Chapter Thirty-Seven: Another Story of Christmas
Other eyes watched the snow fall. A few dozen miles east from the Welsh border, and a few hours later, in the dark chill of the last hours of Christmas day, two young faces peered out from under a raised curtain, and turned to grin at each other.
"Do come away from the window, for Circe's sake," their mother sighed, looking back to her tapestry work before flicking her eyes across to her sister, snuggled in a big, comfortable chair by the fire, attempting to play cards with their father, a sturdy, gruff-faced gentle-voiced man with military eyes and moustache. A decade and a third separated them in age, not to mention a different mother, but Raina and her half-sister had always been close. "Kids," she exclaimed, smiling at the two six-year olds as she did so, to show them she meant no harm by it. "Don't you ever have any," she added, in a gently teasing tone.
"I heartily agree," her father told them both. He glanced at his married daughter's middle-aged husband. "Daughters especially, wouldn't you say, Mortimer?"
Mortimer laughed. He was a Muggle-born, like his father-in-law, and had learned in his school days to have a healthy respect for witches and their wands. He adopted a serious expression, and peered at his distorted reflection in one of the baubles of the Christmas tree. "Not in earshot of my wife and her sister, I wouldn't," he chuckled, and glanced at his two children. "Nor Bethany, for that matter... Beth, stop pulling your brother's hare."
"It's a rabbit, not a hare!" The unfortunately named Elgin snatched the toy rabbit away from his sister and protested its parentage in the same breath.
"I think he meant it as a pun," Elgin's aunt told him. "You'll understand when you're older."
"Yes, Auntie."
She winced.
"Makes you feel old, doesn't it?" Raina smiled. "I still can't get used to being a Mummy."
"Well," Elgin and Beth's grandfather pulled himself up to his feet, scattering cards to the floor. "Oh dear, my dear, I suppose you can see where that comes from... now, where was I... oh yes, how about opening that bottle of port?"
"Dad..."
"Oh, stuff and nonsense, it's Christmas." He chuckled, patting down his jacket for the corkscrew. "Besides, I've been around too long for drink to push me into an early grave. Where did I put that bottle?"
"I'll help you look." Raina set down her tapestry and got to her feet. She gave it a thoughtful look, and looked back up at her children. Elgin had climbed back on to the window seat and was gazing out through the curtains into the falling night snow, but Beth, having temporarily exhausted the entertainment value of her Christmas presents, was regarding the tapestry speculatively. On the part finished fabric, owls flitted about skittishly, trying to avoid the unfinished patches. "And don't you touch, miss."
The old man and his daughter moved towards the door, stepping over mounds of heaped wrapping paper on the worn carpet.
"Granddad?" Elgin's voice had a strange note in it. Mortimer looked up sharply, then forced himself to relax, letting his father in law take the lead.
"What is it, lad?" The older man exchanged a cautious glance with his daughters. He had been an Auror once, and his unmarried daughter had spent enough time near to the front line of the struggle to be wary of danger.
"Why are there men out there in the snow?"
Raina's sister joined her on her feet.
"Come away from the window, Elgin," she told him, an uncharacteristically commanding note in her tone.
"But, Auntie, why are there..."
"Granddad will tell you in a moment."
The older man ran a hand through his thinning hair and moved quietly to the curtains, his hand slipping almost unconsciously to the wand-pocket in the side of his trousers. Mortimer rose, drawing his own wand outright and gesturing to his wife, sister-in-law, and children, to move back. His father in-law crouched, trying to show as little of himself against the light as he could, and peered through a gap out into the night. For a moment his narrow eyes creased still further- and then he laughed. Faint strains of voices could be heard now, voices uplifted in song.
"O come, all ye Faithful,
Joyful and Triumphant,"
"Why, bless me," he straightened his back, a smile spreading almost naturally across his features, and only Raina was close enough to see the shake of relief in his hand. "Carol singers. How traditional."
"O come ye, o come ye,"
"How tuneless," Mortimer winced. "Someone can't sing." His sister-in-law gave him a scathing glance. "Well, they can't," he protested in his defence.
