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Chapter 15

Christmas

Snow was delicately settling on the windowsills of Hogwarts. Today was Christmas, which meant...

"PRESENTS!" shouted Sirius "PRESENTS, PRESENTS, I HAVE PRESENTS!" by now Sirius was dancing around being stupid. Soon James, Lily, Vicky and Katie appeared and laughed at Sirius' joy. Under the Christmas tree were lots of presents all neatly wrapped and in separate piles.

Sirius tore into his quickly. "Wow! Thanks James!" he exclaimed as a rainfall of different sweets and jokes poured into his lap. Soon everyone joined him and there was wrapping paper everywhere and yells of "cool" and "thanks".

They looked around the common room, which had been decorated for the festive season. There was a huge banner reading 'mery crismouse evry won!' which had been written by Hagrid. There was mistletoe and tinsel everywhere. They got dressed quickly and went down to the great hall for breakfast. They bumped into Hagrid on the way.

"Hi Hagrid" Lily said "merry Christmas!"

"Hi young Lily an' the sam' ter yer" what yer doin' today then? Gettin' dressed up fer ball tonight?"

"Ball? What ball Hagrid?" they all asked.

"Shouldn't a' said that!" and he walked off swinging a polecat in his left hand.

They entered the hall and looked around. It had been decorated too and Dumbledore was sat in his usual place looking very happy. To his right was Kondola and Dumbledore was trying to persuade him to pull a cracker. In the end Kondola gave in and pulled. And almighty 'BANG' went off and Dumbledore laughed.

This year many students had chosen to stay at Hogwarts because there was going to be a surprise. Only three people were missing from the Gryffindor table, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and a second year called Bertha Jorkins who had fallen down some stairs whilst trying to tie her shoelace she was really clumsy.

"Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you will all have a terrific time and as my surprise there will be a Christmas ball tonight. Now there is only one condition, you must come with a partner and all partners must be boy girl! It starts at six pm and remember to enjoy yourselves!" Dumbledore said from the staff table. James looked at the teachers Professor Dumbledore was talking to Professor Dreamstone about the ball and then turned to ask Professor Kondola his view of the ball. James thought that Professor Kondola could think of anything worse than a ball and laughed as he went back to talking to the others.

"The ball sounds like so much fun! But I don't know who I'm going to go with!" Katie said. Sirius was just about to ask her when Chris Lumistella interrupted him. "Excuse me, I was wondering Katie if you would like to go to the ball with me?" Katie giggled and said yes. So Katie was going with Chris. Sirius kept throwing murderous glances at Chris and was in a sulk for the rest of the day.

They were all walking back to the common room when Snape stopped them.

"Lily my sweet, will you go to the ball with me?" he asked greasily.

"No Snape, I don't like you! Go away and leave em alone!" Lily snapped at him. He looked ready to attack her but refrained from doing so and walked off in a huff.

"James, will you go to the ball with me?" She asked him. James was shocked. Lily Evans had just asked him to the Christmas ball. The Lily Evans. The object of his dreams for the past two years. Of course he agreed, which got Vicky moaning. "No fair! Whom am I going with?" she was then interrupted by someone behind them saying, "hey guys, what's happening?" they turned around and saw

"REMUS! What are you doing back?" Vicky asked him.

"Well it's not the full moon this year and Dumbledore told me about the ball so I came back" he said.

"I'm saved! Remus will you go to the ball with me?" Vicky asked.

"Yes!" Remus said happily. By now Sirius was even more upset. All of his friends were going with someone except him. He blamed it all on Chris, Katie would've been his and gone to the ball with him if it hadn't been for Chris. He decided to go for a walk. He went to go outside and straight into Kate Thompson, who was amazingly by herself.

"All alone Sirius? Aren't you scared that all of the nasty things will come and get you?"

"Shut up Kate" he snapped. She looked hurt and soon regained herself and threw him a poisonous look of pure venom.

"Look, I'm sorry…" he started but stopped as he had a brilliant idea "hey Kate, do you want to go to the ball with me?" Kate looked surprised and her face turned into a frown.

"You're joking around aren't you?"

"No, do you want to go to the ball with me?" he asked again.

"Ok then" and she broke into a smile. She looked amazing when she smiled thought Sirius. "Well I'll see you tonight" she said and walked away to the Slytherin common room.

He went up to the common room smiling and James asked who the luck girl was, but Sirius didn't tell him, he didn't want anyone to know. It wasn't that he was ashamed it was just that it was unexpected.

There were two types of people in the common room that day, giggling girls rushing around madly and bored boys who where slumped in their chairs doing nothing. The ball wasn't for another four hours, which was plenty of time for the guys but not enough for the girls.

"Do you want to have a snowball fight?" asked Remus. Sirius and James looked at Remus in disbelief, he always wanted to study and read not snowball fights.

"What have you done with the real Remus Lupin?" Sirius asked.

"I spellotaped him in the cupboard, are you coming or not?" Remus laughed and the three boys went outside and started playing.

"Hey! You three!" someone shouted behind them. They looked and were hit in the face with snowballs. Lily, Vicky and Katie were stood grinning menacingly. The guys weren't going to be defeated by girls so they scooped up more snow and ran after the girls with war cries. Vicky and Lily screamed and ran away but Katie stood still and when they got too close she shoved snow down their backs.

Soon they got tired and went back into the common room where it was warm. The girls went up to their dormitory to get ready. The boys knew that they would take ages so they started having a wizard's chess tournament, and even though James and Sirius were good Remus was better.