Chapter Eleven: Christmas and Clabberts

The Hogsmeade trip was the last major school event before the Christmas holidays. The day afterward, almost everyone in the school packed up and went home for Christmas. The Hogwarts Express was full -- Beth's entire class was there, with the exception of Aaron Pucey, and they had a good time singing Christmas carols loud enough to annoy the Hufflepuffs in the adjacent compartment.

Beth spent the next several days at home engaging in traditional holiday events with her father. There was decorating, cooking, napping, visiting, much mailing of Christmas cards by both postman and owl, and general merriment. At Mr. Parson's insistence, Beth rolled an enormous lopsided snowman in the front yard, to which her father added coal eyes, a carrot nose, and -- mischievously -- Lycaeon's old broomstick. The broomstick hovered upright near the snowman's left arm.

On Christmas Eve they went to the candlelight service at the local church and then came home for hot chocolate. The next day, after exchanging gifts and hugs, they headed over to the Scamanders' house for Christmas Dinner. They had been doing so every Christmas for the past five years -- it was as much a part of family tradition as the advent wreath and the tinsel on the tree.

Mrs. Scamander met them at the door. "Beth -- Bill -- come in, it's lovely to see you --" She bent and kissed Beth loudly on the cheek, then took Mr. Parson's arm fondly and led them inside.

"Get in here and see what I got for Christmas," called Mr. Scamander from the living room. His wife rolled her eyes and bustled away to the kitchen.

The Scamander's house was decked out in holly boughs and ribbon. Mr. Scamander stood proudly beside an impossibly large Christmas tree in one corner, which was covered in shining red lights. As they came closer, the lights started to move around the tree. Without warning, one of them leapt out at them -- it wasn't a Christmas-tree light at all, but a hairless, green monkey with what looked like a red light bulb on its forehead. Beth let out a shriek before she could stop herself, but Mr. Scamander caught the weird creature in mid-air and let it clamber onto his shoulder.

"Clabberts," he boasted, and the monkey-like creature on his shoulder stuck its tongue out at Beth. "Just had 'em shipped in from the Americas. They're afraid of you two -- they only light up when they sense danger." Chuckling, he picked up the Clabbert and gently placed it back onto the tree, where it swung from branch to branch before settling down beside another one of its kind.

"Er ... what are you going to do with them?" Beth asked.

Mr. Scamander's skinny chest puffed with pride. "Redoing that section for the fifty-third edition. You'll be getting it for school next year?" he added hopefully.

"We ... have a new book this year, actually," Beth admitted, blushing. "The Monster Book of Monsters. Yours is much better, though," she added hastily. "This one tries to bite you."

"Bah!" Mr. Scamander curled his lip in contempt. "New-fangled fancy books. What next, the Ghost Book of Ghosts? You'd go to read and it'd fall right through your desk!"

Mr. Parson laughed. Beth felt warm relief run through her. Her father had been quieter than usual ever since she had gotten home; it was good to hear him laugh.

"Stop showing off your new pets, Newt, our company's hungry!" Mrs. Scamander's voice filtered from the kitchen.

"Half mad about feeding people, that woman," Mr. Scamander grumbled, but they trekked on out to the kitchen and seated around the round oaken table.

The spread was fantastic. Mrs. Scamander had put together a meal that rivaled anything the hundred house-elf cooks of Hogwarts could create. There was an enormous, golden-brown goose dripping with sauce; steaming bowls of dressing; cranberries garnished with holly; and perhaps a dozen kinds of vegetables, rolls, and fixings. Mr. Parson said grace and they dug into the meal as if they were four teenagers, instead of only one and three elderly folk.

Mr. and Mrs. Scamander were both in their nineties, but they were as sharp as ever -- and having lived so long, they were fascinating hosts. Always one or the other of them had a story to tell about somewhere they had lived, or something they had seen in their many years together. Mr. Scamander regaled them all with a story from his early twenties, when he had been first compiling his book and had been forced to spend two nights in a tree to avoid being devoured by a Chimaera. As he spoke, the wind picked up around them and howled around the windows until Beth could hardly hear him over the noise. Gradually the wind died down, but the howling remained, long and low ...

