It's the most wonderful time of the year, or it would be, had not the Daily Prophet keep shoveling out stories of crime and attack faster than the snowfall. Most of it is true, but what the Prophet shows is what you wouldn't exactly call petty, but the real stuff is being covered up. I guess you'd say they were covering it up or were just in denial. They do not want to believe the worst is yet to come and is indeed coming. Still, you can't stop living just because someone wants to ruin your day.

The enormous ancient house of Black, Number twelve, standing on Grimmauld Place, once belonged to the Black Family, but had long since been abandoned. Now the house is used by a ragtag group of witches and wizards known as the Order of the Phoenix. These various people and various members of their families got together occasionally for secret meetings to share ideas on how to stop the madness of You-Know-Who.

If you had blinked, you would've missed the house. Matter of fact, if you were a muggle, you would not know it was there. "Smashed" between two apartment buildings, a bit of magic situated this structure on this quiet street.

The atmosphere was quite festive. The Weasley Children, all excited over having the Winter Holidays off from school, sat around the dining room, exchanging gifts and messing with the decorations. A couple of days ago, their father, Mr. Arthur Weasley, was attacked while on duty at the Ministry of Magic, but thankfully was released from St. Mungo's Hospital the night before. The Weasley family decided that they wanted to celebrate their holiday with their friends, using the great space of the "meeting house."

An enchanted Father Christmas drifted across the room to the control of one of the Weasley twins, Fred. It floated through the dining room until a "Boys!" was shrieked from the living room; to which Fred and his brother George cringed, sending Father Christmas into a wall.

"Whose brilliant idea was this?" Mrs. Molly Weasley yelled, entering the dining room, holding a decorative ornament of a snowman with a scowl on his face and his wood arm giving a rude gesture. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and the Weasley children all looked away. She set it on the table and fixed the problem.

"I guess he wasn't having a white Christmas," Ron suggested, not looking at his mum.

"Wasn't us," Fred and George both defended together. "Honest."

"Uh huh," Mrs. Weasley replied, crossing her arms. Then she looked around and noticed all her children were here and smiled. All of her children were here for Christmas: Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George, Ron and Ginny. Bill had transferred to an Office for Gringott's Bank in London all the way from Egypt and his mother was grateful for that. He wanted his girlfriend Fleur Delacour to be with him and meet his family for Christmas, but she went to stay with her's for the Holidays, to which Harry, Ron and his siblings were grateful. Fleur promised they would ring in the New Year together. Also, her son Charlie was there all the way from Romania where he was a Dragon Keeper. Mrs. Weasley did not approve of her son's job because it was dangerous and he had sustained a serious burn along a great portion of his left arm. Still, she was glad they were all here for the Holiday.

As soon as Mrs. Weasley left, Bill let out a snort.

"Have my two little brothers been causing mischief while I was away?" Bill laughed.

"We learn from the best," George chimed as he pointed his wand to the snowman ornament and it took off its small, black top hat and pulled a rabbit out.

"Mischief is in our future." Fred told his older brother. "We plan on opening our own shop when we graduate."

"Now there is a time to joke around and a time to be serious," Percy Weasley scolded. Percy works for the Ministry and claims there will be a promotion in his future. He believes highly in Minister Fudge and wants to follow in his footsteps.

"You'd have the energy to mess around if you pulled that broomstick out of your—"

Everyone stopped when a small crash was heard from the hallway.

"Tonks is here," Harry muttered.

"Nymphadora Tonks?" Charlie questioned.

"Yep."

"Haven't seen her since we graduated together," Charlie smiled. "Pulled a prank on me she did. For old times sake, I wanna pull one on her. Help me out here." The group clustered together to decide a spur of the moment prank.

"Mind if I join in your Weasley games?" came a voice from behind them. Everyone froze and turned to face Tonks. In festive red, white and green hair, the young Metamorphagus smiled at the group of Weasleys, stopping upon seeing Charlie.

"My old mate," Tonks smiled and he smiled back. "Love the new do," she laughed as she ruffled Charlie's short orange hair.

"You girls had what was coming for you," Charlie scolded lightly.

"It's not my fault you couldn't get away in time," Tonks taunted, sticking her tongue out.

"Was that the time you had pink hair for a month?" Bill asked his younger brother.

"Oh yeah! I remember that! I was a first year and my cluster could not stop laughing at you," Percy chimed in.

"And you could not tell your fellow first years that that was your brother they were laughing at?" Charlie growled.

"My brother…with the pink hair…yeah right," Percy laughed.

Noticing the confusing looks among Harry, Ron and Hermione, Tonks decided to tell the story.

"You see, what had happened was, a bunch of girlfriends and I found out that a few of the boys—

"-Like me."

"-Fancied a group of us girls."

"It wasn't true. We were only spreading rumors."

"Being young, we started acting giddy around the blokes, you know all smiles and flirting. They totally blew us off," Tonks told.

"Pretended like they weren't even there," snickered Charlie.

"Then we heard them laughing about it and decided to get some revenge. We had it so the word git was painted on their foreheads until they admitted they were wrong little gits."

Charlie continued. "Once we got out of the hospital wing, we heard the girls giggling about it."

