Green flames sprang up around us and we were thrown through space in a swirling vortex of colour and light to another fireplace connected to the Floo network. Next thing I knew we were crouched in a different hearth, looking into a small kitchen of sorts. Sergius stepped out then helped me climb past the screaming tea kettle hanging over the flames.
Just as we were straightening up a woman who was unmistakably Sergius’ mother came scuttling into the room to fetch the tea and gasped. It hadn’t previously occurred to me, until that moment, that Sergius hadn’t told his parents he would be coming home for Christmas, or the reason why he was able to at all. I wanted to crawl back into the fireplace, even if I wasn’t protected from the flames anymore.
She ran forward and hugged Sergius to her large bosom and started kissing him over and over again on the cheek. She had blonde hair pinned up in a bun and the same stunningly clear blue eyes as Sergius, though she was much shorter and homely.
She’d begun chattering incessantly in a language I couldn’t recognize but assumed was Norwegian, since we had been transported to Norway’s arctic archipelago of Svalbard. It made me blush to hear Sergius speak it back to her for the first time.
“Min baby, hva gjør du her?!”
“Jeg kom hjem til jul Mama. Dette er Candie, jeg møtte henne på min nye skole.”
The realization I wasn’t expected either sank in and I tried to hide my now painfully large suitcase behind me. I felt that even entering this little house was overstepping my boundaries. Through all my worrying I didn’t notice that the two had now turned to look at me and I tried to fake a relaxed smile back at them.
Sergius’ mum shuffled over to me and smiled widely.
“Hello!” she said in a thick accent.
“Hello,” I replied, mirroring her. Sergius said something to her and she turned back to me with a knowing smile.
“Hun er heks født.”
“A witch,” she said, nodding her head. I giggled and nodded back confusedly, then she started calling loudly over her shoulder. Sergius’ father promptly shuffled into the room and shook his head, then smiled at me and I immediately saw from where Sergius had inherited his cool demeanor. The three of us looked to Sergius for translations and he began pouring out what I assumed were introductions and explanations.
“Jeg går på skole i Skottland nå; ikke mer Durmstrang. De lot meg gå hjem på helligdager. Candie er typen som jenta mi friend. You vil elske henne, hun er smart og søt, men ikke snakker norsk.”
I stood by awkwardly, unable to understand, taking in the room and scenery outside the kitchen window.
We seemed to be in a small cottage, whitewashed and clean, the room beyond the kitchen decked in furs with a dark wooden table. Outside was a blizzard of grey sky and blinding white snow. Something felt very strange about it and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it before the thought came to me all at once like fact: Sergius’ parents were muggles. I couldn’t explain exactly how I knew, but there was an unmistakable lack of magic about the house and I noticed it right away.
As they continued to talk I discreetly slipped my wand out of my pocket and concentrated on the spell that would miniaturize my suitcase while keeping Sergius’ present within unchanged.
“Verumtamen Vane Conturbatur,” I spoke quietly.
The suitcase shrank and I took it in my hand like a very small lunchbox, feeling much less awkward.
It seemed like an hour before I heard another spot of English, and it came surprisingly from Sergius’ father, who was still smiling widely at me as if this was our only form of communication - which, so far, it was.
“You stay here for Christmas?” he asked. I glanced briefly at Sergius then nodded my head, returning his smile. “Good,” he responded, smiling broadly at me, almost bowing in recognition.
It was very early morning there and we were quickly ushered into the small sitting room for tea and cakes. There was a small, fluffy cat with a prestigiously flat face perched across the couch which hissed and fled the room immediately upon seeing us. I was blatantly disappointed, so Sergius turned to whisper in my ear.
“You can cuddle her later.”
The way he said it made it too clear this was really a malicious intent, but I couldn’t be at peace knowing there was such a beautiful, fluffy little cat in the house and not be able to touch it. As I sat cross-legged on a high-backed armchair, clutching my cup of tea, a sharp tapping noise caught my attention at the window.
Two large green eyes were staring into the living room from the haze of white outside the window. It was an enormous snowy owl.
I jumped up out of my seat, almost embarrassed by how out of place this must seem for the Moonbloods and approached the familiar bird. It was my eldest sister Nora's, she sent Christmas cards to every relative on the planet this time of year. I felt sorry for the owl, Kaia, because she most likely never had to travel this far before. Sergius had appeared at my side, then darted a couple feet to the cottage door.