"To Bethlehem,"
"Oh, stuff and nonsense, lad." Raina's father tutted, throwing back the curtains. The little group of figures huddled in dark coats under a lantern held on a long pole, song-sheets held in one gloved hand, while the other batted away the flakes of snow. They turned gratefully towards the light. "We must invite them in for a glass of port." The man shuffled towards the hall door in oversized slippers. Raina knelt in front of her children.
"Remember what Daddy and I've always told you about Muggle visitors?" she asked, brightly. "No magic."
"Not even if it's by accident?"
"Setting Mrs Greene's hat on fire was not an accident, Bethany... but no, not even by accident."
"Ohhh." The children pouted.
"Now, your Aunt will keep an eye on you." Raina stood up. Her father left the hall door open- so, she thought, they'd be in for a fine gust of cold air when he opened the front door, and fiddled with the door latch. She and Mortimer hurriedly stowed their wands out of sight, and her sister did the same. She watched as the front door opened, and the lead carol singer looked again, smiling, towards the house. He was a tall man, with curiously youthful features under dead-looking, grey black hair.
The glamour lifted. In a moment, the singing was gone. A trick of the mind. The shapes were different. The people... changed. The hooded, inhuman, colourless face looked again, smiling, towards the house, and fear froze her mind. All around the one... the one her mind could not name, no more than she could move or cry out a warning, all of them were changed, shadowy figures in dark robes and pale masks, and the lanterns they held aloft were twisted wands.
One stepped forward, past he who she could not, dared not name, and swung down his wand as her father, in the hall, tried to close the door. Words she could not hear were spoken outside, and a green flash of light lit up the snow.
There was no cry. A crackling sound, a heavy thump against the wall, and something that had been her father fell past the open door.
"Get behind me!" She heard her sister shout, asRaina's husband swore and tried to pull her back from the window. The children screamed. Some toy broke under Raina's foot as she staggered back, and even through the terror she heard Elgin's voice rise in momentary rage- but now there were footsteps in the hall.
"Incendio!" Behind her, the fireplace roared into life, and her sister desperately fumbled amongst the decorations and paperchains for Floo powder on the mantelpiece.
"Reduc--" Mortimer swung his wand, trying to shield his wife with his body even as his sister in law tried to protect the children, as a dark figure almost floated in through the doorway, feet hidden beneath its robes.
"Protego!" Her husband's spell cracked and broke against the shield. The first Death Eater raised its wand- hers, Raina realised, through a haze of shock. The voice was a woman's.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Elgin and Beth's father fell a scant few paces from their grandfather's body.
One death had closed Raina's mind. A second opened it. She screamed, hurling curse after curse at the woman in the black robe as the fire roared behind her.
"I can't get the Floo open..." she heard her sister sob.
"Cassio!" The shriek from outside could have broken the window alone, but the spell completed the violence, and three more Death Eaters strode through the ruin. Still, she lashed her magic at the one who had killed her husband. Still, the evil woman did nothing but laugh, her voice a cold, wracked croak.
"Stupe--"
"Expelliarmus!"
Raina's wand was wrenched from her hand, and sent flying across the room. Part of her mind saw it hit a bottle of wine on the opposite windowsill and shatter it. Brief annoyance flickered through her thoughts. She had been saving that for Boxing Day lunch.
"Avada Kedavra." A harsh, exultingly haughty voice echoed from behind one mask, and behind her came a high scream. As she turned, all thought gone, a hunted, cornered animal, another spell knocked her legs from under her and she fell, her ribs crushing the air from her lungs. Her arms did not move to stop her fall.
Her sister was pinned against the wall, held in a full body bind by a massive, brutish Death Eater who held a terrible, notched axe. Bethany cowered against the fireplace, staring down in utter lack of belief at the awful still shape that lay prone at her feet as another black robed figure strode forward. Another toy shattered beneath the haughty-voiced, slender Death Eater's foot as he looked down at Elgin's body.
"Mudblood brat." Eyes glinted excitedly behind the mask. and the wand rose again.
