It's A/N -Written for hillstar's Hanukkah challenge. I will use several prompts but right now the basis is going to be the underdog theme. [(Underdog): One of the reasons Hanukkah is considered a miracle is because the Macabees prevailed against the much larger and seemingly stronger Greek-Syrian army. -Write about some person or group of people who win in a contest against a seemingly bigger or stronger opponent.] This is the first time I write Anthony Goldstein, a Ravenclaw character, so the personality I give him is all my own interpretation. Anthony was only given a few sentences in the books.

Also, given the recent rise in hate crimes in the news lately, I decided to incorporate a bit of that here. May anyone who has been the victim of hate lately be protected :-)

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I'll Be Home for Christmas

Anthony Goldstein/Hermione Granger

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Hermione snuggled up to the warm, fleece sweater of her boyfriend, Anthony Goldstein.

"Please come home soon, Andy."

"I'll be fine." He reassured her, wrapping his arms around her waist and plucking at one of her frizzy locks of hair.

"I know. But I'm still worried," she murmured into his chest.

Anthony chuckled quietly, the sound low and rumbling against her ear as she pressed it up against his heartbeat. She lived for this: to hear his heartbeat each day, to see his smile, to be by his side. She needed him more than she could say.

"Hermione, I need you to stay here. I can't have you fighting all my battles. Someone attacked my family and I need to know who it is."

Hermione felt the old fury, of the argument they'd been having these past 3 days, storm up inside her. Yet she held back arguing with him: it seemed Anthony was determined to take care of this family issue on his own. Whether she wanted to help or not, he wouldn't accept her interference.

Her pushed back one of her curls from her face and kissed her forehead.

His jaw and lips had set in a determined, unhappy line as his blue eyes studied her.

"I know you've fought in several battles and wars, Hermione, and want to help. But you don't understand how my family is and that they don't want outside interference. I'll have to take care of this on my own."

Hermione felt tears prick at her eyes, but she held them back. "Why can't your family trust me?"

Andy chuckled. "They do, they love you. But you don't understand what it's like for my family. My mother's side of the family is both Jewish and muggle. They just want to keep this within the family."

"But you already told me what happened," Hermione pleaded, trying to reach out to him without starting another argument. He'd already told her that he wasn't going to fight with her about it anymore.

Anthony's young face suddenly became very grim and pale. "Hermione, they were victims of a hate crime. You don't really understand what that's like do you?"

Hermione's cheeks flushed red and she tried to quell her temper. "Of course, I do. I'm Muggleborn. I've been attacked and insulted many times because of my ancestry. Of course, I know what it's like Anthony–"

He grabbed her hand and shook his head. "Then you'll know they just want to keep this quiet right now until they find the perpetrators. If famous Hermione Granger were seen to be sleuthing around, it would be a dead give away, that it's under investigation." He paused to raise her hand and kiss the skin of her palm. "Trust me."

"I could Polyjuice, I could go with you–"

He began to walk away from her, towards the door. "No, Hermione, and that's final."

Hermione resisted the urge to scream at him, Anthony Goldstein could be so stubborn sometimes and set in his ways. He thought because he was half-blood and Jewish that Hermione couldn't understand him but she did. But whenever she tried to show that, he would shut down the conversation.

"I've got to go now," he said at the door before blowing her a kiss and walking off into the cold, wintry outdoors. Briefly, she watched him from the window before she heard the pop of apparition and her boyfriend disappeared.

Why couldn't he trust her to help? Why was his family so insular and protective?

Hermione just wished she could understand, though given that the people of Israel had learned to be a minority over thousands of years, perhaps there was something about Anthony Goldstein's family she would never understand. Perhaps, even being Muggleborn, she'd never understand what it meant to carry the blood of slaves and scapegoats through millennia. Hermione wasn't sure.

So she padded, as she often did when searching for answers, to the library.

I just hope he comes back soon.

Tomorrow was Christmas.

She stared vacantly at their mantelpiece where both a menorah and a small Christmas tree hung side and side. Channakah Andy had called it.

"Please come back here, Andy," she whispered to herself.

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Anthony Goldstein appeared with a loud pop of apparition in the abandoned area of an old New York neighbourhood. He turned around surreptitiously to make sure no muggles had seen him appear, before he thumbed his wand securely beneath his sleeve.

As he took footsteps through the cold, deep snow, he kept darting glances behind him and tucked his long, black coat closer to him to keep out the wind.

His long hair fell into his eyes and Anthony grimaced briefly as he remembered how his mother would complain about how long his hair had grown. While his father was a wizard, his mother was very much a muggle and was still not used to seeing some of the longer wizard hair styles that men wore.

Well, to fit in better with the muggle neighbourhood, he waved his wand briefly over his head to put a glamour on it. To the outside world now, it looked like he was an ordinary muggle man, with short cut hair, in a long black coat.

They had no idea he was a wizard and was on the hunt for the hate-criminals who spray painted and attacked his Aunt Freda's home.

He would find them. And deal them out justice quietly.

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"Auntie Ruth," he greeted his family in between a bombardment of hugs and appraisals of how handsome and well-dressed he was and 'whenever was he going to settle down and get married with a good Jewish girl.' Apparently, his mum had still not told half the family that he was dating a gentile witch. Perhaps, secretly, his mother still hoped he'd change his mind and go back to his roots, but Andy had serious doubts of this. Hermione was the one he loved.

"How is Aunt Freda and Uncle Gary doing?" he asked, noticing they were the only ones missing from the family gathering.

His mother and Aunt Ruth immediately piped up and spoke over each other in loud voices to tell him the news. "They haven't wanted to go anywhere since the vandalism, they are cooped up. But I've told them time and time again to move out of that area, it's no good!"

Andy grimaced, his jaw clenching involuntarily. While he didn't think it was a bad idea for his Aunt and Uncle to move out of a hostile area, he'd rather not give the racists what they wanted: evicting the only Jews out of all gentile area. No, a better justice would be to find the culprits and chase them out. Magic might help there. If his family left the neighbourhood they'd lived in for most of their life, that would be giving the racists who vandalized their house exactly what they wanted. An eviction.

"I'll find them," he said quietly.

His mum tutted. "Uh uh uh, you are not going anywhere til you sit down and eat and spend a little time with your father and me first. Where is your sense of family and duty?!"

"I'm here aren't I?" Andy snapped, thinking back to how he left Hermione alone back in England. Perhaps he should've brought her after all, though more than likely Hermione would just worry and then his family would turn his entire visit on its head by pestering him with questions about her. He coughed. "Where's dad?"

"Upstairs, watching Jeopardy on the telly,"

Andy sighed. His father was a wizard but as he got into old-age, his father was starting to act and live more like a muggle. Perhaps under his mother's domineering influence.

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Back in England, Hermione watched the news. She'd been trying to read about history but she couldn't concentrate. Not when she felt like history was happening all over again.

She switched through several wizarding and muggle newspapers and tv stations.

She noticed the rise in hate crimes in both the muggle world. The war had just finished in the wizarding one, but hate never seemed to completely disappear did it?

Her eyes glazed over as she heard about several attacks on minority neighbourhoods in the UK and in America. It seemed that hate was rising.

She bit her lip. Why had Andy insisted on going without her? What was he trying to hide from her?

She felt more worried than ever about what was going on in America.

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a/n: This will be a 3 part story.