"Do sit down; the turkey's getting stone cold."
Chapter Twelve: Holiday Greetings
Christmas Holiday arrived soon enough with the last few gruesome weeks of tests and a bounty of homework. It seemed that all the teachers wanted to get the last bit of teaching in before the break so they would be able to start off fresh with the coming of the new term. All of which was a disappointment for the students. Their brains could do with little filling as thoughts of snow and family filtered in and out of their heads when they should have been paying attention to their lectures.
Ultimately, James had agreed to stay behind with Sirius to the dissatisfaction of his mother who had wanted to take a small trip over to Germany to visit her sister who had moved there about three years before and was now "dying to see how grown up James was now." Remus had opted to go home over the break to James' frustration once he had realized the full moon fell shortly after Christmas itself making it so he wouldn't have the chance to see if Remus made a miraculous disappearance for the fourth time in a row.
Remus had half-heartedly invited the two boys to stay with him and his family for the holidays due to Sirius complaining about his own family and their decision not to let him come home for Christmas. Yet, Sirius was quick to decline the offer. He, overall, seemed to like the idea of having the castle mostly to himself.
Peter was returning to Portsmouth to spend the holiday with all of his family. Sirius had thought it strange that a family would actually want to see every relative at one time but Peter had insisted that it was actually quite enjoyable. Sirius only laughed at him saying that if his family got together, like Peter's, everyone would be either dead or disowned by Christmas morning.
Their dorm seemed very empty that night when darkness had fallen on the castle because both Remus and Peter had said their farewells and Happy Christmases that morning when they had left for the train. James and Sirius had retreated to their dorms for lack of better things to do and just held a discussion on nothing which lasted late into the night with only a few breaks for food and wizards chess.
Sirius managed to talk himself to sleep that night which wasn't the first time he'd done that in James' presence and probably wouldn't be the last. James, on the other hand, didn't remember falling asleep at all; only that he had awoken to Sirius jumping on his bed with a loud: "Wake up! Happy Christmas!"
James sat up groggily, rubbed his eyes and put his glasses on his face, very annoyed with his wakeful friend. "Happy Christmas to you too." James said once he was sure he was fully awake or at least as awake as one could ask for at eight in the morning, "How long have you been up?"
"Since six," Sirius stated with a smile. James instinctively looked over at Sirius' pile of presents that were waiting to be opened. James' face screwed up in thought and Sirius answered his unasked question. "Family rule: can't open presents unless everyone is up."
James chuckled. "Doesn't sound like a Black family rule."
"That's because it's a Potter rule. Didn't I tell you? Your parents adopted me."
"Great, now I really am stuck with you forever," James said rolling his eyes as he crawled out of bed and picked up his presents and moved over to Sirius' bed.
"So are you saying you'd rather I do things the Black way and open up all my presents, then open up all of yours, sift through your best ones, re-wrap all your remaining shitty ones, and continue to pretend that I didn't touch them?"
"No, the Potter way is much better."
"That's what I thought," Sirius said as he followed James over to his bed. He sat down and quickly picked up the package from James and opened it. He smiled as a small knife fell out of the small box it had been put in.
"It's a penknife... it'll open any door and untie any knot."
"That'll be useful," Sirius stated as he put it safely on his bed-stand.
James then opened Sirius' gift to him and was happy to see a book on his favorite team, a shirt, and a signed picture. "I'm just glad it's not orange." James said with a laugh.
"Shut it, you. At least I thought of you when I went to that bloody game where Puddlemere creamed the Chudley Cannons to my utter disappointment.”
"Wish I'd been there," James muttered, surveying his gift.
Sirius sighed and looked at him with a face that said simply “no, you don't.”
