Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).
ooo
Mary Esmond found that the atmosphere in the waiting room had shifted decisively the next day.
The Black Widow was greeted cordially by some number of the other patients, who previously had sat at the other end of the room and ignored her. The father of the Red-Headed League spoke to her with a smile, and his wife nodded to her cordially, and when the Widow's son entered, his usual cronies were chaffing him about his new job. Apparently, it was novelty enough for him to be working, let alone working for … Muggles.
He was good-humored enough about it, and said something to Blaise, that Granger had expressed admiration of his acting.
Blaise's expression changed then. "Oh did she?"
All irony gone, well, his heart naked on his face.
Little Hypatia was even more talkative than before, for something in the atmosphere no longer constrained her, or she had reached the stage where her language development was taking off on its exponential curve. She gabbled at the other children, the little blond baby sitting on her silver-glowing mother's lap, and the little boy with the changeable hair.
Cousins, Addie told her confidentially, though she already knew that. Everyone in that whole world beyond the wall was cousin to everyone else.
The winter solstice was drawing nearer. The afternoon gave them a lacy-flaked, truly Dickensian snow. It was falling thick and fast when she left work, tickling her face with its cold and feathery touch. The thick snowflakes made woolly shadows in the lamplight as she and Addie walked to the cafe down the street, as if they had stepped into a hushed and magical world.
"So what are you doing for the holiday?" Addie asked. "For Yule or for Christmas." Both, apparently were celebrated in their world, though both with a sort of jolly indifference to metaphysics. Three hundred years later, some were chary yet of the Church holidays, because what had happened at the time of the burning.
Mary considered. "Well." She didn't know yet, because what had been her life before: waiting, inevitably, for Jackie to come home from rehearsal, for she had performed two years in a row in shows that ran the length of the holidays. A jolly night at the theater, for the holiday-makers. The cast parties were brilliant, the players ebullient with quips and cranks. She'd always liked Jackie's colleagues, but these last years there had been no invitations, for those social constellations broke up and re-formed with each production, and she'd never really belonged to those circles except as Jackie's spouse.
And then there had been the two years after, the years of widowhood, when she had spent the holidays at home with a nice glass of wine and a good book…
Jackie's sensible helpmeet always had been domestic after her fashion.
Though she did go in for the dashing types, didn't she? First an actor and now a warrior or policewoman, she wasn't sure exactly which, on leave for reasons of health, well, under mandated treatment for her war-related illness.
She considered the question. "I've never really done much for the holidays," she said. "Jackie was usually working."
Addie considered that. "Did you enjoy the visit, then?" Mary frowned. "To our world. The ceremony."
"It was quite interesting." Very like foreign travel, or maybe time travel, in one's own neighborhood.
"It's quite splendid this time of year," Addie said. "We could take the train…" She said. "Are you taking the holidays?"
"I might, then. A day or so."
"But you could take more."
She nodded. There were others, of course, and she had seniority.
"Well, then, do. I'd like to go on holiday myself. There's one of our villages in Scotland…"
"One of yours?"
"All witches and wizards. It's nothing like anything you've ever seen."
"No, I don't imagine it is." She smiled. "Well, it's a new year, or shortly to be. Why not?"
She felt an answering nod, from somewhere inside, as if Jackie were approving it, or maybe the voice inside her that always knew…
… The one that had been suppressed forcibly these three years and more.
Jackie Bones is dead, she thought, but I'm alive. And Addie might reproach herself, but like as not I'm alive because she did act.
For it had occurred to her on thinking about it recently that the assassin had blinked in and then Addie had returned fire and sent her signal, but had she not been so fast —
Well, no one knew about the worlds that hadn't come to pass. There might be a world in which the war had been won by the other side. She likely wouldn't be alive at all, in that case. Addie wouldn't talk about the war, because it was a sore subject with her…
… And she preferred it that way, because after all Addie was a patient at her own clinic, and that was already difficult or awkward enough, even if she weren't on Mary's roster.
