It's Christmas Time Again: A Time-Traveling TMS Holiday Extravaganza

Oliver Kent!

When I opened my eyes, the sky was still dismal and grey, but there was no snow. My back was still wet from the ice I'd landed on, but I lay on a dirt path instead. Crimson leaves hung from the branches overhead and the air smelled like wood and lichen and all those unmistakably Autumnal scents. Like a freaking candle factory in late August rolling out seventy-six variations of Pumpkin Spice Latte.

I panted through the remnants of my panic attack as my eyes darted around. I could feel myself settling down, feel my breath coming back, feel my heart slowing...

It isn't normal, I thought, for a kid to panic about going home for Christmas.

"Whooaaa! What're you doing down there? Did you fall??"

There were footsteps on the stairs, coming closer, hurrying now, and then running over the gravel.

"You alright?"

A hand extended into my line of sight and I took it, being pulled up from my arse, my fingers gripping on and eyes following from the touch up the arm to meet the eyes of --

"Oliver Kent!" I exclaimed.

The blonde haired boy looked surprised and glanced over his shoulder at the other two behind him, before he turned back to me. "Yeah?" He looked confused.

Of course he did.

He just helped a stranger off the ground and got his name shouted at him as a response.

And he wasn't even famous yet.

It just took me by surprise.

I mean I'd planned to come here. I'd counted the turns I'd need to make a million times since finding out how the wheels of the turner worked. But let's be real, I didn't expect the time turner to fucking work when I turned it.

Not really.

I thought Albus and Scorpius were full of shit.

My heart beat double time as Oliver's brow raised and he stared into my eyes. He was waiting for me to say something - anything - but I forgot how to word. His eyes were just such a gorgeous color of blue. I felt my mouth go dry.

"Do you think you might be... be gay?" My godfather had asked me one day that summer. He'd looked at me with an uncertain expression, like he didn't know if he really wanted to ask the question. Or maybe like he wasn't sure he wanted the answer. "It's alright if you are," he added quickly, as though he had heard my thought. "I'm not judging you at all - in any way - and I won't love you any less and I would keep whatever you tell me a secret for as long as you ask me to, from anyone... But if you are, and you need someone to trust, I - that's what godfathers are for, after all. Innit? I mean. I assume. My godfather would've done for me, at least, and I reckon he was the best godfather that ever lived."

I'd thought about that question a lot over the past few months. (And the words that went with it about his godfather.)

Was I gay?

One of the things that made me realize I probably was gay, or at least some kind of queer. was the poster of Oliver Kent, the star seeker for the Chudley Cannons, hanging on my bedroom wall, and the way that poster made feel. The things it made me think. Want. Do. It was the way those blue eyes pierced me right into the core of my soul.

Like they were now.

In real. Fucking. Life.

My mouth flopped like a fish out of water. I could barely breathe.

Suddenly another boy was pushing up beside Oliver - a dark haired lad with fight in his eyes. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Whoa, Wally; don't scare the kid, jeepers," said the third boy.