They continued on like this, opening gifts back and forth, and showing off what everyone had given them. Sirius was delighted to see that James' mum had restocked his candy stash with homemade fudges and other candies along with some new Zonko's objects, courtesy of Mr. Potter. James smiled as he opened his own present from his parents a new/old chessboard, it had belonged to his grandfather and according to the note his father had left him it was time that it belonged to James. Peter had also gone out of his way to give Sirius a new backpack that had a small patch on the front of it featuring a small paw print on it in black that was sewn on very poorly by Peter himself. The backpack also had a note pinned to the front just below the patch that apologized for the “dungbomb incident” and listed all of the backpacks features, which ultimately lead to James having to hear about this backpack’s special abilities for the next hour.
Peter's gift to James was thoughtful but definitely made James feel guilty as he opened the packaging and a book flopped out of it onto his lap. He looked at it as he read “The Vampire Vault” by Gaston Macaulay. He opened the pages, as Sirius droned on about his new backpack, and found a note carefully written on the inside cover page.
James-
I heard you talking to Chris in the library about dark creatures and that you were interested in them. He had suggested Vampires and you looked interested in it so I thought you'd like this. I read through a couple of pages and it actually is quite good. I hope you enjoy it.
~Peter
Hey, maybe you can prove if Professor Lamia is a vampire or not.
James laughed at the last line as he continued to ignore Sirius by sifting through the pages. It had everything. Poems about vampires: muggle beliefs on the creatures followed up with the truth about them. Like the muggle belief that they can't go out in the sunlight when in all reality they can, although only for short periods of time, like a half hour or so, before it starts to hurt them. But as excellent as the book was, and it was, he couldn't help but feel guilty about it as the thought that Peter had been in the library that day fell into his mind followed by the dread about what his real reason had been for being in there. Sure, Peter didn't know that James thought they were living with a werewolf but the fact was that he did and it just made him feel horrible.
He looked down at his last remaining present and picked it up as Sirius continued to go on about his backpack. He opened it carefully still dreading his thoughts and smiled widely as a package fell out that said simply:
"Palani's PermaPaint-squirt it on your friends and watch their skin change colors! Takes up to a week to wash off!"
He smiled to himself as he thought of all the damage he could do to Snape with this thing. Payback for the afros and wonderful dye job. He'd have to thank Lupin when he came back from his holiday.
James looked up from his gift only to see that, Sirius had opened his own present from Lupin after he had discarded the one his parents had given him, ten galleons with a note that said “buy what you want,” and was happy to see a book entitled Jabberwocky Jinxes by John L. Feeblebunny. It was full of dangerous jinxes that he too could not wait to try on Snape.
They stayed in their rooms till well into the afternoon busying themselves with small things like chess, looking through Sirius' Jinx book and testing out James' PermaPaint kit. They both decided that Lupin had given the best presents that year, although, Sirius did have to admit that it was tied with Peter's gift in his opinion. But after four hours of this they began to get bored.
They quickly put their clothes on and decided to go exploring, maybe even use Sirius' penknife to see if there was anything clever hidden inside the castle walls. They headed out of the common room shortly after what would have been lunch had they taken the time to go down to the Great Hall and eat it. They soon found themselves walking down the hallways not bothering to really look where they were heading as they talked back and forth about whatever odd ideas decided to filter into their heads. James smiled as they passed a tapestry showing Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls to dance ballet. They made many twists and turns with no real destination in mind until they had wondered down the defense hallway where the suits of armor were and Sirius quickly steered clear of them apparently not wanting to get knocked on his arse again.
"Afraid of a pile of rusting metal?" James said in a voice one would use on a baby.
"Shut it," Sirius growled as he glared at the last suit of armor that had beat him up before and then, in turn, hit James upside the head as hard as he could.
James rubbed the spot on his head where Sirius had clubbed him, making his hair even messier than it typically was. Sirius laughed at the spot of hair that poked up at the back of James' head and unknowingly lead them down a corridor that they had never been down before. The corridor was lit with candles that lined the hall and Sirius was instantly taken by the odd pictures hanging on the walls most of which were of fruit. They walked along still joking about Sirius' “fear” of the suits of armor and James' hair issues, as his mother often called it, while Sirius took to absently poking the pictures of fruit as they went along. Then, suddenly, Sirius stopped and stared at one of the paintings in awe.
