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Chapter 36: And man will live forever more, because of Christmas Day!

Christmas Day, 25th December 1977. . . .

Outside it was snowing and it looked really beautiful. The snowflakes looked like fallen stars in the light that shone out from all the windows from the castle. Sitting in the Great Hall when it was snowing outside was quite the experience. The snowflakes from the ceiling never reached them, but disappeared in the middle of the air.

All nine seventh years from Gryffindor had decided to stay at Hogwarts this Christmas as a tribute to all fun and great times they had spent there. The nine of them had never gotten along as well as they did now. They were all on first name basis, something that had never happened before, and they all had a great Christmas together.

They had celebrated Lyanna's eighteenth birthday the twenty-first. The boys had sneaked a birthday cake from the kitchen up into the common room. The rest of the evening the girls tried to make them confess of how you got into the kitchen. However, the boys' lips were sealed, saying that it was 'Marauders secret'.

They had also roamed the castle together, playing hide and seek in pairs on Lily's suggestion. It was really difficult and took most of the day.

On the morning of Christmas Day they opened their presents in the common room, dressed in pajamas and feeling both tired and alert.

Lyanna had never had a more alive and simply homely Christmas for about two years. It made her strangely sad, surprised and grateful for being able to experience this Christmas. Hogwarts was after all her second home and had been since she was eleven. As always nowadays, the thought of a life without Hogwarts made her feel thick inside as if possessed by smoke. Yet she also felt overwhelmed with happiness for spending time at Hogwarts. It was a place you could never find anywhere else.

. . . .

"So, what shall we do?" Desideria asked bored as all nine of them were just hanging out in the common room.

"I don't know", Lily said and looked up from the book she was reading.

She had gotten it from Tanya and it contained a lot of advises on how to become a great Healer.

"What do you usually do for Christmas here?" Mary questioned the ones of them who had spent at least one Christmas at Hogwarts before.

A hazy memory of firewhiskey, drunken kisses and snowball fights came into Lyanna's mind and she smiled a small smile. She didn't exactly think that was what Mary wanted to hear. Judging by James's slightly pink cheeks and the way Sirius rubbed the spot on his head were he had been partly bold, she could tell that they also remembered that specific Christmas.

"We usually have snowball fights", Peter spoke up from his armchair where he sat and played chess against Tanya.

"No", she protested and moved a chess piece. "I'm not going out in this cold."

"Me neither", said Remus and tossed a candy paper in the bin.

"Spoilsports", James pouted childishly.

"Well, its pitch black outside", Lily pointed out.

"That's a part of the fun", Sirius said as though it was obvious.

"Can't any of you some kind of muggle game?" Tanya asked curiously and wrinkled her nose as Peter's bishop took out her Knight.

"There's the usual as tag, Go Fish, Truth and Dare, Poker or Never have I Ever. . . .", Lyanna trailed of, thinking of the usual games she had played at the orphanage when she was younger. "There's hide and seek as well. Lily, can you think of anything else? I can also think of football."

"Petunia and I used to play Monopoly", Lily recalled with a small, fond smile.

"What's that?" James, Peter and Tanya asked simultaneously.

Lily explained the rules for them. James and Tanya listened fascinated, but Peter soon got bored of the detailed explanation. Lyanna, who turned a deaf ear to Lily, somehow found herself playing footsie with Sirius. It felt like a very couple-ish thing to do and Lyanna felt so confused. Sirius didn't seem to realize that what they were doing were totally inappropriate for a nonexistent relationship: he was looking oblivious to it all. Lyanna really got tired of the mixed signals he was sending her, unconsciously or not. Most of all she got tired of herself for starting to actually like him more than just a friend.

She could see Remus watching them, one eyebrow lifted as if to say 'sure, just friends, right?' but his eyes weren't as amused as the rest of his face would imply. Desideria and Mary were also looking at them with amused expressions, bordering to satisfaction. Lyanna got an eerie feeling that they had a bet going on.

Lyanna quickly pulled away her feet so they rested in her armchair instead and she turned to Lily:

"I don't want to play Monopoly. I always get ruined too quickly and we don't even have a Monopoly here."

"You're right."

"Why don't we just play a nice, old game of Truth and Dare?" Desideria suggested loudly and her eyes had a mischievous gleam in them that could rival the Marauders before a prank.

