The Advent Calendars
A/N: Hello! This one shot is written for day one of the Advent Calendar Challenge on HPFC (link can be found in my bio)
Prompt: Advent Calendar
Disclaimer:I do not own any rights to the Harry Potter series nor am I making any money from writing this, just having a lot of fun!
Enjoy :)
…
The Davis family was one of the largest and hence well-known pureblood families in the United Kingdom, and arguably across Europe. Originating in Wales, where much of the family still lives, the family live in several castles and large mansions, with a small branch of the family extending on to Stroud in England, and another branch to Portugal.
Tracey Davis, one of the next generation of this well established family, considered herself knowledgeable on almost anything due to their extensive connections across both magical and Muggle worlds, having travelled all around Europe with her family.
Of course, she was just seven years old, so the key word here was considered.
"They eat what?" she exclaimed. She sat up in her bed, upon which she'd been lying and drawing flowers in her book instead of doing her maths homework. Her brother Dante, who'd been at Hogwarts for three years now, stood in her bedroom doorway with his arms folded.
"Chocolate," he said patiently.
"No, no, you said Santa's head." She waved her arms about her face, as though her brother had never heard the word head before.
"It's a piece of chocolate, and it can be shaped like anything. Ivan brought some and there's one for you."
Repulsed by the idea of eating a man's head, but never one to refuse an invitation to play with her big brother and his friend, Tracey clambered off of her bed (a feat in and of itself since her bed sheets could be confused with a baby-blue coloured variety of Devil's Snare) and skipped after her brother and into the maze of the Aberystwyth Davis House.
Dante led her down the hall where her room was along with Isla and Briallen's (her older sisters) and up a spiralling flight of stairs, through another hall filled with portraits of other Davis's smiling through various activities (one was sitting atop a Granian, another was in the eternal process of carving a chestnut wand), across the balcony overlooking the House's foyer, and down another staircase, through the Gryffin Hall where their father had portraits of his fastest race horses, and to a hall much like her own room, where all but one door remained firmly shut.
The open door was Dante's room (unusual due to their mother always complaining of the mess, although to be fair it did consistently look as though someone had set a bombarda curse off in there) and in a cleared space on the floor sat Ivan Writtle. He waved when he saw the two approaching, and Tracey immediately raced in front of Dante and into the room, shouting a greeting of her own before someone giggled.
At Dante's desk was Briallen, her seventeen year old sister, and she sat wearing the usual half scowl half smirk on her face. It was she who'd laughed. Looking around, Tracey noticed her other brothers and sisters to be in the room. Emyr, fifteen, was sitting on the window sill, with the glass pane flung outward and one leg swinging over the gardens below, whilst his twin Neirin lay on his back on the floor with his eyes closed, and Isla, ten, sitting on Dante's couch with her legs crossed beneath her.
"I'll never get used to how many brothers and sisters you have," Ivan said, looking at Dante.
Dante shrugged, it was the usual thing said. Their family was big, particularly by pureblood standards where most families had one or two children. (The blood traitors didn't count.)
"This isn't even all of us!" Tracey sang, like the little girl she was, and crouched next to Ivan and the flat box things he'd spread out on the carpet. "Seren is in Germany!"
"Calm down, Tracey," Briallen scolded. Emyr sent her a sharp look but Briallen matched it. Isla stood to join Tracey whilst Dante shut his door and moved to sit down by his friend.
"So what have you got for us?" Isla asked.
"You'll have to explain it," Dante told his friend. "There isn't a magical equivalent for these."
Ivan's eyes widened. "Really? You poor, deprived people…"
"I'd hardly call us deprived." Briallen appeared behind Ivan. Over his shoulder, Tracey could see Emyr shaking Neirin awake, down on his hands and knees, whispering in his ear. Neirin was trying not to smile.
"Dante said you eat people's heads," Tracey piped up.
"Ew!" Isla shuffled back a little and overbalanced when her feet hit a thick book on Dante's floor (probably an Astronomy text book).
Neirin appeared in time to stop her from crashing in to the floor and pulled her back to Ivan, where everyone now stood or sat in a circle with his things in front.
"Okay, so, um, you guys know how to use a calendar, right?" Ivan said, looking uncertainly between Dante and Emyr. "The Lunar one?"
"Yes," Briallen said, waving her hand impatiently. "We know the date and that Christmas is coming."
"Er, right, yeah so, basically this is an advent calendar." He grabbed the closest one to him, this one decorated with the night sky and Santa on a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. "There are numbers on all of the boxes that correspond to the date. So on the first of December, you open the box with a one on it."
Tracey pulled one closer to her and noticed the small dots along the cardboard shaped in a number of little boxes. "And you get a head in every box?"
"No," Ivan said, panicked. "No, it's just a little piece of chocolate. My mum made them but we used the calendars from last year and my sister repaired them so the little doors weren't open."
"A piece of chocolate shaped like a head?" Isla asked, looking at Ivan with wide brown eyes.
"It… It could be Santa's face, yes, but it could be other things like presents or snowflakes."
"Like hands?" Tracey asked.
"Like butts?" Isla said, and the two girls dissolved into fits of laughter whilst Briallen dragged her hand down her face in frustration.
"So what's the point of it?" Emyr asked.
"The point?" Ivan asked, confused.
"Why are we eating chocolate?" Briallen elaborated. "We already use a calendar, why the chocolate?"
"Because it's yummy!" Tracey cried from the floor.
Ivan held a hand out to her but kept his gaze on Briallen. "That's pretty much it. A holiday treat in the lead up to Christmas."
"And if I can't have chocolate?" Neirin asked.
"Dante said so," Ivan said, searching his backpack before pulling out another Advent Calendar. "So I got you this one, it has sweets in it instead." Neirin took it with an appreciative nod, and Ivan looked around at the others. "You can just pick whichever one you want."
Tracey and Isla dived for the one nearest to them, painted with a Christmas tree covered in red and silver baubles and gold tinsel. Emyr took it from them and ordered them to pick another without fighting, and Ivan held one out for Tracey to stop them again diving for the closest calendar.
"Wait, but it's already the eighth!" Isla said, her face a beautiful pout.
"Oh no!" Tracey cried, a hand flying to her mouth "What will happen to the other heads?"
"It's okay, you can eat all of them up to today," Ivan said with a grin.
The two girls didn't need to be told twice, quickly sinking to the floor and scanning for numbers one to eight.
"They're just going to eat them all after dinner, you know," Dante said, standing next to Ivan.
"That's what usually happens," he replied.
…
A/N: Hope you liked it! Drop a review and let me know what you think! Have a nice day!