"What?" James asked as he stopped and retraced his footsteps back to where Sirius had stopped, "It's a painting."
"No, it laughed."
"Right," he turned to continue down the hallway leaving Sirius behind him.
"No, really it did," Sirius stared at the painting and poked it. Again, it let out a soft whining sound like someone who was trying not to laugh would do. "See!"
James turned back around and walked back over to Sirius and stared at the picture strangely and then smiled mischievously as he started to tickle the pear that Sirius had just poked. The fruit began to squirm and whine a bit before it finally let out a high pitched squeal-like laughter. In the next instant the green pear turned into a door handle, James grabbed it and opened it, only to find a large room, the same size and shape as the great hall.
The walls were covered in large brass pans and there was a fireplace at the other end. James smiled and climbed inside cautiously happy to see that they had indeed found something. Sirius followed shortly behind him. Instantly, they were greeted by what seemed to be a hundred house-elves all wanting to get them something. One grabbed James' hand after it introduced itself by bowing low as her pointed nose touched the ground. "I is Kiri, sirs."
"'Ello," Sirius greeted with a wide smile and followed the house-elf named Kiri to the fireplace as she practically pushed James into a chair. He sat down next to James and leaned into him and whispered. "I think I need to take one of these guys home and teach Kreacher a lesson in proper etiquette."
James laughed, as the small house-elf came back in with a friend who introduced himself as Askim. Sirius laughed when he heard the name. James chuckled too, happy to see that Dumbledore had a sense of humor. They soon asked for some butterbeers and Christmas cookies. Sirius quickly grew very fond of the house-elf entitled Askim because he was a funny little being. Apparently, Dumbledore came down to the kitchens in his spare time and told random jokes to the little elf as a way to get out the many jokes he had that McGonagall never wanted to hear. And in return it kept the elf's humor up to par.
The two boys smiled and joked with the elves, to their astonishment the elves actually laid back and joined them, and soon found themselves having Christmas dinner around the fire with a small party of house-elves that couldn't help with sending up the food for the party that was going on above them. The house-elves even supplied the party crackers that they had upstairs for the party they were supposed to be attending with the headmaster, teachers, and whatever students were still at school aside from them.
It was well past midnight before they finally willed themselves to leave the company of the house-elves. They bid the little creatures farewell and returned to their dorm. James smiled widely as they entered the common room with their arms full of party favors from the wonderful crackers. Sirius was in the midst of a fit of giggles as he threw himself on the couch.
"What's so funny?" James asked as he joined them.
"Askim," Sirius laughed. "I wanna take that house-elf home. Much better than Kreacher anyway."
James nodded in agreement. Kreacher was a really creepy house-elf in general. "I don't think he'd like that too much. He seems to like being here."
Sirius only half-smiled to himself in reply. "You know what I'm gonna do?" After what was a long bit of silence between the two of them.
"No, and do I honestly want to?"
"I'm going to write Lupin and tell him he missed a great Christmas and wish him the very best Christmas ever," Sirius continued, choosing to ignore James' comment.
James smiled and watched Sirius leave for the dorm. "Oy," Sirius stopped at the foot of the boy's staircase and turned around to face his friend, "tell him I loved the present and that I hope he has a great holiday too."
Sirius nodded and retreated back up to their dorm. James sat in silence and instinctively looked out the window at the moon. He sighed and thought of Remus spending time with his parents and smiled half-hoping he could see his mum and dad at that moment. He sighed and followed Sirius' wake up to his dorm where he found Sirius scrawling on a piece of parchment. James then casually put on his pajamas, crawled into his own bed, took off his glasses, drew the curtains to a close around him, and closed his eyes, where he willed the sleep to come over him.