The Christmas Strike

A/N: Light fluffy chapter. I have developed a few things in this part, but they won't show until later.

It was a little under two months since the attack. The group had nothing else to do but move past it. They could have reflected on their mistakes, how stubborn they had been to refuse help, how they should have known that the vampires were distractions. But it wasn't going to help. This was especially helpful to Harry as he saw that some of people he was growing to admire could so easily move past events. It helped Harry a little to get over the disaster he had caused at the ministry in June.

Since Halloween, Giles had taken lead in having the entire group, students included, research the 'Hope of Light' part of the prophecy. After the battle they were certain that Voldemort and his followers would take a different route to collect the blood of friends. The 'Hope of Light' was soon appearing to be the only choice of action. The only problem was that the group knew little about it. Hermoine had been very helped as she knew most of the books in the library, which turned out not to be much of a help. Giles had Wesley send some books over, but there was still a lot of reading to do.

It was late one Thursday night when Xander decided he had enough. The next day was the last day of classes before the Christmas break, during which Xander had foreseen much more research and he didn't need any magic ability to know it.

"That's it. I call for a Christmas strike," Xander said to a silent room.

The four students were not there that night. Dawn was always overloaded with homework since she had to do extra work in order to come close to the level of her peers so she was naturally in the library with all the books she needed. Hermoine was in the library too with the two boys. She and Harry had a nasty potions test the next day while Ron had to work on some extra transfiguration work he hadn't completed.

"Oh I agree. I miss simplicity. Most of our information is right here in the good old book of shadows" Phoebe added, patting her family's spell book which sat next to her.

Phoebe had been reading one of the books she had found in the restricted section of the library and not having any luck. At her feet Willow lay on the floor using her laptop to search the Internet. Dumbledore had worked together with Willow to cast a spell, which allowed only Willow the use of her laptop. So far it was just as useful as the book Phoebe was reading. Giles was heavily into the research with a pile of books next to him on the small table where Buffy, Paige and Piper were marking defense against the dark arts work for various years.

Leo was the only adult who was not doing any work. He was up in his and Piper's dorm sleeping. It had been a long day for him with his charges so Piper had told him to go to bed and to take Wyatt with him.

"The sooner you find something the better" Buffy stated. "I've never liked things happening at the last minute"

"But you work so well under pressure" Xander argued. "And what do you mean, me find something?"

"Well it's obvious that I'm not going to. I'm not research girl. When have I ever been the one to solve the mystery?" Buffy questioned.

"Solve the mystery. No wonder you call yourselves the Scoobies, Daphne" Paige joked.

"Yeah that'd be me. You know last year I was terrified at the fact that I would be giving advice to teenagers. Now I'm sitting here marking papers and deciding their future" Buffy decided to change the subject.

"Didn't you train those potentials last year?" Piper asked. Buffy nodded. "That's sort of like what you're doing now. Except we're getting them to write essays on vampires and banshee's and curses"

"It just feels weird to be teaching without any kind of degree" Buffy commented.

Everyone else felt they had to agree with her. They were more than happy to be teaching and had received tips from other teaches including Dumbledore. Although there were seven different professors for the one subject, the entire group was quickly becoming one of the most popular defense against the dark arts professors. Of course they still had heavy competition from Lupin's days.

"Ohhh! I think I found something!" Willow excitedly said to the room.

Giles looked down at the young redhead with a hopeful look in his eyes. He hadn't taken part in the conversation as he was keen to know more about the 'Hope of Light'.

"Oh…" Willow's face fell only seconds before everyone else's. "Don't worry. It's about extracting three hearts from three friends"

"That's it. Strike! Strike! Strike!" Xander repeated his earlier message.

Although many students were returning home for the Christmas break Harry, Ron Hermoine and Dawn would be staying at Hogwarts. Not all were staying by choice though. There was no way Harry was returning to the Dursley's for Christmas and since Ron and Hermoine had both decided to stay at Hogwarts he wasn't going to spend Christmas with the Dursley's. Dawn had no choice either. Buffy was her legal guardian and all the professors had elected to stay at Hogwarts. They had been told that they were able to travel home, but Hogwarts looked too magical and inviting they didn't want to leave.

