That Saturday was the first Hogsmeade day of the new school year.

Despite the bitter cold and wind, FitzSimmons bundled up and trudged their way to the small village in order to get out of the castle for a day, and to join Sirius and Tonks for lunch at the Three Broomsticks. Meeting up with Tonks outside of the pub, they saw that she looked a little brighter and more cheerful than she had been when they met her at the train platform at the beginning of September, her hair now a dark purple and a bright smile lighting up her face as soon as she saw FitzSimmons hurrying up the street towards her. And as soon as they made it up to her, she immediately threw her arms around both of them in turn.

"You seem happier," Simmons commented as she returned the younger woman's hug.

"I'm better," Tonks answered. "Remus is still — well, Remus, but there feels like progress, which I guess is the best I can hope for at the moment."

"Glad to hear it," Simmons answered. "Come on, let's get inside out of this wind. We can wait for Mr Black in there."

But as it turned out Sirius Black was already waiting for them at a table inside, as eager to get out of the wind as FitzSimmons were, and so the three of them walked over and sat down at his table. The four of them spent the next several hours eating and chatting and talking about everything going on with all three of their lives, until the door to the pub suddenly flung open and a girl whom FitzSimmons vaguely recognized as often hanging out with fellow Gryffindor Katie Bell, burst in.

"Help!" she shouted in a panic. "Somebody help! Something's happened to Katie!"

Tonks the auror and Sirius immediately leapt up and dashed out following the girl, FitzSimmons running behind them. They soon arrived at a small group of students standing around Katie Bell, who was lying on the road thrashing and screaming, and seemingly unable to recognize any of them or where she was or anything at all.

"Out of the way! Everyone!" Tonks shouted as she ran up. Bending over Katie she only looked for a second at the seventh year before turning to Sirius and saying urgently, "Sirius, you're stronger, apparate her to the gates and then run her up to the hospital wing. I'll send a patronus telling them you're coming and then be right behind you as soon as I find out exactly what happened — and get Dumbledore down there if you can once she's in Pomfrey's hands!"

Sirius immediately picked up Katie in his arms and spun on the spot, disappearing into thin air.

After sending a quick patronus up to the castle, Tonks turned to Leanne and asked urgently, "So what happened? What caused this?"

Through continuous sobbing that made it hard to understand what she was trying to say at times, Leanne explained, "Katie came out of the bathroom in the Three Broomsticks carrying that package, saying she had to deliver it to someone at the castle. She wouldn't say who, so we argued, and I tried to grab the package away from her, and it tore. That's when she flew up in the air several feet, started screaming, and after a minute fell back to the ground still screaming and writhing, like she was when you came up. I did everything I could to shake her out of it, several of these people tried various healing spells and reviving spells and curse reversal spells and such to wake her up, but nothing worked. Finally I ran back into town, and found you."

"How long since she touched it?" Tonks asked, bending down to look at the package in question, and the greenish glitter from within.

"Probably at least fifteen minutes," Leanne answered. "I had no clue what to do, and I panicked, and I know I should have ran to find someone sooner but I've never seen anyone behave like that and —"

"It's okay, it's okay," Tonks interrupted soothingly, cutting off Leanne's panicked rambling as she wrapped the package in her scarf and stood back up. "She's in the school's hands now, they'll do what's necessary to save her. I have to take this necklace up to the school for them to know what she was cursed with, and you should head up there too for Madam Pomfrey to give you a potion for your shock."

Turning to FitzSimmons she continued, "Sorry to leave you guys like this, but I have to go take this up to the castle for the professors, and see how she's doing."

"Of course, of course, GO!" Simmons replied. "Cursed student over us."

Tonks gave them a tight smile and a nod before spinning and vanishing out of sight with the wrapped package.

Meanwhile, Sirius was running Katie into the school — nearly bowling Filch over when he tried to stop the werewolf from entering without a secrecy search first — and up to Madam Pomfrey and the Hospital Wing. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't going to make any difference. While a hard to stop curse under the best of circumstances, by the time Katie was able to be brought up to the castle by Sirius Black and everything done by everyone who could, Katie had already been exposed to the curse for too long, and the curse had already spread too far through her body to be stopped. Madam Pomfrey had done everything that she could to try to stop it with her magical medicine knowledge, before Tonks arrived with the cursed object showing that the curse was caused by very dark magic, Snape's specialty. At which point the man had to be rounded up from his dungeon lair to try his hand at stopping the spread, before she was then passed on to St Mungo's to see what they could do to try to save her life.

