Chapter 15 of 30
A Charmed Christmas
“Wow!” Fred said as they materialized in the living room of the Halliwell manor. “Loved that! So much better than side-Apparating!”
Wyatt grinned at the twins’ enthusiasm. He had never Apparated but he had heard people talking about splinching and stuff like that and it seemed rather painful. Orbing was a little disconcerting at first but it was more the shock of being in one place and then suddenly in another, or so his grandfather told him. Because to Wyatt orbing was as natural as breathing. He’d always been doing it.
He looked at Chris who was looking around a little awkwardly.
“This is our house. The Halliwell manor has been in our family for generations,” Paige explained. “It’s the home of any Halliwell. Right now only Piper, Leo, Wyatt and now Chris actually live in it, since Phoebe and I moved out with our husbands years ago. But we all see this as our home.”
“It is also built on top of the nexus and it’s been the Halliwell’s duty to protect it for generations so there always has to be a Halliwell using it as their actual home to power up the wards protecting it,” Leo explained.
“But who’s here while you are at Hogwarts?” Hermione asked.
“Before they left we all worked on warding the place even more. So if there is any movement in the house we get warned and come to check. It kind of sounds a beep in our head,” Paige wrinkled her nose. “It was a little annoying at first until we developed a system of sending a message to everyone’s cell phones if someone came here. You see, even with mine and Phoebe’s family not living here we or the kids often come here. Because the Book of Shadows is here. Piper’s food is here,” she sighed. “Not now, but normally. We’ve being going hungry,” she made a suffering face.
“Oh, poor you- speaking of food- Phoebe didn’t cook right?” Piper asked worried.
“Oh, God no!” Paige looked horrified. “We ordered out! Anyway. We’re around enough to charge the wards with our magic and with the alarm we have things covered. I’m gonna pop home to get the hubby and the kids. Phoebe and the others should be here soon. Oh, and our other guests were going to wait in the kitchen,” she made a weird motion towards the twins and Ginny.
“Oh, yeah! Fred, George, Ginny, you better sit down for this,” Ron said nodding at Paige. “There’s something we need to tell you.”
“More than Chris having a family?” Ginny asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Hermione worried her lips.
Piper and Leo looked at her and Piper asked gently, “Do you two mind explaining to them while we show Chris around?” Ron and Hermione shook their head. “Come here Chris. There is something I want to show you.” Piper took Chris’s hand gently and led him upstairs closely followed by a silent Leo and a giddy Wyatt. She led him to a door and opened it gently. She led him inside and looked at him taking both his hands.
“This is your room. I don’t know if you like what’s in here. You can redecorate, do what you want. There are things in the closet that you might not want anymore but…but we always bought them. Even if we knew you wouldn’t be able to use them. For your birthday, for Christmas…We wanted you to know that you were always in our minds. We wanted to be ready for whenever we’d have you back with us.”
Chris looked around mesmerized. This was his room. Not someone’s second room, his. Not a cupboard he had to share with the cleaning supplies. His room. There was a single bed with a blue duvet. There were a variety of toys on top of it. Some which were clearly for a younger child. Some he remembered wanting so badly when Dudley got them, even if just for Dudley to share them with him but he was never allowed to touch them. There was a small TV hooked to a video game, and a laptop on a nice desk, very similar to the one he’d seen when the Room of Requirement had turned into Wyatt’s room. He walked to the bed and touched some of the toys reverently. He was too old to play with most of them, but he’d keep them, he’d keep them just because he’d never had them. He turned around and said huskily hugging a plush bear, “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank us son,” Leo said walking to him and resting his hands on his shoulders. “This is your room, this is your house. It has always been waiting here for you.”
Chris smiled through misted eyes and hugged the bear closer.
Ron and Hermione honestly weren’t getting anywhere. They kept trying to tell the others but the twins started one outrageous theory after the other. So fed up with them Ron just walked to the door Paige had indicated led to the kitchen. Poked his head inside and asked the people in there to come outside. That shut the twins up as Ginny yelled.
“AH! SIRIUS BLACK!”
Sirius poked Remus and grinned cheekily, “So nice to have an effect on people.”
Remus rolled his eyes and turned calmly to the poor Weasleys, “Now, Fred, George. No need for that. Put your wands away. Sirius is perfectly harmless,” then he stopped to ponder a bit “I mean, he won’t hurt you, harmless might be going bit too far.”
“He wants to kill Chris Professor! Step away from that man,” George said not lowering his wand that was pointing directly at Sirius. The only problem was that right in his line of fire were Hermione, Ron and Remus protecting the murderer.
“Now, see there. I’d never hurt my Godson!” Sirius protested.
“He’s innocent!” Ron sighed. “He was framed. Do you think Mrs. Halliwell wouldn’t have already blown him up if he had tried to hurt Chris? Just sit down. Shut up and listen already!”
“Bu-“
“SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!” both Ron and Hermione cried firmly and in such a tone that had not only the twins and Ginny sitting down immediately but Remus and Sirius too.
