(December 24th, 1991, standing atop Big Ben in an overly dramatic fashion, London, England)

Christmas was a Christian holiday. Long ago Yule was not celebrated on the 25th, but rather at any time shortly after the solstice. Then more and more muggle-borns had started celebrating on the 25th specifically, and from there it became the unofficial date to celebrate Yule on.

They were somewhat similar, on the surface at least. Both had colourful decorations, gifts exchanged, and feast with much revelry involved. But the why was different. Christmas was in celebration of the birth of Jesus, or something. I didn't really know, I wasn't religious. Meanwhile Yule was… hedonistic, I supposed. It was joy for joy's sake, and that was all.

Other cultures— modern muggle pagans such as Heathens and Wiccans— observed holidays called Yule as well, but those were not wizards’ Yule.

Though many magical families used a tree to host boxed presents under, just as many simply had an uncovered pile. Regardless, it was my plan to contribute to some of those piles tonight. I had placed trackers on all my friends much earlier in the year, for only good natured reasons of course, so it wouldn't be too much trouble to be a mock of Claus tonight.

For my costume, I had a flowing red coat lined with white fur, matching leggings. My feet had black leather snow boots that were spiked with cold iron for traction on ice, and my slender hands left bare, showing a lack of care for the frozen weather and making the coat look much like a farce. Which it was. I was taller thanks to the boots, but otherwise my height remained a metre and a half(4ft,11in). My skin was so pale that it looked tinted blue, my hair much the same became a pure snowy white, and in the dim lighting of the night my eyes shined with terrifying white light. Most damning of all, however, were my ears. Thirteen centimetres long and tipped like daggers, they made clear that my disguise was of some icy Faen knave. One acting as a courier, to those smart enough to connect dots.

I wondered if any of my friends would ask me why I didn't just use an owl. Perhaps. Even if they were awake to see me— which I hoped they were— I would appear more like a hallucination than a reality. My face's lines had been sharpened, and I was employing an aura to make myself look all the more impossibly ethereal to those who observed me.

I was plausibly not Artemis Atterberry in appearance, and that would be enough to maintain deniability. There were a hundred and one ways that I could be doing this that were more stealthy or less identifiable, but this was what I wanted, this would be the most fun.

As the great clock below me struck midnight, I leapt from the ridge I had been posing on, and deconstituted into a flock of seven doves. Rocket powered doves, because I wanted to fly over the English countryside and didn't have the time to spend on normal bird speed.

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

The first house visited was Megan's. It was fairly average in terms of houses. Not too big, not too small, a couple stories tall, and with some minimal wards in place. Those were swiftly snuck through. I rematerialised atop the Jones’ family roof with the sound of bells for good luck. From there I walked to their chimney, and turned myself into a pebble so that I could actually fit through. Telekinesis softened my fall, so no noise was made even as I re appeared in their living room.

The room was dimly lit by the light of a Christmas tree, underneath which was a very modest pile of presents. Funnily enough, they had left a bowl of milk on the mantel. That made me curious, as usually that was done as trade with minor magical beings. But I couldn't detect any at the moment, which made me more curious. After doing some aggressive scanning of both the milk and the local ether, I concluded that the milk was there for a ‘Santa’. I also learned that the Jones had always ended up with a bowl of room temperature milk every single year since 1978.

Underneath their tree, I added a box to their pile of boxes. My gift was a pair of knee high socks, dark Prussian blue with fern green vines and many coloured flowers. The outer layer was composed from the hairs of a chimaera's mane, and the inner layer was made out of kitten fur. They would always be warm, dry, and clean. Were near indestructible. And the socks were very stretchy, so they would always be nice and snug.

Good socks were a gift that everybody could appreciate. And by the end of the break we would all get to wear matching socks!

I took a moment to sneak around the house and tie a little bell onto the inner side of Megan's door handle. Then I drank the milk atop their mantle, and flew through their chimney into the gloomy sky.

The night was still young, and I had many socks to deliver.

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

Alice honestly didn't know what she was expecting when she decided to stay up and try to catch Santa. He obviously was some sort of wizard, and his workshop elves must've been house elves. But she figured that he had lots of experience hiding and sneaking for so many years. Some wizards could even turn invisible! How was she supposed to catch him if he could do that?