Unfortunately, however, even though the adults at Hogwarts and then the doctors at St Mungo's didn't know this yet — though they could tell that the situation was dire — while the Gryffindor seventh year girl would remain alive in a coma for several more months, her fate was already sealed.

~FS~

The story of Katie being cursed and Floo'd to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries spread through the castle almost as quickly as the curse had spread through Katie's body.

Leanne and the others who had been with Katie or congregated around her after she had been cursed were bombarded with questions about what had happened, but FitzSimmons escaped most of the pestering thanks to their reputation of being aloof, and only having come up at the very end of the incident when the auror and former mass murderer had whisked Katie up to the castle and the hospital wing. As for the story itself that was being spread, and the rumors that spread outward from that, the physical details of Katie's actions were mostly accurate, at least as best as Leanne could remember it through her panicked state, and then once everyone else had gathered around and seen Katie writhing on the snowy road, increasing the number of eyewitnesses to give their account of how she had been acting. But as for what had caused the curse and ensuing reaction, while it was fairly well known that it had been a cursed object of some kind, the details were mostly fuzzy as only a few spectators besides FitzSimmons had actually caught a glimpse of the opal necklace beneath the brown paper packaging.

But in the end it didn't really matter all that much what was known and what wasn't, as everyone talked about it pretty heavily for only a week or so, before shifting towards the upcoming opening quidditch match as people realized that she was on one of the two teams that were playing and wouldn't be able to play, and then fully on to quidditch without two thoughts anymore about Katie, the game far more important than one measly student's possible impending death.

In the middle of December, on the night before those taking the Hogwarts Express train home for Christmas left, Professor Slughorn held his Christmas Party for the Slug Club and guests.

Professor Slughorn had been holding weekly or biweekly dinners for the entire term, and FitzSimmons had made it to all of them except for the very first one, when they'd had a meeting with Dumbledore the evening that Professor Slughorn had held the dinner. They weren't always the most interesting of gatherings, and they had retrieved Dumbledore's memory from Professor Slughorn in between the fourth and fifth dinners, but FitzSimmons didn't know if there was anything more that Dumbledore needed from Professor Slughorn that they needed to stay in the professor's good graces for, and at the end of the day the suppers weren't terrible, and at least provided them with slightly different food than they got in the Great Hall every day and enabled them to meet some famous people of the wizarding world at many of the meetings, which always had the chance of coming in useful at some point. They hoped not, as they didn't want to ever get into the real world of the wizarding universe, but no reason to not make potential connections simply on the hope that they would never need them.

For all of the dinners that they'd had through the fall term they had simply received invitations either the evening of the supper or else at most one or two days in advance, but for this particular gathering they were given a few weeks' notice since every member of the Slug Club was allowed to bring a guest should they so choose. Word of which had somehow spread to the entire castle apparently, as everywhere FitzSimmons went for the next two weeks a large number of girls lurked around them, glaring resentfully at the happy couple, clearly less than pleased that none of them had the chance to try to get the Boy-Who-Lived to take them as his plus one.

But two days before the party, Fitz had an idea that was either going to get him kissed or slapped.

"I hope I'm not being presumptuous by suggesting this, but should we ask Luna Lovegood to come with us as our guest?" he asked as they stood in the courtyard between classes. "I'm sure Professor Slughorn doesn't expect us to bring a guest or guests as we are each other's 'guest', but no one ever invites Luna to anything, or really has anything to do with her at all. And we've got the opportunity to get her into something rather exclusive that all the people who shun her on a daily basis won't get to go to."

Simmons threw her hands around his neck and snogged him hard. Pulling back with a bright smile she exclaimed, "That's an amazing idea! We'll totally ask her at lunch if she wants to go with us."

"You're not upset I had the thought of bringing a girl besides you to the Christmas Party?" Fitz asked warily. "I mean, Professor Slughorn is expecting dates, even if he never said so directly."

