Note: Well, here is a longer chapter to make up for the previous two which were so short! I hope you enjoy reading it. Thank you very much to my kind reviewers, it is always great to hear from you!

FF won't let me save alterations for paragraph breaks...sorry about that! =Z

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I making any profit from this piece of writing.

14: The Christmas Fair

"DAD!"

As she watched Teddy Lupin bound down the staircase, making enough noise to wake the dead, the soggy sheet of paper held aloft in his hand, Carrie Winters struggled to fight back a smile.

Having spent so much of the last few days at her neighbors' house, prompting her mother to comment that she was beginning to believe that Carrie and Teddy were joined at the hip, Carrie had decided to phone Cleo that morning and had arranged to go round to her house for the morning. If she were honest, Carrie would admit that she would much rather had spent the morning playing Exploding Snap and Gobstones with Teddy, but she knew full well that once the holidays were over and Teddy returned to Hogwarts, Cleo would be the closest thing to a best friend that she would have left. It would not do to ignore her the whole holiday.

And it wasn't as though she didn't like Cleo, Carrie had assured herself whilst on her way over to Old Oak Crescent, she liked her very much indeed. It was just that she liked Teddy so much more.

She had in actual fact had a lot of fun at Cleo's house, it was to be Cleo's father's birthday the next day and so the two girls had baked him a cake, complete with chocolate sprinkles and a generous layer of dark chocolate icing. It had taken them a long while to clean up afterwards, Carrie recalled, since the kitchen looked rather like...what was the phrase Mrs. Lupin had once used? Like somebody had let a horde of pixies loose in it. Carrie was still unsure as to how the cake mixture had managed to splatter itself across the ceiling, all she did know was that they had been forced to enlist the help of Bowie, who was tall enough to reach to clean it off again. This one aspect of cleaning had taken even longer than the rest put together, for Bowie was reluctant to risk getting her new knitted dress dirty. Cleo had pointed out that white was a silly colour to wear in their household anyway, and that it would be the lesser of two evils if the dress got dirty – if their mother were to see the state of the kitchen she would no doubt scream at Cleo for at least half an hour, and if that happened Bowie would struggle to hear what her friends were nattering about on the telephone.

"You might miss out on some hot gossip! Cindy might have bought some new lip gloss and you wouldn't even know about it!"

At this exclamation, Bowie had grabbed the fluffy pillow from beside her upon her bed and hurled it across the room at her little sister, but had abandoned the book that she had been reading and consented to help nevertheless.

Just before Carrie had left, Cleo had disappeared off to fetch something from a deep and dark corner of her bedroom, and had returned to present her friend with a soggy looking poster advertising a Christmas Fair that was to be held that afternoon in the center of town.

"Show it to your mum," Cleo had suggested with a grin, "and I might see you there!"

Carrie had not bothered to show the poster to her mother, since she knew that Mrs. Winters was much too busy with preparations for Christmas to take Carrie out anywhere, she would only suggest that the twins took Carrie into town instead.

And so she had gone round and knocked on the Lupins' door and gone up to Teddy's bedroom to show the poster to him instead. Carrie had not been entirely sure whether or not a boring muggle Christmas Fair was the sort of thing that Teddy wanted to waste his time with, but he had snatched up the poster and bolted for the stairs.

Mr. Lupin had, as usual, failed to be startled when his son burst into the study, narrowly avoiding knocking the door from it's hinges.

"DAD!"

As Carrie came to a halt just behind Teddy, she watched the wizard stubbornly finish reading the letter that he held in his hands before he finally set it down upon the desk and looked up at the two children.

"You ought not shout quite so loudly, Ted." Mr. Lupin said as Teddy bounded forward to thrust the soggy poster under his nose. "As we speak there are probably fathers all over the country looking around wildly, wondering who is calling them..."

"Look!" Teddy interrupted impatiently, giving the poster a little shake, as if Mr. Lupin could fail to notice the paper mere millimeters from his face.

"A muggle Christmas Fair...?"

"Yeah! Look, Santa Claus is going to be there! With his ELVES!"

Mr. Lupin's brow furrowed as he squinted down at the tubby, bearded man upon the poster.

"You...you want to go and see Santa Claus? And his...elves?" he attempted to clarify, reaching to pull the paper down from his face so that he could stare at his son.

He looked downright bemused. It made Carrie giggle.

"Yes!" Teddy confirmed, nodding enthusiastically. "So...will you take us?"

Mr. Lupin leaned back in his chair, frown deepening as he said:

"You do realize they're not real elves, don't you? They're just muggles dressed up in ridiculous looking suits..." he trailed off when he noticed that Carrie was listening and offered her an apologetic smile.

