Chapter Twenty-Nine
When I woke up, the sun was shining brightly through the window. Somebody had opened the curtains; looking around, I assumed that it had been Rose. She always woke up early, and her bed was neatly made, the midnight-blue hangings pulled back and tied to the bedposts with perfect bows. Rose was nowhere in sight.
Suddenly I remembered that today was my first Hogsmeade trip and my thirteenth birthday. I practically leapt out of bed and to my closet, pulling out clothes in an attempt to find something to wear. I finally decided on dark blue skinny jeans tucked into brown boots and a white tank top underneath a dark purple long-sleeved sweater. I ran a brush through my hair until it hung straight and blonde as always, then booked it out of the room and up to the common room. Rose was sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, reading a thick book. She looked up as I sat down next to her.
"Happy birthday," she smiled. "Are you as excited to go to Hogsmeade as I am?"
I nodded eagerly.
Half an hour later, Annie and Carla came up from the dormitory and the four of us wandered down to the Great Hall for breakfast.
"Present time!" sang Annie cheerily, fishing a tiny wrapped box out of her book bag. Carla reached into her bag, too, pulling out a much-larger wrapped box. Rose revealed a flat package from beneath her robes. All three of them looked up as the mail owls swooped into the Great Hall. Three owls landed in front of me -- two neatly on the table, the third in Jordan Webber's cereal. Jordan frowned at the owl, picked it up with both hands, placed it beside the others, and set his bowl to one side. His best friend, Josh Appleby, laughed at him while stuffing his face with eggs and bacon.
I watched this, amused, until someone tapped me on the shoulder and Rose, sitting beside me, slid along the bench to make room for them. James, Al and Scorpius squeezed onto the bench. Lily entered the hall with her newfound friends and, seeing me surrounded by present-bearing friends, rushed over to sit beside Carla, dragging Ava Scamander, Jonathan Wood and Dylan Longbottom with her. Hugo, too, came across the Great Hall from the Hufflepuff table to sit on my other side. I looked around at all of these people, all pulling wrapped presents out of their bags and pockets.
"Who's first?" asked Annie. "Oh, oh, I know! Me! Me!" She handed me the tiny box, almost dropping it in the pitcher of pumpkin juice in the process. I smiled at her and began to untie the purple ribbon that tied the tissue around it. When the tissue fell down onto the table, I was holding a glass cup with purple wax inside it, a tiny string sticking out from the middle. "Look!" squealed Annie. "It's a candle! My grandmother was showing me how to make them over the summer. I didn't even use magic!"
The three owls ruffled their feathers impatiently. Rose waved her wand over the one that had fallen into Jordan's cereal and its feathers dried quickly. I untied the package from its leg and it flew away gladly.
The package was wrapped in brown paper. When I tore the paper off, it revealed a large white box that contained Grandma's present -- a pumpkin pie with a gingerbread crust and a thick paperback book called Night World #1: Secret Vampire, Daughters of Darkness, Spellbinder by L.J. Smith. A closer look at the back of the book revealed that it contained three different stories. I put the pie directly in front of me, planning to keep an eye on it and make sure that Annie didn't get her hands on it.
The next owl shuffled forwards, carefully avoiding the bowl of cereal and milk that James was now digging into, making himself at home at the Ravenclaw table. This owl carried a very large box that, it turned out, held two different presents -- one from Harry and Ginny, and one from Ginny's parents, Mr and Mrs Weasley. Mrs Weasley, it appeared, had knitted me a thick navy-blue sweater with a big silver E on it, just like the one I'd received at Christmas two years before, but bigger. I folded the sweater neatly and placed it on the bench beside me, nudging Hugo to get him to make space for the present. I placed the box containing my pumpkin pie on top of the sweater and turned to Harry and Ginny's present, a penknife with attachments that could unlock any lock and undo any knot. The note wrapped around the knife read that it was very similar to a knife Harry had received from his godfather in his fourth year. The third owl carried a package from Rose and Hugo's parents -- three self-inking quills this year, and no ink, for obvious reasons. Also they had sent a Revealer. The note said (in Hermione's flowing script) that it was a type of eraser that could make invisible ink be, well, visible. I wondered vaguely how useful that would be, but it seemed pretty inventive.
"Me next!" said Rose, holding out her flat package. I unwrapped the black tissue paper to reveal a hand-mirror. "It's a two-way mirror," explained Rose. "I have the other one." I thanked her and Hugo shoved a package under my nose; a small, velvety green bag containing hundreds of white mints. Rose took one look at it and whirled around to face her brother, demanding to know where he got the spell that expanded the inside of the bag and after that I stopped paying attention to what Rose was saying, because Carla's big package was being held out to me.
"A Skiving Snackbox!" announced James, staring at the big black case.
"What is it?"
"What is it?" repeated James in awe. "It's only my uncles' most inventive concoction ever! When they were still in school, too! It's basically a range of sweets that make you ill. See," he said, opening the case and pulling out a sweet, "you eat the orange end and it makes you ill. Once you're out of class on your way to the hospital wing, you swallow the purple end and you've got endless time on your hands!"