Piper had considered convincing her family to head back to the manor for Christmas, but she had seen Wyatt happily playing in the snow with Leo while she took Care of Magical Creatures. (Hagrid was busy tending to his 'little' brother) There wasn't really any snow in California so Piper thought it would be all right to stay at Hogwarts, even though she had missed the states a little. Piper later discovered if she had wanted to go back she would have been outnumbered anyway. Both Paige and Phoebe were keen to stay at the school because it would be different and they had some of their close friends there now.

- - - -

Harry was surprisingly the first one awake on Christmas day. He and Ron were the only two boys in the dorm that Christmas. Harry looked to Neville's bed and felt sorry for his friend. Neville would be at St.Mungo's with his grandmother and his parents. Harry lightened a little when he looked towards Seamus's and Dean's beds. The boys had both gone to Dean's home for Christmas because Dean's family had headed 'down under' for a change in season. Harry couldn't imagine Christmas in t-shirts and swimming.

"Merry Christmas Harry" Ron said from his bed.

"Merry Christmas Ron" Harry replied.

"I wonder if the girls are up?" Ron asked as he and Harry headed down to the common room.

Ron's question was answered when they saw two bushy haired girls warming up in front of the fire. It was a slight shock for the boys considering they had both always been up before Hermoine each Christmas.

"Hey! Merry Christmas!" Dawn happily said.

Although she was heading towards her eighteenth, Dawn was always a kids at heart. She loved Christmas, like Anya for the presents, but mostly because it meant her obscure family was together. She gave each of the boys a Christmas hug.

"Merry Christmas Dawn" Harry and Ron said together.

Harry couldn't help but smile at Dawn. It was early in the morning and she just had so much energy. He knew the past year for Dawn had been hard on her, yet here she was still smiling. Harry had to admire that. He had gone in the complete opposite direction when Sirius died. He knew Dawn wasn't happy hyper girl all the time, but there was something at Hogwarts that brought the best out in her.

"Ready to go wake up the others?" Dawn asked.

"Oh I don't know about that. I know we're a little bit closer to them than most adults, but they're still our professors" Hermoine answered. "Maybe we should just wait until breakfast"

"Yeah they're also my big sister and my friends. And don't worry about the Halliwells. Piper's got a little boy she's got to get used to this" Dawn answered as she gathered up her unwrapped presents and headed out of the room.

"Don't think you've got a choice Hermoine" Ron added as he picked up his own pile of presents.

- - -

"Wake up!" A familiar voice called from the common room of the American professors. "It's Christmas"

"Do you want to advara kadvanra her or shall I?" Phoebe muttered to Xander upstairs in her dorm.

Late Christmas Eve Xander had been feeling a little down. He thought he was over Anya's death, but Christmas had brought back memories. During his visit to Hogsmeade Xander had seen so many promotions for people to buy their Christmas presents at a particular store. It was commercialising a world wide holiday in order to make money. Anya would have loved it.

Phoebe, who had been spending more time with her new friend since they arrived at Hogwarts, realised this and decided to comfort him. Willow was slightly upset by this, as it was usually her job to do this. Xander had done it for her when Tara died and she had done it for him not long after Anya died. But Willow let it slide. She wasn't going create another triangle like there had been with Anya.

So since they had been up late just talking Xander had crashed in Phoebe's bed. There was no sudden romance between them, after all Phoebe was still sharing a dorm with Paige.

"I could probably cast a spell from her to send her far away" Paige mumbled from her own bed.

"C'mon sleepy heads, you know Dawnie's not going to give up." Willow poked her head into the dorm.

She had obviously just gotten out of bed. Her red hair was in tangles and there were still bags under her eyes. It wasn't long before the others had dragged themselves out of bed to follow Willow down the stairs. Buffy had bumped into them on the way, saying that Giles was the only one who remained in bed. Both Piper and Leo were the first of the adults downstairs after Dawn had called out. They had already been woken by Wyatt's cries of hunger a few moments before.

