Disclaimer: - Characters are not mine only the words I use to let them express them.
Just a little Xmas drabble that came into my brain it's a one of but I think it's kind of sweet. It you like it review it and go and read my other fic. If you don't like it still review it and tell me why (constructively)
Ever since I was a little girl I had always loved Christmas, not the commercial aspects that proliferate the muggle world but the traditional preparations that had been undertaken in the run up to the season of goodwill. Normally my Mom wasn't the sort to be overly sentimental or follow the long standing ways of her own parents but she had always made a special effort at this time of the year, and I felt it was only right to continue the customs with my own small family. While Boxing Day was to be spent at the Burrow, Christ's day was all ours; the first year when our little ones were old enough to properly appreciate the atmosphere and the presents.
The first of these mores had been the baking of the cake, it was only now in later years that I realised that it wasn't a strange variation of orange juice that infused the dried fruit! I distinctly remember that I was never allowed a too large a piece of that frosted fancy my mom had placed before us after a always enormous dinner. Remus had come back to the apartment that Saturday lunchtime that signaled the first weekend of advent to find a bowl of currants, raisins, sultanas, and cherries soaking in alcohol, not knowing me to be much of a baker he enquired as to what I was doing. I had proceeded to show him my tongue in a very childish gesture, and politely inform him that I was making the Christmas cake so he was to stop being so silly. He had been intrigued by my Christmas preparations and had from that first year always thrown himself into them with as much enthusiasm as I. There were some things that the wizarding world just doesn't do at this time of the year, so I had enjoyed showing him all my 'little muggle ways' as Remus affectionately called them.
Until I was about six there had been a small artificial offering that had adorned the corner of the front room adjacent to the door, it had been bought by my mother the first year that my parents had been married. Even though it was tattered and it's top branches bent the wrong way she had insisted on bringing it out every year until my father had accidentally set it on fire, so that Christmas had been the first of many times my father and I went on a tree hunting adventures together. I still don't know to this day if the fire was intentional but from then on we had always celebrated with a real tree. Taking Remus's hand the second year of our marriage we spent a long time scouting for the 'perfect tree'. In Remus's opinion it shouldn't be too tall, it also needed to be big and bushy like Dumbledoors eyebrows. When I had pointed out that we were after all magical inclined and the perfect tree was just a flick of the wand away he had just kissed me soundly and said that there was no fun in that.
Apparating home one day I was flabbergasted to find Remus surrounded by masses of holly, ivy, pinecones and other assorted fripperies. In a daze I sat down and waited for the smile to turn to an explanation. That had come in the form of a set of drawing pins and a hammer. I had never pictured him as the artistic type but I had been overjoyed to see him like a child with his first box of Lego on Boxing Day. When we had finished many hours later an added bonus was to find that Remus was also exceedingly good at removing ivy, holly and other greenery from my person, this didn't come as so much of a surprise as he was very adept at removing other articles from me quite rapidly. It came from having so much practice.
Of course a few years ago we hadn't had the children to add an entirely different slant to the December buzz. However much I had cherished those festive seasons spent as a duet I couldn't deny the times spent as a family are infinitely more singular than anything previously experienced; even those taken at Hogworts. Present shopping this year had been exciting, Remus and I had both been like children ourselves, and after leaving William and Emily at 'Uncle' Harry's we had set out to Diagon alley to help Santa fill his sleigh.
Not having magical parents I had never played with the toys that children from a wizarding background had taken for granted, so it was with much anticipation and after lots of peppering of questions that Remus introduced me to an aspect of the magic world I had yet to discover. Remus enjoyed it when he could show me things I didn't know about, he said that it was hard to find something I hadn't read about in a book. Laughing and with a very suggestive caress I had told him that there were plenty of 'something's' that he had revealed to me that had surpassed expectations received from studying copious meters of parchment.
We had arrived to collect the children a whole lot later than Harry had been expecting us to. He had remarked that he hadn't realized that the shops opened quite that late even at Christmas time; he had however voiced this with a rather cocky almost Malfoy esque smirk iced across his face. A rather beetroot stained pair of cheeks had been his only reply. William and Emily had been angels that night and had slept like logs in their little rooms that were decorated in very un- muggle like borders. Wizards on broomsticks and wands firing spells rode around the tops of their walls; I had especially loved adding those trimmings when we had learned we were expecting twins. A trip to Harry's always seemed to tire them both out; it was something I could always rely on him for.
So here I find myself on the night before Christmas it's all-silent now, only Remus and myself still have our eyes propped open. After settling the children down we had welcomed a few friends into the hub of our house for an exchange of gifts and good tidings before uncovering the twins presents from their moorings. Together we swathe the lovingly chosen offerings with non-magically challenged dressings and place them under the tree. Tinkling the bells one last time I stifle the yawn that mars my face and taking my husbands hand with it's index finger calloused from long writing all the Christmas cards I allow myself to be led to a hopefully dream filled sleep.