HP -- Christmas Spirit II: Deck the Halls
Title: Christmas Spirit
Chapter: 2. Deck the Halls
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,520
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: YAY.
Chapter II:
Deck the Halls
Cold fea-a vague, trifling sort of anxiety climbed Draco’s ribcage, its silver fingers cutting his chest, as he saw that the library was, once again, packed full of people. And not just any people-Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. (A little voice in the back of his head reminded him that this trend was not too surprising given that they, too, attended this school, but he ignored it.) They weren’t just any scum of the Earth, however: they were jolly scum of the Earth. They were cheery and hearty and happy and disgusting, and they were all positively dripping with Christmas spirit.
Draco clung tighter to his book-bag and tried not to gag. He couldn’t possibly sit with those people-what if it was contagious?
He was gnawing on his lip as he progressed all the way to the far end of the library. Surely there was one table that was occupied by neither Christmas freaks nor the slightly more mundane, big-toothed, bushy-haired kind of freak-the usual specimen of which once again hadn’t even bothered to notice him? Surely…?
And then there was. Draco darted over to it, cackling inwardly, and was about to sling his bag onto it triumphantly when he saw that its surface was coated in… gunk.
This was not the kind of gunk one could wipe nonchalantly away with a sleeve or a silver-and-green-monogrammed handkerchief or a paper napkin; oh, no. This was Grade A Gunk. It looked like Hagrid had sneezed on the tabletop, or like someone had vomited figgy pudding all over it. Draco didn’t know exactly what figgy pudding was, but he imagined it looked a hell of a lot like this gunk, black and thick and largely coagulated, with big clumps of something.
Now Draco faced a bit of a dilemma: Which did he hate more-gunk, or Granger?
Seething, Draco pulled out the chair across from Granger’s and sat down in it. She deigned to glance at him once before returning her attention to her textbook. She said nothing.
The whole ignoring-him-instead-of-getting-riled-up thing was becoming extremely obnoxious.
Draco had slogged through a whole chapter of Charms reading before a table not far away burst out in merry laughter. Draco would have given his left kidney to have Crabbe’s Beater bat in hand, but as it was, he could do nothing but frown sourly at them.
That, and pull out a sheet of paper and begin listing what he would like to dole out for the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Eight nooses hanging,
Seven muskets firing,
Six swords a-swinging,
Five headstones,
Four Bowie knives,
Three big sticks,
Two Beater bats,
And a Dungbomb in the Great Hall.
He wasn’t sure where the machetes should come in, and he was having trouble getting “jugular veins a-severed” to scan.
“Not big on Christmas spirit?” Granger asked.
Draco looked up. There was a hint of a smirk in her smile.
“The only thing I would like to deck the halls with,” he informed her curtly, “is Parkinson’s entrails.”
She laughed, and it sounded like Christmas should-like sleigh bells jingling in the snow, harmonizing with horses’ hooves clattering over the snowy cobblestones; like church bells tolling through the brittle air of a chilly morning, the cold thawed by the warmth of quiet joy within. Like the whisper of ribbon over wrapping paper and the soft, gleeful breath exhaled by someone you loved when they opened the perfect gift.
Draco realized what he was thinking and forcefully reminded himself that he was, and would ever be, a Bah, humbug kind of person.
Granger regarded the top of his head now, her eyebrows wandering upward over the expanses of her forehead again. “What happened to your hair?” she inquired.
Suddenly, with the approximate force of a freight train crashing into his brain, it hit Draco that he hadn’t fixed his hair after his battle with Pansy’s carol demon. Tentatively, he lifted a trembling hand to assess the extent of the damage and, heart plummeting like a Dungbomb in the Great Hall, found that it was worse even than he’d predicted. His hair was everywhere.
Less than an hour after the first one, he was facing another wretched predicament, this one based on the overarching Malfoy tenet of pride: was it more degrading to be seen with his hair in disarray, or to seek aid from a Mudblood?
“Do you have a comb?” he asked, sighing a little.