Raina screamed wordlessly, throwing herself across the floor at the man as Beth stepped back, falling into the fire. Behind her mother, the female Death Eater's wand swung- and with it the Christmas Tree. Raina had helped her father buy the tree, a rather magnificent one and a decision she'd only regretted when the time had come to carry it home. Even had the weight been slightly less, the force with which the locomotor curse drove it would still have been sufficient to snap the desperate woman's spine as finally as it did. Her face fell forward into the wrapping paper and party hats as her daughter rolled, screeching, from the fire, her clothes and skin licked with flame. The girl's aunttwisted, fightingagainst the curse holding her immobile, hate and near-madness flickering in her dark eyes, her hair lifeless grey, but she could do nothing, even as the big man whose spell held her pulled the axe from his belt and, still keeping his wand levelled at Raina's sister, raised it high above Bethany as she writhed on the hearthrug.
A pale, cold figure swept into the room, taller than the rest. He stood behind Raina, but even paralysed as she was, she felt his presence in a chill that reached even through the fear and grief. She looked up into her young daughter's agonised eyes- and Macnair swept the axe down.
A cry of pure loss tore itself from the crippled woman's throat, and Voldemort's alien features drew into a fond smile as he strode towards the last one, Macnair's captive. Behind him, he heard Bellatrix kneel beside his target's sister, and whisper the spell she loved so much. As the Cruciatus Curse wrenched its way even through the agony he had already instilled in the broken woman's heart, Lord Voldemort reached out with his right arm, rejoicing in its strength remade, and allowed a thin trickle of the older man's blood to fall to his chin. The last act of his renewal. Now he was whole again. Now his pain was gone. He smiled into the survivor's face.
"And now there is no one left to claim you." His tongue slid over his thin lips. "You are mine... and your mind shall be my plaything, until all this is forgotten and you shall walk abroad with joy in the world once more- an innocent... yet with the seed of great things within you, for one who is abomination and scourge of all that is proper and meet to me shall fall at your hand."
He raised his head and looked upon the tawdry stars and bells of golden foil, and saw past them, seeing the sky and the darkness over the roof. No transience of matter or mortal challenge to his power could impede one such as he. What was ordained would come to pass. "You shall be my assassin. You shall kill Harry Potter. When the time is right."
By the afternoon of Boxing Day, the snow had fallen thickly on the fields and woods of Ottery St Catchpole. It was not, in the words of the twins, 'deep and crisp and evil', but there was more than enough for the four youngsters- fortified with sliced turkey and bacon- to throw themselves into the making of a snowman.
"I'm too old for this." Ron groaned. His third attempt at a head for the creature had crumbled and disintegrated rather than be pressed down on to the figure's shoulders. The two former heads' passage down the body had created the accumulation of a macabre spike of compacted snow atop the snowman's neck, and it was the boy's ill-conceived effort to screw the new head down on to this that had brought about its destruction.
"You eat too much." Hermione carved rough outlines of arms into the snowman's side with a stick. "A bit of healthy exercise won't kill you."
"We'll see." Ron muttered. Harry and Ginny were laboriously rolling another snowball around the garden, twisting and turning around the areas of deepest snow, leaving little trails of faded green grass. Every so often, with an annoyed screech, a small gnome would leap up out of the path of the snowball and hop away- occasionally hurried by a curse from whichever of the two happened to be holding Harry's wand.
"I suppose gladiators fighting was a sort of exercise," Harry observed. "Bit dangerous, though."
"Not if you were good at it." Ginny turned the snowball. "And cats hunt mice for exercise."
Harry twitched his nose, rodent-fashion. "Shame they don't hunt ferrets."
"Ferrets," Hermione remarked in a dignified fashion, or, at least, as dignified a fashion as is possible for one who is attempting to attach small black stones to the front of a temporarily decapitated snowman, "Are not actually rodents."
"What, not even Malfoy?" Ron started to break off the ice cone on the snowman's neck.
"That's different. That boy was a rat long before Professor Moody got near him."
"He wasn't a boy, either." Ginny murmured, as she and Harry hoist the snowball up in their arms. Ron blinked- and the snowman creaked and started to list over as he struck its neck slightly too hard.
"Careful!" Harry braced it with a foot while Hermione and Ron hurriedly steadied the creature and packed snow in and around its base.
"The spell left a sort of echo round him," Ginny confirmed, with a mischievous twist to her lips. "That's sort of how I was able to set it off again. I had a look at it. Moody turned him into a ferret all right... but not a male ferret."
