It wound up taking more than an hour. They went to the bookstore to to kill time, partly so that the girls could browse and partly so that the girls could talk to Felicity with their new relationship with her in mind.
They almost left to go to lunch when Ashton, looking haggled but grinning fiercely, burst into the shop with a gaggle of boys behind him.
"Granger clan! I bring you your extras!" said Ashton with a flourishing bow.
The four Grangers, each one holding a stack of books, and Felicity, who'd been staying close to them while they drifted through the store, looked up and there behind him was Harry Potter and a mass of redheads.
"You must be the famous Weasley boys. We've heard about you," said Meredith, looking all of them over.
"Only good things, I hope," said the tallest, most well put together boy.
"Mostly good things. Entertaining things, to be sure. You must … Percy?" said Tom, pointing at the tall boy.
"Yes, and these are my brothers, Fred, George, and Ron," he said, pointing at each boy in turn.
"Charmed," said Fred and George, twins, in unison.
"Hullo," said Ron, doing his best to stay hidden.
"And Harry, always a pleasure. They tell me you punched a troll at Halloween?" said Tom, grinning at the boy.
"Well, only sort of. I boxed it around the ears, then Ron dropped a club on its head and did it in," said Harry, trying to move out of sight as well now.
"Still quite impressive. Meredith, what say you to lunch?" asked Tom, shifting his books in his arms.
"I think that lunch sounds like a fantastic idea. Felicity, would you and your sister be able to join us for dinner tonight?" said Meredith as she began to work her way up to the counter to pay for their things.
Felicity nodded at her, then went over to the door once again to see to an older wizarding couple.
"So, how much do you boys know about muggle life? Harry, not counting you," asked Tom once they were paid for and out into Diagon Alley proper.
"Um" and "Uh" where the only sounds that came from the Weasley boys.
"That much? More than I thought, then," said Tom, grinning.
He and Meredith spent much of lunch and the rest of the afternoon giving the four Weasley boys a crash course in living in a muggle household, their time with Felicity staying over paying off in ways they'd not thought it would.
That is to say, whenever they weren't taking the seven of them into whatever shop struck their fancy. It wasn't something they normally did when it was just the pair of them wandering about, but since Hermione and Rosalina had just come back from Hogwarts they thought they'd let them explore the shops in Diagon Alley with their new, magically educated point of view.
Also, Tom and Meredith wanted to see what Harry and the Weasley boys were interested in, so that they'd know what to get them for Christmas as well. So far as they were concerned, a guest staying over Christmas got included in Christmas, whether they were family or not. Unless the guest didn't want to celebrate, in which case they would respectfully be left out of said celebrations. But Harry and the Weasley boys all seemed to be very interested in Christmas.
At least, the Weasley boys did. Harry had a rather different view of the holiday.
"I think that they gave me a pair of socks last year. I don't really expect much when it comes to celebrating Christmas," he'd said when Tom and Meredith had asked him about what sorts of gifts the Dursleys would have given him.
Tom had wanted to drive over to their home and slug Vernon Dursley right then and there and the only thing that held him back was Meredith, who didn't feel much different.
Well, that and that they had no idea where exactly Harry lived. Helena seemed to know, since she'd taken letters to him, but they had no idea how she knew, just that she could find a person when they needed her to deliver a letter to that person.
Since they couldn't punch them, though, Tom and Meredith decided to simply give Harry the best Christmas holiday they could.
They took the girls and boys out into their fair more mugglish town and had a fantastic time showing the Weasley boys how muggles did Christmas when they took them back down into Diagon Alley. Felicity came over as often as she could, which was wonderful, since it meant that the girls could ask her anything they wanted to without worry. The greatest moment, though, barring Christmas itself, was when they took them all to see a film.
It was a newer film, an animated one that had only come out in November, but they'd heard wonderful things about it. And it was a musical.
"I thought muggles couldn't do magic! What else have you lot been hiding?" asked Ron when they stepped out from the theater.
