Harry Potter and the Story Without Delphi

Chapter Twelve: The Worst Best Present Ever

Finally, it was Christmas Day.

Albus woke up early, excited for the onslaught of presents and fun. He tried his best not to step on a sleeping Teddy as he left the room. He could already hear Grandma in the kitchen downstairs, as well as the voices of Lily and Hugo, who was little kids, had woken up way earlier that anybody else. 

When he went downstairs to join them, he saw Nova had joined them. Nova had been adamant for the past few days that she needed absolutely nothing for Christmas, saying that the free accommodations and food was more than enough. Albus had a feeling however that she would be receiving a jumper along the with the rest of the family.

"Albus I need to talk to you," said Nova, unusually serious.

"Alright," Albus replied, slightly startled.

"Upstairs."

He complied, and the minute they were upstairs, Nova started talking very fast.

"Well, this might be personal and you don't have to tell me what happened, but why were you late coming to dinner that first day? You've been acting sort of strange since then, and I was wondering what was wrong."

Albus realized he had forgotten to tell Nova what had happened.

"Well it's a pretty long story, but I meant to tell you anyways. Long story short, my mum has another brother, She used to be a sister to twins. During the Last Wizarding War, which we learned about in school, one of the twins died, which hit the other pretty hard. He can barely function from what I saw. He actually lives here..."

"There's a guy holed up living here?"

"Let me finish. Anyways, he thinks his brother's ghost is at Hogwarts. And he's planning to go and find it. So I volunteered to help."

"So we'll be like reverse Ghostbusters?"

"What's a Ghostbuster?"

Nova sighed.

"Muggle stuff. Anyways, that sounds pretty cool. Do we have any leads?"

Albus paused for a second.

"We?"

Nova looked at him like he was stupid.

"Me and Scorpius, being your only friends, will obviously join you. Don't worry, we'll get our permission forms signed."

"Rose is my friend too!"

"She's your cousin. There is a difference."

"No offense, but this is something I should do..."

"We have your back. Aite?"

"Aite?"

Nova blushed and looked embarrassed.

"Sorry, I fell into...nevermind. We have your back ok? We want to hunt ghosts too! It sounds fun!"

"You're already dragging Scorpius into this?"

"Oh, he'll say yes."

By this time, Albus cold hear signs of the older people waking up. He didn't need anybody's input into the matter."

"Listen we can talk later. Let's just go downstairs for know, alright?"

Nova nodded, and they both headed back down the stairs.

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A few hours later, the entire Potter-Weasley-Lupin-Granger gang was around the Christmas tree. All of these people meant the presents had overflowed and had at least a meter radius around the actual tree. Albus was trying to spot his name in the sea of gift tags when Grandma clapped her hands together.