A Christmas party on the brink
A story by Angelina and Wolfgang Mittelmaier
An Important Question
– Papa, what is loyalty?
Markus took a deep breath. Lately, his ten-year-old daughter had developed a habit of asking ever bigger questions.
– Loyalty is when you keep supporting your friends and are honest and trusting even when it gets difficult.
– Ah, then I have lots.
She seemed satisfied.
Well, he thought, I guess that sounds promising. However, the problem was that people made big promises much too easily, at any age.
– Listen, sweetie, I feel I need to explain this a bit more: Loyalty is something your friends should have to you, but then, when things get really tricky, not all of them will show you true loyalty.
– But, papa, I don’t believe that. That’s horrible.
– Yes, it kind of is. That is why you always need to make sure you have several friends you can rely on. Then, when one or two let you down, it still hurts, but you know you can rely on the others.
Angelina’s eyes suddenly seemed twice as big:
– What if all your friends let you down?
– Sweetie, if you choose your friends carefully, that will never happen.
A reassurance with a big disclaimer, he knew that. But you cannot make important things like this a lie. It was true. If you chose your friends badly, it could happen to you that all of them would let you down, when you needed them. Angelina would have to learn to choose her friends carefully.
Without loyal friends, the world could be a scary and very lonely place.
– So, papa, at school, we have a loyalty stone.
Markus had heard about the loyalty stone at St. Emily’s. He had never actually seen it. It was locked away in the school safe all year and only was taken out once a year for the school’s Christmas party. St. Emily’s was big on loyalty. Well, at least in name. After all, it was one of these big words that only get meaning through the people who live it. Or don’t, for that matter.
Markus had once taught Shakespeare’s sonnets at St.Emily’s for a term. By the time Christmas came around, he was already teaching abroad again.
– So, tell me more about the loyalty stone, Angelina..
– Well, it is a magical green diamond, as big as an egg, and we get to see it at the Christmas school party..
– What does it do?
– Well, Miss Parker says it needs to be restarted every Christmas or all loyalty will disappear from the earth.
That sounded a bit extreme. Some things were not what they seemed, and often much more complex than they seemed, but if such a thing actually existed, surely the magical world would not entrust it to the care of a simple primary school, even a sophisticated and time-honoured one like St.Emily’s.
– So, how does it get restarted?
– They did not tell us, but I am allowed to be part of the ceremony, they only selected one girl in each class.
– That is amazing, well done, Angelina!
Angelina was very proud. She had been hard-working all year, and had made an extra effort to be kind and helpful. She had also really been careful to always choose being assertive over being aggressive. Miss Parker had explained the difference many times in assembly. Angelina had been given the school assertiveness award twice that year. She had never received it before. She was very proud. It made her look forward to the Christmas party even more.
A busy morning
London was alight with Christmas decorations. There were trees and Christmas lights everywhere. Angelina was early. Her mum was abroad for a week, so her dad brought her to school. It was a longer trip, but she did not mind, as she was allowed to read on the train.
They got off at St. Pancras station. There was nothing actually magical about St.Pancras, but it certainly looked as if there should be. But then all really magical things were actually invisible to non-magical people. Like St. Emily’s, Angelina’s school.
Getting the Franciscan Gold Coffee Powder
Angelina was out of breath. She had been running for what seemed an eternity, even though it could only have been about 10 minutes.
The music teacher had tasked her with getting Franciscan Gold Coffee Powder from Nehren’s, the coffee shop in Covent Garden. They had been expecting her, she did not even have to pay for it.
She stopped dead in her tracks, narrowly avoiding a bus on New Oxford Street.
She had no time to waste. The success of the Christmas party depended on it. How could they have run out of the powder? Something must have happened. It was not for her to worry about.
She had it in her hand, the little bag with the flowery logo.
– Run, Angelina, run, but be careful,
Miss Somminger had said to her.
Miss Somminger was half-German, just like Angelina. She taught music at St.Emily’s, the School for Wizarding and Advanced Shakespeare Studies, a primary school hidden away in a section of the British Museum which was only visible to the staff of St.Emily’s, the students and their parents.
Now, she was running up Bury Place. She was not far.
– Soooooo sorry, Sir!
She had bumped into a penguin who had just stepped out of the London Review Bookshop. She had no time to check whether it was one of her teachers. There were a number of penguins teaching at St.Emily’s, most wizarding schools had quite a few.
