Disclaimers: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, Christmas belongs to the world.
By Callisto Callispi
Even a Malfoy, no matter how vile, did not deserve to be alone on Christmas Eve. But here Draco was, utterly alone in the huge burgundy armchair, facing the crackling hearth. Shadows waltzed their winter promenade swiftly and silently. Their steps darkened the branches of the green pine; their trail of light coaxed explosive glitters upon the tinsel; their giggles echoed in Draco's mind.
For a brief moment, he wondered how his mother and father were. Probably bored to death, just as him. Those lavish parties that they were invited to ceased to please them ten years ago. For Draco, those days where he preened in the mirror for hours to prepare for the gathering had long withered and died.
With a heavy sigh, Draco stood from the armchair. His pale eyes roamed across the grandiose banquet hall, flickering briefly over to the lavishly decorated tree. The tree was a huge one, cut down and imported from the thick forests of Russia where a small clan of giants herded trees. It was a brutal harvest -- the giants protected their trees with fearsome pride, and he heard from one of the harvesters that three giants had been killed in order to get this one tree.
"The only good giants are the dead ones, I say," Lucius said as he personally paid the head harvester. "Do the wizarding world a favor next winter and kill the whole bloody lot, will you?"
Presents, packaged with respectable green and gold ribbons, silver paper, and elaborate bows, waited patiently to be neatly unwrapped Christmas morning. Draco already knew what he was getting. The big box nearest to the tree contained a large cauldron with which he could brew the most intricate potions at absurdly high and low temperatures. The three medium-boxed ones contained new clothing and shoes and quidditch accessories. The assortment of small boxes scattered around the tree contained watches, first edition novels, gold-tipped phoenix feather quills, folders of stocks and bonds worth millions of galleons newly signed as his own, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Draco grimaced slightly. Christmas became increasingly difficult each year. The more presents that he got, the more he would have feign polite interest and surprise, and the more thank-you letters he had to sign. To Draco, Christmas was a business, not a holiday.
Silently he strode across the great stretch of the marble floor, seemingly leagues away from the now pinprick of light that had once been the blazing hearth, and approached the great tree. It was a magnificent work of crude art, stretching almost twenty feet up into the air in a perfectly shaped upside-down cone. Its rich branches expanded out on all sides like wings, donning regally green pine and charming, perfectly shaped little cones. It was a tree for monarchs, especially now that it was adorned with shimmering balls of crystal and diamond, swathed with a long string of the softest pearls, and sprinkled with the smallest pieces of gold-dust.
The soft voices of carolers reached his ears. Draco closed his eyes and stood alone in that giant darkened room, just listening. The song spun a fragile web of loneliness around him. Their lilting voices seeped in through his soul, teasing his wintry heart with long strokes of warmth.
"Master!"
And then that warmth dissipated. Draco's eyes flew open, his heart nearly jumping out of his chest. He whirled around, pale eyes narrowed until they glittered coldly like the diamond ornaments that adorned the tree.
"Master," the house elf whispered shakily. The plates that he held in his hands clattered together like broken bells.
"What is it?" Draco demanded, his voice raspy and low. The room suddenly got colder. "How dare you disturb me, you filthy little creature!"
The house elf bowed down humbly, the plates clamoring so loudly that Draco was surprised the China didn't shatter.
"Forgive Mitty, Sir," the house elf said in a squeaky voice. "But Master told Mitty to make sure no one got close the tree. He threatened to dismiss Mitty if Mitty didn't obey Master's commands by the edge of a knife."
Draco glanced over to his side and saw that he was indeed standing very close to the tree -- to the extent where a perfectly uprooting branch grazed the sleeve of his silk shirt. Draco glared back the house elf and snarled, "Like I would care if a nasty little creature like you were dismissed." Nevertheless, he stepped back from the tree and watched the house elf scurry out into the hallway.
The angry lines around his lips and at the middle of his brown quickly melted away. The vacant expression stealthily seeped into his features and drugged them into their lazy existence. Draco's eyes idly appraised the tree and then the frosted glass of the window.
With a sigh, he walked up to the large window and placed his right hand on the sill. Thick gray clouds choked the night sky. The stiffened branches of dry, dead trees shot up toward the sky like spears. Time seemed to have all but died and everything seemed to linger. Snow hadn't fallen at all this December. Even on this Christmas Eve, the joy of winter seemed to have abandoned him. There was so little to celebrate, so much time to waste.
The tree glittered coldly behind him, and suddenly, Draco felt the buried anger and loneliness explode within him. He grit his teeth as the hot rush of anger dribbled through his limbs and head. Without another word, Draco stalked out of the banquet room and snatched a thick, ankle-length cloak from the rack. Ignoring the startled cries of the house elves, Draco stepped outside and ran, clutching his wand tightly in his pocket.
