Christmas Cheer
November soon moved into December with a fury “ snow now permanently covered the grounds and Herbology had been moved temporarily indoors once the plants had started growing icicles on their leaves in the greenhouses. Students could be spotted having snowball fights and toboggan races during breaks and Hagrid was seen one evening during a harsh blizzard dragging ten full-sized Christmas trees from the woods into the Great Hall. The holidays were fast approaching and no amount of cold could squash everyone’s sudden excitement.
On a less joyous note, Cory and Gwen had refused to speak one word to each other since their fight down at Hagrid’s hut last month and Leah was now reduced to taking turns listening to them complain at her since neither of them would consent to be within five feet of the other. It made for awkward pairings in class because both of them only wanted Leah as a partner and she had to pick between the two, always leaving one friend out every time.
“I wouldn’t be so mad if he’d just told me himself,” Gwen had vented to Leah during History of Magic one day. “I think I have a right to know who I’m friends with. You don’t have some sordid secret life you haven’t told me about, do you?” she teased.
“Of course not,” Leah had replied. “Look, would you just talk to him; sort this thing out?”
“I mean,” Gwen continued, distracted, “I asked him, flat out, in the Hospital Wing, remember? On the train to school, too. And he denied it. Looked straight in my face and denied it. What kind of friend is that?”
Leah had even less success with Cory. Every time she brought up Gwen or their fight, he promptly turned his head and wouldn’t speak until she’d changed the subject. The one time she could get him to speak of it he said that it was his family and he, Cory, had every right to disclose as little information about them as possible if he wished, and if Gwen couldn’t deal with that, then he had no business being friends with her.
Leah couldn’t deny that Cory had a point, but so did Gwen; and so she contented herself with just attempting to bring them as close together as possible as often as possible in the hopes that they’d eventually work it out for themselves.
But it was now a week before Christmas holidays and nothing had changed. And there were other important matters to worry about “ like the snake, and why whoever had done it had seemingly found it so funny.
“You want to find out what’s going on around here, don’t you?” she asked Cory while they were eating lunch in the Great Hall; she had dragged Gwen with her, and now the other girl was slumped moodily in her seat, trying hard to ignore Cory sitting right across from her. “You know “ the snake, Masen ...”
“Yeah,” he replied, looking up from his apple tart. “I thought I made that clear at Hagrid’s.”
“Good, because so do we.” She indicated herself and Gwen as the latter nodded stiffly in agreement.
“But what can we do about it?”
“Well,” said Leah, “I’ve been thinking about that. You said that your dad wouldn’t let you read any books about the Final Battle? And Gwen: that your dad never talked about it?” They nodded simultaneously. “Then that’s where we start,” she concluded. “We search the library for anything about it we can find, we figure out who was there, who never left ... something must be in all of those books. Because you could be right, Cory; there is something about Masen that doesn’t add up. Maybe we’re biased because he’s so mean, but I believe there’s more to it.”
“And how are we going to balance this, too, what with classes and homework, and visiting Hagrid?” asked Gwen. “It’s going to take forever to look through all that paper!”
“We can start during the holidays. You’re staying here for Christmas, aren’t you, Gwen? Then you can begin searching the library for us. Cory’s going home and my dad ... he’s expecting me, too, but you could catch us up when we get back. Maybe Cory could even try asking his dad again what he remembers about that time.”
“He won’t tell me,” said Cory. “I’ve tried a hundred times.”
“Once more couldn’t hurt,” implored Leah. “He would be our best source for information.”
“Hagrid might know something ...” suggested Gwen thoughtfully. “He fought in both wars, and he lived at Hogwarts for years.”
Leah nodded. “Good idea, Gwen.”
Just then a flutter of wings and sharp hoots singled the arrival of the post as tons of owls swooped into the Great Hall. A brown barn owl landed in front of Cory and dropped a thin envelope into his open hand.
“It’s from my dad,” murmured Cory as he read the letter, frowning. “He says that he wants me to stay at Kootenay for Christmas; apparently he and mum are visiting old friends and Will, Molly, and Liz will be staying at my aunt’s for the holidays.”
