Chapter Two: Do Not Open Til X-Mas

Finally Christmas came. Harry was really more grateful for the fact that there weren't so many people crowding the halls than he was for the actual gifts and Christmas spirit.

It was Christmas Eve, and Ron and Sirius were currently running circles around everyone else in a big chess-tournament type thing they'd set up. They had two chess sets, Harry's and Ron's, and had put them both on adjoining tables. Harry went against Ron and Hermione against Sirius the first time around. Ron stomped on Harry, as usual, and Sirius surprised everyone by actually managing to make Harry's awfully trained chess set come back from an apparently given loss to a spectacular win. Hermione had bowed out right then, throwing up her hands and saying she was no good at chess. Next Lupin went against Harry, and Ron against Sirius -- these two pairs took the longest, since Harry and Lupin managed to both get on the losing side of a terribly-played game, and ended up in a complete stalemate. On the other hand, Sirius and Ron did the complete opposite; eventually it proved impossible for them to play against each other because they were both too good. They got into a stalemate twice, and on the third try Ron beat Sirius by a single player. It didn't help that the chess sets themselves kept shouting out advice to the people using them. When Harry and Lupin tried using Ron's set, they were both utterly confused by the really good advice the pieces were giving them; and Sirius and Ron were both driven crazy by Harry's set, which was awful at it's own game and kept pointing out the wrong moves (not to mention the pieces kept getting into fights with each other). Finally Sirius threatened to turn all Harry's chess pieces into miniature chickens, at which point both the sets stopped talking entirely. During all this, they developed quite an audience, as most of the students left in the common room (16 or so) came over to watch. They cheered on Ron and Sirius and either tsked sympathetically at, or were sent into hysterics by Harry and Lupin, who both played so badly that it was quite entertaining to watch and see how horribly they could lose.

All in all, they had a great time.

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The next morning Harry was awakened by a pillow hitting his head, followed by a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He groaned, sat up, and felt blindly for his glasses. He had new glasses now -- they still had black rims, but they weren't perfectly round and neither did they have the old Scotch tape look. He put them on and blinked several times. Ron and Dean were the only others left in the seventh years' dorm. Harry blinked again and felt for the package, which was now buried under his covers.

said Ron. Finally! It's almost noon. I've been trying to wake you up for ages.

Check out your stash, added Dean with a wicked smile, tossing up his new soccer ball and catching it one-handed.

Harry rolled out of bed, lumpy package under one arm, and crawled to the foot of his bed to see what Dean meant -- and he had to stare, briefly, when he saw the enormous mound of packages that had appeared there overnight. Ron slapped him on the back and motioned for him to start unwrapping. Harry could tell he hadn't been up for as long as he said he had by the fact that he still had half of his own pile of packages left to go.

When does she learn?! Ron cried despairingly when he ripped open the next gift. He held up the thing -- it was a sweater from his mother. Maroon. Again. I help save the world and she still can't figure out what colors I like.

Harry opened the package Ron had thrown at him. It was also a Weasley sweater, though his was red and had a big Golden Snitch knitted on the front.

Harry spread his packages out over the floor and took stock of all of them. He picked up the smallest and opened it first -- a penknife from Sirius to replace the one he'd lost last year. The next was an enormous box of rock cakes and treacle fudge from Hagrid, along with a card with a picture of Hogwarts on the front, covered in snow, with tiny students moving on the ground in front of it. Harry carefully set aside the food. He'd had far too much experience with Hagrid's cooking and knew better than to eat any of it.

Several gifts later, he came across something very odd. It was slightly bigger than the penknife package, but sort of the same shape. He picked it up -- it was very heavy, and he nearly dropped it again. What the-- he muttered, ripping the paper.

Underneath the paper was a layer of rough cloth. Harry carefully unwrapped the cloth and found, to his immense surprise, a small dagger. It was simple, with a plain steel blade and an ivory handle. He gave it a blank look, and when he fingered the edge to test its sharpness he found himself sucking the blood off a small cut a moment later.

Hey, Ron, he said, taking his thumb out of his mouth and pressing it to the knee of his pants to stop the bloodflow. Look at this. He held out the blade.

Ron glanced at it and nodded, unsurprised. He reached up and carefully took down an identical knife from his bedside table. Harry and Ron looked at each other with almost identical, Don't ask me expressions. Dean looked over curiously and shrugged.

Are there notes? he asked.

said Harry. Ron shook his head.

Ask Professor Lupin or something. We're probably missing the feast. Dean headed for the door.

Any clue at all? Harry asked Ron quietly as Dean left.

Ron shook his head again, but added, I'm taking mine downstairs. I want to show it to Lupin or Dumbledore or someone -- it's really weird, you know, coming after You-Kno -- sorry, Voldemort, was defeated. I'd expect something like this before then, but now...

said Harry. I'm leaving mine here, though. I don't like to think what'd happen if Filch or Snape caught us both carrying around weapons inside. We can probably explain off just one.

Ron nodded, wrapped up his blade with both of the thick pieces of cloth, and stuck it through one of the belt loops in his jeans. Then they went downstairs to the Great Hall and the famous Hogwarts Christmas dinner. The house-elves seemed to outdo themselves every year with the food and the decorations, and this year was no exception. They almost forgot about the odd daggers when they sat down at one of the long tables and tucked into the excellent food.