And Beth recognized what it was.

The sound of a woman with white tattered hair, screaming for her very life.

Beth dropped her fork. Not here, not on Christmas ... She felt the blood drain from her face. The screaming woman in white had followed her all the way back to Dorset. It's not even my own house, she thought furiously. She has to intrude on the Scamanders' property. If she had come this far, how much farther would she go? Would she suddenly appear some nights, for the rest of Beth's life?

"Are you all right, Bethy?" Mr. Scamander asked, looking at her quizzically. Before she could answer, Mrs. Scamander spoke up:

"Oh Bill, what's the matter?"

Beth looked quickly at her father. He had stopped eating and his hands were shaking, far worse than usual. There was a weary, worried look in his eyes. He looked at Beth, and her mouth dropped open in realization.

"You hear it too -- don't you?"

Mr. Parson turned to look at his daughter hollowly.

"Dad, I know you hear it!"

Mr. and Mrs. Scamander exchanged a worried glance. "Beth, what is it?" asked Mrs. Scamander, turning to her.

"Nothing," her father began shakily, but Beth broke in:

"There is something, there's this woman outside screaming, I don't know who she is or what she wants -- but you know, don't you!" She turned on her father. "Who is she?"

Mr. Parson licked his lips. "She is Glaistig Uaine ... our banshee."

The screaming fell off and the table was left in silence.

***

Beth had read about banshees in Defense Against the Dark Arts. They weren't the sort of dark creature that you could exactly fight off -- the best you could do was sneak up on them and grab them, and then all you could do was force an answer out of them. The terrible thing was the question that they answered. As described by Mr. Lowell Brummagem in his Handbook of Spirits:

"A banshee haunts a person only in the time immediately before
the death of a member of that family. They are usually attached
to old wizarding families -- predominantly those hailing from
Ireland -- and some theorize that they are the ghosts of dead
matriarchs, mourning their shortly-doomed sons and daughters.
The banshee may wear a dress of black, green, or white, and her
scream is said to be second in agony only to the cry of the
Augurey. (See Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Obscurus
Books, 1990)"

Beth, of course, didn't remember the description word for word -- that's what authors are for -- but she knew enough that once she understood precisely what was going on, she was speechless. She pushed away the rest of her meal, suddenly sick, and went into the living room, where the Clabberts scuttled around the Christmas tree and watched her curiously. The adults joined her soon.

Mr. Parson sat down beside her on the sofa and put his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath. "The banshee has been attached to the Parsimmer family for almost eight hundred years now."

Beth looked up at Mr. and Mrs. Scamander, but neither registered any surprise -- they must have known about her father's change of name. Getting her voice back, Beth demanded, "Well why haven't I heard her until now?"

Mr. Parson shrugged tiredly. "There hasn't been a death in the immediate family for some ten years. Then it was my sister -- your Aunt Eugena."

"I've never even heard of her," said Beth, frankly annoyed.

"She was a witch," said Mr. Parson, "and a Parsimmer. She never met you."

"So we have no idea why she's screaming this time. Who it's going to be."

Her father shook his head, and he looked older than he ever had before.

A banshee ... a herald of death. This was why Beth's father had been checking up on her so often ... this was the reason that only the young Parsimmer girl, the Hufflepuff, had heard the screams that Beth heard. She looked up at the Scamanders, and then over at her father. The appearance of the banshee was not only a haunting, but a riddle -- and one that would only be solved by death.

***

The rest of Christmas break was rather tense. It was difficult for Beth to relax when she saw the face of the banshee every time she looked at her father. The return to school came as a great relief, and she had never been happier to see her friends as when they boarded the Hogwarts Express for the second term.

Clamoring cheerfully, Melissa, Bruce, and Mervin found a compartment and spilled in, chattering about Christmas presents and what they had done over break. On this point Beth was silent. She let her friends chatter and enjoyed their company ... but she didn't tell them about the banshee.

Melissa smiled at the sight of Mervin's snake slung around his shoulders, then stopped and took a closer look. "Good heavens, is that Gina?"

