On Christmas morning, I woke with a profound sense of loss.
The past few months had been fairly decent, despite the attacks and other problems that kept cropping up. After all, I was in a school and I was relatively safe. I was learning magic, and while that didn't give me the same sense of wonder that it gave Hermione, there was still a tiny part of me that was still excited every time I managed to do something new.
Keeping my mind off the things I'd lost had been my way of dealing with things for years. I'd tried not to think about Mom, about the Undersiders, about Dad...even about Emma, who had meant something to me once.
When I'd been trying to save the universe, it hadn't been that hard. I'd told myself that I'd worry about having a life once there was a life to have. Nothing mattered but saving humanity.
But now?
In all important respects I was retired. Nothing I would ever do would be as important as the fight against Scion, and I wouldn't want it to be. This fight against Voldemort was just a regional conflict, and even if he managed to take over the world, it was just one world among an effective infinity of worlds.
On a day like today, I couldn't help but think about my mother. Mom would have loved Hogwarts; she'd been a dreamer; she'd taught English literature in part because she'd loved fantasy.
While I'd been a child, she'd made sure that I'd been raised on fantasy. She'd read to me when I was little; Narnia had been my introduction to fantasy. Later she'd weaned me on Spenser's Fairie Queen, on Tolkien, on Peter Pan, Susan Cooper.
I'd stopped reading fantasy when she died. All of that wonder and magic had just blown away and left nothing but ashes and bitterness when she died.
Hogwarts... she would have loved the ghosts, the house elves, the magical paintings. Doing real magic would have sent her over the moon. Even if she'd simply sent me here, it would have made her proud of me.
That was a thought that I never let myself entertain. Would she have been proud of me? Of the choices I'd had to make, of the choices I was still making?
I hurt people, and being overly bothered by it stopped being an issue a long time ago. There were reasons for that, of course, ones that I considered good ones, but not everyone would agree.
When I was in the Wards, life had been lonely, but at least I'd seen Dad for the holidays. It had made the pain a little easier to bear, knowing that I had someone.
This Christmas was different.
This was the first time I was completely alone. Before, even if I was on missions, I'd at least been able to call my father. Now I didn't even know if he was dead. I hadn't wanted to know, because this way I could at least assume he was alive out there.
Slowly I opened my eyes.
As I sat up, I felt a sudden chill go down my spine. At the base of my bed were a pile of boxes wrapped up in bright and cheerful paper.
How had someone gotten that close to me while I slept? Even with my bugs as sluggish as they had been lately, I shouldn't have been surprised like that. It could have been the house elves; they were stealthy enough that they were sometimes able to evade me even when I was awake unless I was paying attention.
How stupid did they think I was? This had to be a trap. There could be anything in those boxes; explosives, cursed items, anything at all.
The safest thing would be to burn them, but that wouldn't be smart in the dungeons. There were probably magical means of ventilation, but I couldn't take the risk. The last thing I needed was to get a reputation for having tried to burn down Hogwarts. I'd have to take them and put them in the fire somewhere higher up.
I slipped into my robes, keeping a cautious eye on the packages, and I pulled out my wand.
Levitating the entire mass wasn't a problem, and a moment later I made my way down the stairs, the packages in front of me.
Snape was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
"I see that you haven't opened your gifts," he said. He didn't look surprised. Despite the early hour he was completely dressed and looked fresh as a daisy. Having an adult's need for sleep must be nice.
Why was he here, of all places on Christmas morning. Didn't he have somewhere else to be?
"Traps, you mean," I muttered. "Maybe you can burn these for me."
I let the gifts drop to the floor in front of him. He looked down at them for a moment, but he did not step back. I certainly would have.
"You aren't even interested in who might have deigned to send you gifts?" he asked.
I snorted. "Nobody would bother sending me anything. Not this year."
"You might be surprised," he said. "I have taken the liberty of checking every one of your gifts a minimum of three times using every spell I could find. Only one turned out to be cursed, and I have taken that to the aurors to be dealt with."
I glanced down at the presents and frowned.
"Who would have?"
I checked the packages with my bugs. Hermione, Millie, Tracey...Neville. Strangely enough, I had a package from a woman named Molly Weasley. Since I knew every Weasley in the castle, I had to assume that she was a relative of some sort. There was even small packages from Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.
