Ah, the very long awaited update (sorry about that)

R&R

Enjoy :D


It was Christmas, and Lilly needed a break. She had had a very exiting but also stressful last four months. It wasn't easy starting at a new school, having to make new friends and the shock of so much homework, not to mention finding your way around; this proved harder than expected as Hogwarts walls, doors and staircases all had a tendency to move, you couldn't even rely on the many paintings that lined the corridors as landmarks seeing as the inhabitants were constantly visiting each other and were rarely in their own frames.

Lilly looked down into her backpack, she didn't need to take much with her as she had extra clothes and things back at home, so she had just packed the vital things like her toothbrush. Maddy on the other hand clearly had not realised this as she was currently filling her whole trunk up with practically everything she owned.

'Maddy why don't you just leave some of it here?' Lilly asked her struggling friend

'But what if I need it?' came Maddy's muffled reply from behind a huge stack of clothing that could easily last a good month or so.

'Err, Maddy. We're only away for two weeks; surely you don't need that much.'

'It's always good to have a choice of clothes though.'

Lilly shook her head and sighed. 'Well you'd better hurry up anyway because I said we'd meet Hugo down stairs in about two minutes.'

'Ok, ok.' Replied Maddy ramming the lid of her trunk closed. 'I'm done, let's go.'

With that, the two girls preceded down the spiral staircase and into the Gryffindor common room where they spotted Hugo standing by the portrait hole.

'What took you two so long?' he asked

'Sorry, but someone tried to pack their entire wardrobe.' Lilly said sending a pointed look in Maddy's direction.

Maddy blushed. 'I wanted to be prepared.' She reasoned

'If we've missed the train I'll kill you two.' Hugo mumbled clambering through the portrait hole

The girls just looked at each other, shrugged and followed him.

As it turned out, they arrived at the scarlet school steam train with ten minutes to spare. 'See Hugo, I don't know what all the fuss was about.' Maddy said cheekily.

The train ride went smoothly and before anyone knew it, the train was pulling into platform 9¾. The platform was incredibly crowded. Lilly gave Maddy a hug as they stepped off the train and after wishing her a merry Christmas, promised to owl and set off to find her family, Hugo merely waved and quickly Scampered after Lilly. The Weasley/Potter clan were easy to spot, just follow the bright red hair, so it did not take long for Lilly and Hugo to find them even amongst all the chaos.

'Mum!' Lilly cried giving her mother a big hug 'I've missed you so much.'

'Awe, Lilly we've missed you too.' Her mother replied squeezing her only daughter.

'Hey Lil.' Her dad said tapping her on the shoulder, 'give your old dad some of that love.' Lilly quickly turned round and leaped into his arms squeezing him tight.

The journey back to the Potter residence was just like normal, Al winged over everything, argued with James, James bragged about all his latest pranks and talked non-stop about Hayley while Lilly just sat grinning from ear to ear.


Christmas day was two days later and Lilly woke with a start, the familiar feeling of childhood enthusiasm rising in the pit of her belly. She squealed in excitement and leaped out of bed and into Al's room where she promptly jumped on his bed jostling the sleeping shape. Al awoke with a grunt as he tried and failed to shove his little sister of his bed.

'Go away Lil.' He moaned

'Time to get up Alby.' Lilly said giggling and tugging on her brothers arm to pull him out of bed

'Lilly, its six am.' Albus grumbled leaning over to look at his alarm clock 'It's still dark, go back to sleep.'

'Nuh uh. It's Christmas and we've got to go wake everyone else.'

'Fine, you go wake everyone else and I'll meet you downstairs in about three hours.'

'Ok... wait three hours? No now Alby.' Lilly retorted jumping on the bed again only this time landing directly on Albus' stomach causing him to wince.

'All right, all right I'm getting up.'

Lilly waited while Albus dragged himself out of bed then the pair hurried into James' room where they repeated the wake up routine. Once James was finally up the three sibling hurried into their parents room and woke them too.

By half six the family were all settled in their pyjamas in the small sitting room, Ginny, Harry and Albus were all seated on the sofa, whilst Lilly and James were sat on the floor next to the magically lit fire place. All three children were sneakily eyeing the huge stack of presents under the lavishly decorated Christmas tree.

'Ok James why don't you be Santa this year and hand out all those presents?' Harry said

James nodded and reached under the trees lower branches and pulled out a square shaped package that had the label:

To Alby

Love Lilly

James tossed this parcel over to Albus who rapidly ripped the wrapping paper off to reveal a book. Albus grinned and thanked his little sister as James tossed a package towards his mother and another one towards his father after setting one of his own aside. The presents continued much in the same way and by eight o'clock, everyone had a nice stack of gifts.

'Ok family,' Ginny said magically cleaning up all the used wrapping paper 'Teddy's coming in an hour and we have to leave for the Burrow at eleven so I want all of you looking nice and presentable. Albus I'm afraid that means you have to go take a bath.'

'Aww Mum, but its Christmas!' Albus exclaimed

'Go on. Go now and get it over with.' Ginny encouraged prodding her youngest son in the back and forcing him up the stairs towards the family bathroom.

Lilly grinned, 'Typical Christmas.' She thought

Teddy arrived promptly at nine o'clock just as he did every year. He Hugged the family (including a now squeaky-clean Albus) and thanked them for whatever they had given him. Every year Teddy came with them to the Burrow seeing as how he was practically family and like everyone else, held a great deal of respect for Grandma Weasleys cooking skills.

At eleven o'clock the family flooed to the Burrow where they were met by many cries of merry Christmas from the whole Weasley bunch. The lunch that Mrs Weasley had prepared was excellent and as always, she had out done herself with a fabulous array of festive foods in very large quantities. By the end of the meal everyone was full to bursting so the Potters and Teddy said their good byes and hurried home with the usual package of left over's.

The rest of the holidays past uneventfully. Lilly continued to write to Maddy, James and Albus continued to taunt one another and everyone had a completely relaxing time. Before the kids knew it they were back on the platform kissing and hugging their parents good bye and hurrying onto the scarlet Hogwarts express.