The Young Padfoot *Book One*

Leaving for Christmas

My favourite holiday was right upon us. Now don't get me wrong, I love Halloween, but there's just something about Christmas that even Halloween couldn't beat. It might be the food, the presents, the hope it brings or just the whole feel of it, I didn't know.

Even though I wasn't staying over at Hogwarts for Christmas, I still had the chance to experience some of it. As we were a couple of weeks into December, the temperatures had dropped right down so now most mornings when you woke up there was a thick layer of snow on the ground.

One of the best things, though, was seeing the Weasley twins enchant several snowballs to follow Professor Quirrell around and bounce off the back of his turban. Unfortunately, they got caught by McGonagall, who stopped the snowballs.

Literally everyone, even some of the horrible students, was excited about the holidays and none of us could wait for them to start. Luckily, the Gryffindor common room had warm fires on the go at every hour of the day so we could warm up there. However, Snape's dungeon was another story. Whenever we had to go there for potions, our breath rose into small misty clouds right in front of us, forcing us to stay as close to our hot cauldrons as possible.

"I do feel so sorry for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they're not wanted at home," Malfoy announced one Potions class. He didn't try to hide the fact that he was staring at Harry the whole time. His posse chuckled as if it were funny. That's right encourage the idiot. As if we needed to hear his voice any more than necessary.

Ever since Gryffindor had win the Quidditch match, Malfoy had become even more unpleasant to Harry. Malfoy had started off by trying to get everyone to laugh at how a wide-mouthed tree frog would be replacing Harry as Seeker next. To be honest, I was surprised he even knew what that was. It didn't take him long to realise that no one actually found that funny as they were all so impressed with how Harry had managed to hang on to the jinxed broom. So Malfoy, now jealous and angry, had gone back to taunting Harry about not having a proper family.

It was true, though. Harry was staying here for Christmas. And it was true that he wasn't exactly wanted at the Dursleys, but Harry didn't want to go there, either. Well, at least that's what he told us but I'm pretty sure it's the truth. When McGonagall had come round last week to see which students would be staying, Harry practically ran to sign up, shoving everyone out of the way to make sure he got a spot. I don't blame him; if I lived with people like the Dursleys, from what I've heard, I wouldn't want to go back. Harry kept on saying that this would probably be the best Christmas he had ever had as Ron was staying as well. Mr and Mrs Weasley were going to Romania to visit his brother Charlie who worked with dragons.

I was actually quite glad that I was returning back to see Remus as over the last few weeks, since Hagrid let slip about Nicholas Flamel, we had spent at least two hours every day looking for anything about him. I mean, how else were we supposed to find out what Snape was trying to steal? We'd looked in loads of books already but there must be tens of thousands of books in the school library.

When we left the dungeons at the end of Potions, I walked straight into a large fir tree and fell to the ground. Wait, what? A large fir tree? I looked at the bottom of the tree and saw it had two enormous feet sticking out from under it and I heard a loud huffing sound. It took me a moment before I realised that it was Hagrid.

Harry gave me a hand and pulled me up from off the ground.

"You good?" He asked.

"Yeah, thanks," I replied.

"Hi, Hagrid. Want any help?" Ron asked, poking his head through some of the branches.

"Nah, I'm alright, thanks, Ron," Hagrid huffed out.