Hermione stared blankly out the window. The late December rain fell gently to the ground, making her long for the much more beautiful snows that had covered the grounds of Hogwarts. She turned away with a sigh. Winter would never again be as beautiful as it was then, she thought.
She turned her gaze toward the table, and as it fell on Harry, for a moment, they were twelve years old again. She closed her eyes and let the images appear: the three of them in Hagrid's hut, safe from the cold. Laughing as they shared their stories over tea and hot chocolate, Hagrid's spiked (secretly, he thought) with a few drops of firewhiskey. Nibbling on spiced biscuits, with Fang pressing near their chairs in hopes of catching their stray crumbs. Hermione's reverie was broken by a tug on her pant leg. She blinked as if to clear her senses, then looked down to see Lily grinning up at her.
"Are you going to help, Mummy?" the five-year-old asked excitedly. "Daddy said we could make some Christmas biscuits the Muggle way!"
Hermione ruffled the girl's hair. "Of course. But," she added as she shifted her smile to Harry, "I hope he's done his reading on the recipes. We wouldn't want our guests to be subjected to inauthentic sweets, would we?"
Harry grinned. "I have the recipe my grandmother used. Not that I'd recognize it." Seeing Hermione's frown, he explained its origin before she could ask: "Dudley got it for me from his mum."
"Suppose she is good for something," Hermione muttered darkly.
"What do you mean?" Lily asked. "I thought everyone was worth something. That's what Auntie Luna always says, Mummy."
"That wasn't very nice of me to say," Hermione admitted. "I just don't like Daddy's Aunt Petunia very much. She was very unkind to him."
"Oh," said Lily, apparently satisfied. "When are Uncle Neville and Auntie Lavender going to be here? Why did they take a train instead of Floo or Apparating? Why —"
Hermione held up her hand to stop the flow of questions and crouched down to near her daughter's height. "They'll be here in a couple of hours," she replied. "They took the train because they're coming from Neville's work at Hogwarts, and they thought it would be nice to take the train back with the students going home for Christmas." She patted Lily's shoulder to finish the conversation. "Now, wash your hands, and then we'll make our biscuits." Lily grinned as she sauntered to her stool by the sink, humming happily.
When Hermione looked back up to Harry, she found him smiling at her, his eyes seeming to glow with pleasure. "It'll be a really nice Christmas," he murmured as she walked over to stand behind him, looking over his shoulders at the recipes he'd laid out. "We'll have your parents, Luna, Neville and Lav..."
Hermione smiled and placed her hand lovingly on his upper back. "It's still new to you, isn't it, Harry?"
He nodded, a bit solemnly. "Christmases at Hogwarts were nice enough, but the ones with Ron and his family were always better."
"And ours?"
"The best of all."
Hermione sat next to her husband and laid her head on his arm. "I think so too," she said quietly.