"You..." Harry's shoulders shook. Hermione hurriedly grabbed the snowball head and the four of them manoeuvred it on to the creature. "You mean..."
Ginny nodded.
"Indeed. The frightening thing is I think, secretly, he might have quite liked it."
Ron and Harry straightened the head, and Hermione pushed two smaller stones in at roughly the right places to represent eyes. Privately, Harry noted that one was substantially lower than the other, and set below a rather deep and frosty brow, giving their snowman a somewhat machiavellian countenance. Ginny reached up and, with one bare and red finger, drew a lopsided and sinister smile across the creature's face, and Harry burrowed a small socket for the nose, all that remained to complete the basic figure.
"At last," Hermione muttered, throwing her arms out wide. "I have created life... quickly, Igor," she gestured to Ron. "Bring me the carrot and the electrical charges... on this day the name of Hermione Von Frankenstein shall live in history!"
Ron tapped his forehead vaguely, and passed a rather bent and twisted carrot that had been overlooked during yesterday's culinary onslaught.
"It'd melt if you tried putting eckeltricketty through it though, wouldn't it?" Ginny gave her brother a puzzled look.
"Never mind, Ginny," Hermione sighed, pressing the carrot into place on the snowman's face. "There we are." She stood back. "Well, I think it looks quite good."
"With an army of fifty of them, you could take over the world," Ginny agreed.
"Just the world?" Harry tutted. "There's nine planets in the solar system alone, and a whole galaxy out there." he grinned, setting one of Arthur Weasley's old hats on the snowman's head and pulling it into a slightly Napoleonic silhouette, "Just imagine it. The four of us mysteriously disappear. Voldemort continues creeping across the world... then just as he's about to take over everything all the Muggle radar stations start picking up on thousands of space ships entering the solar system." He glanced at Ron. "It's like a big broomstick with an air supply, Ron, so you can fly between different planets. "
"Foolish boy," Ginny hissed, "How dare you imagine that the mighty Lord Voldemort might be intimidated by a mere rabble of armed Muggles..."
"A mere rabble of armed alien Muggles with really, really big guns." Harry held up a finger, correcting her. "And you're forgetting my mighty army of Snow Warriors." He patted the snowman on the shoulder.
"Ssssstupid boy... what power can challenge the might of the Dark Lord, Emperor of Shadowssss... " Ginny drew her coat about herself, her eyes narrowing. "I am the lord of the Earth. Bow down and worship me..."
"I'm the ruler of the universe. No." Harry stuck his tongue out at her.
"How dare you thtick out your tongue at the Lord Voldy? Foolisssssh mortal!" Ginny stooped. "Now fear the dread dark magic of the Dark Lord of the dark!"
She scooped a snowball, pitching it up at Harry. The boy yelled, ducking to the side. The snowball impacted into a large bulge on one side of the snowman's face.
"NEVER!" Harry threw a rather hastily concocted snowball back at Ginny, which shattered on her arm as she raised it as a shield.
"Come, my loyal servant!" Ginny beckoned to Ron. "Strike down my enemy!"
Harry pelted Ron with another snowball as the boy stooped to gather a handful of snow together- but received a mouthful of the soft, powdery white stuff himself from Ginny. Hermione shook her head, trying to retreat around the side of the snowman- but could not resist plucking the remains of Ginny's first snowball from its cheek as she did so. As Ron threw a loose cloud of snow up at Harry, she pitched her own missile high, so that it came down on the top of his head.
"Hey!" Ron protested. "They're shooting back!"
Ginny had ducked down, hurling another snowball at Harry as he wiped the first from his face. Quick as a flash, the Boy-Who-Lived ducked to one side, one arm swinging out ahead of the snowball, his hand cupping round it, and twisting into a spin. Harry's legs slipped round on the snow and he nearly lost his balance, but the snowball was caught, and flung back at his girlfriend.
Ginny spluttered, batting at her nose and mouth as Ron and Hermione hunted each other around the snowman. Harry and Ginny both gathered their snowballs at the same moment, and Harry threw first. Ginny fell into a cat-like crouch, making no effort to evade the projectile, but instead throwing her own snowball in a complicated underarm throw. The two collided in mid-air, exploding in a small shower. A few compacted fragments stung her cheek.
