A/N: Draco and Ginny share a moment under the mistletoe. An outtake from chapter 14 of "Ginny Weasley and the Curse of the Firstborn." If you haven't read that first, you probably won't understand this.

Holly in Her Hair

Draco ran a hand down the front of his dress robes, and surveyed himself critically in the mirror. They were Natty Toggs' finest: heavy wool, and moss-green; it was David and Fiona's Christmas party, and he certainly wasn't about to go into public wearing red. He didn't even own anything red. His hair, tied back in a sleek tail that fell just below his shoulders, was immaculate, but then it was rarely anything else. He gave his reflection one last nod of approval, then closed the door behind him, and went downstairs to the library to wait for Ginny.

She wasn't there yet. He glanced impatiently at the mantle clock. They should have left five minutes ago. Why did it take women so bleeding long to fix their hair, or whatever it was they spent all those hours doing in front of their mirrors? Normally, Draco didn't mind arriving a few minutes late to a party, but tonight, the idea of it irked him. Ginny should not keep him waiting; it was really very selfish of her. Going to this thing had been her idea, after all. He picked up the iron poker, and began to stir peevishly at the fire. Behind him, he heard the door latch click.

He turned, and felt his mouth fall open.

She was dressed in something white, her hair swept high onto her head, with little, wayward curls escaping to tease her face. The fire poker slipped from his hand, onto the hearthrug. Ginny looked startled at that, and Draco tried to say something flippant, to joke away his clumsiness, but he couldn't find any words. She was just… He had never seen her look so elegant.

He ought to do something other than stand there, gawping like a fish, but his usual sangfroid had deserted him, and he couldn't think of what he should do next. The robe clung to her shape, outlining breasts and waist and hips, and when she stepped forward, he caught a long glimpse of curved leg through the slit in the skirt.

He felt his skin heat up, and was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the fireplace behind him.

"Sorry I'm late," she was saying. Late? Dimly, Draco wondered why this mattered. Something in her hair shone green and glossy in the firelight. Holly leaves. She had holly in her hair.

"You look nice." He heard himself say it, and regretted the words for being a lie: they should have been so much more.

She glanced away from him, self-conscious. "Thanks. So do you."

"Ready, then?"

"Ready."

The Port seemed unusually small tonight. Looking down at Ginny from his greater height, Draco could see that the shoulders of her robe instead of being sewn together in a seam, were tied with laces. It was a medieval sort of look. It made him think of old feudal castles and warriors camped by fires on frost-rimed hillsides, and chivalrous knights tumbling passionate maidens in haymows… Chastity and sensuality together. Somehow, the little, freckled diamonds of skin that showed through were more suggestive on Ginny than an entirely strapless dress would have been on another woman. He swallowed hard and then, because he couldn't stop himself and didn't want to, in any case, reached up and brushed his thumb lightly over the laces on one of her shoulders.

She glanced at him, puzzled.

"Stray hair," he said gruffly, and dropped his wayward hand.

He reached for her hand then, knowing that she wouldn't pull away. When they were visiting friends, he was allowed to do this.

She laced her fingers through his, giving him a half-apologetic smile. 'I'm sorry you have to go through this every time.'

He closed his eyes and breathed her in. He lived for this: to stand this close, to touch her and smell her, and have her eyes on his face like this, and to be allowed to look back, long and deep and unashamedly. In front of friends, they could be intimate in a way they were not allowed to be when they were alone.

Too soon, they were stepping out of the Gordons' Port.

The foyer was full of people, and Draco put a hand on Ginny's back. She was warm against his palm, and her hair just brushed his chin. He did not want to share her tonight; he wanted her alone, to himself. But it was not possible, of course. Alone with each other, there was nothing for them; no, better to be here, and to have more of her, in a way. He saw Betsy Kincaid waving madly from the far wall and, resigned, he steered Ginny in that direction.

Betsy commandeered her at once, and the two of them were off, Betsy pulling Ginny into her circle, and making introductions. Draco stepped back. Much as he wanted to keep Ginny firmly by his side every minute of tonight – preferably with his arm around her shoulders – he wasn't willing to stand among a throng of gossiping, empty-headed women to do it. And now Ginny was smiling, and chattering happily with someone she'd just met; she seemed to have forgotten all about him. Draco turned, and went to find where the men were congregating.

It was late, and the party was in full swing, but Draco was not enjoying himself. It had been hours since he had got more than a glimpse of Ginny, and he was beginning to resent it. He didn't want to be here, in the crush of people, and the heat and the unbearable din. But he didn't know where Ginny was, and in any case, she was probably having the time of her life without him, and would want to stay on for half the night.

As it was, she found him first. He was in the ballroom, talking with David Gordon, when she came and pulled on his arm. He glanced down at her flushed face and over bright eyes, and frowned. Something was not right. Was she ill?

"Get me out of here," she hissed at him.

He turned to Gordon and made their excuses, then took Ginny's hand and pulled her from the ballroom. There was a house-elf's entrance by the kitchen, and Draco led her to it, and they burst out into the cold, London night.

