Secret Santa
They were all seated at the great banquet table in the ballroom of the Ministry on Christmas Eve. It was the annual Christmas party for all of the department heads and their secretaries, and they were barely halfway through dessert when a very impatient someone—Harry wasn't sure who—shouted, "Present time!"
Naturally, chaos ensued.
It didn't matter that they were all adults. It didn't matter that some of the adults were the ages of his former Hogwarts professors. Nearly everyone bolted to their feet at the same time and rushed for the magnificent tree at the back of the room where a mountain of presents had been stacked haphazardly.
Harry caught Hermione's eye, and she smiled and shook her head good-naturedly.
Like each of the five years Harry had been employed by the Ministry, a Secret Santa program had been set up. And like every year, Harry's unwitting recipient was his best friend of fourteen years, one Hermione Granger, who also happened to be the new head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Also like every year, when Harry was the first to draw a name from the wizard's hat—being Harry Potter had its perks—he wandlessly and wordlessly summoned Hermione's name to his hand. His reasoning behind it was that it allowed him to not only avoid the potential embarrassment of giving an ill-thought gift to a relative stranger but that he also got to give his closest friend in the world an extra present for Christmas, even if she didn't know it. There was also the added bonus of knowing that Hermione would receive a gift she'd actually like—a perk of being best friends for a decade and a half.
Well, this year might be the exception, Harry thought nervously.
Harry followed Hermione to the back of the room, giving his abandoned treacle tart a last, longing glance as he went. They stood towards the back of the crowd, not wanting to get trampled and sent to St. Mungo's.
"You'd think they'd have grown out of acting like children," Hermione mused by his side.
"Do you think they'd mind if I brought my treacle tart over here?" Harry wondered aloud, fingering his wand as he seriously contemplated a nonverbal summoning charm.
Hermione only laughed.
When finally all the presents were passed around and everyone had found a seat to open them, Harry watched Hermione surreptitiously from the corner of his eye, barely paying attention to the small, flat parcel he was absently unwrapping in his own hands. Hermione's expression showed intrigue at the diminutive size of her gift—the shape and size that usually contained jewelry.
Hermione was definitely not a woman who normally adorned herself with jewelry, and if she did, it was mostly simple and understated. However, this was a special piece—a very special piece—and Harry could only hope she'd like it.
When she removed the decently wrapped paper to reveal a small, rectangular, velvety box, her look of curiosity increased by an order of magnitude. With fingers that might've trembled slightly—Harry noted this with a frown—she lifted the lid to reveal Harry's gift to her.
She gasped.
Oh, good, thought Harry. That's usually a good sign.
Though Harry couldn't get a good look at the item within, he of course knew exactly what it was, since he'd had it custom made himself. The golden bracelet was adorned with six charms, and the theme for the charms was the adventures they'd shared: first came a three-headed dog to commemorate their very first adventure together, even though they hadn't exactly been friends at the time; the second was a tiny, golden hourglass to represent their time-travel experience in third year when they saved Sirius and Buckbeak; the third charm was a miniature prophecy orb to represent their battle in the Department of Mysteries; the fourth charm was simply a tent, and it symbolized the months they spent hunting Voldemort's Horcruxes; and fifth was a broomstick for the time they'd gone to see Ron play for the Cannons—it was their first year in a long time that they didn't come in dead last—only for Ron to be kidnapped after the game by a crazy, frustrated, die-hard fan who hated to see the Cannons rise in the league's rankings. Ron had never been in any serious danger, and they'd all had a good laugh about it afterward—Harry and Hermione more so than Ron. They even gave him the occasional ribbing about it every now and again.
But it was the final item on the bracelet that had Harry's heart in a vise. He didn't know why in the world he thought it was a good idea at the time—it had been a last-minute addition before he'd brought it with him to the party—and now he was regretting it. He simply didn't know how she'd react; there were so many possible scenarios that occurred to him, and none of them were good. The only spot of luck he could find in the whole thing was that Hermione didn't know he was her Secret Santa.
Then he realized something so obvious that made him physically ill: It didn't matter if his name wasn't on the packaging—the charms themselves gave his identity away! And he'd known that when he decided on the charms. Somehow he'd forgotten that handy little fact sometime between buying the bracelet and adding to said bracelet the instrument of his destruction. He was a dead man.
Oh, but it was too late now. She was already wearing it on her left wrist, holding the bracelet up to her face and examining it at eye level. There was a smile on her face as she marveled at the bracelet. Of course she liked it so far—Harry had been positive that she would have! Now he found himself hoping that the sixth object on the bracelet had somehow fallen off or gotten lost.
Maybe I only dreamed about adding it to the bracelet, he thought, frantically hoping that his friendship with Hermione wasn't about to crash down around him.
Hermione giggled when she caught sight of the little broomstick charm, and Harry's lips quirked for a split second, fleetingly defying the paralyzing fear that had consumed him as he watched her get closer and closer to it.
He could tell when she found it because her eyes widened almost comically and her jaw dropped, her smile giving way to a look of disbelief. With the bracelet hanging from one wrist, she used the fingers of her other hand to remove the offending item from the chain.
For the item in question wasn't actually a charm but disguised as one. Imitating charm number six was, in fact, an engagement ring Harry had bought nearly a year ago. He and Hermione had never actually dated, but they were so close that they already knew practically everything about the other, and they'd been that way for a number of years now. And, Harry dared to believe, they had a certain chemistry.
