When Miranda pushed into Harry's bedroom at seven-thirty in the morning on Saturday, she knew beforehand that the young wizard would be sound asleep. The kids had only been home a week, but it had been quite enough time for Harry to start sleeping in practically until noon. When Miranda came home for lunch, more times than not, Harry was still in pajamas, but there, as ever, making lunch and being an utter delight to both Miranda and Hermione. And the wonderful moods Hermione and Harry were both always in since coming home for Christmas holiday… as far as Miranda was concerned, Hermione picking Harry to be her boyfriend had been a wise move. Not that she expected less from her brilliant daughter.

Miranda went to Harry's bedside and looked down at him. She smiled. His hair was a right fright, the sheets a tangle around him, his arms flung out and taking up a huge portion of the bed. His face looked untroubled. He was really rather adorable when he slept. Miranda was tempted, for a moment, to watch him a while, just as she had watched Hermione sleep when her daughter had been very little.

But they had a lot of things to do today, and the sooner they started the better.

"Harry," Miranda said gently and reached down to shake Harry's shoulder.

Harry stirred, his face screwed at the jostling, and he rolled away from her, mumbling groggily as he did so, "Few more min'us, Mione."

Miranda chuckled. "Wrong Granger, honey."

Harry's eyes snapped opened, he rolled onto his back, and looked up blearily at Miranda standing over him. It took about two seconds for everything to register. "Missus Granger… sorry." He rubbed at one eye and yawned wide. "Ut time's it?"

"Seven-thirty."

Harry looked aghast but he didn't say anything.

Miranda laughed. "Come on, dear, get your bum out of bed and meet us in the living room for a family meeting."

Harry blinked at her a moment, first bewildered, then stunned, then serious. He nodded and began to disentangle himself from his covers. "I'll be right there."

Miranda left him to it, exiting his room and returning to the living room. When she got there she remained standing and turned to look at the other occupants in the room. Hermione and Jake were already awake and awaiting the start of the busy day. They knew this routine all too well, but they would have to introduce Harry to the ins and outs. Miranda thought it was kind of fun to think of bringing someone new into this particular fold of the Granger family. Expectant, Hermione was in the armchair with Crookshanks curled in her lap. Jake was sitting on one side of the couch, Kimmy perched on the back of the piece of furniture like a squatting castle gargoyle… a cute gargoyle in holly-covered boxer shorts.

Miranda smirked at the house elf. Since Hermione was four years old Miranda and Jake had known there was something different, special, about their little girl. For their daughter's sake, the acceptance of magic had become commonplace in their household. But for the longest time that had amounted to receiving the occasional owl post, having a copy of the Daily Prophet on their kitchen table in the morning next to the regular newspaper, and making trips to the ever-wondrous Diagon Alley. The recent addition of Harry into their lives had brought with it newfound understanding of just what it meant for Hermione to be part of another world, the wizarding world. They had a shape-shifting house elf as their guest, and they'd had to concern themselves with the potential for Harry to 'lose control' of his magic. Hermione never did; they hadn't known it was possible for magic to just get out of hand.

It was an eye-opener, to be sure, and it made Miranda and Jake reevaluate just what their daughter's abilities meant beyond merely going to a special school for magically gifted children. In the end, it all came down to the simple fact Hermione that loved the world of magic, and she was as much a part of it as though she'd been born to a witch and wizard instead of plain, boring Miranda and Jake Granger. She wouldn't give it up anytime soon. It was irreplaceable in her mind and heart.

The world of magic was where she'd found Harry.

Miranda broke from her ruminations when Harry came shuffling into the living room. He'd tamed his hair to a small degree, and he didn't look near as foggy with his glasses on, but he still looked as though he'd like to crawl right back into bed. When he came into the living room his eyes went first to Hermione. Hermione looked over at him and smiled. Harry smiled back, then took a moment to consider the seating options. After a pause, he went over and sat down on the couch next to Jake and almost directly in front of Kimmy. Kimmy, as though unable to restrain herself given the prime opportunity, reached up and began to worry at Harry's hair, trying to comb it down to some semblance of presentable with her fingers.