"Unless it was Daisy, I know it would never even cross your mind to cheat on me, husband," Simmons answered, resting her hand on his chest. "You had a complete life with Aida, but as soon as you remembered your real life, you only had room in your heart for me. If there could ever be a legitimate situation to be in love with two women at once, it would have been then, and you weren't even hesitant. So no, I'm not worried in the least. As for Daisy — well…let's just hope she never asks us together out on a date, cause I might not say no."

So at lunch after their next class, FitzSimmons walked over to where Luna was eating alone at the Ravenclaw table.

"Hi, Luna," Simmons greeted the fifth year girl. "How would you like to come to Slughorn's party Friday night? We're allowed to invite guests, and we thought of you."

Luna looked up at them in surprise. "Me? Nobody's ever asked me to a party before. No one ever asks me to anything. Or is this some kind of prank at my expense?"

"No, no, of course not!" Fitz exclaimed. "And that's exactly why we're inviting you — no one does invite you to anything. Admittedly, we probably won't exactly be the best hosts, since we'll spend most of the party with each other, but it's still a chance for you to go and have fun if you'd like to."

"Oh, that's perfectly fine," Luna replied serenely. "And I would love to go. I'm used to being alone at everything."

"Then meet us outside of Professor Slughorn's office at 20:00 Friday night," Simmons said.

Luna was clearly excited for the opportunity to go to Professor Slughorn's Christmas Party, but not everyone else was quite so thrilled with FitzSimmons' choice.

As they walked up to their seats at the Gryffindor table ten seconds later, before they could even sit down, Ronald Weasley stormed up to them shouting, "You could've taken anyone! Anyone! And you chose Loony Lovegood?"

He was looking at Harry, so FitzSimmons assumed that despite the fact that both of them had clearly been talking to Luna, Ron thought that it was Harry alone who had invited Luna and not both of them. But it didn't really matter, as they weren't going to stand for Ron verbally abusing another student, and so before Ron had a clue what was coming, Fitz reared back and slammed his fist into the side of Ron's face, as hard of a punch as he could throw against the slightly taller sixteen year old. The redhead crumpled to the ground like a sack of rocks, his head thudding ominously as it smacked against the stone floor of the Great Hall.

As everyone stared at Fitz in shock, he and Simmons calmly sat down and began dishing out their food to eat lunch.

But they hadn't even been able to take a bite yet when McGonagall stormed up to them shouting irately, "What the hell was that, Potter?! That's a week's worth of detentions and fifty points! We don't attack other students in this castle!"

"He insulted Luna," Fitz answered calmly. "And unlike whatever punishment you would have given him had we reported it to you — if anything, because you don't exactly have a track record of punishing criminals and bullies, only punishing victims for defending themselves against said felons — I'll bet you quite a lot that Ron will never insult Luna again for the rest of his life after that, and I'd even bet you that he'll be a lot less likely to insult anyone ever again in the future, at least when Hermione and I are within hearing range. We took action to solve the problem and make sure it never happens again, which is far more than you can claim in the entire five and a half years that we've been here. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because we're untouchable which you apparently somehow forgot when you just told us we have detention, and we don't care about points and literally never have. So kindly move out of the way while we make the school a better, healthier, safer, more friendly place for everyone, not just the bullies and criminals and abusers."

Despite having been reprimanded by FitzSimmons countless times over the years, McGonagall still stared at Fitz in shock like she had never heard any such thing ever before. Finally, however, she collected herself enough to yell back at him, "You can't take punishments into your own hands!"

"We bloody well sure can when those who are supposed to give out the punishments fail time after time after time after time," Fitz growled in return, starting to get pissed off. "When the proper authorities routinely fail to do their duties — as you and the rest of the so-called adults around here have — then it does in fact become the every day citizen and patriot's duty to protect those around them, including giving out punishments to dissuade rule- and law-breakers from continuing their criminal and harmful behavior against others. We are simply doing your job since you can't or won't. Now shove off and let us get to eating, before you get punched for attempting to starve us to death, which is premeditated murder. Now scram!"

And with that he turned back to his food and began eating.

Unlike she was ordered to do by the only two people actually acting like adults in that castle, McGonagall did not, in fact, 'scram'. Instead, after once again staring at Fitz in shock for several seconds, she yelled, "You're just kids! You don't get to say what you can and can't do! That's for the adults to decide! We're in charge here, and we make the rules, not you!"

