Stepping out on the hearth of the large fireplace, Sasha paused a moment to brush a few stray spots of floo powder from his shoulders before adjusting the bag slung over his shoulder.  The room he stepped out into was bright, welcoming and filled with a number of festive faces, both familiar and unfamiliar.  He met the scattered polite nods in his direction with an equally polite 'allo' in return as he scanned to room for the hosts. 

The Spectre open house had already been underway for several hours, leaving many of the visitors well in the midst of a mid-food and drink lull.  Though that hadn't been his motivation for arriving in early afternoon; that had just been a side effect of the time it had taken to get into a mind space conducive to socializing.  But, the mid-day lull was a welcome side effect; it was a much easier mood for him to match during the holidays. 

Sasha quickly spotted Balfour and crossed the room, waiting briefly for an appropriate opportunity to capture Balfour's attention.  "Happy Christmas," he offered brightly as he reached the man.  He extended a hand.  "Thank you for the invitation; everything looks very festive."  Glancing around at the bright decorations offered a vibrant reminder of why, once upon a time, Christmas had been his favorite holiday. 

Maybe, one day, he'd get back to that.  For now, he was just glad to be out and enjoying the holiday with the new people in his life. 

"I imagine the man in red has come and gone so I'm late on that front, but ..."  he fished out two wrapped packages from his bag and handed it over to Balfour.  The first was the fairly typical, safe gift: a couple bottles of wine and a few of the remaining cheeses from the Waldgraf's old dairy herd.  The second, however, was far less so.  He wasn't exactly sure how it would go over but, while fretting over gift decision making, he had received outside encouragement[1].

1.	You're welcome

As always at the holidays, the manor drawing room was littered through with crowns of red and blonde hair - with the odd exception of his fiancé or his sister's husband. The antique chairs and comfortable sofas were occupied by older clan members, nursing whiskies and hot drinks and smoking pipes. Young Spectres were running about, often crossing them on their way to a more exciting destination. It was a large room, with one great window overlooking the front of the estate. A light snow fell silently outside and basked the interior with a light matched only by the gigantic fireplace.

Comfortable in dark jeans and a pale blue jumper, Balfour was looking out across the terrace and wood beyond when he heard someone arriving by floo again. People kept popping in and out of course but he couldn't help noticing every time they did.

            "Happy Christmas," this particular arrival brought Ignan's once-clandestine son to his abode. "Thank you for the invitation..."

He gripped the younger man's hand jovially, bringing him into a hug that might have given away the two whiskies with which seanair and Nathaira had already plied him. "Sasha!" Balfour grinned and clapped his shoulder. "Wonderful, wonderful," he accepted the gifts and placed them on one of the side tables, careful not to disturb a clutter of half-empty liquor bottles.

"I believe Johann is helping my sister set up a rather complicated game of musical chairs in the parlour but -" his gaze flicked back towards the windows and he paused to wave at a figure approaching the edge of the terrace, "- there's Feliks, sorry. He's just been out to the lake with the others."

Balfour was very good at letting his son have run of the manor with his similarly aged relatives but he couldn't help worrying, every now and then, about where Feliks had made off to. They had enjoyed a more private celebration at breakfast this morning - just him and Joh, Feliks, a handful of others. It had been nice. A good reminder to have more of those moments with the boy wizard.

"Shall we go say hello?" he offered Sasha, nodding towards the doors that led out to their entrance hall. "He's always so excited to meet new relatives."

Feliks Spectre, both gangly legs swung over one side of a broomstick, drifted precariously across the icy terrace with a grin on his face. He was loosely bundled up for the cold and snow was still falling across the estate, though he hardly felt any of it. He had just run through the wood from the frozen lake, sprinting past barren trees and frosted boulders, only rushing on to his new broom once he had to get up the hill leading to the manor. The young wizard was out of breath.

Behind him, two white huskies bounded after with their tongues lolling out. The towering doors of the house swung open as they always did for him.