She rummaged in her bag and then handed him one of the plain black variety-which struck Draco as odd, given that she never seemed to use such a device. Perhaps she simply didn’t know how it worked, and after seeing him demonstrate, she would achieve a sort of coif-oriented enlightenment.
He wondered if his cynicism was coming true on him again when she frowned watching him fix his hair.
“What?” he prompted.
“Nothing,” she answered.
Why was it that when girls said “Nothing,” they always meant “Everything”?
He paused, comb-wielding arm poised, probably looking extraordinarily dashing. “What?” he repeated.
Granger became very interested in the shelf behind him. “Well, I don’t know.” Clearly, she did, or she wouldn’t have said anything. And she wouldn’t be opening her mouth to say a little more anything. “Just that… it looked nice that way.”
Draco stared at her.
She saw him staring, and although a little bit of a blush bloomed pink in her cheeks, she met his eyes. “It looked more natural. More human, almost.”
Draco continued to stare at her.
The blush deepened. It was her turn to ask the immortal one-word question. You had to be equitable about these things. “What?” she managed.
“Nothing,” he said. Two could play at that say-the-opposite-of-what-you-meant game girls loved so much. “Just that I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be, you know, brave.”
An eyebrow flicked up. She knew where this was going.
Well, of course she did; she was Granger. Granger knew everything.
“As opposed to?” she permitted.
“Crazy,” he concluded.
Her smile was patronizing. “Ha,” she yielded.
“‘Ha’ yourself,” Draco muttered. He pushed the comb, and it skidded over the table to her. No way he was handing that thing back to her, putting him at risk of one of those insufferably awkward accidental-fingers-touching moments. Nauseated by the very abstract thought, he returned to his reading.
But not for long.
“What are you working on?” Granger inquired.
Draco wasn’t sure whether she was compelled by the Gryffindor mandate of sticking one’s nose into absolutely everything, or by her own compulsive desire to know all that there was to know about everyone there was to know of. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, though he also wasn’t sure which explanation that ‘benefit’ applied to.
“Charms,” he answered. He had intended to leave it at that, but he heard himself adding details. “All that, you know, swish-y, flick-y crap-I always get lost somewhere between the instruction and the execution.”
Granger tilted her head to the right a little. “It’s not hard,” she said slowly.
He felt his anger mounting, the fragments coalescing like a gathering storm. “Not all of us,” he snapped, “know everything before the teacher even says it, Granger.”
“Not all of us,” she shot back, her eyes flashing, “are too stubborn to ask for help when we need it, Malfoy.”
“No help at all is better than Mudblood help, Granger.”
“Coming down off your high horse is better than failing your classes, Malfoy.”
“You’ve never failed a class in your life.”
“Neither have you.”
“Exactly why I don’t need your help.”
“You’re just too full of yourself to ask.”
“Am I?” Draco had shoved his chair back and was on his feet now, the better to look down at Granger imperiously. He had to conserve his status one way or another. “Am I really?”
“Yes,” Granger replied equably. “You are.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Draco noticed that people were giving them weird looks. Again with the dilemmas-better to be a sideshow for bored kids in the library, or to let Granger think she’d won?
Wearily, he sat down. “So help me, then,” he grumbled.
Granger smiled.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“What you need,” Granger was saying as they exited the library, “is a Cheering Charm.”
“Har, har,” Draco responded.
“No, really. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh. Not genuinely, anyway.”
He glanced at her. She was watching him, eyebrows in action as always, her ridiculous hair bouncing along behind her, an absolutely ludicrous quantity of books in her arms.
“Not much to laugh about,” he noted. A gentleman would have offered to carry her books in an instant, but Draco Malfoy was not a gentleman.
He was a nobleman. There was a considerable difference.
Granger smiled at him, a small, secretive little smile. Against his will, Draco wished he knew the secret. “Laughter,” Granger told him pleasantly, “is the only sane reaction to life.”
Draco considered. “I thought that was cold-blooded murder,” he remarked.
She laughed, and he couldn’t help but smirk a little.
