HP -- Christmas Spirit III: Let It Snow
Title: Christmas Spirit
Chapter: 3. Let It Snow
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,442
Warnings: holiday fun! ...and oddities
Summary: All of the tables in the library are full... except one. An impudent little seasonal Dramione.
Author's Note: We don't get snow where I live. Which may be why it seems so magical to me.
Chapter III:
Let It Snow
The next day, it snowed. Tiny flakes pulled themselves free of the clouds and spiraled towards the Earth, raining down like divine dandruff.
Draco watched the swirling and the rushing and the wonder through the wide library window. Just about everyone was out there, playing in the snow, reveling in it, their eyes wide, their laughter overflowing, as if it was the first time again.
And he was here, crammed between the dusty shelves, planted in an uncomfortable chair, to study Charms.
Then he remembered that someone severely lacking in Christmas spirit wouldn’t want to go frolic in the snow anyway, and he pushed all thoughts of frolicking from his mind.
Granger arrived, precisely on time, and sat down across from him. A glance confirmed that, yes, the oddity strung around her neck was a length of green ribbon punctuated with tiny colored light-bulbs that she had somehow enchanted to blink off and on in different patterns.
Draco was beginning to think that he was the only person in the universe who thought Christmas was a load of tripe compounded with lameness, stupidity, and saccharine messages about peace, love, and other such things that the world would never realize in any meaningful way.
“Hi,” Granger said.
“Afternoon,” Draco responded, neutrally enough, the window drawing his eyes again.
“Draco,” Granger said. “Are we friends?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “We are still on a last-name basis, Granger.”
Infuriatingly-and what a tremendous shock that was-Granger merely smiled. “Well, boys call each other by their last names all the time.”
“You are not a boy,” Draco reminded her.
“You called Pansy ‘Parkinson’ yesterday,” she replied calmly.
“Parkinson,” he noted, “currently holds the number one position on my list of people to messily dismember, and as such, had been demoted to boy status until further notice.” He did not mention that his list included just about everyone at Hogwarts if you went down far enough. Granger was probably hovering somewhere around number fifty today.
“So you’re admitting that girls are superior to boys,” Granger observed.
Forty-nine.
Draco opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “No,” he said.
“Well, that isn’t very logical, Mister Malfoy,” she told him lightly.
Forty-eight, forty-seven, forty-six.
He frowned. “Can we just do some Charms?” he asked pointedly.
Now, Draco hated Charms. In fact, he hated Charms with the blazing power of a thousand flaming suns. But he hated losing to Granger even more. It was a lesser-of-two-great-and-overpowering-evils kind of thing.
Her smile was, once again, far too knowing for his liking, but there wasn’t much to be done about that, so he mostly just tried to concentrate on the letters on the page instead of the crinkles at the corners of her eyes.
It wasn’t long before she was correcting him again. He wished she could just stoop to be wrong about something for once in her life, but it wasn’t looking likely. He wasn’t sure if Hermione Granger was capable of being wrong. She might spontaneously combust if she were to realize she’d made an error. The very thought of how awful all that wild hair would smell succumbing to the flames made Draco’s stomach perform an elaborate acrobatics routine that concluded with a standing backflip.
Before he knew it, Granger, like a striking snake, had moved around the table, the better to scrutinize his lackadaisical wand-flicking. “You’re supposed to be making a U shape,” she informed him.
“This is a U shape,” Draco retorted automatically.
Granger considered, an eyebrow rising. “Your handwriting,” she said, “must be nigh on illegible.”
He graced that morsel of sparkling wit with a sardonic look. Before he had time to do much else, she had snatched his hand in hers-guiding him like she was teaching him to write after all.
“Like that,” she explained unnecessarily, her eyes bright and clear as they followed the movement of his wand. She paused, and then, as abruptly as she had caught it, released his hand, freeing it to swim unfettered through the air once more. “Understood?” she prompted, looking almost a little bewildered.
Draco felt one of his own eyebrows creeping up his forehead. (This was a good thing. He rather doubted he would have enjoyed an invasion from one of someone else’s.) “Quite,” he answered.
Granger returned to her seat, toying with her absurd necklace. “Try it, then,” she suggested.
He did, and it worked. Perhaps there was something to this whole U-shaped theory of hers after all.
Not that a comfortable stint in the iron maiden could have gotten a confession of that out of him. Thumbscrews would also have been woefully inadequate, as would have the rack.
Draco was very good about things like that.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Oh!” Granger cried. There was a flurry of movement as she jammed books in her bag and swept her hair out of her eyes. An ink bottle tipped; Granger reached for it and only knocked it over. “Damn it-”
“Tergeo,” Draco supplied, flicking his wrist lazily. The ink collected, coalesced, and poured obediently back into the glass container, refilling it. He then plucked the rubber stopper from the table and stuffed it in the top.
Granger smiled ruefully and blew out a breath that made her bangs dance. “Thanks,” she said, jamming the offending ink bottle in her bag as well. “I’ve got to go meet Harry and Ron for dinner-what do you say, nine-thirty tomorrow?”
