If you want to read by 20+ Chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
[email protected]/Vermeail
••••••
"Right." Harry said, before readying himself. Harry thought back, and grabbed the memory of his 12th birthday party. He thought about everyone showing up to celebrate it with him, and how happy that had made him feel. "Expecto Patronum!" Harry incanted again, and from his wand came a gout of silvery mist that quickly began enveloping the room. The process was draining for Harry, who could feel himself growing weaker, but he kept funneling his magic through the wand. More and more of the fog emanated from his wand, now solidly covering the floor of the room they were in, and swirling in various locations. Harry let go and stopped focusing his magic and looked around. The room now looked like the set to some black and white horror movie.
"Well, this is certainly enough mist that you should have been able to form a corporeal patronus. We'll need to work on your visualization it seems. Don't be discouraged though, for your first day of real practice, this is extraordinary. Feel free to try it more on your own time, but we won't have another lesson until we return from the Christmas hols. This will be your first one with the Tonks' if I remember correctly?" Lupin asked.
"Yes, I'm really excited actually. We were supposed to have it last year, but the school was on lockdown so no one got to leave." Harry said. He really felt bad for that, even though he didn't have any control over it. He knew how excited the entire family was to be together for Christmas, and it had been taken from them. Not this year though.
The following few weeks before the Christmas holidays were filled with more of the same for the Sphinx Club, with perhaps a somewhat greater emphasis than normal on studying for their midterm exams. There wasn't much concern about that though for the Sphinx club members, they had incredibly firm grasps on the course material, and had recently even begun taking OWL practice tests to see how they fared in that regard. Everyone had managed to obtain O's in their preferred subjects on the OWL practices, but only Hermione had managed EE's on more than two others. Considering the gap they were working with though, the Sphinx Club was not worried.
Arriving back at the Tonks' for the first time during winter break was an odd sensation for Harry. Despite how much he loved the Tonks', Hogwarts felt like home to him, so leaving it to spend Christmas somewhere else was a strange feeling. Harry was sure that the feeling would dissipate quickly though. Hermione had separated out with her parents at King's Cross, the group deciding against carpooling together this time, so the magical family took the floo to their house, and arrived quickly. Harry, of course, fell firmly upon his face as he exited the fireplace, getting a small chuckle of laughter out of Nymphadora, who awaited on the other side.
"Struggling with that still Harry?" Nymphadora asked, reaching down to help him up, as Ted and Andromeda made their way through.
"Yeah, I thought I had it figured out, but it looks like I don't." Harry said, dusting himself off from his brief experience with the floor. "Good to see you again Nym." He said, moving over to hug her.
"Good to see you too little bro. Glad you got to be home for Christmas this time." Nymphadora said, squeezing him a bit. "We've got so many Christmases to make up for, so buckle up, we're going to do it all!"
"Don't overwhelm him, Nymphadora." Andromeda said, making her way to the kitchen. "Did those cookies I started finish while we were gone?"
"Yeah, they're cooling on the counter, I prepped the icing bags if we want to go ahead and do that." Nymphadora said.
"Icing bags? For what?" Harry asked, confused.
"Oh, every year we make Gingerbread men, and a gingerbread house. We'll make a few batches over the course of the holidays because Dad and I can't get enough of them. We figured this would be a fun thing for us to do on your first day back!" Nymphadora said, leading Harry into the kitchen.
The warm smell of gingerbread flooded Harry's nostrils as he entered the kitchen, where a couple trays of man-shaped cookies were currently sitting on baking sheets. Piping bags filled with various colors of icing were neatly arranged on the kitchen table, with small bowls of candies ready to serve as ornamentation for the soon to be created gingerbread folk.
"Well, let's go ahead and wash up and get started!" Ted said, making his way over to the sink as he rolled up his sleeves.
Harry watched as the Tonks family started their work, Andromeda was carefully piping out some black hair for her gingerbread man, and Harry was astounded by the small details she was able to pull out of the substance. Ted on the other hand, had gone more traditional, and was outlining his gingerbread man in white, before adding candies to him to create the eyes and mouth. Nymphadora had gone more wild with hers, and seemed to be creating an alien of some kind, complete with green skin and giant bulbous black eyes.
Harry was unsure what he should do though, he hadn't done anything like this before, and didn't want to mess it up. It wouldn't do to ruin the first time he did this with them, especially since it seemed to mean so much to them. Noticing his hesitation, Nym came over to him.
"Come on Harry! Join in, if you're worried about it not looking good, don't bother. Half the fun is eating the ones that don't turn out quite right." Nym said, before chomping the head off of her alien. "Ooh! Maybe now I can make a headless monster or something." Nym got to work on turning her decapitated gingerbread man into something else, and Harry relaxed a bit.