Chapter 16: The Holidays

*****

            Snape's parting comment at the Yule Ball had stuck with Ali over the few days before the holiday.  She and George had talked it over endlessly, though neither could figure out why she would need to be careful.  This also hadn't been the first time Snape had warned her that she might be in danger from someone or something.  He'd also made comments at their wedding, though in the pleasure of leaving for their honeymoon, Ali had quickly forgotten his words.

            Despite their best efforts, neither could figure out who would want to cause Ali harm, so, after sending Artemis with a letter to Dumbledore explaining Snape's warnings, they decided to put it from their minds and simply enjoy the holidays.

*****

            As much as possible, the Weasley's and their extended family always tried to spend Christmas together.  Now that many of the children were married, not all could be there for the entire holiday period, but as many as possible would be there for Christmas evening when they had their main celebration.

            Christmas Eve found the Weasley home filled with the happy sounds of a large family.  Alinora, George and the twins had arrived for dinner.  Harry and Ginny arrived not long after to join the festivities.  Charlie and his girlfriend, Julia, arrived later that evening, in time to join the rest of the family in a game of Exploding Snap.

            As neither Ali nor Julia was all that fond of things blowing up in their faces, they chose to watch the festivities from the sidelines.  They spent the time talking quietly to each other, while throwing out random comments to stir things up in the other conversation.  When the others finally, laughingly, told them to either join the game or leave them alone, both opted to turn in for the evening.

            Ali was fast asleep when George finally joined her, but woke up long enough to help him put into place a few, important Christmas details.  Tradition takes precedence over sleep any day!

*****

            Christmas morning was dawning bright and sunny, causing the recent snow to sparkle in the light of the rising sun.  The house was silent, but as the sun rose, sounds could begin to be heard in the various bedrooms of the Burrow.  Softly at first, the sound of singing was heard, waking one of the inhabitants after the other, until the only ones still sleeping were those making up George and Ali's small family.

            There was even sleepier grumbling when those awake made their way downstairs to find the Christmas tree singing merrily and a barrier blocking their access to the gifts gathered beneath it.

            When Ali and George surfaced not long after, they found Ginny, glaring, waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.

            "I thought you were supposed to be a good influence on him, not help him with his mad schemes!"

            "Humm…," Ali said, pausing to give Ginny a one armed hug as she passed her on the way to the kitchen, "I think there must have been something in that whole wedding thing that said that I'd agreed to support my husband in his every endeavor."

            "Now Ginny, what makes you think Alinora had anything to do with this morning?  The twins have been pulling pranks like this for years." Molly asked, moving to remove Jeffrey from George's arms after being deflected from acquiring Ariel from Ali.

            "Because Ali's the only one here good enough to pull that stunt and have it work despite the wards that you know we all put up for that very reason." Ginny explained, shaking her head in exasperation.  She was still trying to glare at her brother and sister-in-law, but it was obvious that she wasn't really angry.

            "Besides," chimed in Charlie, who had joined them in the living room, "if it had been left up to George, we would've woken to the sounds of screech owls or something really horrible.  This year was actually an improvement, if you think about it."

            Alinora merely smiled as she entered the kitchen, followed by Molly, to feed the now squirming twins their breakfast.

            George moved to join them, but couldn't resist one last comment on the subject as he passed his sister.  "You know, had you only trusted that I wouldn't do anything, you would've been fine," he whispered to her in passing.  "As you said, you all put up wards to protect yourself from whatever traditional Christmas revelry would occur, but had you only believed in my innate goodness…" he sighed dramatically and Ginny hit him.  "Trust is such an important thing for families to have and the lack of can be… quite noisy."  He grinned, tapped her lightly on the nose and quickly left to join the others in the kitchen.

*****

            By the end of lunch, the rest of the extended family had arrived, though Percy and his wife left early citing other familial obligations.  The rest had formed a loud, boisterous crowd in the living room until it had become a bit much for the ladies to deal with.

            Molly, the very pregnant Angelina and Fleur had escaped to the kitchen taking Bella and the twins with them.  Ginny, Katie, Alinora, Julia and Hermione decided that a walk would be their escape of choice and, after pulling on winter coats to protect them from the heavy snow outside, they headed off.

            "Oh, this is much better!  If I had to listen to them dissect the chances of the Chudley Cannons actually making it to the Quidditch World Cup for one more minute…" Hermione ran her gloved fingers through her hair in frustration.  "I may love Ron dearly, but he's a mite bit fixated."

            The others chuckled in sympathy.

            Ginny reached out and took her friend's arm.  "Well, it's not like you weren't aware of it going into the relationship, though if you weren't, his wanting to decorate your living room in orange probably would've clued you in."