Harry suffered it gracefully, but Hermione burst out laughing. Crookshanks startled awake and looked over at the cause for the disruption.

Kimmy gave Harry's wild hair a final pat and grinned sheepishly as she dropped her hands back to the couch.

"Thanks, Kimmy," Harry said politely, then looked around at the gathered Grangers. "So… what's going on?"

"Well," Miranda began, eager to jump right into the thick of it, "since you'll be joining us, there are certain things you must know to properly participate in a Granger Family Christmas."

Harry's eyebrows rose and he glanced fleetingly at Hermione.

"Tradition one is today; the shopping outing.

"Since Hermione's away at school all year, we don't expect her to have had any chance to shop for presents coming up on Christmas holiday. So every year, after she has come home for the holiday, one day is devoted entirely to shopping."

Harry looked like he might be ill.

Jake laughed, seeing the same reaction on the boy's face that Miranda did, and pounded Harry on the back. "Cheer up, son, it's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, this year might be the most painless yet, for me, anyway, thanks to you."

"Umm… okay."

Miranda tried not to smile and betray her amusement at Harry's expense. "It's really not so terrible, Harry. Jake and I tended to our shopping before Hermione came home, so it'll only be an excursion for you and Hermione to see to your Christmas shopping.

"Normally, this is how it works. We take turns teaming with Hermione. One of us takes her shopping for the other parent while the one who's being shopped for wiles away their time at the London Zoo. For example, usually I take Hermione to the stores first, and while she's shopping for Jake, Jake's at the zoo. At lunch we meet up, have a bite to eat, then swap. Jake will take Hermione out shopping for me, and I'll have a wander about of the zoo. When we're finished we meet back up, pack up, and head home.

"Now, since there are four of us this year instead of three it'll take a bit more shuffling, but what I thought most practical would be for Hermione and I to team up first off, and you and Jake can go to the zoo. At lunch we'll swap. You and Jake can go around to the stores and Hermione and I will visit the zoo."

Jake leaned slightly in toward Harry, "Believe me, Harry, that's the best you could hope for. By the time lunch rolls around, Miranda's worked her initial shopping frenzy out of her system and is much quicker about it."

Miranda smiled, a little embarrassed that Jake knew her so terribly well. "That's true. Most years, that means we're ready to go back home by four. But what I suggest is that we meet back up at three, trade partners, Hermione will go with Jake and Harry with me, and all four of us will go out shopping. By that time I expect that you and Hermione might already have certain things in mind from having gone shopping in the stores earlier, so I imagine it will be a real quick shop-and-dash affair once we've swapped partners. Now, naturally it wouldn't do for us to meet up in the stores and ruin any surprises, so I've worked out a system where we can be at different ends of London at certain times so we won't run into each other." She turned to pull out a chart she'd drawn up yesterday.

When Miranda stopped to look at her audience, she noticed three very different reactions. Hermione looked eager to see the schedule and commit it to memory. Jake was smiling that gentle, loving smile he tended toward when Miranda went into organizing guru mode. Harry was trying not to smile like he wanted to laugh, he really was, but he wasn't doing very well. Miranda puzzled over that. "Harry?"

Harry surrendered to smiling in pure amusement. "Nothing, just… you sound like Hermione when she's setting up our study schedules coming up on exams."

Hermione grinned, ducked her head, and blushed at the same time. Harry had turned his eyes to her and the light in his gaze was glittering brightly. Jake guffawed. "Well, you had to know Hermione must have gotten it from somewhere."

Hermione looked over at her father and Harry, and when she was met with nothing but affection from the boys on the couch her coloring started to return to normal.

Miranda finally chuckled. "I am a bit of a details person, I'll admit that. But some things you have to plan, else wise it all turns into a mess and then you're just in all manner of trouble."

Hermione nodded absolute agreement and reached out for the shopping schedule in her mother's possession. Miranda handed it over and next grabbed up a bag of adhesive Christmas bows of various colors.

"Now, this is very important… you need to know the bow color-coding for the gifts."

Harry laughed at once at that. "You color-coded Christmas?"