"Yule, then," Addie said, with a smile that had something in it of the child she might have been, some glow of firelight and magical snow. They turned under the lamplight, and the shadows of the huge lacy flakes floated across Addie's features.
ooo
On Addie's instructions, Mary packed her things for a three days' stay. Addie was delighting in the secrecy of it all, Mary could tell. "Meet me at King's Cross station," she had said, with a conspiratorial smile. "At platform Nine and Three-Quarters."
Mary raised an eyebrow. "So… three quarters of the way between stations Nine and Ten."
Addie nodded. "That's why it's numbered like that."
Mary shrugged. "Very well then."
"Oh don't be such a Muggle."
"That can't be helped, if you're going to keep company with Muggles." She laughed; the word that sounded ugly the first time she heard it had a rather different sound in Addie's voice lately.
Good sport that she was, she did show up exactly as instructed, though she felt awkward standing on the platform exactly where no train was going to come to a stop…
And then there was Addie, in a long eccentric cloak, valise in hand—
"Come on! We'll be late." She took Mary's hand in hers, and to her astonishment took a dead run at the wall —
— Which unexpectedly gave way, as if it had turned to smoke.
On the platform, under arched old-fashioned Victorian brick, in Olympian clouds of steam, stood an old-fashioned locomotive. They ran for the passenger carriages, and Addie leapt aboard, and reached a hand to swing Mary up.
Addie selected a compartment, and settled herself, unwrapping her cloak and flicking her wand to adjust the temperature; Mary found herself swathed in comforting warmth.
Out of one pocket in the cloak came a little package that unfolded itself as if by magic — no, by magic — into a fully packed picnic basket, from which Addie produced a samovar and a set of teacups, a marvelous profusion of snacks, savory and sweet both. Smoked fish, a wonderfully warm and crusty slice of French baguette, cheese —
—And the oddest chocolate confection, that looked like —
— And behaved like —
Live frogs.
Mary blinked. No, more things in heaven and earth, but surely Horatio hadn't been thinking of chocolate frogs.
And speaking of Horatio, she had in her drawer at home a note from Blaise Zabini, who had written her with the news that he'd be playing that role in an amateur production in the spring, having successfully negotiated his first audition.
The snow whirled down outside the windows of the train, thickening into a blizzard of stars. They cuddled into the warmth of the compartment, and except for the personnel of the train, no one disturbed them.
Usually, Addie explained, it wasn't so quiet, but the students were on holiday, and the usual traffic had dwindled to the local townsfolk hurrying home in advance of the holiday.
ooo
And in the meantime, she was happily warm, the best sort of warmth, with the snow outside the window, looking quite picturesquely chilly in the blue twilight as the train chugged equally as picturesquely toward Scotland; the compartment, in its warm reds and golds, made a cozy contrast, as if the Spirit of Christmas Past had worked his own jolly way on that, because off stage, even in childhood, she could remember no holiday like this. Her holiday life with Jackie had been a whirl of parties, yes, and laughter and song, but nothing so old fashioned and perfectly splendid—
Well, she knew that Dickens had written those lovely holidays on the dark scrim of the Industrial Revolution, but that didn't mean that their glow was any less.
"A post-war Christmas," Mary said aloud.
"Yes," Addie said, "We shall never be again as we were." Smiled in a sort of valedictory way, and squeezed Mary's hand.
For some reason, Addie loved that line from Wings of the Dove. They'd watched the film on videotape at Mary's apartment—yet more Muggle wonders—though for some reason Addie had flinched a bit at the sight of the dark and beautiful film actor who played Kate Croy.
A fleeting resemblance, she explained it, to a very unpleasant person from the war. Nothing personal.
There were a great many unpleasant people and things in the war, Mary agreed, sight unseen. One could say that about anyone's war, in any century, though certainly the wizards gave it an atavistic twist. She couldn't now look at Granger and Longbottom and their friends without remembering them in chain-mail and tabards, and wondering not only what they'd done in the war, but what it had looked like.
ooo
Draco looked out at the frozen lawn of the Manor, which was being lost in the whirl of snow. His mother had insisted on the invitation—Christmas Eve it was—as soon as she returned from her Azkaban visit, there would be drinks, she'd see to that, and he was to fetch the Grangers from London. Drinks and a nice selection of hot savories, yes, and there'd be sweets; she had gone down Honeydukes that very afternoon to see to it.