Frozen dirt sparkled and crunched underneath his feet. Draco did not know for how long he ran, but stopped abruptly as he reached the stables. He motioned for the carriage driver and ignoring his toothy "Happy Christmas," Draco stepped to the carriage and said in a low voice, "Diagon Alley."
The wizard world passed by in a blur of gray and brown before his eyes through the window that was his looking glass. A rainstorm of bronze leaves descended upon the carriage as it passed through the apple grove, swirling as if trapped in a hurricane. With a snarl, Draco snapped the window shut and glared up at the ceiling of the carriage.
Within minutes, the driver stopped and Draco stepped out of the carriage. He breathed out, white wisps of air escaping his breath. Diagon Alley was more crowded than usual, with witches and wizards in their blindingly colorful robes flocking about here and there for last-minute gift shopping. They chattered like birds and giggled like drunks.
Draco stared down at his own black and gray robes. He suddenly felt like an outsider looking in, like that shivering cricket looking in through the frosted window of the mound where the ants made merry. Flashes of deep crimson, shocking cerulean, and striking yellow flew past him, like the busy birds of winter, chattering with excitement. Pink flushed even the most pallid of skin tones.
"Happy Christmas, sir," a jolly-looking man said to Draco with a chortle as a young woman, presumably his daughter, wove her portly guardian through the dense mass of people populating the narrow street.
Draco scoffed at the man. He laughed and stumbled about like a drunk. In fact, everyone in this blasted alley acted like drunks. How utterly disgraceful. It was healthful to be happy, but this was just ludicrous.
Draco didn't know what possessed him to escape from the wizarding world, especially at this hour of the night. He crossed the boundary between the wizarding world and the muggle world through the little shack that was the Leaky Cauldron. And as soon as Draco escaped the dirty, narrow little alley, he breathed the colder air of the muggle world.
London. Muggle London.
The streets were wide and frosted over with ice. People, though in far lesser numbers than that of Diagon Alley, walked about with their arms linked. Draco quietly moved away from them and headed towards the empty green, noting with mild amazement how the ground slowly changed from white stone to ice-sprinkled dirt.
The moon shone less brightly here than in the wizarding world -- those muggles and their annoying industrialism. Draco tentatively placed his wand into the pocket in his inner coat and took a few more steps down along the path. Being away from magic and being vulnerable to muggles always unnerved Draco. Even if he was practically a man, something about the non-magical world weakened his courage. The Malfoy name, though very private, still held a certain respect in the muggle world. But no muggle knew anyone but Lucius Malfoy, and being unknown did not bode well with Draco.
This night, however, as he walked along the paved path weaving through a grove, that tingling fear soon left him. Instead, worldly curiosity and almost childlike wonder encompassed his senses -- he was in a world foreign to him. Alone. Without his mother's constant nagging and his father's tendency to jab him in the side whenever he did some trivial thing that did not fancy his father's idea of "proper" behavior.
What surrounded him was a winter wonderland of tangled ivy and glittering flowers that were for once not glittering because they were of diamonds or crystals. Flowers, some that should have been wilted and dead by now, were in relatively full flourish. They were white and small and delicate, just like small cotton balls flaked with shards of sugar. Dark ivy, almost black under the moonlight, climbed up the white-stone pathway walls. Specks of ice glittered, glittered, glittered and a light blanket of fog tugged at his ankles. The ground was more like heaven than the sky, where thick, ominous clouds choked from Draco's view every single star. Even the moon lazed about behind the gauze of water vapor.
People would walk by every now and then, mostly younger couples out to enjoy Christmas Eve by taking a late-night stroll in the park. Draco ignored them all, and lost himself in the natural magic of the dusky moonlight and the pleasant bite of winter's cold.
Their romantic sweet-talking, to say it simply, pissed him off. Couples no more than sixteen years old strolled by him, giggling like idiots who lost their mind to inhalants. Draco walked out of the grove in disgust (mostly because of their utterly pure happiness) as more and more people gathered about him. The magic of the grove had worn off, and like a hungry parasite, Draco stalked off to find something more.
The fog thickened. What had curled up almost seductively up to his ankles down caressed the sides of his chest as he walked toward the trickling lake. A delicate shield of ice filmed the water's surface, and Draco's eyes widened slightly, not because of the sudden gust of the icy wind that threatened to knock him off of his feet, but because of the distorted reflection he saw in that ice.
"I wonder how thick that ice is," came a very familiar voice from the bridge, and Draco knew immediately that she had seen him much earlier than he had spotted her.
"I don't know. Why don't you jump in and find out, Granger?" he asked, not even bothering to look at her.
Laughter. Her laugher. Draco's lip twitched. He heard no mockery in it -- just plain amusement. What was the mudblood up to now?
