Chapter 27 : Christmas Invitations
Hogwarts Library — November 28, 1991, 4:15 PM
"Come to mine for Christmas."
Matt said it the way he'd planned — casually, between turning a page and reaching for his pumpkin juice, as though the invitation were an afterthought rather than a decision he'd been engineering for six weeks.
The table went still. Five faces looked up from five different tasks: Harry from his Defence essay, Ron from a Chocolate Frog he was eating instead of studying, Hermione from her Transfiguration notes, Neville from Trevor's latest escape attempt, Terry from the Herbology diagram he was labelling wrong.
"Your house?" Harry said.
"Summon Manor. It's in the Scottish Highlands. Enormous grounds, more bedrooms than sense, and three house-elves who will take personal offence if I don't bring guests for the holidays."
Cork would, in fact, take personal offence. The house-elf had sent four separate letters inquiring about Christmas preparations, each more elaborate than the last, the most recent including a proposed menu that ran to three pages and featured dishes Matt hadn't heard of in either lifetime.
"I —" Harry stopped. The expression on his face was complex — hope and disbelief and the particular wariness of someone who'd learned that good things came with conditions. "Really?"
"Really. The Dursleys won't miss you, and I'd rather you spent Christmas somewhere with actual food and people who like you."
The reference to the Dursleys was deliberate. Harry's face closed briefly — the shuttering reflex, the walls going up — and then opened again, because this was Matt, who'd been in the library in Little Whinging, who'd given him the lucky coin, who'd stood between him and a troll. The walls didn't hold against that.
"Yeah," Harry said. "I'd — yeah. I'd like that."
Ron shifted in his seat. The calculation was visible — wanting to come, weighing it against the Weasley Christmas tradition that was sacred and immovable and the one thing his family had that didn't require money.
"Mum'll skin me if I miss Christmas dinner," Ron said. "She's already planning the jumpers."
"Then don't miss it." Matt kept his voice easy. "Christmas is for family, Ron. The Manor's not going anywhere."
The relief on Ron's face was immediate and poorly hidden. He'd wanted permission to say no without feeling guilty, and Matt had given it to him in four words. "Right. Yeah. Family. But — Easter, maybe?"
"Standing invitation."
"Wicked."
Hermione had been quiet — the particular quality of silence that meant she was running the proposal through her analytical framework: logistics, social implications, parental permission, academic impact. "My parents would need to be contacted. They're not — they don't know much about the wizarding world beyond what I've told them, and I've told them quite a lot, so they're probably confused about most of it."
"I'll write them a letter," Matt said. "Formal. Explaining who I am, where the Manor is, that it's safe. I'll include a Floo address so they can contact us if they need to."
"You've thought about this."
"I think about everything."
"That," Hermione said, "is what concerns me."
But she was smiling. The smile she'd started using after the troll — the one that reached her eyes, that existed in the space between suspicion and trust, that said I don't understand you but I've decided to like you anyway.
Neville looked at the table. The silence was the kind that hurt — the silence of someone who'd been included and was now watching himself be excluded, not by cruelty but by circumstance.
"Gran expects me home," he said quietly. "She's — she's planned things."
"Neville." Matt waited until the round face looked up. "I'll send you something brilliant by owl. And the Manor will be there for summer. You're invited then. Always."
The flush was there — the Neville flush, the one that meant someone wants me somewhere. Whisper, curled on Neville's lap as always, purred and pressed closer, and Neville's hand found her fur with the automatic tenderness of someone who'd learned that this creature, at least, would always choose him.
---
Ravenclaw Common Room — December 1, 1991
The permission letter arrived three days later. Hermione's parents — Drs. Daniel and Jean Granger, dentists, Crawley, Sussex — had written back with the careful thoroughness of people who'd raised a daughter who demanded precision.
Dear Mr. Summon,
Thank you for your kind invitation. Hermione speaks very highly of you and your friends. We would be pleased for her to spend the Christmas holiday at your residence, provided the following conditions are met:
Adult supervision will be present at all times.2. Hermione will call us on Christmas morning (she says 'Floo' works like a telephone?).3. No dangerous magical activities.