She'd startled, well, she told him, to see that nice nurse from the clinic, Mary her name was.
"In Honeydukes," Draco had repeated, just to be sure that he'd heard right.
"In Honeydukes," his mother repeated. "Her friend was buying her sweets." Approving, that smile. "And mind you, don't eat all of them while I'm gone."
As if he were ten years old and not almost twice that.
She saw that look, of course, and kissed him on the forehead, as if to say, you'll always be my little boy, and smoothed his hair, before walking down the grand staircase to meet her Auror escort.
Since the ritual at the ministry, his mother had been a great deal more affectionate.
He sighed, and paced the marble gallery that overlooked the formal gardens. Here he had sat with Granger in the summer, and she had looked at his toys.
His hands were empty, with Hypatia gone.
He went into the depths of the house to bring out the best of his toys. Hypatia loved them, and it would be a nice surprise for her to play with them again, though she was too young of course to understand the holiday. He would give some number of them to her when she was old enough, the ones that were fitting… well, that would depend upon whether she turned out a witch or not.
Something would have to be done about the Manor's wards, he knew, some time before her third birthday, because he did not like the thought of her being exiled from this place. He would have to have a word with his mother about that.
He set out the chess set, in all its antique glory, the caliph and his grand vizier facing their counterparts across the board. For the Queen had once been the Grand Vizier, and… well, in this house, she still was.
He sighed, remembering as he did this time of year, both better Yuletides and worse.
No, he did not want to remember the worse, and the better, well, they seemed to be warm with the gloating of a child with many presents. He did remember that odd hollow feeling of coming to the end of the presents in all their array, and somehow the thrill of possession was not quite what he had anticipated—well, and then there was a turn of mind, where he resolved to play with those toys he had, and to turn his attention away from the ones that he still wanted. For there was always more that one could want, a spangled array of possible playthings that stretched across the sky like the very Milky Way…
… Though once he was older there were the presents that were means to an end, such as that marvelous broom, the Nimbus, yes, he still had that about the premises, didn't he? Yes, a wonderful thing, and he went to his room to find it out among the old school trunks —
He averted his eyes from those. He had left off being a schoolboy quite some time before. Some time there would be the NEWTs and he would have to study, though he had no idea any more what it would be he would study. A generalists's training then; he wouldn't qualify as an Auror no matter how many NEWTs he collected, and truth to tell he'd never had the inclination. Nor for Healing either, though he had certainly a great deal more respect for that line than he'd had. An old-fashioned wizard, then, a generalist in the mystic arts, and perhaps he might travel to Paris some time, like his sister's namesake, and study alchemy; that was practical and the Muggles had always patronized that art most generously. It wasn't until after the time of John Dee that it had fallen from favor in England, and fallen from the syllabus of Hogwarts.
He sighed. There had been a time when one could have gone to study with the noted Nicolas Flamel. All things perished and all things passed away; Flamel and his wife had died at a ripe old age when he was only in his first year at Hogwarts.
Household charms, that was a good bit of it, and perhaps a bit of fortifications on the old model; the Grangers might like a bit of that, though really their daughter had done a bit in that line and it didn't do to poach on her turf. Household charms, then, and perhaps something in the line of alchemy, and whatever might help that mysterious business of theirs — though he'd understood that they did not care for the notion of magical enhancements. He remembered William's quip about Hermione practicing orthodontia without a license —
— To cover up the greater matter of what else she'd practiced without a license. He'd overheard just enough of a conversation the other day —
Memory charms.
He shuddered. Not Obliviate but something altogether more complex.
No. He didn't want to think about that just now. Granger — Hermione — was talented enough, and in scary ways. Presently she was looking at her eternal timetables and considering the choices laid before her: a defense architect and occult engineer, as a journeyman under Madam Longbottom; a Healer, studying with the redoubtable Derwent; or some Muggle business involving spell-work with money, if he understood aright.
ooo
Time weighted heavy on his hands. Hypatia had gone with his mother, and the soundless snow muffled the world outside. Then as he settled into his old school books, on the little side table to the side of the marvelous array of toys, time ceased to weigh anything at all, as he took a slow turn, as on a moonlit broom ride, over the long curves of the future, and it began to show light.