Mom had said that Santa would be very busy tonight and that she shouldn't bother him, but just watching would surely be fine. So, Alice had grabbed her wand, her pyjamas, and a cup of hot chocolate to stake out the Christmas tree.

She was out like a light by five past eleven.

In her defence, she was only eleven. And the ingestion of warm liquids tends to make people more relaxed, which in turn made Alice fall asleep faster.

She awoke to the sound of bells jingling somewhere above her. She groggily brushed curly orange hair from her face, and looked at the ceiling. ‘Wuh, es thr sum thin on th ruf?’ She tried to think through the haze of sleep. ‘Why am I en the live en room?’ It was then that she was struck with a moment of clarity, and the situation dawned on her.

Clearly she had fallen asleep at some point during her stake out. Alice grabbed her wand and hid behind one of the armchairs. From near the hearth she heard another softer jingle of bells. She poked her ears over the edge of her cover, and though she couldn't see much, she could still make out some aspects of the silhouette she saw. It was short, shorter than Mom but taller than Alice herself. It wore a red coat with white furs and had white hair, but the similarities ended there. Its body was framed by long silky locks, and its eyes glowed with tiny pin pricks of light that made all of Alice's instincts scream that there was a predator in darkness in front of her.

“You're not Santa,” she blurted out, before realising that she said that out loud and immediately regretting it.

The lady did not turn it face her, instead it merely chuckled softly. The sound was so beautiful that Alice thought it had been imagined. Summer winds, the smell of pastel blue, the taste of Yorkshire tea mixed with cream, her mum's hugs, the sound sounded of all those things and yet was none of them as it echoed around inside her skull.

By the time Alice recovered from her stupor, the… t̴ḧ̶̨́i̵̬͗n̷̙͒ḡ̶ was gone.

‘And she took all of Santa's cookies too!’ Alice thought indignantly.

She didn't know it, but those were intended for her father, not Santa. Mr.Olkson liked how they were chewier if left out.

⋇⋆✦⋆⋇

(December 25th, 1991, Atterberry Ranch, Ireland)

Christmas day was upon us! Days prior the three of us— Mom, Olea, and I— had decorated. We hung lights around the cabin, lacing it inside and out with colour. The mundane wood had been varnished with ribbons and streamers of red, green, and gold. The ether was filled with Christmas magic, as the collective weight of billions of muggles shifted its hue, but only slightly shifted the flow.

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At eight o'clock sharp my eyes snapped open, and I pointedly did not make any additional movements. Olea was cuddled up into my chest. I didn't want to wake her up too roughly.

My hand started gently combing through her feathers, as I decreased my body temperature. After a few seconds of that, I increased my body temperature back to forty degrees. From there I began softly kissing her forehead, and not long after, her eyes fluttered open.

“Morning, Sunshine,” I whispered to her. Olea's face couldn't really make expressions, but I could still tell that she was comfortably content. She pecked at my collarbone delightedly, and seemed satisfied to stay as we were. “We're doing Yule today, you might want to be awake for that.”

She grumbled something about ‘comfy’ in the thoughts she sent me.

I sighed. “We've done this exact routine every morning for the past four days. Aren't you excited about presents?” I asked.

She replied with feelings of inadequacy towards the presents. Acquiring them sooner could not be worth shortening our cuddle.

That was really sweet, but… “I dunno, opposable thumbs are pretty cool,” I retorted.

That immediately got her up and moving. In my consideration, there were no blankets or pillows on top of us as we slept. The cold didn't matter to me, and Olea preferred that it was just the two of us cuddled above the sheets. So, there was nothing in her way as she started buzzing about the room in flight.

I crawled my way out of our enormous bed, and formed a now long since familiar bright blue summer dress around my body. I did a little twirl in front of the mirror, which caused the hem of my dress to spin in that lovely way that they were wont to do. “You know, if you just sat down for a second then I could give 'em to you now.” I said to her.

That got her to settle for a moment, landing on the foot of our bed.

