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The kitchen windows were weeping.
Proper rivers, not mist—condensation running in panicked streaks like the house was trying to sweat out Christmas.
Jerry Creevey was locked in hydro-thermal warfare with a twenty-pound bird. "Call my turkey dry, will you," he muttered, basting with the grim focus of a man defending his honor. His apron said KISS THE MILKMAN. He was sweating nearly as much as the windows.
Sylvie Creevey paced. When she wasn't pacing, she was murdering a lemon with a zester. Her eyes kept flicking to the oven timer. Then to Jerry. Then back to the lemon, which had clearly done something unforgivable.
Colin leaned against the only unoccupied square inch of counter—wedged between a tray of "posh" crackers with actual fabric ribbons (twenty quid a box) and a precarious stack of serving dishes. He raised his camera.
Whirrr-click.
Lemon oil hit Mam square in the forehead. She didn't blink.
She was doing "that look" again. Colin said as much.
"I'm doing no look," Sylvie snapped.
"The 'Imminent Doom' look." Colin framed another shot, his mother clutching the zester. His father, digging around the oven. "You are."
"I'm supervising." She pointed the zester at Jerry like a weapon. "Turn the heat down. If you burn the parsnips, she'll put you on a list."
"My parsnips are perfection, Sylvie love." Dad sprinkled nutmeg with a theatrical flourish, humming something that might've been "Silent Night" if Silent Night had been written in a pub. "Little Southern flair. That's what this Christmas needs."
"Okay, who's she? What list?" Colin asked finally. "You've both been on edge since I got here. What's going on?"
The simultaneous "Nothing!" from both parents meant the exact opposite. Something was indeed going on.
Colin surveyed the scenario. Take in the clues. Consider the suspects—Mam, zesting and supervising; Da, on turkey duty, extra basting. "Definitely something's a'foot."
"Nothing's a foot. Or an arm. Or leg," Mam said tightly, attacking the rind with renewed vigor. "I am zesting. It requires concentration. Move your elbow, you’re on the sage and onion."
"You're zesting. Angrily," Colin countered, brushing stuffing crumbs off his sleeve. "You only angry-zest when..."
A creeping dread came into focus just then. His father sensed it. His mother sensed it. The lemon sensed it. The zesting intensified—if that were even possible.
"Mam. Who’s coming to dinner?"
No answer, just more zesting. That poor lemon.
"Don’t be soft," Mam snapped. "It’s Christmas! Who usually comes? Just... us!"
"Which 'us'—exactly? Colin's brain churned through the possibilities. "Not Dad's dairy mate who smells like sour cream."
"Jim smells perfectly normal."
"No, no, couldn't be him. But you are sweating, so..."
"That is the cabbage steam," she lied.
Colin straightened, imagining the worst of the worst. "Oh, no. No no nononono... Not her. Not—"
The back door banged open with enough force to rattle the plates on the dresser.
Dennis stumbled in. Or rather, a man-sized—barely—tangle of flashing LEDs with a fully grown man trapped inside stumbled in. He looked like he'd lost a fight with a bioluminescent squid.
"Open the drawer!" Dennis’s voice was muffled from inside the wire ball. "I need the scissors!"
"You can't cut them," Colin said, snapping a photo. "They're a circuit."
"I don't care about the circuit! I care about my circulation!" Dennis wrestled with a particularly vicious knot near his ear. "I've been out there forty minutes trying to make the 'icicle effect' happen and I think I'm just making it worse."
"Making what worse?" Colin asked.
"Everything! The preparations!"
"For who?"
Dennis froze. Blinked through a gap in the wires, looking between Colin and their parents.
"Mam-gu is coming," Dennis said.
"Oh. Well, that's—"
"And Nain."
The silence was absolute. Even the boiling cabbage hushed.
"Both of them?" Colin whispered. "At the same time?"
"Yeah. And Mam-gu wants the tree flashing, but Nain says flashing lights are 'vulgar and common,' so Dad's making me put them on a slow fade so nobody gets a migraine."
"Speaking of," Dad said, not looking up from his bird. "Is the ladder secure?"
"Why's your mam is coming?" Colin's voice climbed an octave. "Why hasn't she died yet?"
"Colin! Not tidy, that." Dad looked at Sylvie. "But seriously, Sylvie. Why hasn't she died yet?"
"That's what the ladder's for." Mam mimed pushing someone off a cliff. Then laughed, slightly unhinged.
"She really does hate us," Dennis said, still tangled. After three more camera clicks, Colin opted to help in the untangling. Or try.
"Nonsense." Mam walked to the kettle. "Just your father."
"Excuse me?"
"Or, well, she hates your Yorkshire puddings, more's the point," Mam said, popping a teabag into a mug. "Says they’re 'flat as a witch's tit.'"
Dad flourished his baster like a sword. "If that woman mentions my puddings once, Sylvie, I'm letting one of your sons levitate the turkey. I mean it."
"Now, now. Let's not have a magical incident." Mam dropped a teabag in a mug. "And why are they my sons all of a sudden?"
