Chapter 1 - Year's End
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By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw it we all recognized the Count -- in every way, even to the scar on his forehead.
-- Bram Stoker, Dracula
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A single lamp upon a lone table lit the stone floor, providing a flickering yellow light. Frost framed the nearby window panes in a bristling white that glittered warm in the flame's glow. Harry exhaled loudly and flipped ahead a few pages in the small, worn spell book he held before him. With a flick of his wand he tried the spell again to no effect. His scarred brow furrowed as he held the rough paper closer to his nose, just in case he was reading the incantation incorrectly or missing an arrow on the gesture diagram. Uttering a noise of impatience, he lowered the book and gazed at his efforts so far. The Christmas tree standing before him looked pretty plain with just blue lights hovering in it and nothing else. But the tree itself was a nice full one with an attractive aquamarine tinge to its outer needles. He had picked it up at a neighbor of the Burrow just that morning after the all-night party Ron had hosted. This party was on top of the late evening the night before, when he and his fellow Auror apprentices had celebrated reaching their sixth-month review.
Harry rubbed his neck and his tender right shoulder as he carefully reread-from the beginning-the chapter on fairy lights, frustrated and determined all the more by the apparent utter simplicity of the spells he was attempting. He winced. His shoulder was even sorer today than it had been immediately after his six-month review testing. At first, he had been pleased to be assigned to Mad-Eye Moody for his spell examination, but the old Auror had apparently seen more confidence in Harry than he liked and had proceeded to put Harry on his backside with an Alibappa spell that they had not learned, and in fact one Harry suspected none of the other full Aurors knew either given their puzzled expressions. As Harry had picked himself up off the floor and caught his breath, Moody had looked about as pleased as Harry had ever seen him.
It was a subsequent chain binding curse that had bruised his shoulder. Harry had been required not to counter it, but to cancel it once it had captured him. He had accomplished this in record time, but neglected to point out to his trainer, who gave Harry a rare grunt of approval, that he had no choice given how little he could breathe with the spell so tight.
Harry soothed his pride with determined and almost dark expectations about his one-year review. He couldn't find a reference to the two difficult spells Moody had used, but he had sent a letter off to Penelope, a former girlfriend who lived in Switzerland, asking if she would check the archives where she worked. He was confident that she would find a source for them. Harry just had to work out a way of making sure Moody was his spell examiner next time as well.
Scratching his head, Harry decided to give the remaining fairy lights a go later. He put the book down on his stack of presents, noticing the one from Ginny on the top. This reminded him that he needed to work out how to convince her to trade brooms with him. If he just wrapped up his own broom, that would cause confusion. Instead, he sat down in the drawing room and began writing a charmed letter that would only let you open the second half of it after you had agreed to the first half. He wrote out: An unconventional present idea, but you must agree to it before you will be able to read the remainder of this letter.
Harry was just chuckling to himself, knowing how very batty that would make any Weasley, especially Ginny, when the doorknocker sounded. Harry set the parchments aside and quickly closed the ink bottle before answering the door.
