The Wednesday officially became rotten when I realised we still had three
weeks to go before Christmas break. Three whole weeks, that made twenty-one
days, five hundred and four hours and god knew it was too many minutes.
Three whole weeks left with the Gryffindors before I might have a chance to
go home and see my little sister, and have the snowball war I'd promised
her. The way things looked right now, Lucas wouldn't let me out of his
sight, and my sister would never get her snowball war. If I could get out
of the castle long enough to see them I'd be lucky.
Our Defence lessons had gone completely round the bend. Due to my wandless magic, I'd been excused from participating, so I at with a book in the corner while the others learned new spells to defend themselves against garden gnomes. I could see Millicent and Granger grow more and more impatient with Lucas as the days went by. It was obvious he'd been told by the Headmaster to tone down his teaching after the duel-class. Maybe teaching us to defend ourselves against garden gnomes was just a way to make our promised exams the more unprepared. Keeping us busy until he could get permission to let us work on our projects again.
Tacked up on my wall, found somewhere by a sleep deprived Theo, was an old calendar, with pictures of dragons, on which I crossed out the days to Christmas break. The red crosses slowly outnumbered the uncrossed days, but all too slowly for my tastes. The days went by, and Agnes nearly drove me up the walls by not being able to look at me without grinning evilly. Ever since I'd told them I'd given Granger the Slytherin Cross, Agnes and Millicent had spent all together too much time whispering to each other in the corners. They scared me sometimes.
The weekend was more than welcome, because all professors were heaping us with homework due to the upcoming break. I stayed up from Saturday morning to Sunday evening before I finally went to sleep, working on Transfiguration essays and Arithmancy homework. Only a constant supply of coffee kept me going the whole way.
After the nightmare weekend, Lucas called me into his office. The poor Hufflepuff he sent running after me, a second year, was almost in tears when he found me, once more proving the utter scariness of Vincent Lucas. I ended my traditional aimless-Monday wandering and climbed the stairs to Lucas's office whistling to myself.
"What did you want with me?" I asked, sticking my head through the door, "I'm rather hungry and would like to go eat now, so could you make it quick?"
"Sit down, Zabini. You're not getting out of this one." Lucas ordered me.
"Fine, fine. I'll hold you responsible if I pass out though. Imagine the wrath of Pomfrey." I shrugged and half-sat, half-fell into the chair.
"I'll handle it. Besides, you appear to have run out of medication, so we might as well get you some more." Lucas commented off-handedly. "What I wished to speak to you about was the upcoming Christmas break."
"Ah, here it comes, the reason I won't be allowed home." I sighed grumpily.
"You will be allowed home, but not for the whole holiday." Lucas gave what for him was a smile, but for others was a nervous twitch. "Your family will have to be informed of your recent developments in magic, of course. If you came home and told them about it in the manner I'm sure you would do, they wouldn't believe you. Therefore, I am going with you, as ordered by the Headmaster. He believes it's because of your so called horrible behaviour, and I feel no rush to enlighten him. You will be allowed two days home, namely Christmas Eve and the day after, before going back here."
"Whoo, I get to have a baby-sitter on my Christmas holidays." I grumbled, incredibly bored and annoyed. "Hopefully you're up for snowball wars, because that's what I'll be doing."
"That was all, Zabini. You can leave now." Lucas told me, raising an eyebrow at the mention of snowball wars.
Dinner somehow tasted like nothing, knowing that not even my Christmas break would be normal. Not even in my own house would I be allowed to forget about the world outside, not even in my room could I pretend to be sane, if only for a moment. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into myself, put my hands over my ears and just shut the world out, forget about everything and rest until my nerves stopped tearing apart as I moved. Even Cain, who had kept out of everyone's way the past two weeks noticed something was wrong with me.
"Blaise, are you alright?" He asked quietly as dinner was ending.
"Nope. Will be soon, hopefully." I shrugged it off. "Professor Lucas has to come home to me and talk to my mother about my violent behaviour. The fights with Weasley, you know."
"Oh. Professor Lucas is scary." Cain nodded to himself. "Where do you live?"
