The night was dark as pitch and cold as ice, with hail battering the walls and the winter wind rattling the windows as it blew in from the wave-crashed cliffs. Inside, however, it was warm, and the smell of frying oil was wafting through from the kitchen.

Artemis smiled as she turned her attention to the row of thin candles that had been placed on the windowsill, each of their little flickering flames reflecting on the dark glass behind. There were nine of them in total, one for each year of her age, all held by a candlestick with outstretched arms like the branches of a tree. She raised one forefinger and gently tapped the flames in turn, smiling as they bobbed away from her touch.

"Come away from there, Artemis."

At the sound of her great-aunt's voice, Artemis turned her back on the nine candles, but she did not move away from them.

"It's fine, Aunt Tina. They don't hurt," she said. "They're only teeny tiny fires."

"I know, but I don't want them getting put out accidentally," Tina replied. "It's the last night of Hanukkah, so it's important that they all stay lit tonight."

"Yeah, but if one goes out you can just set it on fire again."

"That's not really the point, honey."

Artemis' nose wrinkled. "Then what is the point?"

"Well, you know the story of Hanukkah, don't you?" When Artemis shook her head, Aunt Tina frowned. "I assumed Sally would have told you."

It had been a long time since Artemis' mother Sally had been in a mood to tell stories. Maybe once upon a time, before her dad had died and her brother ran away from home, Artemis might have sat on her mother's lap and been told the story of Hanukkah. If she had, she had since forgotten it.

Luckily for her, she still had Aunt Tina to tell her stories.

"A long time ago, there was a kingdom far away from here," Tina began. Artemis listened carefully. All her favourite stories took place in far-off lands. "And in this kingdom, the king decided that he did not like people following different gods to his. So, he ordered his soldiers to take over all of the temples and stop people from going in, and get rid of all the oil they used to light candles.

"Now, the people who followed one god, the one me and my family follow, they weren't happy about that at all. They fought back, and they managed to win back their temple. It was all in ruins, but they managed to piece it back together slowly. But, they didn't have enough oil for their lights; they only had enough for one night.

"So, the people lit their candle, thinking it would only last that one night, but their god knew all about their struggles, and to thank them for having faith in him against all odds, he granted them a miracle. That little bit of oil, which should only have burned for one night, burned for eight whole nights."

Aunt Tina smiled. Artemis did not.

"What, is that the end?" she asked, and her great-aunt nodded. "It's not a very exciting story."

"I think it's a very exciting story."

Old people had strange ideas about what was exciting. Artemis sighed heavily. "It's about oil, Aunt Tina."

"It's not about the oil," said Tina. "It's about the miracle."

Artemis was not as easily impressed as her great-aunt.

"It's not much of a miracle," she said. "Anyone can make a bit of oil last longer, you'd just need a spell or a potion. Or you could just make flames with magic, and you wouldn't even need the oil at all. I don't get why it is worth this big celebration every year."

"But these people weren't magical, honey. They were all Muggles."

"They can't have been. One of them must have been a witch or a wizard and lying about it. They were in disguise or something, I don't know."

It was at that moment that Artemis' great-uncle Newt, Aunt Tina's husband, came in. He settled himself on an armchair, around the back of which a Kneazle was sleeping. Artemis turned to him for support.

"You agree with me, don't you, Uncle Newt? That thing with the oil isn't a miracle, it's just magic."

Newt fixed Artemis with a peculiar expression. "Why can't it be both?"

"Well, because," Artemis said with a shrug, "miracles are miracles. Magic happens all the time."

"So do miracles." Uncle Newt was clearly wrong, and Artemis opened her mouth to tell him so, but he continued before she could speak, "Maybe not big miracles, but lots of little miracles. Last week, I visited an old friend and saw his phoenix burst into flames before my eyes and emerge reborn, young and new again."

"That's what phoenixes do, Uncle Newt."

"If you or I were to do that, or Milly here" — Newt raised one hand to scratch the chin of the Kneazle behind him — "that would be a miracle, don't you think?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Yesterday morning, you went down to the beach and you picked up a pebble and painted it for me. It's on my desk now. Until yesterday, it was just one pebble among thousands of others, and you happened to pick that exact one to paint. Years ago, that pebble would have been part of the cliff, and it's only because of the waves washing over it in different ways over the years that it's become a pebble at all, let alone one that was picked out and is now painted and special to me."

"I grew up all the way over the sea in America," Aunt Tina added. "And one day, your Uncle just happened to travel there, and on that day the two of us happened to be in the same place at the same time. If that hadn't happened, I might have met someone else and fallen in love with them. But I didn't, I fell in love with him." Her dark eyes sparkled as they met her husband's. "And, out of all the millions of people in the world, he fell in love with me, too. The same thing happened when your parents met, and now all three of us are here together. I think that's pretty darn miraculous."

It was all very nice, what they were saying, but Artemis wasn't sure that she really understood what they meant.

"But then, everything and everyone could be a miracle, if you go by what you're saying," she told them. It wasn't a joke, but they both chuckled. "What?"

"Well, that's what we are trying to tell you, honey. Everything can be a miracle, you just have to think it. To the people in the temple, the oil was a miracle. To some people, magic is a miracle. To us, you are a miracle."

"That's why we need to be kind to everyone and everything," said Uncle Newt. "Because this whole world and everything in it is just as miraculous as we are."

Aunt Tina placed one gentle hand on Artemis' dark-haired head. "Now, don't you think that is worth celebrating?"

"I guess so," Artemis replied, though she was still a little confused.

"Great. So, let's stop playing with the Menorah, and go and make some latkes."

Artemis followed Tina into the kitchen without hesitation. She might not have fully grasped the point of Hanukkah, but she did know that she liked latkes. And, seeing as her great-aunt and uncle considered her to be a miracle, she was sure that she could persuade them to give her at least one extra portion.