next he turned toward Remus and Sirius. “And these two, the Swotty Hypocrite and the Vainglorious Nutcase.”
“Merlin, you lot are creative name callers,” said Lily. She leaned down and patted his stem, causing the mistletoe to giggle and blush red to the tips of his berries. “But what did they actually do to him to derve such vengeance?”
“What did he do to us more precisely,” huffed James. “Well, yes, we did hit him with a Singing Curse and once, I’ll admit, I turned him yellow, but he made Wormtail cry and Moony and Padfoot kiss and…”
“I’d hardly call that magic,” Lily interrupted.
“And he sent Remus and Sirius to Fairy Land!” offered Peter.
Lily huffed and shook her head. “I don’t even want to know what that means,” she said, “but I bloody well hope it’s not some sort of homophobic reference.”
“Quite the contrary, I assure you,” replied HL-986. “The residents of Fairy Land vary greatly in sexuality and gender expression.”
Sirius narrowed his eyes, glaring down at the angry clump of parasitic vegetation. “And last year,” he snarled, clearly holding back the bile, “he cursed Remus into entirely destroying my fabulous Christmas color scheme and creating culturally appropriate Santas! Your darling cousin deserved to be thrown out in the cold, he did!”
“That’s what you think,” growled HL-986. “He may well have frozen to death.”
“Wait, doesn’t mistletoe live in the forest? How could something that lives in trees freeze to death? So how do we even know he’s dead?” asked Peter. The others hummed and nodded in agreement.
“SHUT UP, YOU!” screamed the enraged parasite, “DO NOT TRY TO DEFEAT ME WITH LOGIC!”
“Well, we can certainly defeat you with something,” Remus suggested calmly. “I mean, you’re not all that powerful, are you? You’re nearly incapable of photosynthesis.”
“SCREW YOU!!!” shrieked the mistletoe, waving his wooden-sword in a vaguely threatening manner. Unfortunately, the gesture merely produced laughter from the former Marauders and a pitying smile from Lily.
Then, without warning, from somewhere deep within the apartment, a muffled chime sounded.
“Hurrah! It’s time!” shouted James.
“Time for what?” asked Lily a bit warily.
“Time to send you all to a watery grave!” cried HL-986.
Sirius grinned. “Time to get dressed! It’s the nearly the exact moment of the Winter Solstice, so Jovenalia is almost upon us.” He then turned to the mistletoe and asked, “And why, precisely, would our grave be watery? We’re on dry land. Hell, it’s not even raining.”
“Theatrical license,” replied the plant with what (had he eyes) could well have been taken to be an eye-roll.
“Be that as it may…” began Sirius, but he found himself yanked away toward the bedroom to change into his Jovenalia regalia.
Ten minutes later the quintet emerged dressed in a rather violent shade of violet and arranged themselves around the tree.
“What in bloody hell are you wearing?” asked the mistletoe.
“I’m asking myself the same damned thing,” Remus grumbled a little too audibly. “Seriously,” he thought to himself, “who the hell wears purple velvet, spangled-drenched robes at 11:10 in the morning? Hell, who would wear such a thing at 11:10 in the evening?” He was trying to to think of a single occasion where such a sartorial monstrosity might be even vaguely appropriate when he noticed that the peak of James’s hat was currently sporting a glowing model of the planet Jupiter which rotated slowly. “Well, it could be worse,” he admitted aloud.
To Remus’ great dismay, another chime sounded, and James motioned for everyone to circle closer to the tree and join hands. “Now we may begin,” he intoned in a curiously low voice.
Clearly feeling ignored, HL-986 began hopping up and down on his leafy limbs. “What in bloody hell are you doing?” he cried. “You’re busy looking ridiculous when you should be preparing for your imminent death - or at least acute gastrointestinal distress!”
