Hey there lovelies! I've got a quick little Christmas-y triad fic for y'all. It's something that popped into my head and wouldn't let go of my Muse so I ended up writing it for the Fairest of the Rare's Advent event over on Facebook. You should really go check out the group on Facebook. They do all kinds of awesome stuff and their members and admins are all kinds of awesome (can I say awesome any more?!). But yeah. This was hammered out in a few days, in between some massive upheavals with my special needs kidlet so it's rushed and I'm sorry. I do plan on going back and filling it out eventually as per some awesome advice from the lovely lady who helped me with the beta work, the awesome (again with the awesome!) kickynikki. You can find her using that penname on here or on AO3. :) So check her out and giver her some love cause she came through in a serious pinch for me and mad props to her. So, as I said this will eventually get fleshed out a bit more, but for now, it is what it is and just...sorry for the rushed feeling but I hope you enjoy nonetheless. :)
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Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. I make no money, and have nothing but massive student loan debts.
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"You're serious? This is how Muggle organizations raise money?"
"Dead serious."
"How would you know? Done a lot of Muggle research, have you, Blaise?"
"More than you have, Malfoy."
"I cannot believe we are going to do this."
"Hey! I never said I'd do it!"
"Oh, shut it, Weasel! We're in deep and you know we need the money. Of course we're going to do it!"
x . x . x . x . x
Yule Celebration - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
"Welcome everyone! In just a few moments, the doors will open and you will have a chance to explore the school and its changes. You will also have a chance to peruse some of the merchandise the students have been working on to raise funds for some of their organizations, both established and newly formed. So, it is my pleasure to open the Yule Celebration!"
White and blue sparks shot from the tip of Minerva McGonagall's wand as the doors to the Great Hall swung open dramatically. The parents and families turned nearly as one and began shuffling lazily through the doors to meander in each direction.
"Mum! Dad!"
Dan and Emma Granger had never seen Hogwarts before the Battle and therefore had no scale on which to judge whether to be impressed with the improvements or not. They were impressed with the castle all by itself, however. Their daughter's voice broke them from their wide eyed staring, for which they were immensely grateful.
"Hello, darling! Don't you look lovely! Your hair! What have you done to it?" Emma stroked a hand down the silky smooth strands, marveling at the lack of unruly curls.
Hermione grinned. "It's part of what Professor-I mean, Headmistress McGonagall was saying. We've formed small organizations or clubs or what-have-you to try to boost funds. The war and rebuilding took most of the Hogwarts budget. So, I made friends with the girls in my dorm and we created a line of beauty potions."
Lavender and Parvati had nearly fainted when Hermione had approached them with the idea. Living through a war and coming back for their eighth year together had opened her eyes, so she'd been determined to make friends with her dorm mates. And what better way than to find common ground. She was good at potions. They liked...being girly.
It had all come together beautifully.
"Well, lead the way then, Snowflake," Dan chuckled as his daughter's cheeks flared bright red and her eyes darted quickly to the left and right.
"Daaaaaaaad!"
Emma landed a light smack on his bicep as they traipsed through the maze of people to follow their magical daughter.
"Hermione!"
"Oh, hey Gin! You remember my parents, right?"
The red headed Weasley daughter nodded briefly to the couple before turning back to Hermione and smacking her repeatedly on the arm. "Why didn't you tell me! I am beyond pissed at you, Missy!"
The smile on her face seemed to contradict her point as she skipped merrily on her way, calling to an 'Emmett' somewhere further down the hall.
Emma and Dan raised their eyebrows identically as Hermione turned a puzzled eye back to watch her friend's retreat. "I have absolutely no idea what that was about."
With a sigh and a shrug the Granger trio was off again, though the adult duo did notice a lot more whispers and stares, along with some pointing, as Hermione chattered obliviously away.
Eventually, after climbing what felt like 1,000 stairs (but was actually only 328, which Dan knew since he'd counted), they came to a table covered in pretty bottles and jars, but unmanned.
"Lavender? Parvati?" Hermione looked around worriedly, old habits from the war dying hard. Emma's heart ached for her daughter, but kept her place by her husband's side, knowing Hermione just needed to work through the trauma herself.
"Oh!" A bubbly looking blonde with some nasty looking scars across her face popped up from behind the table, a bright smile stretching her ruined mouth wide. "You should have told us what the boys were doing!"
