Day 4 of my 8 Days of Hanukkah/12 Days of Christmas Drabble Challenge. See a moment at Hogwarts in the December of 1997
That year, nobody was allowed to go home for Christmas. The halls of Hogwarts were devoid of all holiday spirit. Instead, it held the cold, cruel atmosphere of a Disney Villain's castle. Nobody dared to breathe a word of the holiday season. Hogwarts had become its own war zone with soldiers and refugees. Neville had taken charge and was leading his own revolution. This meant getting people to safety. He had created a fool proof safe space in the Room of Requirement. Only those in dire need of refuge could get in.
Muggle-borns were the first. Dean Thomas had been crucio'd to the point of white getting in his hair and was hiding since Halloween. By Christmas, they had about thirty permanent residents. The room provided cots, sleeping bags, and hammocks. Tables for eating. A radio to keep up with the news. They'd practice defensive spells but without any proper teacher they'd hit a wall.
On December 24th, it seemed the elves put together what they hoped was a Christmas enough dinner. However, in the Room of Requirement, they were stuck with food smuggled in from the Hog's Head.
"I miss me Mam," said Seamus Finnegan sullenly. "Wish she'd pulled me out of school back when we thought Harry had gone mad. Every day I'm scared I'll hear news that she or Da's been killed."
"I took a note out of Granger's book," said Dean. "She wrote all us muggle-borns in the D.A. about what she did."
"What did you do, Dean?"
Dean hugged his knees and bowed his head. "I erased their memories of me and sent them away. To America. Mum and Dad decided it was better opportunity for them and my sisters."
"Dean…"
The boy scrubbed the tears that spilled over his cheeks. "I know I'm not high on the Death Eater's list but I wanted to be sure. Now, I'm glad I did. If the Carrows ever found out I'm bisexual they'd kill 'em off just to spite me."
Seamus sighed and slid his pale hand into Dean's dark one. "Imagine if they found out I fancied only boys then."
"Guess Death Eaters are no different from any other fascist," said Padma Patil. "They hate muggles, muggle-borns like fascists hate skin color and then they hate homosexuals."
"They're Nazis," said Anthony Goldstein. "They're Anti-Semitic as well. I didn't think wizards particularly cared about religion."
"Remember when Alecto Carrow tried to rip off Nekia Taheri's hijab?" Neville Longbottom reminded them. "They hate Muslims, too. I think they hate any religion that preaches tolerance."
"They tried to banish the Fat Friar," said Justin Finch-Fletchly.
"Well… this is turning into a Happy Christmas," said Seamus sourly.
Anthony Goldstein hummed with the others and then he brightened up.
"Room, can we have some candles and candelabras?" he asked.
A table filled with candles of all sizes, shapes, and colors appeared in the room. Anthony went over to it and began picking out ones that were close to the same size and length. He drew his wand and used transfiguration to add more arms to a candelabra until it had nine. Then, he squeezed a candle into the center arm and the very end on the right side.
"What are you doing, Anthony?" Padma asked.
"It's the first day of Hanukkah," he said. "It's sort of luck that it was also on Christmas Eve. I think… we should celebrate. You know why we have Hanukkah?"
"Isn't it just Jewish Christmas?" Dean asked.
Anthony scoffed and rolled his eyes. "No. Hanukkah is celebrated in defiance from when the Greeks took over Judes and tried to squash out our religion. The Greeks took over our Second Temple and dedicated it to their god Zeus. We took the temple back and rededicated it to Yahweh. We light a candle each night for eight days so that we can remember how one little bottle of oil lit the menorah at the rededication of the temple for eight full nights. I'll elaborate on that later.
"Hanukkah is not as important a holiday as Yom Kippur but I think our defiance in being who we are is exactly why we need to celebrate. I think… it might be okay for goyim to join in times like these, yeah?"
"I'm in," said Dean. "We can have a… Christmas-Hanukkah!"
"You can probably just call it Chanukah," said Padma with amusement.
"What's the difference?" Seamus asked.
"The spelling."
Anthony shushed them and watched out the window for the setting sun behind the mountains. As soon as the rays relinquished their soft glow turning the snow from multi-colored to blue in the shadows did he light his wand with a single flame. He began to recite, almost singing the blessing. He lit the shamash, the tall, middle candle first, and used the shamash to light the candle on the far right.
He then transfigured a few of the candles that were not going to go on the menorah into dreidels.
"If this were a real Hanukkah, we'd have food fried in oils," said Anthony, drawing letters on the dreidels.
Neville and another kid snuck out and brought back a tree as well as some sweets. The tree was decorated with whatever stuff they managed to get from the Room of Requirement. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and all Eight Days of Hanukkah were celebrated. The moments of celebration were short-lived but left everyone with just the slightest bit of hope that everything would be okay one day.