"Yup," said Mervin proudly. "Grown six inches over break. She's almost five feet long. Isn't she gorgeous?" Gina nudged his cheek affectionately. "She's smart, too. I trained her to fetch the paper every morning. It always comes back with two big holes in it, but at least she's stopped fetching the butler."

"What're you feeding her now?" Bruce asked curiously.

"Mice, mostly, I mean I just let her hunt around," said Mervin. "Eggs, sometimes. She can swallow them whole, you know."

Bruce thought that was extremely impressive.

"I remember when a mouse could've eaten her," said Beth thoughtfully, reaching over to stroke Gina's snout. "What kind of snake is she again?"

Mervin shuffled awkwardly. "Don't know really. The guy who sold her to me didn't really say much ... shifty bloke. He had this eye patch and no teeth ..."

"That's what you get for buying pets in Knockturn Alley," Melissa said.

The trip back to school was much more relaxed than the one at the beginning of the year -- it might have been remnants of the holiday spirit, or just the fact that there were no dementors coming in to suck the happiness out of everyone. Beth fell asleep about halfway through. She woke up to the sound of screeching wheels and the long, shrill whistle of the Hogwarts Express.

"Rise and shine!" Melissa chirped, as Beth struggled to sit up. "We're at Hogsmeade!"

"You missed the food cart," said Bruce. "I saved you a Peppermint Toad, only Gina thought it was a real toad and tried to eat it." He held out a milky-white sweet with the head bitten off.

Beth laughed at his genuine show of concern. "Thanks anyway. Tell Gina she can have the rest of it."

"She hated it, though," Melissa pointed out. "That's the part she spat back at Bruce."

Beth stared at Bruce. "You offered me this?"

He shrugged and popped it in his mouth.

They hurried through the falling snow to board the long line of horseless carriages. The ride back was lighthearted; Beth was so grateful to be back with her friends that she ignored the persistent thought of the banshee in the back of her mind. Forget it, Parson, she urged herself. But there it sat, tugging on her thoughts, even as the students went up the stone staircase, into the Entrance Hall, and dispersed in four directions.

They spilled into the common room, grateful to be back. Aaron was there, sitting on the floor by the fireplace, so they all stopped by to say hi. He looked extremely glad to see them, and said as much.

"How was it, staying here in the castle?" Beth asked, plopping down beside him

"Awful," Aaron grouched. "The only other people here were a couple of firsties and Potter with his little friends. Didn't even recognize me," he said sullenly. "Had to eat Christmas dinner with the professors, didn't you always want to do that, and Trippy Trelawney kept going off about somebody dying."

"Did you get anything done?" Melissa asked hopefully.

Aaron sighed. "That's the worst part -- I was so bored I did all my homework." His eyes widened suddenly. "Oh -- and listen to this --" He lowered his voice. "You're never going to believe it. Harry Potter --"

Bruce swore under his breath at the mere sound of the name.

"-- got a Firebolt for Christmas."

In his surprise, Bruce swore out loud. "You're kidding."

Aaron shook his head. "No, it just showed up, no label or anything. Good thing is, McGonagall thinks it might've been sent by Sirius Black. So she's confiscated it and Flitwick and Hooch are running all sorts of tests on it."

"That'll stall it, anyway," Bruce said hopefully. "Maybe it'll take so long to check that he won't get it back all year. Wonder if they've thought of a Bucking Charm ... Did you actually get to see it? How's it look?"

"No," said Aaron enviously. "But if it's anything like the one in the shop in Diagon Alley -- Draco's got some competition."

~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Notes: Guess what, guys! The first S.S.A. novel got rejected by Sugarquill.com! I suspect that somewhere, Richard is crying.
Thanks to all you beautiful people who have been leaving reviews. They're all I have for breakfast. In particular, God bless Lyta Padfoot and UnrepentantReader who review every single chapter. And Geis ... just because you've read it before doesn't mean you can't review now ... :-) I've revamped chapter 12 for you.
Hope you're enjoying the book. --Amberdulen