"That wasn't magic, that was a lot of hard work for a lot of people," said Hermione.
"I just don't know why the enchantress cursed the servants too. Seemed a bit much," said Harry, frowning.
"That's why you never bother with the fair folk. They said she was a beautiful enchantress, but I'd bet that she was one of their lot. Wizarding curses don't have escape clauses like that," said Fred, who was humming 'Be Our Guest' under his breath.
"Just imagine if they did, though! Turn into a talking tea kettle until you stop being a prat, seems like a win to me," said George, grinning at Fred.
"Pansy Parkinson would never change back," said Rosalina, and she and Hermione both giggled.
"Well it was made by Muggles, so of course they'd get the magic wrong," said Percy, frowning as if the idea that he'd enjoyed the film as much as everyone else had was upsetting. "A complete misrepresentation of magical culture."
"Well, there's an easy fix that, you know," said Tom, which earned him a nudge in the side from Felicity, who'd come along as well. She'd taken quite strongly to muggle films, although once they'd gotten home, she and her sister had both disapperated to their own family's Christmas ("Big affair, lots of people, much to do, and our family spread out all over the world so this the only time we get to really see everyone," said Felicity before giving each of them a kiss goodbye; the Weasley boys had goggled at that).
The trickiest part of the whole holiday was, in the end, hiding the presents from the children. Tom and Meredith would have loved to simply hide the presents where they normally did, but the children knew spells and they had no idea how well magic could be outwitted.
In the end, they'd just decided to keep them all at Gringotts and move them over Christmas Eve. The fact that they had a vault to keep their valued items in was a novelty unto itself, never mind that they could deposit items into it if they wished. ("We can deliver items from your vault as well, although there is an additional fee for that," said one Gringotts goblin, Griphook).
Christmas day was still a surprise. There were the usual gifts that Tom and Meredith would have gotten for the girls (books for Hermione, devices and kits for Rosalina), albeit with a more witchy feel to them this year, and the gifts they'd gotten for each other.
Tom had gotten Meredith a beautiful silver necklace he'd found at Borgin and Burkes while she'd gotten him the most majestic unicorn horn he'd ever seen ("I've had them keeping an eye out for the best one they could get for months now," said Meredith).
The Weasley boys got gifts from their family as well, which had been stashed into their vault a few days before Christmas ("Oh yeah, Bill works there. He's a curse breaker, he must've gotten them to get it in there, they like him," said Ron).
The most delightful part, not that they'd admit it, was that Harry had gotten his own bounty of presents as well. Gifts from Hagrid, the girls, one from Ron, and theirs, but also from Mrs Weasley. And one mysterious one, which came with a note that simply said "Open this when you have a moment to yourself" in exquisite handwriting.
And of course there were the gifts from Father Christmas.
"Now before you say anything, we didn't buy these last few gifts. Those are from Father Christmas himself," said Meredith, handing them out to Harry and the Weasley boys.
It had been something of a surprise the first time they'd all received gifts from Father Christmas, mostly because Tom and Meredith hadn't thought that the man actually existed. Yet there the presents had been, and so that little bit of magic just became a part of life. That Hermione and Rosalina were witches did explain it though, in an odd sort of way.
Harry looked at them like they'd all sprouted a second head, while the Weasley boys looked at them like they were mad.
"You … you invoked him? You invited him in? Isn't he a kind of … one of the fair folk? And aren't they dangerous?" said Ron, not touching the gift they'd handed to him.
"Come off it Ron, open your gift," said Fred, who'd already opened his and had gotten a box of gag surprises.
"Yeah, open it up. It's not going to bite you," added George, who'd gotten a disguise kit. He was, at the moment, wearing a pair of Groucho Marx glasses.
Hermione had gotten "Magical Mastery: Great Witches and Wizards of Old," and was, at the moment, browsing the index, while Rosalina had gotten what looked to be an enchanted D&D miniature figure of Filch dressed up as a Ranger, who was scowling at everyone but her, along with a character sheet for it.
