Mercifully, Christmas brings a two week long holiday, though as second-years it's possible to be called in for emergencies.

"I'm not coming in," Des says firmly. "I don't even care. What are they gonna do?" He throws things haphazardly into a ratty old suitcase, while Eli and I watch him, 'helping' as he asked us to.

"Well, they could kick you out of your internship, and you'd have to full-time it down at the Ministry, bringing people coffee." Eli smiles wickedly. "Plus, you'd be homeless because there's no way we would be friends with you anymore."

"You should know by now that you can't talk tough around Eli," I tell him.

"Yep, 'cause I see right through all that crap to the goody-goody little softie you are on the inside." Eli grins, ruffling his hair in a way he clearly doesn't appreciate.

Poor long-suffering Des. Maybe homelessness would be a favorable option for him at this point.

"I'm not leaving a Caribbean cruise to come back to this constant abuse." Des turns toward me, the less abusive of his roommates. "I'll be back in a week, though. Happy Christmas."

"Happy Christmas," I respond. "We can do presents for each other when you get back then, since, well… I haven't got you anything yet."

Eli comments to herself that I've already got her something, which she wouldn't know if she didn't snoop through my closet so often.

"Alright, sounds good." Des and I move haltingly and a tad awkwardly into a hug, but once we get through that phase it's comfortable enough.

"Aww," coos Eli, living up to her usual standard of obnoxiousness.

Des quickly double checks that he has everything, and we reassure him that he does and shove him toward the fireplace. He floos to his parents' house, but a few seconds later he's back.

"Forgot my tie…" he announces, marching up to his room. "There are formal dinners, apparently," he snaps in answer to our questioning looks.

"Your 'tie,'" Eli says loudly while he's upstairs. "As in singular. As in the only tie you own."

"Oh, shut up," he growls, grabbing another pinch of floo powder.

"And a Happy New Year," Eli grins, waving him off once more. This time he doesn't return and we sit on the couch in silence for a minute. "I'm gonna miss that kid," Eli says wistfully.


Early afternoon on Christmas Eve, Eli and I pack a few things and Apparate to Hogsmeade. It's really the best place to be on Christmas, a solid foot of snow coating the whimsically sloping roofs of tiny cottages. My mum lives in a flat above a dusty little bookstore, where even the many ceiling-high shelves aren't sufficient to house the vast number of books, which often end up stacked in teetering towers on the floor. My mum is convinced that the owner, along with his two cats, lives in this shop full time. The evidence is rather compelling: a mattress stored between two shelves, and the inexplicable presence of a four-slot toaster and used frying pan among the stacks of books.

In comparison to this character of a place, my mum's flat is absolutely barren. She lives in a state of cleanliness that is all at once unfathomable and comforting to me, a nineteen year old who lives with her two best friends and is still fuzzy on the finer points of doing laundry.

Eli has spent Christmas with us before, when she could get away with it—and from her family. This time around she's been complaining about her older brother John's new girlfriend, whom Eli's never actually met, but despises regardless.

"She's a Daily Prophet reporter," she explains yet again. "Did I already tell you this?"

"Yeah." Of course. I'm the only on you've talked to in the past three days. Who else would you have told?

"Oh. Well." The redundancy of her rant does little to discourage her. "Like, that's way less important than being a Healer."

"Intern at St. Mungo's," I mutter. Though to be fair, I don't envy her family situation. She's an afterthought of a child, a girl born six years after the last of three boys, who all became wildly successful in diverse fields—which is, as Eli is fond of pointing out, statistically improbable. Her age alone has proved to be a disadvantage. What's the big deal about an O on the O.W.L.s when Steve is now a licensed Auror?

Eli's unhealthy need for attention is not a good fit with her family. Or maybe it stems from her family. Oh, Merlin, they've created a monster.

My mum welcomes us in and all but spoon-feeds us Christmas cookies. It's been about fifteen minutes and Eli's calling her 'mum' too as we sprawl on the couch watching cheesy Christmas movies. Muggles really have the right idea with this whole TV thing.

Our dinner on Christmas Eve is a meal composed of snacks, as usual: cheese and crackers, a vegetable tray, shrimp cocktail, fruit and nuts. We fill and refill our small paper plates. Eli and I split a bottle of sparkling cider, neglecting to use cups in favor of passing the bottle back and forth, and pretending to be drunk to the mixed amusement and disapproval of my mum.


It isn't until two in the morning, technically Christmas Day, that we stumble into my bedroom, wanting desperately to fall asleep in a warm bed.

