Disclaimer: Don't own Potter.
"It could be a holiday card," she says and he smiles a little and looks at her from the corner of his eye.
Her eyes are fixed on the small snow covered house in front of them as her hands brush back the strands of red hair that escape from her hat.
Her eyes are bright and her freckled cheeks flushed red from the cold night air. He wants to say that she could on a holiday card too but instead bites the inside of his cheek and turns towards the house.
"If holiday cards had pictures of ridiculously lopsided houses on the front," she adds quietly, kicking the white snow with the toe of her shoe, almost bashfully. "Which, of course, they don't." her voice trails off into a whisper and she bites her lip as her brow creases.
"Well, I think it's perfect." He finds himself saying, eyes meeting hers before returning to the house before them, taking in its nearly toppling layers, peeling paint and missing shingles, fitted with all sorts of seasonal trimmings, covered overall with piles of snow.
"Better even," he continues, his tongue forming words almost against his will, "then one of those type of holiday cards."
She sniffs a little and looks up, the tip of her shoe barely scraping the white lawn. "Yes well, I suppose, a bit." There's a hopefulness in her voice that catches in his ears and he nods with a smile.
"Perhaps you could charm it to sing too." He suggests warmly, his smile widening as she glares at him.
"Very funny, Potter."
Her boot hits his ankle and a soft laugh reaches his ear. He wants to hear her laugh again and persists against his better judgment.
"No really, you could, a Christmas carol and everything—" He is cut off by the handful of snow that is thrown in his face, and he can't help the laughter that swells up inside of him as he bends to gather his own handful to retaliate.
Their conversation lays forgotten and the snow continues to fall even as they create their own storm, their laughter and threats of revenge cutting through the quiet of the night until at last she delivers a well placed kick in his shin and he goes down in a frosty heap of white. She throws herself down besides him, delighting in her victory; even she blinks away the snowflakes that cling to her almost invisible eyelashes.
There is silence for a moment and they lay there, in the snow, her hat now lost, her hair bright and vibrate, almost impossibly red against the white of the ground beneath them and the dark of the night sky above. She smiles lazily as he tells her that her house reminds him of a gingerbread house, one that's been carefully pieced together by a child.
The minutes ticks away and the clouds shift and he can make out patches of stars in the distance and she tells him the moon reminds her of a lopsided smile in the sky.
He feels her shift besides him and then she's leaning over him, her eyes carefully tracing his face, and he wants to ask what it is she's looking for but she's talking before the question even forms on his lips.
"What carol?" She asks and her voice is as careful as her eyes and for a moment he can't understand what it is she's asking of him.
"You said I could charm the card." She said simply, without resent, feigned or otherwise. "What carol?" She is earnest in her question and his mind is suddenly void of all thought. He wonders how exactly it is he's survived all these years if all it takes is an innocent question on her part to render him useless.
"Dunno." He starts slowly, when nothing comes to mind. "What's your favorite?"
She looks around for a minute, biting her lip, and she starts a losing battle with the strands of hair that have escaped from her hair tie. Then, slowly, she leans closer, so that she is almost bending over him, her mouth just next to his ear. Her cool cheek brushes his own and he feels a shiver go down his spine even as her breath, warm and even, reaches his ear.
"Angels we have heard on high, singing sweetly o'er the plains…"
Her voice is low and wobbly and terribly off key but there is an intimacy to the moment, something subtle and heavy and tangible, something that frightens him more than a dark lord, but warms him too, makes some spot inside him feel full though he never knew it was empty to begin with.
And a part of him wants to break the moment, wants her to back away and simply be Ginny once more. Ginny who will laugh and play in the snow and kick him in the shin as surely as she would any other bloke. He thinks he could say something along the lines of how he now understood where her cards got the talent from and he knows she would understand it was all in jest and she would play along and glare even as the corners of her lips turned up.
He thinks it would be fine to pretend that intimacy of this nature was something you feel with a friend, something that it was something that could be blended seamlessly into the background of any friendship.
But his tongue won't form the words and he wonders if it would appropriate to kiss her.
He wonders if he brothers would murder him in his sleep and decides that it's worth the risk. Because her hair is twirling around them as the wind picks up, and he catches the scent of jasmine that seems a part of her very skin and she's so close he can practically count all the freckles just below her own ear.
But he doesn't do that either because her hand finds his and her gloved fingers intertwine with his own and just about every thought flies out the window as she lowers her head onto his shoulder.
Instead he tightens his hold on her hand, content with the falling snow and the sound of her humming.
End
Feedback is Love