The owl came in on his arm and dropped the neatly sealed letter in my hand, a twisting candy cane secured to it with indelible charmed ribbon. I had nothing to send back with her, and so Sergius let her perch for a while on the armchair while his parents watched her flawlessly white feathers with fascination. Mr Moonblood took a photograph with a muggle camera, and I had to restrain myself from staring too hard at it. Professor Burbage would be so interested to hear that I’d seen a camera in person.
I finished my tea, taking time to sort out my future in the soggy leaves (a hollow triangle means power; a rabbit means underestimation) and sucked the raspberry candy cane, reading over Nora's letter while the Moonbloods chatted with each other. I assumed Sergius was filling his parents in on what he'd been up to this past semester, and I was relieved not to be expected to understand or keep up the conversation.
The card read ‘Happy Christmas, Love Nora’.
There was a moving picture of her twirling a red velvet dress in front of the Christmas tree. I realized she was probably spending the holidays in Portugal with her fiancée, as it was a palm tree decorated elaborately with a mismatch of silver ornaments.
"Candie," said Sergius suddenly, and I was pulled from my thoughts back into the room. "Can you bring back my staff?"
"Oh yeah, sure," I replied, turning to reach into the pockets of my coat lying on the chairback. I laid the staff in my open palm and raised my wand with the other, called “Crecer,” and it grew back to full size, weighing heavily in my hand. I held it out to him as he crossed the small room and took it from me.
"Are you allowed to do magic outside of school at Durmstrang?" I asked.
"I was, not anymore. They don't like it that much anyway," he replied, motioning haphazardly toward his parents in their armchair across from us.
"I like, I like, but you have to work hard for what you have, or else you do not appreciate," his mother corrected in heavily accented English. Sergius rolled his eyes and placed the staff in a bare corner of the room that looked as if to be reserved for it.
"I've never actually seen Sergius do magic," I said slowly, hoping it was understandable. His muggle upbringing clicked into his personality as I thought about it: I really hadn't ever seen him do magic. He didn't rely on it like the rest of us. I wondered why he never told me.
Kaia had begun shifting from claw to claw anxiously, so I lifted her carefully on my shoulder and let her go back out into the snowy morning.
In what appeared to be a very large; very hot storage cabinet on the floor of the kitchen was a tray of warm biscuits, and we went about scarfing them down as soon as they were ready. I hadn't learned about cooking in Muggle Studies yet and was absolutely mortified when Sergius' mother asked me if I could bring out the milk from the 'freege'. There were two degrees of separation between his parents and I now - language and magic.
Immediately after we ate, she set about preparing more food while Sergius' father retired back to the couch, flat-faced cat perched in his lap.
"Do you want to go for a walk?" Sergius asked as we stared out the window of the living room.
"Yeah! Sure," I said eagerly, even though it looked like a frozen wasteland out there and I wasn't sure what we would be walking to.
Before he opened the door, we pulled on our coats and I tapped each article of clothing, from my boots to my hood, and whispered, "Fleecio!" He smiled and shook his head as we stepped out into the blizzard.
We stomped through the knee deep snow into a flurry of white; I could hardly make out any shapes in the distance as the sky was a light grey and the sun was nowhere to be seen. If thick lumps of snowflakes were not coming down from all angles at us, conspiring to land in my eyes, I may have been inclined just to lay down in the dunes all day, making snow angels and enjoying the peace of pure white oblivion.
I must have started to stray as Sergius' hand soon closed around my wrist; my oversized mittens against the bare skin of his fingerless gloves, and he began guiding me to the left, away from the small cottage, its puffing little chimney disappearing from sight.
If the snowfall covered up our tracks, I wondered how we'd ever get home. Perhaps he was leading us in a long, arcing circle, and without knowing it we'd find his ancestral home right in front of us again.
As I squinted through the fog-like blizzard tall, dark shapes came into view, and as we approached they got darker and thicker, until I realized what we were heading toward were dense woods.
Sergius' hand slipped from my wrist to envelop my mitten and he began pulling me harder into the shadow of the trees.