"Draco Malfoy, you have not changed since the last time I saw you." Her voice was nearer now. Draco still refused to acknowledge her presence and kept his back turned. Childish, yes, but Draco Malfoy was one to hold grudges for a very long time.
"I had thought that you would have matured a little since graduation. I suppose not."
Her voice -- that sharp, chiming, utterly feminine voice -- was right behind him. He could almost feel the mudblood's warm breath grazing the nape of his neck. Annoyed, Draco spun around and faced her, his eyes narrowing and hard once more. Like diamonds.
"Don't you have other wizards to annoy?" he spat out. "Where are Potty and Weasel? Don't tell me -- you bored them to death with your irritating questions."
But it turned out that Hermione was the one who did change. For instead of retorting back angrily, she merely stood next to him and stared at the half-frozen lake in pondering silence. Draco, suddenly losing all desire and energy to start up a good verbal battle, remained silent as well. What had become of the fiery boy that he used to be?
Quietly, Draco took out the wand in his pocket. His eyes strayed vacantly over the long, smooth stick of fine wood. Power once burned in the core of that wand like a wildfire, threatening to overcome his very soul. He strutted about school like he was the prince of the universe, and why not? People looked up to him (at least in his own house) and many supported him. He was the brazen one, clever and brave enough to stand up against the trio of the Gryffindor stooges: Potty, the boy-who-lived-to-become-a-pain-in-the-arse; Weasel, the one poor enough to eat his own socks when the harvest didn't go well (or when there weren't enough raids to recompense Arthur Weasley with spare change); and of course, his least favorite all-around good-girl, Hermione Granger, the epitome of saintly purity. Bah.
Draco expected graduation to open doors. Instead, it seemed to close them. No longer did admirers surround him. No longer did he find any humor in life. No longer did he wake up in the morning, mind fresh and body spry. Perhaps it was because of the realization that he was no longer a child, for children did not attend to their father's corporate meetings to make and cancel business alliances with incredibly wealthy and powerful (and absolutely boorish) men who ruined fortunes with smiles and gained them just as quickly with well-timed temper tantrums.
And with that loss of his childhood, Draco's imagination and his humor (albeit his slightly sadistic and dark humor) seemed to evanesce like a fading dream.
"Why do you care?"
Hermione's traitorous eyes sought his, just for that briefest second. Then she regained her control and stared at the lake again, digging her booted foot into the dirt. "Excuse me?"
Draco glanced at her with disdain then looked up at the clouded sky. "You heard me. Why do you care whether I've changed or not?"
She didn't answer for a while. And Draco didn't mind, for right then, he preferred the noisy silence of the park. The night was so silent that he heard everything -- the stiff crackle of water being frozen, the soft whistle of the breeze, the distant jingle of sleigh bells...
"I don't know," Hermione finally admitted. "It's been five years since graduation, and I've not seen a trace of you in person. It's been strange, getting used it all. Not being in school, I mean. I still wake up some mornings, expecting myself to be in my Head Girl room. And as I walk down my hallway, I expect to see someone from my past greeting me. Parvati, Ginny...you."
Draco smirked, and he could literally feel his long-lost cockiness returning to him. It was not just any cockiness however; it was the cockiness that attracted the challenge of one's most hated nemesis. "Me?" he asked. "Why me?"
Hermione turned her head, her eyes brazenly seeking his. "Why you?"
Draco stared back down at her coolly. "Yes. I didn't think that you would give a rat's arse over whether I lived or died...mudblood."
Hermione's mouth settled in a thin line of brewing anger. Draco felt a tug on his lips. How he loved rousing that fire deep within her. In all of the years knowing her, Draco had never seen Hermione Granger lose her temper in front of anyone...at least, not in such a wave of pure passion. Had she slapped anyone across the face? And though the memory of that certain episode still triggered a flood of resentment, Draco took certain pride in possessing the ability to unleash her anger. Anger made people foolish, and oh, how he still ached to make Hermione Granger the fool he designed her to be.
"You haven't changed at all," Hermione said dryly.
"Did you truly expect me to?"
Silence greeted this. Draco turned back to stare at the lake, hands stuffed into his pockets, though the lake was the last thing in his mind at the moment.
"Why are you here, then?" she began once more.
"Why do you care? It's not as if this park belongs to you."
That earned him a scowl. Draco's smirk grew.
"I hope you fall into that lake and freeze."
Draco regarded her with amusement. "Don't you think we're too old to be appropriately exchanging such blatantly hostile remarks?"
She crossed her arms. "You're insufferable."
"And yet you stand here, insisting on speaking with me."
Hermione turned so sharply to face him that her brown hair whipped out of her scarf. Still bushy and completely unmanageable, Draco saw. "I'm only speaking to you because I am curious."