“I’m sorry, Cory,” said Leah, seeing his crestfallen face. Then she smiled slowly. “But, I guess you can help Gwen now with research in the library.”
Both of her friends turned identical scowls on her as she grinned.
As the last few days before holidays began, Leah started to rethink her decision of going back to her dad. Kootenay had quickly become a home to her: it was where her friends were, where make-believe and reality seamlessly merged together as a simple fact of life. She even enjoyed the classes a bit. And it was so different from Toronto, where she had always felt a bit discomfited and out of place.
Cory and Gwen could hardly fail to notice her increasing reluctance as the time to depart drew ever closer, and so they set out to solve this latest problem, even going so far as to temporarily put their ongoing argument to a rest and cornering Leah in the common room one morning.
“Why don’t you want to go home, Leah?” demanded Cory, standing with his arms crossed before the fire, as Gwen sat down with Leah.
“I do want to go home,” she protested weakly. Cory just snorted. She didn’t blame him; she was a terrible liar.
“Something’s going on, Leah,” said Gwen honestly. “Do you think we haven’t noticed? You’ve been withdrawn and moody all week. Now spill, ‘cause we won’t let you get away with it.” She smiled encouragingly.
“You made me tell you about my detention with Masen,” put in Cory.
“Does it have to do with your dad?” asked Gwen. “I thought you would want to see him ... I mean, we know you love him “”
Leah looked into the faces of the two people in the world who meant the most to her; if she couldn’t tell them this one thing, then did that mean she didn’t trust them? But she knew she could trust them with anything, and they wouldn’t abandon her or view her any differently. They had proved it again and again. After all, wasn’t that what she’d been trying to tell Cory ever since he had told her of his secret?
“I do love him,” she began. “I love him so much. But at the same time ... there’s something inside me that just c-can’t.” She was crying now, and so were they, although she had hardly told them anything.
“It’s just ...” she whispered, “You know my mom died when I was six, right?” She took a deep breath. “But what you don’t know is that it was because of me that she died.”
“Oh, Leah, of course it wasn’t,” said Gwen.
“It’s the truth.” She stared into the embers of the dying fire, the words that had been bottled and hidden for so long pouring out like water through a broken dam. “She was driving me to a friend’s slumber party one night, but she hadn’t been feeling well all day. My dad was supposed to take me but he was called out to work unexpectedly “ a mare had gone into labour at some farm outside of town “ so I begged my mom to. She was distracted the whole way there, and I kept bugging her, because I was going to be late. She was trying to calm me down when the car in front braked suddenly; she couldn’t stop in time.
“We crashed into the back of the other car. I got away with only a few scrapes “” Her voice caught in her throat uncomfortably. “But my mom, her head collided with the steering wheel and she died on impact.”
“You don’t have to “” whispered Cory hoarsely. He looked sick.
Leah shook her head. “I’m almost done,” she said. “My ... my dad ... he was never the same afterwards; he walked around like a zombie that whole first year. My grandfather moved in and he tried to help as much as he could ... but I ended up taking care of the house, and the vet practice, and the both of us. He says he doesn’t blame me, I was just a kid, and for the most part I believe him. But sometimes I’ll catch this look in his eyes when he looks at me; this accusing look. And it’ll be gone the next second, making me think I’d imagined it, but ... well. It’s just so awkward to live together sometimes. Part of the reason I was so excited to come here was for the ten months of space I would get.”
She finally finished and closed her eyes. She felt more than saw Cory sitting down on one side of her as Gwen entwined their fingers on the other. He put a soothing hand on her shoulder.
“That’s just awful, Leah,” said Gwen. She made no attempt to tell her that everything would be okay, or that it would get better, and Leah silently thanked her for it.
“Does it make me a bad daughter,” Leah asked shyly, “To not want to go home, to wish to stay away just a little longer?”
“I think ... that you would be crazy if you didn’t feel ... the way you feel ... sometimes,” said Gwen. “Everybody deserves a break.”
