SILENT HEIST
25 DECEMBER MONDAY
The Spooky Express chuffed round and round on the bumpy track in the early midnight hour. Captain Meat-Hook had finished explaining his stuff, the chaps had finished dozing off. Now they needed to process the bits they had caught by repeating them back.
"So what you're saying," said James, "is that only a whale can get me to this island, but I must be born in the sign of the periwinkle?"
"Ohhh dearrr," said Meaty. "I better take it all from the beginning, but make it shorterrr. I am one of the Yule Lads. I am also a ship's kobold."
"I thought you were an elf."
"Exactly! We kobolds are sprites that may take any form we wish! Me, I like to take the form of an elf pirate, yarrr! To see a kobold's true form is to DIE! Ohh it is a long story, so why don't you practice untying yourselves in the meantime? Oh, gone are the days or romantic piracy. What's a ship's kobold to do to adabt to the changing times? Become a radio DJ, of course. we ship's kobolds love our music, look it up."
Sirius and Remus were dozing off on each other. The Spooky Express hit a bump in the track and Sirius hit his head in the low ceiling.
"Anthenwuappened?" he slurred.
"What do you mean yarrr?"
"Was this before or after the viscount on the hippo jumped over the maypole?"
"I knew I shouldn't have turned up the heat," said Meaty. "You insulted the Yule Lads. I am one of the Yule Lads. It was also I who was put to guard the Krampus. It was me who unchained the Krampus and opened Krampus Land."
"Are you from Iceland?"
"I am sure there are many things I could clarify but do you really want that?"
"No." Sirius dozed back.
Meaty slapped the chaps across their chins with his rusty bronze hook.
"WAKE UP!"
"Imnotanyoucantproveit!" came Remus's slurring slur.
Now that each chap was awake at last, Meaty put a torch to his own menacing face and said, menacingly:
"I'm afraid I can't let you go throught with this."
Like he had been waiting to say.
"Try and stop me!" James cried nobly. "With what?"
"Defeating the Krampus, 'course!"
"By the way, where are we?"
"But we have all worn boots," said Sirius. "We couldn't."
"Jolly good," said Meaty. "I can take you all home on my ship, how does that sound?"
"Yes please! Well can you take me someplace nice, like Mallorca?"
"Anywhere you want!"
"Hold on a minute!" said James. "I am coming to get that Krampus! And you can't stop me! And you're not sending my chums anywhere nice until I have!"
Sirius sloped against the wall and moped.
"N'aw."
"Oh I see," said Meaty. "Is that how it is going to be, is it, is it? Good luck finding the Krampus!"
A snap of his fingers and Meaty was gone, for it was a feature of the kobolds that they could make themselves invisible without either cloaca or acid pop. But they needed fingers.
The train began to speed up and shoot through the tunnel until it crash-stopped through a glass wall.
The chaps used their wands to apply bandage to themselves as well as their wands.
Once they had scrambled back up they realised they were surrounded by mirrors, each of them distorting them in a comical fashion while their reflections became normal.
Remus arranged some clothing he had nicked off the dummies in a pile. scorched it and collected the ashes in a pirate hat. Then he ran off, scattering ashes all over.
"We appear to be in a labyrinth!" said James when he hit his nose in a mirror and flipped upside down. "And I know that the secret to labyrinths is always turn left!"
"Moony told you that," said Sirius.
"He must have learned it from Dumbledore!"
"He learned it from Wizard's Antiques Road Trip."
"When Dumbledore went on a road trip!" It was a little known fact that Dumbledore had been in the antiques business.
The distorting mirrors would have slowed them down very badly indeed, had Sirius not kept a mirror in his pocket. James looked in it and flipped back up. They tried not looking in any mirrors from then on.
Which was hard, because they were in a labyrinth of distorting mirrors. Even when they were trying not to look, they kept hitting mirrors.
They were hopelessly stuck.
"Are we to just assume that the Krampus is somewhere in here?" Sirius asked.
"Yes," James replied. "I mean it is really cold, I think that's a dead give away."
"Damn!"
"What?"
"We missed the dead give away at the ghost yule party!"
"Damn!"
"Good thing I brought this chipped tooth!" Hand over his eyes, he stabbed his own reflection with the tooth, at his wrist. "Ow!" His own corresponding wrist grew a patch of white fur. He looked in his mirror and it went away.
"I think you'd really thrive as a werewolf," said James. "You would wear the sheep skin with such poise."
Sirius thought so, too. And he would scare the locals shitless with glee.
"Now think," he said, ending that fantasy and evil laugh.
"What, again?!"
"Who has never shaved or worn boots? Oh?" He listened for something. "What's that, Andrew?" He reached under his jumper and pulled out his sticky hand. "You have never shaved or worn boots? Then you better take this!"
The sticky hand pinched the tooth and closed its sticky fingers around it.
