Lessons and Carols: an Evelake Christmas, pt 1 of 2
Lessons and Carols: an Evelake Christmas
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GMW Wemyss
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My more intimate acquaintance will be aware that I had intended to spend New Year’s Eve - in this instance, assuredly not Hogmanay - in Vienna (some of you, in fact, were envious, despite my promise to think of you as I eat my Tafelspitz and Käsespätzle); and we are all, I think, aware that the weather has been and threatens to remain so ghastly that it were unfair to act the dog in the manger. I have therefore released my claim upon the annual seat in the Goldener Saal back to my Austrian (and distant) cousins, and abandoned hopes of seeing Prêtre conduct in Vienna, this year; and I shan’t repine even if it transpires that New Year’s is in the event clear, mild, and perfect weather to have travelled in without delay or annoyance.
Obviously, this means that I do have rather more time to write over the hols than I had anticipated having.
Those of you who may have but lately encountered me will perhaps know me if at all as the author of Drink Up Thy Zider: a South Hams Pomona in the 2009 H/D Career Fair.
It must accordingly occasion no surprise to anyone that my Boxing Day gift - a trifle late in the day, the Boxing Day meet of the Hunt being an immutable event on my calendar, as is visiting the OAPs - my Boxing Day gift to all of you who have been so very kind, is this brief fiction set in the Zider-verse, which chronicles the first, and rather stormy, Christmas in ETS after the events of Drink Up Thy Zider.
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1. Once, in royal Merlin’s city
… our care and delight….
From the Feast of St Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of the parish of St Margaret ante Porcos, to the Third Sunday of Advent, Draco had luxuriantly put down roots in the rich and kindly soil of Evelake Tout Saints and district: that sheltered vale, redolent of apples, watered by the kindly River Avelyn, where falls not hail, nor rain, nor any snow - except of the brief and picturesque sort that calls to mind innumerable Christmas cards - nor ever wind blows loudly. Well before Autumn, he had given up all pretence of stopping at the cottage, or at the Dower House, or in the Green Room of Aveline itself, as a ‘guest’, and he and Harry were as firmly coupled as were ever their sons Scorpius and Albie. He had discovered with delight the characteristic South Hams field barns, built of rubble or of cob, red-roofed or thatched, so like yet so unlike the field barns of the North Country, standing not at all alien amidst the corn; and rejoiced in discussing them with Nev, long familiar with their North of England iterations. The South Hams, at once so like and so unlike his own ancestral Wilts, absorbed him, and he them. After morning service on the day of the Autumnal Equinox, he and Harry had spent a quiet day in the centre of the Cleave St Urith Standing Stones, talking deeply and freely and lustrating their past. (They had made certain to ward the place well: even in Harry’s own country, even in Avalon of the Hallows and the Grail, it was always possible that some wandering Muggle of odd religious predilections and appalling taste in clothes might show up muttering about Mabon on the equinox, which Draco considered simply silly: everyone knew that the Feast of St Mabon of Brecknockshire fell on 18 November. He supposed that Muggles could hardly help themselves, knowing no better; but his ever-present memory of how his wife, like Harry’s, had come to be killed in the terror attacks, assured that any Witch or Wizard was well-advised to damned well know better.) On Bonfire Night, he and Harry had presided over the bonfires at the Evelake Pommery Long Barrow.
Packhorse bridge and parish magazine, farrier and forge, ford and footbridge and field: these now bounded his horizon, and his time in London of evil memory was as but a fevered dream beyond clear recall.
