Finder's Keeper || Oliver Wood [1]

Chapter 8: Presents

Christmas Day arrived and Jessica was more than glad that she was back home for it. Her family wasn't perfect, but she loved them and Christmas was certainly the best time of the year to spend with them.

On the morning of December 25th, Jessica was frosting a new batch of the sugar cookies her parents were encouraging her to bake the day they picked her up from King's Cross Station. Her relatives from her mother's side, all of who were muggles, got a taste of the first batch of cookies the day before when Jessica visited the home of Katherine's parents where the rest of her relatives were gathered. She didn't expect so many of them to be there that year, so she had underestimated how much she needed to bake.

"The Yu's sent another fruit cake," Jessica heard her mother sigh when she passed by the kitchen.

"You who?"

"The Yu's, Ian. My second cousins."

"Ah," Ian nodded his head. "Sorry, the only Chinese surname I can really remember is yours."

"Yu isn't that hard compared to Huang," Jessica pointed out to her father. He was telling the truth, though: he could only remember Katherine's maiden name but didn't bother to remember the names of his wife's more distant relatives, including the Yu's who always just sent fruit cakes to them every year. And, to be frank, none of the members of the Hawthorne family even liked those cakes.

"Don't be racist," Katherine said jokingly.

"I'm not," her husband defended. "There are too many last names in your family with two to three letters in them! That actually makes it harder to memorize them all."

"Don't forget that my family has a mix of Korean in there, too."

"My point, exactly! Too many similar surnames."

"Maybe you should make more of an effort to learn them instead of complaining, dad," Jessica suggested with an amused smile. Katherine, pleased with her daughter's words, jumped off from that to try to win the building debate between her and her husband.

Eventually, Jessica quieted down and let her parents continue their bickering about the family's Asian heritage as she finished up the last few cookies. Bucky, their 2 year old beagle, sat by her feet the entire time, clearly expecting to be given a piece of whatever she was making. He would sit by her side and look up at her with his wide, round eyes, his tail wagging just a bit to show his interest in what she was doing — or, more realistically, what food she was making.

"Not today, Bucky. Sorry," she patted him on the head when she had finished. Of course, he didn't understand a word she had said and continued to excitedly wag his tail as she washed her hands and set the finished cookies aside.

Jessica's grandparents and aunt and uncle from her father's side arrived a few hours later. As a whole, her family and relatives consisted of muggles. Whereas her muggle-born mother had many siblings who were all non-magical folk, her father had one brother whose son happened to be a wizard. Thus, Jessica's family consisted of only a few witches and wizards, all of them being muggle-born: her parents, herself, and her rising-to-fame first cousin Charles Hawthorne from Puddlemere United.

After the Hawthorne clan had their lunch which composed of mostly the grandparents asking what their grandchildren were up to nowadays (which took quite long considering the fact that they were muggles and needed an explanation for every detail to do with the magical world), they settled in the living room while Jessica and Charles chose to stay in the kitchen for a while with Bucky.

"So, did you get those gloves you asked me about?" Charles asked, grabbing a sugar cookie from the tray.

The day Jessica arrived back home, she had sent a letter to Charles asking what were the best pair of Quidditch gloves to get for a Keeper. She was thankful he was on break from training because he had responded within a short amount of time. Of course, she also asked him how he was doing and that they should binge eat the cookies she baked while watching Christmas movies when he came over like they usually did every year.