There we go! She crossed Great Russell Street, the majestic building of the British Museum right in front of her. She quickly ran along the iron fence, turned into Montague Street and reached the back entrance of St.Emily’s, the bag with the powder in one hand, the wand in the other.
You were not meant to draw your wand in public, other than in emergencies, but Miss Somminger had been very, very clear that this was a school emergency.
– Sesam, öffne Dich!
She had been the first in her class to master the key spell for the entrance door. No wonder. It was German, and so was she. Half-German.
A section of the fence disappeared to make way for her.
– Oiiii, young lady, wheeeere are youuuu going so quickly?!
Great. A drunk penguin was the last thing she needed. She stared at him. He blocked the corridor. She really, really did not have time for this.
– Ahem. I am on important headmistress’ business, she said, her voice trembling slightly.
– Headmistress-schnisstress, fiddlesticks! Whaaaat’s the hurry?
This was not going to work. She knew she could get expelled for putting a spell on anyone within the school grounds, but certainly putting a spell on a penguin was potentially much, much worse. But it was no good:
– Arrêtez, pinguin!
God knows why she thought of a French spell, but it worked instantly. Naturally, the penguin had frozen in the very spot where he had been standing, so she very uncomfortably had to squeeze past him, lifting one of his wings. He stank of whiskey.
She ran down the corridor, ran through the morning room, through the music room, through the assembly, until she reached the narrow, winding staircase leading down to the kitchen.
Somehow, her feet did not betray her, when she took two steps at a time – she had injured herself badly before, doing exactly that. As she ran down the stairs, the whole world started to spin.
– Noooooooo!!
It could not be true, she could not be too late, she ran and ran, but it seemed that the world spun against her, everything slowed down. Finally, she saw the round desk with the egg-shaped clear, green diamond on the purple cloth, and the headmistress with all the teachers and all the pupils gathered around it.
They were not looking at her. They were looking at the loyalty stone. They all seemed to have frozen in time.
The stone had started to lose its lustre rapidly, right before her eyes. There were only moments left.
Angelina dropped her wand. It did not fall, it just stayed where she left it, as if the air had turned into jelly. She lurched towards the stone stretching her hand out that held the bag with the Franciscan Gold Coffee Powder.
The first bit of powder dust fell towards the Loyalty Stone.
But.
It.
Was.
Too.
Late.
Angelina was suspended in mid-air.
Like everyone else she had stopped moving, she had stopped breathing, her eyes were wide open in panic and fear. Like everyone else she was like waxwork, lifelike, but lifeless.
The earth still moved, but every living soul stood still.
Loyalty was extinguished.
The powder had been too late. Angelina had been too late.
It was over.
No living being on planet Earth had escaped the terrible spell.
Only inanimate objects were still moving. The Earth still spun around the sun, the oceans’ waves were alive and well, but all the creatures in and above them had been frozen in time.
Suddenly, a small ray of light seemed to build up inside the loyalty stone. An inanimate breeze, a mere result of the Earth’s rotation, the movements of the atmosphere, had moved the little bag in Angelina’s hand ever so slightly, so that a tiny, tiny amount of powder had started running out and started streaming onto the stone.
Maybe, it was indeed God’s hand that moved the air, but what was clear, even though no soul was conscious to witness it, that little bag was about to bring life and hope back into the world with the help of nothing more than a slight gust of wind in an otherwise thoroughly hopeless and empty world.
– Angelina, pass me the coffee powder, please.
The young girl walked over to the potions cupboard, took out a small brown bag with a violet embroidered on it and handed it to her music teacher.
– It is essential that we put a little bit of powder on the stone before we start the Christmas party. You see, Angelina, loyalty is everything, without it, friendship, love, all that makes us human, is worth nothing.
Angelina looked at the kind face of her music teacher. She was a wise woman and Angelina had learnt a lot from her. She thought that maybe it was a bit exaggerated to make such a fuss about a bit of powder on a green diamond, but hey, adults came up with all kinds of weird stuff, especially in the wizarding world, so she was not going to start asking awkward questions.
She was excited about the Christmas party that was to start in a few minutes. She had a number of wonderful friends, some of them nicer and more fun than others, but had you asked her whether they were loyal, then, why, surely they were. All of them. Surely.
Upstairs, in one of St. Emily’s corridors, there was a penguin slumped on the floor, snoring, sleeping off his overindulgence. Tomorrow, he would tell everyone about a hectic pupil running into the school mere minutes before the start of the Christmas party, her wand drawn, a small bag in her other hand, stunning him. And nobody would believe him.