"Now? Well, I think it's France, up in the mountains. High enough to get snow in the winters." I smiled at the thought of snowball wars with my sister. "Don't know for sure though. Mother could have gone to Italy too. Or closer to Paris."
"You don't know where you live?" Cain's eyes were the size of dinner plates.
"Well, My family is incredibly old, and has more inheritance than should be legal." I smiled and ruffled his hair. "My mother's father comes from Italy, and her mother's from France, and when she got married to my father, grandfather and grandmother both gave them mansions, or castles, whatever you want to call them, as wedding presents. One in Italy, and one close to Paris. My father's part British and part French, and had a German adoptive uncle, so we own places in Britain, the mountain castle in France and a mansion in Germany too. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of them all."
"Wow." Cain breathed, "A castle in France? All we have is a big house in Wales."
"Is it a nice house?" I wondered.
"Yeah; we have the best climbing tree outside my window!" Cain grinned widely. "I love it!"
"Then it's worth more than all the castle's in France." I told him.
And it was. We hardly used our properties, and when we did, they were empty and too large and cold. I'd much rather have a house in Wales with a climbing-tree outside my window. Would have been nicer than growing up in a huge mansion and never seeing my father except for when his work allowed him to come home before I fell asleep. If he came home at all. My appetite, which had been almost non-existent to begin with, disappeared completely at the thought of my father.
"Not hungry Blaise?" Draco asked, sitting down next to me.
"Not particularly. What're you doing over Christmas?" I changed topics.
"Hopefully getting too many presents and being even more filthy rich than normal," Draco grinned, "You?"
"A snowball war with my sister and trying to keep out of my mother's way is all I've got planned," I wrinkled my nose, "She's going to want to cuddle me and worry over me and be a good mother. She'll fail utterly, but you can't blame her for trying."
"I'll be trying to convince my mother I don't have to be married before I'm seventeen, and unwrapping presents." Millicent said, with a sigh. "Hopefully Father will be able to rein her in."
"Aside from listening to my mother's whining about Cassius Warrington and his cowardly habits, nothing." Pansy shrugged. "My Dad might take me out skating, we do it every year."
"I'll spend Christmas playing chess with my cat." Agnes said. "If my grandmother deems me safe enough to allow down in furnished rooms."
"Aren't we a cheerful bunch," Theo commented. "The only one who seems remotely happy about Christmas is Draco. I won't be going home, so my holidays will be spent in the company of an all too Gryffindor Headmaster. We're pathetic."
"Yeah, but we're classy pathetic." I said, gesturing with my glass of pumpkin juice. "Gryffindors are trashy pathetic. We do it with style."
"Slytherin pride," Theo said, raising his glass as well.
"Slytherin honour," Agnes said, raising hers.
"Slytherin solidarity," Gaspar broke in, hailing with an empty glass.
"Slytherin vengeance." I grinned evilly. "It's time we show them how to go down in style. Slytherin style."
"The Christmas spirit practically shimmers in the air around us, no?" Millicent chuckled.
"'Tis the season to be depressed." I grinned back.
The round of laughter that comment provoked had the rest of the Great Hall staring at us in confusion. Granger especially, seemed suspicious of us. Couldn't blame them really; laughing Slytherins usually led to trouble for everyone.
'
The last test was written, the last assignment turned in. All I did now was wait for the holidays. Our little outbreak of laughter in the Great Hall had everyone watching us as if we were crazy, or planning something sinister, and Granger had been glaring at me more than usual. We'd have daily glaring games, which would invariably end with me having to duck a blow from her after saying something about the Slytherin Cross. I still hadn't gotten an explanation to why she was still wearing it. Agnes just kept smiling and saying Granger was a girl and that I should be satisfied with that when I asked her.
Our little group got more and more isolated as time went by. All older students, except Gaspar, looked at us as if we were crazy, or for the more Voldemort-inclined students, despise. But it was a comfortable, non-hostile despise. Open fighting within the House wasn't the Slytherin way, and as of late, neither was backstabbing in the dark either. Moon's disappearance had caused both a rift and a peace among our ranks. It divided us, but made us realise that fighting wouldn't lead to anything but losses for both sides. When the war came for real, the pretences would fall, and we'd fight people we'd known since infancy, but not now.