"Well played," Harry called, already casting his eyes about on the lawn for the thickest covering, and thus, the best available armaments. "So the Dark Lady has some skill in battle."
One of Ron's snowballs sailed through the air, striking the wooden wall of the little garden shed in the distance- an impressive throw. The snow atop its roof shook from the impact, slithering and falling in a miniature drift. For a moment, a variety of wires and cables hanging around his shoulders, Arthur's face appeared at the window. Then an electrical flash reflected off the glass from inside, and Mr Weasley hurriedly turned back to his work. Meanwhile, the boy managed to decorate the back of Hermione's coat with two more impacts as she attempted to retreat behind the garden wall. Harry and Ginny duelled on, circling around the lawn. Hermione scooped up a large, soft snowball from behind the wall and flung it back at Ron, realising too late that a pair of struggling arms and legs had emerged. The gnome squeaked unprintably as it arced through the air, and Hermione stared at it in consternation. Ron dived for cover- fairly burying himself in the fallen snow, and the small, alive, but none the less far from guided missile landed in Ginny's hair, sending her own shot wide.
"Argh, get off me, you git..." the girl put her hands up to her head, the gnome clambering upright and pulling her hair angrily. Harry knocked it flying with another snowball, liberally covering Ginny's red hair with white.
"Thank you, so much," she favoured him with a sweet and somewhat lethal looking smile, which faded not a jot as she ducked, gathering a missile of her own with which to return fire.
"Anything for a damsel in distress," Harry retreated, nearly falling over the gnome, which had itself reached the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour and 'somewhere else' was the better part of the Weasleys' back garden this afternoon.
"So I've heard," her eyes sparkled, throwing several more snowballs after the boy. "Normal boys just buy a girl a drink, or something... you have to go and do something like rescuing them from certain death, don't you?"
"I like to be impressive!" the boy protested, crouching by the side of Arthur's shed and plunging his hands into the deep snowdrift. "I thought we might blow the planet up for our next date, or something?"
"Already he wants to make the Earth move!" Ginny called to Hermione. "No patience, that boy-gah!" A large snowball exploded against her cheek.
"Pay attention, Miss Weasley," Harry chided her, as she tried to clear her eyes of snow. "Fifty points from Slytherin."
"I'm no Slytherin!"
"It's fun knocking points off them, though," Ron, the prefect, advised his sister, and swung his head back to Hermione, whose head had moved in unconscious agreement. "You nodded," he crowed. "I saw you," Ron challenged her. "The girl has a sense of humour!"
"Kissing you, I need one."
Ron's jaw dropped. Hermione cocked an eyebrow at him, coming out from behind the wall, her arms behind her back. "Oh, honestly, Ronald," she shook her head, looking at her friend's sister as she walked slowly towards him. "I swear, that boy takes life far too seriously." She raised her eyebrows, turning her face back towards Ron, whose mouth was twitching with the air of something which had not entirely made up its mind whether to set in amusement or anger. "Well, well," Hermione remarked, as Ron finally settled on a resigned grin. "The boy has a sense of humour."
"One for her side," Harry remarked to Ginny.
"Two." Ginny nodded back to them. Hermione had come to a halt rather close to Ron, and, waiting until the boy took this as an invitation and leant towards her, brought her hands around from behind her back and deposited a respectable amount of snow on his head.
"You're not taking notes, I hope?" Harry gave his girlfriend a sideways glance, slipping one arm around her waist.
"Taking notes, no," Ginny reassured him. "Who do you think gave her the idea in the first place?"
As Harry felt a cold trickle flow down his neck and into the back of his shirt, he decided that defeat had its compensations. He rolled his eyes, blinking to shake away the frosting that had somehow managed to find its way to his eyelashes even behind his spectacles, and grinned.
"Is... it all right now?" Ginny smiled at him, her eyes lifting to his forehead for a second. The boy nodded. The pain he'd felt in the night had been muted, a pale and distant echo of what he'd suffered for the last few years. He hadn't known what to make of it- whether Voldemort was deliberately hiding from him, or whether his success in the battle had somehow itself weakened the Dark Lord's power to turn it against him. His concern about what it might mean had far outweighed the pain itself- but no search of the Pensieve had been able to find anything in his memories. He shook his head, dismissing the memory.