Miranda put one hand on her hip playfully at the question. "Yes. Why?"

Harry shook his head but his gaze went to Hermione again.

Miranda had a guess as to what Harry was thinking. "Well, silly as you may think it sounds, it's actually very important.

"Three days before Christmas we'll be going to my mum's. We celebrate Christmas day there with her. But my dear mother, though I love her, doesn't know about Hermione being a witch. So we have to take care with any presents that might be magical in nature. So, here's how the color-coding system works. Any gift that is magical, or close enough to magic that it would make my mum look askance at it, you put a silver bow on the gift. For the most part, the silver bows should do. When the present has a silver bow on it, we all know to open it so that my mum isn't in a position to lean over and have a peek."

Harry frowned. "But… doesn't she ask? I mean, I… I'll grant I don't know too much about Christmas, but when I'd stay over Christmas at Hogwarts and I'd open presents with Ron he always asked what I'd got."

"Ah, that's where the second part of the silver-bow beauty lies. Sometimes you can hide the true nature of the gift. Like last year, we gave Hermione a book on famous witches in history. Couldn't very well have my mother seeing that, so we took the cover off a book in our library… what was it, sweetie?"

"The Best of Gregor Mendel," Hermione giggled.

Miranda laughed. "That's right… we made out as though Hermione was thinking of majoring in biology when she went to university.

"We took that book cover, wrapped it around the book on witches, and there you go, perfect disguise. And since the gift had a silver bow, you know you're to play along with whatever the gift would appear to be on the surface. But, should it not be something so easily masked, then what we do is dip into the jumper collection."

"Huh?"

Hermione laughed at Harry's confusion and explained herself. "We have a collection of jumpers in the closet, still with the tags on them and everything, that we bought ages ago. All colors and patterns and sizes. If the silver-bow present is something that can't be put off as a muggle gift, then you lay a jumper over it and the receiver act as though the present was the jumper, not the magical thing underneath."

Miranda nodded. "My mum is always going off to the kitchen to check on pies and the like, so when she's gone we usually have a look at the real present."

Harry nodded slowly, face a play of concentration. "Okay, I think I get it."

"If not, I wrote up the rules for you, just so you don't get confused while you're wrapping," Miranda produced her handwritten page of guidelines for gift-wrapping and gave it to Harry.

Harry glanced down at the list briefly and looked up. "Gold?"

"Ah, yes," Jake threw in, "the most important bow color of the color-coding system.

"If the present is something that should not be opened in Berti's presence at all, say it's something that's apt to jump out of the box the moment you open it, then you place a gold bow on the box. More often than not, we don't even take those to Berti's. Rather, they're opened here at home."

"All right," Harry said, "sounds easy enough."

"Now, Harry," Miranda turned serious… well, even more serious than the present color-coding system demanded. "We'll be heading out today and shopping in teams to allow you the opportunity to shop for anyone you might care to, including Jake and me, but by no means does that mean we expect you to get either of us anything. You really don't have to, so please don't think you're obligated."

"All right, I understand."

"Good. Then get dressed everyone, so we can get a start on the day." Everyone started to rise when Miranda remembered something else. "Oh! One last thing… Kimmy?"

"Yes, Missus Granger?"

Miranda cringed to even have to say it. "I… I know you have to stay with Harry, for his protection and everything… the only problem… well, the London Zoo has a strict policy that all pets that visitors bring have to be on a leash."

Kimmy didn't react at first, just stared at Miranda with an unreadable expression. Then she frowned and gave a shrug of her bony shoulders. "Well, if Kimmy must, Kimmy must."

Hermione turned to Kimmy. "I'm very sorry. We'll make it up to you, Kimmy, I promise."

Kimmy jumped down from the couch and headed toward the hall, where she'd taken up her old closet quarters. "Kimmy thinks many boxers will be deserved for this, many and pretty," she said over her shoulder as she turned the corner.

Miranda had a feeling that they would all be picking up boxers on this day's outing.