There was a package from Alice Longbottom, and at the bottom of the pile was a package from Snape himself.
"This one is from you?" I asked. For some reason I felt like it was hard to swallow.
He nodded.
With a gesture of my wand, I summoned it to me, and I sat down on the armchair closest to the fire. I carefully opened the package.
"A mirror?" I asked. It was a large mirror, the kind meant to be hung on the wall. It was plain and utilitarian.
I frowned as I looked into it and saw only shadowy shapes. There was a brown haired man in his early thirties. He was staring at me as though he wanted to kill me. Behind him stood a man with a face that was the color of bleached bone. He didn't have a nose and his eyes were red.
"It is a magical mirror," he said. "It is called a Foe-Glass. It shows the enemies of the possessor. The closer they are to you, the more clear the image becomes."
I stared at him.
"This is... too much..."
"It was my hope that you would realize that not everyone is your enemy," he said. "Although if they are close enough that you can see the whites of their eyes, it is likely that they are right behind you."
Snape wasn't in the mirror, but there was a large crowd of indistinct shapes that indicated that I had more enemies than I had thought. I'd assumed that most Wizards wouldn't really care that much about me. Maybe I was wrong.
"How does every Wizard in the world not have one of these?" I asked. "Are they expensive?"
"This one cost me nothing," he said. "I managed to capture it in a raid during the last war. It is one of several."
I looked down at the mirror, which I'd leaned against the chair. It obviously hadn't helped its previous owner that much, and I had to wonder what side of the war its owner had been on.
Still, it wasn't the kind of gift I could possibly afford to turn down.
"Thank you," I said, and for once I meant it.
"It is not infallible," he warned. "There are ways to fool it, and even if it tells you who your enemies are, it will not tell you from which direction they are coming."
"I understand," I said. "But... there isn't anything you could have gotten me that would have been better than this. I... I didn't get you anything."
He shrugged.
"The best gift you can give me is to avoid creating so much mayhem over the next year. If this helps, then I will consider it money well spent."
But he didn't spend any money...
He turned. "Finish up with your gifts. Breakfast will be an hour late this morning."
It had been a long time since I'd been excited about a gift, but this was something I could actually use.
As soon as Snape left, I tore into my other gifts.
Hermione had gotten me a book, of course. She'd gotten me "Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed." Flipping through the book, I found myself interested in spite of myself. There was a spell for scalping people, for turning their tongues into horns, for giving them fiery hot breath.
There might be things here I could use.
Millie had gotten me socks.
That made me snicker a little. I'd been struggling with a lack of socks all semester; scourgify apparently would get blood out, but tended to wear holes in socks and reparo only went so far.
These were warm socks too, of a nice quality. Maybe she was just tired of seeing my toes peeking out.
Tracey had gotten me underwear. None of them had Armsmaster, or any kind of designs on them, but these too were quality work and there were enough of them to get me through two weeks. They even had my name on them.
Molly Weasley had knitted me a sweater.. It was a beautiful color of emerald green, with the letter T embroidered on the front in silver. Those were Slytherin colors, and after a moment I slipped it on. It was marvelously warm and comfortable.
There was a letter accompanying it.
"Miss Hebert... you have returned my aunt to me, and my family will always be grateful to you. Consider yourself one of us, and should you ever need anything, ask one of my boys."
That was it.
Harry Potter had sent me some chocolate frogs.
Draco had sent me a wizarding chess set. Was this a gift from him, or actually from his father, and was he trying to tell me something by it?
Checking my Foe-glass I didn't see Malfoy on there, although that might have been because it was a small mirror, and from the look of it I had a lot of foes. It was possible that he was somewhere in the back.
Maybe it was a message if some kind. Was it a warning or an invitation? It was possible that I could go over and over the possibilities and never come up with an answer.
I set it aside for the moment, vowing to reflect on it more in the future.
That left only the packages from the Longbottoms. First was Neville.
Opening his package, I frowned.
"Another mirror?" I asked.
This one was much more ornate than the one that Snape had given me. That one had been a rather no-nonsense kind of mirror, bare bones as was appropriate for someone like Snape. This one was something else. It was gilded and looked like it was worth a fair bit. It was much smaller too; this one was the size of my palm.
I opened the mirror, and I blinked.
Hermione was staring back at me.