“Now, this is going to feel really strange. Please try not to move much, aside from breathing, until I instruct you.” I then walked over to her and booped the tip of her beak.

It was a simple matter to designate her body as ‘my body’, and then from there to impose the blueprint I had made for her. I walked around to the side of the bed, leaning over where her new head was laying. Though heavily modified, her body appeared on a surface level to be much the same as my own if I were to de-age it by six years. There were, however, a few very noticeable differences. Olea's hair was a scarlet red, and her eyes were a golden orange. She also wore a dress similar to my own, but her's was lacier and was a red that matched with her hair.

When I saw her fluttering her eyelashes up at me as she blinked with confusion, I nearly burned from the warmth of the joy I felt. Doing my best to contain myself, I tapped each of the fingers of her left hand one by one, and then traced my hand up her arm. “Don't try to speak yet. Your tongue is a lot more biteable than before, so keep your jaw closed as you explore your mouth.” A few seconds later I held her hand. “Try to grip my hand,” I told her.

She compelled, and gripped my hand with her adorable little fingers.

“That's very good, just like that. Now move my hand about.” Which she also did. “Try the same with your toes and legs. As you know human legs bend in a different direction, so be careful not to knee yourself in the jaw.”

We went on like that for several minutes, going from basic movement to crawling around the bed, and then I deemed that she’d had enough time.

“I think we can try talking now.” I said, sitting next to her on the bed.

She took a deep breath. “Hi Mum,” she said, and I felt my smile somehow grow wider.

“Hi Lea~” I replied. “Ask me basic questions, even if you know them already, they'll make for good practice.”

She nodded. “Whas- what is yore favwet culler? Wait, no, what is shood be what's, and… arwh er rah are err or.” Another deep breath. “What's your favourite colour?” she asked carefully.

“Blue. Also, I am so proud of you right now. Gimme a hug.” I answered and then pulled her into our fifth hug in just as many minutes. “Ask another one,”

“Why are you so grabby all thə- the sudden?” she inquired, snuggling the back of her head against my collarbone.

“Because your current shape is more conducive for such things. Birds don't hug each other in the wild because the body plan of a bird is not built for hugging.” I replied, grabbing her arms and briefly holding them out to the side for emphasis.

“Is water wet?”

“If something is wet then that means that it is covered in fluid, so all of the water, except the outermost molecules, is wet.”

“Why can't Scottish people say ‘purple burglar alarm’?”

I frowned slightly. “They can,”

“But-”

“Sugarplum, please, don't be racist.” I blew a raspberry into the top of her head. “Accents are relative, to their ears it's completely intelligible.” I said.

“Okee,” she acquiesced. Gosh, she was so adorable.

I chortled. “You learned to speak not five minutes ago, and you're already weaponising cute talk against me.”

“I am sorry mother, that was-”

I blew another raspberry to interrupt her. “I didn't say stop,” I clarified. “But I do suppose that now would be a good time to stop. We should go say hi to Mom. Or, well, my mom. We'll talk about it over breakfast.”

My mother, Astrid Atterberry, was mildly surprised to see Olea. But she figured that I'd do something like this for her at some point eventually, so she wasn't too surprised. Breakfast was eggs on toast, and I let Olea eat my half of what Mom had made. I didn't really need to eat anymore, all my body's needs could be met by shapeshifting it into being full. That took energy from my soul, but I had half a dozen ways of generating more than enough power to offset even costly expenditures. So I insisted that it wasn't a bother.

We also talked about Olea. Mom decided that she was too young to let us call her grandma, so Olea would just be calling her Mom, like I did. It would lead to some confusion inevitably, but we figured that if ever unclear then she could just specify. I also made it clear that after a few hours of getting used to this, I would enable Olea to switch into her bird form and back at will. Even in human shape she was still a phoenix.

Though her increased mental and emotional faculties would stay regardless of which form she was in.

After breakfast, we gathered together on the couch to unbox presents. Olea had already received her gift from me, but Mom had given her a little plushie of a blue turtle, which Olea was overjoyed with.

