Chapter Thirty-Nine: Deck the Halls With…

 "Well, hope y' like the present, chat," Mitchie said, putting another parcel into the French girl's trunk. "Say hi t' your little brother for me."

"Oh, I nearly forgot!" Chloe suddenly dove under her bed and brought forth several boxes of various sizes. Written on each was a sentence in French that clearly meant 'Do Not Open Before Christmas.' "Here, these are for you, Julie, Tom & Tim," Chloe indicated the matching pair, "Donaghan, and of course, Aldous. In fact, I'm going to go give him his now, okay?"

"Want me to take your trunk to the Common Room?"

"Merci, Mitch. I've been dreading having to lug it around."

"I suppose the packages have made it rather heavier. I'll get it out to the train platform for you." The Yank made the trunk levitate with a 'wingardium leviosa' and shoved it about like a well-oiled lawnmower. Chloe looked rather distressed by this.

"It's bad enough I can't levitate 'eavy things yet, do you have to do it in front of me?"

The trunk suddenly dropped out the air and landed on Mitchie's foot. A fairly incredible American curse word followed.

"Is something wrong?" Aldous asked, reaching Chloe's door. "Oh." He lifted the corner of the trunk up and Mitchie extricated the offended foot. "Is it broken?"

"I don't think so, just ticked off a bit."

"Maybe you'd better get it looked at, just in case." Aldous pulled a small box out of his pocket. "Chloe, this is for you."

"I'd better get this trunk out of here," Mitchie observed, tactfully leaving the Chaser and first-year alone. The instant she had the trunk in the Common Room, she let fly another American curse word and turned her wand on her foot. It seemed to her she may have just used the wrong spell on it.

"Was 'at meant t' be a Numbin' Charm?" a voice inquired from one of the fluffy chairs. "Because y' seem t' 'ave frozen y're shoelaces."

"You aren't really helping much, Donaghan."

"Oh, aren't I?" The Scot leapt out of his chair and bodily picked up the American. "Aproxa ver! That'll fix the pain, what'd y' do t' it?"

"I dropped Chloe's trunk on it."

"That wasn' too bright of y'."

"It wasn't intentional."

"I think I gathered 'at." Donaghan swung Mitchie under the portrait hole and out of the Common Room. "T' Madam Pomfrey's, or d'you think th'you coul' walk on it?"

"I don't think Madam Pomfrey's really necessary, and I'm supposed to be helping Chloe get her trunk downstairs."

"I'll take care of that." Donaghan opened the portrait hole and yelled into the Common Room. "Ay, Kevin?"

"Yeah?" the Keeper asked.

"C'you 'elp Chloe get 'er trunk downstairs?

"Sure thing. No prob."

"See?" Donaghan asked Mitchie. "Now let's get that foot looked at, m' darlin' Yank."

"I can walk, you know, Donaghan."

"But I don't want y' to, I'm goin' t' carry y'."

"Aren't I heavy?"

"No, y' aren't. Why d' girls a'ways assume that they weigh t'much?"

"It's a common neurosis of our gender, has to do with a lot of things. Julie doesn't think that she's overweight."

"Well, Julie's got ribs 'at stick out like she swallowed a cage or summat." Donaghan leaned over and kissed Mitchie. "Yeh're beautiful an' I'm entirely over her."

"I just can't help but worry you aren't, though, 'cause she's turning into one of my best friends and I'm really starting to more than just like you."

"More'n like?"

"I don't want to say 'love' in case I don't mean that."

"Would y' believe me if I said I love you, Mitch?"

"I'm not sure. It's way easier to say it than to know what it really means."

"What's love t' you?"

"Okay, not to burst into a song, y'know, but love is when you can't live without someone. Love is what makes life worth living, what you can never admit to and can never stop meaning. It's your downfall and your victory all in one."

"Y' can be awfully poetic when y' want to, Mitch."

"It's a habit."

"What could I do t' convince y' that I love y', dear?"

"I'm not sure you can," Mitchie said quietly, tears shining but refusing to finally fall. "I'm not sure I even believe in it."

"A person like y', not believe in love!"

"For god's sake, don't get all Ewan McGregor-ish!" Mitchie protested, trying her darnedest to get him to put her down.

"All what? Mitchie, I d'know what you're on about, but if I 'ave t' hold on 't y' all night, I'm goin' t' tell y' 'ow I feel fin'lly!" Donaghan sat down on a stone bench and wrapped his arms around Mitchie, kissing her gently on the lips again. "Everything y'said jus' now, I understood, 'cause that's 'ow you make me feel. Whether y' believe in love or not, I think I love you, so it has to exist, then, doesn't it?"

Mitchie didn't know what else to do, so she shrugged and submitted to being kissed again.

"Someone can cheat on you and leave you and you still believe in love?"