“You can always ask McGonagall if you can still put your name on the list of students staying,” said Cory. “I’m sure she’d let you.”
“I’ve looked after him for so long “”
Gwen squeezed their fingers tightly. “Leah, you need looking after, too.”
But Leah needed to go; her dad would only worry needlessly. Even if she was having doubts, she knew she would always go, because some things just naturally came first, and family was one of them. “No,” she smiled gratefully, “no, I should go home. My dad needs me. But thanks.”
She wiped her soaked cheeks dry and met the eyes of her best friends. Leah knew that they understood each other completely in that moment. And she knew just how truly lucky she was to have them.
When the time finally arrived to leave, Gwen and Cory waved her off at the local station and wished her a good trip. She played Exploding Snap with Sarah, Nia, and Sean in their private carriage as the train slowly chugged its way home. Nia left once they reached the Saskatoon stop, while Sean was with them until Winnipeg; Sarah would stay on after Leah got off in Toronto until she reached Halifax on the far side of the country.
All too soon they were pulling into the hidden magical platform in Union Station. She spotted her dad standing a bit back from the rest of the anxious parents, shifting his feet nervously. He appeared torn between being both elated and lost, and as he waved, she felt a rush of affection for him that had lain dormant for too long. The train had barely screeched to a halt before Leah found herself grabbing Soot and flinging herself from the seat, into his arms; he twirled her around in the air, both of them laughing, and Leah wondered how she could have ever entertained the thought of not being here.
“Hey.” He pulled her tight to him as he guided her to the car. “Feel like grabbing a bite to eat before we head home? I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Sure,” she beamed. Maybe the time away had done them some good after all.
“Nothing! Days of searching through all these musty old books and we’ve found absolutely nothing!”
Gwen was, Cory thought, the most annoying girl he had ever had the misfortune of meeting. She was whiny, and loud, and if Leah would have ever talked to him again afterwards, he would’ve happily throttled her a million times before now and then stepped on her a thousand times more just to be sure.
“Do you think you’re the only one that’s frustrated?” he snapped back, flipping angrily through the large tomb he was currently searching through. The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore by Rita Skeeter “ obviously, their material was dwindling.
“It’s just useless, is all!” she huffed. “It would help a bit, too, if we had more of an idea of what we were searching for. Say we do find something, how are we supposed to know that it’s what we were looking for?”
“We’ll know it when we see it,” he said. He didn’t want to admit that the same thought had crossed through his own mind; there was just so much about the wars: the history, the dead, the living, and the after effects. They had to sift through it all.
“I wonder why Hagrid wouldn’t tell us anything.” She had a pile of yellowing newspaper clippings from England’s The Daily Prophet spread out around her on the library table. “Don’t you think that was a bit strange?”
“No different than our parents refusing to tell us,” answered Cory.
The day before, the two of them had traveled down to Hagrid’s hut again and asked him what he remembered about the war. He had looked completely shaken the moment the words had left their mouths and refused to say a word of it before he had none-too-politely told them to leave and not to come back if they were only going to bring up what was best left forgotten.
She sighed. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“And we didn’t really give him a reason to tell us. Why should he bring up something that’s obviously painful if he doesn’t know the reason?”
“Good Merlin, Cory! Are you on his side or ours?” exclaimed Gwen.
“Nobody said anything about sides, Gwen,” he replied. He flipped through a few more pages in the Skeeter woman’s book, his eyes flicking back and forth across the paper as he skimmed through the text.
“Whatever. The point is, you would think that everyone’d be a bit more interested in their fellow professor, and if not that, then why a bloody snake was killed on the grounds! They’re all ignoring it. Don’t you “ Cory, are you even listening to me?”
“Stupid load of trash!” he cried suddenly and he flung the book away from him. “That woman is a real piece of work, and I don’t even know her! The things she wrote about Dumbledore ... who would believe that he was into the Dark Arts when he was young, or that he had ever had that type of relationship with Harry Potter?”