“Touchy,” Sirius mumbled and Remus nudged his foot to shut him up.
“Okay, so this story begins when Sirius and the Potters decided to change Secret-Keepers…” Hermione began and by the end of the tale the twins and Ginny had a mixture of disgust and shock in their faces.
“I knit a hat to that awful rat,” Ginny growled disgusted.
“I know, I let him sleep in my bed. A grown man!” Ron commiserated with his sister.
“So, er, what you’re saying is that you are Padfoot and Moony?” George asked seriously.
“No, what we’re saying is he’s innocent,” Hermione rolled her eyes.
“Details,” Fred dismissed her. “To the important part. You are Padfoot and Moony, Purveyors of Aid to Mischief?”
“Yeah, why?” Sirius asked bewildered.
“Fred!” George choked grabbing his brother’s sleeve.
“I know George. All that time! Professor Moony!” he cried throwing himself at Remus and hugging him. “You’ve taught us so much,” he sobbed as George did the same to Sirius. The other three just rolled their eyes.
By the time Chris, Leo, Piper and Wyatt came back down. The rest of the family and the food had arrived. Fred had a disgruntled face as he finally figured out why he and George could never trick Chris into getting them confused. After Hermione had taken the lead and first introduced them all he had tried to pull an ‘I’m George’ to a little girl of seven who was Paige’s daughter and she just looked at him and said flatly.
“I’m part Whitelighter. I can sense the difference and you’re Fred. Now, I’m Helen,” she smiled mischievously and Fred eyed the other identical grinning girl next to her suspiciously.
To say Chris was shocked when he first stepped in the room and everyone turned around to see him and no one had one ounce of restraint and unceremoniously pulled him into hugs, was quite the understatement. The first one had been of course Sirius with a ‘Happy Christmas pup!’ and he had hugged back enthusiastically as he did Remus but then, an older man he had never seen in his life, and who turned out to be his grandfather Victor, pulled him into a fierce hug and cried.
“Oh, Chris! You’re so big! We’ve missed you so much!” followed by a bunch of kids who he was quite sure were attacking him but Wyatt assured him they were just hugging him and two amused dark haired men who turned out to be his Uncles Henry and Coop. When the last person released him he ended up next to Ron and cried.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“That!” he pointed at the crowd. Ron looked at them and shrugged. “Come on Ron. I was just mauled over there.”
“Oh, that’s normal,” Ron said placidly taking a sip of the hot chocolate he’d poured himself. “Welcome to life in a big family,” he patted Chris’s back sympathetically just in time for Chris to see an older man, who he found out later was his other grandfather Sam, materialize in front of them and cry his name and attack him all over again. Chris glared at Ron who was laughing.
Presents had been opened and Chris’s head was still spinning. He had never in his life received so many presents. He was wearing his Weasley jumper. It was a tradition for him after all, and he had been playing video games with his cousins, Hermione and the Weasleys. It was quite funny to watch how amused the Weasleys were by all the Muggle gadgets. Though they learned fast and he was watching as Ginny pounced Wyatt on a game when he had an idea. He went upstairs to his room and quickly separated the toys he had thought were for kids around his cousins’ ages. Then he went back downstairs and called them all upstairs and with their help and of his friends he opened them all up and with his youngest cousin on his lap, Phoebe’s five year old daughter Penny, he said:
“You can all use them whenever you want. It’s like toys you can leave here for when you come to visit or if you want to borrow them and take them home for a while. You can play with them all you want, I just ask that you be careful with them and return them so the others can play too.”
He wasn’t ready to part with them, they were toys that he would have loved to have had at that age. But he thought it a waste to just keep them in their boxes. And he hadn’t really bought presents for his cousins, not knowing them and all; he had just bought a bunch of candy from Honeydukes. Which honestly his Uncle Henry did gulf down a good part of it.
He had a hard time knowing who had more fun. The little kids going through the toys or the teenagers helping them. Especially the ones from the Wizarding world who had never seen most of those toys before.
He never saw the satisfied smile from Victor Bennet as he watched his grandchildren practically ransack Chris’s room.
“Your skepticism against Dumbledore runs deeper. He couldn’t have known how the Dursleys were,” Phoebe pointed out to Remus. They had been talking for a while seated at the couch and Phoebe had questioned the need to keep Chris’s identity a secret. The Elders wouldn’t be able to anything more. The only people that mattered where Dumbledore, because Piper and Leo didn’t trust him, and Voldemort, because if he didn’t know Chris was a half-Elder half-Witch Chris would have an advantage over him. Remus looked at Sirius who was having an animated talk with Henry about motorcycles, which he found quite ironic, the escaped felon and the cop, and Chris who was surrounded by his younger cousins.
“I told him there was no way Sirius would betray James. He was Head of the Wizengamot. He vouched for Snape. Why not get Sirius a trial? I couldn’t but he could. It was his duty to.”
“Maybe he thought you were biased and he believed in Sirius’s guilt.”