The first real snowfall of the year came the morning everyone was going back to their families. Heavy snowflakes fell with the special sound snowfall makes, coating Hogwarts in white cotton candy, or so it seemed. Hagrid started dragging snowy trees down the halls, singing Christmas carols with his ringing bass voice, like usual, but this year his voice kept breaking when he sang ´God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs´. Seeing the large man cry and mumble to himself was nothing short of unnerving.
I saw Millicent, Gaspar, Pansy, Draco and Agnes off at the train station together with Theo, waving like crazy. Cain hung out the compartment- window, waving back and smiling so hard it looked like his face would split. The Christmas spirit we'd all claimed to lack had taken over us against better judgement, and everything seemed better somehow. Not even the prospect of only two days at home over Christmas could get me down. Theo and I raced back to the castle, laughing the whole way. There was something about Christmas at Hogwarts that made me feel seven years old again.
"I thought you said you were going home over Christmas," Theo said breathlessly when we finally slowed down in the Entrance Hall. "You said you'd be having a snowball war with your sister, didn't you?"
"I am going home, but only for two days." I grimaced. "Lucas and the Headmaster thinks my behaviour over the past few weeks has been too violent to let me go home. An extended detention, almost."
"Though luck." Theo said sympathetically. "Well, I've got to go; I still have Agnes' present to make. It has to be special, so I'll put a lot of time on it."
"You do that." I grinned, both at his eagerness to make a present, and at his obvious worship of Agnes.
Theo was Slytherin's resident artist. Maybe it was his many sleepless nights that had made him start doodling on paper to make the hours pass, but whatever the reason he'd gotten very good over the years. We'd all wound up in his gallery of drawings and paintings sometime, and his idea of a good birthday or Christmas present was a drawing. I could only imagine what he'd give to Agnes. I'd gotten some of his paintings of dragons and Thestrals earlier years, and I'd probably get the same thins year.
With nothing to do, I stood in the Entrance Hall for a moment, before deciding to take a walk around the grounds before dinner. In only a few short hours, the snow had covered the grass with a layer of snow several inches thick, and my boots made crunching sounds as I walked. The wind bit my face and I could feel my cheeks slowly turning redder by the minute. After about ten minutes, I must have looked like I was painted in the Gryffindor colours. I stopped by the lake, and looked out over the frozen surface. A fleeting thought of how the Squid managed under the ice hit me before I shook it off.
Snow started to settle on my head and shoulders as I stood still, trying to see something through the mist my breath was making. Something moved closer to the castle, and I turned my head to see a black-robed form with suspiciously red and gold markings move across the snow-covered grounds. The bushy brown hair revealed it to be Granger. Funny. I hadn't known she was staying. I'd seen Weasley and Potter both leave, and then it was just logical for her to leave too. She seemed to be alive and kicking and still at Hogwarts, and moving about on the grounds, - I squinted – building a snowman. How utterly Gryffindor.
"'S'at you, Snape?" Hagrid's rumbling voice asked, "Nah, it ain't. You jus' looked like him for a moment there. 'Course it couldn't be Snape. 'E's gone and disappeared."
"Hmm." I replied, not taking my eyes off Granger. She was having trouble putting the middle section of the snowman on the bottom section. A small smile twitched on my lips. It was fun to see Granger fail to accomplish something for once.
"Who's that?" The gigantic man rumbled, shading his eyes with one hand and squinting at Granger. "'Ere, that's Hermione!"
"Hmm." I answered again, not having the energy or the wish to make a more eloquent reply.
"Yer Zabini, ain't yer?"
I nodded.
"Heard about yer dad. 'M sorry." A giant hand weighed my shoulder down. I shrugged it off.
"I'll get over it." I said shortly. "If you don't mind, I have things to do - "
"Starin' at Hermione is ´things to do´?" The ground keeper snorted. "You can' fool me, Zabini. You been out 'ere for twenty minutes staring at 'er."
