Christmas lunch for those of us left at school

Well, for the first time since his first year at Hogwarts Sam was spending Christmas back at the castle.

Mind you, he wasn't alone in the slightest, with the rest of the school seeming to have the same idea as he did. See, if you went home, you missed out on the Yule Ball, and no one wanted to do that. Well, that was all over now, last night had been fun, he'd met a few new people, and he'd generally enjoyed himself. Of course now the hall wasn't in it's normally pristine condition. For a few people it seemed as though this was just the next stage of the party, a lot of them didn't seem to have left at all. Their loss, he liked his sleep, more than anything else.

Luckily, this meant that the tables were still organised as small groups, instead of the house tables. It was better that way, maybe he'd speak to Headmaster Doyle about keeping it that way, it really helped bonding between the houses. Mind you, the house rivalry was almost as big a part of the school as lessons and professors.

Taking a seat at one such small table he wished that he had a plate of bacon and eggs, and a glass of orange juice, and just after he thought of it, there it was sitting in front of him. "Mmmm," he thought to himself, licking his lips and preparing to stuff himself.

Marki scampered into the Great Hall, smiling contentedly at the set up. It reminded her of the Yule Ball and she did not want to forget the Yule Ball soon. She had thoroughly enjoyed herself at the Ball even if she had been dateless, had been in an ensemble inspired by an extra terrestrial, and had been the DJ which allowed for no social interaction... it had been the best school function she had attended.

Marki usually did not have a good time at such things, because she usually got ignored or picked on, and if she tried to create her own fun- reading or trying to attack any suspicious looking inanimate objects- she usually got ostracized or bullied even more. She always showed up because even that was not enough to scare her away.

She looked around. Every table was occupied by at least one person. No chance of her sitting by herself the way her classmates usually expected her to. She saw a nearby table where only one boy was sitting there, so the rick was minimum. She went and sat across from him and stared down at the plate. Immediately, a biscuit, jam, toast, french fries, and bacon appeared. She smiled up at the boy. "Good morning. Merry Christmas!"

Keith took the stairs to the main hall two at a time.

He had had a good christmas. Maybe his parents had money to burn, or maybe they just felt bad that they were visiting Kat in France this year, and weren't able to see him over the holidays. Anyway, they had bought him, well, a lot. Keith could reasonably mark this year as a good haul.

By far the best present was his headphones, which he was wearing now. They were the classic kind of headphones, the big ones that covered the whole ear instead of those stupid little buds that came with muggle ipods nowadays. They were a white with blue clouds on the sides, and were enchanted to play any song the wearer knew. The main drawback was that they were easily confusable - the note had said they would adjust with time, but with Keith's flighty mind they constantly switched back and forth between songs, forcing him to stop and correct them.

Keith didn't particularly mind. The headphones were slung down so they still covered his ears, but instead of the band going across the top of his head, it rested on his shoulder, wrapping around his neck. This was done so that he could comfortably wear his second favorite gift, a ravenclaw-blue baseball hat with what Keith considered his personal symbol on the front - a circle with a K inside it, the ends of the K extending past the circle.

He walked through the door to the great hall, and, currently occupied with making sure the song on his headphones wasn't about to switch, sat down next to a fourth year gryffindor and the weird girl Keith recognized from the common room.

"Sup?" Keith said, his voice abnormally loud due to the fact that music was currently blasting through his ears. "Good christmas this year huh? Grits!" He looked down at the bowl of grits that had appeared before him and happily dug in before either of them could answer.