As soon as our heads ducked under the first branches I wondered how I could have found that blizzard of light relaxing compared to the silence and calm that befell us past the tree line. Everything in the woods was dark: black soil and evergreen needles, tall pitchy trunks and the end of the thicket was no where in sight. I cautiously took down my hood.
It didn't make much sense to me that this was here, but the confusion was cleared up when a starry blue pixie dashed across the way and out of sight. The forest was magical, and must be under a muggle-repelling charm. I remembered Professor Flitwick telling the class in first year that if a muggle was aware of the magical world, such as in the case of squibs or muggle relatives of a witch or wizard, they could choose to see what is usually hidden from the muggle eye, like the Leaky Cauldron or Hogwarts itself. Even dragon sanctuaries have been known to be visited by non-magical folk who were simply able to accept the realness of the wizarding world.
"Do your parents know this is here?" I asked cautiously.
"Not really," he replied. "My dad has seen it while walking to town a couple times but they'd never go in here." I didn't say so, but found that a relief. Even if the most dangerous creature in this forest were pixies, it wouldn't be fair to let muggles roam around it unprotected. As soon as it crossed my mind I felt a creeping sense that I was being ignorant. I don't even know what a 'freege' is, how can I say that non-magic peoples are unprotected?
"So what do you think?" Sergius interrupted.
"About what?"
"Anything," he replied nonchalantly. I shrugged.
"I like the snow," I said, "and your house, and your parents, and the food." He nodded his head and looked down at me with a devilish smile.
"You didn't know I was muggle-born, did you?" I raised my eyebrows but tried to shake my head in an unconcerned manner.
"No," I squeaked out, trying to mirror his signature aura of indifference. He laughed.
"Yeah, well, surprise."
I struggled to find something of meaning to say to that but couldn't come up with anything.
"I used to come here in in the summer when I was little," he continued. "I didn't realize there was anything special about it. Thought pixies and centaurs were perfectly normal. My mom would see them in my drawings and stories but she just thought I had a funny imagination."
We stopped.
"You should get her to tell you the story of when I got accepted to Durmstrang. It's pretty hilarious."
He stopped talking and raised two fingers to his mouth in a whistle. It was long and low, and seemed to echo out over the treetops for ages. It was immediately followed by a rushed, crackling sound, like something was barreling through the peat; snapping twigs under it.
I stumbled back and grabbed hold of his arm, pressing my lips into a thin line lest my fear escape them.
Then, cantering through the trees like a ghost, erupted a thestral. Entirely black and skeletal, with wings like that of a bat; it gracefully slowed to a stop a few meters from us, its cloudy eyes sweeping slowly across where we stood.
"Can you see it?" Sergius asked me as I stared in wonder at the creature.
"Can you?" I repeated. He put his hand out and it approached him cautiously, letting its smoky muzzle fall into his open palm.
"When I was eight the school house in town caught fire..." he explained. We had plenty of thestrals pulling carriages at Hogwarts, but most students couldn't see them. The blind, ghostly horses were born out of tragedy and only those who had witnessed death and accepted it could see them.
"A week later I came in here, and found it, like a newborn. I've seen some around Durmstrang, but he's the only one here."
I looked at the creepy creature sadly and tried not to think of the reason I myself could see it.
"So you've been taking care of it all this time?"
"Doesn't need to be taken care of," he answered, "besides, there's a tribe of centaur in here. Kind of like guardians of the forest. But I'm sure you know everything about that," he said, giving me a sly look.
"Not as much as I wish. We only started Care of Magical Creatures this year. I've read loads of books, but I like hearing it from Hagrid better."
Sergius smiled and nodded. The thestral was now lying down relaxedly at his feet.
"Does he have a name?" I asked, watching it with more admiration every minute.
"Yeah, but you wouldn't be able to pronounce it. Vaðlaheiði."
"Oh." My face fell and I shuffled my feet absently.
I couldn’t catch the name the first time he said it and as I tried to repeat it in my mind I realized I just couldn’t comprehend the pronunciation. Those vowels and sounds didn’t exist in my language.
He took my hand and kneeled on the damp leaves, guiding my fingers along its thin mane. I shivered and recoiled, its fur was so cold and sparse I felt it couldn't possibly be living. But with Sergius watching me intently, I stuck out my hand again and laid it flat against the creature's bony neck. Its wings fluttered grimly.