Even so, amongst the many delights of coming to know his new love - to Muggles, Sir Harry Potter KCVO, late the Int Corps, lieutenant-colonel on the Retired List, magistrate, councillor, churchwarden, MFH, and, when cornered, Deputy Lieutenant of Devon in lean years; to Wizards, yet the Vanquisher of Voldemort, Field-Auror Marshal the Rt Hon. Harry Potter, OM, MPC, late Chief of the Magical General Staff, Grand Sorcerer, MMA (Domd), Chancellor of the University of Domdaniel; hereditary member of the Moot; Governor of Azkaban and Constable of the Black Tower; Ranger of Savernake Forest; Warden of the Sept Ports; Lord Warden of the Alchemical Stannaries; Magical Lord Lieutenant of Devon; Chairman of the Board of Governors of Hogwarts School; and honorary or corresponding member of more learned and scientific societies than will ever do any good in this world or the next - amongst the many delights of coming to know his new love, Draco reflected, was discovering how Harry had grown into himself, not merely as Master of the Hallows and, when all was said and done, the principal person of consequence in Afallach (not to say, in fact, the pendragon thereof). In Harry’s company, even journeys up to town were transports of delight; and, although not resigning from his own clubs, Draco had been happy to join Harry’s as well (in fact, Malfoys had been angling unsuccessfully to join for generations, notwithstanding its Squib and even Muggle members: the snob value, given who precisely were the Squibs and Muggles at issue, outweighed even those considerations), and happily surprised that in the bohemian and unbuttoned atmosphere of the Wodewose Club, where the membership ranged from a royal duke (wherefore the Malfoy truckling) to dear old Derwent Shimpling, Harry was an appropriately savage wit. (Draco had forgotten, rather conveniently, that this was after all the same Harry who had cheeked Snape with considerable pith, in their schooldays.) And it had given Draco much innocent pleasure to discover that the adult Harry - a veteran by now, after all, of innumerable missions outwith the British Isles, and a Very Senior Man Indeed - knew and maintained cordial ties with their shared cousinage, even upon the Continent.
The annual Christmas Luncheon with their Brothers Wodewose, in town, had fallen upon Friday, 21 December, under the auspices of and in memorial celebration of Myrddin Wyllt. And as they left London, something more began to fall: snow.
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2. In the bleak midwinter
… amongst the trees of the garden.
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on bloody snow. Beyond the charmed bounds of the Vale, outwith the boundaries of Evelake that was Avalon, frosty winds made moan, earth stood hard as iron, and as for all but the deepest and swiftest waters, stone simply wasn’t in it for hardness. From the Friday to Sunday, the last Sunday of Advent, Britain and the Continent - outwith Evelake, naturally - had been plunged into the most bitter of Arctic temperatures, lashed by gales, and choked by unprecedented snowfalls.
The Rector, Dr Vickers, had alluded to the phenomenon, none too gently, in his sermon that morning, and again when he had joined the house party at luncheon: for Narcissa, the neighbouring Ackerleys, Pansy and Theo, Blaise and Justin, Dean and Seamus, Luna and her sons and Nev, her second husband, as well as all the Weasleys in creation, were amongst those stopping at Aveline House for Christmas. In one comprehensive grumble, Wizarding Britain’s most contentious C of E clergyman (the common view of Old Hufflepuffs is a dangerous delusion) had damned the weather, the Muggle Met Office, its Wizarding counterpart the Neph Office, people who thought Lancelot Andrewes and Mr Eliot were merely indulging in rhetoric when they talked of hard winters, and the global warming folly of fifteen years before. ‘Solstitio brumali, I ask you! There’s a damned good reason we call it as the dead of Winter - you never hear of the dead of Summertide, do you, by God! Well, there’s one comfort: at least the odds and sods the other side the Channel are getting it hotter - or, rather, colder - than we are, and serves ’em right, the buggers. The ones that aren’t sodding Socialists are all papists, when they’re not both together, and the Wizards are worse yet, Durmstrangers and Death Eaters and buggers who’d black Grindelwald’s boots were he still about and ’d let ’em! You two,’ said the Rector, brutally, to his longsuffering hosts, ‘shan’t be going to Vienna in ten days, I can say with some assurance: the wireless says it’s far worse in Europe, which is no more than they deserve, and set to remain so for a fortnight at the very least.’
Draco took on what could only be described, musically, as a whiter shade of pale. It is little enough known to Wizards, let alone to Muggles, that the Wiener Zaubermusikverein maintains on the Schottenring its own eponymous concert hall for magical concerts, in the Silbernersaal of which the annual Neujahrskonzert is held. Draco had an honest love of music; and he was honest enough to admit that he loved Society very nearly as much. It had meant much to him that - even before his and Harry’s relationship had commenced - his post-War respectability had been slowly but increasingly acknowledged by his Austrian cousinage (Harry’s kinsmen as well, come to that, and Nev’s, and Cousin Weasel’s to boot), with their ton and their standing and their priceless hereditary seats in the Silbernersaal for the Neujahrskonzert. To have been allotted seats for the social and musical event of the Austrian Wizarding year had pleased Draco’s simple soul; that this allotment had been treated as a familial courtesy, with warmth and apparent affection, had meant far more. It had been one of the few comforts of his dogged return to respectability, in the years just after the War, to have gone from unacknowledged and disregarded black sheep - and Lucius had remained severely unacknowledged, never spoken of and cut when he could not be avoided, to the end of his days - through stages of increasing intimacy: polite acknowledgement; courteous correspondence; recognition; and then cordiality, culminating in the embrace of kinship by the various Wizarding scions and cadets of his Viennese connexions. The grateful exchange of ‘Servus, Rudi’ and ‘Servus, Leopold’ and an answering ‘Servus, Draco’ had been balm to his soul, and he had been looking forward with unbearable anticipation to showing off Scorpius, and Al, and his own Harry at last, to all those sporting, clever Berchtolds, elegant, Petronian Pálffys, and pious, honest, rather thick Trauttmansdorffs - and now a turbulent priest was telling him it was falling through all because of a few inches of snow.