She leaned against the outside wall of the house, and closed her eyes, and he watched her with some concern. She was not ill, he realised after a bit: just overheated and as tired of the noise and the crowd as he was himself. He liked knowing that she felt the same way he did.

"Not having the great time you expected?" he said.

She opened her eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I usually do fine in crowds. I think it was the heat that got to me."

"Want to walk?"

"All right." They started down the drive. She shivered.

"Cold?"

She was. He stopped, and swept his wand over her.

"Oh, that's much better," she said. "Thanks."

She looked uncommonly pretty with the flush in her cheeks playing up her bright eyes. He reached up and touched one of the glossy holly leaves in her hair. She smiled at him, and his heart missed a beat. How was it possible that she was standing here, so beautiful, and smiling at him like that, and still so out of his reach? It was not fair.

They walked, and made banal conversation that he was hardly aware of. He was getting cold, but he did not want to do a Warming Charm on himself: it was too much like admitting weakness. And he most certainly didn't want to go back to the party. He wanted to stay here and walk with Ginny all night: to have her all to himself like this, and maybe, after awhile, to have the courage to pick up her hand and pull her close to his side, even though no one else in the world was watching them.

They rounded a corner, and a brightly-lit shop window caught his eye. There was a toy-sized village surrounding a little Christmas tree, with a train running round the whole thing. It was the kind of thing Ginny would love. It was the kind of thing he had never taken notice of in his life, until she had come along and changed the world for him.

"Look," he said.

Her face lit up, as he had known it would, and she went to the window, bending a little, to inspect the train more closely.

He didn't know why he looked up just then, but he did.

Mistletoe. The unexpectedness of it startled him. He had managed to avoid the temptation of it these last weeks, had banned it from the house even, so that there would not be the constant reminder that he wanted to kiss her, and couldn't. But… here it was now. And although no one was obligated to kiss under the mistletoe, it was right over their heads, and it seemed too good an invitation to pass up. Ginny straightened, and turned to say something to him, and he made up his mind. He put his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs caressing the laces, and pulled her to him.

He had meant for it to be a quick kiss, light and gentle, and then over with. He brushed his lips over hers, shuddering at their softness. For a moment, she didn't move, and he realised he had startled her. It had been a mistake. Oh Circe, what had he been thinking? He pulled…

But then he felt it: she moved her mouth under his. Hesitantly, but she moved it all the same. Kissing him back.

She made a little noise in her throat, and something electric coursed through him.

He put his hands on her face, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs, pulling her deeper into the kiss, unable to hold himself back. It was too fast for tonight, he knew that. But she hesitated again, then returned the kiss the same way, her teeth grazing his lip, her breath warm in his mouth. His mind seemed to implode, the world around him whirling around, sucking down into a vortex of raw, heady pleasure.

He had to get closer, further into her. He pushed her up against the shop wall, pinning her there with his body, and pulled at the clips in her hair, wanting to feel it fall around his hands, needing to bury them in it…

He never knew what brought him back to his senses, but some instinct deeply imbedded in his brain commanded him to stop. It was an instinct he had learned to obey, and he obeyed it now. He dropped his hands and stepped back from Ginny, fighting to control his breathing. Fighting to look cool and composed, and unaffected.

He nodded his head at the kissing ball. "Mistletoe," he said, and by some miracle his voice did not sound drugged and gravely, but careless and light. "It gets me every year: I never could resist a pretty girl under the mistletoe. Don't take it personally."

He wished she would stop looking at him like that: all shocked and horrified, as though he had violated her, or something. Though, in a way, he knew he had. He was an idiot: an absolute fool. He had just ruined any chance he might have had at making amends with Ginny. She would hate him now – already was on the way to hating him, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. What had he been playing at?

Dully, Draco turned, and they walked toward the Apparition Port on the corner. The conversation between them limped along, and he was grateful when they stepped out of the port at Four Winds.

"Happy Christmas, Draco," Ginny told him quietly.

"Happy Christmas," he echoed. "Hadn't you better go to bed? You're looking pale, just now." And indeed, Ginny looked as though one good breath might knock her over.

He watched her go up the staircase and then went to the library to pour himself a stiff drink. Mistletoe and kisses. What damned idiot had been responsible for inventing that particular tradition? Draco sipped gloomily at his brandy, and stared into the cold ashes of the unlit fireplace. He had ruined everything. Everything.

But it had been one hell of a kiss. And for one, brief, shining moment she had kissed him back. Suddenly, he smiled. He didn't know what it meant, or what Ginny was thinking right now, if it would ever happen again, but there was no denying that she had kissed him back. She had kissed him back. And tomorrow was a new day, and their year wasn't over yet, and there was such a thing as fighting for the thing you wanted. He was a fighter: he could do that, couldn't he? It wasn't as though he had anything to lose.

He set his unfinished glass of brandy on the mantelpiece, and went to bed, his heart lighter than it had been all evening.