"I know!" Teddy cried, fidgeting excitedly as he announced: "It'll be bloody hilarious!"

Mr. Lupin leaned forwards slightly in his chair, gaze suddenly quite piercing and Teddy hurriedly amended:

"I mean it'll be absolutely hilarious!"

"Indeed..." his father muttered, reaching to push the poster aside and pick up one of a large pile of unopened letters. As he set about carefully pulling open the envelope, still very much frowning, Teddy hurried around the desk to stand beside him, rocking back and forwards upon his heels impatiently.

"Please, Dad! Please, please, please..."

"I'm quite busy, Teddy..."

"No you're not! I bet I could tell you what all those say without you even opening them!"

Mr. Lupin pulled the letter from its envelope with what was probably much more force than was necessary, and Teddy paused in his fidgeting to shove his hands awkwardly in his pockets.

"Go and do the washing up." Mr. Lupin instructed, and Carrie watched Teddy hang his head.

"I'm sorry, Dad..."

"You've not touched it since I asked you this morning. And whilst you're at it, put your shoes away properly. Your mother will trip over them if you leave them by the back door like that."

When Teddy simply stood, opening and closing his mouth several times as he attempted to think of something to say, his father finally looked up and said:

"Well? What are you waiting for?"

"Carrie's here, Dad..." Teddy reminded him, and Carrie shuffled back into the hallway a little, embarrassed.

"You better hurry up with that washing up then." Mr. Lupin suggested, reaching to draw out his wand from his pocket. "You don't want Carrie to get bored waiting for you, do you?"

Carrie was briefly distracted from the awkward atmosphere when he gave the letter a tap with his wand and it disappeared into thin air. It took her a moment to notice that Teddy had turned and shuffled out of the room, reaching to pull the door closed behind him.

"I'm such an idiot." he muttered dejectedly as he led the way towards the kitchen. "I just had to open my big mouth..."

"That wasn't very fair." Carrie told him, attempting to side with him in order to cheer him up.

She was surprised, therefore, when Teddy shook his head vigorously, hugging his arms around himself with a heavy sigh.

"It's perfectly fair. I'm an idiot. Mum's going to be mad if she finds out." He headed over to the sink and set about filling the washing up bowl with soapy water. "Dad's...had a bad time recently. He's...being a bit short tempered." he muttered as Carrie went to fetch a tea towel from by toaster. "Mum says I'm not to upset him."

"What's wrong with him?" Carrie asked as he stared down at the growing bubbles with a somber expression upon his face.

"I'm what's wrong with him." he said, reaching to halt the fast flow of water and reaching for the sponge. "Mum says he's not doing so well now I'm at Hogwarts."

"Why?"

Teddy dunked a plate into the water and set about scrubbing it clean.

"When I was younger, it was sort of okay, Dad not having a job. Mum put gold in the vault, and Dad looked after me, played with me, taught me to read, write, count...that takes up a lot of time, you know, looking after a child. But I'm not here half the time now, am I? What's he got to do now besides a bit of cleaning and filling out those stupid job applications? It's getting to him, I think. His mood's pretty unpredictable, Mum's worried about him."

Carrie frowned as she accepted the plate from him and set about drying it.

"There must be things for him to do. I mean...what did he do before? Before you were born, I mean."

Teddy pressed his lips together against a smile as he recalled:

"Well...he did a bit of teaching...only for a year, mind you. Most of his time was spent either on the run from the authorities, hanging out with his convicted mass murderer friend, or going on missions for a secret organization he was part of during the War."

At the wide eyed, completely bemused looked that Carrie presented him with after this explanation, the young wizard simply laughed.

"Did I not tell you all about the War?" he asked, surprised at himself as Carrie reached to put the plate down, still staring.
"What...war?"

"The Second Wizarding War."

"A Wizard War...?"

"Yeah, the Second one. Although Dad fought in the first one, too..."

"Your dad has fought in a Wizard War? Two of them...?"

"Yep. That's how he met my mum. They were both in the Order of the Phoenix...it was a secret organization that fought against Voldemort..."

"Who?"

"Voldemort. You've heard of him, right?"

"No..."

"Oh...I thought even muggles might have at least known his name..."

"Who is he?"

"He was the most evil dark wizard ever...that was until Harry killed him."

"Harry? As in your godfather Harry?"

"Yeah, that's the one. Harry Potter, most famous wizard of the age."

Carrie went to lean against the kitchen table, feeling more than a little overwhelmed. She was beginning to think that this was as difficult to comprehend as the notion of magic itself.

Wizards had wars? Surely not, surely somebody would have noticed something like that...

And Teddy sounded so casual about it, too...

Mr. Lupin had a convicted mass murder friend...? Ridiculous!