Lyanna didn't really feel like playing that game. She had too much she wanted to be left unspoken and with the Marauders and her friends, the dares would surely be something extreme.

"I'm in", Sirius said and he was looking challenging at the others.

James, who didn't want to seem like he was nervous, agreed loudly and smirking with Sirius and Desideria. Tanya and Lily weren't late to hang on as well. Peter was smiling and nodding. Mary looked excited, eagerly leaning forward in her armchair. Lyanna and Remus weren't happy about this, both having secrets of their own to keep.

"I'll pass", Remus said airily and picked up a random book, lazily turning its pages.

"No, Moony!" Sirius protested as Peter forced the book from Remus's hands.

"You have to play", James argued and looked pleadingly at him. "We all have."

"It won't be as fun anyways", Desideria piped up, flipping her long hair back.

"Can't we just sing Christmas carols for the house elves or something else?" Remus asked in a timid voice that he hadn't intended to use.

His three friends looked quizzical before their eyed widened in understanding. The four of them have a silent conversation with their eyes – what a remarkable and different set of eyes they were– before Remus sighs and nod his head in defeat. His friends smiled happily.

"What about you, Lyanna?" Mary asked and the attention turned to her. "Will you play with us?"

Lyanna quickly thought it over. She can play this. If she chose truth and someone ask her a question she doesn't want to answer, she can always lie. As long as someone doesn't enchant the bottle, or whatever they'll use, so that whomever they pointed at was forced to tell the truth. Which she remembered was quite impossible as the only spell to get someone to tell the truth would be the Imperious Curse and it was highly illegal. Lyanna would be safe.

"Count me in", she said and smiled wryly and her friends squealed in excitement.

The Christmas spirit seemed to have gotten them in its claws.

"Yes, that means all of us are in", Tanya said giddily and rubbed her hands together.

Lyanna got a bad feeling about this and felt tempted to ask Sirius if he had some firewhiskey she could borrow. James was too responsible these days to have some with him.

As Desideria transfigured a candy wrapping into a bottle, they all sat down on the floor together in a circle. Lyanna felt like she was part of a cult or something. The common room was spooky with only the bright light from the fire casting shadows around the room, making the spots on the walls that weren't covered in shadows look like blood.

"Okay, I'll start", Desideria said with an excited voice.

She spun the bottle and it landed on Peter. He looked nervously around, waiting for Desideria to ask the doomed question:

"So, Peter: truth or dare?"

. . . .

The game went on for a few hours even though Remus tried to end it earlier, saying something about dancing around the Christmas tree instead. No one listened.

The dares had been utterly stupid and mostly embarrassing: Mary had been dared to act as a Barbie the whole next day, only wearing pink. Peter was dared to ask Dumbledore if he would like to play quidditch while talking backwards. Remus had to use the word 'Christmas' in every sentence he spoke. Lily and Tanya had their hair braided together so they had to act like one person the rest of the evening and until lunch time next day. James had teasingly dared Lyanna and Sirius not to have any inappropriate physical contact – as he put it – during the rest of the break. It made both of them annoyed, but Sirius never backed down a challenge and Lyanna figured that it might do them some good. Then Sirius dared James to transfigure some horns onto his head and a big red nose and prance around the Great Hall tomorrow, singing Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. James looked mortified but Remus and Peter couldn't stop laughing in a long time. Desideria had been dared to flirt with the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Garlan Marcel, who was quite young and she had to speak with an Scottish accent all the time and ask him what he thought of sharks.

The truths had been more nervous and bigger reactions than to any of the dares. Lyanna felt as though she could've lived without knowing those things about her friends, yet it was oddly satisfying and comfortable to know that all of them trusted each other to tell these things. Or all of them could be lying, Lyanna didn't know that. It was a game after all.

Lily told them all how hard it was for her sister to accept her as a witch, that she's called 'freak' almost every time she's home with Petunia and that she isn't even invited to her own sister's wedding. She looked really sad and Lyanna noticed that James very gently put an arm around her shoulders and Lily didn't tell him off or pulled away. In fact, she seemed to like it. They were making progress.

Peter told them how he once had cheated on a test in Potions. Lily was riled up in over twenty minutes after that.

