A/N: I'm back! Okay, it's been a while, but here is my Draco/Ginny Christmas fic. I think it's going to be very different from last year's, lol. For now, I'm planning on nine chapters plus an epilogue...
Disclaimer: I solemnly swear I am up to no good. Harry Potter is JK Rowling's and Warner Bros, etc. The quotes are from Enya's album 'And Winter Came' (2008).
Here's to all who love Christmas! And to my beloved ones, I miss you terribly.
And Winter Came
Chapter 1 – Trains and Winter Rains
City streets passing by underneath stormy skies. Neon signs in the night, red and blue city lights, cargo trains rolling by. Once again someone cries. Trains and winter rains, no going back, no going home. Trains across the plains and in the sky a star alone. Every time it's the same. One more night, one more train…
A lonely boy aboard the Hogwarts Express. He was dressed in an expensive-looking black cloak, yet he seemed to be freezing. His face, barely discernable underneath the dark hood, shone white in the pale light. Chattering teeth filled the silence that was in that one cold winter's night.
Slowly, the boy sat up. As the hood fell from his face, he blinked faster when the light hit his face. His face was not a happy one. Although he seemed to be very young, thirteen, fourteen maybe, his features were sharp, as if they had been cut in white marble by a very talented stonemason. His nose was pointy, his jaws a stark contrast to his soft blond hair that was falling onto his shoulder. His eyes were of a stormy grey colour, dark and mysterious, his mouth as red as a Christmas apple. The boy was not particularly handsome, but he possessed a certain charm, something that drew the onlooker into him.
There should have been some colour on his pale cheeks since the train compartment was nearly frozen and the landscape that flew by the window was a frosty white. However, the boy did not care about the cold. His eyes were staring into the distance, fixing something invisible. No emotion, no sentiment was betrayed by his face, impassive and calm. It was unusual for a boy that age to be that distant. The blond, nevertheless, was not like other boys his age.
His name was Draco Malfoy. He was returning from Hogwarts to visit his parents for Christmas, although, personally, he would have preferred to remain at Hogwarts Castle. Draco had become very accustomed to living at the magical school for the entire year. As he was about to enter his compartment, he had thought about Christmas at Hogwarts, about the feast, about lights and fir trees and mistletoe.
Although many other pupils thought his family was an unhappy, an evil one, that was not true. Granted, they were a traditional Pureblood family, Slytherin to the roots, and his father most certainly was a Death Eater. But when Draco was at home, all this did not matter. His mother, Narcissa, as icy and distant as her refined appearance made her look, loved him with all her heart. His father, despite being close to his son, had always been less important to him. Draco did love him, he was his father and even in the supposedly worst of the Pureblooded families the familial bonds were strong. Draco shook his head and thought of his aunt Andromeda and her daughter Nymphadora, and his cousin Sirius Black. If you acted by the family's guidelines, that was.
A fanit smile on his face, he looked out of the window. Far in the distance, red and blue city lights were visible. The dark shadow of a forest passed by rapidly. He sighed. Draco liked winter. Winter meant hot chocolate and snow and mistletoe. He did not mind the cold. In the Slytherin dungeons, even in summer, the temperature was always equally cool.
Draco smiled again. He was looking forward to seeing his mother and father again. It had been a long time, and Wiltshire was far from Hogwarts, seeing as the castle was well hidden in the Scottish mountains. He closed his eyes. Giving a contented sigh, he imagined the candles and the hundreds of fireplaces burning at Malfoy Manor and the House Elves baking Christmas cookies. The kitchens were always heated at that time of year, and the elves busily running around. His mother would be decorating the castle and his father would come home with a high Christmas tree like he had for years and years gone by. Candles would flicker in the draught, holly and ivy would be decorating the entrance hall and the whole castle would be filled with the smell of ginger and cinnamom.
When he was just a little boy, Draco had loved Christmas. For children, it was like magic. Lights and music and the smell of candles and fir trees. He recalled the evenings spent by the fireplace in the salon with his parents, his mother quietly humming a carol while she would read from a thick volume and his father silently sipping his hot chocolate. Those evenings had been peaceful, so peaceful that in retrospect they had an unreal quality to them, as if they were old photographs that had been magically embellished or old paintings repainted by a delicate artist's hand. The memories seemed to glow in his head. Once again, he wished, his desire completely sincere, once again he wished to live one of those evenings. Back then, Draco had not paid much attention to how marvellous they truly were, they seemed so natural, so common that he had not thought twice.
Draco sighed and turned his face to the window. It had been so easy then. Loving is easy when you don't know anything, when you don't fear. But he had grown up, he had seen his father do what he had never, even in his wildest nightmares, believed possible. His mother, although in his mind she was still as pure and innocent as she had been at birth, did love him, yet he did not know what she expected him to do.
But it was Christmas, and vain thoughts such as those weren't doing him any good. Looking out of the window as if this were the first time he ever saw a snowy landscape flying by the Hogwarts Express, Draco marvelled at the single white perfect snowflakes that were slowly falling from the stormy grey sky. Each snowflake was a perfect crystal, and when one fell onto the window he pressed his nose to the cold glass and studied it closely. How could something so fragile just fall from the sky and then lightly form a white blanket?
His nose rubbing the glass, he detached himself to look at the plains that were then passing by. Not a single soul was out, the night was clear and silent. Draco wrapped himself in his cloak. Shortly the train would be arriving at King's Cross, he would step off it and after that he would leave with his father. His mother would be waiting for him at the Manor.
However, Draco was not a child anymore, and Christmas would never be the same again, although at home would be Christmas, wonderful white Christmas with his family. There would be lights and warmth and love and music and the smell of cloves and gingerbread.
A/N: Please review!
I hope to put the next chapter up this weekend.
Anna Scathach