It was unbearable, really. For, even as, from the Feast of St Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of the parish of St Margaret ante Porcos, unto the Third Sunday of Advent, Draco had luxuriantly put down roots in the rich and kindly soil of Evelake Tout Saints and district, he had realised that some part of him would always also seek other horizons as well. Not always; not indeed often. Yet, even as packhorse bridge and parish magazine, farrier and forge, ford and footbridge and field, now bounded his workaday horizon, he had also, and knew he would ever have, a touch of the great city in him, of noble buildings and works of ancientry and of art, the world of professional orchestras and drama, and choirs that not the best church and choir in the Three Kingdoms, even if trained by Mr Avent and Dr Thorning, could match. The great world called him betimes, counting-houses and ’Change, Moot and marble monuments, galleries and great gardens and parks, and the bustle of commerce in Diagon. Theatres and the concert halls - jolly, vulgar music halls as well - all the vibrant culture, high and low alike, of Friary Garden, Dreary Lane, and the West Bar. The ever-flowering glories, charmed and charming, of Chiswick - the Royal Herbologic Garden - and its satellite in the country, Balcombe Court; Duke of Kent’s Steps running down to Merlin Walk, all around the green and ever-flowering glories, charmed and charming, of Mungo’s Park, the grave, chaste, Palladian frontages of Mercia Square and the Classical proportions, trim as a Wren’s nest, of St Cuthbert’s, Mercia Square, the elegant arch of Crutchedfriars Bridge and the mix of Queen Anne and Georgian graces in the houses of Fore Square: these also spoke to his soul, quite as much as did Ham and beacon, tor and moor, tumulus and cairn and standing stone, ling and heather, river and coppice and bluebell wood, village and church and green.
Just last week, he had been unable to dissemble his excitement over the prospect of a Viennese New Year. Hermione had asked, ‘Do you speak German, then? Harry’s never mastered it, and he’s forever complaining that the Glossomentia charms are so fiddly’; and he’d explained, ‘No, Mummy hadn’t wished him to learn German, lest it encourage Lucius to send him to Durmstrang, he spoke French, naturally, as one must, but it hardly mattered: if one speaks English slowly and loudly to foreigners, they eventually twig - well, bar the Americans - and anyone who mattered in Vienna spoke English, more or less’; and now the beautiful dream was dying.
As he struggled to hide his sudden and unexpectedly overwhelming disappointment, he realised that Harry was speaking, with the voice of command, easy to him with long familiarity.
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3. Angels, from the realms of glory
… as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore….
‘Arthur?’
‘Yes, Harry?’
‘As well you know, I have never fully understood the bloody Floo. Is there any likelihood its being affected by this weather they say we’re to be having?’
‘Mm? Oh. Oh, dear. I suppose it might well be - I seem to recall … Christmas of ’09, wasn’t it? Bit of a mess all ’round, although of course nothing to what the poor Muggles were faced with. Yes, I think it very possible that it may be.’
‘Right, then. Draco, love, if you’d be so good as to flick the wireless on? We’ve missed hearing the Apparating Forecast, but if there are gale warnings, as there must be, surely we’ll know soon enough. Thank you, love - the Home Service, please.
‘Right. Now. Noddy!’
Hermione compressed her lips as the elf appeared. In years gone by, she would have been forced to do so to avoid complaining about the servitude of elfdom, never mind that Harry’s elves were all paid and as free as they would accept to be. Nowadays, she was compelled to sit shtum only to keep from giggling: she could never hear Noddy’s name without an immediate reversion to childhood, to Toyland and Mr Plod and Big Ears and - she would never tell anyone, but Molly did so recall her to mind - Tessie Bear.
‘House-elves on parade, please, Noddy.’ With a volley of pops, the staff assembled - even Wynkyn, the library elf. ‘Thank you. Now. There is a dreadful storm under way, and it’s to be worse still, we think. It won’t of course be bad here, because of - well, I needn’t spell that out. This is Evelake, after all, and the bl- - er, the blessèd Grail is just there in the parish church: you understand. We shall be having a much larger house-party than planned.’
