For several minutes now, Ginny Weasley had been able to feel pale sunlight warming her face and to smell the sizzle of bacon rising up from the kitchen far below. Yet she willed her eyes to stay closed and her body to keep still beneath her mound of covers. She was not yet ready to feel the chill morning air against her thin cotton nightdress. Nor was she was ready to give up on lulling her mind back to the dream it had so rudely abandoned—one where the spreading warmth of firelight danced softly against her skin, matching move for move the dance of Hermione's warm lips against her own.

Stifling a small cough, Ginny sighed and accepted that the charm had been broken. The stillness of the sheets stretched over her and the lone sounds of her own breath rising and falling told the red-head that the other girl was already awake, puttering around downstairs somewhere. Any hope of a real Christmas kiss would mean she had to go find her. Which wouldn't be my kindest gesture, she mused grumpily, unless I go and find my toothbrush first.

Twenty minutes later, however, when a freshly-scrubbed Ginny finally reached the bottom of the Burrow's steps, she felt her earlier resistance to wakefulness swept away by the storm of holiday cheer surrounding her. A chorus of Weasley voices, in which she could only vaguely make out her girlfriend, greeted her heartily with "Merry Christmases" and "It's about times," and before she knew it, Ginny had been half-hugged and half-tugged to a spot on the couch between Charlie and Hermione.

Settling there, she allowed her mother to fret about her, feeling her forehead and "tsking" at her bare feet, as a steaming cup of herbal tea was shuffled into her hands. Finally, when Molly seemed satisfied that a drippy nose and ragged throat wouldn't do her daughter in, she stepped away to try to bring order to the joyful chaos overtaking the room.

"Right then, everyone's together now, time for presents" the Weasley mother announced with a glowing smile, before bustling about to clear away breakfast dishes and to pile brightly-wrapped packages neatly at her children's feet.

Order, however, could not be maintained for long, and before Ginny had managed to get the green-and-gold paper off of her first sweater, the twins had caused a ruckus, pilfering Percy's glasses and magicking them high up onto the glittering, popcorn-draped tree. With their wands, they pulled together two red streamers to act as a mouth, and before their older brother could stop them, the pine was belting out their latest rewrite of an old Christmas tune:

Dashing through the forest

On an angry centaur's back

Goes good old Dolores

And we never want her back!

Oh, students shout and cheer

As Grawp lifts her in his fist,

What fun it is to sit right here

And watch that bitch get squished . . .

Ginny almost choked on her tea, laughing at the chorus that followed, and even Ron, sitting alone in the corner armchair and purposefully avoiding eye contact with the girls, cracked a smile. Molly brokered no initial complaint either, perhaps remembering all that the horrid woman had put her family through the year before. She did, however, call a stop to it when the tree moved on to a rather uncensored version of "I Saw Voldy Kissing Death Eaters." And somehow, she managed to get most of the siblings to join in on more "traditional" wizarding carols instead, while they finished unwrapping their gifts.

The rest of the morning and afternoon passed lazily as butterbeers and plum pudding were served, as Arthur pestered Hermione with questions about the inner-working of Muggle Christmas lights and Charlie draped an arm around his sister's shoulders, sharing stories from his work on the dragon preserve. Visitors came and went as well, adding their own laughter and chatter to the mix—Tonks and Lupin, Dobby, Xenophilius and Luna. None could stay long because they all had other families to visit, but Molly made sure that each left with plates heaped full of her cookies and cakes.

Settled back on the old sofa that evening, Ginny smiled at the memory of those visits. She had been happy to see her friends, and even happier for the unexpected "gift" that each, in turn, had brought her. For as the first couple bid goodbye, inspiration had struck, and the red-head had the idea of volunteering to see all their guests back out to their portkeys, dragging Hermione along to help carry their treats. This allowed the two girls to steal small snippets of time alone together on the walk back. A moment or two when no one would miss them, when they could make good use of the mistletoe adorning the broomshed's doorway . . .