"Papa!" he exclaimed, hopping off the broom on to the sodden welcome rug. The dogs ran in right after, excitable, but Balfour pursed his lips into a sharp whistle, and they obediently reigned themselves in. Feliks put down the oilskin bag he'd been carrying before he started taking off some of his many layers.

His father was stood in the entrance hall with another tall man, with fair hair and a noble face. "Had a good time? The others still out there, aye?" Balfour asked, tousling Feliks' dark curls.

"Yes! They are skating still," he answered and reached into his bag to dramatically pull out two huge lake trouts hanging off a wire hook, "I caught fish!" Their dead eyes stared at the two wizards, mouths gaping wetly.

Something like surprise and laughter crossed his papa's face as he glanced at this offering. "That's... that's actually quite impressive. You should give them to Grizelda for dinner," he said with a distracted air, and then abruptly looked at the other man. "Before that, Feliks, this is Sasha," he gestured between them both, "Johann's cousin, he's just arrived."

Oh, yes! Johann's! But he did not have the dark hair? Feliks wiped his other fishy hand on the front of his jeans before offering it enthusiastically. "Hello! It is very nice to meet you. Merry Christmas."

If there hadn't been more important matters to attend to, Sasha might have asked how games of musical chairs could be complicated once he'd finished attempting to match the other's enthusiasm.  Sasha did return the hug, and it was genuine, but it definitely lacked the je ne sais quoi that would have come after two glasses of whiskey.   Or just generally being slightly less socially awkward about physical contact. 

But, there was no time to worry about such things.  Meeting the newest member of the Spectre clan took precedence and had been Sasha's primary reason for braving a social event on Christmas Day.  "Yes, definitely!" he confirmed, earnestly.  "That's one of my highlights of the holiday." 

He followed Balfour to the entrance way and waited, respectfully, a step behind him as father greeted son and offered introductions.  There was a peculiar sense of nostalgic familiarity to the whole scene.  The details were, of course, different but the general themes were remarkably similar to Christmases of years past spent at the Waldgraf family home along the lake.  The snow, music, decorations and retreating from the cold at the end of some hunting, skiing or sledding expedition.  Even the warm greetings at the door shared the quintessential holiday similarities - just substitute a grey-haired German grandmother for a much younger Scotsman. 

"That is pretty impressive," Sasha confirmed Balfour's assertion, nodding his head at the pair of fish, proudly on display.  "I was never very good at fishing, myself.  But - booting - I was a pro at booting.  I always caught the biggest hiking boots that backpackers somehow lost in the lake."  He cracked grin.  "But, then, I had a bad habit of playing fish hero and scaring them away so my sisters couldn't catch them, either."

Hand in hand with those memories came the familiar, crushing sense of grief and guilt but he touched his fingers to a small, golden pendant kept tucked under his sweater and forced those thoughts to the periphery.  He had to believe that being here was not his attempt to callously replace the family he'd destroyed for one he preferred, even if he knew full well his ghosts would accuse him of that very thing. 

He took a quiet, steadying breath as he dropped his hand from the front of his sweater and extended it to shake Feliks'.  "Allo, I'm really excited to meet you.  Happy Christmas to you, as well - and, I brought you a few gifts as well."  He shifted the bag on his shoulder but kept it slung in place, figuring the younger boy was bound to want to de-fish his hand first.  For at least one of the gifts, not doing so would have lasting consequences. 

"But - in the meantime - I hear congratulations are in order.  You're a Slytherin!  I was in Ravenclaw but most of my closest friends were Slytherin."  And, on a few occasions, Sasha had wondered if he might have ended up in Slytherin if he'd known what he knew now as a first year. 

A fish hero? Why did fish need heroes? Feliks laughed in delight, picturing the blond wizard trying to catch boots in the water. There had sometimes been boots, where he grew up, by the river. But none in the Spectre lake - not that he knew with certainty what was beneath the surface. That could wait for the spring or summer, when the ice would thaw.