"There's only one bed," Eli whines.

"It's a trundle—you can pull it out unless you want to sleep on the floor." I curl up in my bed, smiling as my eyes ease shut.

"Are you serious, Bri? I'm the guest!"

I pull the blankets over my face, but a mere couple seconds later Eli's full weight crashes down on top of me. Then she rolls off to one side and, still on top of the covers, hooks a leg around me. I whip the sheets off my face and glare at her.

She yawns theatrically. "I'm comfy, how 'bout you?"

I sigh and shove her leg off of me but am too tired to do much beyond that.


The morning brings a modest exchange of gifts: candy, lotion, jewelry, makeup. We spend a good lot of the day in our pajamas, making pancakes and frosting cookies. It's well into the afternoon, but still light out when we get dressed—or bundled up, rather—and venture outside. The day is blindingly bright, the cold sun reflecting off the crystal snow. It's well below freezing. Eli and I sprint ahead of my mum, mittens shielding our faces. We burst into the Three Broomsticks right as it's opening then wait for my mum—and her money—to arrive as we defrost. She comes in minutes later, having taken her sweet time on the frigid walk, and we order a round of hot butterbeer, gulping them down as soon as they are placed on our table. Eli complains about her scalded tongue, but downs her next drink just as quickly as the first.

And so Christmas comes and goes in a relatively unremarkable fashion.

"What's Christmas like at your house, Eli?" my mum asks her later that night.

"Oh, well, it's bigger. More of a production. Lots of cleaning and cooking and stressing." Eli gives a dismissal shrug. "Not really my thing." Her face doesn't seem quite as nonchalant as her body language, but I let it slide. It's late and it's dark and it's just not something I'm supposed to see.


The next day we head back home, carrying several pounds of leftover cookies.

"If there's an illegal Christmas cookie trade," Eli says, "I think we're a part of it now."

The day after Christmas this year is as quiet and uneventful as it is ever year. Well, at least by the time I go to sleep that night I think it's going to be. But I'm woken up after a short time by the unmistakable crack of Apparation. I lay still in bed until I hear knocking at our door a moment later. Warily, I peer out the window.

Oh, Merlin. Who else would it be?

I rush out of my room, peek in Eli's—she's still sound asleep—and right before going downstairs I catch my reflection in the mirror. Frowning, I straighten up my hair and regret the stained sweatpants and oversized t-shirt. In a moment of post-midnight poor decision making, I slip out of my sweatpants and hurl them into Des's unoccupied room. I smile, and continue down the stairs, thinking of how genius I am be able to make an extra large t-shirt look sexy under pressure.

When I open the door all that is forgotten because Teddy looks worse than I do, even pre-stained-sweatpants-removal. He also looks like a scene out of a movie, holding a bottle of something that smells like nail polish remover in a crumpled paper bag. And even in the dark I'm pretty sure he's crying.

"Oh. Hey, Teddy. What's… going on?"

The dim lighting of the house as he stumbles inside does nothing to improve his appearance. Yikes. Good thing Teddy's a metamorphmagus because if this is his natural state… all sickly and pale, thin mousy hair and small, weak eyes…

"Bri, I'm sorry. I shouldn't've come here."

"Teddy, what happened?"

We sit on the stairs and I wrestle the bottle of alcohol away from his needy grasp.

He hunches over, burying his face in his hands, muffling his words. "Well, let's see… I was at the Potters' for Christmas, and Victoire was there of course."

I'm sickened by the involuntary jolt of hope that Victoire was the one who had gotten him into this state. Have I always been this selfish?

"And long story short I asked her to marry me."

I groan, falling back against the steps. But, wait—if she had said yes he surely wouldn't have shown up on my doorstep, drunk off his ass.

He continues drearily, saying, "Basically she freaked out, saying that I was rushing her and that we're still kids. Then…" He lifts his head and stares at me with dead eyes. "Then she dumped me. So… that's that. It's over… it's all… over." He stands up slowly, his knees cracking, and starts groggily up the steps. "So I'm just gonna crash here if that's okay."

"Alright, uh, I've got a couch down here…"

He continues up, turning down the hall.

"Or you could sleep up here… Y'know, whatever you want." I stand in the door watching as he lies down in my unmade bed. "Okay, um… I'll go sleep in Des's room then. Goodnight."

"No, wait." He sits up, sudden clarity in his eye as he grabs my arm and pulls me across the tiny room to the bed. "Stay. Please."

