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

Christmas 2009 (Part Three)

I'm not proud of it, but when I tell you I ran away when Storm Lyson bowed down in front of me and said my father was a werewolf and that he himself was in fact a werewolf I hiked it out of that waiting room like I was a rocket ship sent right to the moon. I burst out of the waiting room and ran down the hallway, ignoring Gran and Uncle Ron yelling my name after me.

It wasn't even just the fact that I was afraid of the giant man that had come in the room and said all that stuff about werewolves and my father being one, it was also this overwhelming feeling of drowning under information and the need to be alone and process what had been divulged to me so abruptly.

I ran until I didn't hear anyone coming after me anymore, ducked down another two halls and into a stairwell that spiraled downward through the hospital. I stumbled up a way and sat heavily, pressing myself against the wall. I sat there, my Christmas sweater tugged over my knees and resting my chin on my arms, eyes closed, and breathed as evenly as I could.

I catalogued sensations.

I could feel the rough concrete under me. Solid. The wall was cool against my shoulder. Also solid. The stairwell was quiet. My sweater was scratchy wool and magicked that sort of warmed and tightened ever so slightly (Gramolly always put special spells into the wool as she knit so that the sweaters had sort of built-in hugs). It didn't smell as much like cleaning potion in the stairwell. It was dustier and sort of forgotten feeling since everyone just used the lift these days or else the magical stairs that had been installed closer to the floo reception and floo network hall. These stairs probably went days between anybody using them, if anyone ever did at all for anything besides hiding from werewolves, that is.

There was a buzzing in my pyjama top pocket and I fished into the sweater to find the source of it.

I had found the plastic egg in an old jewelry box of my mother's. The battery had beed dead when I found it originally, but it was a colorful oval with a tiny screen, three buttons, and a silver keychain that clearly did something. So I'd carried it around with me for ages before one day Uncle George spotted it and asked me what it was.

"Dunno, something of my Mum's but I think it's broken." I'd said.

He'd taken it up in his palm and laughed, "Oh-ho! I remember these. We used to stock these in the muggle section of the shop! Its a Tamagotchi."

"A what?"

"A digital pet."

"Its a dead animal?" I asked, horrified.

"No, no - It's only a computer... Looks like the battery died." He magicked the back of the egg open and plucked a silver disk out, holding it up. "See here? This powers it. It's a muggle battery." He laid the Tamagotchi on the counter top and the battery down beside it, tapped it thrice with his wand and murmured some spell I didn't understand. The battery glowed and Uncle George grinned. "There we have it," he said. "Charged up. Ought to last a great deal of time, these things take hardly any power and I've massively over charged this..." he laughed, "You'll have long outgrown playing with it before it dies again." And he plopped the battery down into the egg.

It made a blooping beeping sound as Uncle George replaced the back and turned it over so I could see.

The screen had a very faint greenish glow and on it was a funny looking shape - sort of like a blobby baby duck or something.

"You push these buttons here -" Uncle George showed me, "And see along the frame here - there's different things you can select to interact with the pet. See look - this button gives it food. And there you see that gauge? Shows you how full it is, and that one shows how happy it is."