Title: Cakes and Turnips Characters: Argus Filch Rating: Gen (U). Warnings: Strange English Customs Summary: Young Argus Filch discovers new friends and makes a new tradition. Notes: Thanks to my Yorkshire beta for telling me all about Soul Cake day (and chanting the whole song at length).
"A soul! a soul! a soul-cake! Please good Missis, a soul-cake!"
The chant echoed down the street. Argus, a newly arrived evacuee still trying to decipher the long vowels of the local dialect, pressed his nose against the window to watch the gaggle of muggle children dancing along the cobbles.
Mrs McCandy turned from her negotiations with the greengrocer. "Would you like to join them?"
Argus gaped at her. At home wizard children, even squibs, were not allowed to consort with muggles, especially at Halloween, which wizards had not celebrated for three hundred years. But he was learning that things were different here in Yorkshire.
"May I?"
"Go on," smiled the greengrocer. "Take a few of them turnips by the door. They’ll be wanting to make lanterns for Soul-Cake Day."
Soul Cake Day, Argus learned as he sat with his new friends carving the hard turnip flesh into ghoulish skull shapes, was more fun than Halloween. He decided that when the war was over he would always have his own little Soul Cake Day celebration.
And that is why, on All Hallows Eve, there is always a single turnip lantern burning outside the door of the caretaker’s room at Hogwarts.