Hermione was late in coming to meet up with them, and when she did, she only picked at her food. She looked extremely happy about something. When Ron was serving himself a third helping of pudding for desert and Harry didn't feel he could eat another bite, Harry finally asked her what was up.

she said distractedly. Oh. Well, this. Look. Viktor sent it -- isn't it beautiful? She held out her hand; she was wearing a ring that was obviously new.

Harry couldn't see anything particularly special about it. It was a plain gold ring; nice if you liked expensive, pointless gold jewelry, but not useful for much.

'S nice, said Harry vaguely. Ron barely glanced up.

Hermione seemed to think differently, though. She looked at it as if it were quite precious to her. Well, I love it. He sent you two some things too, for your information. His card said to tell you myself, because he wouldn't be caught dead writing cards to you two. Just like a boy, but that can't be helped.

Harry looked sidelong at Ron. He wouldn't have happened to send, uh, knives or some such, would he?

Some sort of pointy object of destruction, I think; he hinted at that, she replied, still fingering her ring lovingly.

Harry sighed. It made a lot more sense, now, and he decided he wouldn't worry about it.

He watched Ron continue to eat unbelievable amounts of food through half-closed eyelids, and sighed again, thought it was a sigh of contentment this time instead of exasperation.

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That night everyone went to bed stuffed with good food and with their bedside tables littered with gifts and wrapping paper, the latter of which would be cleaned up in the night by the silent house-elves. Harry fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

But move down from the boys' dorm, down the spiraling stairs to the common room and back up again; up the twin staircase to the girls' rooms. The hall at the top of the stair is lined with seven doors; three on the right, four on the left. The second door on the left is the seventh years' dorm; there's a small plaque there that proclaims it as such. Behind that door is a circular room identical to all the other Gryffindor dorm rooms; six beds are lined around its walls, and the third bed from the right side of the door is the bed in which Hermione Granger is sound asleep.

Her bedside table isn't nearly as cluttered as the others', because she organizes her things even on Christmas day. All her gifts are neatly stored in the drawers of the table, and some in her trunk at the foot of her bed; all except her ring, which sits out on the tabletop.

Lavender Brown, in the next bed over, stirs slightly and rolls over, but she remains asleep.

Parvati Patil, directly to the left side of the door, mutters something so obscene about Pansy Parkinson that she would have received a week's detention if Professor McGonagall had overheard her.

All the other girls have gone home for Christmas, leaving four empty beds.

And Hermione Granger wakes up suddenly, just as the great grandfather clock in the trophy room downstairs chimes the first time of twelve.

She sat up rubbing her eyes disconcertedly. She blinked several times, realized that she had to use the bathroom really badly, and quickly got out of bed and headed for the girl's washroom right at the end of the hall lined with its seven dormitory doors.

The grandfather clock kept chiming.

And the ring on the table sensed it.

Slowly, very slowly, it was becoming aware. It was waking up from a short respite, knowing full well that it had a new encasement -- this one was cold, so very cold, whereas it had just been gloriously warm a moment ago, burning; burning in the fires of its mountain; but..... where was it? The ring had no memory. It never had. Not clear memories, anyway, because what had it to remember? It had none of the five senses that elves and mortals were limited by; it couldn't remember pictures or smells or tastes because it knew not what these things were. It merely perceived; the individual minds around it and the far-reaching stretch of other minds, all melded together, with glimmers of the minds of lands hundreds of thousands of miles away. The Ring perceived all.

And right now it was perceiving quite strongly that something was really wrong.

Its master waited for it; it could feel that at least -- but the master was greatly weakened by the destruction of the ring's old body, for the master had mixed his own blood with the gold he had used to forge that ring. And he was far away... further away than the ring ought to be able to sense, except for that bond between the master and the ring that connected them at all times. Master was not fully conscious. Master was not aware that the ring had survived the fires of its mountain. But Master would become aware... and then the Halfling would pay. The ring had nearly taken the Halfling, but he was too strong in will, and he had a companion with glass walls in his mind, which the ring had not been able to scale, merely to peer through.

The ring was a great deal further away from master this time than it had been the last time, thousands of years ago, when the Man had taken it from master's hand. At such a distance master would never regain enough strength to defeat his world, and the ring could see no way to travel that distance without some special device, for vast stretches of time and space lay between it and master. But the destruction of master's blood-work would not go unnoticed by him when he awoke; and though he may not defeat the world, he would take the ones who caused him such grievous harm and return to them the pain that they caused him.

The ring was pleased with this perception.

The clock chimed for its twelfth time, and a faint red glow came from the ring in its pleasure. It grew warm, and it hewed through its metal body with words from the inside; words in flowing elvish script, so small as to be barely discernible, on the inside and outside of the golden band:

Ash nazg durbatutluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul....

And the ring was aware.

The glow faded and the words grew cool and vanished without a trace. A minute or two after the clock downstairs had stopped chiming, Hermione came back down the hall into her dorm. She sat down in bed and pulled the covers up over her lap, then paused, and looked at the ring again. She smiled, picked it up, fingered it lovingly.

Feeling suddenly sleepy, she put it back on the table and laid down, pulling the covers up around her chin. She didn't notice that the heat of her hand had made the glowing letters flare ever so briefly before they faded away again, and shadow took all under its wing.
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