"The Order of the Phoenix helped Harry defeat the Dark Lord." Teddy went on, apparently oblivious to Carrie's confusion. "That's why it sucks that Dad can't get a job. I mean...he's a bloody war hero! There's something wrong with the world, you know, when somebody who was prepared to die to protect it can't even get a stupid job..."

"Teddy?"

At the sound of Mr. Lupin's voice, Teddy jumped, splashing water down his front, and he turned to find his father standing in the doorway. Carrie spun around to look at the wizard, wondering how he had gotten there without them noticing. It seemed that Teddy was thinking something similar, for he cried:

"For the love of Merlin, Dad! Did you have to sneak up on us like that?"

Mr. Lupin took a few steps into the room and pointed his wand at the sink. The plate that Teddy had been holding leapt from his hands back into the bowl and began to wash itself.

"Force of habit, I'm afraid." the older wizard explained as he gave his wand another wide sweep and the pair of trainers by the back door were levitated to Teddy's side. "First rule of being part of a secret organization, Theodore..."

"Be sneaky." Teddy finished, folding his arms across his chest and barely suppressing a grin. "I know, Dad. I was just telling Carrie about Harry and the Order and Voldemort. Will you tell her the story?"

"I could do." Mr. Lupin said as the trainers rose a few inches until they hung before Teddy's face meaningfully. "But it's a long story, and you'll probably miss your chance to see Santa if I started now..."

"I thought we weren't going."

"I never said that."

Teddy immediately snatched the trainers out of the air and began to pull them onto his feet.

"What changed your mind?" he asked as Mr. Lupin went to lock the back door.

"You can finish the kitchen when you get back." came the vague response. It seemed good enough for Teddy, however, for he bolted for the front door, calling excitedly for Carrie to hurry up.

Carrie stared bewildered at Mr. Lupin for a long moment, mind still consumed with thoughts of war heroes and evil dark wizards, when Teddy's father turned his back on the door and offered her a somewhat wistful smile.

"I know," he said in answer to her unspoken words. "Looking at us now, sometimes I can't believe it, either."

"Hahahahaha!"

"Stop laughing, Theodore."

"But Dad! They've got BELLS on their shoes!"

As he stood beside Carrie and Teddy at the side of the street, staring over at the alarmingly glittery Santa's Grotto, Mr. Lupin sniggered.

"Be that as it may," he said, clearing his throat loudly as Carrie put a wooly gloved hand to her mouth to stifle her own amusement. "You shouldn't be laughing at them. You'll ruin the experience for the other children."

Teddy frowned over at the line of children waiting impatiently with their parents to sit upon Santa's knee and tell him what they wanted for Christmas, eyes coming to rest back upon the elves in their green jackets and stockings.

"But...they've got bells on their shoes..." he said again, and Carrie was forced to turn away to hide her giggling.

"I hadn't noticed." Mr. Lupin muttered dryly, reaching into his pocket and drawing out his wallet, only to look up at the grotto again when Teddy cried:

"That one's got a red wig on!"

"Says the boy with the turquoise hair." his father said with a grin, eyes back upon his wallet. Carrie watched his sort through an assortment of large gold and silver coins that looked nothing like the money she was used to, before he extracted a couple of crumbled looking five pound notes and returned the wallet to his pocket.

"No tormenting the elves." he instructed with poorly suppressed amusement as he offered each child a note. "And no more chocolate, Ted...unless you promise to give half of it to me."

After calling enthusiastic thanks over their shoulders, Teddy and Carrie disappeared off up the street to examine the various stalls that had been set up along the road, which had been blocked off from traffic especially for the occasion. The two children had fun looking at all the different stalls. Teddy particularly liked the stall selling wooly hats and scarves, and tried on at least a dozen before Carrie could drag him away. There was a stall selling mince pies, another selling personalized stockings and a third with hand made wooden toys. It did not take them long to discover the stall that was selling an assortment of sweets, from huge slabs of fudge to lollipops and chocolate bars.

"Does your dad like chocolate a lot, then?" Carrie asked as they stood looking keenly at the display.

"You know how your dad is always going on about eating his five fruit and veg a day?" Teddy said as he reached to examine a box of chocolate covered toffees. "Well, that's what my dad's like, except he does it with chocolate."

Carrie sniggered, gloved fingers fiddling with the five pound note in her pocket.

"What sort does he like best?"

"Plain milk chocolate." Teddy supplied, "He buys Honeydukes' Finest. It drives Mum slightly insane, she says it tastes the same as the normal stuff, the only difference is it's about twice the price. She doesn't tell him that, though. He'd just point out she has no idea what she's talking about because she likes fudge better than chocolate. He thinks that's criminal."

"Your parents are funny." Carrie said, recalling the antics she had witnessed through the fence back in September.

