“Well none of it would have mattered if you’d done your duty and caught the snitch in time!” Lily shouted, giving James a shove in the chest. “I was busy all night! You had one job, and you blew it, just because you fell for some stupid stunt your own brother’s been dying to pull for months!”
James felt like an icicle had been stabbed straight through his chest. He took a step back from Lily’s furious gaze, his mouth open in surprise and dismay.
“Now hold on, both of you,” Graham said with weary alarm, moving to get between Lily and James, but James smacked his placating hand away. He turned, grabbed his broom, and stalked away from the locker area, into the darkness of the tunnel, smarting from Lily’s words, feeling betrayed and furious at his brother, and most of all cursing himself as a complete failure.
Snow was still falling in steady, skirling clouds over the pitch, which was now criss-crossed with footprints. The grandstands were mostly empty as the last spectators trickled away. James moved to follow them, keeping his head down.
“James,” a girl’s voice called, the sound muffled by the falling snow. For a moment he thought it was Lily coming to apologize and his heart quickened, unsure if he would let her beg forgiveness, or scorn her and make her stew for a while. It was not Lily, however. He stopped and glanced back to see Millie plodding quickly toward him through the deepening drifts. She was bundled in her coat and Hufflepuff scarf with a fetching woolen hat on her blonde hair, now heavily dusted with white, but she carried a Gryffindor pennant in her right hand, drooped in defeat.
She stopped near him, her breath puffing in thick white clouds.
“I’m so sorry,” she said simply.
For a moment, he thought she had somehow divined what had happened with Lily in the locker area. The look of commiseration on her face was so heartfelt and unabashed that, for a fleeting second, it almost made him want to cry. He drew a deep, bracing breath instead and looked up at the mostly empty grandstands. “It was a rough match.
I should have seen the snitch sooner. Albus beat me to it. He was the better player tonight.”
Millie nodded soberly at James, her lips pressed into a thin line, and then drew a deep breath and said, “That’s complete skrewt dooey.”
James glanced back at Millie again, frowning. “Excuse me?”
“I say it’s skrewt dooey, top to bottom. You were by far the better flyer out there. You had Albus beat square. He won by being a numpty showoff, not by being a better player.”
“He did, didn’t he?” James suddenly seethed, smacking a fist into his open hand. “I completely had him beat! He didn’t see when the snitch changed direction, but I did! I cut him off!”
“He resorted to sloppy desperation tactics and got lucky,” Millie agreed emphatically. “He won’t pull that off again. That sort of thing only works once.”
James shook his head at the injustice of it. “I wish you’d been down in the locker room with me and the rest of the team,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“Why?” Millie asked, threading an arm through James’ as they turned and trudged toward the castle together. “Don’t tell me they blamed you for what happened?”
James blew out a deep sigh. “Not most of them. Just… my sister…”
Millie chose to remain silent on that detail, which James thought was probably a very wise move on her part. They walked in silence toward the warm glow of the castle, which shone from its myriad windows onto the falling curtain of snow and the white blanket that was the grounds. James could just make out Hagrid’s hut far to the right, shouldered up against the fringe of the forest. The roof was cloaked with snow. A grey ribbon of smoke arose from the crooked fieldstone chimney. The scent of burning wood was an ode to warmth in the crisp air.
“I was wondering,” Millie said, snuggling a little closer to James as they turned toward the open courtyard, “if maybe you’d like to come to Canterbury for the holidays with me this year?”
James stopped in the lantern light of the main entrance, turning to look aside at Millie, surprised at her offer.
She went on before he could answer, “I already asked my mum and dad and they were totally keen on the idea. Honestly, I think they’re more excited about it than I am. I just thought…” She shrugged a little and looked out over the dark courtyard, “maybe you’d like to meet my parents, and brother and sister. I mean… I’m sure you have your own holiday traditions and things that you’re looking forward to.
So maybe this is absolutely the last thing you expected. And my timing is probably perfectly horrid, now that I think of it. Soooo… maybe we should just pretend I didn’t even—”
“I’d love to, Millie,” James interrupted. He very much enjoyed the look of surprised delight that crossed her face, bringing her eyes immediately back to his.
“Really? Seriously?”
He shrugged and nodded, glancing back toward the unseen darkness of the Quidditch pitch. “I’d love to meet your family. And I love Christmas in the city. It’d be nice for a change, since we usually have Christmas at the Burrow, out in the middle of nowhere.”
Millie’s enthusiasm was seamless. She squeezed James’ arm ecstatically and kissed him briefly on the lips. “Oh, but I love Christmas in the country! We should go to your family’s next year! Promise you’ll invite me! Even if we aren’t… well… I don’t want to assume…”
Her cheeks reddened, but James was feeling very cavalier in the wake of the evening’s disappointments. “Make all the assumptions you want. Sure, I’ll invite you next year. But you have to keep in mind that Headmaster Merlin is part owner of the Burrow and spends his summers and holidays there. That means when we go home for Christmas, even next year when we’re graduated, school sort of comes with.”
“I’ll love it no matter what,” Millie enthused, dragging James onward again, up the steps to the main entrance. “I’ll send an owl to mum and dad tonight telling them to expect us both. Oh, we’ll have simply a grand time! But do pack your dress robes! It’s traditional for the Christmas Eve dinner. And we attend a play every year, too, at the Theatre d’Extraordinaire! This year it’s the Triumvirate, isn’t that just perfect? And, oh! My grandmother Eunice will be there, too. She takes some getting used to. I’ll tell you all about her on the way…”