Once Upon A Time (Prequel of The Savior Fables)

Chapter Ten

It's Christmas! Our core quartet follow their usual traditions, Emma makes a new friend, and Theseus and Newt try to outdo each other's gifts.

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It wasn't Christmas morning without Emma being woken by her door banging open and her son launching onto her bed, subsequently onto her, chanting "It's Christmas!" over and over.

Emma blinked sleep out of her eyes, sitting up and grabbing her son, wrapping him in a hug as he squeaked. "Yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too, kid," she grumbled, though she was smiling as she kissed the top of his head. "Why don't you go wake your aunt and uncle, too?"

"Already happened, Em." She looked up to see Newt in the doorway, a mug of tea in his hands. "Happy Christmas," he smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Newt," she grinned. "Go on, I'll meet you downstairs."

"Yay!" Harry cheered, jumping off the bed and barreling past Newt out of the door.

Newt stepped to the side, watching Harry disappear with a fond smile. "I'll never get tired of watching his excitement, especially for the holidays."

"Me, neither," Emma agreed with a smile. "After everything he went through with the Dursleys . . . "

She trailed off, but Newt nodded in understanding. "He deserves all the wonderful Christmas holidays we can give him."

"Absolutely."

Newt smiled at her. "Take your time getting ready. Queenie and I can distract him until you come downstairs for gifts."

"Thanks," Emma nodded.

Newt raised his tea in reply, whistling a Christmas tune to himself as he departed.

Emma smiled to herself as she got up to brush her teeth and her hair. Every year they stayed in their pajamas to open gifts and eat breakfast while watching "A Christmas Carol" on TV. They did gifts first, followed by breakfast, and after that Harry and Newt went out to the reserve to check on the animals. While they did that, Emma and Queenie would start on lunch. After lunch, they would gather outside in the yard to mess in the snow, having snowball fights and building snowmen. After that they all came in and warmed up by the fireplace, watching a movie and drinking hot chocolate, before Queenie made a start on Christmas Dinner, where Tina would usually drop by to see them.

She grabbed her phone as she passed her dresser and walked downstairs, finding Harry laughing as Queenie and Newt's patroni flitted across the room playing what seemed to be a game of tag. The small niffler was ducking under and over the thunderbird, goading the larger creature. The wiser animal wasn't taking the bait and was instead trying to smack the small animal with his wings. Emma smiled, opening the camera on her phone and snapping a picture of it before making herself known to the three other occupants.

The entire reserve was ready for Christmas. The fire was lit, giving off a warm glow to the room and bringing warmth to ward off the chill of the snow coming down heavily outside of the window behind the tree. The fireplace was in the middle of the longest wall, which was littered in pictures of all of them, the first family picture they had taken proudly sitting in the middle of the mantle, next to a picture of Newt and Theseus hugging on the right and Queenie and Tina holding up two wine cups filled with wine and toasting Emma, who had been the one taking the picture. Their stockings were hanging in front of the fireplace, Harry's with a pegasus on it, Emma's with a swan, Newt's with a niffler, and Queenie's with a thunderbird.

The big pine tree in the corner near the fireplace was covered in ornaments, garland, lights, and popcorn strings. All of Harry's magically made ornaments glimmered in the firelight, giving them an ethereal look. Queenie had taught Harry how to make Christmas ornaments a few years ago, and the first year he made them, the tree only had a few on it, but this year, it was littered in his ornaments. Emma had made one of the family too, and it sat next to Harry's favorite ornament, the first he had made. It was of him and Emma dancing in the snow, or least that's what he had said it was. It looked more like two blobs, one dark haired and the other blonde, against a white background. Emma smiled fondly at it. The lights around the tree were made by Emma and Newt, the bright colors of pink, blue, green and red blinking proudly in the shapes she had chosen with Newt. Each shape represented the occupants of the reserve, so it had a niffler for Newt, a swan for Emma, a pegasus for Harry and a thunderbird for Queenie as shapes. Under the tree sat a mountain of gifts, most of them probably for Harry, all clad in either gold, red or green wrapping paper with silver bows.