"How are you so good at this?" I sighed, having been annihilated again at chess by the smallest Weasley. After he'd exhausted his brothers' patience at losing the game, he'd finally talked me into playing a few games with him late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

One of the biggest shocks I'd gotten attending Hogwarts was to learn how many pureblood kids took to the primordial control of reality provided by learning magic with exactly the same enthusiasm as muggle students had for algebra or social studies. Ron Weasley was exactly the kind of underachieving jock that would put in precisely the minimum effort to not get kicked from athletic activities. It was maddening, but made a certain kind of sense if you let children grow up so steeped in magic that they were somehow bored by it.

What didn't track was the chess. Jocks might also be good at Nintendo, where their twitch reflexes could shine, and might enjoy board and card games. But getting good at chess was difficult. I wasn't that great at it, honestly, but Ron usually beat everyone I'd seen him play, including kids that were good. And that would seemingly mean intelligence, patience, and forethought.

He just shrugged at my question, so I impatiently dove deeper, "I mean, are you actively planning a bunch of moves ahead, or is this just intuitive? Do you memorize old games for gambits?"

"What's intuitive mean?"

"Going with your gut," I explained.

"Oh, no, not usually," he admitted. "We have some old books at home that explain a bunch of gambits. But those mostly only work against people who are also playing gambits. I guess I think three or four moves ahead early on, and can go further when the board's getting clear and there's not much left you can do."

"You know why wizard's chess is popular, right?" I tried.

He nodded, and then explained, "It's for, like, battles. Makes you better at strategies for dueling. And quidditch."

I shook my head, remembering that my answer to Justin had been similar, when I was his age. "Three dark wizards kick in the door to the common room, right now. What do you do?"

"Well, if they're coming in from the front, I could–"

I interrupted, "Your brothers are screaming from upstairs, it seems there's one or more of them up there fighting."

"Then I guess I'd try to–"

I kept piling on the problems. "I'm knocked across the room by a spell and pinned down by two of them, but the third one is pointing his wand at you. There are footsteps racing down the stairs and you're not sure if it's a bad guy or your brother."

Frustrated, Ron yelled, "You have to let me finish a sentence!"

"Why?" I asked, probably a little smugly. "An actual fight goes even faster than I was describing it. So does a quidditch game. And there's all kinds of things going on that you can't predict. You don't even know all the things your opponent can do."

He crossed his arms and frowned petulantly, "But it really is for battles!"

I wobbled my hand in a "kind of" gesture, and explained, "Maybe for muggles. A long time ago, when you could stand on a hill and look out and see your groups of guys and their groups of guys, and you knew they basically had to move next to your guys and stab them with a spear, you could kind of abstract it into chess. Even then, generals would get a lot of people killed if they expected they knew all the moves the other side could make. And wizards never fought like that."

"What's it for, then?" he let me lead him, but clearly didn't understand why I was being mean to him.

"Say you're making a boil cure potion. You're about to add your porcupine quills but it's looking too green. Can you stir the potion to get it to change to the right color, or should you just put in the quills? If you put in the quills and it starts going purple instead of blue, can you change the number of times you stir it to fix the color now?"

"I… just follow the instructions, and hope it turns out alright," he admitted.

"Why? Potions have rules, just like chess. At each stage, there are ways that it can go wrong because of minor mistakes, poor ingredients, or problems with your heat. And if you learn the counter-moves and think ahead to what you want it to do, you can still have it turn out right." He seemed to maybe be getting it, so I added another example, "You won't be able to take arithmancy for a couple more years, but it can be similar. When you're inventing a new spell, or just doing a complicated ritual, things outside your control can mean it doesn't do what you expected. If you can plan ahead and know the rules, you can still save it. That's why wizards play chess."

"But, I understand chess," he complained. "Professor Belby said some stuff like that for potions, too, but it seems like you have to know so much. And it's different for each potion."

"Only because the Hogwarts curriculum was invented by maniacs," I grumbled. "They have you jumping from snake fangs to mistletoe to flobberworms. If they'd just stay on potions with similar ingredients, you'd see that the rules are pretty consistent."

"Potions is boring, anyway," Ron shrugged.

"A bunch of people think chess is boring," I told him. "Just seems weird to me that you've put in so much effort on that, and don't want to get the good grades that seem like they'd be so easy for you to get by just taking the next step."

"Huh, maybe," he considered. "Want to go again?"

"Only if you agree to work with Hermione on some extra credit potions after the break," I pressed. "Otherwise, you're just wasting your time learning chess." I'd seen a little of how much it had affected Percy to have mostly underachievers in his year, and I figured Hermione would have a better time if she actually had friends that wouldn't try to constantly kneecap her learning.

He sullenly agreed, and I played a few more games with him before having a quick dinner and turning in early, still not totally recovered from my escapades and limited sleep the previous day. It was a small price to pay to maybe help out Hermione in the long run.

I woke to a rustling sound from Percy's bed. "Happy Christmas, Harry," he said, as I woke and noticed the pile of packages at the foot of my own bed.

"You, too, Percy," I said, groggily. "I didn't think I'd gotten any presents."

He explained, "The house elves must have been intercepting the presents for those of us staying in the castle. Dumbledore does like his surprises." He already had a notepad out, cataloging his pile of presents, likely to send proper thank you notes later.

