A/N: Stand in position Round Ten Y3 of THC, Standing in for Gryffindor Year Five Position. Additional prompt: Thanksgiving. Muggle World AU, Characters may appear OOC at times. Wordcount w/o AN: 1016
"The turkey is dry," Ronald Weasley says, sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table alongside Harry, Hermione, and his other friends.
Hermione gives a sharp inhale and sends Ron a glare; this has been the millionth complaint of the evening, and most of them have just arrived. They'd arrived of course, at Harry Potter's house, one of Ron and Hermione's old school friends who they cherished deeply. Harry was there with his wife, Ginny, and she just so happened to be Ron's sister.
Everyone had been eating the turkey; to say they'd been enjoying it is quite the stretch, Hermione had overcooked it. It was an easy thing to do, overcooking a turkey, but that didn't stop Ron from complaining. Every two seconds he'd been mentioning how he thought the turkey was dry. And he'd given Hermione the classic this isn't how my mother makes it. Hermione had been managing the complaints since then, but that had very much so struck a chord with her. Harry sensed that Hermione was just about ready to murder Ron with the turkey knife, so he decided to speak up.
"Uh, I'd like to state that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks, like the pilgrims did," he said.
To this, Hermione's face lit up; she knew she was going to have a fun night from now on.
"Actually," Hermione began, and Ron groaned, knowing she'd be delighted but that everyone else—himself included—would be miserable.
She smirked at his discontent; this was her form of payback in a way. She'd had quite enough of his complaining, and she'd quite enjoy the time she'd be spending to lecture him. With Harry around she couldn't murder him—not that she would ever do that—but if she could bore him, it'd be just as satisfying.
"The Pilgrims weren't saints who wanted enlightenment, they were grave robbing, money seekers looking to land a few bucks. They actually settled into old villages and robbed the graves of those who died from disease. Or, they killed them off. They would rob graves for food, clothing, and antiques," she started.
"That can't be true, Hermione, stop pulling my chain," Ron said, eager to get back to his food, but Hermione wasn't done yet.
"Oh, it's no joke," she said. "In fact, It's not even half of it. The only reason the Pilgrims and the Natives became friends? The Natives needed their gunpowder, and the Pilgrims were willing to trade that for food. The Natives actually used a tribe member who'd been from another tribe previously and then captured by the British to translate for them. The worst part is that the tribe the Pilgrims rebuilt? That was the native translator's old town. It had been wiped out by disease and famine.
"And by now you've probably heard the story of how Squanto assisted in their planting of corn? So this was their first successful harvest and they were celebrating that harvest and planning a day of their own thanksgiving. And it's kind of like what some of the Arab nations do when they celebrate by shooting guns in the air. So this is what was going on over there at Plymouth. They were shooting guns and cannons as a celebration, which alerted us because we didn't know who they were shooting at. So Massasoit gathered up some ninety warriors and showed up at Plymouth prepared to engage in combat if that was what was happening, or to see if they were taking any of our people. They didn't know. It was a fact-finding mission.
When they arrived it was explained through a translator that they were celebrating the harvest, so we decided to stay and make sure that was true, because we'd seen in the other landings—[Captain John] Smith, even the Vikings had been here— decided to camp nearby for a few days.
" During those few days, the men went out to hunt and gather food—deer, ducks, geese, and fish. There are ninety men here and at the time I think there are only twenty-three survivors of that boat, the Mayflower, so you can imagine the fear. You have armed Natives who are camping nearby. They [the colonists] were always vulnerable to the new land, new creatures, even the trees—there were no such trees in England at that time. People forget they had just landed here and this coastline looked very different from what it looks like now. And their culture—new foods, they were afraid to eat a lot of things. In the true history of Thanksgiving, they were very vulnerable and we did protect them, not just support them, we protected them. You can see throughout their journals that they were always nervous and, unfortunately, when they were nervous they were very aggressive too.
"And so the people did eat together, just not how it's portrayed modernly," she said with delight.
This Thanksgiving being her favorite by far; it was quite a joyous occasion for her. The rest of the group had just stared at her, knowing that this was a good time for her, and not wanting to complain for any future lectures. And so they sat, and they ate, and nobody said anything about Thanksgiving traditions after that.
Harry sighed as they continued to eat their turkey. Ron coughed a few times, which earned him a glare from Hermione, who had taken hours to cook the turkey. Perhaps that's why it was so dry. The rest of the day went on without a hitch, and even though many people were required to drink lots of water in order to stay hydrated enough to survive the day of turkey, they laughed over little things.
Critiquing Hermione through her method of cooking turkey was Ron's mother, Molly Weasley, who'd arrived in time to avoid the first lecture. Hermione sat through it, looking very interested, where as Ginny Weasley was bored out of her mind.
Aside from lectures, they'd cuddled on couches, watched films, and argued over how there were no good Thanksgiving songs. Harry and Hermione had said 'no way,' whilst Ginny and Ron were sure there had to be at least one song about Thanksgiving.