Eeeeaaaarrrllllyyyyyy, Draco’s brain groaned. But he couldn’t tell Granger a thing like that. A Malfoy was supposed to be primed, ready, and on his guard at all hours of the day, including the ones that were cruel enough to take place in the morning. He shrugged his acquiescence. He would just will himself to get up on time.
Granger beamed. “Great,” she decided. She waved cheerily, and then she went skipping out, her hair bouncing around her shoulders again, her overfilled bag straining on the verge of explosion, little light-bulb necklace twinkling merrily.
Draco tried to study a little more, but his eyes wandered from the dark spots on the page to the white ones still floating downward from the clouds. What glimpses of sky he could see were darkening, and most of the erstwhile revelers were retreating inside again, having sufficiently defiled the snow with their cavernous footsteps and their scraped-up snowballs and their malformed snow angels.
His things almost leapt into his bag, and it seemed mere moments later that he was there in it, the brilliance of the snowfall fading with the light, the most persistent of the crystals winking faintly as dusk drew its curtains slowly closed. He raised his face to the sky, and tiny flakes dropped cold kisses on his cheeks, his nose, and his forehead, only to melt and run like tears.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The next morning, when Draco managed to rouse himself and glance at the clock, he discovered that there existed approximately six last, lingering minutes before the time he’d arranged to meet with Granger. After exercising some of the choice four-letter words in his expansive vocabulary, he scrambled out of bed, became tangled in his sheets, fell on his face, fought his way to his feet, threw on the first clothes he encountered, grabbed his bag, and blundered his way down the stairs still tugging his vest on.
Only when he was draped over a chair in the library, a full minute early and panting hard, did he discover the metal pin attached to his lapel: a tiny bright green wreath bedecked with a ruby-red bow.
“What the-”
He attempted to remove it, and it bit him.
“OW!”
Naturally, Hermione Granger, her hair brushed and shining, her clothing neat, her bag slung casually over one shoulder, chose that moment to arrive. Amusement lit up her face.
“Endorsing a little bit of Christmas spirit after all?” she inquired pleasantly.
“Parkinson,” Draco gritted out, “is much too tall. Accordingly, as soon as I find a sufficiently sharp object, I will be abbreviating her at the neck.”
Granger smiled. “I think,” she said, “that you probably secretly love Christmas.”
“I think,” Draco shot back, “that you certainly and very obviously are wrong.”
The smile continued to dart around her face as she opened the cover of her book and pretended to focus on it. “I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
“By which you mean,” Draco corrected, “that you’ll have to agree to concede your error.”
Her smile only widened a bit more.
Draco was about eighty percent sure that he was going to be stark, raving mad by Christmas.
[Chapter II] [Chapter IV]
Chapter: 3. Let It Snow
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,442
Warnings: holiday fun! ...and oddities
Summary: All of the tables in the library are full... except one. An impudent little seasonal Dramione.
Author's Note: We don't get snow where I live. Which may be why it seems so magical to me.
Chapter III:
Let It Snow
The next day, it snowed. Tiny flakes pulled themselves free of the clouds and spiraled towards the Earth, raining down like divine dandruff.
Draco watched the swirling and the rushing and the wonder through the wide library window. Just about everyone was out there, playing in the snow, reveling in it, their eyes wide, their laughter overflowing, as if it was the first time again.
And he was here, crammed between the dusty shelves, planted in an uncomfortable chair, to study Charms.
Then he remembered that someone severely lacking in Christmas spirit wouldn’t want to go frolic in the snow anyway, and he pushed all thoughts of frolicking from his mind.
Granger arrived, precisely on time, and sat down across from him. A glance confirmed that, yes, the oddity strung around her neck was a length of green ribbon punctuated with tiny colored light-bulbs that she had somehow enchanted to blink off and on in different patterns.
Draco was beginning to think that he was the only person in the universe who thought Christmas was a load of tripe compounded with lameness, stupidity, and saccharine messages about peace, love, and other such things that the world would never realize in any meaningful way.
“Hi,” Granger said.
“Afternoon,” Draco responded, neutrally enough, the window drawing his eyes again.
“Draco,” Granger said. “Are we friends?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “We are still on a last-name basis, Granger.”
Infuriatingly-and what a tremendous shock that was-Granger merely smiled. “Well, boys call each other by their last names all the time.”
“You are not a boy,” Draco reminded her.
“You called Pansy ‘Parkinson’ yesterday,” she replied calmly.
“Parkinson,” he noted, “currently holds the number one position on my list of people to messily dismember, and as such, had been demoted to boy status until further notice.” He did not mention that his list included just about everyone at Hogwarts if you went down far enough. Granger was probably hovering somewhere around number fifty today.
“So you’re admitting that girls are superior to boys,” Granger observed.
Forty-nine.
Draco opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “No,” he said.
“Well, that isn’t very logical, Mister Malfoy,” she told him lightly.
Forty-eight, forty-seven, forty-six.
He frowned. “Can we just do some Charms?” he asked pointedly.
Now, Draco hated Charms. In fact, he hated Charms with the blazing power of a thousand flaming suns. But he hated losing to Granger even more. It was a lesser-of-two-great-and-overpowering-evils kind of thing.
