Glissade: to perform a sliding or gliding step.
December 24, 2020
With a final flourish of Ginny's wand, the last roll of garland twined itself around the Burrow's battered wooden banister, knotted in place with a large, velvet bow that wouldn't have been caught dead in Ginny's house but which her mother liked.
"Woah," Scorpius murmured as little candles burst into light and silver baubles shimmered into existence all along it.
"Oi, watch the ladder," Albus reminded him, wobbling dangerously as he strung tinsel along the curtain rods. Scorpius hastily returned his attention to the precarious, ancient wooden ladder they'd found in Al's granddad's toolshed.
"Careful," Ginny warned glancing over at them. She flicked her wand again and the tinsel flew out of Al's hand and looped itself along the rod.
"No fair," Albus said indignantly as his mother reached up to help him down.
"I thought Dad told you to leave the high stuff to us."
"But that's the cool stuff."
"Yeah, yeah, anything to get a few feet off the ground, eh?" she pushed her fingers though his hair affectionately. "Well we're nearly done and Gran'll probably have biscuits waiting. They really appreciate you helping out," she added to both of them.
"Gin! Wanna come help me with this?" came Harry's muffled, breathless voice from the back garden.
"Twenty-one years to the day since we got engaged back there and he still can't manage on his own for ten minutes," she muttered, hurrying through the kitchen.
"What're they doing?" Scropius inquired curiously. He had never spent Christmas Eve with Al's family before. Last year he'd come for Christmas tea and thought that was chaotic, but that was nothing to the run-up.
"Trying to catch a gnome for the tree," Albus explained as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
"The tree –?"
Al smirked. "Angel on top's always a gnome, stunned and stuffed in a fluffy pink tutu. Family tradition."
"And your aunt, head of the mistreatment of magical creatures committee, is okay with that?"
Albus pressed a finger to his lips. "It's kind of a secret. Not even Gran knows."
"Anyone ever tell you your family's mad?"
Albus laughed. "You only know the half of it. I better go help out. You know, they're not as young and spry as they used to be. The folks might sprain a hip. Then we'll be done and we can meet Rose and Hugo for sledding."
He ran off toward the back garden, leaving Scorpius on his own in the cramped sitting room. Feeling suddenly awkward, Scorpius shoved his hands in his pockets and wondered over to the stairs to get a better look at the decorations. His mother festooned the manor with all kinds of lavish ornaments and at least a dozen freshly cut trees, but they were all antique, traditional, magical ornaments that were probably bought to show off the family gold in the eighteenth century. Scorpius liked the bright, simple, homemade ornaments that filled the Burrow.
He idly turned to examine the pictures that lined the zigzagging staircase, noticing that they seemed to have multiplied since he was last here. Usually Molly Weasley kept a procession of baby pictures hanging above updated photos of each of her grandchildren, wedding pictures for each of her married children, and a few faded old snapshots of people Scorpius didn't recognize or dare to ask about. But now photos ran like a timeline up the stairs.
The first place was an empty frame marked with tomorrow's date in gold numbers along the bottom, but snapshots had already been stuck around it. The one on the right was of Al and his sister decorating their tree. Teddy sprawled on the floor at the bottom of the picture, levitating the star up to the top, and James leaned against his knees, eating gingerbread. A date in the corner branded it as only a few days old. The next shot was of Rose and Hugo arranged back to back in front of their fireplace, a book titled A Christmas Carol open on Rose's knee. The next one showed Roxanne and Fred dressed in suits of armor, fencing in front of the shop with spears of candy cane. Then it was Molly and Lucy in matching, dark blue dress robes, sitting stiffly on a bench in their front hall. And on the far left was a close-up of Victoire, Dominique, and Louis, all squeezed together so their faces fit in the frame, all laughing.
Christmas cards, Scorpius realized. He stepped up a step to look at the next set. The big frame was filled with the group photo they'd taken the last year, December 25, 2019 shining on the bottom edge of the frame. Scorpius found himself in the bottom corner, squeezed in between Al and Rose. The sofa had been elongated, an armchair shoved in for Teddy and Victoire to share, and the rest all scrunched down in front or crammed in behind. There were five more snapshots stuck along the top of the frame. The Potters and Teddy on a toboggan, Rose and Hugo making Christmas cookies, Fred and Roxanne as Christmas cookies. Molly and Lucy were in the exact same pose as the year before except in dark green. Victoire, Dominique, and Louis were all stretched out on the beach in their picture, making snow angels in the sand on what was clearly a blazing summer day.
Scorpius went up another step to find nearly the same picture. The big group photo was shuffled around a bit, and he wasn't in it. The snapshots were of different scenes (except for Molly and Lucy, who were just in red rather than green and looking slightly younger). The next set of pictures was more or less the same. Scorpius slowly glided back through the years, each arrangement more or less the same as the ones next to it, but steadily things changed. Children got smaller, gray hair faded back to vivid red, lines smoothed out.
Scorpius grinned at the picture labeled 2008. Al must've been two, laughing madly as he stood up on his father's knee, clinging to his neck to stay upright. Rose had a lion's mane of red curls and was dressed in snowman pajamas. Lily was just a chubby baby cradled in her grandmother's lap and Ginny was pinning James's arms to his side in a hug, which he did not seem thrilled about. In the next picture, Lily had vanished completely and Ginny rested a plate of Christmas cake and what looked like pickles on a protuberant belly.