"I'm not going to start worrying every time Voldemort stubs his toe."
Then a rather large and somewhat hard snowball smacked into the side of his head, almost knocking him off his feet. He staggered, swinging Ginny round and almost horizontal in what would have been a decidedly stylish dance move in another time and place, but in this particular locale succeeded in saving her from another snowball. Ron and Hermione floundered through the deepening snow towards them. It had begun to fall again, but they were not stray flakes that zipped along parallel to the ground and slammed into the side of the snowman. Mr Weasley's old trilby slipped from its head and fell into the snow at the snowman's base. More snowballs spun through the air, cutting an impossible curved flight path through the falling snowflakes, arcing around the side of the shed where Harry and Ginny had taken cover, and impacting on their raised arms and coats.
"An attack!" Harry called, scooping up great handfuls of snow and hurling them back towards the house while Ron and Hermione joined Ginny behind the relative shelter of the shed. "Take cover!" the dark-haired boy shouted, peering at the various doors and windows of the house. He could guess the nature of the assault and its origin easily enough... but... three snowballs struck his face one after another, streaming through the air with balletic precision, and he fell over backwards in the snow, glasses completely obscured.
"Hang on!" Ron shouted, and he felt two pairs of hands grasp him, hauling him back through the snow. His feet kicked, trying to get a purchase on the ground, while he spat out enough snow to protest. He heard Hermione shout something about the twins, and then Ron and Ginny had pulled him behind the shed and relieved him of his spectacles. He saw, dimly, that they had snapped across the bridge of the nose. With a faint, exasperated noise, Hermione reached for them.
"Oculus Reparo,"
Harry said quickly, having been for once fortunate enough to have his wand on him, and restored the glasses to his face, flashing a smug look in his friend's direction as he did so. The look froze, and he ducked, seconds before a snowball of somewhat impressive size and softness splattered over the wall where he had been seconds before. Two more struck Ginny and Hermione on the back of the head, covering what few parts of them had escaped in the earlier battle in soft, wet snow. Ron snatched up a handful of his own and looked round.
"Where the hell are they?"
"They've enchanted the snowballs," Hermione prodded at one with a finger. Harry peered around the corner of the shed. Fred and George had emerged from the house, both wearing broad grins across their faces that the boy could see quite clearly even across seventy metres of falling snow, and training their wands here and there on the ground. Where they pointed, the snow rose up, clustering, forming levitating balls of snow, which then zoomed off, gathering speed.
"Look out!" he shouted, pulling his own head back a fraction too late. "Pfff!" Harry spat snow- but the worst was to come. Four of the twins' enchanted snowballs arced over the shed roof and fell on its far side. As had happened to the nearer side when Ron had managed to hit it, a great sheet of snow came loose, and cascaded down on the four of them. Sitting, half-buried in the snow, they looked at each other, and very distinctly heard one of the twins laugh. Ron's cheeks reddened.
"There's a spell to animate snowballs in that Wizard Wheeze gift set of theirs," Ginny, scrabbling about in the snow like a lost hobbit, pulled herself mostly free of it.
"I don't suppose you..." Harry struggled to his feet and helped her, "Remember it, do you?"
"Possibly." She grinned at him, and reached for his sleeve. Then she paused, holding back her hand. "May I?" Ginny asked, politely.
Harry ducked his head. "A gentleman never refuses a lady."
"Why thank you, Mr Potter." Ginny stroked her gloved fingers over the back of his hand, and pulled his wand from its hiding place. She narrowed her eyes, and pointed it at the snow.
"Wait a minute." Harry pressed himself against the shed again, and peered round it cautiously. The two red-topped demons in question- each huddled in heavy orange jerseys labelled 'F' and 'G'- had reached the middle of the garden now, and stood flanking the snowman, leaning on its shoulders and chatting to it or each other while they gradually raised a veritable army of floating snowballs around themselves. Harry smiled slowly, a decidedly evil idea coming to him. He beckoned with one arm behind his back, and felt Ginny press herself against him, her neck craning around the corner. All in all, he reflected briefly, a sensation he would like every opportunity to become accustomed to.
