The Houses Competition (or THC) Round 8
Story Type: Standard
House: Hufflepuff
Class: Muggle Studies:
Prompt: [Action] Building a snowman out of sand and [Event] Winter Holiday Celebration
Word Count: 2214 words
Alerts and notes: Bill and Fleur don't have any children yet in this fic because I was trying to focus on a reasonable number of characters so decided that since canon doesn't specify they're children were born later than the main trios. Nothing too heavy in this fic. Dobby's grave is visited and some children experience harmless cartoon peril.
Beta Love: Thanks to my team for beta-ing
The fire at Shell cottage crackled pleasantly as the wizards and witches inside rested after their Christmas dinner. Harry and Ginny, along with Ron and Hermione, and their children had joined the oldest Weasley brother for the holiday while Molly and Arthur visited Charlie in Romania. Hermione had had to pop out after dinner to deal with a minor emergency at the Ministry, but was expected back in a few hours.
On the carpet, James played with a toy broomstick he had unwrapped that morning while 3-year-olds Albus and Rose, along with 2-year old Lily and Hugo rested in the next room, worn out from an exciting Christmas morning. On the plush armchairs, Harry, Ron, and Ginny sat and watched James play.
Fleur and Bill walked into the room, carrying a steaming tray of coffee with a cup of hot cocoa for James, and a large pile of packages wrapped in brown paper, respectively.
"Mum sent an owl," Bill explained, "with Christmas packages for each of us. Poor thing looked like it could barely handle the weight."
"You think with all the grandchildren, she wouldn't have time to knit all of these," Ginny commented, grabbing her package from Bill as well as the one for James.
"She's got plenty of time, doesn't she? With all of us out of the house," Ron answered, "I've got no idea how she dealt with all seven of us at home. I can barely manage the two."
"She's such an easy baby though," Harry teased him as he stopped James from crashing his broom headlong into the fireplace. Ron rolled his eyes in response and tore open his package.
"Maroon again," he grimaced, "I swear she does it on purpose." Despite his complaint, he pulled the sweater over his head.
Harry and Ginny unwrapped their sweaters, this year in a hunter green and navy blue respectively, and pulled them on. Then, Ginny helped James loosen the knot on his and pull on a perfect miniature sweater complete with a little red and yellow hat.
In the next room, Harry heard the sounds of waking toddlers and stood to attend to them. He found Lily and Hugo were still sound asleep while Albus was standing in his cot. Upon seeing his father, he raised both arms in the air in the universal toddler symbol for "up." Harry obliged. In the next cot, he saw Rose stir.
"It looks like Rose is waking up too," he notified Ron, who stood to collect the girl.
"Why don't we go play outside?" Ginny suggested
"Yea!" shouted James. Albus clapped his hands excitedly.
After some acrobatics keeping the children inside while getting them bundled into winter gear and a minor tantrum from Albus, who did not want to wear a hat, the little family exited the cottage. Ron followed with Rose.
Corralling three children on a beach was, Harry decided, considerably harder than catching a flying snitch. Rose was crying because sand had gotten into her eyes and Albus seemed intent on throwing himself into the churning sea with no care in the world that the water was nearly freezing.
"Where's James?" Harry asked Ginny, trying to hide his exhaustion.
"I thought you had him."
Harry panicked for a second, then calmed himself. James wasn't by the water and he was old enough to know not to get too near the cliffs. He called out to Ron, who was comforting Rose, "Ron, come help me look for James!"
Ron scooped Rose into his arms and started to scan the island, but their search wasn't destined to last long. James came running down towards the house.
"Dad, Dad!" he shouted, "I found a cool rock. Come see!" He grabbed Harry's arm and started pulling. Sensing the excitement, Rose and Albus followed with Ron in close pursuit.
James led Harry to the edge of the garden where a familiar rock, only slightly worn by a few years of wind and water sat atop a well-maintained little grave.
