The Thanksgiving Disaster(Harry Potter & Carry On, Simon Fanfiction) #fanficfriday #thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving Dinner Disaster

*Hermione's POV*

"So who's coming over again?" I ask Harry, who is helping me straighten the table for our guests. Today is Thanksgiving, and Harry has invited over his long lost cousin or something for Thanksgiving dinner. They have magic too, which is good (it'd be pretty of hard to hide magic in a house full of wizards) but I'm still kind of annoyed that Harry invited them. I wanted Thanksgiving to just be the four of us, Ron, Harry, Ginny and I. But Ginny had some Quidditch thing to do, and now we're stuck with Harry's weird distant relatives.

    "I've told you this a billion times already, Hermione. My cousin, three times removed, on my father's side. His name is Simon Snow, and his friends Basilton and Penelope are coming over as well." Harry answers. I sigh and continue working on setting the flower vase just right in the middle of our table.

    At the end of the battle of Hogwarts, the three of us all decided that we needed to stick together. We grabbed Ginny, and immediately starting looking for a place for all of us to stay. We finally chose a place in London that was big enough for the four of us, and we all pitched in to buy it. We've pretty much completely moved in now, and I love our place. Now, we've put up tons of fall decorations and now our house is all ready for Thanksgiving, which I am no longer excited for.

    "When are they coming again?" I ask, and Harry shrugs.

    "At 4:00, so in like a couple of hours. But we've got everything set up, now. Don't worry about it." He tries to reassure me.

    "Yeah," I say dismissively. "Thanks for the help with the table." I turn and walk upstairs to my room as Harry calls after me.

    "Your welcome!"

    I pick a book out of my bookshelves (The one I pick happens to be a book on Magical Creatures that live under water) and sit on the window bench, which has become my little reading nook. I sit down and look about my room, which I have organized to the point where it looks like a room out of an advertisement, with everything perfectly neat in it's place. I smile at how wonderfully un-chaotic it is in my room, as opposed to the rest of the house, where nothing has a place and everything is just strewn about.

    I read my book nearly cover to cover by 4:00, and I feel like I could give a lecture on underwater magical creatures when I hear Ron call to me from downstairs.

    "Hermione! Come on down, our guests are here!" I take my time down the stairs like a child who doesn't want to say hello to her parent's guests. But once I'm in range of our guests, I'm all fake smiley and happy.

    "Hi! I'm so glad you're here. We've got all the food set up, and we can start eating whenever you want. Can I offer you something to drink?" I welcome them inside, taking their coats and putting them neatly up in our coat closet. The girl approaches me.

    "I'll have water, please. My name is Penelope, but you can call me Penny. And I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by your house. I thought anyone who's related to Simon would be a whole lot messier, but Harry seems to be actually pretty neat." Penny says. I look at the living room, which I spent nearly an hour cleaning up earlier because Harry and Ron are walking mess-makers. I laugh.

    "You were right to think that. Harry is ridiculously messy. I spent just under an hour cleaning this room up!" I exclaim.

    "That sounds more like Simon," Penny laughs, and I smile.

    "Let me get you that water," I say. I grab a cup from the kitchen and as I fill it with tap water, I start to think that this dinner might be enjoyable after all.

    Fifteen minutes later, we're sitting at the dinner table, and enjoyable is definitely not the word I would use to describe whats going on right now. When we first sat down at the table, it looked like things were going fine. I sat down next to Penelope and we had an interesting conversation about magical tears in the universe, and how they were possible. Though after barely five minutes of our conversation, the boys' voices started growing louder. Now, Ron, Harry, Simon, and Basilton are yelling at each other. I don't know how their conversation started, but now they are full on screaming at each other.

    "You just dismissed Voldemort like he didn't even matter! He killed my parents and tortured and killed hundreds of wizards! He's the worst thing that's ever happened to the magical world!" Harry screams.

    "Yeah, right! People die all the time, so what? Magic almost disappeared completely, and you're off ranting about this random guy who I bet barely made a dent in the population!" Simon yells back.

    "This 'random guy' was feared so much that people wouldn't even dare to mention his name! I would rather magic disappear forever than have all my friends and family killed!" Ron bellows.

    The yelling match goes on for a little while longer, until I can't take it anymore.

    "Everyone just shut it, okay! I didn't even want you all here, and apparently I was right to think that. You all have ruined my Thanksgiving. Thank you for the worst night of my life." I glare at all of them, and then storm up to my room. I sit curled up on the window seat, looking out at the night sky. I'm so angry that that happened. I didn't even want them to come here in the first place, and now our stupid guests have ruined one of the best holidays. I just wanted to be thankful with my friends. Was that too much to ask for?

    I sigh, and feel the anger seep out of me as I start to cool down. But I still can't believe that they got into a fight. We were having a holiday dinner for crying out loud. You don't start a fight during a holiday dinner.

    I know I've thought this a thousand times, but I really wish Harry didn't invite them to come for Thanksgiving. I've barely had any times in my life where I can just be myself around the people that I love most, and I was really hoping that this Thanksgiving could be like it was in my early years at Hogwarts, messing around with Harry and Ron, having loads of fun. But this was just a disappointment.

    I hear footsteps, and expect Ron or Harry to walk through my door, but it's actually Penelope.

    "Hey," she says gently, standing in the doorway. I glare over at her.

    "What do you want?" I say, a little too harshly considering that she wasn't the one screaming. She walks over and sits down on the other end of the window seat.

    "I wanted to apologize. They were idiots down there, and I'm sorry, and they are very sorry too, that they ruined your Thanksgiving. And I'm sorry that we came and barged in on your holiday celebration when you didn't want us here, and that we proved your point in not wanting us here. We're cleaning up our food and stuff downstairs, and we'll leave straight after that. I'm sorry." She says, and I instantly feel terrible. I mean, they were idiots like she said, but I can't just kick them out on Thanksgiving. Especially not after that apology.

    Penelope stands and turns, and starts to walk out of my room, but I stop her before she is fully out of the door.

    "Penelope, wait," I say. "I'm sorry too. I should've been more open to having other people over for Thanksgiving. It's just, I wanted it to be the way it was when we were younger. But I get now that a lot of stuff has happened since then, and I can deal with traditions changing. What I mean to say is, I'm sorry for not giving you all a chance, and you're welcome to stay." I'm probably going a little bit overboard with the sappy apology thing, but oh well. I've gotten my point across, and I feel better in doing so. A wide smile creeps across Penelope's face.

    "I'll go and tell Baz and Simon," She says, and rushes downstairs. I follow behind her, and we set up all the food and things downstairs on the table, and we start Thanksgiving dinner over again. We all laugh and have a really pleasant dinner party without arguing, and it almost feels like the screaming and yelling didn't even happen. I smile real smiles, and I find myself hoping that we can do this again next year. I'm glad I let the past and our old traditions go, because this new tradition is something that I want to be doing for a long time in the future.

Thank you for reading! :)