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

Christmas 2010 (Part One)

"You're sure the cookies taste right?"

"Yes, absolutely, Harry. I am positive." Ginny said. "Aren't the butterbeer biscuits good, kids?"

"Yes," Albus, James-Sirius, and I chorused. Lily was still gnawing on hers and too young to answer, but the fact she hadn't thrown it the way she did everything else she could get her tiny hands on spoke volumes. Her occupation was catapulting everything she touched across the room and screaming for it like some sick variant on playing fetch with a dog. Her binkies were strewn about everywhere in the cottage.

"And the lights on the house - are they..."

"Harry! They look splendid. They always do. You always put so much care into them."

Harry nervously tugged at the hem of his Christmas sweater. Gramolly had come that morning along with Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione and their brood of children. "Perhaps I ought to change into something more --"

There was a knock on the door, loud and firm, and Harry paled several shades.

I was sitting at the dining room table next to Albus, who was coloring while I was drawing. James-Sirius was watching the muggle telly in the living room and Lily was in a pink baby walker seat, with her biscuit in one hand and with the other she was slapping at plastic stars that spun as she giggled and squealed loudly, her red hair in pig tails.

"Is it him?" James-Sirius demanded, kneeling on the couch to look at the door with eager eyes. He leaned, trying to catch a glimpse out onto the porch.

"You're to be polite, on your very best behavior," Ginny said, turning to James-Sirius and catching him about the waist before he could launch himself over the back of the couch in a mad dash to the window to look out the curtains. "Get the door, Harry, before they catch their death of cold out there!" The wind had been howling all night.

Harry was practically shaking as he opened the door.

A pudgy man with dark brown hair stood in the door, in front of him stood a girl with brown curls and wide green eyes. He looked just as nervous as Harry did.

"Hullo, Harry," the man said.

Harry stared at him a moment, then said, "Hullo Dudley."

The monumental moment had come. Harry hadn't seen his cousin, Dudley Dursley, since the day he'd left Number 4 Privet Drive for the last time ages and ages ago. Although he and Dudley had exchanged holiday cards every year, they hadn't bothered at meeting fact to face again. They were far from what you would call friends, but had at least that much. Harry had showed me one of the cards when I was smaller and the post had come.

"We grew up together," Harry explained when I'd asked who Dudley was. "My Aunt and Uncle raised me, and Dudley is their Son."

"So you're like brothers? Like me and James-Sirius?" (For at the time it was only James-Sirius, Albus and Lily the Baby Catapult hadn't been born yet.)

"No," Harry had said pointedly. "We're not like brothers."

The little girl in front of Dudley stepped forward and held up a tin. "Happy Christmas, Uncle Harry," she said in a crisp, sweet little voice. She smiled and curtsied. She was wearing one of those red velvet holiday dresses.

Harry looked perplexed at the title and the tin she held up as Dudley shuffled uneasily behind her, looking sheepish and miserably uneasy.

(Guilty, I realized later, looking back, when I learned more why they were not more like brothers. The fucker looked guilty.)

Ginny hurried over and took the tin, smiling, "Happy Christmas!" she exclaimed, smiling and ushering them both inside, flicking her wand to shut the door and the coat rack galloped over to take Dudley coat as he shrugged it off. Ginny looked to the girl, "You must be Violet."