Since there had been so many witnesses to the confrontation with the fae warriors at Hogsmeade, there was no way to keep it out of the papers, and the Ministry had advised avoiding travel on the 21st lest the floo go down again. Fortunately, that was the day after the Hogwarts Express went home, so the exodus from school was only the usual madhouse. My friends wished me good luck before they left, and Mathilda said she'd owl with revised plans if the floo wasn't available.

Hogwarts was functionally empty once everyone left. With the combination of Black, dementors, and fae armies seen around the school, there were basically zero parents who thought their children would be safe there. Besides me, the only remaining students were two first-years whose parents hadn't gotten the memo, and poor Irving Cram, the fifth-year Slytherin prefect, whose family seemed to be going through a very rare pureblood divorce if the rumors were to be believed. He'd been sullen in the defense class I subbed for back in October, and he seemed even worse after being stranded at school for the holidays.

That left a very Order-centric lineup of professors in the building, however. I wasn't sure Dumbledore, McGonagall, or Flitwick had homes beyond the school. Hagrid definitely didn't. Remus also decided to stay (which was a large part of the reason why I was), but had managed to get permission for Tonks to spend a large part of the holidays at the school as "auror protection" and Moody tagged along as well. I suspected he didn't have much of an extended family to spend the holidays with, regardless. About the only adults in the building that I wasn't sure were in Dumbledore's secret cabal were Sprout, Filch, and Trelawny.

Moody took advantage of it: he had detailed plans for magical combat drills to prepare us all for battle with the various fae beings we suspected were in the sidhe army, as well as the sidhe themselves. The paranoid old auror clearly felt like he hadn't been vigilant enough about threats from fairy tales, and had a lot of ground to catch up on.

I hoped the Room of Requirement didn't have the ability to report this training back to Maeve, because I couldn't exactly articulate my reasons for why we shouldn't use it for the drills.

To no one's great surprise, the floo went out again on Tuesday night at midnight. After it was confirmed at breakfast on Wednesday, I took Bob up to the top of the astronomy tower and had him scan the Veil like he had the year previous.

"This is a much better view than Remus' house, Harry!" the skull-bound spirit enthused. "They're definitely using somewhere in Ireland as their gateway: the cracks seem to be radiating out from that direction."

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"Not too much worse than last year? They probably had less resistance to shove out whatever came through this time, but that meant there was less damage to the Veil. They may not be able to shatter it completely this way. Maybe if they started shoving big things through at all the raths."

"But what about small things?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely," he confirmed. "They probably have to work to get sidhe nobles into the world still, because they have more metaphysical scale and the Veil is specifically trying to keep them out. But some of the smaller stuff might have hardly any trouble slipping through."

"That's about what I figured," I grumbled. "Small" was relative, and probably included things like the wargs and leucrotta from the Nevernever. Luna had already warned me that she'd been seeing more of her tiny pests floating around the world in the last year. Hopefully the Department of Mysteries was finally taking fixing things seriously.

I still hadn't told the professors about Bob, because I was worried they'd want to take him from me for safety or study. But, fortunately, they were willing to give me a lot of leeway about where I was getting my information on the fae, and didn't need to know that I could talk about this because of my secret research spirit and not because I had somehow gotten around a geas.

"Veil isn't too much worse, apparently," I told the Order at our afternoon sparring session. "They may have broken it enough last year that it has more flexibility now. But they definitely brought in more heavy hitters last night, somewhere in Ireland."

"Probably one of those warded IRA strongpoints," Moody growled. "The muggle government wouldn't be having half as much problem dealing with them if they didn't have those boltholes. We couldn't even do much but confirm that magic was involved when they asked our lot for help. Probably more faerie assistance."

"There's a muggle connection to the Ministry?" I asked.

The old auror agreed, "Yep. Doesn't get used much, but there are a few people, like the muggle Prime Minister, who get to know. I bet old Fudge hated to admit that something magical was going on, but he had no idea what to do about it."

As promised, other than the disruption of the Veil, there was no immediate follow-up attack. I wondered whether the Wizengamot was actually planning to negotiate, or whether they were just going to wait for the fae to make their next move. I suspected the latter. At least they managed to get the floo fixed quickly this time, and long-distance apparition had never really gotten better. I wasn't totally sure how they'd managed to get long-distance portkeys working again. Maybe the use of an enchanted item provided enough power to jump over the cracks?