A darker skinned girl stood more slowly a moment later, a grin that clearly spoke of cats that ate canaries painted on her gorgeously unmarred face. "Why in Merlin's name would she tell us, Lav? So we could go steal her boyfriend?"
"Boyfriend?!" Hermione ignored Dan's sputtering as she rested her fists on her hips and raised an eyebrow.
"What? She's got an extra to spare." Lavender giggled wickedly, clearly ignoring Emma's scandalized gasp and Dan's rather choked "Extra boyfriend?!".
"What in the world does everyone keep talking about?" Hermione sighed as she finally took notice of the stares and whispers following them as the crowds broke around them like a boulder in a river.
The two girls smirked at each other before Lavender giggled. "You mean, they didn't tell you? Oh, please tell me they didn't tell you!"
"No, please tell me we get to watch when you confront them about it!" Parvati added and she bent to grab something under their table and tossed it over to Hermione.
The Grangers crowded over their daughter's shoulders, their eyes going wide as they caught a glimpse of what she held in her hands.
Hermione choked on air as she read the title of what she could clearly see was a calendar.
'The Men of Hogwarts Quidditch'
She very nearly died on the spot when she let her eyes travel further down the cover to reveal the entire eighth year Hogwarts Quidditch Team wearing nothing but their Quidditch pants slung low on their hips, their boots, and Santa hats in their house colors. They held their brooms in their hands and all leaned on each other, jostling playfully for the camera with a sense of camaraderie that Albus Dumbledore would've loved to have achieved in his lifetime.
"So, which two of these miscreants do I have to maim?" Emma landed a soft smack to Dan's bicep again. "Actually, it doesn't really matter. They're all obviously deviant enough. I can maim them all."
Hermione just stared at the glossy monstrosity that featured most of her friends and the two men she'd come to love, realizing in horror that their behavior over the past month now made perfect sense.
"I-I...uh...I-just…"
"Oh my word! Is that-is that your name?! Tattooed on his hip?!" Emma's shrill shriek of disbelief brought Lavender and Parvati scrambling around the table, elbowing poor Dan out of the way as they crowded around the calendar still clenched in Hermione's fists.
"Oh dear Merlin, it is! Did Draco get one too?!"
A sharp, insistent poking on her shoulder drew Hermione's attention back to her father as he stood behind her, an expression of irate fury etched on his normally passive features.
"Would you care to explain why some deviant has your name permanently tattooed on his body, young lady?"
"Oh, that must be Draco then. He definitely didn't get it on his hip though…" Emma's voice trailed off wistfully and Dan's eyes narrowed even further as Hermione bit her lip.
"Dad, I was going to tell you-"
"Uh huh. Why don't you take us to meet these perverts and you can try to explain this in a way that I might understand."
Hermione gulped at the imperiousness of her father's demand as she quickly glanced back at the calendar in her hands. Her two beaus winked merrily at her from the glossy page, the puffy white balls on the end of their hats flopping happily around their heads. She couldn't help but feel that it was such a juxtaposition of reality that she only hoped she'd wake up any second.
x . x . x . x . x
Hermione did not, in fact, wake up, because she was already awake in some hellish nightmare where her boyfriends had made a raunchy calendar with most of the eighth year boys. A calendar that her parents had gotten a glimpse of and found out about said boyfriends before she'd had a chance to ease them into the idea. Could the day get any more complicated?
She muttered an expletive under her breath as she shuttered her own imagination tightly into itself. Thoughts such as those had a dangerous way of manifesting themselves and she had no desire to live through any more ridiculousness.
Their steps echoed ominously through the hallowed halls of her educational safeground, the place where she'd fought a war and looked to be about to fight another. She wasn't sure if she'd rather fight Voldemort all over again if the way her father was stomping and huffing and snarling under his breath in a startlingly familiar way was any indication of how the next few hours was going to play out.
"Hello, Hermione. It was so lovely of you to let the boys do that calendar. The snufflagumps are truly drawn to all the positive emotions they're creating!"
The smile that broke across her face couldn't be helped as Luna intercepted the Grangers path and Hermione stopped to embrace her friend. "Mum, Dad, this is Luna Lovegood. She fought in the Battle with us and is one of my closest friends."