We appreciate the detailed explanation of your home's location and the included contact information. It's refreshing to receive correspondence from the magical world that doesn't arrive by owl and frighten the cat.
Warm regards, Daniel and Jean Granger
Matt wrote back confirming all three conditions. Cork would provide adult supervision — the house-elf was more protective than any nanny. The Floo would be available for calls. And dangerous magical activities would be strictly limited to the ones the Grangers didn't need to know about.
---
Great Hall — December 15, 1991
The castle was transforming.
Twelve enormous Christmas trees lined the Great Hall, each decorated differently — one covered in icicles that didn't melt, another hung with live fairies who blinked indignantly from the branches. Suits of armour had been enchanted to sing carols, badly. The staircases were draped in holly, and Peeves had taken to throwing snowballs at students from behind the gargoyles, which Filch had responded to with increasingly creative threats that Peeves cheerfully ignored.
Exams had come and gone. Matt had placed second in his year — behind Hermione, ahead of Anthony Goldstein, who'd been furious about it for three days. Potions was the outlier: Matt had deliberately scored average, giving Snape nothing unusual to note, filing the exam away as another exercise in strategic mediocrity.
The library table had shifted from study group to investigation headquarters. The Stone was known. The protections were theorised. Hermione had compiled a list of likely defences based on which professors were involved — "McGonagall for Transfiguration, Flitwick for Charms, Sprout for Herbology, Snape for Potions, Quirrell for Defence, Dumbledore for... whatever Dumbledore does."
"And Fluffy for Hagrid," Ron added.
"Yes. And the three-headed dog for Hagrid." Hermione's tone suggested she had feelings about including a Cerberus in a school security plan.
The investigation was paused for the holidays. Nobody said so explicitly, but the collective understanding was that Christmas came first. Even Hermione, whose relationship with downtime was adversarial at best, had agreed to set the notebooks aside.
"I'll keep an eye on Quirrell," Matt said during their last library session before break. "If anything changes, I'll notice."
Harry looked up. "You keep mentioning Quirrell."
"And you keep watching Snape."
"Snape tried to —"
"Snape might have been counter-cursing," Hermione interrupted. She'd been turning Matt's Quidditch observation over in her mind for two weeks, examining it from every angle, and had arrived at the place where she couldn't dismiss it without more data. "The counter-curse requires the same eye contact and incantation as the jinx. From the stands, they'd look identical."
Ron made a noise that communicated deep scepticism. "Right. Snape, the bloke who takes points from Gryffindor for breathing too loud, was saving Harry."
"Snape protected the Stone on Halloween," Matt said. "He went to the third floor to check on Fluffy. That's how he got bitten. If he was trying to steal the Stone, why would he check the guard dog?"
The table went quiet. Ron's scepticism warred with the logic, and the logic won a grudging foothold.
"So who's the real threat?" Neville asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Matt almost said it. The name was right there — Quirrell, it's Quirrell, the Dark Lord is living on the back of his head — and he swallowed it the way he'd swallowed it every day since September.
"That's what we're going to find out," he said. "After Christmas."
---
Hogsmeade Station — December 20, 1991, 10:00 AM
The train was scarlet against the snow.
Students piled into carriages, trunks stacked, owls hooting from cages. The platform was chaos — the particular chaos of a school emptying for the holidays, the annual migration of children toward home.
Ron found them on the platform, Scabbers tucked in his pocket. He'd brought something — a package wrapped in brown paper and string, the kind of wrapping that spoke of the Burrow's kitchen table and Molly Weasley's hands.
"Here," Ron said, thrusting it at Matt with the aggressive casualness of someone doing something tender and refusing to acknowledge it. "For Christmas. Since you can't come to ours."
Matt unwrapped it. A jumper. Hand-knitted, forest green, with a silver 'M' on the front. The yarn was thick, the stitching slightly uneven, the kind of imperfection that meant someone had spent hours with needles and wool making something for a person they'd never met because their son said he was worth it.