"It's not endless time, James," said Rose in a matter-of-fact voice. "And anyway, what's the point? There's exams at the end of the year, you know. If you skip classes and pretend to be sick all the time, you'll never pass. I think it's stupid."
"Well, I think it's genius," grinned Carla. I put the Skiving Snackbox on the growing pile on the bench beside me.
Al and Scorp had put their money together to buy me a beautiful diorama of the solar system, a perfectly created miniature, moving model of all the planets and the Sun, contained within a glass dome, complete with moons.
"It's supposed to be used for studying only," said Rose importantly.
"Who cares?" retorted Al. "It's cool, look at it!"
James pulled out a big plastic bag -- the kind that you buy groceries from the supermarket in -- and dumped it out onto the table in front of me. More joke items. What else? Fake wands, Dungbombs, a screaming yo-yo, stink pellets and a nose-biting teacup. I smiled gratefully at James and he smiled back at me.
"Well, Lil?" asked Al, looking across the table at his red-haired sister. "You got anything for Elle?"
"Uh," said Lily, reaching into her book bag, "yeah, sure! I mean, I've got..." She fumbled around in her bag before extracting a rumpled purple quill. "This. Here. Happy birthday!"
"Oh, come on," said James. "You forgot Elle's birthday? How can you forget it? It's on Halloween! Easy!"
Lily looked embarrassed.
After breakfast, Rose, Annie and Carla helped me carry my presents up to Ravenclaw Tower. Rather, Rose performed a spell to carry them for us and we walked behind my floating birthday presents, talking animatedly and giving the passwords as the presents approached. When we reached the dormitory, Rose set the gifts down on my bed and I started to put my things in their new places. The solar system model claimed a spot on my bedside table beside the blue Mickey Mouse sucker, and the Muggle book was placed on the shelf. Annie's candle was placed beside the solar system and my blue sweater with the silver E went into my closet. I put my new penknife in the top drawer of my bedside table, along with the two-way mirror, which lay in the drawer beside the talking mirror I had received two years ago. Then I opened the next drawer and dumped James' grocery bag of joke items into it. I never really used any of these things, just dumped them onto the ever-growing pile in that second drawer and opened the drawer to look at them randomly. The Skiving Snackbox I slid under my bed, just behind the bed skirt so that it was hidden from sight, and I stuffed my new self-inking quills into my book bag.
"Pie!" shouted Carla, racing back from the bathroom, and I smiled before reaching for the white box and being overtaken by the smell of gingerbread and pumpkin.
***
An hour later, the pie was almost completely gone -- only a thin slice remained, closed up in the white box and next to the Skiving Snackbox beneath my bed -- and we were in the Entrance Hall, waiting to be in the clear to go down to Hogsmeade. I bounced eagerly in place beside my friends. Al and Scorp stood beside us. James had "more important things to do," he had said before taking off to find Royce Higgs.
Once Filch had announced that we were "clean," the six of us set out into the crisp, cool air down the front drive to the gates, down the road to Hogsmeade.
"Where to first?" asked Annie excitedly, craning her neck to look around at all of the shops.
"Honeydukes," said Carla dreamily. "My brothers and sisters have been telling me about Honeydukes forever. Can we go there first? Please?"
And so the sweet shop came first. Half an hour later, we left the shop, loaded with Canary Creams, Licorice Wands, squeaking sugar mice, and Peppermint Toads.
"Scrivenshaft's next," announced Rose, leaving no room for argument. "I need a new quill."
But we passed Weasley's Wizard Wheezes along the way -- many years ago, said Al, his Uncle George had bought off Zonkos as a Hogsmeade branch of the joke shop -- and were easily sidetracked from Rose's quill needs. After purchasing more joke items than we could hold from Teddy Lupin, who had apparently been recently promoted to manager at this branch, we moved onto Scrivenshaft's. Next Scorp claimed that he was out of socks, and so we went to Gladrags, which was located right between Zonkos and Scrivenshaft's. Then we went back along towards the castle and into The Three Broomsticks.
Late in the afternoon, we returned to the castle, satisfied by our purchases and full off my grandma's pumpkin pie and Butterbeers. Rose, Annie, Carla and I did not go down for dinner. I grew hungry right before going to bed and ate the last piece of my pumpkin pie as quietly as I could, because Annie was still awake.
***
Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long! Over a month! What's wrong with me?! I guess just the excitement of CHRISTMAS ... Santa Claus is coming to town ... Thanks to those who reviewed: HPobsessssssed7, ObsessedandRepulsed, and grangergal101. Now, just a piece of info -- I've changed my mind a little about the something BBBIIIGGG. (Don't kill me! It might not be as bad as you think!) You know how I said that it would probably come after Elle's Christmas break? Yeah, that's not happening. It's going to come next chapter or the chapter after that. Which will, I hope, be before Christmas break. Not my Christmas break, that started today. I mean Elle's Christmas break. Anyways. And I've changed my mind about what the something BBBIIIGGG is going to be, too. Originally I was going to use an idea that I asked permission for from another author, but now I've decided that if I'm going to do that it'll come later and I have something else that seems more important to Elle at the moment. So yeah. This is a really really really long author's note. Merry Christmas, everyone!