The Muggle dentists turned to the blonde girl with her arm around their daughter, their eyebrows knitted together in bewilderment. Her hair was long and wavy with flowers insterpsered randomly through it, as if she'd rolled around in a field and just gotten up and walked away. Her clothes weren't Muggle, but neither were they the slightly out of date Wizarding wear they'd seen most of the students and other parents wearing. It was an odd, eclectic mix of pieces that didn't quite fit together, but worked in conjunction on her small, lithe frame. But the most disconcerting piece of the puzzle that was Luna Lovegood were the cerulean eyes seemingly staring into their souls and, if not judging them exactly, reading them closely and possibly not entirely liking what she found.
"It's nice to meet you." Emma held her hand out cautiously and Luna looked at it for a moment before reaching for it, the numerous beaded bracelets adorning her wrists capturing the light and sending it skittering around the halls.
"It's truly interesting to meet you as well, Dr. and Dr. Granger. Your daughter is one of my only and best friends. You'd do well to remember what a truly good heart she has." Dan choked at Luna's words, laced with steel instead of whimsy as they usually were. "Perhaps I'll accompany you, Hermione. I've been meaning to talk to Neville about the Flitterbloom he transplanted for me. It's becoming much too rambunctious and I need to figure out a way to calm it down."
Hermione's brown eyes were wide as they bounced between her parents and her friend, her lungs screaming as she forgot to breathe at the confrontation that had just occurred.
"Uh-" She gasped audibly and Luna squeezed her side gently, just as she'd done all those months ago during the Final Battle, their signal that they were there for each other. "Yes. Yes, we should...we should go. Come on, Mum. Dad, the pitch is just-this way."
x . x . x . x . x
"Oh shite! Three o'clock mate!"
Draco furrowed his brow at his teammate as he cast a quick tempus charm. It was only just after noon. Dean Thomas had gone pale, which was a remarkable feat under his dark skin, as he stared at a place somewhere off in the distance.
"What's that, Thomas?"
"Three o'clock, mate! Three o'clock!"
Blaise shot Draco a look as Harry and Ron did the same, the quartet all turning various shades of puzzled eyes back to the stuttering Gryffindor Chaser who's face was painted with a look of utter terror.
"Dean, what are you on about now?" Harry's gentle words brought his friend out of the terrified stupor a bit, but Dean still gulped audibly as he bit back a groan.
"There is a raging mad female baring down on the lot of us at one, two, three o'clock!"
Draco and Blaise froze as Harry and Ron spun quickly, each duo letting out creative strings of expletives that had the people milling around the Quidditch pitch throwing scandalized glares their way.
"Is there ANY chance at all that the raging mad female baring down on us isn't our girlfriend?" Draco's tone was nearly begging and Blaise would have laughed if he wasn't so afraid of the same thing.
"There is absolutely no chance that the raging mad female isn't your girlfriend, mate, because you neglected to tell her about the calendar. And from the look of it…"
"Oh, shite!"
Ron's exclamation did nothing to settle the Slytherin's nerves, though they still didn't turn to face their Lioness.
"Weasel, you can't just say 'Oh, shite!' and not tell us why! What could possibly be worse that a raging mad Hermione baring down on us?!"
A beat of silence followed Blaise's question before a very masculine sounding throat cleared. "Probably her raging mad father baring down on you. Just to take a guess."
x . x . x . x . x
Despite the warmth of the Three Broomsticks, the atmosphere of their table was distinctly frosty.
Emma and Dan Granger sat on one side of the booth while Hermione sat sandwiched between Draco and Blaise on the other, the calendar squarely thrown on the table in between.
"So, you're the two deviants perverting my little girl, huh?"
"Dad!" Hermione's embarrassed exclamation coincided with Emma's vicious smack and mumbled reminder to behave himself.
Draco glanced at his best friend out of the corner of his eye and sighed. He'd be taking the lead apparently. Coward.
"This was not exactly how we'd envisioned meeting you, sir. We both love your daughter very much."
Gathering his courage, Blaise laced his finger through Hermione's and continued on with Draco's thoughts. "We know, both from Hermione and from our own research into the matter, that this type of situation," he gestured between himself and his lovers, "is not common in the Muggle world and often considered indecent. But in the Wizarding world, triads - which is what we are considered - are a rare and beautiful thing."
