Celestina Warbeck’s trilling notes warble in the warm Christmas Eve air as we sit huddled around the tree. I hold my little baby boy in my lap while Sarah twitters around the room like a little bird. She’s so happy to decorate the lovely tree that sits bare and miserable in the corner after nearly two weeks of waiting. Sarah was so mad at me when she discovered I would not allow her to cover it in candy canes and other decorum until Christmas Eve. I told her that it was the tradition in my family for years, until I went to Hogwarts. However, it is her first time putting the little bobbles up on a branch and watching them glint in the firelight, so she didn’t speak to me for a week afterwards.
My little five-year-old is so stubborn, just like her father. He and I make a game of bickering about where she gets it from. He blames me, and I blame him, until we are blue in the face. More than likely she gets it from everyone around her, the constant bickering is quite at home with us. I say bickering because it isn’t really fighting; it is witty comebacks that almost always result in a laugh from the opposition.
I watch her dance happily around the room, her black curls flying in every direction in a mock attempt at ballet. She is quite graceful, her youthful spirit filling the room to bursting. “Mummy, when’s Daddy going to be home?” she asks with fervour as she spins happily, and I tell her ‘soon’ with a laugh. She will soon be quite dizzy and very worn out if she keeps this up. It will just make it easier to fall asleep tonight if she does, though.
I am about to ask if she wants to go outside into the frozen wilderness of our backyard when I hear the quiet POP of an apparition from the kitchen. Sarah shrieks delightedly and takes flight towards the open door. I hear a soft grunt as she leaps into his arms. I smile and stand up, carefully holding Oliver, Olly for short. Harry wanted to name him Dilbert as a joke, but I firmly decided against it. I didn’t want him teased after all. Harry walks in carrying the giddy Sarah over his shoulder. He whips her off and holds her gently in a fireman’s fashion, his eyes glowing happily.
“Ready to decorate the tree?” He asks suddenly. Sarah smiles and nods impishly. Harry sets her down and comes over to give me a kiss. It’s a light one on the forehead, his cold lips glancing off quickly as he avoids sandwiching Olly between us. I smile like Sarah and open the Rubbermaid containers that hold the dressings for the tree.
“Are you ready to be pretty?” Sarah asks the tree gleefully as her father feeds the lights around it. I always felt sorry for Harry. Until he was eleven, he hadn’t had a real Christmas. He had never received presents, never decorated a tree. I have a feeling he’s making up for lost time in these simple acts.
Sarah jumps onto his leg and clings to him. He nearly stumbles as he tosses the popcorn strings onto the tree. He peels her excited little frame off his leg and sits her down with a quiet “Settle down.” My heart surges with love for him yet again. After all the pain he has suffered over the years, the friends and family who have died, the abuse experienced, the desecration of his soul when he killed Voldemort, his love for his children has never faltered. Despite the fact that Sarah’s conception was scandalous at best, he still loves her with every bone in his body.
I wonder what Ron would think, if he knew Harry and I had conceived our first child on the evening after his death. I had always been in love with Ron; before Voldemort ripped him away, we had been engaged. I suppose Harry and I had just needed someone that night. He had just lost his best friend, and I had lost my first love. Sarah followed our lack of judgement less than a year later.
I remove the layer of tissue that separates the ornaments from the room and look at them. I pull out a pair of miniature crystal ballet shoes; I got them for Sarah’s first Christmas. It seems that I’m going to have to get her real ones soon if she continues these happy dancing routines in our living room. I wouldn’t want her accidentally breaking something. I blow the dust off of them and hand them to Sarah. Harry picks her up and she puts it near the top.
It continues like this until all of the baubles and candy canes are up. Until all that is left is my special ornament. I hand Olly to Harry and brush my frizzy brown hair out of my eyes. It’s a snowflake, nothing special when viewed from far away. It’s cold to the touch after its year in the box. The crystal is shaped uniquely. There is no ornament exactly identical to this one. My parents got it for me the year I was old enough to appreciate the symbolism in it. I may have been ten, maybe I was fifteen, but it was touching to understand what they meant when I opened it up on Christmas morning. That I was their little girl, their one in a million. I hang it gently somewhere around the middle as Sarah begs to hold Olly.
I turn to look at them: Harry sitting in the rocker, looking very much like a dad with sparkling eyes and a baby in his arms. Sarah leans against the arm of the chair with a pleading look in her green eyes. It strikes me how much she looks like her father. She looks almost nothing like me, and yet she is mine. I can see it when she smiles. Her teeth aren’t quite beaverish like mine were, but Grandma and Grandpa Granger are bound to grimace when they examine her smile for the first time this January.
I smile as wide as she does.
Big Mistakes Lead to a Wonderful Christmas by Emily_the_Poet
Chapter Notes: Rated for sexual innuendo