"Dad, look! Somebody wrote something on the rock! Do you think it's buried treasure?"
Harry shook his head to clear it, "No James, it's not buried treasure. It's a gravestone. Remember–like the ones we saw when I showed you where I lived with your grandparents as a baby?"
"But this isn't a cemetery," James objected, "You can't bury somebody at a house."
"It was– complicated," Harry tried to explain. His children had grown up in a world that was warm and predictable. Evil and dark magic lived in the domain of storybooks for them. In their world, Santa Claus was more real than Voldemort. Harry gave Ron a pleading look.
Ron understood and knelt down to James's level, "Can you read what it says?"
James screwed up his face and tried to read, but he wasn't quite fluent yet.
"That's an H," he said, pointing at the first letter.
"Perfect!" praised Ron, giving the boy a high five. "It says "Here lies Dobby, a free elf."
Rose gave out a screech, "Elf?" she asked, voice wavering, "He should be with Santa! Daddy, get the rock off him!" She pulled at Ron's sleeve.
Since Ron was still kneeling with James, Harry, now a bit more composed, took charge of comforting Rose. He picked the little girl up in his arms.
"Dobby wasn't a Santa elf, Rosie," he explained, "he was a house-elf and he's right where he's supposed to be."
"House-elf?" Albus, who had until now been quiet in Ginny's arms, interrupted. "What's that?"
"A house-elf," Ron explained, "is a big-eared, short little creature that helps clean houses, cook food, and sometimes put Hogwarts's students in mortal peril."
Harry snorted but the kids looked confused.
"Here," Harry offered, "I'll show you."
He led the rest of the little party down to the beach and magicked himself a bucket that he used to wet some sand. He started to roll the sand into a ball and then passed it to James with instructions to continue as he helped James make a smaller sandball for the head. Once they were done, he placed the smaller sphere atop the larger. Ginny magicked up a flat edge and helped smooth the two into a lanky body with a big head. Ron grabbed two handfuls of wet sand and inelegantly plopped them on either end of the head, forcing Harry to try to flatten them into something that resembled ears. Finally, they added a nose, eyes, and mouth to their creation.
"So that's a house elf," Ginny explained to the kids.
"I want one!" shouted James.
"You can clean your own room," Harry chided with a smile. Then a thought occurred to him, and he sat down and removed his shoes and then his socks. The grainy sand was chilly in the December cold, but he took the sock and handed it to the sand-elf. Albus gave him a quizzical look.
"Dobby really liked socks. I gave him one when I was a little boy and I'm not sure he ever stopped wearing it."
"Dad Dad Dad!" James interrupted, "What other creatures did you meet at Hogwarts? Can you show us?"
"Oh we met all kinds of creatures," Ron interrupted. "Giants and centaurs. Poltergeists and pixies."
"Even some giant spiders," Harry contributed. Ron glared at him, but Rose shouted out, "Cool!"
"Can you show us?" James asked, pointing out the sand-elf.
"I don't know, it's awfully chilly out here, kiddo," Harry objected.
"Please, Dad! It's Christmas." James was wearing his best pleading expression.
"Oh, alright, then," Harry conceded, "but only because it's Christmas."
They split into three groups, with Ron and Rose working to build a pixie, Ginny and Albus constructing a giant, and Harry and James working on a centaur.
"Did you know your dad got to ride a centaur once?" Ron shouted from a pile of sand that looked as much like a rat as a pixie.
"Really?" James asked.
"I was eleven," Harry explained, "Centaurs won't hurt children, but they're not super friendly when it comes to adults." He and James had been able to roll out a long cylinder that could serve as a centaurs abdomen, but Harry was stuck on how to make legs.
"I wish Hermione was here," he asked Ron, "any idea when she's getting back?"
"Soon, I hope," Ron said. His pixie now looked like a ball of sand with a bunch of pointed sticks coming off at odd angles. Only Ginny and Albus, who together had rolled a truly spectacularly large ball of sand almost equal in size to Ginny herself, seemed to be succeeding with their sculpture.