Draco smiled widely and brought the hand he held up to hip lips for a sweet kiss as he gazed into her chocolate eyes. Hermione blinked back tears, completely ignoring her parents across the table, enthralled by the two men she'd grown to love. "True triads are born from pain and strife, but grow into the most pure love known in this world. That's why they are so rare and beautiful."
A few moments of silence passed before a sniffle from across the table broke the trio out of their bubble of happiness. Emma's eyes glistened with unshed tears as one hand clutched at Dan, her other clenched over her heart.
"Mum?"
Emma waved her daughter's question away, her lips pulling into a tremulous smile as Dan frowned unhappily at the trio. "Oh, that was just...just...beautiful boys!"
Blaise was caught wholly off guard as Hermione's mum jumped out of her seat and rounded the table to pull him up and into a hug, rocking him from side to side awkwardly since she was about a foot shorter than him. Draco sniggered as he edged further back into the booth, pushing himself as far into the wall as possible in an attempt to avoid the same fate.
"Emma, darling, I think you've scarred the boy enough. People are staring." Dan gently pulled his wife back to their side of the booth and Blaise collapsed eagerly beside Hermione. He tugged her away from Draco and buried his face in her neck for a long moment to regain his bearings as Emma dried her eyes.
"Well," Dan cleared his throat and eyed the two boys as they scooted closer to his daughter, as if she could protect them from his wrath, "I guess since my wife seems to be taken with what you've said and my little girl is enamored with you for some reason-"
"Daddy…"
"Oh hush, Snowflake. As I was saying, she is legally an adult in both our worlds and I can't stop her from seeing whomever she likes, no matter how much I might disagree. Therefore, in the spirit of Muggle and Magical cooperation, and the Christmas holidays..." With great reluctance, Dan extended his hand across the table, hovering in midair as he waited for one of the young men to shake it.
Draco cast a sharp glance at Blaise before leaning over slightly to whisper in Hermione's ear. "Are you sure your father isn't capable of some kind of Muggle fighting that will maim me as soon as I take his hand?"
The famous Gryffindor quirked an eyebrow at her blonde counterpart before bursting into loud peals of laughter, though Blaise was quite sure Draco was 100% serious.
"Just shake my hand, son. I don't bite and I won't Krav Maga you to death."
Blaise paled under his dark tan as he nearly broke the fragile bones in Hermione's hand. "What's a Krav Maga?!"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Daddy! Stop scaring them to death! Bloody big bad Slytherins you both are."
Dan withdrew his hand when it became obvious that the younger wizards truly were terrified of him and settled his face into a more personable expression. "Boys, I don't mean you any harm. Truly. I can wrap my head around this - situation - eventually. As long as you treat my little girl with the respect and care that she deserves, you'll get no trouble from me."
Draco and Blaise nodded solemnly while Hermione and Emma rolled their eyes at the blatantly male posturing.
"Okay, now that all that is out of the way, I'm going to walk them back to the pitch so they can finish selling their...there's not a word I can say there that actually sounds at all decent. So they can finish." Hermione paused, then shook her head emphatically. "Nope, not any better. I'm walking them back. Mum, Dad, you stay here and have a few drinks. Then we can all have dinner tonight to get to know each other better. Blaise, you and I can cook in the eighth year dorms. Sound alright?"
Blaise's eyes lit up at the prospect. He loved to cook, and he loved Hermione, and combining the two was utter perfection in his eyes. Plus, it would force Draco to entertain Hermione's parents while they prepared the meal, which would make him squirm.
"Alrigh,t darling, just hurry back. And dinner sounds lovely." Emma rose along with the trio, pulling each of them into their own hugs. Draco's pleading look of abject terror only sparked another laughing fit from Hermione as she pulled him away and began ushering the two embarrassed Slytherins from the cosy pub.
"Well," Emma flopped back down beside Dan as he caught the attention of the barmaid. "That was not at all what I expected."
'You're telling me." Dan smiled at the young waitress as she approached their table with a smile. "We'll take two of those butter drinks the students always rave about, please."
"You got it, sir." She smiled back at the couple and turned to get their drinks as Emma straightened up in the booth.
The Grangers sat in silence for a few moments as their waited for their drinks, both lost in their own thoughts of how their day had turned out so far.
"Here you are, lovelies. Oh, you were up at Hogwarts too, eh? Those calendars are something else. I can't believe McGonagall let those boys make it. I mean, I've seen raunchier things in Diagon, to be sure, but for school boys…" The barmaid shrugged and threw a wink over her shoulder as she sauntered away to help another table.