Matt's throat tightened. In his old life, his last Christmas had been spent alone in his flat, eating takeaway curry and watching veterinary documentaries. Nobody had knitted him anything. Nobody had wrapped anything in brown paper and thrust it at him on a train platform with the particular ferocity of someone who cared and couldn't say so.
He pulled the jumper over his head. It was warm. It smelled faintly of the Burrow — woodsmoke and baking and the indefinable scent of a house full of people who loved each other.
"It fits," Matt said.
"Mum always gets the sizing right." Ron's ears were red. "She says you're to eat properly over Christmas. Three meals a day. She means it."
"Tell her I will."
Ron grinned — fast, genuine, then buried under the performance of not caring — and disappeared into the crowd toward the Weasley cluster. Matt saw the flash of red hair multiplied by five: Fred and George wrestling Percy's prefect badge, Ginny clutching Molly's hand, Arthur Weasley beaming with the incandescent joy of a man who found Christmas delightful every single year.
Harry appeared beside Matt with his trunk and Hedwig's cage. The owl looked affronted by the cold. Harry was wearing the scarf Matt had loaned him in November — he'd never returned it, and Matt had never asked.
"Ready?" Matt said.
Harry nodded. Behind them, Hermione emerged from the train with her trunk, organized to the point of architecture, wearing a blue beret and an expression that managed to be simultaneously excited and apprehensive.
"The Floo connection is to 'Summon Manor,'" Matt reminded her. "Speak clearly. The system is old and has opinions about enunciation."
"I always speak clearly."
"I know. I was warning the Floo."
They took a carriage to Hogsmeade, then the Knight Bus to the nearest Floo-connected pub — the Three Broomsticks wasn't technically available to students, but Matt had owled ahead and Madam Rosmerta had made an exception for "Cordelia's grandson." The name still opened doors. Matt was learning to use it without guilt.
The fireplace was wide and warm. Matt grabbed a handful of Floo powder, stepped into the flames, and spoke clearly.
"Summon Manor."
The world spun. Green fire. The rushing sensation of magical transport — faster than brooms, more disorienting than Apparition, the particular violence of a system designed by people who valued speed over comfort.
He stumbled out into the Manor's entrance hall.
The house had been preparing. Cork had polished everything — the floors gleamed, the banisters shone, and every surface reflected the light of a hundred floating candles that the house-elf had arranged in patterns that bordered on architectural. A Christmas tree stood in the hall's centre, twelve feet tall, decorated with enchanted ornaments that changed colour every few seconds. Pip had draped garlands around every doorframe. Tilly had cooked something that smelled like cinnamon and heaven.
"YOUNG MASTER IS HOME!" Cork materialised with a crack that rattled the candlesticks, tears already flowing, hands wringing with the particular frenzy of a house-elf who'd been waiting five months for this moment. "And Young Master is bringing guests! Cork has prepared the guest rooms — the blue room for Master Harry, the rose room for Miss Hermione — and the menu, Young Master, the menu —"
The fireplace roared green. Harry stumbled out, ash-covered, glasses crooked, trunk bouncing off the marble floor. He straightened. Looked up. The entrance hall stretched before him — high ceiling, floating candles, the enormous tree, the warmth that four centuries of magic and three devoted house-elves had built into every stone.
Harry's face did something Matt had never seen it do. Not the guarded smile. Not the careful hope. Something underneath those — the expression of a boy who'd spent ten years in a cupboard walking into a house that wanted him there.
"Welcome home," Matt said.
The fireplace roared again. Hermione arrived, neat and precise, brushing ash from her beret with the efficiency of someone who refused to let magical transportation diminish her presentation.
"Oh," she breathed, looking up. "Oh."
Twig emerged from Matt's hair and chirped. Whisper dropped from the bannister and wound between Harry's ankles. Cork wept. Pip bowed. Tilly poked her head from the kitchen door and announced that dinner was ready.
Matt led his friends into the house, and the Manor — old, vast, lonely for two hundred years — began to feel like something it hadn't been since his grandmother's time.
Full.
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