            "But - in the meantime - I hear congratulations are in order..." Sasha continued, handshakes exchanged. "You're a Slytherin!"

His heart lifted and papa clapped a hand on his shoulder, reinforcing the pride felt upon being sorted into the same house as his father had been. "Da! Thank you!" Feliks smiled while his dark curls flashed an unmistakable shade of dark green. "My housemates are good. They are so interesting and they teach me so much," he added, thinking of Nicola.

Someone called Balfour's name from the drawing room and the older wizard glanced over his shoulder, "I'm being summoned. Why don't you give Sasha the grand tour, Feliks?" he drew away, this time patting Sasha's back. "Come join us for a dram of whisky, at your leisure."

Mostly dry (and still holding on to the trout), Feliks watched his father disappear to attend on one grant aunt or another. The whole day had been like that, both papa and Johann busy and chatty and cheerful. He wished they could spend more time with him, though it was easy to be infected by their high spirits.

"We must start the tour in the kitchen," Feliks told Sasha matter-of-factly, already heading towards the passage that would take them to the back of the manor, "so that I can give Grizelda my fish."

The two huskies followed, one of them sniffing around Sasha curiously.

Sasha offered Balfour an appreciative grin and a nod before turning his attention back to Feliks.

"The grand tour!  Allons-y!" he proclaimed, brightly, revealing in an entirely personal moment of victory for emulating The Doctor at a wizarding holiday party.  "It seems like a rather impressive house.  The perfect place for a game of hide and seek."  Though, he supposed, such games were much easier with siblings. 

Not surprisingly, given their open mouth, previously-swimming companions, Feliks led the way first to the kitchen.  After bending over to give the dogs a quick pat, and apologize to them for infiltrating their home with the subtle scent of Alsatian, Sasha followed Feliks down to the hallway. 

"The most important part of the house, some would say.  And, not just because of the fish."  Kitchens always seemed to be the highlight of any home.  "Have you found the entrance to the Hogwarts kitchens, yet?  The house elves there are very nice; they were always quick to press food into my hands when I'd wonder down there when I'd forget to leave the library to go to dinner." 

Feliks led the way confidently, glancing up at Sasha's comments every so often or waving at family portraits who noticed the pair of them walking by. The portraits weren't always in their frames unless there was a big family gathering - or at least that was what his papa had told him.

"Da!" he chattered along happily, "My cousins and I, we play hide and seek, but they know this house much better than I do." They had all spent more holidays here after all - there was nothing envious or glum in the way he said it, a happy observation. He liked his cousins! They were funny and interesting and played musical instruments.

The kitchen, as they passed into it underneath an archway, was boiling hot. A couple of old witches were sat at the stone oven where they spoke seriously whilst poking at a loaf of bread in the open flame. They glanced over their shoulders to smile at Feliks and nod at Sasha before returning to their conversation.

Grizelda, the ever silent house elf, was popping in and out of sight at an alarming speed. She was clearly busy preparing at tidying up the feast laid out on the kitchen table - cold cuts, sandwiches, hearty salads, steaming patties of bubble and squeak.

            "Have you found the entrance to the Hogwarts kitchens, yet?  The house elves there..."

"Oh, yes!" Feliks grinned as he deposited the dripping fish in the deep sink, and took the opportunity to thoroughly wash his hands. "My papa told me! The house elves there, they make good hot chocolate. Not as good as Johann's," he added, drying his hands on a kitchen cloth. "But still very good."

Johann also fried the best eggs and had the best ideas, but of course Sasha already knew all this because he was related to Johann. Feliks sat at the table for a moment and picked at the finger sandwiches (cucumber and butter!). "Do you work at the Ministry also, like Johann and papa?" he bit into a sandwich hungrily.

Catching fish was hungry business.