The snapshots began changing, too. Harry and Ginny each held a son, Teddy between them, round-faced and gap-toothed with his hair striped red and green. Percy's wife joined their daughters on the bench. Children began disappearing like raindrops sliding down a window. In 2007, Hugo was nothing more than an indistinct bundle, and in 2006, he and Roxanne had both gone, and Audrey and Lucy, a tiny, winkled newborn, were added in a separate polaroid stuck in the corner. In 2005, she, Rose, and Albus were gone, too, and in 2004 the picture was a lot less crowded.
In 2003, Ron and Hermione's snapshot was a wedding picture, Harry and Ginny's was a filmstrip from what Scorpius was pretty sure from his Muggle Studdies class was called a photo booth. By now he'd reached the second landing. Everyone fit on or behind the sofa without it being elongated. They were… so much younger. Bill and Fleur, each balancing a daughter on their laps, were the only ones who looked like they could really be parents. George and Angelina must have just been engaged because Angelina was flaunting a glittering ring in their snapshot, and George, kissing her neck, didn't have a ring at all.
They looked… well, like kids. It was bizarre.
Scorpius took another gliding step, watching as Dominique and Molly quickly disappeared. Teddy and Victoire, the only two children left, stuck out like the very first buds of spring in a flower patch. Angelina dropped from the snapshot, replaced by Charlie, who had an arm flung around a rather tipsy-looking George. Scorpius found her on the very edge of the big picture, but by the next one, she'd vanished completely. Gone as if she'd never been dreamed there in the first place.
The pictures had changed, Scorpius thought, leaning forward to look more closely. The smiles were less genuine, but it wasn't the cheesy quality of posed pictures, it was an almost pained sort of forced joy. There were obvious gaps in the group clustered together, but it wasn't the children or Audrey and Angelina who were missing. The house was decorated and everyone wore knitted jumpers, but it didn't look like a holiday picture anymore.
Scorpius paused in front of 1998. Mrs. Weasley looked like she'd been crying. Harry was hunched at one end of the sofa in between Ron and Hermione, looking startlingly young, pale, and almost ill. Ginny was at the other end, tucked under Charlie's arm. Andromeda, clutching Teddy to her chest, was half-hidden in shadow at the very edge of the picture as if she wasn't sure she should be in it. Even though she was twenty-two years younger in it, she looked much older to Scorpius. There were no snapshots, and George was entirely absent.
The next set of photos was almost as grim. There was no big group shot for 1997. Instead, three snapshots filled the big frame. One showed George and a boy identical to him in every way except that he had two ears on either side of Ginny, who was wearing a Santa hat. Their smiles looked as forced as before. Another photo was of Bill and Fleur waving from the door of Shell Cottage, which was glittering with frost. The last one had Charlie standing in a field with a great dragon curled up behind him, toasting the camera with a foaming mug of butterbeer and wearing a Weasley jumper with a fat C knitted on the front. Percy, Ron, Harry, and Hermione were not represented at all.
A transition had been made. There were once more children in these photos, but they were not the children Scorpius was used to taking center stage. Bill lost his scars, George gained his ear and Scorpius stopped being able to tell exactly which one he was. People came and went and the photos wavered from big group pictures to a collage of snapshots, the darkness lifting the further form 1998 he got. By the middle of the next staircase, even Harry, now smaller and more innocent-looking than Scorpius had believed he could be, disappeared and it was just the seven Weasleys.
They were arranged in various winter scenes up another staircase, just like Al and his cousins three floor below. Each year they got smaller and younger until they, too, started disappearing, popping out of existence like popcorn in reverse. At the top of the last staircase it was 1975. Bill and Charlie grinned toothily, sitting on the snow-covered garden fence. There was no weight of responsibility, no toddlers for them to wrangle or babies they had to hold. It was just the two f them, and even they were rapidly shrinking until Molly and Arthur joined them, almost unrecognizable with flaming hair and youthful energy, rolling on the floor with their sons.
Scorpius turned to face the last wall. There was one last picture there, a crowd of redheads all crammed together in faded and yellowing ink. Scorpius didn't recognize any of them. But stuck on the edge of the frame was a snapshot of two teenagers, no children in their laps or rings on their fingers. The only reason he knew they were Molly and Arthur in 1969 was because he could see their children and grandchildren in their faces. They were just a snapshot in someone else's family photo.
All of this, the fifty years of Christmases Scorpius had sloughed through had come from that snapshot. Turning to look back down the twisting staircases they lined, he felt slightly dizzy.
"Hey, there you are!' Al appeared around the corner and took the stairs two at a time. "Thought the ghoul might've gotten you."
He reached Scorpius and clapped him on the shoulder. He peered more closely at Scorpius's face. "Hey, what's up?"
"Nothing. Ready to go?"
"Yeah, Rosie'll give us an earful if we're much later."
They took off down the stairs, racing to the bottom and raising an almighty clamor on the creaky wood. But Scorpius slowed in front of the 2019 picture long enough to find himself edged into the corner. He ran a finger over his white-blond hair standing out so vividly among all the red and black. A part of someone else's picture. For now.
A/N: This is ridiculously long for this story. Merry Christmas!