"Brilliant," Dennis muttered.
"But I do love your Yorkshire pudding. Flat tits and all."
Dad set down the baster. Walked to the fridge. Leaned against it, staring wistfully at the framed wedding photo on the wall—younger Jerry and Sylvie, standing in the rain, looking impossibly hopeful.
Oh, no. Colin could feel the turn coming. Dennis felt it too.
"We were pioneers, you know," Dad mused.
Colin rolled his eyes. "Here we go. The Ballad of Jerry and Sylvie."
"Mock all you like, sons of mine—" He added finger quotes around the phrase.
"Air quotes, Dad?" Dennis huffed. "Brilliant."
"Forbidden love, it was." Dad clutched his tea and leaned against the fridge, looking wistfully at the back of Mam's head. "A boy from the Valleys. A girl from Snowdonia. The North-South divide was real. They said it wouldn't last."
He set his tea down. Started moving toward Sylvie, fingers wiggling, targeting every tickle spot he'd mapped over thirty years of marriage.
"Don't you dare..." Mam warned, stepping away—but angling her body so every spot was perfectly accessible.
"They called milk llefrith, you see." Dad's voice dropped to a whisper. "Llaeth, we called it. It would never last."
"Could just call it 'milk,'" Dennis suggested from the floor, where he was now fusing fairy lights to his shoelace.
"Brilliant compromise, Den. Oh, wait—" Colin snapped his fingers. "That's what everyone calls it anyway!"
Too late. Mr. Creevey’s fingers found his wife's spots. She yipped—actually yipped!—as he buried his face in the nape of her neck, making loud gnashing noises as if he were a lone wolf and his two sons weren't in the room, witnessing their parents—their very old, very gross parents—acting every bit the part of teenagers.
"Oh god," Colin groaned, shielding his camera lens. "The indecency."
Dad's arm snaked around Mam, pulling her close. "You see? The fire burns still. Star-crossed lovers. We were the Romeo and Juliet of the Valley."
"Romeo and Juliet both died, Jerry."
"If your mother calls my turkey dry, I might join them." Dad's face was still buried in her shoulder. "My turkey is moist. Tell me my bird is moist."
"It's... it's..."
"Boys?" He turned to Colin and Dennis with desperate, pleading eyes.
The boys stared back.
The cabbage water bubbled. The only sound in a kitchen suddenly devoid of oxygen.
DING-DONG!
"Oh, thank Merlin..." Dennis exhaled, his knees actually buckling with relief.
Colin was already moving. "I'll get it!"
"No, I'll get it!"
"I'm the oldest!"
"I'm the fastest!"
There was frantic scramble—socks on linoleum, sharp elbow to ribs, distinct thud as Dennis checked Colin into the coat rack like a rugby flanker. They ricocheted off the wall, skidded to the door, breathless and slightly battered.
"Twenty says she asks if Dad burned the bird," Dennis whispered.
"Not taking that bet," Colin muttered.
RAP-RAP-RAP from the back door.
Colin's hand froze on the latch. "They've flanked us."
"Front and back." Dennis looked horrified. "We've been pincered."
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends!" Dad called from the kitchen, sounding far too cheerful. "Open fire!"
"I'm definitely Switzerland," Dennis muttered, smoothing his jumper.
"Not today, you're not," Colin said. "Today, we're all of us the casualty ward."
"Ten says Nain asks you why you don't have a 'proper job' yet."
"I'll take that bet." Colin swung the door open. "Happy Christmas, Nain!"
Nain stood framed in the doorway like a general surveying enemy territory. Tight bun. Rigid posture. Coat buttoned to the throat despite the mild December air. In her hands: a foil-covered Pyrex dish, held like a weapon.
"About time." Her eyes flicked over Colin and Dennis like they'd failed inspection. "Invite me in. I'm not a vampire."
Dennis muttered, "Doubt it."
Colin elbowed him. "Happy Christmas, Nain!" He reached for the dish.
She relinquished it like surrendering a relic to an unworthy custodian. "You got a proper job yet?"
Dennis, already wrestling her coat off, mouthed: "Told you."
Colin clutched the Pyrex. Forced a laugh that sounded like death. "Well, you know, the market's—oh, hey!" Diversion, engaged. "What's this?" He held up the dish close to his ear, shook it. But he knew exactly what it was. He could smell it.
"Is your father cooking the turkey again?"
"Yes," Dennis and Colin said simultaneously.
The temperature dropped ten degrees.
"Then I shall be eating that." Nain nodded at the dish.
She stepped inside, peeling off her gloves. "Well? Don't just stand there, Dennis—"
"I'm Colin."
"—take it to the kitchen before the heat death of the universe claims it."
Colin looked at Dennis.
"Casualty ward," Dennis whispered. "Bed one."
Colin nodded grimly. "And we haven't even served starters."
"That's ten Galleons you owe me, by the way."
"Funny you thought I had ten Galleons to begin with."
– Happy holz, everyone!
