Golden Afternoon

Yuletide Carols part one

Nov. 30th, 2008 at 2:18 PM

I am going to be posting one Harry Potter vignette a week between now and Christmas. Each is based on a Christmas song, though I'm not going to name it in the piece, you get to guess! This one is entitled "Merry".

Once there was a boy who had three best friends. He was studying to become a wizard at school where all the other magical boys and girls in Britain went. Each year, when he was old enough, he and his friends would travel to the nearby magical village. The village was full of fun and wonders that delighted the children year after year.

Sirius Black traipsed through the Hogsmeade village, enjoying the company of his best friends, and popping pepper imps into his mouth. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in December, just a few weeks before Christmas, and the Marauders were enjoying their freedom. They had eaten lunch at the Three Broomsticks pub, and had purchased several bags of sweets apiece at Honeydukes sweet shoppe. They’d already gotten presents for their families, and were now meandering aimlessly through the village. The trees were lit with little twinkling colored lights, and the window displays in the stores actually moved. They were a sight to behold.

Just as the boys began to think all the fun had been had, and that it might be time to return to Hogwarts, they happened upon a most charming scene. A small group of young children were building a snowman in the front yard of a small thatch-roofed house. They were laughing and shrieking with delight as they rolled the ever-growing snowballs that would soon be set upon one another to create their snowman. One small girl flew out of the house, holding a blue scarf, a pipe, a button, two pieces of coal from the fireplace, and a black silk top hat. She set the items down in a pile at the foot of the front steps, and began to look around for sticks that would most likely become the arms.

Sirius and his friends stopped across the street to watch the children laugh and play. They smiled as the snowman slowly took shape. One of the older boys helped out the little girl who’d procured all the objects. It was too tall for her to reach the snowman’s face, so the boy lifted her up and let her assemble his face. She put in the pieces of coal for eyes, the button for a nose, a few stones she’d found in a smile shape for his mouth, and then stuck the pipe out of one corner. Next, she wrapped the blue scarf around the snowman’s neck.

Sirius thought about the young children for a moment and decided it would be amusing to join in with their fun. “You guys wanna have some fun?” he asked his friends quietly, taking his wand out of his robes.

“What are you going to do?” James asked curiously.

“Just watch…” Sirius snickered and waggled his eyebrows devilishly.

“Don’t do anything mean,” Remus requested, though he knew it was futile to do so.

“Well, what are you going to do?” Peter piped in eagerly.

Sirius aimed his wand at the snowman and muttered a few words. He’d always been good at Transfiguration, and wanted to see how far he could manage it. A thin gold beam shot out of his wand and hit the snowman in the belly just as the little girl put the black top hat on his head. A second later, the snowman began to rock around on its base, his twig arms started waving around, and his stone mouth moved up and down while words emanated from it. “Hello children! My name’s Fros—” it began to say, but was interrupted as the children began to scream in terror. The boy holding up the girl promptly dropped her and ran down the street screaming as though the snowman had tried to strangle him.

Sirius doubled over with laughter while James howled wildly. Peter giggled and gave the occasional snort, but Remus only frowned disapprovingly. After a few more seconds of the snowman dancing around the front yard, he took his own wand out and waved it towards the dancing object. A blue bolt shot out of the wand and hit the snowman in the head. The snowman exploded into the air, and the snow settled back onto the ground. “If you’re done torturing children, do you mind if we return to Hogwarts? It’s freezing out here,” he growled while replacing his wand and wrapping his arms around himself. His thin robes didn’t do much to keep out the chilly winter air.

The other three boys continued laughing for another minute before calming down again. By this time, the kids had returned to their yard, and glared at them. The children gathered up handfuls of snow and threw them across the street. “You think you’re so funny!” the youngest girl cried out as her snowball hit Peter in the thigh. Sirius, James, and Peter quickly joined in the snowball fight, leaving Remus standing there, rolling his eyes.

“Good bye,” he muttered before turning and walking away, back towards Hogwarts. “Every year, they do this. So immature…” he said to himself as he made the trek back to the school.

The other boys continued playing in the snow with the children until it was too cold to keep playing. As they said their goodbyes, and waved to the kids, Sirius turned and called out to them, “We’ll be back again next year, be ready for another snowball fight!” When James and Peter looked at him warily as they walked to school, he shrugged his shoulders. “What? It’s for the children…they enjoy it…”

“Yeah, for the children,” James said, rolling his eyes. “Come on, let’s go get warmed up and eat dinner. I’m starving.”

The boys turned and walked out of the fun and magical village of Hogsmeade, to return to Hogwarts. A light snow began to fall, but they were busy making merry and talking about the Christmas holidays to notice. Sirius Black would look back on this day as one of his favorite Christmas memories. One that he would think of every year ever after.

Location:home
Mood: chipper