Penwick

"New tradition" is an interesting oxymoron. Can you really call it a "tradition" if it hasn't been repeated yet? Then again, there is something beautiful about the intentionality of deciding to repeat something for the sake of repeating it, for tradition, for the beauty of whatever you're trying to instate.

However, the student body felt about new traditions, Rhiannon was starting one.

The 6-meter-tall Christmas tree in the center of the entrance hall was not a new tradition; it had been a winter spectacle for Penwick Castle for as long as any of the faculty could remember. What was new, however, was that instead of appearing overnight adorned with hundreds of coordinating baubles, the tree was entirely without ornaments. Gold and silver garland wrapped around the tree, small enchanted tealight candles flickered without producing heat, and the picturesque gold star was placed atop the massive fir.

It created quite a buzz, rumors flying around about the possibility of someone having stolen the ornaments, or perhaps casting an invisibility charm on them as a prank. But at lunchtime, Headmistress Rhiannon set the record straight.

She clapped twice, the sound echoing throughout the dining hall and quieting the student body. "As you may have noticed," her voice calm, amplified by magic, "Our traditional Christmas tree in the entrance hall is missing ornaments. This is intentional, and no we have not lost them. Instead, this year we will be decorating the tree." Some students groaned, but Rhiannon didn't notice, a warm smile on her face. "If you'd like to participate, I invite you to owl home, asking for an ornament you hang up at home to lend to our tree. Or, perhaps you'd like to make or buy one instead, that will do just fine. I would love to see this tree fill with the styles and traditions of you and your families, and create something truly one-of-a-kind."

After lunch, the tree already began filling up with small parchment ornaments made in class, some baubles that had already been used for decorations in common rooms, and a few sentimental tokens that weren't exactly "ornaments", but had been used to trim the tree nonetheless.

Students lingered longer than usual in the entrance hall, pointing out their handiwork, comparing stories of the ornaments they'd brought or planned to bring. A few professors stopped as well, quietly adding their own pieces when they thought no one was watching.

The tree wasn't something you would see in a catalogue. It was not symmetrical. It was not coordinated. It was not curated.

It was better.

June Selwyn had not expected that the thing to make her feel at home this term would be a Christmas ornament.

Penwick's new holiday tradition would have been background chatter to June, normally. This year, though, she was wound tight. A new school, new social circles she still hadn't quite managed to break into (it really was first year all over again, wasn't it), and OWLs were all pressing on her like a weight she couldn’t quite shift. If one more professor asked her if she was revising, she might strike a wall. She was June bloody Selwyn. Of course she was revising. Didn't they read her transcript?

So this year, something inside of June actually wanted to participate, and not just participate, but... Do a craft. And she knew exactly what she was going to make.

Selwyn Manor sat on a stretch of land bordered by a small wood of walnut trees, old enough that their trunks twisted like knotted wands. The family of 3 used to wander through them in winter, usually for a walk after supper, snow crunching beneath their boots, pockets stuffed with the best fallen walnuts they could find. They'd usually end up roasted or on top of a Christmas pie, but once every year, when June had found the Best Walnut of the Season, she and her father would take it into her grandad's old workshop. Her father would lift her onto a stool beside the workshop table, sleeves rolled, tools set out as though this were serious, sacred work. Together they'd split the shell, carve a small mast, and fold a parchment sail from an old manuscript draft that always caught the candlelight just so.

“It stays afloat as long as you do,” he’d say to her, which meant absolutely nothing, and yet she’d believed him.

Obviously, the Selwyn trio had not gone on a winter walk to the walnut grove in quite some time, and neither June nor Phinehas seemed particularly keen on picking up the tradition again. Maybe June would ask her father to do it again this year.

She brought her supplies back to the Mercator common room that Saturday evening: a single walnut from the dining hall, a toothpick pilfered from the kitchens, a scrap of old parchment she’d been meaning to throw away. She arranged them neatly on one of the long oak tables, sat, and simply let the stillness settle.

She cracked the walnut with a butter knife she'd nicked from supper, the two halves cleanly falling apart onto the table, and trimmed a bit of parchment into an elongated square (the irony of making something sentimental out of academic refuse was not lost on her). She set the toothpick mast into a dab of wax, reinforced it with a charm, and then shaped the sail so it curved as though catching wind.

With wax and charm, she set the toothpick mast steady, pressing it softly into place. Her fingers remembered the motions without fumbling. For the first time in several weeks, the tension behind her eyes relaxed.

When the small ship was complete, it looked all but identical to the ones she had set adrift in bowls of water as a child: gold-tinted walnut shell, parchment sail curved as if it were catching a winter's breeze. It made her chest ache, but in a warm way, like stepping into a familiar room after too long.

That evening she took the ornament down to the Entrance Hall. A few clusters of students were crowded around the huge Christmas tree, some arguing about aesthetics, colour balance, and whether enchanted snow counted as an ornament. June slipped between them quietly.

She chose a branch neither too high nor too low, touched by the golden glow of the floating candles. Carefully, she hung the ship there. It rocked once, twice, and stilled itself, as if it had found harbour.

June stepped back and simply watched for a moment.

A warmth spread through her chest, slow and certain. A little piece of home, her home, not the manor, but the feeling of being where you know you belong, now nestled among the branches of a school that was slowly, tentatively, becoming home too.