Tanya had to tell them how old she was the first time she had had sex. Turned out it was the term before with her Ravenclaw boyfriend. She blushed furiously while telling them this and it came as a surprise to all her girlfriends. They hadn't heard of that before.

A blushing and embarrassed Mary informed them all that she had never kissed a boy and she blushed even more when Sirius jokingly volunteered to be the first. Lyanna ignored the little green monster that invaded her mind at that moment. He could do whatever he wanted; she needed to stop caring.

Sirius got the question from Desideria why he had asked Lyanna to move in with him. Lyanna glared at her for that. Sirius answered the same as he had explained to the Potters and Desideria looked disappointed.

Tanya evilly asked James how long he'd had a crush on Lily. While avoiding any eye contact with Lily, he told them it was since the end of third year even though he'd asked her out for the first time during their fourth year. Because James didn't look at Lily, he didn't notice how she blushed and got a look that her friends knew as the 'I want to dislike him, but I can't' look.

Desideria admitted that whenever her parents were fighting, she always had to do something rebellious just to show that she didn't care even though it was obvious that she did. This summer, she had started to smoke which Lily and Mary told her was dangerous, but apparently Desideria needed the rush of knowing she did something bad.

Lyanna told them quite monotonically that she sometimes had nightmares about the deaths of Samuel and everyone from the orphanage. She regretted it immediately when the mood got noticeable sadder and they all glanced pitying at her.

Remus lied smoothly about what kind of sickness his mother had that always made him leave almost every time once a month. His friends and Lyanna looked impassive and the others accepted it, but Mary and Lily looked thoughtful.

. . . .

Lyanna was sitting in by herself in the common room as the clock started to near midnight. The other had retired to their dormitories except Sirius and Desideria who had gone somewhere with a bottle of firewhiskey. Since Sirius had been dared not to snog Lyanna during the rest of the break he needed to share his needs with someone else and Lyanna remembered Desideria saying that she would have done the same as Lyanna if Sirius had come with the suggestion to her first. So Lyanna was quite sure what they were doing right now and she tried not to feel bitter about it. It was Christmas, she should rejoice.

"You're still up?"

Lyanna lazily turned around her head so she could look properly at Peter. He slumped down on the couch and yawned.

"Yeah", Lyanna answered and played with a string from one of the presents they had opened many hours ago. "Why are you?"

"Well, Moony is annoyed at Padfoot for leaving with Des and Prongs's trying to calm him down. I felt like I was in their way. I usually are. . . ."

His eyes widened as he realized that he might have said too much. He averted his eyes and looked down at his hands. Lyanna sighed.

"It's no big deal", she said, talking about Sirius and Desideria. "And you're not in their way. They're your friends."

"Yeah", Peter said quietly, but with a small smile on his pudgy face. "They're great."

They sat in silence for a while. They could hear the ticking of the clock, the fire and a cold wind blowing outside. Together it all sounded scary. After a while Peter started to eat some chocolate frogs that were left. He offered Lyanna some, but she declined.

"I was wondering. . . .", Peter started to say but he trailed off, looking nervous and his pale, watery eyes were wide. "You said you still had nightmares of the attacks. . . . Weren't you afraid when you were there, seeing it all?"

He looked curious, like a small child. He couldn't know. He couldn't possibly understand the pain, the hurt, the feeling of something you couldn't control. Lyanna felt like this was probably the oddest Christmas she had experienced and she had once getting drunk in the boys dormitory.

"I was terrified", she told Peter softly, staring him straight in the eyes and he listened attentively. "In a few minutes so much I held dear was lost. The feeling can't be described. But I was scared. Though I remember hearing once that it's only when you are truly scared that you can be brave."

She didn't remember where she'd heard it: perhaps it was something Samuel once had said, she could've read it or it could be one of those wise things Dumbledore often said even though they usually were more like riddles than she was.

Peter didn't say anything. He bit his lip and looked very thoughtful. Lyanna wondered why he had asked her that. Before she could voice her thoughts, the clock chimed twelve. Hesitantly Peter stood up, went to her and gave her a one-armed hug.

"Merry Christmas, Lyanna", he whispered in her ear.

"Merry Christmas, Peter."

I just really felt for writing a Peter scene...

I don't actually know if you play Truth and Dare like this. Perhaps it was more like Spin the Bottle? Anyway, whenever me and my friends play Truth and Dare (basically never), we play it like this.

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