Studiously ignoring the overwrought hemiparasite, James, Peter, and Sirius shut their eyes and began to sing to the tune of “O Tannenbaum”: “Oh Jupiter, oh Jupiter, you are my favorite planet…”
Lily (who couldn’t quite bring herself to participate), looked over at Remus and gave him a wink. “Just go with it,” she mouthed silently.
“The things we do for love,” he mouthed back.
The three Purebloods continued to sing. “Oh Jupiter, Oh Jupiter. We raise you up our…”
“DAMN IT!” screamed HL-986. “What the hell are you doing?” Using his haustorium as well as his leaves, he raced to the top of the tree and began viciously poking his wooden sword at the circle of wizards. Luckily, his weapon was tiny and his limbs weak, so he missed each face by a proverbial mile.
Oblivious, Sirius, Peter, and James continued their ceremony which now seemed to involve everyone slowly circling the tree as they recited the planets of the solar system: “Mercury, messenger of the Gods... Venus, great Goddess of Love… Earth, yup, that’s where we live… Mars, bringer of wrath...”
“You can face my wrath!” HL-986 shouted. He dropped his tiny sword and began hurling berries at the circle of purple-robed wizards. “Have some Phoratoxin, you stupid arses! Enjoy the blurred vision and nausea!”
But Remus had had enough. “You’re really not all that poisonous, you know,” he whispered, dodging a berry. “Most people who eat you live to tell the tale.”
“Shhhh, love,” admonished Sirius. “It’s almost time for the wishes.”
“I am, too, poisonous!” retorted the mistletoe. “I can cause drowsiness and vomiting!”
“So can walking in a circle,” Lily pointed out, but was immediately shushed by James.
“But there’s more,” cried the plant, “I can make you kiss people you don’t like!”
“Yeah, well, so can Firewhiskey,” said Peter.
The mistletoe threw back his head (or what passed for one) and screamed, “MY NAME IS HL-986! YOU KILLED MY COUSIN! PREPARE TO DIE!” The last syllable echoed faintly across the now-silent apartment. No one said a word. No one knew quite what to say.
Finally, James, broke the silence, “Now close your eyes and make a wish…”
“Ha!” said the mistletoe, “I wish you all stomach pain and muscle weakness! I wish that you feel the strength of my poison! I wish…”
“...SILENTLY!” finished James.
Once again, silence reigned. Remus closed his eyes and pondered about what to wish for. He briefly considered making the moon disappear, but reconsidered because of what that might do to the tides. For a fleeting moment, he thought about making himself not a werewolf, but, in truth, he lacked the confidence that there was anything that powerful. Other than that, he had all he needed: good friends (even if they were a bit batty), a good education, a warm cozy apartment with the man he loved… and then it hit him.
“Time to open your eyes!” James said brightly, and Remus felt Sirius squeeze his hand.
“Oh,” cried Peter sadly, “My wish didn’t come true.”
“Whatever did you wish for?” asked Lily.
“NO! Don’t say it!” broke in James. “There might still be time! If you say it aloud before it happens, it won’t come true!”
“Hey, look,” said Sirius, pointing happily at the convulsing form of HL-986, “Our little mate seems to be a bit preoccupied!” He carefully reached into the tree branches and gingerly picked-up the trembling sprig. As he did so, thousands of tiny, silver specs floated off into the pine-scented air.
HL-986 writhed and scratched, whimpered and whined. “Mmmmnnnnth,” he cried piteously.
“Well,” said Remus with a smile of geniune surprise. “It seems my wish came true already.”
“What did you wish for, love?” asked Sirius, slipping his arm around his boyfriend.
Remus sighed and snuggled into Sirius’ hideous, purple robes. “Nargles!” he replied. “My crazy Uncle Hifflerump always cautioned me to be wary of mistletoe, lest it be infested with nargles.”
And so passed the first (and only) Jovenalia of Remus’ life. Though relieved and happy when the real Christmas decorations appeared, he would be forever grateful for - and just a tad bit incredulous about - his Jovenalia wish.