Tonks snorted. "More like howling with laughter. They had to do a walk of shame all the way to the hospital wing."

"In order to get back at them, which we did, we sent a rain shower of spiders into their pretty little hairs." Charlie let out a loud laugh as the image came back fresh as the day it had happened.

"While we are wigging out right in the middle of the hallway, I remembered a spell I saw in a teen magazine and decided Charlie needed some pretty hair and *bam* long pink hair for Charlie."

"It would not come out. At all. Another trip to the hospital wing, I went. The muggle studies teacher was in there at the time and said she had to deal with the same spell with her daughter, but with green hair and told me it would take a month and nightly washing to rid of it. Needless to say, a school boy with short pink hair was not a fun time. The teachers could not believe a student of my academic standing would participate in such childish pranks. In the end, only the two of us had detention."

"Some loooooong, boring detention," Tonks groaned.

Sirius Black and Remus Lupin came down the stairs.

"Can't imagine an Auror ever having detention," Remus commented with a smile.

"We can't all be perfect little angels like you Remus," she shot back.

"Angel? Hah. James and I got Remus to come over to the dark side," Sirius laughed. The duo situated themselves at the table with the rest.

"We also pulled a stunt with the girlies such as you Charlie, but instead of spiders, we used bats, lots of bats. We wanted to scare the girls when they left their dormitory, but our buddy Remus here wanted to scare the pants off the girls," Sirius said, watching the family at the table give Remus bemused glances.

"I was a third year mind you," Remus defended, knowing he could not stop the story.

"No excuses. Remus here was like, "No, not the girls dormitory, how about right outside the girls lavatory. Since he was the mastermind of the plan, he would be the one to act upon it."

Remus decided to continue. "Since I did not have the skill of a pro-mischief maker, I was caught mid-act and sent for a weeks detention."

"Professor, I'm shocked!" Fred and George rang in simultaneously.

"You would be shocked," Ron told his twin brothers. "You two are professionals…except for the collision."

"Don't go there Ron," Fred warned.

"No, I'm definitely going there," Ron defended and began. "These two blokes thought it would be a show to tell a bunch of students to stand in the middle of the hallway outside the Great Hall right after lunch and do a little rendition of "Christmas at Hogwarts."

"—To get everyone in the Christmas spirit," George defended.

"They figured once the people who were told of the event started, people would just join in and then the whole hall would be doing the little song and dance," Ron continued.

"The Muggles call it flash-mobbing: a whole bunch of people go to a certain location, put on a small show and then leave," Fred told.

"These two blokes decide to do it right after lunch, during the great rush to get to afternoon classes. Let's just say, it wasn't very Merry after that! Some people decided not to participate and tried to get out and there was pushing and shoving, turning into a stampede, but the show went on and people continued to perform. Guess who was caught and sent to detention, no doubt?"

"Only a week," they chorused. "Even Hermione was singing." The lot turned to face her.

"What? I was in the spirit," she defended, reddening a little.

"I need a little help getting dinner to the dining room," Mrs. Weasley called from the kitchen. Remus, Ginny, Tonks, Bill and Hermione got up and went to help.

"Does Professor Binns still teach?" Sirius asked Harry.

"Yeah. He, well he's very boring."

"Don't let Hermione hear you say that though, she is quite fond of that boring drone," Ron told Sirius in hushed tones.

"I heard that!" Hermione yelled from the kitchen.

"I wonder how long he has been a ghost?" Sirius wondered.

"He has been a ghost since I was there," Molly Weasley told the lot as she entered the room with the Christmas Turkey. "I guess you could say he has been teaching the longest at Hogwarts."

"He has been teaching there for quite a while, but is not mentioned in Hogwarts: A history," Hermione informed.

"You would know. You're the only one who has read the bloody book," Ron smirked.

"That is not true," Hermione growled and looked around the room, waiting for someone to say they have read the book. No one came to her rescue.

"You're the one who probably wrote the book," Ron went on.

"You're going to read it as soon as we return to school," ordered Hermione.

"No way! You are not giving me homework or a daily Hermione visit to the library!" Ron bited.

"The library is a great place," Arthur Weasley told as he decended the stairs. He had a broken arm, some scratches, bumps and bruises, but the smile on his face told everyone he was in good spirits to see his friends and family.

When Ron wasn't convinced, Arthur went on. "That was where I met your mother." He went over to Molly and put an arm around her.

"I could not keep my eyes off of him," Molly smiled and kissed her husband.

"Or hands," Sirius whispered to Remus and he tried to contain a laugh.

As everyone gathered around the table to enjoy the lovely Christmas meal, Arthur stood up and proposed a toast.

"I would like to be the first wish everyone a Merry Christmas and thank everyone for being here. We are starting to see the beginning of some hard times and I'm afraid they are only going to get worse. Fortunately we are preparing and will fight this out. Today, however, we all gather here today to celebrate friends and family! I expect you all here, same time next year!"

A loud round of "Cheers!" and clanking glasses filled the air as the lot settled into Christmas dinner with more stories of love, detention and days past.

^_^ Merry Christmas Everyone! ^_^