"Hey, yeh've jus' gone an' proved it does, 'aven't y'?" Donaghan suddenly began to very quietly almost-whisper a song: "My boat sails stormy seas,
Battles oceans filled with tears…"

"What the-?"

"At last my port's in view,
Now that I've discovered you…"

"Are you singing?" Mitchie asked in complete surprise.

"Oh, I'd give my life so lightly,
For my gentle Lady,
Give it freely, and completely,

To my Lady."

That was too much. After all, Mitchie knew this song.

"Words that you say when we're alone," she countered,
"Though actions speak louder than words,
But all I can say is I love you so,
Drive away all my hurt…"

"Oh, I'd give my life so lightly,
For my gentle Lady,
Give it freely, and completely,
-y' really do love me then?"

"You know it."

And they just wound up snogging for awhile after.

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"Could you get it?" Judy asked Professor McGonagall.

"Yes, I've got three of them." She held up the necklaces.

"Great!" Harry cried gleefully. "Here's my Invisibility Cloak."

"And here are the potions," Marguerite Weasley said.

Fred, Jaquie, George, Marguerite, Ginny, Harry, Ron, Judy, and Professor McGonagall were all preparing a bit of a surprise. Fred and George supplied a lovely non-exploding box containing two suits of their best Shrinking Clothes, Ginny and Judy drew up a detailed map, and Ron enchanted a glass marble into a Portkey. Marguerite had brewed a Geriatrum Potion and her sister a Juvenilum Potion, and Harry lent his beloved invisibility cloak. Professor McGonagall, whose idea this all had been, supervised the plans with the greatest amount of anticipation of them all.

Just as they were about to put everything together and wrap it up, Dumbledore arrived with his contribution: a camera loaded with wizard film and several extra rolls of it.

"Invisible flash," he reported. "Noone will notice it."

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"What was in that?" Draco asked Julie cautiously, looking at the two bottles of butterbeer. "It's got kind of a weird aftertaste, like… where did you get this from?"

"Why, I had Tom and Tim-" Julie suddenly realized it was likely spiked. "Oh, shoot!"

"Spiked?"

"Likely."

"With what?"

"I d'know. Last time they spiked my drink it was Terpsichora, but-"

"Isn't that what they messed up before?"

"Yeah, that's what scares me. It might be something even worse."

"Maybe we should go inside if we're going to sing and all."

They were sitting on one of the tower tops in their winter coats watching other students build snow animals as more of it fell down. Hagrid was helping some first-years build a great big snow unicorn, holding up the midsection while they strengthened the legs with snow, and there was a dark-robed shape that looked very suspiciously like Professor Longbottom decorating the snowy bushes. As a little snowflake melted on the back of Julie's neck, she shivered, and suddenly Draco's arm was around her shoulders. "Come on inside. You're freezing."

"I am not."

"You are. Come with me." Draco tickled her ear and Julie obeyed at last.

"Your place?" Her voice betrayed the slight suspicion she'd had ever since he'd mentioned actually loving her.

"Well, how 'bout yours, Jules?"

"Uh, wouldn't that look just a little strange?"

"Not if I look like your pet, it won't." Draco caught hold of Julie's coat pocket and transformed, still hanging on as he became a pure white ferret. Julie helped him into the pocket and patted him.

"Alright, dear." She headed toward the Gryffindor portrait hole. On her way, she saw Chloe leaving for Christmas break and stopped to chat awhile and to go with her to the door, and then she overheard Donaghan and Mitchie singing off in one of the corridors and eavesdropped a bit, then she found herself a mite cold and decided to change her clothes, having forgotten entirely about her pocket's passenger.

She remembered when she opened her door and saw the Castle of Ferretage. Julie put her hand in her pocket, only to discover her Draco was sound asleep. Moving over to her bed, she gently picked him up and put him on her pillow before taking off her coat. It was a remarkably nice coat compared to her old beat-up purple one, not full-length, but it actually fit her, which was good, and it had both Slytherin and Gryffindor colors entwined in the fuzzy tartan. In fact, she dimly suspected her father had had some advice from Headmistress McGonagall as to where to find a perfect plaid. The only genuine oddity was the mismatched mittens on a string that had been on the hanger with it, for while Julie could understand a green mitten for her sinister side and a red one for her right, the idea of having a string was just a little…well, unusual, for someone turning sixteen soon. But hey, anything to keep her from losing them. Mittens were easy things to misplace when one suddenly had more than two outfits.

Julie pulled a soft scrap of fabric from her bedside drawer and placed it over her sleeping boyfriend/ferret. He looked so sweet and innocent lying there that she gave him a gentle kiss on the head before picking up the Potions apron she was making for her mum. It had been hell and a half finding a big enough piece of dragonhide that wasn't entirely rough to the touch, but as usual her friends Tom and Tim had come and bailed her out with the address of their uncle and aunt in Romania. As it happened, there was an especially old dragon who had recently gone on to heat the great furnace in the sky, and for only five Galleons the Charlie Weasleys had sent Julie a rather overlarge piece of surprisingly soft dragonhide.

