A/N: Happy Holidays one and all!
It is time again for a Christmas Countdown! I had so much fun writing all 25 stories for starrnobella's Christmas Countdown last year that I decided to be crazy enough to do it again this year!
This collection is composed of stories written from prompts supplied to me by fellow writers, a few friends, and some of my readers. I want to extend a generous thank to to everyone who sent me a prompt.
A few other general thank yous are well deserved as well besides my prompters.: xxDustNight88, SquarePeg72, articcat621, and GaeilgeRua are God-sends and without them I'm not sure these stories would have gotten written. Thank you for listening to me whine about getting these written. Also, if I tell you I'm going to do another Harry Potter Christmas collection next year, stop me… (If you haven't read their works before, you should definitely check them out! They deserve all the love in the world.)
The first story was prompted by bentnotbroken1 and the story was beta read by xxDustNight88. Thank you to both of you for your assistance in the creation of this story.
All of the usual disclaimers apply. I don't write for profit and I certainly don't own any of these characters. J. K. Rowling is a wonderful human being for supporting fanfiction and allowing authors to express themselves with the help of her characters and the world she created.
If you are interested in checking out my other works or keeping up with me in general, I have an author's page on Facebook that you can check out (starrnobella Fanfiction) as well as a group (starrnobella Fanfiction Friends & Fans) that I am very active in on a daily basis. I'm also on tumblr (starrnobella) that you can follow along with me as well.
With all that said, I hope you all enjoy these stories this year. I know I had fun writing them.
Title: You're On
Pairing: Bluna
Rating: K
Summary: Sometimes building gingerbread houses can turn out to be a little more fun than originally anticipated.
Reviews always make me smile, and I love reading what you all have to say about the story!
Love always,
~starr
"We're doing what now?" Blaise asked, following Luna into the kitchen of their small flat as he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He was fairly certain she said something about building a house of some kind, but there was something else to what she had said and that was what he needed to figure out.
Luna turned to him and smiled widely as their eyes met. "We are building gingerbread houses!" she exclaimed, reaching out to grab his hand and tug him quickly into the kitchen.
With a small sigh, Blaise smiled and followed reluctantly behind her. "And we do this how?" he asked curiously, spotting the collection of supplies on their small table in the middle of the kitchen. His eyes widening at the organized chaos that had taken over. "What happened to our table?"
Looking from the table back at Blaise before pulling out a chair for herself, Luna shrugged. "I guess the Nargles decided to get all of the things out that we would need for the gingerbread houses, since it's too cold for them to be outside."
He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly closed it again and shook his head. He knew how she was when he asked her to be his girlfriend, so he shouldn't find a discussion involving Nargles surprising at this point. Pulling out the chair beside her, Blaise leaned in and kissed her on the cheek before joining her at the table. "Well, that was nice of the Nargles. What do we do first?"
"First we have to decide if we want to build one big house together, or each build and decorate our own?" she replied, rummaging through the supplies on the table to find the pieces of gingerbread. She noticed a smirk playing at Blaise's lips out of the corner of her eye that made her very curious. She could practically see the gears turning in his head as he plotted something.
Placing a contemplative finger to his lips, Blaise tapped his finger to his lips a few times as he thought about his answer. If he was being honest with himself, he knew that he'd never be able to build a gingerbread house on his own. In fact, until Luna had mentioned them a few days ago, he had no idea what they were. The way that her face lit up as she describe them to him was what had made him say yes. Although, he still couldn't wrap his head around the idea of building something out of food that didn't get eaten. It just sits around until you get tired of looking at it and toss it in the bin.
"What are you planning over there?" Luna asked, leaning back in her seat as she began unwrapping the package of gingerbread.
"I'm not planning anything," he insisted, batting his eyes at her innocently. "I was just trying to decide if I was in a competitive mood or not."
Luna laughed and rolled her eyes. "Sure you were. So do you want to build one with me or on your own, Zabini?"
"Seeing as I've never built one of these things before, I'd like to build one with you, love. If that's alright," he said, resting his arm on the back of her chair and scooting himself closer to her.
She smiled and leaned over to him, pressing her lips gently to his for a few moments. "We better get started then. The Nargles will be upset if they see all their hard work goes to waste."
Biting his tongue to stop the smart remarks that were forming on the tip of his tongue, Blaise laughed to himself momentarily before reaching over to the table and grabbing two pieces of gingerbread. "What do we do first?"
"The first thing we have to do is build the base of the house with the gingerbread pieces and some icing to seal them off," Luna said, grabbing the container of icing and a piping bag off the table. "But before we can start putting it together I have to put this icing in this piping bag. Could you hand me that spoon?"
