Lumos

The Midnight Snow

Felicity didn’t receive any more letters after the first. However, she soon found she could apply what she’d learned to other types of Transfiguration. She still struggled, but suddenly she wasn’t the biggest failure in the class. Unfortunately, this meant that particular title fell to poor Neville.

But Felicity didn’t have time to worry about Neville. Christmas was coming and, just a few days earlier, she’d received a letter that darkened her holidays significantly.

My Dearest Niece,

Hope your school is going marvelously. So sorry that you didn’t get into Slytherin, but that can be overlooked. I know you’re coming home for the holidays, so you can show me all the new spells you’ve learned when I come to stay with you! I’m sure Sebastian is excited to spend some time outside of school with you as well! Your grandmother wanted to come, but some plans have come up with some relatives in Bulgaria and she can’t make it. But she’ll be with us in spirit!


This was not the full content of the letter, but it was the most interesting. Felicity only managed to read the first few paragraphs of things they’d do over the holiday before she folded the parchment and tucked it under her plate, feeling very sick.

“Feeling alright?” Neville asked from across the table.

“You look a bit peaky,” Fred added, leaning forward to get a better look at the nauseated first year.

“I’m fine. Just dreading the holidays now,” she grumbled in response, shoving the letter toward Fred, who picked it up and glanced at its contents. “My uncle is mad.”

“Can’t be as bad as some of my uncles,” Neville commented.

“Trust me, he is. And he and my mum don’t get on. They can’t be in the same room with each other for two minutes without one having a go at the other.”

“What you need is some family bonding,” Fred suggested, handing the letter back. “A lovely heart-to-heart between them and everything will be better.”

“Siblings shouldn’t fight,” George agreed. He’d been so quiet on Fred’s other side, Felicity had almost forgotten he was there.

“They’ve been fighting for about fifteen years, I doubt they’ll stop now,” Felicity said gloomily, picking at her toast. “There’s going to be no reason to enjoy Christmas.”

“What about presents?” Neville asked.

“My mom’s a barkeep. She can hardly afford to keep the house.”

“I’m sure something about this Christmas will be worthwhile,” George said then, leaning his elbow on the table and resting his chin in his hand as he looked at Felicity. But Felicity knew this Christmas would be little more than completely miserable.

The air in the corridors was frigid as Felicity made her way back to the common room the night before they were due to leave for Christmas Break. She’d lingered in the Great Hall for longer than usual, until Ulric and Neville had both returned to the common room, and used the extra time to work on her Transfiguration and contemplate ways of getting out of going home the next day.

Unfortunately, an eleven–year–old’s mind can only come up with so many logical plans and she was stuck somewhere between becoming suddenly too ill to travel and telling her mother a dragon had eaten the train.

Just as Felicity reached the seventh floor, her mind in a faraway place where her uncle didn’t exist, she was grabbed from behind and yanked through a tapestry. Her first instinct, of course, was that she was being violently attacked and she reactively lashed out at whoever had grabbed her.

“Oy! Stop it!” came a familiar voice in the dark. It was one of the Weasley twins. As usual, Felicity couldn’t tell which one.

“Sorry,” she replied sheepishly. “But you shouldn’t just grab people like that.”

“You’re not people. You’re Felicity,” said the twin, his tone as cheeky as ever.

“Why did you pull me in here?”

“I’ve got something to show you.”

Felicity was nervous that he meant something that would get them into trouble. “It’s almost curfew.”

“That’s the fun of it.”

Just then, the tapestry was ripped aside, momentarily blinding the two hidden within the little alcove, and then the other Weasley became visible.

“George, you git,” he said, slipping behind the tapestry with them. “You’re going to get caught without me, and you know it.”

The tapestry opened once more and Ulric squeezed into the alcove as well. With the four of them inside, they were all rather squished and uncomfortable and Felicity vaguely wondered why they were all crammed in there in the first place.

“You’re all insane,” Ulric said, his voice quiet in the freezing darkness.

“Why are we all standing in here?” Felicity wanted to know, rubbing her hands together.

“I had planned something fun to cheer you up for the holidays,” said George, “but it seems Fred is unable to keep his nose out of my business.”

“Oy, we’re twins. Your business is my business.”

Of course it was Ulric who said, “I think we should go back to the common room before we get in trouble.”

“Come off it. A little rule–breaking never hurt anyone.”

George grinned. “No one important, anyway.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Ulric insisted, now starting to sound a bit nervous.

“Go back to your Potions homework if you’re gonna get your wand in a twist about it.”

“Or come with us and live a little.”

Ulric was silent for a long minute. Felicity, starting to shiver from the cold, stepped a little closer to the twin on her right side. She wasn’t sure which it was - George, she suspected - but he noticed her shivering and put an arm around her.

“Come on, Fred, let’s have some fun, shall we?”

“Sounds brilliant, George,” the other twin replied, pulling out his wand and tapping the wall behind them three times. To the two first years’ astonishment, the stone began to grumble softly as the solid material reshaped itself into a sizeable opening just large enough for a person to walk through.