He looked up, realizing that his mother had returned. His books lay open on the table, and he could concentrate, had concentrated, well enough for hours to have passed.
She stood in the snowlight, as the flames of the candelabra sprang to light in the grand reception hall, Hypatia in her arms, bright and alert.
"It's time," she said.
He gathered his cloak and wand, and walked outside to the snow-bound terrace to Apparate to suburban London.
ooo
There were drinks, a great flaming punch bowl on the old fashioned model, and savories; there were fairy lights, when he had returned, and from the depths of the house, music that might be played by a ghostly orchestra.
His mother smiled, gorgeous as candlelight lit the lamp of her face to rose and flame.
The Grangers and their Court Wizard exchanged pleasantries; he stood there with them, and savored the punch — firewhiskey in the base, and a symphony of fruit over that, no note easily identifiable, spices adding to the heat — yes, this time for the pleasure of the flavor and the warmth, and not to blind his senses or summon false courage.
Granger-the-younger, Hermione, was there, her wild mane curling from the snow that had dampened it, and Madam Granger, who smiled at him and then at the array of toys.
"What marvelous things," she said. "It must have been lovely to grow up a wizard child."
There was that little pang on her daughter's face, and then a sort of melancholy smile.
What he had not been bold enough to do the summer —
"We missed the chance to be children," he said.
She nodded.
"But the toys are still here."
They went to play with them.
As if time could be turned back, which it couldn't, but somehow that snow seemed to bestow an obscure and innocent light on what had passed before. The light of the candles blessed his books and notes, spread out on the little desk; that ruddy light picked out the charioscuro of the wizarding chess set, on which the janissaries waved their scimitars, and the great elephant cavalry rumbled forebodingly from the corners of the board.
He sighed. It was not a night for war.
Instead, they played Quidditch, with his two sets of players, for Ireland and for Bulgaria.
She was a disaster on a broom, but playing the game at a distance — well, it was clear that she could play like a strategist, as if it were merely airborne chess —
And she'd probably learned a thing or two from Weasley in her time.
ooo
His mother fetched them. "Come, Draco." He shook his head, but Granger put the toys down. "We're walking in the formal gardens."
"In the snow?" he might have asked, did he not see the look on her face, carven and solemn.
ooo
In the blue snowlit gloom, the white rosebushes slumbered under a pall of fluffy white, simulacra of the blooms that would grace them in the spring.
In the white and falling snow, in the starry wand-light of his mother's Lumos, he watched as she conjured the markers.
One, two, three: the Squibs, and their names.
Two Dracos and an Andromeda.
Not Hypatia, he reminded himself, for Hypatia had been of the Malfoy line, who had studied at the University of Paris in the fourteenth century, an alchemist in the age of the cathedrals and the crusades; she had learned her trade under a male Glamour when the boundary between the Muggle and the magical world was thin as the surface of a mirror.
His sister's name was a concession to his father, a last wish, as it were. All the names before that belonged to the Black line.
And now…
The other two miniature white marble obelisks were unmarked except for dates, for those children had not lived long enough to be named.
Three Squibs, one stillborn, and one who lived four hours and had seven fingers on each hand.
ooo
Mary and Addie fell asleep under fluffy covers in the warm embrace of a featherbed, and the snow collected on the sill outside the mullioned window-pane. The snow fell through the night.
At dawn, Mary woke to a soft rosy light, diffused through the falling snow that had thinned enough to allow the pearlescent sunrise to show.
Addie turned to her, and whispered, "We don't have to get up."
She said, "Merry Christmas."
"So it is," Addie said, pulling the covers over them and flicking her wand a bit to dispel the early-morning chill. "Would you be ready to celebrate?"
Mary smiled.
And then they did, in the hush of dawn in a magical village hundreds of miles from her real life, and years from the war.
They would never again be what they were, but had at least the satisfaction of being what they were now.
ooo
Author's Note: The adaptation of Wings of the Dove is the 1997 film version, featuring Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix from the Harry Potter films) in the role of Kate Croy.