The Art of Living - R. Black

twenty one

Regulus Black

December 24th, 1996

The house is no longer quiet. The sound of people talking and laughing echoes throughout the living room, into the kitchen, and up the stairs. The fire is crackling in the fireplace, and the lights of the Christmas tree brighten up the living room.

I can hear Atlas and Elio arguing over something as I step into the living room.

I readjust my hold on Cassie, who is just looking up at me. "Your brothers just love arguing, huh?" I say, stifling a laugh.

She just smiles and laughs at me.

Everyone is scattered throughout our living room. Atlas, Elio, and Natalia, Jack's daughter, are sitting on the floor in front of the Christmas tree having a wizard chess tournament. Remus and Tonks are sitting on one of the couches talking quietly and interjecting into the game of chess. Meanwhile, Meredith and Jack were sitting on the other couch going through boxes of pictures from when we were all in school.

If you told me twenty years ago that I would be spending Christmas with Jack Trouche I would've laughed in your laugh.

But none of us have any other family, so I guess it'll do.

I sit down on the other side of Meredith, and she immediately reaches for Cassie, who is smiling and happy to see her mom.

"Reg, you're never going to believe what I found," Meredith says, handing me a stack of pictures.

I take a look at the first picture and already know what I'm looking at.

"These are the pictures we took in Paris," I say, going through the stack.

Meredith smiles, "For your eighteenth birthday."

"Eighteen?" Elio asks from a few feet away. "That must've been forever ago."

Remus starts laughing, and I can't help but stifle a laugh. "I'm not that old," I defend. "Your mum's older than me."

Meredith smacks me in the arm gently, which makes Cassie laugh again. She just started laughing a week ago and finds everything hilarious.

"Hey, you're supposed to be on my side," I tease, letting her grab onto my finger.

With my other hand I hold up one of the pictures and show everyone. It's a picture of Meredith and I on the balcony of the hotel we stayed in for my birthday. I'm kissing her cheek and she's smiling. The picture is slightly blurry because she was laughing.

"Aw that one's cute," Tonks says.

Meredith looks at me and smiles. "You know we haven't been to France in a while," She reminds me.

"Maybe we can go for the Easter holidays," I suggest.

She seems content with this and goes back to looking at the pictures that are sprawled out on the coffee table.

"This one was after we beat you guys and won the quidditch cup," She says, picking up one of the pictures.

Jack looks at it and grins. "This was the second year in a row we won."

I look at the picture. James and Marlene are in it, and everyone is holding James up on their shoulders and he's holding the quidditch cup. Sirius and Remus are in it as well. Sirius is yelling something at James, a huge smile on his face, and Remus is off to the side shaking his head with a small smile.

"I remember this game," I say, "Evan was bitching all night because you and Marlene ganged up on him and you almost hit him with a bludger."

Meredith hands the picture to Jack, who hands it to Remus and Tonks.

"This was the game that McGonagall was yelling at Sirius over the speakers for his swearing and "blatant bias"," Remus laughs.

I keep going through the pictures Meredith handed me. This is the first time I'm seeing these pictures since she took the camera. There's a lot of pictures of Meredith, ones that I took. She's smiling in all of them.

"Hey, remember this one?" I smirk as Meredith looks over.

"Do not show that to anyone!" She exclaims.

I laugh and put the picture in my pocket so that it doesn't get mixed in with any of the other pictures.

I finish going through the stack. Meredith took a lot of pictures of me that I didn't know about. But in every single picture I look happy.

All of these were taken only a few days before I left.

Atlas, Elio, and Natalia are still busy with wizard chess and Cassie has fallen asleep in Meredith's arms. Remus and Tonks are sitting close, talking in hushed voices. They've gotten pretty close within the past few months and I'm pretty sure that they're together but I'm not sure I want to know the answer.

Meredith and Jack are still digging through the boxes of pictures, and I find one of the boxes with my handwriting on it.

1976-1979

I open the box and start flipping through the pictures. There aren't very many compared to the few boxes of pictures my wife has.

The first picture is of Evan, probably 15 years old, he's wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater while attempting to make French toast.

The next picture is of me, Pandora, and Barty. All of us are clearly drunk and yelling at the camera.

Then there's Barty and Evan, both of them stoned out of their minds. Evan's leaning in to kiss Barty on the cheek.

The last picture I look at for the night is of Pandora. It's from sixth year, when she cut her hair up to her shoulders, and she's wearing a Ramones t-shirt that I'm pretty sure she stole from Xenophilius.

I put all of my pictures back, deciding that I'd unpack all of those another time.

I settle back into the couch and wrap my arm around Meredith. She leans into me, careful not to wake up our daughter.

"I love you," I whisper, pressing a kiss against Meredith's head.

She smiles and tilts her head to look at me. "I love you too," She replies.

- - - - -

The entire house is quiet now, and the house is dark aside from the light of my wand. Meredith is holding my hand as we sneak through the house, carrying bags of presents in our spare hands.

"Shh, be quiet," She whispers.

"I am being quiet," I say, trying not to laugh.

Meredith shakes her head and stifles a laugh. "Your footsteps are so loud."

We both had a few drinks after the kids went upstairs for the night and we put Cassie to bed, so the both of us have been laughing at everything for the past hour.

I squeeze Meredith's hand tighter and pull her along with me into the living room. We drop the bags of presents on the rug and start setting everything up.

"It's not like they believe in Santa anyways," I add.

"Doesn't matter," Meredith says. "Even when they're grown adults they can't catch us putting their Christmas presents under the tree."

I laugh, apparently too loud, and Meredith shushes me and covers my mouth with her hand.

"Be quiet," She says, trying to keep a straight face.

"Make me," I reply.

Meredith rolls her eyes, leaning into me. She wraps her arms around my neck and stands on her tiptoes to kiss me.

I duck my head and meet her halfway.

She kisses me, letting her hand drift up to my hair. I have one waist on her waist, the other on the small of her back.

"Happy Christmas, darling," She says when we break apart.

I kiss her again. "Happy Christmas, love."