It was on the last of these treks through the snow in the yard that Hermione had slipped her gloved fingers softly down Ginny's arm as they kissed, leaving behind a ringlet of silver. Pulling away to finger the charms dangling from it, Ginny had blushed at its subtle beauty, and then blushed more deeply when she inspected it closely. Along the inside ran an inscription that changed with her touch, each version listing a different reason that her girlfriend loved her.

"It's . . . wow," the Weasley girl had murmured in awe, as their breath rose in tendrils around them and her eyes watched the changing letters.

"And a damn good thing you gave to me in private, Herm!" she'd then exclaimed a second later, her face turning a deeper scarlet at the sight of a particularly embarrassing inscription, one containing words about freckles that only Hermione had seen.

Remembering this, Ginny stifled a laugh and discreetly sidled closer to her love on the couch, until she felt their hips pressed warmly together. Though I'd be mortified to show it off, she mused, it's more than I ever would have thought to ask for, just like this day with my family, just like the girl who's joined it. . . She felt a sudden urge then to take that girl's hand, to pull her up into her arms for a slow dance around the tree, just as her father had done with her mother, the moment Celestina Warbeck's music had begun drifting through the room.

But then Ginny thought better of it, remembering Ron and her mother's warnings to "let him get used to the idea." It seems to be working at least, she thought, knowing she'd have time upstairs to get closer to her girlfriend later. Granted, he hasn't said a word to us all day, but still, he's not fighting being in here, not cursing and calling names. Given a day or two, he'll probably make up with us, realize he misses his mate, and that she'd had a good reason to not to tell him . . .

The rest of break, however, proved that this would not be the case. From what Ginny could tell, Christmas may have merely been a compromise between mother and son, one that didn't extend past the holiday's end. Since then, Ron had made a show of storming out of any room the girls entered, no matter whom he had been with or what he had been doing. An unfinished dinner, a conversation with the twins left dangling mid-sentence—his fiery temper was undiscriminating, and a bit more immature that necessary, if you asked for his mother's opinion.

Their father had tried talking to him, of course; the whole family had, long before Harry and Roxie had come along at New Year's to add their own failure to the pile.

"He says he doesn't give an owl's nut what either of you do," her Quidditch captain had reported dutifully that evening, after a sulky hour spent in his best mate's room, "He just doesn't want it anywhere near him."

"Which sounds exactly the opposite of not caring to me . . ." Ginny remembered hearing Hermione mutter irritably, in reply.

That conversation had continued on much further, of course. For over an hour, the girls had sat with Harry and Roxie, cutting up bits of confetti for the party they'd planned to celebrate the change in years. The whole time they'd tried to figure out just what the boy's problem could be. After all, he had been the one to break up with Hermione, to say he wasn't in love with her and hadn't been for some time. He had had loads of other girlfriends since, and he hadn't been the only one kept in the dark about their relationship. He wasn't quite big enough of a git to be that homophobic—in the end, they were left with many possibilities, and no definitive answers, for no matter who talked to him, Ron simply wouldn't say.

The evening before them, however, was no holiday, but rather their last at the Burrow before returning to school. And Ginny was determined to push her brother from her mind. As it stood, she and Hermione had enough other things to worry about, had always had enough other worries, and that certainly wasn't any different now, sitting at the Burrow's kitchen table, awaiting a visit from their headmaster. That morning, Dumbledore had owled the family an oddly formal letter, requesting an audience with the girls before term resumed and asking them to have "parental representation" present.

"What do you think he wants?" Hermione murmured to the air, for the fiftieth time since they'd opened the envelope. But Ginny just squeezed her hand, and Arthur just shook his head, and no one offered an answer. No one knew.

In their minds, however, all of them had guessed at some point during the day, and in a moment each would know that he or she had guessed correctly. For when the wizened old man swept through the kitchen door, he shook the snow from his boots first, offered the group a broad smile second, and made the reason for his visit more than apparent in what he did third.

From his midnight blue cloak, Dumbledore pulled a stack of papers. And the topmost one was definitively pink.