[Chapter I] [Chapter III]
Chapter: 2. Deck the Halls
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,520
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: YAY.
Chapter II:
Deck the Halls
Cold fea-a vague, trifling sort of anxiety climbed Draco’s ribcage, its silver fingers cutting his chest, as he saw that the library was, once again, packed full of people. And not just any people-Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. (A little voice in the back of his head reminded him that this trend was not too surprising given that they, too, attended this school, but he ignored it.) They weren’t just any scum of the Earth, however: they were jolly scum of the Earth. They were cheery and hearty and happy and disgusting, and they were all positively dripping with Christmas spirit.
Draco clung tighter to his book-bag and tried not to gag. He couldn’t possibly sit with those people-what if it was contagious?
He was gnawing on his lip as he progressed all the way to the far end of the library. Surely there was one table that was occupied by neither Christmas freaks nor the slightly more mundane, big-toothed, bushy-haired kind of freak-the usual specimen of which once again hadn’t even bothered to notice him? Surely…?
And then there was. Draco darted over to it, cackling inwardly, and was about to sling his bag onto it triumphantly when he saw that its surface was coated in… gunk.
This was not the kind of gunk one could wipe nonchalantly away with a sleeve or a silver-and-green-monogrammed handkerchief or a paper napkin; oh, no. This was Grade A Gunk. It looked like Hagrid had sneezed on the tabletop, or like someone had vomited figgy pudding all over it. Draco didn’t know exactly what figgy pudding was, but he imagined it looked a hell of a lot like this gunk, black and thick and largely coagulated, with big clumps of something.
Now Draco faced a bit of a dilemma: Which did he hate more-gunk, or Granger?
Seething, Draco pulled out the chair across from Granger’s and sat down in it. She deigned to glance at him once before returning her attention to her textbook. She said nothing.
The whole ignoring-him-instead-of-getting-riled-up thing was becoming extremely obnoxious.
Draco had slogged through a whole chapter of Charms reading before a table not far away burst out in merry laughter. Draco would have given his left kidney to have Crabbe’s Beater bat in hand, but as it was, he could do nothing but frown sourly at them.
That, and pull out a sheet of paper and begin listing what he would like to dole out for the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Eight nooses hanging,
Seven muskets firing,
Six swords a-swinging,
Five headstones,
Four Bowie knives,
Three big sticks,
Two Beater bats,
And a Dungbomb in the Great Hall.
He wasn’t sure where the machetes should come in, and he was having trouble getting “jugular veins a-severed” to scan.
“Not big on Christmas spirit?” Granger asked.
Draco looked up. There was a hint of a smirk in her smile.
“The only thing I would like to deck the halls with,” he informed her curtly, “is Parkinson’s entrails.”
She laughed, and it sounded like Christmas should-like sleigh bells jingling in the snow, harmonizing with horses’ hooves clattering over the snowy cobblestones; like church bells tolling through the brittle air of a chilly morning, the cold thawed by the warmth of quiet joy within. Like the whisper of ribbon over wrapping paper and the soft, gleeful breath exhaled by someone you loved when they opened the perfect gift.
Draco realized what he was thinking and forcefully reminded himself that he was, and would ever be, a Bah, humbug kind of person.
Granger regarded the top of his head now, her eyebrows wandering upward over the expanses of her forehead again. “What happened to your hair?” she inquired.
Suddenly, with the approximate force of a freight train crashing into his brain, it hit Draco that he hadn’t fixed his hair after his battle with Pansy’s carol demon. Tentatively, he lifted a trembling hand to assess the extent of the damage and, heart plummeting like a Dungbomb in the Great Hall, found that it was worse even than he’d predicted. His hair was everywhere.
Less than an hour after the first one, he was facing another wretched predicament, this one based on the overarching Malfoy tenet of pride: was it more degrading to be seen with his hair in disarray, or to seek aid from a Mudblood?
“Do you have a comb?” he asked, sighing a little.
