His Children

Back Where We Started

When I woke up again, I was back to my first year size with the pile of wrapped boxes sitting in front of me. That's weird. Maybe it's something about the blankets...well, cloaks now. They had some kind of spell cast on them right?

"Hey sis?" I looked at my brother to find him wrapped up in his cloak. I giggled as I untangled him," hmm, do you remember the note that flew from my cloak a few...minutes, years, hours? ago?"

He nodded at me," yeah, why?"

"It said something like timelines would twist and meld, right? Maybe that's the reason half our future adventures were spoiled, it was the magic doing it's work." I scratched my head as I went through any other possibilities,"  I mean, it can't possibly be anything else. And while we're on the subject of cloaks, where did these even come from. There wasn't a name signed on it anywhere."

Kaiden seemed to catch my drift," we gotta take this to Dumbledore, or Father, maybe even McGonagall for Merlin's sake!"

"What about me? You'd better not be planning anything. It's Christmas, if that holds any type of value to you." Papa entered our room, not even acknowledging the ton of wrapped boxes littered around our common room.

"What's Christmas?" I tilted my head at him. Kaiden moved some boxes off of a chair and sat down," what she said."

Pops had a dumbfounded look on his face when we said that. That expression quickly turned to pure malice. He zoomed out the door, muttering something like," to hell with Dragonpocks, I'll kill her myself." Kaiden and I followed after him, our velvet cloaks flowing after us.

"Hey Papa, wait up! What's wrong?" I said, running in order to keep up with his walking pace.

"It's absolutely absurd, children raised as muggles having never heard of Christmas. Your mother has gone much too far!" He said. Before he could get any further ahead of us, Kaid and I grabbed onto his arms and planted our feet firmly on the ground. With the force of a mountain, we went flying forward as Dad stopped dead in his tracks.

"Woah!" I cried, rolling past him as I hit the stone floors hard. Kaiden did the same, except he started crying when he the ground. I got up, holding my bruised shoulder, and began to pick him up off the floor. We looked up to find Dad with a look of pure regret in his coal black eyes, and what I said next probably only hurt him more. "Of all the people in this castle, we never thought you'd be the one to harm us, Severus." Unfortunately, he didn't know we were only messing with him. It is our fault for holding onto him when he stopped.

We walked off back to our room to get dressed before breakfast. When the time for eating finally came around, we were quick to sit at a different end of the table from him. The dark circles underneath his eyes seemed to have darkened and the expression he wore was nothing short of depressed scowl. Breakfast went on with much conversation between us and the two Gryffindor boys who'd stayed behind.

"So what did you two get for Christmas?" Ron asked over a mouthful of food.

I looked up from my plate," hmm? Oh, we uh...we don't really don't really know." 

Harry sat up straight," what do you mean? There were gifts under your tree weren't there?"

Kaiden answered after swallowing some food," well, yeah I suppose. We went into the Common Room this morning and found a whole load of wrapped boxes littered around the place. The first one we opened had a pair of cloaks in it. We didn't really have enough time to open anything else."

"Really?! After breakfast, we should go down and open the rest up. Speaking of which, my mum sent you a sweater each." Ron grinned.

"Sure, it sounds like fun!" My twin and I agreed, racing down toward the dungeons with the other two hot on our tails. By the time we'd finished unwrapping them all, the room was covered in wrapping paper. Each gift held something different, the sweaters from Ron's mother included. Along with those, there were a few peculiar items that stood out to Kaid and me. The first was a small box that was inscribed with the words 'I shall appear when the year's clock strikes five, for I am needed only then and never again', the second was a necklace with a circle surrounding an hourglass, and the third and last of the strange objects was....well, I don't know what it was. 

It resembled something I'd seen once before, although I can't remember where. My memory is fuzzy in those areas, I can't seem to remember much abo....