As if on cue, Hermione apparated onto the beach. She handed out chocolate frog cards to the kids.
"I ran into Seamus; he wishes you all a Merry Christmas. Now, what are you all up to?"
Harry explained the events of the last half hour to Hermione and pointed to the Dobby structure. This caused her to squeal in delight and carefully put her own hat on top of the sculpture's head.
"Hey– now that you're here. Can I get some help?" Ron asked.
"What are you trying to make?" Hermione asked
"It's a pixie! I was just telling Rose about the time they got loose in our Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson."
"It looks like a Blast-Ended Skrewt."
"Well, you try to do a better job then!"
Hermione was, fortunately, a better artist than her husband and carefully crafted the pile of sand into a body, face, and set of wings. Rose helped decorate the wings by drawing on them with a stick and inserted two small twigs as antennas on the pixie's head.
"Suscitate mediocris," she said, and the pixie started to flap its wings and flutter about.
"That's fantastic, Hermione," Harry offered as the pixie began to try to lift the large sand club Ginny was helping Albus pat the sand down on for their giant. "Any chance you can help with the legs?"
Hermione examined the half-centaur. "Sand isn't going to be strong enough to hold that much weight. We'll have to strengthen it." She directed Harry and James to make four narrow cylinders of sand for the legs and then pointed at them and waved her wand in a neat circle.
"Vinculum harenae" Harry tried to lift the first one vertical. It was really heavy.
"What did you turn these into? Cement?"
Hermione rolled her eyes, "Try wingardium leviosa." She emphasized the a at the end of the word. Harry rolled his eyes but proffered a smile as he showed James how to pile up sand next to the legs to hold them in place. Then he levitated the abdomen and torso onto the legs with a little more help from Hermione to hold them in place.
Once he was satisfied the structure was stable, Harry retrieved James' forgotten broom and helped him hover up to carve the face. The result was a childish rendition of a smiley face that Bane would have been appalled by, but James seemed pretty happy with it.
"Do you want to ride it?" Harry asked James, who gave a big nod.
"Me too!" shouted Albus, who had now finished helping with his giant, which was now swinging its club ineffectually at Ron's circling pixie.
"I want to ride!" interjected Rose. So the adults situated all three children on the centaur's back and Hermione very carefully animated it. The creature looked around as if perplexed to find three children on its back and then reared onto its hind legs. James quickly wrapped his arms around his neck while Albus wrapped his around James and Rose wrapped hers around Albus. All three children managed to stay on. The centaur took off, galloping across the beach to giggles and shrieks of the children on its back. Hermione quickly froze it again and placed the children, ecstatic and unharmed, back on the ground.
"Again? I wanna go again!" asked Rose.
"Not today, sweetie." Then Hermione suggested, "Why don't we go inside and see what chocolate frog cards you got?"
Fortunately, the children agreed and proceeded inside.
"This is the best Christmas ever!" James declared.
Harry and Ron trailed the rest of the group. "Not a bad Christmas, eh?" Ron commented.
"Not bad at all," Harry replied, "When I was their age I was sleeping in a cupboard and getting used socks from the Dursleys."
"Last time I was here for Christmas was while you and Hermione were out looking for Horcruxes. Can't say it was super cheery." Ron said.
"I'm glad we're together this time. It's nice to have everybody around."
"You bet," said Ron. "Now hurry up. I still don't have a Ronald Weasley chocolate frog card. I have like five Harry Potters, but I don't need a card to see you when you and Ginny visit our place almost every other night."
"Here, try this one." Harry handed Ron a chocolate frog stored in his pocket and Ron tore it open. He popped the frog in his mouth and let out a muffled shriek when he saw the card. He showed it to Harry who recognized his friend's picture staring back at him. He clapped his friend on the back.
It was a very good Christmas indeed.