"Snow is snow is snow, wouldn't you say, Miss Weasley?" he asked.
"I might, Mr Potter."
"If, say, one had on hand an exceptionally talented young witch with a creative mind, a snow which animates snowballs might, in fact, animate anything made of snow." Harry pondered. "That makes sense, doesn't it?"
"I believe it does, my love."
"Excellent." Harry turned his head. "Did I mention I'm making you joint second-in-command of the DA?" He paused. "Lieutenant-commander?"
"Yes sir?"
"Get them."
Ginny bared her teeth.
"Animus!"
"I say, old chaps!" Fred called. "Don't be so dashed unsporting! Here we are..."
"... All these fine fellows ready and waiting," George gestured around at the floating snowballs, as the two twins looked at the garden shed, grinning. "And no one whatsoever..."
"... To play with. Out you come, Ronniekins, or do we have to send people in to get you?" Fred raised his wand slightly, and a phalanx of snowballs moved forward aggressively. An arm tapped him on the shoulder. He glanced round, questioning, towards his twin, saw the snowman leaning forward and grinning at him, and looked back.
"Gred?" His twin asked him, thoughtfully, as he pondered this strange event, and a heavy snow arm patted him on the shoulder reassuringly.
"Yes, Forge?"
"We're in trouble, aren't we?"
"Yes, Forge." Two extremely large armfuls of snow splattered into their faces, and, wands forgotten, they reeled, before strong snow arms pitched them forward into the stuff. Spluttering, they surfaced- as every one of their army of snowballs fell to earth in their general direction. Fred rolled over, grasping for his wand, half-swallowing a mouthful of snow. The snowman twirled one arm like a conductor, and three more snowballs pelted him. He struggled to his knees. George had sat up, his hands held above his head. The snowman patted him on the head gently, knocking him down again. Fred swung his wand up.
So did the snowman. Fred gulped.
"That's my wand..." he heard George splutter. A thought struck him.
"A snowman can't use a wand," the twin realised, and brought his wand to bear again.
"I can, though." Ginny's voice rang out from the shed.
"We surrender," George protested, as several more snowballs picked up and thrown by the snowman punctuated Ginny's remark.
"Sorry, what was that?" he heard Harry call.
"We surrender!" Fred shouted. "This time!" he added.
"Thank you." Ginny walked primly out from behind the shed, followed by Harry and the others. Harry helped the twins to their feet, and stood beside his girlfriend.
"Who are the pranksters supreme?" she asked, her eyebrows arched quizzically, meltwater dripping from them on to her cheeks.
Fred had folded his arms behind his back, and Harry saw his wand-wrist move, just as the elder boy beamed at him.
"You won this time," he smiled at Harry and Ginny. "It's already next time."
"Not now."
"Wh-"
Harry was looking past them, back towards the house.
"Not now."
Ginny and the others followed his gaze. The Burrow was a precipitous, uneven tower of white snow roof and lightly snow-dusted plaster and brick against the dark grey sky, the snow in that whirling over the white carpet of the fields, and the rearing white-and-shadow shapes of the trees. It was a monochrome world, a world blown soft by a haze of snowflakes that danced and blurred before the eye, and, behind the dancing veil, a still place, a frozen landscape. At the top of the garden, just outside the back door, itself encrusted with snow, flanked by the white-edged dark skeletons of two denuded birch trees, a tall, angular shape in black robes stood watching them, like a jagged dark hole in the field of stark white, its hood drawn up like a shroud around its form, hooded, contemptuous eyes watching the six near-adults as they disported like children in the snow, a hooked nose twitching in a disgust that carried no amusement with it.
Severus Snape raised one hand and beckoned sharply to Harry, then turned and strode back into the Burrow once more.
Harry cleared his throat.
"Something's happened."
Mademoiselle Phantom:
Harry, clueless? Well, yes... although the boy's got a bit more about him than he sometimes lets on. :-) Albus' visit was the last part of that chapter I wrote- it seemed to be the right thing for him to do. Merry Christmas to you!