He'd never bucked up the courage to ask if she wanted them to be anything more, but he'd known for quite some time that there wasn't any other girl for him. But how was he possibly supposed to propose to his best friend? The idea to put it on the bracelet had been rather impulsive, clearly, but it was ironic that an engagement ring, something supposed to signify an eternity of love and commitment, would be the end of his relationship with Hermione.
Then she turned towards Harry, her eyes snapping onto his like magnets. "Oh, Harry," she said, and there was an unidentifiable emotion in her voice—probably something nastily efficient at destroying a friendship of fourteen years.
"I'm sorry!" he blurted. "It was a mistake! I didn't mean to—"
Suddenly Hermione was right in front of him—and how long had he been on his feet? She frowned. "Harry, what do you mean—exactly—by 'It was a mistake'? Tell me the truth."
Fighting a sudden urge to run back to Grimmauld Place, lock the door and never open it again, Harry forced himself to look her in the eye and only say, "I shouldn't have put it on the bracelet."
Truly, what hadn't been said was more important than what had.
Her eyes sparkled at his words. Then she looked down at the extravagant band in her hand and rotated it until she could read the engraved words, written in elegant script, on its inside curve: To My Best Friend.
"Ask me." The words came so softly that Harry thought he'd imagined them. "Ask me," she repeated only slightly louder when he didn't reply.
His body was bending at the knee before he even knew what he was doing. He held her hands in his as he stared with steely determination into her eyes. A part of his mind marveled at his newfound courage; Voldemort was a piece of cake in comparison. He opened his mouth to speak, and his voice didn't betray his infinite fear of her rejection. "May I marry you, Hermione Granger?"
Unable to manage words as she laughed, she nodded. A solitary tear ran down her cheek as she held her hand out to him. And so he slid the ring onto her finger, not even trying to withhold the wide smile that threatened to split his face in two. No sooner had he finished that she yanked him to his feet and kissed him right there in the middle of the ballroom as a crowd of onlookers applauded.
They broke apart, both blushing fiercely but grinning all the while. Then they had to endure dozens of choruses of "Congratulations!" and "Good show, Mr. Potter!" But everything was brilliant because Hermione never let go of his hand and kept shooting him those beautiful, beaming smiles of hers.
"Took you long enough," Hermione told him after the last of the well-wishers had gone.
Harry stared at her, mouth agape and unable to produce any intelligent speech.
"Honestly," she continued, "if you hadn't done anything by New Year's, I was planning on asking you myself."
"Really?" said Harry, completely flabbergasted. He'd been refraining from asking her to consider even becoming his girlfriend—let alone his wife!—out of fear she'd say no, and she'd been feeling the same all along?
She smirked. "I wasn't going to buy you a ring—I figured you wouldn't have cared much for that—but I was going to ask you if wanted to take things a step further. We've practically been dating for the last few years anyway. How many times have you stayed over at my place after late nights at the office only for us to continue in my living room? And what about the long talks that followed or all the movies we've watched as we cuddled on the sofa? How many times a week does one of us join the other for dinner? We take lunch together every day, working or not. And neither of us have dated anyone since we both started working at the Ministry."
Her smirk widened into a smile. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out we've only had eyes for each other the past few years."
Harry slipped an arm around her waist. "Well, I certainly feel like an idiot."
She hummed in agreement. "But you're my idiot."
He leaned in to steal a quick kiss. "That's not so bad then."
Then her smile turned sly. "Are you sure you don't mind dating your boss?"
"I thought you said we've already been dating?" he countered teasingly.
There was a gleam in her eye as she leaned in close and whispered, "Secretaries shouldn't talk back to their bosses." Her breath on his lips drove him mad.
"Or what?" he challenged, keeping the inch of distance between them. "Will you dock my pay?"
She purred. "I'll dock something." She accentuated her statement by dropping her hand a little lower than his waist and briefly grabbing his bum, causing him to jump. "Are those the silk boxers I got you for Christmas last year?"
Harry frowned. "You didn't—" Then his eyes widened. "You were my Secret Santa last year?"
It seemed nothing could remove the smile from her face, because it only widened further. "I have been every year, just as I know you've been mine." Pausing only to admire his floored expression, she pressed on. "No one else knows me well enough to buy me a gift card to the Muggle bookstore that my parents would take me to whenever I returned home during the summer, Harry. And that's only one example."
She patted him on the cheek affectionately. "Now, are you going to finish opening your present?"
Harry was momentarily confused until he remembered the small package that he'd unwrapped as he'd watched Hermione open hers. "Oh!" He pulled the parcel out of a pocket of his robes, not quite sure when he'd placed it there to begin with. It was an envelope, and within it he found, to his delight, two tickets to a Weird Sisters concert.
He brandished the tickets at her and, with a raised eyebrow, said, "I suppose you expect me to ask you if you'd like to come with me?"
"Oh, Harry!" she said, faking a squeal of surprise. "Of course I'll go with you!" The kiss that followed certainly wasn't faked in the slightest.
"You're diabolical, Hermione, you know that?"
She just grinned. "You know, of course, that this is just your Secret Santa gift and that you're still getting one from metomorrow?"
"You've already given me the best Christmas present ever by saying yes," he said, gesturing to her left hand where her new bracelet and engagement ring now resided. That earned him a thorough snogging.
When they came up for air, she put on her head-of-the-DMLE face and said to him, "Report to my office immediately, Mr. Potter: We have work to do."
Best Christmas ever, Harry thought as he hastened to follow his brand new fiancée, pausing only briefly to scoop up his previously forgotten treacle tart as he went.
Finite