and voila, mystery meal. Great for the working mum on the go.'
'At least that's what the sign on the display at Tristan's and Tupperworth's said,' Ron remarked, grinning. Harry clipped him on the back of the head.
Fleur sniffed. 'Vere I come from, eet is considered improper for a man to buy cookery as a gift.'
'That's because where you come from, my dear,' Bill said gently, 'the men do most of the cooking.'
'Oh, just open the next one,' Harry said, annoyed.
Ginny's next present turned out to be a pair of mer-pearl earrings, which went over much better. Ginny seemed simultaneously distraught and overjoyed by them.
'Harry! How did you pay for these? Mer-pearl! I never expected…!' Her eyes glittered as she blinked back tears.
'Just put them on,' Harry smiled. 'If it makes you feel any better, they're fake. Leprechaun-pearl. They came as a bonus gift with the Conjure-Pot.'
'No, they didn't,' she smiled, and kissed him.
Ron had gotten Hermione a small but apparently expensive bottle of perfume called
'We knew you'd both been wanting to go for the past several years,' Hermione explained as Harry and Ron congratulated each other. 'But you never think ahead to get advanced tickets. We've got eight total tickets, so you can take the kids, if you wish. They'd love it. And your wives, of course, if you wished. It's up to you.'
But Harry and Ron had fallen into a debate about what teams would be in the Cup and barely heard the last.
James opened his present and was surprised to see that his parents had gotten him a new broom.
'Wow,' he breathed. 'A Thunderstreak! Mum, Dad, you got me a Thunderstreak?'
'Well,' Harry said slowly, 'I knew you'd had some trouble getting started on the broom, but I spoke to your friend, Zane, and he said you were coming along really well. I thought you might like to practice on your own broom. Those school brooms are too old. Slow, unwieldy, and the handling's gone all mushy. You try this out and I think you'll notice the difference straight off.'
'Course, if you don't want it,' George offered, 'you could always trade with Ted. That old Nimbus of his may be slow as a flobberworm, but it has loads of antique value.'
Ted hurled a ball of wrapping paper at George, hitting him square in the face.
James felt a little sorry for Ralph, who had not heard from his dad since the message that he'd be travelling over the holidays. Ralph shrugged it off, saying his dad had probably sent his Christmas gift to the school. James and Ralph were both surprised when Ginny handed Ralph a small, wrapped package.
'It's not much,' Ginny smiled, 'but we thought you might enjoy it.'
Ralph unwrapped the package and looked at it. It was a very dog-eared and dilapidated book, the words on the cover almost illegible with age. It was called Advanced Potion-Making.
'That belonged to a great Slytherin, like you'll be, no doubt,' Harry said somberly. 'Frankly, I thought I'd lost it, but it turned up a few weeks ago. I didn't know what to do with it until you came for the holiday. Then it just made sense that you should have it. Don't let Professor Slughorn see it, though. Just use it as a… reference.'
Ralph flipped carefully through the old book. The margins were crammed with hand-written notations and drawings. 'Who wrote all this stuff inside?'
'Doesn't really matter,' Harry said cryptically. 'You don't know him. Just take care of it, and be careful how you use some of the stuff in there. It can be a little… dodgy, sometimes. Still, it just seems right that it should be in the hands of a good Slytherin man. Happy Christmas, Ralph.'
Ralph thanked Harry and Ginny, a bit puzzled at the serious looks both he and the book were getting. He recognized that, mysterious as the book was, it was apparently rather meaningful. He wrapped it in a piece of cloth Ginny gave him and placed it in the bottom of his trunk.
James was delighted when Neville and Luna Lovegood arrived that afternoon. The two had been seeing each other for the past few months, but James had heard his mum tell Andromeda Tonks that it wasn't going anywhere. James couldn't guess how his mum knew such things, but he never doubted that she was right. For James' part, Neville and Luna seemed just a bit too brotherly and sisterly to be a couple.
After dinner, Grandmum Weasley appeared in the fireplace to wish everyone a happy Christmas.
'We're having a perfectly delightful time here with Charlie,' she said from the grate. 'And Prague is just lovely. I think you boys need to have a talk with your father, though. He's gotten rather enamored with the Muggle architecture here and is talking about staying on a few more weeks. He's become so unpredictable now that he's retired from the Ministry. Oh, it is so difficult having you kids all over the world like this. How am I supposed to keep track of my grandbabies?'
'How are Charlie and Claire and the kids, then, Molly?' Hermione asked, gently steering the topic to pleasanter subjects.
'Quite well, although Charlie insists on taking little Harold and Jules to work with him on occasion. How these poor children can endure the sight of such creatures and not have constant nightmares is simply beyond me.'
James, who'd met his younger cousins, Harold and Jules, a few times, knew that it was likely that they, in fact, might give nightmares to the dragons rather than the other way around.
Late that evening, as most of the household was beginning to drift to bed, James and Ralph found themselves seated near the fire with Luna Lovegood, who was telling them about her latest expedition into the Highland Mountains in search of the Umgubular Slashkilter.
'Still no positive identification,' she said, 'but I discovered a vast network of their tracks and leavings. Their diet seems to consist almost entirely of blusterwermps and figgles, so it's pretty easy to identify their dung by smell alone. Sort of pepperminty. Not at all unpleasant.'
'Unglubulous… slashkillers?' Ralph attempted.
'Close enough,' Luna said kindly. 'They're a species of flightless raptor, distantly related to hippogriffs and octogators. I took a mold of one of their tracks and a stool sample from one of their leavings. Would you like to smell it?'
'Luna,' James said, leaning forward in his chair and lowering his voice, 'can we ask you a question about something? I'd rather nobody else knew about it.'
'I specialize in things nobody else knows about,' Luna said mildly.
'I mean, I want to keep it sort of a secret.'
'Oh,' Luna said, her face placid. James waited, but Luna merely watched him, smiling politely. Luna, he recalled, occasionally had a rather unique approach to conversation. He decided to plow on.
'This isn't about Slashkilters or Wrackspurts or anything. Really, it'd be a better question for your dad, if he was still around, but I bet you know the answer, too. What can you tell us about… about Austramaddux and Merlinus Ambrosius?'
Luna was the only completely unshockable person James knew. She merely looked into the fire and said, 'Ahh, yes, not exactly my specialty. A lifelong hobby of my father's, though. Austramaddux was the historian who recorded the last days of Merlinus and his promised return, of course. The subject of much speculation and intrigue for centuries, you know.'
'Yeah,' James said, 'we know. We read about him and the prediction of his return. What we're wondering is how it could happen? What would it take?'