As if there was a magnet from their eyes to it, the calendar drew their attention as it sat benignly on the table. Emma attributed their lack of attention previously to the fact that it was face down. There was no way she'd have been able to ignore the moving photograph on the front this long otherwise.
"Do you think-"
Dan glared at her, his butterbeer already halfway to his mouth. "No."
"But she said-"
He finished gulping down half of the sugary sweet liquid and let out a satisfied 'ahhhh' before fixing his wife with a pointed glare. "No."
"Dan."
"Emma."
"Daaaaan."
"Em-ma."
The Grangers stared at each other for a long moment, the noise of the pub fading around them as silence engulfed their small booth. Then Emma lunged forward and clutched the calendar triumphantly as Dan stared blandly at her, sipping his butterbeer nonchalantly.
"Did you expect me to stop you, love?"
Emma raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow at her husband as she clutched the offending item to her chest, not trusting him not to just snatch it away. "Well, yes, actually."
Dan just grinned. "I had to put up a token fight. It wouldn't do to seen overly eager to look at a bunch of half naked school boys, would it? But I do in fact want to see the type of miscreants my daughter is dating and hanging around with. She did say all of these boys were her friends."
Emma gingerly set the calendar on the table, the group of boys merrily waving at the two of them as they glanced at the cover once more. "Okay, well, here goes nothing."
Her shaking hands steadied the further into the year they went, even as they came to Draco in June and then Blaise in September. The pictures really weren't all that bad. Even Dan could admit that he'd seen much worse on the telly and he was feeling much better about the situation, even if his daughter was gallivanting around magical Britain with two men.
Until they came to December.
"Okay! That's it! I'm locking her in her room until she's eighty! They have dragons 'round these parts, right?!"
x . x . x . x . x
Snow drifted down around them as Hermione bumped her shoulder with Blaise.
"That wasn't a complete disaster."
Draco snorted inelegantly as he pulled her toward him and planted a kiss on the top of her head, ignoring the specks of frozen water clinging to her glossy hair.
"Maybe not a complete disaster, love, but not exactly how we wanted it to go."
She had to concede his point as she snuggled into his side and Blaise huddled up to the two of them for extra warmth. "So...what exactly possessed the lot of you to create that monstrosity, by the way?"
Blaise huffed out a breath as Draco burst out laughing. "Potter, of course. He said that every Christmas his aunt would receive a naughty calendar from one of the women down the road that she'd hide from his uncle. Some fire brigade sold them to raise funds. Apparently it's quite common in the Muggle world?"
Hermione nodded, deep in thought. It was a little unreal to her that Harry, her best friend and ultra quiet Harry, had thought up this hare brained scheme.
"Well, since we were trying to raise money for a new set of school brooms, we figured why not try for as much as possible? Sex sells, so they say." Draco's cheeky grin caught her eye and she burst into laughter, poking his ribs as they traipsed along the trail back to the castle.
"Well, then how did you decide who got which month? And, wait...aren't there only eleven of you?"
The two Slytherins grinned maniacally and Hermione's nether regions clenched spasmodically. Those devious grins did wonderful things to her.
"December was a...joint effort, let's just say. And the other months we did mainly by birthday, although we gave May to Potter for his 'glorious defeat'."
Hermione patted her jacket, searching for the calendar to see for herself what her boyfriends had put together, coming up empty handed. "Oh, bloody balls. I must've left it back at the Three Broomsticks."
Draco and Blaise paled rapidly, a feat in and of itself for Draco, who was already nearly as white as the snow they'd been trudging through.
"You don't think-they wouldn't...it's not as if they'd-look-would they?"
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A lonely calendar lay forgotten on a table at the Three Broomsticks, a puddle of butterbeer inching it's way closer to the glossy pages from the toppled mug it'd come from.
The two school boys that graced its pages leaned against each other, carefully wrapped Christmas boxes placed over their naked laps as green Santa hats sat atop their heads. They winked and flirted with the camera as they danced and gyrated teasingly for their audience.
As the Wizarding photo loop came to a close Blaise made sure to point out his tattoo nestled deep in the V of his abs, while Draco turned to give a nice view of his while flashing a delectable view of his backside, both proudly proclaiming that they belonged to Hermione.