He left me blinking as he walked away. I'd thought I'd been watching Granger for about five minutes, not twenty. And why wasn't I fooling Hagrid? And fooling him about what? Grumbling to myself about odd ground keepers and snowmen, I walked back to the castle. The snow stuck to the soles of my boots, and I got gradually taller as I walked. I stopped halfway and leaned against a tree, cleaning the snow off to a tune of muttered curses.
I didn't see it coming, because I was bent over my boots. I didn't expect the sudden chill in my face or the impact of freezing snow on my chest. I certainly did not expect looking up and finding Granger stuffing all her fingers in her mouth, trying not to giggle. Snow dripped slowly down the side of my face and the front of my robes. An unreasonable wish to dunk her in the lake came over me, but I checked it. Dumbledore wouldn't look kindly on me killing one of the smartest witches at Hogwarts, so I clenched my fists and ground my teeth to keep from lashing out at her. Wiping away the snow from my face slowly, I stared at her expressionlessly, until she stopped giggling.
"That," I said, "Was not something one has come to expect from the smartest witch to ever walk Hogwarts' grounds. From a Gryffindor, however, it's nothing less than can be expected. Someday, when I'm feeling less Christmas- cheery than I am now, I will take my revenge for that. But not now."
"You deserved it." Granger flipped back.
"For what? Leaning on the poor tree?" I snorted. "It wasn't as if it was complaining, was it?"
"For being a prat." She snapped, ignoring my rather silly retort. "And for constantly picking fights with me. Consider it payback. Something you Slytherins would understand wonderfully."
"That was rather different of you, Granger," I replied, "Does your other personality only come out to play when Potter and Weasley aren't around?"
"Split personalities are reserved for the resident nutcases, like you, Zabini." She snorted derisively before turning back to her snowman.
There was nothing for me to say, so after a few moments of sputtering, I turned on my heels and stormed back to the castle. One point to Granger today, but I'd win it back tomorrow. Daily arguments had turned into an addictive habit, and this one was just the last in a long on-going debate of my sanity and her neat-freakiness. It was a miracle that she hadn't slapped me again, and a miracle that Potter and Weasley hadn't tried to rip my spine out through my nose and beat me to death with it.
If I survived to Christmas Eve, I'd be lucky.
'
Ending Notes; shorter chapter this time, but hopefully, the next one will be longer and include more plot-points than this one.
Our Defence lessons had gone completely round the bend. Due to my wandless magic, I'd been excused from participating, so I at with a book in the corner while the others learned new spells to defend themselves against garden gnomes. I could see Millicent and Granger grow more and more impatient with Lucas as the days went by. It was obvious he'd been told by the Headmaster to tone down his teaching after the duel-class. Maybe teaching us to defend ourselves against garden gnomes was just a way to make our promised exams the more unprepared. Keeping us busy until he could get permission to let us work on our projects again.
Tacked up on my wall, found somewhere by a sleep deprived Theo, was an old calendar, with pictures of dragons, on which I crossed out the days to Christmas break. The red crosses slowly outnumbered the uncrossed days, but all too slowly for my tastes. The days went by, and Agnes nearly drove me up the walls by not being able to look at me without grinning evilly. Ever since I'd told them I'd given Granger the Slytherin Cross, Agnes and Millicent had spent all together too much time whispering to each other in the corners. They scared me sometimes.
The weekend was more than welcome, because all professors were heaping us with homework due to the upcoming break. I stayed up from Saturday morning to Sunday evening before I finally went to sleep, working on Transfiguration essays and Arithmancy homework. Only a constant supply of coffee kept me going the whole way.
After the nightmare weekend, Lucas called me into his office. The poor Hufflepuff he sent running after me, a second year, was almost in tears when he found me, once more proving the utter scariness of Vincent Lucas. I ended my traditional aimless-Monday wandering and climbed the stairs to Lucas's office whistling to myself.
"What did you want with me?" I asked, sticking my head through the door, "I'm rather hungry and would like to go eat now, so could you make it quick?"
"Sit down, Zabini. You're not getting out of this one." Lucas ordered me.
"Fine, fine. I'll hold you responsible if I pass out though. Imagine the wrath of Pomfrey." I shrugged and half-sat, half-fell into the chair.
