Disclaimer: If I owned ANY rights to Howl's Moving Castle, would the Howl's Moving Castle DVD release date in America still be Spring of 2006? You bet your Studio Ghibli Image Model Collection VIII it wouldn't.
----------------------------
It was a generally peaceful New Year's Eve in the moving castle, about three or four months since Howl and Sophie's spells were broken. The castle had recently been grounded because Sophie and the Witch had been getting airsick. Things were really back to the way they used to be, besides Howl having his heart back and Sophie being her young self.
Calcifer was asleep in the grate, lazily sparking off tiny blue flames(his equivalent of "z"s) which quickly became embers and died away. Something stirred and roused him from his sleep. "Mmmrrrf..?" he grumbled, opening one eye. He saw Howl, hastily pulling his turquoise-and-pink checkered coat over his back. "...Howl?" Calcifer uttered. "What are you-"
He had apparently startled Howl, who wasn't expecting anyone to still be awake. He turned to Calcifer and held a finger up to his lips. "Shhh." With that, he turned on his heels to the stairs, and floated up them without actually walking on the steps, so as not to make any creaking sounds. Landing softly, he slowly crept to Sophie's room...
Sophie was also sleeping soundly, now that the castle wasn't flying about anymore. She had really appreciated Howl doing that for her, since converting the castle back to a moving castle was almost as difficult for him as it was making it into a flying castle- not to mention him having to rebuild it, too.
Her door cracked open a bit, making a faint noise that Sophie failed to hear. After a few seconds, Howl decided he could go ahead and step into the room. He liked having that 'mysterious-appear-from-nowhere' effect, and waking her up now would spoil it all. Sophie was about to fling an arm over the side of her bed in the act of turning over, but Howl gently caught her hand in his. Her eyes flew open, and she found herself looking into a pair of deep-blue eyes that seemed to sparkle in the moonlight coming from the window. Howl was kneeling at Sophie's bedside, wearing his classic heart-melting smile. "Oh, Howl, what are you doing up so late?" she said to him, as if he were a child.
He didn't seem to mind her tone. "To come wake you up," he said, as if it were the most plain an obvious answer. Which it was, but it's still the vague answer you wouldn't want to hear. "It's New Year's Eve!" he remarked enthusiastically. "Don't you want to go out and do something?"
Sophie was sitting up now, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Perhaps, but I would have preferred it to have been brought up before midnight," she mused. "What did you have in mind?"
Without saying a word, Howl turned to her window and held out his hands with his palms facing the window. He pulled his hands farther apart from each other, and the window appeared to grow. Soon it was just about large enough to jump through, but of course no one in the right mind would've done that... Satisfied with his work, he threw open the window then turned back to Sophie. "Let's go, then." Not waiting for her to respond, he scooped Sophie up in his arms and faced the window.
When Howl loosened his embrace, Sophie wrapped her own arms around him while looking out the window. An odd breeze began to encircle them, and she wasn't sure if it came from outside or not. She took a moment to glance at Howl's arm and realized that his sleeve was materializing into dark blue feathers. "Oh no..."
Soon his entire body was covered in blue-raven feathers, and the trailing sleeves of his coat had become large, regal wings. He leapt into the air, then gave his wings a mighty flap, and he and Sophie zoomed through the window.
Sophie clung to Howl's feathery body as tightly as she could. She had only flown with him over a great distance and above a great distance once, and she was terrified then, so she was most definitely terrified now. After a few minutes she finally built up enough courage to look below. Everyone was out and about, to her surprise. She looked up at Howl, who wasn't enjoying the sights below. He seemed to be looking for something... Sophie wondered how long he was going to keep this up. "Where are we going?" she shouted above the roar of the wind rushing past and the occasional beat of Howl's wings.
"I'm still trying to find it," he shouted back. He looked around for a few minutes more, then spotted something that caught his interest. He began to lose altitude as they approached a flat rooftop. Howl stopped at its edge and hovered in place. "Here we are," he said reassuringly. Carefully she hopped onto the roof. 'Still high up,' she thought, 'but solid and not with wind blowing in your face.' She sat down on the edge and let her legs hang off the side. "I'm sure these people won't mind us borrowing their roof," Howl said as he sat down beside her. He protectively draped a wing over her, but not so much that she couldn't see the sky from under it. "Lovely, isn't it?" he asked.
Sophie stared up into the stars. "Yes," she answered. The stars reminded her of the night Howl met Calcifer. She looked at him solemnly. "Was this what you dragged me out here to see?"
"Of course not!" Howl retorted. "The stars alone are not worth waking you..." They both sat there, for a long time. Howl looked expectant and anticipated for something, but Sophie's mind had wandered off. Suddenly, a large ball of light rose into the sky and caught Sophie's attention. It burst into a crimson orb of glitters with a loud BANG!
"Fireworks!" Sophie gasped. Howl looked at her and smiled. Another ball of light streamed into the air, but exploded with a neon blue color. The next one was a pale gold. "They're so pretty," she said in awe. Howl wrapped an arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. They watched the fireworks explode in their bright rainbow of colors.
They were still sitting on the roof as the last few fireworks shot off. "Are we ready to head on home?" Sophie asked.
"Not yet," said Howl. "There's one last thing I think we should do before we shove off..." Unexpectedly, he pulled Sophie closer to him and her lips gently met his. Everything around them seemed to have disappeared for a moment, as if there was no one else there but them, in their own little world... But all that quickly came to an abrupt end when the last firework exploded loudly in its three different colors, signaling the end of the show. They stared into the space where the firework once was, disappointed. "Okay. Let's go on home now."
Howl let Sophie ride on his back on the way home, so she could perhaps catch up on her sleep as they flew back. When they got there, the window was just starting to shrink back to size. Drawing his wings close to his body at just the right moment, Howl managed to slip through the window, only losing a few feathers. Sophie was sleeping soundly on his back, so he carefully lifted her up and set her on the bed. He gently laid the covers over her and gingerly kissed her on the forehead. "Love you," he said, stepping back. He quietly crept back down the steps and slid into his chair in front of the hearth, not bothering to get rid of the feathers before nodding off to sleep.
Fin