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

Christmas 2009 (Part Two)

Okay - so - let me give you some ✨context✨ real quick.

You know how muggle children go about telling one another horrid ghost stories and do shite like hold their muggle torchlights to their chins and make spooking ooOOOooOOOoo noises? The way some kids are utterly and completely terrified of the stupidest shit because of those stories? Or like, there are very cliched "bad guys" that are used so often in these type stories that kids fear them the moment they see them based purely on the stories and nothing else?

Like muggle dentists.

(Which by the by Aunt Hermione's muggle parents were dentists and although I've never met them I've heard they're lovely.)

In the wizarding world, kids do that with werewolves.

In primary, I had friends (* I am doing some BIG AIR QUOTATION MARKS around the word friends here bee-tee-dubs) who used to take the piss out of me with horrid werewolf stories that positively petrified me. Werewolves were in the news a lot around that time - the Minister was trying to reform the way they were treated, which now that I'm older and smarter and all that I totally get and am all for (awhooo! Werewolves unite! and all that jazz)... But then I was a child and the other children around me were stupid and I was even stupider and consequently werewolves were my number one fear.

Okay. ✨Context✨ recap:
1. I was stupid
2 I was terrified of werewolves

Oh, and hidden message number three:

3. I didn't know at the time my Dad was one.

Now. Back to the story.

CHRISTMAS 2009 (PART TWO)

The waiting room was near to bursting within minutes. See, when word gets out that Harry Potter's been injured on duty, people show up. Quickly. Loads of people.

Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione came, apologizing for taking so long - they'd had to drop their children off with Grampa Weasley. The moment Uncle Ron walked in James-Sirius's mood improved a thousand fold and he went racing to Ron, forgetting about me and all the anxious questions he'd had.

Wonder what that's like - just forgetting to be anxious anymore?

Aunt Hermione went to find Ginny and see if she could help with paperwork or anything.

Uncle Ron's mum, who I called Granmolly, arrived with them, too, and carried with her jumpers for me, James-Sirius, and Albus, saying she'd worried if Ginny had had time to dress us properly. My sweater was dark blue with a golden lightning bolt knit into the chest. I pulled it on thankfully and she clucked about the likelihood of all three of us catching death of cold and digging in her purse for pepper-up to douse the beginnings of the illnesses we were likely to get from the lack of jumpers.

My Gran arrived next and said that it was hectic getting cleared to come upstairs by now - apparently half the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was apparently gathered in the big waiting room downstairs, wanting to know if their fearless leader was alright.

Uncle George and Aunt Angelina arrived, followed by Professor Longbottom and a greying old witch I didn't know at the time but whom I've since learned to be none other than Minerva McGonagall.

"We came as soon as we heard!" Minerva McGonagall said, her voice a trilling Scottish accent. "What's happened to Harry Potter?"

"We're not entirely certain just yet now," Uncle Ron answered, "Only that there was some sort of incident with the werewolves in Blackburn."

"The Blackburn werewolves?" Minerva McGonagall asked, her face paling, "Och! I thought they were on peaceful terms ever since --"

But she stopped mid-sentence when Gran's eyes snapped to her and her hands went to my ears.