The home of Molly and Arthur Weasley was always full to the rafters at this time of year. It used to be just father, mother, a sister and six brothers, but since that time, seven or eight Christmases ago, the number of people in the house on Christmas day had more than doubled.
Were you to look around at the moment, you could count at least twenty people, most of whom bore the last name of Weasley.
Christmas day is always inordinately busy, more so because in the Weasley household, the main present-opening jaunt was on Christmas evening when the children were home. Each member of the family got a present in the morning and had to wait until after the gigantic Christmas dinner for the rest. Right now, in the kitchen, Molly was watching with a matriarchal air, her daughter an array of daughters-in-law, and a friend of the family who was, to Molly, a daughter in law (though her husband was far from another son) in her own right.
"What the heck are you doing, Siri! Leave it in to baste it! And where's the stuffing?" asked the said as-good-as-a-daughter-in-law, named Lily, in her early twenties, who had short hair that was black for all intents and purposes, though she insisted it was dark brown.
"Stuffing? I was supposed to put stuffing in this? What?" asked the target of the queries, a blond woman, the same age as Lily, who was holding, with an oven mitt, the edge of a pan in which a gigantic thirty-pound turkey was, in theory, cooking.
"Of course there was stuffing! A turkey without stuffing! The very idea! Oh well, we'll just cook it separately, that always makes better stuffing anyway. Just remember to baste it while it's still in there every ten minutes, or I swear I will kill you."
"Righto," Siri saluted, and turned back to her basting.
"Alright, Amy, how's that cranberry sauce coming?" Lily, said, in a put-upon tone, turning to another woman in the kitchen.
Through the dining room, into the living room, a dazzling Christmas tree loomed towards the back of the room, and a roaring fire burnt in the fireplace on the nearest wall. There were two red leather couches, facing each other across the centre of the room. On one sat five flame haired brothers and a scrawny man with black hair and round glasses who stuck out like a sore thumb on one couch, and on the other sat, aloof and cold on his first Christmas at the Weasley home, a man with platinum blonde hair. A few children played happily on the floor with their cousins.
"George! Fred! Bill! Draco! Set the table! Come on, get to it!" Molly called from the doorway between the kitchen and living room.
"Mum! What about Perce, Harry, and Charlie! And where's Ron, isn't he supposed to be here?" George asked, indignant, as he trudged up the shallow stairs to the dining room, followed by his equally red-haired and freckled twin, Fred. Traipsing in after them was another red-haired man, who was Bill, with a few more years about his youngish frame. Following him was the platinum-blonde, who had to be Draco by process of elimination.
"George, just humor your old mum for once. You're supposed to be an adult now, aren't you?" Molly snapped lovingly. George smiled warmly at the mother he did love, despite all outward appearances, and began to get the Christmas china out of the cupboards. Lily came rocketing out of the kitchen to the new Muggle soundsystem Arthur had been given by one of his sons (no one can agree who, as the package wasn't marked), grabbed a CD out of her robes' pocket, and slid it into the player, pressing play as she dodged Draco's arms, sticking out her tongue and dodging back to the kitchen. A few seconds later, filled with whirring from the player, a digitally enhanced voice crooned from the speakers "Viktor was born in the spring of '44/ And never saw his father anymore/ A child of sacrifice, a child of war/ Another son who never had his father after Leningrad …" but just there, the song was interrupted as a loud WHAM announced that someone was coming through the front door.
Subsequently, the whole household ran out to greet said person, who really turned out to be two people. Which two people in particular was hard to tell, because they had so many cloaks and other warm vestiges on, as well as a heating charm or two. They began unwrapping themselves, one apparently turned to the wall, the other facing the people waiting to receive all these cloaks. The one facing everyone turned out to be Ron, who started hugging his relations and in-laws as soon as he was relieved of his wintry wear. The other, slowly unwrapping what turned out to be a blonde head of hair and markedly female body didn't say anything till all her cloaks and charms were off, and when Lily and Siri, in a fit of uncharacteristic Christmas niceness, surged to take them from her.