Her smile was, once again, far too knowing for his liking, but there wasn’t much to be done about that, so he mostly just tried to concentrate on the letters on the page instead of the crinkles at the corners of her eyes.
It wasn’t long before she was correcting him again. He wished she could just stoop to be wrong about something for once in her life, but it wasn’t looking likely. He wasn’t sure if Hermione Granger was capable of being wrong. She might spontaneously combust if she were to realize she’d made an error. The very thought of how awful all that wild hair would smell succumbing to the flames made Draco’s stomach perform an elaborate acrobatics routine that concluded with a standing backflip.
Before he knew it, Granger, like a striking snake, had moved around the table, the better to scrutinize his lackadaisical wand-flicking. “You’re supposed to be making a U shape,” she informed him.
“This is a U shape,” Draco retorted automatically.
Granger considered, an eyebrow rising. “Your handwriting,” she said, “must be nigh on illegible.”
He graced that morsel of sparkling wit with a sardonic look. Before he had time to do much else, she had snatched his hand in hers-guiding him like she was teaching him to write after all.
“Like that,” she explained unnecessarily, her eyes bright and clear as they followed the movement of his wand. She paused, and then, as abruptly as she had caught it, released his hand, freeing it to swim unfettered through the air once more. “Understood?” she prompted, looking almost a little bewildered.
Draco felt one of his own eyebrows creeping up his forehead. (This was a good thing. He rather doubted he would have enjoyed an invasion from one of someone else’s.) “Quite,” he answered.
Granger returned to her seat, toying with her absurd necklace. “Try it, then,” she suggested.
He did, and it worked. Perhaps there was something to this whole U-shaped theory of hers after all.
Not that a comfortable stint in the iron maiden could have gotten a confession of that out of him. Thumbscrews would also have been woefully inadequate, as would have the rack.
Draco was very good about things like that.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Oh!” Granger cried. There was a flurry of movement as she jammed books in her bag and swept her hair out of her eyes. An ink bottle tipped; Granger reached for it and only knocked it over. “Damn it-”
“Tergeo,” Draco supplied, flicking his wrist lazily. The ink collected, coalesced, and poured obediently back into the glass container, refilling it. He then plucked the rubber stopper from the table and stuffed it in the top.
Granger smiled ruefully and blew out a breath that made her bangs dance. “Thanks,” she said, jamming the offending ink bottle in her bag as well. “I’ve got to go meet Harry and Ron for dinner-what do you say, nine-thirty tomorrow?”
Eeeeaaaarrrllllyyyyyy, Draco’s brain groaned. But he couldn’t tell Granger a thing like that. A Malfoy was supposed to be primed, ready, and on his guard at all hours of the day, including the ones that were cruel enough to take place in the morning. He shrugged his acquiescence. He would just will himself to get up on time.
Granger beamed. “Great,” she decided. She waved cheerily, and then she went skipping out, her hair bouncing around her shoulders again, her overfilled bag straining on the verge of explosion, little light-bulb necklace twinkling merrily.
Draco tried to study a little more, but his eyes wandered from the dark spots on the page to the white ones still floating downward from the clouds. What glimpses of sky he could see were darkening, and most of the erstwhile revelers were retreating inside again, having sufficiently defiled the snow with their cavernous footsteps and their scraped-up snowballs and their malformed snow angels.
His things almost leapt into his bag, and it seemed mere moments later that he was there in it, the brilliance of the snowfall fading with the light, the most persistent of the crystals winking faintly as dusk drew its curtains slowly closed. He raised his face to the sky, and tiny flakes dropped cold kisses on his cheeks, his nose, and his forehead, only to melt and run like tears.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The next morning, when Draco managed to rouse himself and glance at the clock, he discovered that there existed approximately six last, lingering minutes before the time he’d arranged to meet with Granger. After exercising some of the choice four-letter words in his expansive vocabulary, he scrambled out of bed, became tangled in his sheets, fell on his face, fought his way to his feet, threw on the first clothes he encountered, grabbed his bag, and blundered his way down the stairs still tugging his vest on.
Only when he was draped over a chair in the library, a full minute early and panting hard, did he discover the metal pin attached to his lapel: a tiny bright green wreath bedecked with a ruby-red bow.
“What the-”
He attempted to remove it, and it bit him.
“OW!”
Naturally, Hermione Granger, her hair brushed and shining, her clothing neat, her bag slung casually over one shoulder, chose that moment to arrive. Amusement lit up her face.
“Endorsing a little bit of Christmas spirit after all?” she inquired pleasantly.
“Parkinson,” Draco gritted out, “is much too tall. Accordingly, as soon as I find a sufficiently sharp object, I will be abbreviating her at the neck.”
Granger smiled. “I think,” she said, “that you probably secretly love Christmas.”
“I think,” Draco shot back, “that you certainly and very obviously are wrong.”
The smile continued to dart around her face as she opened the cover of her book and pretended to focus on it. “I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
“By which you mean,” Draco corrected, “that you’ll have to agree to concede your error.”
Her smile only widened a bit more.
Draco was about eighty percent sure that he was going to be stark, raving mad by Christmas.
[Chapter II] [Chapter IV]