"It took you long enough to wake up!" I heard her voice say.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Neville got you a two way mirror!" she said. "He lent me the other one so you could see how it worked!"
A two way mirror... there were possibilities here.
The image on the mirror shifted suddenly. I was suddenly staring at a beautiful room with one wall that was made of glass. Outside there was a beautiful azure sea. It was a beautiful scene.
"We're not having a traditional white Christmas this year," Hermione said. "But we're doing something different."
The scene jostled and moved.
"This is my Mom and Dad," Hermione said.
Her parents didn't look that much like her. Their hair was rather normal, and their teeth looked perfect. Yet there was a sense of intelligence in the way they held themselves, and in the way they they looked at me.
"Hello Taylor," the woman said. "We understand that you've been good to our daughter."
"Some of the things we've been hearing..." the man started.
"It's Christmas," the woman interrupted, "And Taylor is all by herself. Hermione was worried about you, you know, She was worried that you'd burn all your presents and spend the whole holiday brooding like Batman."
"She makes you sound like Batman," her father muttered. "Are you sure your last name isn't Wayne?"
If my Dad wasn't such a nerd, I wouldn't have gotten the reference. The old style of comic books had gone out of style when real parahumans had come on the scene, but my Dad had made me see some of the old movies from Earth Aleph.
I was actually flattered.
"Well, dungeons are a little like caves," I said. "And I like to fight the good fight. I don't have a utility belt, though."
"Just a magic bum bag," Hermione said. "Like you think I didn't notice. You pull more stuff out of there than can actually fit inside."
"Sounds like Batman," her dad said. "My mates always wondered if he had half his equipment shoved up his..."
"Dad!" Hermione said. Her face turned beet red.
He grinned. "I was going to say cape. What did you think I was going to say?"
"Annnyway," Hermione said, "I knew you were going to be there all alone, and I thought you might like to see a little of our Christmas. We took your advice, and we're doing a Mediterranean trip."
She spun the mirror again, and I could see that there was a tiny Christmas tree on a table in the corner, with a large stack of gifts underneath it.
"I'll give you your gift when you get back," I said. "I really appreciate the book. It's really cool."
"It's no two way mirror though," Hermione said. "I'm kind of jealous. Magic for Christmas...what could be better?"
"Is it OK for you to be using this?" I asked. "Won't it violate the Trace or whatever?"
"I asked Neville's grandmother," Hermione said. "And she said the Trace only detects new magic, not spells that are already in place. We still have to make sure that no muggle gets their hands on it; that really would get us in trouble."
"I really appreciate this," I said. For once, I actually meant it. "I...didn't expect anything this morning."
"You've helped people, Taylor," Hermione said. "And Wizards and Witches have long memories. You should enjoy it."
I nodded.
"It's getting close to breakfast. I'll talk to you this evening after dinner."
She smiled and it lit up her face. "We can talk about the gifts we got. I know about a lot of yours, of course, but there might be some I haven't heard about."
"How did you all keep this from me?" I asked.
It worried me; was it because of my reduced range because of the cold; I didn't have nearly enough bugs to cover as much space as I would like. Or was it because I'd been so focused on my enemies that I hadn't been paying attention to my friends?
She shrugged. "We passed notes and didn't talk about it much."
I forced myself to smile. "This means a lot. I was feeling a little down. Thanks for everything."
A moment later the mirror went dark, and then it was a normal mirror again.
The only thing that was left was a small envelope with Alice Longbottom's name on it. I carefully opened it, and I noticed that all there was was a single piece of paper.
The words on the paper were written in a childish scrawl; it looked as though the writer had struggled to complete each and every letter. The words weren't childish at all, though.
"Thank you for my life," was all it said.
There wasn't anything else in the envelope, but there didn't have to be.
It was funny that the thing that Mom would have been most proud of that I'd accomplished in this world had been the thing I'd put the least effort into. It had been a casual, off the cuff remark, and yet there were people benefiting from it that I would never meet.
As I gathered my gifts to put them in my room or my fanny pack, I found that my eyes burned. I must not have slept well the night before, probably because the House Elves had almost woken me.
My throat was tight too. I wondered if I might visit Pomfrey; it wouldn't be good to come down with something that Wizards could cure.
Still, as I headed for breakfast, that feeling of gloom that I'd woken up with had almost entirely dissipated, and I found myself actually looking forward to the day.