A/N: This is written for the NGF Christmas Tree Prompt Challenge. All of these stories are disconnected, so... well, yeah. I own nothing, get used to it, because disclaimers are boring and I don't like attaching them to everything!
i – james ii
gingerbread
linger . possibility . tree
-x-
It's the first snow of the winter, dancing down past the window, like there's all the time in the world and the Christmas rush currently engulfing the world is just a phase. He wishes, for a short moment, that he's back home, with his mum and dad and even Al, the bozo, but then it passes, and he relishes being alone, in his own place.
The clock in the corridor chimes intrusively, scattering the vague thoughts he's only just pulled together, and he realises Lily will be back soon, and jumps up.
The apartment smells like smoke and cinnamon and soap and winter, that unmistakable smell the snow brings with it.
It's not really that bad, he thinks, and sits back down.
-x-
He forgets that ovens, when turned on, are hot, and burns his hand not once, nor twice, but three separate times trying to pull the tray out of the oven, and lets a stream of expletives fly that would never get by if Lily was at home (but she isn't, and that's the point).
When they've cooled, he looks at the little people lying flat on the tray, crisp limbs askew, some looking as though they've turned to a Horntail for emergency amputation.
The world can't go on like this.
Five end up in the bin, spooning banana peels and getting intimate with empty jars.
Four become two through amateur surgery, aided by icing and a poke from his wand.
Seventeen beside this nine survive the cut though, and lie there in trepidation, blank faces giving nothing away.
-x-
Lily gets back half an hour later, while the smell of smoke still lingers. She doesn't mention it, shrugging off her coat and helping the other girl out of hers, hanging them both on the stand with a wave of her hand.
She hangs behind slightly as the other girl runs down the corridor, jumping into her father's waiting arms. He pushes back her black hair, curling it behind her ear, and nods earnestly as she tells him all about the Father Christmas she saw in Diagon Alley and the impending holiday, barely pausing to breathe in passing.
Lily takes her leave fifteen minutes later, remarking to her brother that she's got to get back, and he just nods, understanding completely. She kisses her niece and leaves, quickly engulfed by the swirling snow.
-x-
They spread the seventeen small bodies out, lining them up on the bench to eye with scrutiny. A further one is thrown out, deemed too blobby for all intents and purposes.
He heaps bowls full of small sweets, she wields small tubes of coloured icing. Between the pair of them, they decorate fifteen of the small figures, the last being specially put aside as Grandpa (she uses nearly half a tube of red icing as his 'pretty lil' scar').
They set them aside to cool, although one somehow manages to break in half and fall into each of their mouths. It's not a loss they'll notice, they agree, and he sets about making dinner while she gets into her pyjamas (with some help) and takes her toys back to her bedroom.
-x-
Later that night, when the sun has gone to haunt the other side of the world and the moon illuminates the snow that has settled around the house, they sit on the couch, his feet resting on the couch beside him. She sits on his leg, her head resting against his chest, one small hand clutching the sleeve of his shirt, pulled in close to him with one arm.
He turns down the television (a moving out gift from his maternal grandfather) as her head nods, now barely bothering to try and keep her eyelids apart, and looks down at her, wondering, not for the first time, how he became quite so lucky.
It will be their first Christmas alone, only their second together. Somehow, he never factored things like Christmas into it, even in the wake of the funeral, where her father had tried to speak about the way she'd go out and dance in the first snow.
When they had been together, at the first snow they'd bake gingerbread men, and make them into caricatures of people they knew.
A sudden flash of light pulls him from his nostalgia, and he looks up to see the Christmas tree lit up, the multi-coloured lights bobbing away quietly like it's no one's business.
He smiles, looking first at the now sleeping child in his arms, then up at the photo on the mantelpiece.
"Merry Christmas, darling," James says, to no one in particular, then gets up to put his daughter to bed.