Flattened U's and Thumb Dots

By Marmalade Fever

The snowflake fell into Hermione's hair and stayed there. She sat on a bench, tugging her scarf tighter around her neck and trying to recite the runic alphabet to herself. It was a numbing exercise, one that required absolute brainpower, and so she was able to keep her mind off anything else. Anything else being a euphemism for a certain red-haired imbecile.

There was a flurry of fresh snowflakes as something or someone disturbed the frigid air around her. He sat down, uninvited, and surveyed her, uninvited.

"Come to freeze yourself to death? Not the most efficient form of suicide I've ever heard of."

Hermione's mind was still processing runes. The one with the O shape and the squiggle going above and the hook below like a goatee. That one was called—

"I could make some suggestions, if you'd like. Something a little more, hmm, expedient? Wands tend to help the process. Of course, Avada-ing yourself might not even work, seeing how the words have to go out of your mouth at the same time the spell is activating, and—no, no, I suppose it would work, considering my objection is that you'd be dead before you'd be finished saying the spell."

The other one, the one shaped like an unclosed square, its open side to the right and a dash going through its upper left corner—

"By the way, you've got a snowflake in your hair. Quite a big one. You're sure you've never learned a repelling charm? I find them quite useful when it comes to cold wet blobs attacking. Then again, grooming never was your strong point, was it, Granger?"

Which was the one shaped like a Y with an extra leg, sticking out like a K? Or should she say its extra leg was like an R? It was the same leg, after all.

"Snap out of it, will you? So he's got himself a new bird! It was bound to happen sooner or later, and this is a party. Most people do bring dates to parties. But I guess you never were most people."

Hermione looked up, quickly running out of runes. "Did you bring a date?" The perpendicular lines that extended from an ellipse, a dot in its center.

"Are you implying I'm most people?"

His nose resembled a rune, a narrow triangle with two small circles to either side of its base. "You sure turned that one into a win-win situation. Either you're unique and beyond social norms or you're not a desperate loser who couldn't get a date to a Christmas party."

"Did you just call yourself a desperate loser? How quaint."

A squiggle in a distorted leaning S. "I thought I'd save you the trouble."

He groaned. "You've been sitting out here too long. Your brain is turning to slush."

A bracket and a parenthesis in one. "Is that concern I detect?"

He scoffed. "Hardly. I've just come to bother you. My work is done here." He rose, though he didn't walk away.

A lone plus sign. "Was there something else?"

He stared at her, his head crooked to the side, making his nose a different rune now. "Just curious…. Suppose you'd like to be most people with me?"

Her head crooked to the other side, so they resembled the arms of a Y. "Why?" she echoed.

"It's just a waste is all."

"Of what?"

"Of perfectly good company. And perfectly good banter. I do so love a good repartee, don't you?" His hand extended, curled like a flattened U, his thumb like a dot. She placed her own flattened U into his, and they formed two curved, overlapping lines, their thumb dots tightly clasped.

That had always been her favorite rune.

A.N. This was for a Christmas drabble contest that I entered. Only two of us entered, so I kind of won? Kind of tied? lol