I looked through the tags on my own, and was pleased to see that the people I'd thought to get gifts for had also gotten gifts for me, so nobody would be embarrassed. Percy, Penny, and I had all swapped books, finding various reference tomes on creatures and defense spells. I'd also gotten Oliver a book that looked like a reasonably accurate set of stories of the fae. He'd gotten me candy. Hopefully nobody would be too put out that the books I'd given were duplicated from the Hogwarts library, rather than purchased new. I'd at least replaced the covers with handmade ones and put in the enchanting work to make them permanent conjurations.

I'd spent some effort on Hermione's gift, and was especially happy about it after all the help she and her family had given me over the weekend. I'd used various protective and durability charms on a quill so it would last through use, and subtly worked runes into the shaft so it served as a focus for the levitation charm. It wouldn't work as well as my staff, but she'd hopefully find it interesting. She'd remembered me complaining about my wardrobe and must have told her parents, because her gift to me was a stack of muggle t-shirts.

Hopefully Hagrid liked the present I'd made him, though I might have to teach him how to use it. I'd put the focus light bulb into a lantern housing I'd turned into a shield focus. If he could use it, it would make for a better source of light and protection for his night trips into the forest. For Filch, I'd found a charm that was supposed to enhance the familiar bond, and worked it into a collar and wristband for Mrs. Norris and him.

In return, their packages were the biggest of the lot. Hagrid had provided me a pile of mostly-tanned hides from various beasts, and Filch had clearly gone back to the contraband pit and found more items that would likely provide useful enchanting materials. I'd passed on the last of my stock to the twins in their gifts, and they'd gotten me several vials of interesting ingredients (none of us would point out that they were probably lifted from the school's potions cabinet).

Speaking of the twins, I didn't have a chance to open my final presents before we heard them shouting from down the stairs. Percy and I shared a look, then headed down to find them gathered in the first years' room. "Why all the noise?" Percy asked his brothers.

Percy still had the sweater he'd just finished unwrapping slung over his arm, and rather than answer what they'd been up to, or explain Ron's guilty look, Fred grabbed the sweater and displayed that it matched the hand-knitted ones they were all wearing. Percy's had a letter P knitted into the chest, and Fred and George were, theoretically, currently distinguishable by the letters on their own. "P for prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we're all wearing ours."

While the twins struggled to force Percy into his own sweater, I noticed Ron trying to casually hide something in a fabric bundle under his own, maroon-colored sweater. He finally saw me watching, and blanched, glancing toward Percy who currently had his head buried in wool and twins. I grinned and nodded, tacitly agreeing to not rat out whatever contraband he'd received to his prefect brother.

The Weasleys all went down to the common room to have a family morning, which gave me the chance to look at my last three presents, each of them unexpected. The first, I initially thought was a sweater like the Weasleys had gotten, but the floppy package actually revealed a large scarf in some kind of tartan pattern. It wasn't labeled with the sender, but I couldn't detect any enchantments on it so I shrugged and resolved to figure it out later.

A small package included a note:

Fawkes only rarely provides components for enchanters, but we both thought you would find something worthwhile to create with this.

Albus Dumbledore

Within the thin box was a large, red tail feather, presumably from Dumbledore's phoenix. It practically hummed with potential magic, and I immediately started thinking of all the items it would be useful for.

Setting aside the feather, I looked at the last package, clearly a large but thin book, also without a tag. Within was a road atlas for Britain. Confused by the gift, I flipped through and noticed that periodically circles of gold paint had been added to the maps. It took me a while to work it out, but when I found one in the park I'd apparated to the other night, I realized that these must be the locations of raths. There was one near enough to Hermione's house that I would have saved myself some effort if I'd known about it, getting back to Hogwarts.

I probably owed my godmother a present in return, now. Rule number one of the fae is never owe them anything. Even if she wasn't actually a faerie, I didn't feel good about being at a gift imbalance with her. I'd managed to save more of the books from Justin's library than she'd hoped for, so hopefully that would balance the scales, whenever I could actually get them to her.

Christmas lunch was ridiculously extravagant, particularly for fewer than a couple dozen students scattered across the house tables and half the staff. I expected that we'd be seeing most of the hundred roast turkeys as leftovers for at least the rest of the break. I noticed that the twins were being unusually affectionate to their little brother, almost like they were buttering him up.

When we trooped back to the dorms, the boys insisting that they wanted to go play in the snow, I let Percy head up to our room then shouldered the other three into Ron's room and closed the door. "Okay, spill," I told them.

"Might as well show him," Fred told Ron.

"Yeah, if Harry was prefect we'd never get away with anything," George said.

"Fortunately, he knows the benefits of mischief," Fred finished.

Ron nodded and pulled out what I'd assumed was a fabric bag, but he shook it out into a large cloak. Grinning, he swirled it around his shoulders and, as it settled, everything but his head disappeared. I now knew why Ron was the new favorite brother; the things the twins would get up to with this. "Who got you that?" I asked.

They all shrugged and Ron showed me a note:

An old friend left this in my possession before he died. Unfortunately, he has no heirs, and I think that you may prove to be a worthy keeper. Use it well.

A Very Happy Christmas to you

"Harry recognizes the handwriting," whispered Fred.

It was basically identical to the writing from my own note, so of course I did. Not sure whether I should tell them that they'd basically been given permission to sneak around the school, I figured they'd get it out of me eventually, so I exclaimed, "Hell's bells. Why would Dumbledore give you an invisibility cloak?"