JINGLING WITH YETIS
DECEMBER 21 SUNDAY
After a quick visit to Bubbles at the roller rink, a visit made possible by the flexible Sunday schedule or lack thereof, it was time for Remus to pack up and take his possessions to Hagrid's hut.
It was obvious that the hut had been tidied up recently in haste. Surfaces were clear but shelves were bursting. It was a fine deduction worthy of Miss. Marble.
"It's not much" said Hagrid bashfully and awaited compliments.
"No it's great thanks a lot for having me" said Remus, feeling rather bashful himself.
"Not at all I have dreamt about this!"
That was a pretty weird thing to say.
"... Really?"
"Not exactly, but it's a compromise. I wouldn't be this excited for anybody, but you're different"
"Yeah... Hear me roar, and so forth..."
"Ok!"
Hagrid looked close to bursting from anticipation. Was it too late to sort things out with that long lost granny with the gingerbread house?
"Do you need me to help out with something?" Remus asked, itching to occupy himself with anything and longing to search the cleaning cabinet.
"Hey not so fast!" said Hagrid. "You just got here. Let's sit down for a moment"
They pulled up chairs at the kitchen table and sat down.
"When Dumbledore approached me about this I said to him say no more!" said Hagrid. "One month with me and he will think twice before he even looks at a minotaur! You see, I, too, was a collector back in the day. It all ended very, very badly"
"What happened?"
"A girl died"
"Of what?"
"She was eaten by a spider"
"I'm so sorry. I guess her body was never found, then"
"No, her stone dead body was found very near a basilisk nest"
"Still, the spider stomach juices would have showed up in the lab tests"
"I'm sure it would have, if they had performed an autopsy. But what happened was that this snooty pretty boy accused my spider and then I was out for good. At least that's how I remember everything"
"I think I know this girl. Isn't she a pervert ghost now?"
"Is she? I wouldn't know. But she was very lustful"
"It explains why they wouldn't perform an autopsy on her body, since they could just ask her what happened"
"Yeah that makes sense. But the moral I want to pass on to you is don't collect high risk pets if you want to stay at Hogwarts and keep your wand. My wand was taken from me and now I must live like a squib. It's so undignifying, you know? Accio tea!"
A teapot whistled on the stove and Hagrid summoned it, as well as a tea tray, using his pretty umbrella.
"The problem is that collectors like us think we have more control than we do. We may be able to look after our pets, but we can't look after malicious peers who just want to sabotage for us, because we're different... But enough of that! Let's finish our tea and then go look for a Christmas tree!"
And so that's what they did. Afterwards, when they were wiring their scarves around their necks and pulling wooly hats over their heads, Hagrid saw the bubble staff leaning against the brown sofa.
"What an unusual cane!" he remarked. "That looks like it came straight out of Sinterklaas' workshop"
"Who's Sinterklaas?" Remus asked.
"Sinterklaas was a dutch wizard who would travel around the world on Christmas Eve, filling stockings with his unusual creations. Or coal, if the child in question was naughty. He had his factory in the North Pole and would create the most unusual things, until he just disappeared"
They stepped out of the hut and into the cold, where Hagrid continued recounting what he knew.
"He's been dead for a really long time, now. Fell off his sleigh and was pierced by an iceberg, or so the story goes"
There was something about his tone that suggested there was more. Hagrid took his axe from his wood chopping tree stump and carried it over his shoulder.
"You know, when one is BFF with the headmaster one hears things"
Remus had always thought that professor McGonagall was BFF with the headmaster, but said nothing of it, because he was interested in just what sort of things one heard when one was BFF with the headmaster.
"Apaprently some oracles speak of Sinterklaas's return. Turns out his body was never found and some interpret that as him never dying at all. Yes, drama queens sure love to fake their death. The press was giving him a bad rep at the time and some people think that he faked his death just so people would remember him for the good things he did"
"What good things?"
"I don't know I can't remember. Later this week I'll have to go to the bank to take something from Dumbledore's account, and I don't think it's acid pops this time. Whenever I have to take something from his account it always means it's really important. As everybody knows, Hogwarts is the safest place in the world, much safer that Dumbledore's bank account"
"Do people steal from his bank account a lot?"
"No that's never happened it's impossible to break into Gringotts, innit? Ok, this looks like a good place!"
They were inside the forest now where pine trees grew all around and where blackbirds and bullfinches added a splash of colour and contrast to all the white. After a quick inspection they found a tree just the right size and Hagrid spoke very warmly of past pets of his while chopping it down but said nothing more of Sinterklaas or Dumbledore's bank account.