"Most parents are. Uncle George says secretly its because they don't want to grow up."

As she picked up a large bar of milk chocolate that was wrapped in shiny blue foil, a silver ribbon tied in a bow around its middle, Carrie frowned deeply.

"Doesn't sound like my mum and dad." she muttered, and Teddy gave a shrug.

"You never know." he said, only to be distracted by something that caught his eye. "Oh look, sugar mice!"

Carrie suppressed a sigh, turning the bar of chocolate she was holding from side to side, watching the twinkling fairy lights above them being reflected in the foil.

"I think I do know." she mumbled, but Teddy didn't hear her.

Carrie spent all of her money at the sweet stall, buying the bar of milk chocolate and a large bagful of butter fudge tied up with bright pink ribbon.

"They're for your parents." she informed Teddy happily as they set off towards the next stall, which appeared to be selling Christmas tree decorations.

Teddy, who was busy struggling to fit the wide bar of white chocolate that he had bought into the pocket of his coat, offered her a bright grin.

"They'll like that!" he told her happily, only for his eyes to widen as something drew his attention and he hurried forwards towards the stall.

"Cool! Turquoise tinsel!"

"I thought you might spot that." Mr. Lupin's voice commented from somewhere behind them and they both spun around to find him stood watching them, smiling faintly.

"Stop DOING that!" Teddy cried, eyes widening furiously, causing his father to chuckle. "Anyway, can we have some turquoise tinsel for the tree, Dad?"

"No, Ted." Mr. Lupin turned and led the way back up the street towards Santa's Grotto.

"Why not?"

"We've already got tinsel. Besides, we're going to Diagon Alley on your mother's day off next week. We'll buy all the Christmas things then."

Teddy began an excited account of the family trip to Diagon Alley the previous festive season, when they had been babysitting James and Albus Potter for the afternoon. They had lost James after only five minutes and Albus had spent the majority of his time sobbing into Mrs. Lupin's cloak after relaying the news that his parents had told him that he was too young to receive a proper broomstick of his own for Christmas.

"...and then we found James in the Owl Emporium, trying to open all of the cages, didn't we Dad?"

It was only when Mr. Lupin failed to respond to this question that Carrie, who had been absorbed in the story, had realized that Mr. Lupin had stopped walking. Teddy narrowly avoided walking into the back of him as Carrie noted that they had passed the grotto and had reached the cross roads at the end of the high street.

"Dad?" Teddy said, reaching to tug at the sleeve of his father's coat, but Mr. Lupin appeared not to hear him.

He was staring at something on the opposite side of the road, and when Carrie stepped sideways to see what he was staring at, she spied a tall, broad shouldered man swathed in a long black coat. He had short, curly brown hair that perched upon his podgy head. He didn't appear to have much of a neck to speak of, but Carrie barely noted this for she was much too preoccupied by his cold, dark eyed gaze as he stared, unblinking back at Mr. Lupin. Carrie averted her own gaze from the stranger, for she felt quite intimidated by him, and it was then that she spied the girl who was stood beside the man.

"I know that girl!" she hissed in Teddy's general direction, not entirely sure why she felt the need to whisper. "That's Amanda Goyle, she lives opposite Cleo, up near the school!"

Teddy opened his mouth to whisper something back when both children jumped as Mr. Lupin took hold of each of them by the arm and began to march them back up the high street towards the fair.

"We're going the wrong way." Teddy pointed out as both he and Carrie turned to look over their shoulders at Amanda Goyle and her father.

"Don't look at them." Mr. Lupin muttered, tugging upon their arms in emphasis, and they obediently looked away again.

"Weren't there Death Eaters called Goyle, Dad?" Teddy asked, stumbling a little at their suddenly brisk pace. When Mr. Lupin said nothing, Carrie asked:

"What's a Death Eater?"

"Where are we going, Dad?"

"Is it something bad? It sounds bad..."

"Dad? Where are we going? Dad?"

"No more questions! Not now!" Mr. Lupin demanded, and they both fell silent, Carrie fixed her gaze upon her shoes. They kept on walking up the street for several minutes, and when he found himself being led down the alleyway beside the butcher's shop, Teddy seemingly forgot his father's demand and said:

"Why are we going down here?"

At long last Mr. Lupin, whose face Carrie noted looked slightly more flushed than was reasonable despite the cold, gave an answer.

"Because we're apparating home." he said as they came to a halt at the end of the alleyway.

Carrie barely heard Teddy's surprised:

"What? All three of..." before she suddenly felt a horrible pulling sensation descend over every single inch of her, and the alleyway seemed to swim before her eyes for a moment, suddenly there came a popping noise and the alleyway was...well...gone!