But this time FitzSimmons simply ignored her, eating away like there wasn't an irate witch screeching loudly behind them. And after a few more minutes of yelling McGonagall apparently realized that the only thing that she was accomplishing was making herself look like a giant fool (or tool) in front of the entire castle that was congregated in the Great Hall eating lunch, as she certainly wasn't affecting FitzSimmons in the least bit, so she finally turned on her heels and stalked back up to the staff table to soothe her hurt ego with other professors who would commiserate with her on losing a fight to a student, leaving FitzSimmons to enjoy their lunch in peace and eventually head on to their afternoon classes.

Word quickly spread through the castle that 'Harry Potter' was taking Loony Lovegood to Professor Slughorn's Christmas Party. Nearly everyone in the castle was in the Great Hall at lunch when FitzSimmons invited her, but especially with their following fight with McGonagall immediately afterwards, most people weren't actually aware what had caused said fight. But over the course of that afternoon, the people around Luna when FitzSimmons had invited her quickly spread the word through the female population of the castle, until by suppertime pretty much everyone knew.

And while they received plenty of glares and angry mutterings from all of the females who weren't Luna for the next two days, none of them were stupid enough to insult Luna in front of FitzSimmons having seen or heard about the punishment the duo doled out for anyone who verbally abused Luna (unlike the complete lack of punishments the adults gave out that discourage no one), and so FitzSimmons arrived at the evening of the party without having had to punch any more common decency and manners into anyone else.

They met Luna in the hallway outside of Professor Slughorn's office at exactly 20:00, most of the other Slug Club members and their dates walking up at the same time. Music, and the laughter and loud conversations of Professor Slughorn's special guests from outside of the castle could be heard already getting the gathering kicked off inside Professor Slughorn's office, and upon entering the office they found quite the crowd already gathered in the magically larger on the inside room. What they also discovered, though not to their surprise, was that Simmons was the only girl there wearing a real dress instead of boring dress robes. A fact that would earn them everything from curious to jealous to disapproving looks throughout the rest of the evening, both from other students who had mostly already seen Simmons in a dress two years earlier at the Yule Ball, and from celebrity guests, many of whom looked like they had never seen a dress before in their lives, or cleavage from any other clothing besides a nice dress, either.

Almost as soon as FitzSimmons and Luna entered the room, Professor Slughorn swooped down on FitzSimmons and dragged them off through the room so that he could introduce them to one particular famous person whom he had invited to his Christmas party, one Eldred Worple, an author, which left Luna to wander the party on her own like she wanted to anyway.

"Harry Potter, I am simply delighted!" Worple greeted Fitz when they made it over to the author. "I was saying to Professor Slughorn only the other day, 'Where is the biography of Harry Potter for which we have all been waiting?'."

"Sixteen year olds who have only had one thing ever happen to them, which wasn't even any of their doing, don't normally have biographies written about them," Fitz replied with a slight roll of his eyes. "A biography of Harry Potter would take all of about ten pages and is already in a bunch of the modern history books in the Voldemort section. 'A spell bounced off of Harry Potter's forehead and Riddle vanished.' — there you go, just wrote the entire book for you."

"Just as modest as Horace described!" Worple exclaimed, ignoring everything that Fitz had just said, before turning very businesslike. "But seriously, I would be delighted to write it myself — people are craving to know more about you, dear boy, craving! If you were prepared to grant me a few interviews, say in four- or five-hour sessions, why, we could have the book finished within months. And all with very little effort on your part, I assure you — ask Sanguini here if it isn't quite so."

"Oh, you couldn't afford us," Fitz answered with a wry chuckle as Worple pulled his vampire friend Sanguini back from a group of nearby teenage girls he was about to snack on. "Hermione and I's life is more long-running network tv show material than a mere book — not that you probably have any clue what that means not having tv's or movies in this world. But think wizarding photo, that moves, only it's twenty-three or forty-two minutes long normally for a tv show, or anywhere from an hour and a half to over three hours for a movie, unless it's a movie that really should have been at most a tv episode because it's only a little over an hour long, and still required a lot of filler and real life news footage that should have gone after the credits or not at all — but I digress. Getting back to tv shows and movies, each separate tv episode and movie is exactly the same every time you watch it, unlike your moving portraits and photos that have a life of their own. But point being, our lives would take a hundred and thirty or more of those forty-two minute tv episodes to tell — not some measly book."