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾

Jake and Harry bid farewell to Miranda and Hermione at the front gates of the London Zoo. Other zoo visitors were coming and going through the entrance behind them as the four split up for the first portion of the day. Kimmy, in her dog guise, was on a leash as required and standing at Harry's feet like a good little dog would. She didn't really look that upset about the whole leash affair, as far as Jake could tell, but then Harry was being very careful to hold the end of the leash in little more than a two-finger grip. Miranda was in a splendid mood, and Hermione gave Harry a hug before the women hurried off to hit the stores.

Jake put a hand on Harry's shoulder and steered him toward the entrance, where he paid for them to go inside. The lady who took their money gave Kimmy a critical eye and then looked up at Harry. "You keep that dog on its leash, young man."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And have a great day at the London Zoo."

It was a chilly sort of day, with gray skies and a brisk wind pulling at their clothes. Most of the zoo patrons were bundled up snuggly, and those that weren't were seeking out windbreaks. Somewhere to their left an elephant trumpeted, and the birdsong here was different, thanks to the aviaries close to the front entrance.

"Well, then, Harry, where would you like to start?" Jake asked as he stuffed his hands into his pockets for warmth.

Harry looked around as though out of his depth being tasked to decide. "I don't know, wherever you want to go is fine."

"Come now, you must have some preference. Do you have any favorite animals?"

Harry paused a beat. "I like lions."

"Ah, yes, king of beasts and all that. Very manly. I'm partial to the monkeys myself."

Harry cracked a smile. Jake was happy to see the kid loosen up a bit. It would make the day go much more smoothly. Miranda had suggested that this day, his time alone with Harry, might be well-spent getting to know the boy better. Jake didn't think he was on bad terms with Harry, but he couldn't deny that Miranda was much closer to the boy than he was. He tended to trust Miranda's judgment on a great many things, and if she thought Harry was a decent fellow he was apt to go with that. After he and Harry had cleared up the whole issue about Hermione, that issue being that Harry had best not hurt her or there'd be hell to pay, Jake was fine with his standing with the young wizard. But Miranda wanted them to be better acquainted. She suggested it would mean the world to Hermione. For that, Jake would give it his best.

"Well, we should have plenty of time to see both the lions and the monkeys before lunch, so no worries there. Let's go." Jake started them in the direction of the lion exhibit, as he was quite familiar with the layout of the London Zoo. Harry fell in step beside him with Kimmy quick on the boy's heels.

"So, have you ever been to the zoo before, Harry?"

"Once… with my aunt, uncle, and cousin."

"Did you have a good time?"

Harry began to smile. "Better than my cousin did."

"Oh, well doesn't that just reek of mischief. What did you do, throw his jacket in the panda cage?"

Harry laughed. "No." He looked up suspiciously at Jake. "What would make you suggest that?"

"I might have been a bit of a prankster in my youth. Not to implicate myself in such a dastardly deed, mind you, but I can tell you that jackets fly better wrapped around a stone. Though the pandas like them less that way."

Harry chuckled.

"So, what happened to your cousin to ruin his day at the zoo?"

"Well, we were in the reptile house when I was eleven and… uh, did Missus Granger tell you about my… snake thing?"

"That you can talk to them? She mentioned it."

Harry nodded. "It was right before I got my letter from Hogwarts, we were at the zoo for Dudley's birthday. They didn't want to take me, they never took me anywhere, but no one would watch me so they were stuck with me for the day. I didn't know anything about my abilities then; I didn't even know I was a wizard.

"Dudley and I were in the reptile house and he was heckling this python. When Dudley walked off I was just standing there talking to the snake and he…talked back."

"If you didn't know you could do that, it must have been kind of scary to have a snake start chatting with you."

"Yeah, well… not half so scary as my uncle's temper later. He wasn't very happy about what happened to Dudley."

"Then get on with it, what happened to this cousin of yours?" Jake asked curiously, for now willing to side-step the atrocious uncle aspect of the story.

"When the snake woke up to talk to me, Dudley ran over to look and knocked me down. I got mad and the glass on the snake's cage just… disappeared. Dudley fell in with the snake and about had a fit."

Jake chuckled.

Harry chuckled as well at the memory. "The snake got out and the glass reappeared, trapping Dudley inside the exhibit."