"I'll handle it. Besides, you appear to have run out of medication, so we might as well get you some more." Lucas commented off-handedly. "What I wished to speak to you about was the upcoming Christmas break."
"Ah, here it comes, the reason I won't be allowed home." I sighed grumpily.
"You will be allowed home, but not for the whole holiday." Lucas gave what for him was a smile, but for others was a nervous twitch. "Your family will have to be informed of your recent developments in magic, of course. If you came home and told them about it in the manner I'm sure you would do, they wouldn't believe you. Therefore, I am going with you, as ordered by the Headmaster. He believes it's because of your so called horrible behaviour, and I feel no rush to enlighten him. You will be allowed two days home, namely Christmas Eve and the day after, before going back here."
"Whoo, I get to have a baby-sitter on my Christmas holidays." I grumbled, incredibly bored and annoyed. "Hopefully you're up for snowball wars, because that's what I'll be doing."
"That was all, Zabini. You can leave now." Lucas told me, raising an eyebrow at the mention of snowball wars.
Dinner somehow tasted like nothing, knowing that not even my Christmas break would be normal. Not even in my own house would I be allowed to forget about the world outside, not even in my room could I pretend to be sane, if only for a moment. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into myself, put my hands over my ears and just shut the world out, forget about everything and rest until my nerves stopped tearing apart as I moved. Even Cain, who had kept out of everyone's way the past two weeks noticed something was wrong with me.
"Blaise, are you alright?" He asked quietly as dinner was ending.
"Nope. Will be soon, hopefully." I shrugged it off. "Professor Lucas has to come home to me and talk to my mother about my violent behaviour. The fights with Weasley, you know."
"Oh. Professor Lucas is scary." Cain nodded to himself. "Where do you live?"
"Now? Well, I think it's France, up in the mountains. High enough to get snow in the winters." I smiled at the thought of snowball wars with my sister. "Don't know for sure though. Mother could have gone to Italy too. Or closer to Paris."
"You don't know where you live?" Cain's eyes were the size of dinner plates.
"Well, My family is incredibly old, and has more inheritance than should be legal." I smiled and ruffled his hair. "My mother's father comes from Italy, and her mother's from France, and when she got married to my father, grandfather and grandmother both gave them mansions, or castles, whatever you want to call them, as wedding presents. One in Italy, and one close to Paris. My father's part British and part French, and had a German adoptive uncle, so we own places in Britain, the mountain castle in France and a mansion in Germany too. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of them all."
"Wow." Cain breathed, "A castle in France? All we have is a big house in Wales."
"Is it a nice house?" I wondered.
"Yeah; we have the best climbing tree outside my window!" Cain grinned widely. "I love it!"
"Then it's worth more than all the castle's in France." I told him.
And it was. We hardly used our properties, and when we did, they were empty and too large and cold. I'd much rather have a house in Wales with a climbing-tree outside my window. Would have been nicer than growing up in a huge mansion and never seeing my father except for when his work allowed him to come home before I fell asleep. If he came home at all. My appetite, which had been almost non-existent to begin with, disappeared completely at the thought of my father.
"Not hungry Blaise?" Draco asked, sitting down next to me.
"Not particularly. What're you doing over Christmas?" I changed topics.
"Hopefully getting too many presents and being even more filthy rich than normal," Draco grinned, "You?"
"A snowball war with my sister and trying to keep out of my mother's way is all I've got planned," I wrinkled my nose, "She's going to want to cuddle me and worry over me and be a good mother. She'll fail utterly, but you can't blame her for trying."
"I'll be trying to convince my mother I don't have to be married before I'm seventeen, and unwrapping presents." Millicent said, with a sigh. "Hopefully Father will be able to rein her in."
"Aside from listening to my mother's whining about Cassius Warrington and his cowardly habits, nothing." Pansy shrugged. "My Dad might take me out skating, we do it every year."
"I'll spend Christmas playing chess with my cat." Agnes said. "If my grandmother deems me safe enough to allow down in furnished rooms."