She had had rather a lot of leftover, enough to attempt a new pair of matching gloves to go with the apron she was making, and with a little aid from Draco she had gotten them done easily. Julie grinned as she remembered talking him into tracing around her mother's hand onto a bit of parchment. He had gone a little overkill with his 'plausible explanation,' returning outlines of the hands of most of the faculty in addition to her mother. In the unlikely event of her expulsion from Hogwarts, Julie reasoned, she could do rather well as a glovemaker.

Small, intricate things suited her very well, things like forgery and unusual-font design. She had always liked to design all the characters of one font for the English alphabet, for despite being very good at handwriting with her left, Julie couldn't draw pictures to save her life. In fact, the one time her art teacher had assigned pen-and-ink drawings, she had only passed the assignment by choosing an open copy of 'Les Miserables' as her model. She had used a ruler to make the edges of the book, cadged the rough, dog-eared corners as best she could, and then painstakingly copied every fourteen-point Adobe Garamond letter of the two hundred fifty-seventh page.

'Ah, well,' she thought contentedly, continuing her merry work of present wrapping. Spellotape had insisted on sticking to her fingertips, and she had therefore decided to stick to the Muggles' Scotch tape, no pun intended. It occurred to Julie that she hadn't even used her old Muggle stereo since the start of Dark Lady lessons, so she went over and placed the needle tentatively on the spinning disc. There was a small Arthurian Transformer installed near the baseboard, as this was a room typically given to Muggle-born Gryffindors.

To Julie's rather unpleasant shock, the record was one she didn't recognize. Since the first song was fast and rather loud, she had to move quickly to turn it down, only to recognize the lead vocalist's voice. Hastily she removed the needle and looked at the label on the LP.

"Good lord," she breathed. It was the latest Moody Blues album, and how anyone had gotten hold of one on vinyl was beyond her wits. And then she noticed Wormtail's note.

The rat's paw signature was easy enough to recognize. For a split second she was tempted to take the record and smash it on the bedpost, but it occurred to her it would bend before it would break and probably wake Draco up in the process. Ah, well. She returned the suspicious item to it's sleeve and put it alongside her other ones. She figured the best thing to do would be to turn it in to Headmistress McGonagall to be checked out. 'And then," she smiled, 'she might wind up liking it.'

A soft purry squeak interrupted her. It was Anthony. Julie took out the brown and white creature and petted him, before he 'eaked' to be put on the bed next to the white ferret. Figuring it wouldn't do any harm, (and being rather curious to see what would happen,) Julie placed Anthony on the pillow next to Draco. Her dear little pet sniffed the newcomer cautiously and then placed a paw on his shoulder.

Had Julie been able to speak ferretish, that gesture translated to 'sleep well, mate of my keeper.' Ferretish being an intensely subtle language of 'eaks,' 'squeaks' and ear twitches, however, Julie could no more speak it than she could the language of unicorns. Anthony's little gesture of acceptance, however, made her feel a lot better about a lot of things. She patted both ferrets for a little while, being careful not to wake Draco up, before writing a note and instructing Anthony not to bother their sleeping guest. The note was very simple and to-the-point:

'Dear Draco,
I've gone downstairs to the Great Hall to meet Mum and Dad. When you wake up, come down through the Cage and then up from your room, as if you needed to be told.
-J.S.'

She kissed him gently again and departed in relative haste. Christmas Eve was tomorrow night and she had work to do.

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A/N: I felt I might as well give you a preview of the next two chapter titles, as they're pretty much written, but on paper, and I have to type them out. Forty is 'Boughs of Holly,' and Forty-One is 'Journey to the Crystal Ward.' In other recent news, my dear boyfriend has just discovered fanfiction, but refuses to tell me his penname and has forgotten mine. Oh, and there's a new McNeville called Chelsey, she's a friend we seem to have adopted into the Freakish Clan. I don't know when or if she, Sheri, Kylie and Xander posted anything, but they're all my equally-eccentric relatives. Someone wrote me an email asking what I looked like, and while I can't really tell you due to safety reasons, the physical description of Mitchie minus the wolfiness is close enough. Aldous is based on brother Xander physically, should one wonder, and Chloe is a combination of m'sister Ky and the little dear I babysit sometimes. The way Julie and Mitchie get along is a dead-on of how Teva Arsen and I get along, with Kylie filling in the Chloe role. So much for emails asking me where I get my ideas. A very merry last day of school to all of you, ours was last Friday.

Next chapter in a day or so!

-J. McN.