Blaise nodded, picking up the spoon from the table and placing it gently in Luna's hand. "What is the icing for?" he asked curiously, watching her open the container of icing and begin scooping dollops of icing into the bag.
"It's the glue that holds the house together," she replied absentmindedly.
After scooping six spoonfuls of icing from the container into the piping bag, Luna offered him the spoon for a taste. "Wanna try the icing? It's my favorite part!"
Instead of responding, Blaise closed his eyes and stuck his tongue out as he waited for Luna to press the spoon against it. However, as she brought the spoon closer to his tongue, a wicked idea popped into her mind.
Rather than placing the spoon directly on his tongue, Luna pressed the spoon to the bridge of his nose and drug it down until she reached his tongue, leaving a trail of icing in its wake.
"What the hell?" Blaise shouted as he eyes popped open, spying the biggest smile trying to appear on Luna's face.
She was worrying her lip in a desperate attempt to keep from smiling, but the surprised look on Blaise's face was causing her to start giggling. As she noticed a smile growing on his face, she started laughing a little harder.
Trying to fight the smile he could feel playing at his lips, Blaise ran a finger along his nose to remove the icing trail that was left behind. He shook his head as he started to laugh. "You know I'm going to get you back for this, right?"
"How?" she asked, quirking her brow as she turned to look at him. "I have the piping bag full of icing."
Quickly he licked the excess icing off of his finger and crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back in his chair, eyeing her up as he tried to anticipate her next move. "You have to put the piping bag down at some point…" he replied.
"Says who?" she laughed, picking up the scissors from the table and snipping the tip off of the piping bag after twisting the top of the bag and forcing the icing down into the corner. "I can do everything that requires the icing and you can do all of the other work."
"But the icing is the fun part," Blaise said, pouting his lower lip and batting his lashes at her in his best puppy dog imitation. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that she had placed the spoon back down on the table. It just so happened to have some icing still on it.
Now he needed to figure out how he was going to get his hands on the spoon without her noticing. An almost impossible task he was sure. The damn Nargles were probably telling her exactly what he was thinking right now.
"If you do a good job helping me build the house, then maybe I'll let you use the piping bag to help put the decorations on," Luna said, placing a gentle hand on his knee.
"I guess that's okay," he sighed.
"Great, so I need you to hold those two pieces of gingerbread side by side in the shape of an l," she explained, pointing at the small pile of gingerbread on the other side of the spoon. "I'll glue them together with the icing."
"I think I can handle that," he laughed, picking up two pieces of gingerbread and standing them on the long side. He lined the two short sides up in the shape of an l and waited for Luna to make the next move. "Like this?"
"Mhmmm," she said, nodding her head as she leaned forward and squeezed the piping bag and lined the space between the two pieces of gingerbread with the icing. "Now we wait a few minutes for the icing to harden."
"Simple enough," he laughed. "My guess is that we will be repeating this process with two more pieces of gingerbread, right?"
"Correct again," she said, pausing briefly. "I think that one's dry enough that you don't need to hold it, so let's do the other side of the house. We need two more pieces of gingerbread."
"On it!" Blaise replied happily as he grabbed the other two pieces.
Repeating the same process as before, Luna glued the two pieces together as Blaise held them in the shape of l before placing the two l's next to one another. Then Luna glued the two shapes together with a little more icing and Blaise pushed the two pieces together, allowing the glue to seal them together.
"Next up we need to make the roof!" she said. "Two more pieces of gingerbread, please, and flip them over. I'm going to line the sides with icing so that we can stick the pieces together to form a roof. After that all dries, we'll be able to start decorating."
A few moments later, the house was built and they were waiting on the icing to dry. Resting his arm on the table, Blaise reached over and ran his finger along the spoon gathering some icing as he went.
As he moved to lick the icing on his finger, he quickly redirected himself and pressed his finger into Luna's cheek, smearing the icing along her face.
"Blaise Zabini!" Luna shouted, laughing briefly. "I can't believe you did that!"
"Did you really think I wouldn't get you back for your little stunt?" he asked , laughing as he watched her wipe the icing from her face. "I told you that I'd get you back, love."
Luna shook her head as she licked the icing off of her finger. "I knew you'd do something to get me back, but I didn't think it would be so early in the evening. There's still plenty of decorating to do on this house."
"But I'm the one who gets to use the piping bag," Blaise replied proudly.
"Who says I was going to use the icing again?" she replied with a laugh. "That would be too easy."
Amused, Blaise quirked his brow. "Are you declaring a food fight?"
Crossing her arms over her chest with a smug smile on her face, Luna nodded. "Yes I am."
"May the best fighter win," Blaise said, extending a hand.
"You're on," she replied, shaking his hand firmly.