A Festive Morning

After Harry had stored his presents in his cupboard, which was one of the improvements on his side of the room, he dressed in comfortable but still presentable clothes and both went down to the Great Hall for Christmas Breakfast.

On their way down to the Great Hall they met Peeves.

"Sirius!" Peeves cried in delight.

"Hey Peeves, still keeping this old castle on its toes?" Sirius greeted back.

"Yessir! Peevesy has kept Filch, the nosy cat, the strict teachers and the students busy, making sure nobody is bored." Peeves answered.

"Good to hear. Any remarkable pranksters coming up?"

"Aye. The Weasley twins are on a good way to follow the legacy of the infamous marauders." Peeves said.

"Great. By the way, don't give my godson here a hard time Peeves, would you?" Sirius asked.

"Ah, Harry, didn't see you behind Sirius. It's ready." Peeves said.

"Really? Great work Peeves. When will you start it?" Harry asked.

"After lunch is over. You said you didn't want to disrupt the feast." Peeves said cackling.

Harry nodded enthusiastically.

"Harry, are you collaborating with Peeves for a prank?" Sirius asked.

"Why would you say that?" Harry asked innocently.

"I'm so proud. I thought you didn't like pranking that much." Sirius said delightedly, putting his arm around Harry's shoulders.

"I don't like if it goes too far and if it is too disrupting over the school year. But a well-done prank that makes everybody laugh I like. And as a gag after the Christmas feast, I thought it was okay." Harry answered blushing slightly.

"What did you plan?" Sirius asked.

"Uh, uh!" Harry responded shaking his head. "That would be telling."

"Come on, I'm your godfather, you can tell me." Sirius tried to convince Harry.

"No, it's a surprise." Harry insisted.

No matter what Sirius tried, Harry wouldn't budge. In the end Sirius resigned to waiting after lunch

...

After the breakfast Dumbledore insisted on singing a few Christmas carols. As this time they all sang to the right melody it was pretty nice. Neville and the twins invited Harry over to the Gryffindor common room to play a few games. Harry agreed and Sirius said he would meet him later for lunch. He wanted to catch up with his cousin Andromeda and her husband Ted, who had joined his wife for Christmas at Hogwarts. Normally Andromeda Tonks flooed home after she was done with her classes, but over Christmas with her daughter being stuck at the auror academy this year she and Ted had decided to celebrate at Hogwarts.

Harry had a fun morning in the Gryffindor common room. He found out that Percy already knew how to play 'Wizard' from Penny, so he and Harry explained the game to the other four. In the beginning Ron had grumbled about that a Ravenclaw being in the Gryffindor common room was not right, but his brothers and Neville had soon shut him down. It was Christmas; Harry was okay as long as you didn't cross him or his friends, so he was welcome to visit for a few games and the like. And once the new term started, the password would be changed again anyway, so there was no way it would be a problem.

They had a fun morning and soon the Gryffindor boys liked the game as much as the Ravenclaw students. They had some biscuits that the house elves had placed in all the common rooms for the students that stayed at Hogwarts over the holidays, coaxed Harry into singing again, the twins hit all of them with spells that had their hair change colours every thirty seconds and they had some fun in the beginning guessing the next colour. They then went down for lunch and were greeted by an opulent meal. Fat, roast turkeys, roasted and boiled potatoes, platters of chipolatas, buttered peas, gravy and cranberry sauce and stacks of wizard crackers everywhere.

Inside the crackers were fantastic presents for those that pulled them. Harry got a new wizard chess set and an admiral's hat. In the flaming Christmas puddings that followed the main course Sirius found a silver sickle. Then, when all the children and adults were stuffed, Harry knew it was soon time for the little gag he and Peeves had prepared.

Once everybody was filled to the rim, outside explosions and wheezing were going off. Everybody just started to run outside to see what the noise was about. When they reached the entrance doors, they saw they had been opened wide to have everybody look at the snowy grounds. There in the snow were glowing pictures of embarrassing scenes of each teacher. For each subject there was one thing that had gone wrong in their respective field. The pictures were drawn lines in the snow that were sizzling with sparks in different colours. There was an exploding cauldron with Snape looking surprised, McGonagall having bunny ears, a carrot in her paw and a bushy tail, Flitwick shooting sparks from his ears, Sprout being strangled by the vines of a plant, Tonks having a cloud of letters and numbers swirling around, Sinistra running away from a shooting star, Hagrid being grilled by a small dragon and Dumbledore running after a bag of lemon drops that hopped away.

The students were laughing hard at the scenes and even most of the teachers had to suppress a grin. This was a well-done act and while some scenes might have been embarrassing, it was obvious that it was all in good fun.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Quite a nice idea to end the feast with a bang." He commented.

Harry just grinned and said nothing. This had worked out well. Everybody got a good laugh, but nobody was humiliated or hurt. While Snape seemed to be a bit put off at the idea, he couldn't think it was a prank that targeted him specifically. He had made sure to portrait all the teachers during their classes to have the correct looks on their faces. He had drawn the images later with a special potion he had found in a third year book. While theoretically a third year potion, the process was easy enough. He had given the pictures to Peeves to place them in the grounds. With the poltergeist being able to float over the snow it was impossible to find out who had done it. No footprints, the portraits on paper burned up when the pictures were enlarged by a spell on the papers which he had set for a certain time to go off, and no magical signature to go by. The perfect prank.

....

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