"We have a relationship, Handy Andrew and I," said Sirius.
"Insert rude euphemism here."
"I thought you wanted to."
Turning left was no good advice in this labyrinth because they kept hitting mirrors whichever way they turned. James lost patience and asked to borrow Sirius's Handy Andrew so he could attach the rock to it and fling it through all the glass. CRASH! Through there! CRASH! Through there!
(Hey, glass breaked!)
They saw hoof prints and boot prints in the ash. CRASH! Through there!
The Krampus's long, lolling tongue was penetrating a block of ice. And inside that block of ice- GASP!- it was Remus, cryogenically frozen and being devoured like a butterfly by a crab spider. James hated that he'd be stuck with that information forever now.
He flung the sticky hand by the stone in it and sliced off the lolling tongue. The Krampus gave a demonic shriek and backed away. James expected him to collapse into a pile of dust, but he didn't. He just directed his rage at him now. James took some trembling steps back.
"Nice work, Andrew! You really are someone to me!"
The tongue began to grow back. Without thinking about it much, James wolf-whistled. And very soon he could hear the wooshing of his Diamond Lucy. It whacked the Krampus in the back of the head and sweeped his lungs full of dust. The Krampus became so stuffed with dust his eyes popped out. The Krampus became a dust statue and that was how he came to meet his end. (This time.)
"Nice work, Diamond Lucy, you really are someone to me!"
And that was the truth.
In the meantime Sirius had cast the Jellify on the block of ice, dug through it and laid Remus on the ashy glass floor. And right now he was blasting him with the Super Blowdry Maximum Heat. Nuances of peach were already returning to Remus's melting cheeks.
Whoever said poodles were only good for getting perms!
Oh yeah, James said that.
"Nice work, Lassie!" said James, feeling his pockets. "Oh. I don't have any biscuits on me."
"I like Jammie Dodgers." Hint.
"I'll look for them in the dog food aisle."
"Look for them in the biscuit aisle!"
"No sugar and wheat for you, nobody likes a fat collie!"
"Poodle."
"Poodles don't save lives they are only valued for their appearance."
Very much defrosted like an undercooked turkey, Remus's eyelids began to twitch and open. He sat up.
"We got the Krampus!" said James.
Remus coughed some snow. His eyes followed something moving.
"Tiny footprints. Over there." COUGH and point. "That way."
Something was leaving small footprints in the ash. Sirius cast Jellify at where it was putting down its feet next. This lifted the invisibility magic, revealing a jellified Meaty with his arms full of jelly-dynamites.
James scooped some jelly from the face and tasted it.
"Blackberry?"
"Blackccurrant."
It would go really well with a trifle.
XXXXX
The chaps made themselves another fire, chucked some floo powder in it and travelled to a very busy Hogwarts kitchen. There they nicked a bowl of trifle and a spoon, because they were famished and really peckish for trifle.
When Remus had lifted the nutcracker curse from Peter, and become the new nutcracker, his bag of secrets had been left behind in a very un-secret location.
But luckily enough Dumbledore had been keeping it.
"What are your plans for the day?" James asked. "The train leaves at two. It's bound to be very busy at home but I'll invite you all anyway!"
"I was going to suggest Mallorca but I'm up for whatever," said Sirius.
"I have to get un-converted," said Remus, looking at his watch. "My mum must be so worried."
"Is she a very strict Jew?"
"Worried about me."
"And your relationship with Yahweh!"
"Worried about why I haven't come home."
"To Judaism!"
"To Oldshed."
"Is that your synagogue?"
"It's ok we sent her a postcard," said James.
Then Remus realised another thing. His hands flew to his cheeks in shocked distress.
"Shishi!"
CRACK!
That was Shishi appearing in a cloud of his own putrid green gases, looking unharmed, and leaping into Remus's arms like a toy poodle.
"My mum must be so worried, too," said Sirius.
"I'm sure she is."
"Worried about how her wicked maternal abilities are percieved by other wicked mums." Sigh and groan. "I wish I was Jewish because then Christmas wouldn't matter!"
"You forget," said James, pushing up his pince-nez," that the Jews have their own Christmas and it's called hanukka!"
"Hanukka was over two weeks ago," said Remus.
"Then it's not so important that you get home today?"
"No. Saturnalia was two days ago."
"Saturnalia!" Sirius gasped. "But that's a Roman thing! And the Romans killed Jesus! Oh. Ok. Now it all makes sense."
"Good."
James really wanted them to play a Christmas joke before paying a visit to the Count of East Mead. So they hopped in the pipe system, collected some small vipers and took them to the staff room, which they accessed through the ventilation grid. Nobody was there, because Dumbledore was treating the entire staff to eggnog. The tradition was: eggnog first, then gingerbread house.
So the chaps stuffed the gingerbread house with vipers, had one slices too many of boozy Christmas pudding and then they really felt like wassailing.
FIN.