When her eyes met the eyes of the two accosting her for her cloaks, they grew extremely large. Then their hands dropped their cloaks into the waiting arms of Lily and Siri, now screaming the name of this newcomer in unison, "KAIT!" Kait ran from the room and into the kitchen, where she sat down at the table and began crying uncontrollably. Lily, Siri, Amy, and Fiona, who were other sisters-in-law, ran after her, leaving the rest of the shell-shocked family standing in the doorway.
"Kait! Is it you? Really? Where have you been all these ages? What are you doing with Ron? And what the flub is the matter?" the sisters-in-law asked relentlessly of the sobbing Kait on the kitchen table. She brought her head up, tear streaked, completely ruining the effect she'd wanted to impress upon her boyfriend's family. She just hadn't counted on his family including these particular people.
"I - I didn't expect you to be here!" she sobbed. Ron, from the door, cocked his head.
"Why not? Well maybe Amy's a surprise … and Herm … but us?" Siri asked, pretty incredulous. Their old friend had watched her relationship with Fred blossom from the age of fourteen onwards - why would anything have changed? She looked back at her friend and realized why. It was because she had changed, so very much. "Kait, honestly, that shouldn't send you to sobbing. Is it - ?" the name she didn't say wasn't needed. Kait nodded.
"It was - weird - and I didn't know how to deal so I ran away … I'm such a wimp."
"You're not, I don't know what I'd do if George died," Fiona said softly, laying her hand on said male personage.
"But the song and you all … I haven't seen any of you for ages … or cried like this …" Kait said, wiping her face where she could taste salt. Lily's eyes brightened, and she pushed through the gaggle of family.
"I know what you need!" she announced, a look of triumph on her face. "Come on, upstairs we all trot. Siri, Amy, Fiona, Herm, Ginny, you come with me, and you, Kait."
All of the women, sans Molly, gingerly led Kait up the stairs, and up more stairs, to the second or third floor of the Burrow, which had had countless additions from its beginnings as a stone barn centuries ago. They led her into a room that was all pillows and had one very important Muggle commodity, on a pedestal in the centre of the room; and entertainment centre. Lily flitted to the cupboards on the walls, the kind with doors that you see in Church choir rooms, and pulled out a very imposing stack of video cassettes.
"What shall we watch first, girls? Walk to Remember? Gone With the Wind? Casablanca?" Lily asked the room. Kait stayed silent, eyes still shining with tears waiting to be shed. And that was the purpose of this whole thing. Th rest of the room was not so overwhelmed by the ordeal, and immediately began shouting the names of their favourite chick-flicks, although some of them weren't strictly chick-flicks, such as Castaway. There were shouts of "Saving Private Ryan!" "Forrest Gump!" "Castaway, you idiots!" "HANNIBAL" (which was followed by "you idiot, that's not a chick-flick, and Airinne's not here, why are you yelling for her?", for another friend called Airinne loved the movie Hannibal, but wasn't able to attend the Christmas celebrations that year) "A Walk to Remember!" This last was repeated many times after its initial yelling, and so that movie was put into the VCR and turned on.
Downstairs, Molly had dashed into the kitchen and enlisted a few of her sons' help in making sure dinner wasn't completely ruined. The rest of the male population sat around the dining room table with questionably strong glasses of Egg Nog, discussing what on earth was the cause of the insane female rush for upstairs, as well as where Ron had picked up this latest of his conquests that she should be made such a fuss over.
"You don't remember her? She was a general in the war too, you know. I can't believe you don't remember her!" Ron exclaimed, looking at his brothers, a brother-in-law, and Draco, whom he hated so much they weren't on a first name basis.