She rummaged in her bag and then handed him one of the plain black variety-which struck Draco as odd, given that she never seemed to use such a device. Perhaps she simply didn’t know how it worked, and after seeing him demonstrate, she would achieve a sort of coif-oriented enlightenment.
He wondered if his cynicism was coming true on him again when she frowned watching him fix his hair.
“What?” he prompted.
“Nothing,” she answered.
Why was it that when girls said “Nothing,” they always meant “Everything”?
He paused, comb-wielding arm poised, probably looking extraordinarily dashing. “What?” he repeated.
Granger became very interested in the shelf behind him. “Well, I don’t know.” Clearly, she did, or she wouldn’t have said anything. And she wouldn’t be opening her mouth to say a little more anything. “Just that… it looked nice that way.”
Draco stared at her.
She saw him staring, and although a little bit of a blush bloomed pink in her cheeks, she met his eyes. “It looked more natural. More human, almost.”
Draco continued to stare at her.
The blush deepened. It was her turn to ask the immortal one-word question. You had to be equitable about these things. “What?” she managed.
“Nothing,” he said. Two could play at that say-the-opposite-of-what-you-meant game girls loved so much. “Just that I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be, you know, brave.”
An eyebrow flicked up. She knew where this was going.
Well, of course she did; she was Granger. Granger knew everything.
“As opposed to?” she permitted.
“Crazy,” he concluded.
Her smile was patronizing. “Ha,” she yielded.
“‘Ha’ yourself,” Draco muttered. He pushed the comb, and it skidded over the table to her. No way he was handing that thing back to her, putting him at risk of one of those insufferably awkward accidental-fingers-touching moments. Nauseated by the very abstract thought, he returned to his reading.
But not for long.
“What are you working on?” Granger inquired.
Draco wasn’t sure whether she was compelled by the Gryffindor mandate of sticking one’s nose into absolutely everything, or by her own compulsive desire to know all that there was to know about everyone there was to know of. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, though he also wasn’t sure which explanation that ‘benefit’ applied to.
“Charms,” he answered. He had intended to leave it at that, but he heard himself adding details. “All that, you know, swish-y, flick-y crap-I always get lost somewhere between the instruction and the execution.”
Granger tilted her head to the right a little. “It’s not hard,” she said slowly.
He felt his anger mounting, the fragments coalescing like a gathering storm. “Not all of us,” he snapped, “know everything before the teacher even says it, Granger.”
“Not all of us,” she shot back, her eyes flashing, “are too stubborn to ask for help when we need it, Malfoy.”
“No help at all is better than Mudblood help, Granger.”
“Coming down off your high horse is better than failing your classes, Malfoy.”
“You’ve never failed a class in your life.”
“Neither have you.”
“Exactly why I don’t need your help.”
“You’re just too full of yourself to ask.”
“Am I?” Draco had shoved his chair back and was on his feet now, the better to look down at Granger imperiously. He had to conserve his status one way or another. “Am I really?”
“Yes,” Granger replied equably. “You are.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Draco noticed that people were giving them weird looks. Again with the dilemmas-better to be a sideshow for bored kids in the library, or to let Granger think she’d won?
Wearily, he sat down. “So help me, then,” he grumbled.
Granger smiled.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“What you need,” Granger was saying as they exited the library, “is a Cheering Charm.”
“Har, har,” Draco responded.
“No, really. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh. Not genuinely, anyway.”
He glanced at her. She was watching him, eyebrows in action as always, her ridiculous hair bouncing along behind her, an absolutely ludicrous quantity of books in her arms.
“Not much to laugh about,” he noted. A gentleman would have offered to carry her books in an instant, but Draco Malfoy was not a gentleman.
He was a nobleman. There was a considerable difference.
Granger smiled at him, a small, secretive little smile. Against his will, Draco wished he knew the secret. “Laughter,” Granger told him pleasantly, “is the only sane reaction to life.”
Draco considered. “I thought that was cold-blooded murder,” he remarked.
She laughed, and he couldn’t help but smirk a little.
[Chapter I] [Chapter III]