"You know, not all of us worship Santa. Jewish remember" Willow reminded Dawn.

It was a line Willow remembered saying to Dawn's sister a few years ago when Buffy had encountered The First when it attempted to kill Angel.

Ron had no idea what Willow meant by the term 'Jewish'. He had never heard that word before in his life. Then again he had never taken muggle studies either and knew nothing about 'muggle religions'. Ron would never admit it, not even to Harry, but the first thought that popped into his head was that 'Jewish' had to do to with Willow's choice of sexuality. Knowing that Hermione had the answers to almost everything Ron turned his friend . She quickly explained to him about other muggle December celebrations including fasting. Ron found this utterly ridiculous and couldn't understand why anyone would want to deny themselves food. Hermione just rolled her eyes.

It wasn't too long until everyone was downstairs and exchanging presents. Giles was naturally the last one up being the oldest and least excited by the day. It was only when Dawn had threatened to stand by his bed and precede to sing one of Peeves dirty versions of 'The 12 days of Christmas' that finally got the ex-watcher up.

"Er…Dawn?" Harry tapped on her shoulder.

The group had finished exchanging gifts of various sweets, magical and non-magical objects and of course for Buffy numerous amounts of clothes and shoes. They were about to head down for a quick breakfast then going out on Hogwarts grounds to play in the snow.

"I have something else to give you. In addition to the stuff from Fred and George's shop" Harry quickly explained as he handed Dawn a plain looking book. "I only finished putting it together last night. Collin and Dennis went home for Christmas and forgot to leave me the…well open it and find out"

Dawn did as Harry said. The book was not as plain on the inside as it was on the outside. It was a photo album. All the pictures inside were of Dawn's friends. Some of the pictures were from previous years, but most were taken in that school year. Dawn turned the page to find photos of herself and her sister taken before the chaos began on Halloween. A few more photos contained the rest of the Scoobies and the Halliwells.

"I figured after what happened at Sunnydale you probably didn't have any time to grab any photo albums. Hagrid actually gave me the idea. He gave me a photo album of pictures he collected of my parents at the end of my first year" Harry explained.

"Thank you" Dawn said taking her eyes off the waving pictures.

- - -

After breakfast the group headed out to the snow. While it was cold over winter, it had rarely snowed in both San Francisco and Sunnydale. The group had somehow automatically split themselves into two groups for a snowball fight. A couple of younger students who were also outside watched as professors and students began to build up walls. It was an odd sight to see professors interacting with their students in that way. Only Giles had hung back. Even with Xander's taunting of Giles being a stuff old English folk, Giles was not at all tempted by a snowball fight.

"Snowball!" Paige called for a snowball aimed at her head and sent it right back at the other red haired professor.

"Hey! No magic!" Willow called out.

The snowball fight was a rather immature event for the professors, especially the way they interacted with their students, but they all enjoyed themselves. Ginny, and Luna joined in although the only snowballs they threw were towards their classmates rather than the professors. Towards the end of the fight Peeves had decided to join in, choosing to target Giles who was watching from afar with Wyatt.

Lunch was an interesting affair. Most of the people who remained at Hogwarts consisted of those who were involved with the prophecy. Many students had returned home for Christmas, like they had in Harry's third year. Naturally the other professors at the school at acted a little more formal and had not gone anywhere near the snowball fight in the morning. However they were happy to chat with the American professors.

"These decorations look amazing Flitwick" Willow complimented.

"They better" Ron muttered to Ginny who was sitting next to him. "It took me forever to untangle the tinsel that Peeves wrapped around me. I swear if I hear him singing 'O weasel tree' again I might just join Filch's campaign to get rid of him"

The afternoon was spent doing various things, but mostly just lounging about the common room. After dinner that night Ginny, Harry, Ron and Hermione set off some of their fireworks they had been sent by the twins.

"Wow. I'm used to having fireworks at my place at Christmas time, but I think seeing the real ones is slightly better" Xander told Dawn as they watched the fireworks spell out 'Merry Christmas'.