‘How many Wizards is we putting up, Master Sir?’
‘As many as want shelter. And our Christmas guests who were coming along later must come now. Ron? See to it, please, beginning with the Shacklebolts. I shall want you elves, please, to make ready all the cottages and every room here that can be spared. Orla, Stewart, I’m sorry, but I shall want to billet guests on you at the Dower House as well - thanks, damned good of you. Hubert Henry, I promise you that I’ll not have anyone stop with you who’s not musical. I’m relying on you to help me, as I know you will do. Yes, Hugo can stop with you, and the Percy Weasleys, I’ll make certain you all have the chance to listen to the lessons and carols from Blaise College, and - I promise - Messiah right through on the WWN. We can expand things if we must - yes, Scrumpy?’
In a very small and apprehensive voice, the elf in question said, ‘We can be putting Wizards up in the cellar.’
‘The cellar? Don’t be absurd,’ said Draco, ‘the -’
‘One moment, please. Is the cellar empty for some reason, Scrumpy?’
The elf lowered his eyes. ‘Scrumpy is a bad elf and did not tell Master Sir whens it were time -’
Seeing an elfin hand reaching for an elfin ear, Harry stopped him. ‘Scrumpy, was this the sort of thing I should have wished you to interrupt luncheon to tell me? I thought not. You’re a very good elf, Scrumpy. Now, as we’ve begun, you may as well tell me now.’
Snuffling only the least bit, Scrumpy gulped, and answered. ‘The removal Wizards as Master Sir told Scrumpy to use got muddled, they did.’
Draco suddenly realised, with horror, what must have happened. Since the parish Patronal Festival, he had been slowly moving himself in to Aveline House, with a delicious deliberation. The Christmas rush and all the seasonal preparations had caused him to leave to the very last the final push, which had included the moving and merging of his cellar into Harry’s quite respectable one. (Even with charms, wine wanted delicate handling if it was not to be rendered undrinkable for a fortnight, and Draco had known he was cutting it rather fine, and cursed himself for it daily.) And now some clot-headed fool, some idiot hedge-Wizard who’d doubtless not managed even to pass his OWLs, some cack-handed, gaping stockfish with the wit of a Squib, had apparently buggered it up. This was the final indignity. He’d thrown himself into planning for Christmas. He’d meant it to be perfect in every detail: his and Harry’s first Christmas together. It was to have been the crowning touch, the crown matrimonial, and now -.
‘Elf! Are you telling me that, instead of moving my cellar into Harry’s, some gang of thickies has been hired to move Harry’s out and we have no wine?’
‘Draco -’
‘Oh, don’t you start, I make quite certain you succumbed to some atavistic Old Gryffindor urge to hire an incompetent as an act of charity -’
‘Be reasonable, Draco: we’ve still tea, and beer, and milk for brekker, and lashings of cocoa, and some whisky as far as that goes, and more than enough cider, no one will die of thirst. And some good’s come out of it: we can put up more people in want of shelter, now -’
‘And we’ve no wine and Christmas is utterly buggered and all because you felt it necessary to entrust my property to whichever down on his luck oaf you thought wanted a good turn done!’
With his usual tact, Ron said, ‘Harry, didn’t you tell me you gave the job to - oi, Hermione, that’s my shin!’
‘I must say,’ cut in Narcissa, in cut-glass tones, ‘I much preferred you, Draco, at the age of four, when you would simply cry when frustrated. You’re too old by four decades to persist in these squalid little tantrums. I apologise to you all for my son.’
‘And I,’ said Scorpius, suddenly formidable, ‘for my father.’ Draco glared at his son. Sitting there wearing - he had, of course, changed after church - a rather worn hoodie on the breast of which was printed, ‘Dumbledore Lives!’ and on the reverse, in faded lettering, ‘Hippogriffs of Fire: World Tour 2019’, with a list of tour dates and venues (Albus, to his right, was wearing a similarly down-market article of attire bearing the name of the group that had opened for the Hippogriffs at Neasden, ‘No Æon’), Scorpius ought not to have seemed formidable; but Draco recognised, with a shock that shamed and sickened him, that his son was, just now, the adult, and he a petulant child. ‘This is not precisely the season, Father, for taking on the role of the Bethlehem innkeeper. Or Herod.’
