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

The Sorting Hat, 2011

"Teddy? What are you doing?"

Victorie's voice was the first to break into my whirlwind of anxiety as I sat on the step. My thumb slid from George-Michael's buttons as I opened my eyes and looked at her. People had been stepping around me to disembark from the Express, like a stone in the middle of a flowing river. But Victorie stood on the step below me, staring me in the face.

Her brows were raised with concern, her pale blonde hair hanging like a curtain over on shoulder, her eyes piercing into me. "What's the matter?" she asked me, touching my arm carefully.

I shook my head.

"I tried to find you, but I wasn't sure if you were you or if you had a different look, and I thought you maybe were with some other friends," she said. "Didn't you try to find me?"

"You were busy with your friends," I answered.

Victorie sighed. "You're my friend, too, Teddy."

I smiled. I didn't really believe her, but I smiled anyway.

"Come on, you idiot," she said, grabbing my hand. I let George Michael fall to my hip with my other keychains clattering from the strap of my bag to take her hand in mine and followed her across the platform. "Did you ride the whole way there on the step?"

"No," I said defensively.

Victorie laughed gently, then saw the briefcase I was hugging under my other arm. "What is that?" she raised her eyebrow.

"Harry gave it to me. It's a briefcase. It belonged to my father."

"It looks like it's lost a fight with a dragon," she said.

I thought of the stolen book in my bag.

"Maybe it has," I said.

Victorie laughed and her eyes sparkled brightly as she did. She dropped my hand naturally at some point as we walked, following the sounds of Rubeus Hagrid's voice carrying over the Platform. "Firs' years o'er here, firs' years!"

Violet's eyes widened, "Who is that?" she asked, awe lacing her voice as she slowed, seeing Hagrid's hulking form, looming more than double over the heads of the students milling about him.

"That's Hagrid," Victorie and I said in unison. "Jinx," I added and Victorie stuck out her tongue.

As we were herded along with the other first years, it became super-duper clear that I was also quite a bit taller than the first years. Victorie was quite tall for her age, but still shorter than me, so it hadn't really occurred to me until we were filtering into the crowd of eleven year olds that I would be this much taller than them... a problem made worse by the fact that I am naturally taller than most kids my age anyway.

"Oh no," I murmured. My hair started turning red.

"Your hair --" Victorie made a face.

I screwed up my own face and turned my hair black, and I grabbed onto George Michael again as we approached the shore line where Hagrid was lifting firsties into the row boats grounded at the edge of the water. Kids were looking at me, sizing me up, whispering.

"He can't be a first year, he's too tall!"

"Maybe part giant like Hagrid?"

"Maybe he was too dumb to come in his proper year."

"Why don't you shrink yourself?" Victorie asked, "So you're my height?"

I'd never tried to change my height before.

"I --"

But I was next up to be lifted into a boat already and when Hagrid lifted me up, the boy that had been in queue in front of me shouted, "No! No! Not him! Not that giant! He's too big!!! He'll sink the boat!!!"