"Aren't we a cheerful bunch," Theo commented. "The only one who seems remotely happy about Christmas is Draco. I won't be going home, so my holidays will be spent in the company of an all too Gryffindor Headmaster. We're pathetic."
"Yeah, but we're classy pathetic." I said, gesturing with my glass of pumpkin juice. "Gryffindors are trashy pathetic. We do it with style."
"Slytherin pride," Theo said, raising his glass as well.
"Slytherin honour," Agnes said, raising hers.
"Slytherin solidarity," Gaspar broke in, hailing with an empty glass.
"Slytherin vengeance." I grinned evilly. "It's time we show them how to go down in style. Slytherin style."
"The Christmas spirit practically shimmers in the air around us, no?" Millicent chuckled.
"'Tis the season to be depressed." I grinned back.
The round of laughter that comment provoked had the rest of the Great Hall staring at us in confusion. Granger especially, seemed suspicious of us. Couldn't blame them really; laughing Slytherins usually led to trouble for everyone.
'
The last test was written, the last assignment turned in. All I did now was wait for the holidays. Our little outbreak of laughter in the Great Hall had everyone watching us as if we were crazy, or planning something sinister, and Granger had been glaring at me more than usual. We'd have daily glaring games, which would invariably end with me having to duck a blow from her after saying something about the Slytherin Cross. I still hadn't gotten an explanation to why she was still wearing it. Agnes just kept smiling and saying Granger was a girl and that I should be satisfied with that when I asked her.
Our little group got more and more isolated as time went by. All older students, except Gaspar, looked at us as if we were crazy, or for the more Voldemort-inclined students, despise. But it was a comfortable, non-hostile despise. Open fighting within the House wasn't the Slytherin way, and as of late, neither was backstabbing in the dark either. Moon's disappearance had caused both a rift and a peace among our ranks. It divided us, but made us realise that fighting wouldn't lead to anything but losses for both sides. When the war came for real, the pretences would fall, and we'd fight people we'd known since infancy, but not now.
The first real snowfall of the year came the morning everyone was going back to their families. Heavy snowflakes fell with the special sound snowfall makes, coating Hogwarts in white cotton candy, or so it seemed. Hagrid started dragging snowy trees down the halls, singing Christmas carols with his ringing bass voice, like usual, but this year his voice kept breaking when he sang ´God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs´. Seeing the large man cry and mumble to himself was nothing short of unnerving.
I saw Millicent, Gaspar, Pansy, Draco and Agnes off at the train station together with Theo, waving like crazy. Cain hung out the compartment- window, waving back and smiling so hard it looked like his face would split. The Christmas spirit we'd all claimed to lack had taken over us against better judgement, and everything seemed better somehow. Not even the prospect of only two days at home over Christmas could get me down. Theo and I raced back to the castle, laughing the whole way. There was something about Christmas at Hogwarts that made me feel seven years old again.
"I thought you said you were going home over Christmas," Theo said breathlessly when we finally slowed down in the Entrance Hall. "You said you'd be having a snowball war with your sister, didn't you?"
"I am going home, but only for two days." I grimaced. "Lucas and the Headmaster thinks my behaviour over the past few weeks has been too violent to let me go home. An extended detention, almost."
"Though luck." Theo said sympathetically. "Well, I've got to go; I still have Agnes' present to make. It has to be special, so I'll put a lot of time on it."
"You do that." I grinned, both at his eagerness to make a present, and at his obvious worship of Agnes.
Theo was Slytherin's resident artist. Maybe it was his many sleepless nights that had made him start doodling on paper to make the hours pass, but whatever the reason he'd gotten very good over the years. We'd all wound up in his gallery of drawings and paintings sometime, and his idea of a good birthday or Christmas present was a drawing. I could only imagine what he'd give to Agnes. I'd gotten some of his paintings of dragons and Thestrals earlier years, and I'd probably get the same thins year.
With nothing to do, I stood in the Entrance Hall for a moment, before deciding to take a walk around the grounds before dinner. In only a few short hours, the snow had covered the grass with a layer of snow several inches thick, and my boots made crunching sounds as I walked. The wind bit my face and I could feel my cheeks slowly turning redder by the minute. After about ten minutes, I must have looked like I was painted in the Gryffindor colours. I stopped by the lake, and looked out over the frozen surface. A fleeting thought of how the Squid managed under the ice hit me before I shook it off.