"It’s all alone up here," Sergius said in a quiet voice. "The only one of his kind."
Then a gentle voice spoke from behind us in a language slightly different than the Moonbloods’. It was a centaur, with a wide, pale grey body and deep blue black mane.
She spoke in turn to both of us. “Hvad er dine intentioner i skoven i dag?”
I suppose from my blank expression she gleaned I could not understand her at all. Sergius stood to face the centaur but put my hand back on the thestral's sleek shoulder in a silent way of telling me not to trouble myself, or perhaps to remain still and calm. He spoke to the centaur in the same soft tone she'd used.
“Jeg omsorg for thestral. Hun taler ikke den nordlige tungen.”
She made no acknowledgment but seemed to be placated and trotted away, disappearing behind the murky foliage of the evergreens.
"What did she say?" I whispered as Sergius knelt back down beside me.
"Nothing," he answered, his eyes fixed back on his spooky companion's pitch black head. “Just wanted to know why we’re here.”
He rubbed the thestral under its jaw, then stood up and offered me his hand. The thestral stood as well and gave a chuff with the shake of its narrow head, then cantered off.
Sergius walked me some ways back, just before the tree line, then held my chin in his hand and kissed me. I arched against him, taking in the scent of pine all around us and melting into the heat of his mouth.

When we finally returned to the house, I realized I had left my tiny suitcase on the armchair and lifted it in my hand.
"Where should I keep this?" I asked, giving a quick glance down the darkened hallway leading off the living room.
"Later," he said, taking the little blue parcel and placing it on the coffee table.
I followed him into the kitchen where his father sat eating a second round of biscuits, and his mother was working over a fire on the countertop. There was a large black pot perched upon it, and the steam wafted tantalizingly past our noses. Sergius put his arm out to open the lid but she slapped his hand away, laughing.
"It is no ready yet," she said, then looking at me, "Tonight!"
I smiled and tried to mumble something but was caught off guard when the little fluffy mass that was the Moonblood's cat came swishing into view beneath the table.
She had large golden eyes and an innocent, if not wholly frightened, stare. Tisha, he'd said her name was.
I called her but my pronunciation didn't sound quite right and every way I said it felt wrong. I bent down to pet her and she hissed at me.
"Tisha does not like people so much," his father interjected as I retreated into Sergius' chest, feeling hurt. I tried to give a meager smile but was starting to miss Binky's soft warm fur and immediately felt like crying. I just wanted to hug this cat.
"Is okay," his mother said sweetly, "if you are just nice to her, and she get used to you, you can pet her."
I nodded my head and watched the fat furry tail disappear from view. Then I thought maliciously to myself that I had just the spell to calm this startled cat.
Sergius' mother passed us each a square of extra dark chocolate and we went back to the living room to sit closely on the couch and devour it, savouring each tiny nibble.
"Do you want to see my room?" Sergius asked as I licked the last of the bittersweet cocoa off my lips. I nodded my head vigorously and we crept around the corner into the hallway.
"Accio!" I whispered as we turned down the corridor, and my suitcase came floating through the air after me.
There were two bedrooms on either end of the hallway, one was occupied by a queen sized bed and a carved wooden dresser with an equally large mirror on top. Tisha sat staring at us from a fur rug. We turned into the room on the right, and my suitcase set itself down on the hardwood floor.
The bed was pushed up in a corner beneath the windows, still forecasting snow, and there was what I recognized from my muggle studies to be a boxy little television set on a table in the corner across from it. I walked around it warily, as if it were about to spontaneously combust. There was a white fur rug the size of a polar bear stretched across the rest of the room.
Sergius ignored my fascination with the television and sat on the bed, tapping the spot next to him and looking up at me expectantly. I blushed and walked toward where he sat, but only under the pretense of gazing out the window.
The flurry of white and grey was still present outside, but from his view on the side of the house I could just make out a darkened patch on the horizon; the centaur's forest.
I swiveled and sat down next to him on the bed. My feet couldn't quite reach the ground so I kicked them aimlessly and wriggled my toes in the thick woolen socks I’d packed.
His face leaned down close to mine and I could tell he was smelling my hair again.