Gwen stared at him strangely before picking up the next book on the pile. It was thin and battered with a plain black cover and gold script. She read a couple paragraphs from the middle of the book before tossing it to Cory and saying, “Here, this is guy more boring than Monroe on his best day! You take it, I honestly can’t stand anymore.”
He took it and continued reading where she’d left off. “Gwen ...” he said after a minute. “What was that name that the teachers were saying when we overheard them in the empty classroom; they called the snake it ... started with an N ...?”
“Nagini?” she said.
“Yeah, that’s it. Listen to this: “In the beginning, You-Know-Who did not take part in the battle. Witnesses Weasley and Granger later claimed him to be residing in the Shrieking Shack with his protected snake, Nagini, as his servants fought in his name,” he read in a low voice.
“That snake was You-Know-Who’s?” she gasped.
“Sounds like it,” said Cory, just as stunned. “But then ... how could “ how did ... it get here?”
They both shuddered at the thought and then silence overtook them. Gwen gazed out the nearby window, where you could see the east end of the lake and the beginning of the forest behind it. As she watched, a dark speck was rounding the water’s edge, coming from the direction of the forest. “Who’s that?” she asked, pointing at the figure.
Cory followed her gaze to the speck, his eyes narrowing, and whispered, “It almost looks like ... Masen.”
“What is he doing coming out of the forest?” said Gwen just as quietly. “I thought McGonagall said it was forbidden. Or is that only for students?”
“It isn’t.” A hard expression changed his face as he jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over in the process.
“What are you doing, Cory?” she hissed.
“What does it look like? I’m going after him!”
“No, you can’t,” she cried. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t just go running off after him! What are you going to say if you catch up to him “ ‘oh, sorry, Professor, I just wanted to know what evil thing you’re planning next by going off into the dark forest alone!’”
“Gwen, we need to know what he’s after. What if he’s planning on something really bad?” She tried to grab onto his shirttail as he started to leave but it slipped through her fingers and he sprinted out of the library.
“Why are “ you “ so “ attracted “ to “ life-threatening “ IDIOCY?” she yelled, gasping for breath and running as fast as she could after him.
But he just wrapped his hand around her wrist and tugged her along. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t think “ all he knew was that he had to keep Masen from whatever it was he was doing. Their heavy footsteps echoed through the corridor and they were forced to weave around crowds of students as they made their way to the Entrance Hall. The sun outside the windows had started to sink, signalling that curfew was approaching, but he didn’t slow down. They rounded a final corner, the great double doors of the castle in sight, and then it happened.
A violent gust of wind blasted their faces, and they shivered against it. A thick mist was surrounding them. Somebody must have left the doors open, because suddenly the temperature dropped and goose bumps raced up Cory’s arm.
The cold was all-consuming. They stopped in their tracks; nobody else was in this corridor with them. The hand of Cory’s that was holding Gwen’s wrist slid down so it was covering her palm and they held on tightly to each other, drawing their bodies closer, as they both felt helplessness and fear take over.
“W-w-what i-is t-this?” Gwen stuttered. She shut her eyes as if in pain.
He couldn’t answer her. His ears were ringing with the sound of horrible screams “ his brother and his mother crying as one “ as his brother fell off his broom at an impossible height. His father yelling at him for being so irresponsible; his sisters silent and scared; his mother draped over her youngest son’s hospital bed as they awaited news.
That had been the worst day of Cory’s life. Will had only been four years old. Will had almost died at the age of four because of him.
Cory felt his knees give out and hit the cold stone floor, and then he remembered where he was “ not at the hospital, waiting to see if he’d killed his brother, but at school, with Gwen, in this corridor that was too cold and too dark. He sensed more than saw Gwen falling beside him, still clutching his hand.
Then somebody was shouting “Expecto Patronum” above them, and Cory looked up, his eyes feasting upon the shimmering white shield that had materialized there. The light was blinding, painfully so, but he felt warm and protected, so he let himself close his eyes and submit to the creeping darkness behind their lids.