Snow started to settle on my head and shoulders as I stood still, trying to see something through the mist my breath was making. Something moved closer to the castle, and I turned my head to see a black-robed form with suspiciously red and gold markings move across the snow-covered grounds. The bushy brown hair revealed it to be Granger. Funny. I hadn't known she was staying. I'd seen Weasley and Potter both leave, and then it was just logical for her to leave too. She seemed to be alive and kicking and still at Hogwarts, and moving about on the grounds, - I squinted – building a snowman. How utterly Gryffindor.
"'S'at you, Snape?" Hagrid's rumbling voice asked, "Nah, it ain't. You jus' looked like him for a moment there. 'Course it couldn't be Snape. 'E's gone and disappeared."
"Hmm." I replied, not taking my eyes off Granger. She was having trouble putting the middle section of the snowman on the bottom section. A small smile twitched on my lips. It was fun to see Granger fail to accomplish something for once.
"Who's that?" The gigantic man rumbled, shading his eyes with one hand and squinting at Granger. "'Ere, that's Hermione!"
"Hmm." I answered again, not having the energy or the wish to make a more eloquent reply.
"Yer Zabini, ain't yer?"
I nodded.
"Heard about yer dad. 'M sorry." A giant hand weighed my shoulder down. I shrugged it off.
"I'll get over it." I said shortly. "If you don't mind, I have things to do - "
"Starin' at Hermione is ´things to do´?" The ground keeper snorted. "You can' fool me, Zabini. You been out 'ere for twenty minutes staring at 'er."
He left me blinking as he walked away. I'd thought I'd been watching Granger for about five minutes, not twenty. And why wasn't I fooling Hagrid? And fooling him about what? Grumbling to myself about odd ground keepers and snowmen, I walked back to the castle. The snow stuck to the soles of my boots, and I got gradually taller as I walked. I stopped halfway and leaned against a tree, cleaning the snow off to a tune of muttered curses.
I didn't see it coming, because I was bent over my boots. I didn't expect the sudden chill in my face or the impact of freezing snow on my chest. I certainly did not expect looking up and finding Granger stuffing all her fingers in her mouth, trying not to giggle. Snow dripped slowly down the side of my face and the front of my robes. An unreasonable wish to dunk her in the lake came over me, but I checked it. Dumbledore wouldn't look kindly on me killing one of the smartest witches at Hogwarts, so I clenched my fists and ground my teeth to keep from lashing out at her. Wiping away the snow from my face slowly, I stared at her expressionlessly, until she stopped giggling.
"That," I said, "Was not something one has come to expect from the smartest witch to ever walk Hogwarts' grounds. From a Gryffindor, however, it's nothing less than can be expected. Someday, when I'm feeling less Christmas- cheery than I am now, I will take my revenge for that. But not now."
"You deserved it." Granger flipped back.
"For what? Leaning on the poor tree?" I snorted. "It wasn't as if it was complaining, was it?"
"For being a prat." She snapped, ignoring my rather silly retort. "And for constantly picking fights with me. Consider it payback. Something you Slytherins would understand wonderfully."
"That was rather different of you, Granger," I replied, "Does your other personality only come out to play when Potter and Weasley aren't around?"
"Split personalities are reserved for the resident nutcases, like you, Zabini." She snorted derisively before turning back to her snowman.
There was nothing for me to say, so after a few moments of sputtering, I turned on my heels and stormed back to the castle. One point to Granger today, but I'd win it back tomorrow. Daily arguments had turned into an addictive habit, and this one was just the last in a long on-going debate of my sanity and her neat-freakiness. It was a miracle that she hadn't slapped me again, and a miracle that Potter and Weasley hadn't tried to rip my spine out through my nose and beat me to death with it.
If I survived to Christmas Eve, I'd be lucky.
'
Ending Notes; shorter chapter this time, but hopefully, the next one will be longer and include more plot-points than this one.