            Julia, sensing perhaps that a change in topic would be good, asked for clarification on a story Charlie had told her earlier and the conversation soon turned to past events.

            They'd walked for a good distance by now and were surrounded by tall trees, branches coated in a heavy layer of snow.  Hermione and Ginny were giggling together over some comment Ginny had made while Katie had run a bit ahead, laughing, to escape Ali, who was mock threatening her over something she'd said.

            Above the sounds of their laughter, they heard a loud "Snap".  Katie, being a bit ahead of the others at this point turned around and looked up in time to see a large limb break from the tree above them and begin to fall towards the other four.

            "Scatter!" she screamed at them, helpless to do anything else in the time they had.

            From years of working together, Alinora and Ginny reacted quickly at her warning.  Each glanced swiftly upwards before shoving the girl beside them as hard as possible away from the falling branch.  Unfortunately, they didn't quite have enough time to get themselves out of reach as they were both hit glancing blows as the branch reached them.

            Hermione and Julia struggled out of the snow where they'd fallen after being shoved, and joined Katie in hurrying back to check on the others.  Alinora seemed okay, though she had obviously taken a light blow to the head, judging by the small trickle of blood running down her cheek.

            Katie, seeing that Alinora was at least awake and moving, left her to Julia as she joined Hermione in removing the lower end of the limb from off of Ginny.

            "Ow…" she moaned softly, as the branch was removed.  Once the weight was lifted, she lowered the arm she'd raised to protect her head and cradled it to her chest, face contorted in pain.

            "That doesn't look good, Gin.  Is it broken?" Katie asked, crouching down to take a better look.  "Yep, definitely broken.  Well, not to worry, I can fix that up in a jiffy."  Katie reached under her coat and pulled out her wand.  Concentrating, she cast a charm to fix the break then watched as Ginny moved it experimentally.  "Better?"

            "Much." Ginny replied in a relieved tone of voice.  She made a move to get up, but waited as Katie rose and held out a hand to pull her to her feet.

            By this time, Julia had helped Ali move away from the tree limb, where Ali had collapsed back down in the snow.  Her head appeared to have stopped bleeding, but it was also apparent that she had some additional scratching along the side of her head.

            "Are you all right?" Katie asked in concern, finally noticing Ali stretched out in the snow.  "That's probably not the best idea… you could get quite sick by doing that."

            "Possibly, but it's the closest thing I could think of to putting ice on my shoulder." Ali groaned, struggling back into a seated position.  Her left arm was held at an odd angle and she kept running her hand over her shoulder.

            "I think we should get back to the house for this one.  I should take a better look at your shoulder and that won't work out here.  And you both should get into the warmth.  Let me take a quick look though to make sure there are not any other problems I need to know about before we move you."  Katie cast another quick charm and observed the results.  She looked rather startled at something she saw, but quickly controlled her expression

            "Well, you certainly have a rather nasty bruise forming on your shoulder, as you are quite aware, and some scratches on the face, but otherwise you don't seem to have been hurt by the fall."  She reached out to help Ali to her feet.  "I need to talk to you later, when we have a bit more privacy," she whispered.  In a louder voice she called to the others, "Everyone ready to go?"  The others agreed and they were soon back in the warmth of the kitchen.

            "What happened?!?" Molly asked in shock at their sudden reappearance.  The two injured folks were pushed into chairs and Katie helped Ali remove her jacket and outer jumper so she could take a better look at her shoulder.

            Molly's voice had attracted the attention of the men in the other room, who now crowded around the entrance to the kitchen attempting to see what was going on.  George pushed his way though once he saw that Ali had been hurt, followed by Harry, who rushed to Ginny's side.

            George took the hand that Alinora held out to him before kneeling down beside her.  "Is she okay?" he asked Katie, who was still busy examining the wound.

            "It looks like it's just a really bad bruise.  Nothing broken, pulled, strained, that sort of thing.  I'm sure Molly has something on hand that will help it feel better." She glanced up at Molly, who nodded and turned to find the appropriate potion.

            "You know, I'm getting really tired of things falling on my head." Alinora complained.  "Do I have some invisible tattoo that says 'Hit me'?"

            George and Katie chuckled.  "The only tattoo I'm aware of is your rose and, as I'm the one who put it there, I know it doesn't say that.  So, what happened?"

            "We had a tree limb fall on us as we were taking our walk.  Ginny and I were able to push 'Mione and Julia out of the way, but weren't so lucky ourselves."

            "Is she okay?" George asked in concern, turning to glance at his sister.

            "She had a broken arm, but it should be fine now.  That is one spell I'm quite familiar with.  She'll have to take it easy for a day or so, but there shouldn't be any lasting damage."