"Of course I remember her. She made such a fuss when that boy of hers died. What I was asking was how on earth you got her to settle for you," commented Draco, caustically. Normally, especially after marriage to Lily, Draco was a perfectly nice man. He did, however, as did his wife, have a mean, caustic side, that could inflict extreme injury to your person and your pride. Being with the Weasleys, especially Ron, with whom he'd had a large degree of enmity in their schooldays, seemed to bring out his worst side on top. He didn't really mind too much, it was nice to be mean sometimes, especially after turning out on the "good" side of the war against all odds. He felt he had to make sure that, although he was technically a good guy, that didn't mean he had to be nice about it. All in all, this baiting of Ron was proving to be quite a good time. The thing was, he knew Kait in and of herself wasn't a bad lot, and would definitely understand why he was doing this. She had, in Hogwarts, always been friendlier to him than Ron or Harry ever had, along with most of the rest of the school. He thought Ron was getting a little uppity about this whole thing. Trust the Weasel to do that.
Ron, meanwhile, was clenching fists and grinding teeth. Bill, who didn't care a jot for Malfoys or the feud between Ron and Draco, gave Ron a cooling look he normally would have gotten from his mother, who was, as has been mentioned, in the kitchen. "Where did you meet her, after all this time, Ron? Seems pretty strange to just bump into someone whom everyone thought died a good long while ago. Why didn't you tell any of us?"
"I met her at the Leaky Cauldron - this was a good few months ago. Almost fell out of my seat when she walked in the pub. I didn't tell anyone because - well, it didn't seem like something I wanted widely known. To be completely honest, she's said all of ten words in total to me since that first night we met -"
"And what happened on that night?" George interrupted Ron with an evil glint in his eyes. Ron lifted his eyebrows.
"I took her dancing. You really think Kaitlyn Gainstein would let me just - well, you know!" Ron said, agitated. George snickered.
"You misunderstood me. I didn't mean that at all. Your mind is a demented as ever, my dear brother," George remarked lightly, lying blatantly.
The conversation wound on through many, many hours. Long after supper had finished cooking and was charmed to stay warm, long after the few small children running around were put to bed, and long after the supply of spiked Egg Nog had gotten dangerously low. Finally, very late at night (but this was only because Kait and Ron hadn't arrived till about 9 o'clock PM), the women came back downstairs, every last one sobbing very noisily. Kait saw Ron, ran down the rest of the steps, and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him gently on the cheek and lips. Ron looked pleasantly surprised, he being the one who had initiated all their other kisses. He hugged her close, and turned to Lily over her head (she was definitely not tall, not making 5'4").
"What were you doing up there?" Ron asked, extremely surprised by this show of - well - normality by Kait and a little put off by the tear streaked faces before him.
"Nothing much - just watched a few chick-flicks."
~~~ A/N ~~~
OK, the following is the A/N plus this: please review! I know it's pretty odd/short and the title is odd (I was out of ideas) but please please please review! Would anyone like to see Accompanimnet - Black Guitars? I have to have some motivation to write this, I did this for school but it turned out OK.
Another note, When Science Labs Explode is up on ff.net. here (http://fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=754703 if the whole "let's all link things" deal doesn't come through"). Ella Moon is me, except I changed my author name. The other Author is Ravenwolf.
Also, I didn't have the italics I originally had because I'm to lazy to add the HTML in the whole story. Sorry. Not that anyone cared.
This is an excerpt from a longer story, entitled Accompaniment - Black Guitars. This story explains how Kait and Ron met again and what they were doing between when Kait walks into a pub on a stormy November evening and this Christmas evening, as well as what happens after this excerpt. It's one of many sequels to the story When Science Labs Explode, by Lynn Mackay and I. Accompaniment - Black Guitars begins nine years after When Science Labs Explode (WSLE) ends, which it hasn't yet. Lynn's story which she is handing in for this short story project is another sequel to WSLE, that talks about Lily. It's set some time between the end of WSLE and this story.
This is a work of Harry Potter fan fiction. The Burrow, the Leaky Cauldron, Muggles, Arthur, Molly, Bill, Charlie, Percy (Perce), Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny Weasley, Hermione Weasley (nee Granger), Harry Potter, and Draco Malfoy all belong to Joanne Kathleen Rowling. The movies in the chick-flick scene belong to their production companies. The plot and concept were created by me, and all other characters, while they may not belong to me strictly, are in my care at the moment.