You've got to be kidding me.

"Teddy, I'm going to go now."

"Please," he beds, staring up at me with eyes that are beginning to tear up. "Don't go."

Merlin, this is pathetic. The most pathetic part is that I shut off the light, close the door and crawl into the too-small-for-two bed with Teddy, who smells like a bar. And not even a good bar, a really sketchy bar. He is burning up, almost feverishly warm and after only a few minutes I feel him sit up behind me. His shirt flies over my head and onto the ground. He settles back down and the heat he's radiating is even stronger. His hand ghosts over my hip and then rest on it, drunken fingers toying with the hem of my t-shirt.

I don't fall asleep until long after he does, when he rolls over and only our feet and elbows bump intermittently.


We wake up late the next morning when my door bangs open.

"Eh, Bri, I'm back, and—"

As soon as I see Des's appalled face I drop my head back on the pillow and clench my eyes shut.

Teddy, shirtless, sits up, rubbing his eyes. "Hey, man, you're being really loud, can you just—"

Des slams the door, causing Teddy to wince. I scramble out of bed, ordering Teddy to stay put. First, I sneak into Des's room to retrieve my discarded sweatpants from the previous night. But they're nowhere to be found.

"Looking for these?" Des, leaning in the door frame, tosses them to me. "Why were they on my bed?"

"I just threw them in here last night, I didn't…"

He starts to walk away, so I follow him down the stairs.

"It's really honestly not what it looks like."

"Well, fuck!" Des laughs, not so much as glancing my way. It's not his regular laugh, it's hollow and bitter. "What was it then?"

"Des, we didn't—"

"Bri." He spins around and the sudden eye contact makes me shrink back. "I don't care who you shag, believe it or not. Do whatever the fuck you want, I just… I just thought you had a little self respect is all."

A low whistle comes from the stairs. "Is this about the half-naked, hung-over bloke in Bri's bed?" Eli asks, obviously trying to cut through the tension.

Des makes a bee-line for the front door, muttering on his way out. The slamming door hurts my head and I'm not the hung-over one.

"Alright, Brielle Marie Schmitt," Eli says, grabbing me by the ear and shoving me into a chair at the kitchen table. "What did you do to get Des dropping f-bombs like that?"

"Nothing!" I sputter.

She uses her thumb to lift one of her eyebrows in a manner that simply can't be taken seriously.

"Eli, trust me. I did not sleep with Teddy." I pause, rethinking what I said. "I mean, I did, but we didn't have sex or anything."

"Okay… well why isn't he off 'not having sex' with his girlfriend?" Her exaggerated air quotes are starting to really piss me off.

"They broke up," I explain shortly, impatiently.

Eli massages her temples with a level of frustration and exasperation that has to be at least partly feigned. "When?" she asks cautiously.

"Yesterday, I think."

"Aw, fuck, Bri, you're gonna have me storming out of here like Des!"

"What's the big deal?" I cry.

"Ever heard of a rebound?"

"I did—not—sleep—with him!"

The sound of Teddy clearing his throat from the hall makes my face burn and makes Eli flee from the house, letting the door fall shut behind her.

"I told you to stay in my room," I hiss at Teddy, who is still shirtless for some reason that probably has to do with ruining my life without me realizing that it's his fault.

"I was hungry," he says defensively. "Your friends really hate me, huh?"

"They don't have you," I answer unconvincingly.

"Well, they sure don't like having my around."

I decide not to waste energy arguing with him on that point.


Teddy stays for the rest of the holiday, effectively ruining it for everyone involved. Does won't so much as look at me and takes on extra shirts at the Ministry. Eli suddenly has mysterious friends whom I don't know but whose parties she goes to. And I'm stuck entertaining and consoling a lovesick Teddy.

I would so much rather be bringing government bigwigs coffee or hanging out with Eli's imaginary friends.

I've been trying to get Teddy to teach me how to cook Italian food, or to talk to him about politics, and I even offered to help him pick out a guitar, telling him he could totally make it as a musician.

But he's dead-set on being a depressed, moping loser.

At least he's sleeping on the couch now.

The end of the holiday can't come soon enough. I'm hoping that returning to work will be enough of a hint to drive Teddy out. But I won't be surprised if he's too thick to take it. And I can't help but wonder if taking Teddy out of the equation will actually fix what's wrong between Eli, Des and I this time.


A/N: I feel like a lot went down in this chapter… what are your thoughts?