Mom— in her never ending quest to find me good gifts, despite the fact that if I ever wanted for anything I could just make the object of my desire— had given me a book called Mathematically Useless Spells, by Ancalo Simoni. It was all about spells that were very specific, which made them more powerful and efficient than general purpose spells that one might use to complete the same tasks. The title of the book was because spells took time to learn, and the gain of these more specific spells would never offset the cost of learning them. Supposedly the book had been made for historical purposes, but after a hundred and fifty years of gathering dust the Dublin Archives of Magic and Nature were willing to just let Mom free up their shelf space.

I also got a few small things via owl from my school friends. Hermione sent a muggle book about linguistics. Rainy gifted me a beautiful white scarf that had blue flowers on it. Janet baked some cookies, and thought to send half a dozen my way. Gabby sent me a copy of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Which I had already read, but I appreciated nonetheless. Eileen's gift was the weirdest of the bunch. She owled me a dead dove, accompanied by a note saying ‘do not eat’.

I ate the dove.

Similarly Mom got a dead rat from Olea, which… yeah, birdbrain. But it’s the thought that counts! And she was only four months old, so she wasn't expected to get something anyways. As my gift for Mom, I made her a calendar. Like all the things I made for her, it was impossibly ornate. It also had a bunch of dates already written onto it, such as the stop and start of school, any holidays she might care about, and a moon phase tracker along with the dates of other known celestial phenomena.

I preened under the compliments that she praised me with despite the fact that this year's calendar was almost exactly the same as last year's. The details and illustrations for each month were different, but the style was already established so it was barely any effort to switch the pieces around into a ‘1992’ configuration.

Mom still didn't know how easy it was. My mind was mostly machine, of course it was easy to print together a few modular pieces. I designed species for fun, but for some reason she lavished me in praise for making a calendar. Still filled my heart to hear, though. Regardless of what it was for, I would always be delighted when listening to her express her love for me.

After that was finished, the day went on like any other. Olea practised hand eye coordination by learning how to juggle— outside— and then I watched her play Super Mario World on the cutting-edge SNES that Mom had imported from America for my birthday.

Then, to my great befuddlement, at around three o'clock I got a high priority ping about muggle politics. The alert left me so surprised that I stopped paying active attention to my body, as I solely focused on the contents of the broadcast that my subsystems had picked up.

Whilst I was distracted, Olea took notice of my suddenly apathetic expression. “What'cha doin'?” she asked, pausing her game.

“I am looking at the television as you use it to play a video game.” I responded automatically.

Olea sent me a small ping psychically, and realised what was happening when I didn't respond back. She turned around and shouted towards Mom's study. “HEY MOM, ART SUDDENLY BECAME SUPER DISTRACTED, CAN YOU, um, HELP‽” Mom had already put down her book and was speed walking out the study’s door. “Normally she gives a brief response when I message her, but she hasn't.”

Mom crouched down next to me and snapped her fingers twice in front of my face, which was identified as a higher priority request for attention than talking. The first thing I did when coming back to myself was re-categorise Olea's mental messages to not just count as talking. The second thing I did was furrow my brow as I moved Mom's hand out of my face, and then said “TV, now.”

I stood to walk over to the telly, and then realised that I was already at the sofa, so I just sat back down feeling rather silly.

Mom joined us on the couch, as I telekinetically unplugged the Nintendo and tuned the TV to receive the short range broadcast I was about to send.

The broadcast wasn't very Long, just a few minutes of a bald man speaking Russian with some hastily translated subtitles thrown up on screen. It was the resignation speech of Mikhail Gorbachev. That clearly didn't mean much to both Mom and Olea. I supposed they were right to not care. We were British witches, this wouldn't affect us. For now it didn't, but it meant a serious shift in global politics, and that could mean something eventually.

They just shrugged it off. The woes of muggles didn't matter to them. Even in the Great Wars magicals of all kinds rarely interfered. But at the very least we could acknowledge that we had just witnessed history?

I was reminded of an old adage. ‘Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.’

No wonder magical Britain had two civil wars in the last fifty years.

‘I wonder when the next one will be. The board is near set, just one body removed from the pile and they'll be at it again.’

Hmm…

‘Maybe I should do something about that,’