‘Besides,’ said Albus, with that cheeky grin that was so perilously reminiscent of his father’s, ‘we’ve already cast this year’s Nativity play for the infants’ class.’
Scorpius was not to be diverted - even by his lover. ‘I for one don’t care if every Wizarding family in the Three Kingdoms is forced to kip in the cellars, no matter how numerous, so long as we’re doing what is right, rather than what’s easy or expedient; and I rather doubt that, at bottom, that’s what has you tossing your dummy out of the pram - Father. And you’re quite right that Harry gave the commission of moving your damned claret here to a Wizard who’s been having rather a hard time of it since the War, and was never perhaps all that clever - to judge by his choice in friends, certainly. What Ron is too polite - or too afraid of Hermione - to say is that the person who made the mistake and whom you think a charity case … well. I think you know the man? Name of Gregory Goyle, I believe.’
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4. In dulci jubilo
… and the government shall be upon his shoulder….
There was nothing for it but to be brave, and put as good as face on it as one might. ‘I -. I’m sorry. I apologise unreservedly. I’ve no excuses to offer, and can only hope I’ve not ruined Christmas for you all.’
Harry smiled. ‘You’re here, love, with me. The family is here, our friends are here - and we’ll bloody well have more of ’em, now - and it’s Christmas. That’s perfect in itself. You’ve not ruined Christmas. You couldn’t if you tried.’
‘As many have tried,’ grumbled the Rector. ‘Herod, that Pullman bugger - I wager Old Red Socks got him in the end - and no one’s ever managed, have they.’
‘Quite.’ Harry was polite, but brief. The elves, after all, were waiting on orders. ‘Wynkyn, please send to Hogwarts and find out who are stopping over the hols, and get them here where it’s safe. Bring all the Hogwarts elves that can be spared. Zammy, get on to the Goldsteins: they’ll want to bring their elf and their own stocks, we’ll set aside a kitchen for them exclusively, Tony and Eleanor can kasher it, I imagine. Scrumpy, much as we’d all like to get the wine back - I’m sure Draco had planned a splendid table for Christmas, and we may be forced to adjust - we mustn’t tie up the Floo with inessentials. You go and stock us with all the foodstuffs you can find, the simpler and heartier, the better. Go to the greengrocer first, mind.
‘Noddy, please go and hasten Kingsley and party. Pansy, my dear, you and Cissy are quite likely responsible for half the consumer spending in the country: hurry to Diagon and warn the shopkeepers. George: Knockturn. I know, I know, but we cannot leave them to die of cold. Seamus, find out how bad it is to be in Ireland and the Isles - fire-call Morag, as well. Dean - no. Stewart: get through to Roger Davies and monitor Wales. We shall give priority to those in the most immediate danger of weather. Arthur, chivvy whoever’s in charge of the Floo system these days. Dean, I want you and your wand: the church can take plenty of refugees, and in fact may be the best place for anyone we take from Knockturn: at the risk of material idolatry, I rather think the Grail, even more than the Hallows, can manage them. Padre, you’re for the almshouses: if there are beds to spare, we’ll want them, and in any event we’ll want the kitchens.
‘Hermione, hurry to the Ministry and sort them, then deal with the Muggle PM: best of British luck with her, by the way. Ron, not to bring up old memories, but you go with Hermione and knock up whoever does the weather charms in the Ministry buildings, we don’t want to lose the fabric to some silly thing. Molly, Lily, please go and bring the Grangers and Dudley, Elspeth, and Harriet here; when Minerva and Filius arrive, they can tell us what Muggle and Squib families with Wizarding connexions want to be brought here. You other elves, go and start spreading the word to every household with an elf, like the good little elves you are; if you’ve any questions, ask Mr Draco, or Kreacher’s portrait. Any house or building that is to be left empty must be charmed secure and weather-proofed, mind, Grimmauld Place included; do make certain of the Burrow and the Manor, as well. Now, next I shall -’
Draco was just reflecting on how it was that only Harry would have had a portrait done of his late house-elf, when Theo cut in. ‘Harry, much as I applaud your decisiveness, you are, you know, retired as CMGS….’
‘You’re a High Court judge, Theo, surely you’ve kept up your draughtsmanship. The sooner Kingsley gets here, the better - elves, the rest of you: go - you can draw up whatever wants drawing up. Until then, I remain a Magical Privy Counsellor and a hereditary Member of the Moot, that should do to be going on with. Blaise? I want you to Floo quickly to Gringotts, and tell them what’s afoot. Nev, Luna, come with me, please….’
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