It couldn't be that great, there was probably still specks of floo powder in it from when we left the Leaky Cauldron earlier this morning.
I remembered Sergius' present in my bag and decided I should resize it to avoid any further possible damage, but when I tried to stand and reach for the suitcase his arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me backward to sit on his lap. I wriggled uncomfortably, then tried to stay still as his hands ran up and down my arms, rolling off my shoulders, gently moving my hair to one side so he could plant a kiss on my neck.
I jumped up from the bed and started rushing over to the suitcase, rooting myself firmly on the rug cross legged and pulling out my wand to unshrink the contents. The powder blue suitcase sprang back to size and I carefully unlatched the locks to pry it open.
I could feel Sergius watching me from where he sat and so called warningly, "Don't look!" He laughed and turned away while I checked on the precious trinket wrapped beneath all the sweaters. It was fine.
I snuggled it back in, then snapped the bag shut and slowly rose to my feet.
Sergius' eyes were fixed back on me again. I began to circle back around the television set, poking and tapping it, looking up at Sergius every other second as he just sat watching me.
"Do you want to watch something?" he asked.
"Okay," I replied, nodding my head. As he got up to fiddle with the television, using his fingers to press buttons and force a black rectangular prism into its mouth, I took a seat on the corner of the bed and tucked my feet under me excitedly.
The television's face came to life and sound began pouring out of round little holes in its sides. Sergius sat down on the bed behind me and snaked a hand around my waist.
I watched the pictures move across the screen, and then laid back in his arms and drifted soundlessly to sleep.

That night at dinner I remembered to ask his mum, clearly as I could, what happened when she found out her son was a wizard.
"Magic, you know, is like something we only hear in fairy tale," she started. "Dis whole world you come from is kept secret, so we do not know, except for maybe when Sergie is little and we cannot stop his hair from grow," she laughed.
Sergius turned to me and ladled me some more hot beet soup; dropped a fat dollop of sour cream on top.
"She means when they'd cut my hair it would just grow back overnight."
I smiled and studied the dark curtains framing his face, the mane tied away at the nape of his neck.
"But, what about when you got his letter?" I asked. His mother looked confused and shook her head, then prattled something off to Sergius.
“Hva betyr hun brevet?”
“Jeg mottok ikke en av disse fra skolen,” Sergius replied.
He finished the roll he was eating and turned to me again.
"Durmstrang doesn't send letters," he said through another mouthful of bread.
"Well, then how did you know?" I began to imagine the massive viking ship pulling up in front of the little cottage. His mother got a big smile on her face.
"Ah, Candie, it was so weird for to happen, but one day when Sergie is small," she motioned close to the ground with her hand, "dis lady come to our door and say he need to be in special school because he is gifted," she said, and she smiled at him again.
"Oh, who was it?"
"Nerida Vulchanova," Sergius answered almost immediately. I waited for him to continue, but it seemed that was all I could get from him.
"She say everybody can not see wizard world because we are not wizard, Candie."
His father grunted; scruffy beard buried in his bowl of soup.
"I tell her she can not have him, because he is my baby, but Sergie, he just turn to me and say, 'I can go, mama, and I will come back and you will not have to clean anymore'." The end of her sentence was punctuated by her laughter. Sergius was going a little pink, but was beaming and murmuring, making his mother laugh.
“Jeg følte meg dårlig for deg fordi du måtte leve med ham, og ingenting er endret.”
Then his father piped up, having finished his enormous bowl.
"And look, now he is going to new school, meet pretty girl, come home for Christmas, and finish next year!" I blushed and looked over at Sergius. He already had a retort for his dad.
“Oh er du stolt av meg nå fordi jeg klarte å åle meg ut av etra tid på skolen? Eller fordi jeg er nå definitivt ikke homofil?”
His mother laughed harder.

After dinner his parents retired to the living room for tea and Sergius and I began to inch closer in his bed.
"You want to go somewhere tomorrow?" he breathed as we pressed together, stretched out on our sides. I entwined my fingers with his between us and nodded, looking down at his mouth; watching his lips.
"You're so beautiful," he murmured.
It was the sweetest, simplest thing that no one had ever said to me before. It was what I felt whenever he looked at me, or touched me, or said my name. That he knew I was beautiful. And I felt overwhelmingly the same thing about him.