Ginny's Story

Chapter 24 Christmas

Hello there! I am extremely sorry for the delay in uploading... we're on holidays and I left my computer for a while and when I got back on, it was broken! Ahh, I was soooo distraught! And the guy came to fix it yesterday, but it'snot fixable, so I had to try ,y best to get my stories on another computer... I just did it and then it broke again. Lucky, eh! So now, hopefully, I will be able to upload a lot more, but not as much as I did before because I don't want to spend my whole holidays writing. Thanks for sticking with me... and sorry for the rant!

Chapter 24 Christmas

“Ginevra! Get out of bed now!” boomed Mum’s voice. I groaned and rolled over, opening one eye to look at my calendar. What I saw made me leap out of bed immediately.

“Christmas!” I breathed to myself. “How could I forget?”

I pulled on a simple and light long-sleeved shirt, knowing I would be covering it up soon anyway with Mum’s customary knitted jumpers. As I tugged on my jeans, I reflected back on the wonderful Christmases I had enjoyed in my lifetime. I was so lucky to have such a brilliant family. And Harry, a voice added in my head. I blushed at this thought, but didn’t dismiss it. It was, of course, true. Anybody could see it.

“Ginny!” Mum called again. I sighed, creaking my door open.

“Coming, Mum!”

I bounced out to the lounge where I saw mostly everyone in my family. I was determined to make this Christmas a good one despite the circumstances.

“Hello everyone,” I greeted brightly. Charlie beamed from the sofa and got up to give me a tight hug.

“Merry Christmas, little sis!” he chuckled and ruffled my hair. I smiled and looked around. On the floor by the fire sat Fred and George, talking quite seriously so I assumed they were talking business. Mum and Dad were sitting on the loveseat, enjoying having family around, and Charlie had been sitting by himself before I came in, but looked quite content.

“Where’s Bill?” I asked, grabbing a gingerbread wizard from a bowl and nibbling on the edges, savouring the flavour.

“He and Fleur decided to spend their first Christmas as a married couple alone,” Dad told me. Mum’s brows furrowed slightly.

“I don’t know why,” she said with a sigh. “Christmas is about family, not… not…” Mum seemed to be struggling for the right word.

“I know you don’t like it and to be frank, I don’t love it either,” I said in defence for Bill. “But Fleur is now part of our family. I think she and Bill deserve some time alone.”

“Very sensible, Gin,” Fred – or was it George – said disapprovingly, shaking his head and turning back to George. I scowled in their direction and walked over to the Christmas tree.

“Present time? Please Momma?” I asked, repeating the same thing I asked every year from when I was old enough to understand Christmas. Everyone laughed, remembering me as a small child saying the exact same thing.

Mum rushed to the tree and piled presents into her arms; distributing them to the people they belonged to.

I ripped off the wrapping paper and out fell the usual knitted jumper. This one was red and gold with a lion standing upright and proud on the front. I looked over and Fred and George’s and they had exactly the same as mine just enlarged to fit them.

“I thought we could all do with some Gryffindor spirit,” Mum said in explanation. She had already donned on her own knitted jumper. I looked around and saw everyone in the family in matching jumpers. “You know, we all have to be brave these days. Hopefully these jumpers will remind you the... the right side of the war to be on.”

I smiled and silently agreed with her. Bravery and loyalty were the most important things now.

From Fred and George I received a bunch of things from their shop, which I was itching to use on certain teachers at Hogwarts. Charlie slipped me a small dragon model, and whispered,

“If you ever want to talk, say my name to the dragon and whisper in its ear. I’ll whisper into mine’s ear and it’ll come out of your dragon’s mouth. I got the idea from a mirror Sirius gave to Harry before he died.” Charlie smiled sadly and pulled out his dragon and whispered something in its ear. I lifted mine to my ear and heard, ‘Merry Christmas,” in Charlie’s voice.

“Thanks, Charlie,” I whispered into mine, smiling when I heard my voice ring out of the other dragon’s mouth.

Bill and Fleur owled us each a present. Mine was a small ring with a ruby - the same colour as the jumper Mum knitted us all - embedded in a golden ring. It was just big enough to fit on my small finger.

All in all, it had been a very successful Christmas so far, but we still hadn’t heard anything from Harry, Ron or Hermione, which put a damper on our day.

“How ‘bout we go play a bit of Quidditch,” Fred suggested. “What do you think, Gin?”

“Sounds great!” I exclaimed eagerly, ready for an opportunity to make this Christmas a bit like all our others. 
All of us - including Mum, although a bit reluctantly - gathered in the field we always played Quidditch in, and organised ourselves into small teams.

On my team was Dad as the keeper (apparently he had been quite good back in his day’, but had obviously lost quite a bit of skill during years of not playing), Fred as a chaser (which he had never done before, so I had my fingers crossed that he would succeed at doing it), and me acting as the team seeker, which I had done a few times before.

On the opposing team was Mum as the keeper (she was absolutely dreadful and could barely fly her broom a foot off the ground), George as the chaser (like Fred, he had no experience doing this), and Charlie as seeker (which frightened me a fair bit because he had been almost as good as Harry).

We had a lovely time with our friendly Quidditch match, but unfortunately Charlie beat me to the snitch (no surprises there). Mum, Dad and Charlie headed up to the house straight after the match, while Fred, George and I stayed for a bit of a fly around.

“Ginny,” George said calmly. “Don’t freak out, but land the broom now.”

“Huh?” I said, bewildered. “Why?”

Fred and George ignored me a silently flew to a large tree, drawing their wands and very calmly shot stunning spells. I flew over to them and saw a man wearing dark robes with an ‘S’ stitched on the back.

“H-He’s a Snatcher!” I exclaimed. Fred and George nodded.

“Yeah, he was trying to bring some ‘blood-traitors’ to his master.”Fred and George rolled their eyes. “We’re not stupid, though. We have to stun Snatchers about ten times a day! You’d think they’d learn.”

“Anyway, let’s get back to the Burrow before any of his friends-” George kicked the Snatcher, turning him over, “- come and think it would be a good idea to have a shot themselves. Mum and dad would kill us if anything happened to you.”

I shook my head at how casual they were and the three of us flew back to the Burrow.

Despite the Snatcher interference, it had been a great day and I was thankful we could celebrate in near peace.

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