Draco arched an elegant eyebrow. "Curious?"
"Yes, curious. As to why you are in the muggle side of the world at this time of night with your wizard robes on."
Draco rolled his eyes. "You sound like a bloody interrogator...wait, last I heard, you were training to become an auror. Of course you'd be interrogating the hell out of someone like me."
He paused then stared up at the sky. What surprises -- the clouds cleared just enough so that he could see one bright star blazing against the inky sky.
"A hotel," he said quietly. "It's like a mini-vacation, this muggle world is. A place to put me up for a few hours, nights, weeks..."
"It's Christmas Eve, you know," Hermione said after a while, shuffling the mound of dirt between her feet. "You shouldn't be in such dark hotels all alone. You should be at home with your parents, with your tree, with your presents."
Draco's smile was wry. "My parents are drunk with the champagne of boredom a world away; my tree is paid with eight point six liters of blood; and my presents are but neatly wrapped packages."
Silence reigned again like a frigid king of ice. The jester, that lone star, danced in a thousand different motions, twinkling and almost vibrating in an attempt to please.
"I'm sorry."
Draco snorted. "For what?"
"That this Christmas isn't joyful for you."
"I don't need or want your pity, Granger," Draco said sharply. Everything, even the leafless trees, glittered like diamonds. Fragments of diamonds dusted the whole world. "Just leave me."
But diamonds did not frost and harden everything. Draco saw this and noted it with certain surprise. For instead of leaving, Hermione planted her feet firmly into the ground and replied, "Even a Malfoy, no matter how vile, does not deserve to be alone on Christmas Eve."
Draco blinked, surprised by her response. Then he studied her face carefully, trying to uncover any inclinations that she said this for motives other than wanting to keep him in her company. "Are...are you being serious?"
Without even a passing moment of doubt, Hermione nodded. Draco did not know what to say, for his heart hammered so quickly that he felt as if his rushed blood were heated another thousand degrees.
Then somewhere in the distant haze of the outside world, a clock announced midnight with its silver chimes. Sundry calls of "Merry Christmas!" suddenly sweetened the air, and Draco's eyes fell into shadow. It was late. He ought be getting back home.
"Malfoy." Her voice was but a whisper.
Draco looked up.
"Merry Christmas."
The wind howled between them, around them. It seemed to be drawing them together and, at the same time, pulling them apart. Draco looked away, for his eyes felt so hot that tears were starting to cloud his vision. It was the wind, the dust, something -- it wasn't her. Without a word of thanks, Draco turned away and began walking. He noted with frigid disappointment that she did not follow him.
"It's getting colder. Go home, Granger," he said softly as he walked down the path, back into the snarled wilderness of glittering ice and winter blossoms that led back to his palace of frozen crystal.
Yet, instead of responding, Hermione merely gasped, her footsteps suddenly quick and light as she skipped around in a small circle. "Look!" she breathed.
And as he tilted his head up toward the sky, his pale eyes widened every so slightly. A thin yet brilliant white line shot across the patch of sky where the clouds had dispersed. How bright it must have been for him to be able to see it through the polluted air of London. A falling star.
"Snow!"
Then Draco realized that it was not the shooting star to which she was referring. Flakes of splendid white drifted to the ground, twirling and tittering in their silent way.
"Look, it's snowing!" a woman across the bridge cried, spreading her arms out to the sides like wings, spinning on the heel of her boot while her husband (beau, lover) watched with a silly grin on his face. "Look, darling, it's snowing!"
Then Draco did something that he had not done since his first year at Hogwarts. Shakily, he extended his arm out, palm upright, and watched as fragments of the silver sky drifted down onto the smooth leather of his black gloves. He watched, fascinated, as it melted in his hand.
"Snow..." Hermione whispered behind him. "I didn't think it would come this year..."
Was it the falling star? If he made a wish...if he, the boy who had everything, made a wish...would it come true?
Draco dropped his arm to his side and continued on down the path. As soon as he glanced over his shoulder, he found Hermione staring back at him, eyes glinting just like the specks of ice drifting down from the heavens.
"Granger."
Hermione raised her brows in question. Snow flaked her dark lashes and her hair.
"I hope...wish you a...Merry Christmas."
Draco's last memory of her that year was the smile that illuminated her honeyed lips and eyes. Then he walked on, snow whipping through the ends of his fluttering cloak.
The diamonds of his dreams shattered, and instead, white covered the world. The white of the falling star, the snow...the blazing white of her smile.
And sparing one more glance back at misty visage of Hermione, Draco allowed a small grin to warm his frosty expression. "Yes. I wish...for you to have a Merry Christmas."
.
.
.
.
Finis. Happy Holidays.
December 2004