It was Christmas Eve. Diagon Alley was packed with people pushing and jostling each other as they rushed to make last minute purchases before the shops closed for the evening. Dusk was setting in and a light flurry of snow was falling.
Ron Weasley squinted as he stepped out of Number 93, his brother's joke shop, into the swirling white flakes. The lanterns that lit the street were not quite bright enough to dispel all of the shadows and in one, he saw a child sitting on an empty canary creams crate. The boy had his chin in his hands and a melancholy expression on his face.
"Hello there," Ron said, smiling at the boy, who couldn't have been more than five years old. The only response he received was a wobbly lower lip and furrowed brows.
"What's the matter?" he asked lightly, hunkering down next to the crate and raising an eyebrow. "Nobody should look so sad on the day before Christmas!"
The boy weighed up this comment for a moment, as if deciding whether it was worth a reply. Eventually, he mumbled, "… I ran away."
Feigning terror, Ron glanced around quickly and gasped, "You ran away? From who? A troll? A dragon?!"
"No," said the little boy, trying not to smile. He seemed to be working out how to reply. After a minute, he continued, "From my family. They're too big and too loud and nobody listens to me!" His little hands were balled into fists and he looked miserable.
"Oh dear," Ron murmured. He pulled a foil-covered chocolate galleon out of his pocket and said, "I think this might do you some good."
After a few moments of munching, he continued, "You know, I grew up in a very big family too. I had five brothers who were bigger than me and they would eat all the good biscuits and take my things and play tricks on me every day. There was nowhere I could go to get any peace and quiet. So I know how you feel, mate."
"I haven't got five brothers," came the sighed reply. "But I have even more than five cousins and they shout and run around and they don't let me play because I'm little. It's not fair."
Ron frowned, "Blimey, that isn't fair at all. I think you might be right to run away. It sounds like your family is a right bunch of rascals. We'd better do something to fix this…" Pulling out his wand he said, "I know a very secret spell that can make a family disappear, will we try it out?"
This solution seemed a little bit drastic to his new friend, whose eyes widened at the prospect.
"Come on," Ron declared. "Show me where they are and we'll have them gone in a trice. Is that them, over there?"
He pointed to one family hurrying down the street, and then another, but none of his guesses were correct.
"Well I give up then, where do you keep them hidden?"
He was pulled along to the brightly lit joke shop window next door and they peered in together. "There." A little finger pointed in the direction of a huge gaggle of redheads, who were laughing and chattering and running in all directions.
"Hmm. I see your point," Ron said, quite seriously. "Who will we disappear first? How about that lady over there?"
He had pointed to a slender woman with shoulder-length red hair who had several children scrambling all over her lap.
"No! No, that's my favourite auntie. She showed me how to make spice biscuits and brought me to a Quidditch match for my birthday! I – I don't think she should disappear."
Ron seemed to accept that reason without argument, pointing to someone else instead. "What about that man over there – he seems to be laughing at everybody."
"Oh. Yes, but… but that's my grandpa. I think my grandma might not like it if he disappeared."
"Well, that's a very nice way to look at it… Oh, I think I know who you could choose! Look at those two over there, dancing around like there's no tomorrow!"
He had indicated a woman with long, curly brown hair who was twirling a miniature version of herself in her arms.
"No way! That's mum and Rosie! Sometimes they're silly, but I don't want to live without them."
Grinning, Ron ruffled his son's hair and agreed.
"After all that, it looks like you don't want to get rid of any of them!" he noted. "So what will we do now?"
"Well," Hugo reasoned, "I suppose they aren't really so bad. And you never disappeared your brothers, right dad? Not even Uncle Percy, and Uncle George says he's a-"
"Alright, alright!" Ron interjected hastily, as he picked his son up. "So we're keeping them all, then?"
Hugo yawned and leaned against Ron's shoulder. "Yes, we will keep them all!"
A/N: I don't know about all of you, but when I was little my dad would help me to figure out how I was feeling by pretending that he was hearing it all for the first time, which is where this story came from. So excited for the Christmas holidays!