            Molly had returned with the necessary potion and, handing it to Ali, turned to go check on her daughter.  Ali sniffed the glass, crinkled up her nose at the smell then hurriedly gulped it down.  She grimaced at the taste.  "That stuff is horrible!  I think I might have preferred the bruise."  Twisting her head, she and the others watched as the vivid purples, blues and greens faded from her skin leaving it only slightly discolored.  "Does feel better though, I have to admit." she said, tentatively rotating her arm.

            Katie stood up and took a look at the head wound that had since stopped bleeding.  "Just a flesh wound," she teased, "You'll get better.  But it wouldn't hurt to get it washed up and maybe cover over some of the worst of those cuts.  They're not serious enough to need healing, but why take chances?  You've had enough bad luck recently with getting almost hurt."  Katie smiled and turned away, not noticing the startled looks George and Alinora were giving each other.

            "Come on," George said finally, let's get you up stairs to the bathroom.  It's too crowded in here to get anything done."  He helped her to her feet and the two made their way through the crowd of people who'd now managed to squeeze themselves into the kitchen.

            "She's right, you know," George finally said, when they reached the safety of their room and he had settled Alinora on the bed.  "I hadn't placed it, but you have had some interesting near misses over the past couple months.  Even on our wedding day you almost fell into traffic."

            "But those were all accidents, right?" Alinora asked in surprise, "People stumble all the time!  It doesn't mean anything!"

            "It might not, but there have been a number of things…" George began ticking them off on his fingers, "The stumble in London that could've put you under a car, we got chased by a shark on our honeymoon.  Yes," he said, holding up a hand to stop her refuting of that one, "I know you said that was me being overly sensitive, but let me continue.  There was the illness you had, or food poisoning, after we returned.  You were really sick from that!  Ummm, let me see…  That might be it until today.

            "You know, I wonder if the attack on you guys your first night back is related?  Since we don't know why anyone would be after you, why couldn't that be connected?"

            "This is really beginning to bother me, George." Ali looked up at him, fear beginning to show in her expression.  They sat in silence for a while, each considering the evidence presented.  Suddenly, Alinora gasped and reached out to grab George's hand in a strong grip.  "You don't think… could the car accident have been… you know, normally we, I, would've been in that car that night!  Could that have been another 'accident'?!?"

            They looked at each other in horror as the possibility sunk in.  Ali gave a sob and buried her face in her hands and began to cry.  George began pacing the room furiously for a few minutes before returning to the bed.  Sitting down beside her, he hugged Ali to him and she turned to bury her face in his shoulder.

            "It's not fair!  If someone's out to get me, why are they hurting everybody else too?!?  Any one of those things could, or did, affect people other than me.  And we don't even know why it's happening!  What have I done?!?"

            "I don't know.  I wish I did because I hate feeling this helpless!  We sent the letter to Dumbledore.  I'm sure with his, and the others' help, we'll figure out what's going on.  Let's not mention it to the family today though.  Let them enjoy the rest of their holiday."

            Ali nodded in agreement.  She made a quick trip to the bathroom to wash her face and clean the scratches.  Returning to the bedroom, George helped her cover over the cuts and the two were about ready to rejoin the rest of the family, when there was a knock on the door.  At their permission to enter, the door opened and Katie entered, closing the door behind her.

            "I have something that I wanted to tell you guys, and I figured this would be the easiest time to catch you alone."  George and Ali waved her to a chair while they sat back down on the bed facing her and waited for her to speak.  "Remember that spell I cast outside to see how you were doing, Ali?  That particular spell doesn't just check for problems, it gives the caster a general overview of what's going on in the body.  I saw something that I thought you two might want to know about."

            She stopped for a moment, looking slightly nervous, and then continued.  "Ali, I… well, I'm not sure how to say this…  Oh, good grief!  Ali, you're pregnant.  Not very far along, but definitely expecting.  Congratulations." She finished sheepishly, looking with some amusement at the utterly blank expressions on their faces.

            Ali and George looked at each other in shock, trying to take in the news.  While happy about it, with everything else going on, it seemed almost too much to handle.  They had an unknown person supposedly out to get Ali, the two children of their good friends' to raise and now they would soon be having a child of their own…

            "Well, that's a bit unexpected."  Ali finally said, her hand going down protectively to cover her still flat stomach.  "Please tell me we're not having twins," she said a bit desperately, looking back at Katie.

            "Too soon to tell, dear.  I told you, you're not more than a couple weeks along.  I'm surprised I could tell at all.  Anyway, I thought you should know.  I'll leave it up to you two to decide when and what to tell the others."  With that, she got up and left the room, leaving them to further consider this latest surprise.