Michael Corner and The Education of Wizards

Michael Corner and The Ghost of Christmas's Present

'So this is Christmas, is it?' said Boot. 'Fir trees and fairies?'

'Don't you do Christmas, then?' I said.

'Not really,' he said. 'I mean, this Jesus bloke was just one of us, wasn't he?'

'He probably was,' I agreed, 'but don't you do Christmas just to fit in? That's what we do.'

'We used to,' he conceded. 'My parents said they used to back in the sixties, but these days no-one cares that much.'

'We always have a party,' I said. 'How about you, Tony?' I asked Tony Goldstein, who was admiring the fairies.

'Well, seeing I'm Jewish, Christmas doesn't mean much to me,' he said. 'We have Hanukah, but that'll be over by the time we get home.'

In fact, Christmas was not a big deal chez Corner, either. Mum held the same views as Boot's family and Dad was a professional atheist (or 'rationalist' as he called it). But the blending-in aspect of Christmas was significant, for us. Dad was an academic, a professor of Economics and had to be fairly conventional or he might not be taken seriously. And we lived in a town that was predominantly Muggle. Mum accepted her responsibilities under the Statute of Secrecy, so we put up tinsel and lights with everyone else.

All the same, the end of autumn term at Hogwarts was something else. I wondered how many of the staff thought about Christmas, but Hagrid was well into the swing of it. Half the Forest seemed to have ended up in the Dining Hall and the bill to the fairies must have been astronomical. I almost envied the people who were staying over the hols because it looked like Christmas Day itself would be a riot.

The atmosphere on the Express back down to King's Cross was exciting to start with but it did become a bit feverish at the end, with some pretty dangerous jinxes flying about. One Hufflepuff Third Year was shrunk to the size of a matchbox and was nearly sat on by Longbottom, who was stopped just in time. Snakeo Malfoy tried to get Mandy Brocklehurst with a scale-skin curse but she's much stronger than she looks. She blocked him and got him with strabismius, which left him cross-eyed for an hour. That was fun.

Mum was waiting at King's Cross, but we then had to go to a Muggle platform and catch the next train back up to Thirsk. It was silly, really. The Express actually went through Thirsk station, about five miles from our home, on the way down, but didn't stop anywhere before King's Cross.

I wouldn't say we had a Christmas party; 'family get-together' was closer to the mark. Davy was only just ten but didn't seem to be magical and didn't care very much. He thought I was weird. Dad's brother, my Uncle Stephen, took the whole magic thing in his stride, so he came over. Auntie Mary and her family lived in the States so we didn't see them very often. Mum's brother, Uncle Siegfried, always came over but he had been killed by Death Eaters before I was born. I'm not sure where he haunted for the rest of the year.

The big problem with Uncle Siegfried was that he had never moved on, in any sense. Not only was he still here, but he still thought I was about three.

'Well, Mikey,' he would say not long after he manifested. 'What's your favourite toy?'

Which was difficult to respond to once I had reached the age of ten and thought I was beyond toys.

This year, though, while he asked Davy about toys, to me it was, 'Well, Mikey. Which house are you in?'

And I thought ... we've moved! A bit.

'Tough, being in Ravenclaw,' he said when I told him. 'Having to be relentlessly intelligent. Everyone needs to be able to be a little stupid sometimes.'