Disclaimer: Mine? I wish!
I actually wrote this for the Checkmated Chrismas Challenge last Christmas, but I finished it late and never submitted it. That said I had not read the Half-Blood Prince, so the plot can't be canon, although I did try to keep the main characters in character. Please review!
Revisiting Christmases Past
It's terribly dismal being a ghost. You are trapped in life, going forever forward in time without the hope of reprieve that death offers. It might not be so bad if one were actually alive, but being unable to eat or drink, having to haunt one place for eternity, trapped in a vague shadow of life without any of the things that make life worth living. You may see some of your friends but in time they all die as mine did. I outlived my dear brother and even the young lass I was courting. They lived for many years after I died, but while it seems a lot to begin with, after five hundred and five years of death how does forty or fifty years compare?
"Merry Christmas, Sir Nicholas!"
"Yeah, have a good one, Nick"
"Have fun in Hogsmeade!" I reply. Some of my newest friends, Hermione and Ron. I almost wish I could accompany them to Hogsmeade, but they would not want me today. Not with his arm around her waist like that. Not with her adoring smile, reserved only for him.
I float back up the stone steps. With all the snow today I know these steps must be freezing, but I can't feel them.
"Have fun in Hogsmeade, you two," I call to Harry and Ginny.
He waves as they pass and Ginny grins, and then they continue on, Ginny dragging him by the wrist to make him go faster, and him laughing at her efforts all the way. Ah, love. (I would sigh, but I can't breathe. What's a ghost to do? )
I remember love. I was in love with a woman once. We were going to be married. My botched beheading rather got in the way of our nuptials. Since then I've lived (died?) for five hundred and five years in this castle. That's a lot of Christmases. Out of those there are a fair few that stick out in my mind. I think about them occasionally. As everyone knows, you can't live in the past, but ghosts can revisit the past. Not as participants of course, we merely remain unknown spectral spectators.
As Hogwarts was the place I was happiest at in life, that is where I chose to live in my death. I visited my dear Elise the Christmas after I died. She fainted. As it turns out she had married the town blacksmith in my absence. That wasn't exactly my favorite Christmas.
On my fifth Christmas Eve as a ghost my old history of magic teacher joined me in death. To be honest I'm not entirely positive old Professor Binns is aware that he died.
Many more Christmases have since passed. Important things were happening out in the world. Wars, discoveries, turmoil and many other things were happening on the outside, but in here it remained the same. Headmasters and teachers came and went. Every once in a while a new ghost would join me in the haunting of these halls. I became good friends with Erskine Elwood (known to most as the Fat Friar), and my own dear Elise even came to join me. Far from being the joyful holiday I had hoped for, it turned out to be one of the worst. I remember it well. I went to visit her near the Ravenclaw common room. . . .
"How have you been, Elise?"
"Dead," she snappishly replied, "And you, Sir Nicholas, How have you been?"
"Fair. The Headless Hunt sent me another rejection letter tonight."
Elise went even paler than I knew a ghost could be. "That's lovely." She turned and glided back upstairs.
"Elise! Elise, wait for me!"
She turned, and gave me the saddest look I have ever seen on a lady's face. "No, Nick."
"But, Elise. We are together now," I protested.
"No, Nick," she replied, "No matter how badly you wish it, you can't go back."
. . . My lady turned and fled up the stairs. From that night on, she rarely left her beloved Ravenclaw common room, and to this day she wears the same sad expression and it is rumored that she has not talked since that night.
For a time grief consumed me. It might have taken a year or it might have taken a hundred years, but I paid no attention to the outside world or to those around me.
After a while I began to spend a lot of time in the library. There was endless knowledge to occupy my time with. At least for a couple hundred years or so. One day I was digging through a pile of scrolls and someone just walked through me. . . .
"Terribly s-sorry S-sir. I was only t-trying to reach that scroll up there."
I turned to look at him. He was a small, scruffy looking lad with deep blue eyes and light copper colored hair. He didn't even look as if he were nine years of age, much less a student, yet he was. He was a first year, top of all his classes. His name was Albus Dumbledore.
Albus and I took to each other right away. Both of us were lonely. Albus came from a London orphanage where he knew nothing of his past, nor of his future. I decided that even if I cared little about the holidays, I would make sure little Albus had the time of his young life.
I taught him how to transfigure and charm all sorts of things. I even got an official reprimand from old Armando Dippet for teaching Albus to charm suits of armor to sing Christmas carols and tap dance in the corridors. Together we put up the biggest tree in the history of the Gryffindor common room (a record which has since been broken be Messrs. Fred and George Weasley). He made himself very popular indeed. He got the most presents of anyone in Gryffindor that year.