“And didn’t want to bring attention to where Chris had been placed,” Remus said shrewdly. “I said this before. I don’t think he is a bad man. And I truly believe he thought Sirius was guilty. I think he would have pushed for a trial if he thought, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Sirius was innocent. But even guilty Sirius deserved a trial, and Dumbledore overlooked that, overlooked the individual’s right for what he considered to be the greater good.”
“He overlooked his doubts that he could be innocent and chose to believe what the evidence said without questioning because it suited him?” Phoebe asked and Remus nodded.
“And that is why I don’t trust him to make the best decisions in regard to Chris. I trust him as my general and will follow him. I respect him. I owe him. But my family comes first,” Remus said firmly. “There is a lot that he has done…more like let happen that irks me. Gives me the impression that he is training Chris as a soldier. If not, why not tell me about everything Chris had gone through his first two years in his letters to me giving me updates on Chris? No, they were all trivialities like he made the Quidditch team, or he is adapting nicely. And even the year I taught there. I heard rumors that Chris had gotten into trouble but not the details. Not until Chris told Piper and Leo. I had thought those rumors were about being out after curfew. Getting in the kind of trouble we got into when in school. Not facing Voldemort twice! Why bring the Philosopher Stone to Hogwarts? And didn’t he have an inkling as to Quirrell being up to something? Why not confront him himself? No, I think he made sure Chris found those clues, that Chris came up face to face with Voldemort in a controlled environment. They were tests.”
Phoebe looked up to see Chris patiently reading to her youngest daughter who had attached herself to her cousin once she realized he would do anything she asked him. He was so young and yet had lived so much, “You think he’s measuring Chris up, seeing if he is up to the task of vanquishing Voldemort and preparing him for that task?”
“Yes.” Remus answered flatly. “And I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” Phoebe nodded firmly vouching she would do her best to protect her family. and she didn’t know if Remus and Sirius realized it, but now, that included them too.
He was in the middle of the Halliwell manor’s attic. The three sisters had been chanting and Wyatt, Leo, Sirius and Remus where a little to the side watching expectantly. Everyone else was waiting downstairs. The Christmas party had come to an end and they were planning to go back to Hogwarts in about half an hour to get ready for the Ball.
They had left the unbinding to the last moment because they didn’t want to ruin the party with memories of why they had to bind his powers in the first place. But now he was nervous about what would happen.
A golden light washed over him and at first he felt nothing but then he felt a tingling sensation run through his body and felt lighter. He couldn’t explain, he just felt right. Like this was how he was supposed to be. He closed his eyes and suddenly he could tell exactly where each person in the house was. That faint feeling he always got from people, the feeling that let him tell Fred and George apart wasn’t faint anymore. It was strong and he could pinpoint where each one was.
“Wow, that’s wow,” he said eloquently.
“I know!” Paige nodded being able to relate to him. She had an idea of what he was feeling having his sensing powers suddenly in full drive.
“That’s how you always find me!” Chris cried looking at Wyatt.
“Yeah,” Wyatt grinned but Chris scowled and crossed his arms.
“That’s cheating!” he whined and Sirius couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing and coming next to Chris he snaked his arm around his shoulder and asked:
“Beside hurt pride, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine. It feels right- like there was something stuck before, something locked that I couldn’t reach but now I can.”
“Good,” Sirius nodded pulling Chris close.
“Now we’ll have to train whatever powers you got from me,” Leo explained. “I know you could orb and you couldn’t heal, but as an Elder I had a few other powers. More active powers that you might have.”
“Oh, how do we find out?” Chris asked curiously.
“Well,” Piper started frowning, “With us our powers kind of came slowly. Well not slowly, but we didn’t have them from the start. But we already know you can orb things to you so you can probably already orb too. That was one power that Paige had from the moment she unbound her powers. We also don’t know if because they are Elder powers and not Wiccan powers they will behave in the same way as ours. Wyatt could always heal, and orb and have his shield. Those are things that he had even as a baby. But each person is different.”
“Yes, the twins could orb since they were born,” Paige nodded agreeing with them and wincing as she recalled that, “But Henry Jr. was almost two the first time he orbed.”
“Okay, so what if I try like I tried my other powers in the Room of Requirement?” Chris asked.
“Good idea,” Remus nodded. “He can right?” he asked the others.
“Why not?” Piper shrugged. “As a Halliwell he is already keyed into the wards. He should be able to.” They all moved things around to avoid any crashes.
“Okay,” Paige said coming in front of Chris. “Close your eyes. Picture the other end of the room, where the love seat was. Now picture yourself there, you need to want to be there,” she said an they all were about to cheer when Chris disappeared in a shower of blue orbs, except he never appeared again and instead they hear a muffled, “Womph!” and “Chris!” from downstairs.
“I’m okay! I hit a loveseat!” Chris’s voice came from downstairs.
“Yeah! You fell on us!” Ron’s disgruntled voice complained.
“Well, he has to train his aim,” Leo winced. “Just to be on the safe side, you help Wyatt take us back,” he told Paige.
The others couldn’t help the snickers which turned into full blown laughter.