Soon, it was Christmas, and Dumbledore had once again had the elves redirect my presents to the foot of my bed. This year, my gifts to my friends had been part of a set: using the book Dumbledore had given me the year previous about protean enchantments, and an idea from Hermione (passed through the Lord of the Rings), I'd made everyone rings that could be used with a simple spell to send a short text message that would fill the inside of the band of everyone else's ring. They also could be activated to glow with the equivalent of a lighting charm, since it bothered me that a wand-user couldn't really cast anything else while using the focus as a flashlight. And I'd added another secret failsafe.

And, yes, mine was the one ring to rule them all. Mostly it just controlled when the rings were all connected vs. when my age group was kept on a different "network" than Hermione's. I'd also tried to give Mathilda's a few more enchantments, because it didn't hurt to pay special attention to one's gift for one's girlfriend.

We, of course, hadn't been super serious when I'd decided to do rings for everyone, and I wasn't sure how that would get interpreted.

My favorite present that I received was from Percy and Penny. They'd gotten the Mackintosh store in Manchester that we used to floo to Penny's house to custom make me a weatherproof canvas coat that would pass as either wizards' robes or a muggle long coat. The note indicated that the proprietor initially didn't believe the measurements they'd given him, until he remembered how tall I was from the few times I'd been to the shop. I already had big plans for the defensive enchanting I could do with a multipurpose piece of outerwear.

I finally received a highly-coveted Weasley family sweater, a big blue H on the brown background, and Mrs. Weasley had even gotten the arms long enough to fit my oversized frame. I wondered how many of these she'd wound up making, if everyone that went on the trip over the summer was family now.

The most surprising present was from Filch, the caretaker. In the last year, sometimes when I'd stayed almost to curfew just working in the enchanting lab by myself he'd joined me and just quietly sketched by the fire while I petted Mrs. Norris, his cat. I'd gradually realized that he was a bit of an artist, and part of his role in the castle was to clean and restore the magical paintings; it was something even a squib could do and, in fact, cleaning charms didn't work well on magical art. I was shocked to open the flat-wrapped present that was a foot wide by a foot and a half tall and find a very nice portrait of me deeply focused on my enchanting work. He must have been making reference sketches the whole time. The note indicated that he'd done all the proper prep so a wizard portrait-maker could easily perform the final steps to invest it with part of my personality and make a proper wizarding portrait that would animate and talk after I died.

That step was a little morbid, but it was certainly the most personal gift I'd ever received. After replacing his familiar-bond charm the previous year (with one that actually had some failsafes built in to try to safely dissipate feedback if Mrs. Norris got attacked again), this year I'd added a new minor item to his repertoire. Most of the school, but the twins, in particular, probably wouldn't like that I'd given him a modified sneakoscope that was designed as a compass that would point out nearby troublemakers.

I'd also gotten the usual trio of "mystery" gifts.

The book on transfiguration the year before had been a big clue that McGonagall was one of my unsigned gifters. I still wasn't sure why she was singling me out among the students for gifts, but she got me a book on handy skills for new bachelors as a big hint that I'd have to be out in the world on my own pretty soon. I'd gotten her a really cool cat statue from Egypt.

Dumbledore had gotten me a nice edition of a book of wizarding "fairy tales" that looked to be much closer to the original sources than the more recent books for children, and might genuinely have some insight into fae politics. After hearing how much he liked socks, I'd gotten him a set of very nice Egyptian cotton ones from a trader on our vacation.

Finally, my godmother's present was an actual, non-conjured tuxedo robe and another invitation to the Malfoy ball. I wondered if she had something new to inflict on me or if she'd just seen how much Mathilda enjoyed it the year before. Preempting her this time, I'd also sent a present care of Draco: a set of muggle books on tradecraft and disguise. I wasn't actually sure I wanted her to get better, but it was a fun in-joke after her poor attempts at blending as a servant at the last year's ball. And I wanted our gifting to stay balanced.

And, of course, I had another set of clothes: not quite a tuxedo, but a very nice set of robes appropriate for fancy meetings, job interviews, or nice restaurants. And it was clearly intended for all three, basically, since it was from Mathilda.

After all, I had a new doom hanging over my head: on Boxing Day, I was finally going to meet her parents.