After that Christmas he didn't need me so much, but he has since remained a special friend of mine, and since the death of Nicholas Flamel, he is my oldest living friend.
Around twenty-five or thirty years later I had another wonderful Christmas. That year there was another new Gryffindor, one who didn't think she was brave enough to be a Gryffindor. She thought that surely she must belong in Ravenclaw. Although it's true that Minerva always stayed at the top of her class, she showed a level of courage that anyone, even Godric Gryffindor himself would find admirable.
That was the Christmas of the dark lord. Well, I say the Christmas; really there were nine, but the last was the most memorable. The reign of Grindelwald had begun. . . .
"I want to help, Professor!"
"Miss McGonagall, go back to your tower."
"No! Professor, I want to help. I graduate this year. I can help. I want to join the Order and help fight Grindelwald!"
"Minerva, you are head girl! Do you realize how much trouble you could get into if Professor Dippet finds out you are walking the halls after hours, much less arguing with a teacher, and blatant disobedience to multiple other school rules I don't have time to cover right now?"
"Do you realize I don't give a damn?" she responded. A fire burned in her eyes and her stance told him that she had come prepared to argue for hours. "I don't give a damn what Dippet thinks—"
"Professor Dippet, Minerva."
She only glared at him in response.
Professor Dumbledore paused and rubbed his forehead, deep in thought. "Fine, run and get your wand and broom; I'll wait here."
"Swear it!'
"Fine, just hurry!"
Minerva flew upstairs. Dumbledore jumped on his broom and rushed out through the open doors of the entrance hall.
He flew as fast as possible to where he knew Grindelwald awaited him.
"Bloody Liar!"
"Minerva! How did you find me. "
"It wasn't hard to figure out. I saw someone on a broom through the tower window. There are only five students left here for Christmas. None of them have such a long, lovely, red beard." She smirked at his back as he shook his head and flew on.
"So you flew out through the window and managed to catch up to me?"
"Yes. I am the Gryffindor seeker after all."
"Amazing."
. . . What followed was a long and terrible battle. Early in the morning on Christmas day the world was once again at peace.
This year another battle has raged. He who must not be named has held the world in terror for longer even than Grindelwald. After so much hardship, so much pain, fear, and yes, so many deaths. So many lives sacrificed so that these young ones may live in peace to enjoy this Christmas and many others to come. He was finally beaten on Halloween, making this the first truly happy Christmas celebration in these halls in nearly twenty-five years.
The portrait swung open and the sound of familiar laughter interrupted my memories.
"Hullo, Nick," Ron called as he entered the common room, followed closely by Hermione, Ginny, and Harry.
"Hello Sir Nicholas. Did you have a pleasant afternoon?" queried Hermione.
"Hi, Nick!" said Harry and Ginny together.
"It was well enough," I answered Hermione," And yours?"
"Very well," she answered, grinning at Ron.
I could not resist. I laughed.
"What is so funny," asked Ron.
"The past, and also the future."
Hermione smiled at me again. "So what did you do all day, Nicholas?"
"Revisited Christmases Past."
"Did you revisit anyone we know?" she asked, sitting down on the thick red carpet in front of the fire. The other three sat down expectantly next to her. Ron put his arm around Hermione again, reminding me very much of another young couple whose presence graced this very room not so long ago.
"Actually. . ."
A teenager with fiery hair ran giggling into the common room. She took a running leap, vaulted over the squashy crimson couch, and dashed upstairs. Another teenager with hair of the same blazing red ran after her, taking a detour around the couch. When he tried to chase her upstairs they collapsed under him and he slipped down onto a scarlet and gold rug, laughing the whole time.
"You bloody well did that on purpose, didn't you?"
"Language, Arthur," Molly teased before sliding down after him. She landed beside him, but she didn't get up immediately. She leaned over and gave him a long kiss. "I told you I'd give you your Christmas gift when you catch me. You haven't caught me. I caught you." She gave him a quick peck on the forehead before she stood up and ran off again.
He lay there and giggled helplessly for a moment before chasing after her.
"Sound like anyone you know?" They all grinned.
"Another year, a bit later. . . "
"Don't open them yet, " James said leading Lily upstairs. "Okaaaayyyyy. . . now!"
"Oh, James!" Lily had no way to describe it. It was magic. Actually it really was magic. He had taken her to the highest tower in the castle and had decorated it more beautifully than she had ever imagined possible.
"Oh, James, thank you!"
She turned to hug him and gasped. He was on his knees and grinning like mad. "Happy Christmas, Lily. Will you marry me?"
Harry grinned at me. "That sounds a tad familiar. Thanks, Nick."
As the group got up to leave, I smiled to myself. Maybe being a ghost isn't so horrible after all. I can hardly wait to tell their children about this Christmas!