“After you,” George said, giving Felicity a nudge toward the passageway.

She shot a nervous glance at Ulric before stepping into the tunnel. It was warmer inside and she eagerly pressed forward, hearing the muffled footsteps of the twins behind her. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears as she felt her way along the dark corridor, not even thinking to illuminate her wand.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the tunnel began to slope upward and the air became chilly again. Her eyes now adjusted to the light, Felicity could see her breath coming out in wisps of fog in front of her.

“This...better be...worth it,” she heard Ulric gasping somewhere far behind her.

“Is little Ricky getting tired?” came Fred’s cheeky reply.

“Does little Ricky need to go beddy–bye?” added his cheerful twin.

“Oh, shut up!”

Felicity was having a good laugh at their childish behavior when she ran into solid wall. Looking up, she saw that the tunnel opened above, but no light shone down on them.

“What now?” she asked as George caught up and came to stand next to her. Instead of answering, he knitted his fingers together and held out his hands to give her a leg up. “Oh, bloody hell.”

“Don’t back out now,” he said with a grin.

“Can’t have come all this way for nothing, right, George?”

“Absolutely right, Fred.”

“Bleeding...” Felicity muttered, not bothering to finish her cursing before she put her hands on George’s shoulders and put her foot into his hands. In one smooth movement, he’d lifted her up and she was suddenly surrounded by scratchy branches. “What the...?”

She hoisted herself out of the tunnel and rolled out from under the bramble to find herself suddenly laying in the snow, staring up at the night sky. Seconds later, Fred was by her side and helping pull Ulric out from under the bush.

“Where are we?” Ulric asked when he was standing on his own two feet again.

Felicity scrambled to her feet, sinking nearly up to her knees in snow, and looked around. They were surrounded by hills and mountains in the distance. George straightened up then, came to Felicity’s side, and put an arm around her shoulders. “This, m’dear, is the best place in the world.”

With that, he turned her around and steered her up the hillside, miraculously managing not to stumble in all the snow. When the reached the top, Felicity gasped.

It was Hogsmeade. The little village seemed to glow, the snow glistening in the light provided by a sky full of glittering stars. The snow-capped houses made the town look like a perfect Christmas card and Felicity desperately wished she had a camera.

“What do you think?” asked George, grinning at Felicity’s speechlessness.

“It’s quite nice, isn’t it?” Fred commented, mirroring George’s grin. Ulric, unlike Felicity, was not speechless.

“This is amazing,” he said, not even seeming to care about the cold anymore. “How did you know about the tunnel?”

“That’s for us to know-”

“-and you to keep your bloody nose out of.”

Then, before Ulric could come up with an argument, Fred reached up and yanked on the branch of the tree the group had been standing beneath. Snow cascaded down, hitting the unwitting trio as Fred made a run for it.

“Oy! Get back here!” George shouted, scooping up a handful of snow and tearing after his twin. Felicity laughed, but it was cut short as she got a mouthful of snow. Ulric had to stuff his fist in his mouth to keep from laughing, but the twins didn’t bother.

Felicity, not one to be outdone, snatched up a snowy branch from the ground and began to chase after Ulric. She was foiled as Fred caught her with a snowball from the left.

“Fred!” Felicity exclaimed, glaring at said twin.

“He’s not Fred, I am!” shouted George. But, somehow, Felicity knew the offending twin was, in fact, Fred. She charged toward him, wielding her branch threateningly, but George grabbed her around the middle and spun her around, causing her to drop the branch, snow flying everywhere.

“Let go!” she shouted, almost incoherent through her laughter. But George just continued to spin her until they were both so dizzy they couldn’t stay upright and ended up toppling into a snowdrift. Fred and Ulric, who had began to wage a one-on-one snowball war, didn’t even notice.

“So,” George breathed, still trying to catch his breath, “having a good Christmas yet?”

Felicity smiled and nodded. “I think I am.”

George grinned and rolled over to tickle Felicity’s side. “Don’t think, know.”

She swatted his hands away and sat up, leaning back on her hands and watching as Fred bewitched several snowballs to chase Ulric around, leaving the giddy redhead to sit back and laugh.

“Thanks, George,” Felicity said a moment later, turning her head to look at him.

He shrugged his shoulders carelessly and replied, “Can’t send you trotting off home without a smile, now, can we?”

Felicity grinned and was about to say something witty, but stopped as a prick of cold touched her nose. Little white flakes were fluttering from the sky, falling down on them in little flurries. Felicity and George watched them fall in silence, their breath little wisps of mist in front of their faces.

“It’s going to be a good Christmas,” Felicity decided. George’s eyebrows lifted as he glanced over at her. She nodded, confirming her decision to herself, and said, “I’m going to make it a good Christmas.”

“That’s the spirit,” said George, reaching over to pinch her cheek. She again swatted his hand away and flicked a handful of snow at him. This prompted him to dump a large scoop of snow on her head and, just like that, they were off again, rejoining Fred and Ulric in a furious snowball war.