Worple stared at Fitz in confusion, having no clue what he was talking about, especially as he had just said that there shouldn't even be a book about him since he had only ever had one thing done to him in his life, before finally deciding to just jump straight to the one thing that would make almost anyone do whatever you wanted them to — money.

"My dear boy, the gold you could make, you have no idea!"

"I have the love of my life standing next to me every minute of every day — that's all the wealth I need," Fitz answered, wrapping his arm around his wife's shoulder. "Anyway, I'm far from poor, and I invested in a small business that is currently booming and we have every reason to believe will continue to do so, so gold doesn't really have as strong of a draw for us as it does for most of the people you try to get to do what you want them to by offering riches. So until you can offer us something that we're actually interested in having, for a much less interesting biography of Harry Potter than you seem to believe could exist, this seems to be the end of our short acquaintance. Goodbye."

And with that Fitz turned and walked away, Simmons following along beside him. They walked over to an almost secluded corner of the room, picking up some food and mead along the way from the roving house elves carrying plates of food and drinks on silver platters above their heads. But they were not to be able to hide away in their little corner of the world all night long, as an even tipsier than before Professor Slughorn soon found them again and dragged them with him over to where a clearly drunk Professor Trelawney was standing next to a skulking Snape — in other words, a completely normal Snape doing completely normal Snape things.

Leading them right up to Snape and Professor Trelawney, Professor Slughorn bragged, "You two know Harry Potter and Hermione Granger! Well, I just have to say, I don't think I've ever known such naturals at Potions as these two! Instinctive, you know — Harry is just like his mother, and Hermione might be even better, it's really too close to tell most lessons! I've only ever taught a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that. Such natural ability, both of them! Some credit must go to you, of course, Severus, you taught them for five years! But you should have seen what they gave me when I had everyone make the Draught of Living Death in our first practical lesson — never had a single student produce finer on a first attempt, let alone two students in the same class, not even you, Severus. And even before that, Hermione here had realized entirely on her own over the summer that Potions books have different instructions and wanted to know why, making me realize that none of them knew anything about the reasons behind why potions are made how they are!"

Upon this last proclamation, Snape turned to glare down at FitzSimmons for daring to lead Professor Slughorn into enlightening students to what he had deliberately hid from students for a decade and a half, the knowledge on how to become the best potioneers that they possibly could be through properly understanding the science behind potions. Professor Slughorn, of course, was too sloshed to notice this, but FitzSimmons were not, and saw it clear as day on Snape's sour face. So Fitz leapt on the opportunity to twist the metaphorical silver Potions dagger a little further into Snape's lack of a heart or conscience.

"Yeah, Snape, that's right — we fixed the problem you caused by not teaching any of us why potions are brewed the way they are," he sneered up at the glowering Snake. "But now, thanks to Professor Slughorn actually teaching us something more than how to follow less than ideal instructions written on a board, everyone who moved on to NEWTs — most of whom, by the way, wouldn't have been able to if Dumbledore was still letting you rule over the class, since you refuse to take anyone with less than an O, which is very hard to get after you spend five years not teaching anything — but everyone who moved on to NEWTs this year actually understands the concepts behind brewing potions, and so can recognize where the textbook has less than the best instructions and be able to do things the better way instead, using the extra ingredients and slightly different stirring and cutting techniques and such, to make better potions than any NEWT class under you ever could."

"Now, Harry, I'm sure —"

"No — Harry is completely right," Simmons interrupted Professor Slughorn's attempt to defend Snape and lessen the intensity of what Fitz had just said. "Had Snape been a real professor and not an insecure, cowardly, child abuser who blames everyone except himself for his own faults and failings in life, he would have spent our first five years, and all the years of students older than us, teaching us what you've had to spend way too much class time this year teaching us because he didn't. Which either means that he's too stupid to be teaching Potions class because he doesn't know what he needed to have been teaching, which I don't believe because he's shown to be a very good Potioneer himself, which only leaves the single option that he was deliberately cruel and intentionally did not teach us what he knew because he did not want any of us to reach our full potential, probably because he feared that some of his students would be better at Potions than he is, and his ego is too big to handle not being seen as the best Potioneer in the castle. Isn't that right, Snape? Look me dead in the eyes and deny it if anything I just said was wrong."

