Hogwarts (Challenges and Assignments).

Assignment 7 — Arts and Crafts: Needlework — task 2 — write about someone receiving a Weasley jumper (someone who we don't see actually get one, and no other Weasleys, inc. canon marriages and children to Weasleys)

Going, Going, Gone! — (dialogue) "you're not going to like this"

The Golden Snitch; Canopus, Aurora Academy.

Through the Universe — 167 — solstice — (word) significance

Molly Weasley didn't remember when she decided to make a Weasley jumper for Draco Malfoy. She just knew that she had to.

She knew deep down that Draco wasn't a bad person. He'd just been raised wrong his entire life, had been pushed away, had been hated by most of the school because of his parents. He hadn't had loving parents, and as a mother, Molly's heart couldn't take that.

So she sat down one day with a ball of yarn and began knitting.

"Who's that one for?" Ron asked, coming in the back door and shutting it behind him with a loud slam and a "brr." He stomped a couple times on the doormat, making a bunch of snow fall off his clothes and boots, and crossed the room to stand by the roaring fire. He held out his hands to the orange flames and looked back over his shoulder at his mum.

She glanced up from her routine. "Shh," she said crossly. "You've made me lose track of where I was." She ignored him and went back to muttering "knit one, purl two, knit one, purl two."

Ron wisely shut his mouth. A few minutes later, Molly set her work aside. The sweater was coming along nicely; it was dark green and about half of it was done. She'd decided to not knit Draco's initial into it — that would be a dead giveaway of who it was from. "Oh, just a friend who needs one," she said vaguely.

Frowning, Ron said, "But you never give Weasley sweaters out to people who aren't Weasleys or friends of the family."

Molly sighed. "You're not going to like this," she warned.

"Why, who is it?"

"Draco Malfoy."

Ron stared for a minute, eyes comically wide and mouth opened in a perfectly round 'O' shape. "You're joking," he said blankly. "You're making a sweater for that slimy Slytherin git?"

"Ronald Bilius Weasley," admonished Molly. "I'm ashamed of you! Draco is a perfectly nice young man who was led down the wrong path by everyone in his life, and is already on house arrest. So yes, I am making him a Weasley sweater for Christmas." Her tone obviously meant that the discussion was closed.

Ron grumbled for another few minutes before going upstairs, leaving Molly to resume her knitting in peace. (Or what passed as peace for her considering that Ron was singing loudly and very out of tune in the shower and she could quite clearly hear the others outside throwing snowballs.)

Two days later, it was finished, wrapped, and ready to send. It had turned out quite nicely; the wool was especially soft, and she thought he would appreciate the color. The packaging was fancier than the family's normal brown wrapping paper in an attempt to disguise the sender. She hoped the significance of the gift wouldn't be lost on the young Malfoy.

She went to the post office and dropped the package off instead of going inside. She already looked suspicious enough sending something — everyone knew that the Weasleys spent Christmas together and tried to never be out of town for the holidays. (Mostly because they didn't want to miss out on Molly's food.)

She hurried home, heart considerably lighter.

Draco woke early Christmas morn and immediately turned over and went back to sleep.

An hour later, his wand, serving as his alarm clock, buzzed and he slammed his hand down on the wooden stick, effectively shutting it off.

He hated Christmas. And Valentine's Day. And all holidays, really. Mostly because he always got presents he neither needed nor wanted.

He remembered one Christmas when he was but six years old, he'd asked his father for a teddy bear. Lucius had scowled blackly and when Draco opened his lavishly wrapped gift on Christmas morning, he'd been sorely disappointed to see the newest and most expensive model of toy brooms. He'd finally mustered the courage to ask his father why he hadn't received the teddy bear he'd wanted and asked for, and Lucius slapped him and told him that teddy bears were decidedly Muggle and he would die before his perfect son ever laid his Pureblooded hands on one.

No, he thought sullenly, he didn't like Christmas at all.

A tapping sound came at his window just then, snapping Draco out of his reverie. He grumbled, threw the covers off himself, and walked over to the window. He raised the sash and glared at the owl perched on the windowsill. The bird shrank a bit, but pecked at the parcel attached to its leg.

Draco untied the package and stared at it. His parents might not have been around much for Christmas — yet another reason he'd hated winter hols when he had visited for them during his Hogwarts years — but they had yet to stoop to sending his presents by owl. They lived in the same house, for Merlin's sake!

He had no idea who it could be from. Even his friends rarely sent him gifts. And yet...this package was addressed to him. Mr. Draco Malfoy, read the tag. He sighed and slid his finger beneath the neatly folded paper. If this was some sort of prank…

Draco set the wrapping paper aside and narrowed his eyes at the white box — like the ones clothing came in — inside. Finally with a heavy sigh, he pulled the top off.

A sweater? He lifted it out of the tissue paper and stared at it. It was obviously handmade, which Draco had never had something of, but the color was perfect and the material used to make it was so soft. He slipped it on over his pajama shirt and smiled.

"Where'd you get that sweater?" his mother asked him at breakfast. It was one of the rare days that they hadn't bothered to get dressed, and all three were wearing — not their nightclothes exactly, but clothes they had to lounge around the house in. Not that Narcissa and Lucius, some of the most refined and proper people in the Wizarding world, lounged in them.

Draco looked down at his new sweater. "It came for me by owl," he replied, and went back to buttering his toast.

Lucius glared at his son. "That's a Weasley sweater," he said in an accusatory tone. Narcissa dropped her knife.

"A Weasley sweater?" she repeated. "Draco, why are you wearing that?"

He shrugged. "It's comfortable. And the war's over if you hadn't noticed. It's about time we started mingling — even with those we once believed beneath us."

His father slapped his palm down on the table and exclaimed, "Have you no shame, Draco? Have we and our family name not been dragged through the mud enough?"

Frowning, Draco began, "But —"

"No!" Lucius pounded his fist on the table again. "Subject closed," he announced.

Knowing better than to continue the argument, Draco went back to eating his toast, still frowning.

Later that day, Molly received a thank you note from Draco Malfoy.

word count: 1173