Percy had gotten "Murphy's Big Book of Puns," another muggle gift that seemed to match the theme of those that the twins had gotten ("I guess Father Christmas thinks you need to loosen up a bit, Percy," George said, waggling his eyebrows).
When Ron opened his, he found it to be a box of chocolate frogs, which he promptly began to devour.
Harry slowly unwrapped his own gift, and found it to be a little silver cube. When he picked it up, it shimmered for a moment and the top flowed upwards, taking on the form of three people. Two adults, each one holding the hand of a small child, almost an infant. The man looked very much like Harry, while the woman looked unlike anyone they'd ever seen. The image of them moved for a moment, as if they were walking, then sank down again.
"What is it?" asked Tom, who'd gotten "The Beginner's Guide to Monster Care."
"Maybe it's a potential; Father Christmas got me that a few years ago," said Hermione, looking at it.
"No, it's some kind of memory, I think," said Meredith, who had, a few years back, gotten a memory of the moment she fell in love with Tom. It still sat on the table next to their bed.
"It's my parents," said Harry. "It's my family. The three of us." He stared at the box for a long time, and a smile flickered across his face, one happier than any they'd ever seen on him.
"Another Dumbledore," interrupted Ron, eating his way through another chocolate frog. Then he stopped and stared at the card that came with it ("They're collectable!"). "I found him! I found Nicolas Flamel!"
"Who?" asked Rosalina, the twins, and Percy almost in unison.
"Nicolas Flamel, famed alchemist, made a Philosopher's Stone a few hundred years ago," said Meredith, now reading her own gift from Father Christmas, "The Wild Hunt: The Werewolves of Great Britain and Ireland."
This time it was Hermione's turn to stare.
"You know about the Philosopher's Stone?" she asked, parsing the words out slowly, as if she didn't believe that they were leaving her mouth.
"Well, yes. I've spoken with Mr Fortescue in Diagon Alley about wizarding history. Fascinating stuff, really" said Meredith, still reading intently into her book while stroking the Wee Beastie, who'd had settled in next to her and was looking warily at the new book, not making any moves on it.
"What's a Philosopher's Stone?" asked Rosalina, glancing from Meredith to Hermione and back again.
"Magic rock, lets you live forever. Wouldn't mind getting my hand on one, that's for sure," said Tom as he began to browse his own book.
"Yeah, that. um, Harry, Ron, do you want to go, um," said Hermione, trailing off all of a sudden as she looked back towards the bedrooms.
"Um … oh! Oh, yeah, let's go! Sorry, we have a little project we've been working on, Gryffindor thing, you know how it is," said Harry, and in a flash Hermione, Harry, and Ron had vanished back into the room that the boys had been sleeping in. Harry took his mysterious package with him.
"Odd," said Tom, looking up after them. "Well! Who wants crepes?"
And so the rest of the morning went. The trio rejoined them part way through breakfast, sharing a conspiratorial look with each other. Fred and George, meanwhile, went on and on about Rosalina and how well she was picking up Quidditch, and she beamed. Percy was mostly astonished, as he had been for each meal, that such fantastic food could be made by muggles.
As morning slipped into afternoon, everyone got more and more lethargic. By the time evening rolled around, most everyone was ready to collapse. The only ones ready for a night out were Helana, Meredith's owl, and Hedwig, Harry's owl, and that was only because they were creatures of the night themselves.
Eventually, though, everyone turned in, Christmas gifts unwrapped and excited children tucked away.
"I think that today went well, my love," said Tom as they curled up under their covers.
"Thank goodness for the twins. I think that Rosalina would have melted without them. I'm glad she's doing well," said Meredith, smiling.
"One more week," said Tom, in a tone that was half glad, half sad.
"One more week," replied Meredith, her own tone similar to his.