Snape tried his absolute hardest to glare holes through the 'insolent' mudblood cunt's head, but he said not a word to contradict her because he couldn't. Sure, he could lie his arse off, and Professor Slughorn might believe him, but the two truly genius students (even he couldn't deny that, no matter how much he hated Potter for living and a mudblood for being smarter than him) standing in front of him would see right through him and know that he was lying his arse off, and while technically that wouldn't make any difference as they were unlikely in this situation to actually go do anything with that knowledge or even be able to really do anything with it, he still couldn't have them going around knowing without question that he was a complete lying arsehole — if that ever happened, in his mind at least, they would have one up on him, and he couldn't live with himself if that were ever the case.

Meanwhile after a few seconds, in order to try to ease the growing tension between his two best students and Severus, Professor Slughorn quickly asked his prize students, "Harry and Hermione, remind me what other subjects you're taking?"

"Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Astronomy, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, History of Magic, Potions, and Transfiguration," Simmons rattled off in alphabetical order. "Everything except for Muggle Studies, because we know more than the professor and the tests combined, and the truth instead of whatever wizards think is true about the normal world that they know absolutely nothing about never having spent any time in it, and Divination because prophecy and future telling is never what it seems to be, and we have bad history with it."

"Ten NEWTs! Such overachievers!" Professor Slughorn boomed out genially. "And I'm sure you're just as amazing in all those other subjects as you are in Potions! Do you know what you're planning on doing with all that when you graduate?"

"Probably move to the States and open an ice cream shoppe aquarium that also sells proper British junk food," Fitz answered, making all three professors stare at him in surprise. "I love British junk food, Hermione loves fish, especially those that can change colors, and we both love ice cream."

"What? — You didn't think that we would go work for the Ministry after they attempted to overthrow Hogwarts and denied the truth about Riddle's return all of last year, did you?" Simmons added with a condescending scoff. "Not a bloody chance in hell we would ever work for the Ministry. The further we can get away from said bunch of tyrants — across a rather large pond, for instance — the better in our opinion."

And with that proclamation she turned and walked away, Fitz scurrying after her as soon as he saw that she was leaving the professors for food.

They headed over to a different secluded corner of Professor Slughorn's office, only stopping briefly to kiss under the mistletoe that was hung up in the middle of the room, and then grab more mead and mince pies from passing house elves. And about twenty minutes later they decided that they'd had enough of these festivities, and attended long enough to keep Professor Slughorn happy with them if they still needed to be doing that for Dumbledore, and headed out with a wave at a Luna, who was deep in some conversation with Professor Trelawney that they both seemed to be really invested in.

Despite there being no Hogsmeade days over Christmas break, Tonks wasn't about to let that stop her from visiting her new favorite friends over Christmas.

And as one of the four aurors assigned to protect the school, she had all the excuse that she needed to be sitting at the Gryffindor table at breakfast waiting for FitzSimmons to arrive a few days before Christmas. As soon as they spotted her and her festive dark red and green hair sitting by herself at Gryffindor table in the otherwise empty hall they immediately headed over, sitting down across from her.

"Love the hair," Simmons greeted the younger woman. "How are you doing?"

"Visiting my two favorite students, so not too bad," Tonks answered with a smirk. "Thought you might like some company while the castle's mostly empty."

"We're happy to have your company any time," Fitz replied. "We fit in at this castle about as well as your hair, so it's always this empty to us, regardless of how many people are actually here. It's not a problem, because we have each other and are used to being different, but it does mean we're happy to have you visit any time you can, especially since you can apparently get inside the castle to come see us and not just meet us in Hogsmeade."

"Yeah, I'm not really supposed to come inside the castle unless it's something important during the school year, but they forgot to say anything about Christmas," Tonks explained with a mischievous smirk. "So you'll get to see so much of me you'll be sick and tired of me by the time school starts back. In fact, the only day I can't come is Christmas itself, since after weeks of begging and pestering, Remus finally agreed to take the day and go with me to the White Cliffs of Dover for Christmas Day — not that I'll actually subject you to my presence every other remaining day of break."

"Well good for you!" Simmons exclaimed. "I'm sure you'll have fun, and he will to. And if you actually want to, you're more than welcome to spend every day besides that with us. We won't mind."

"Yeah, we've pretty much just been spending as much time as we can playing out in the snow, and then going to the library to study or to our dorm to practice or do other things when we get frozen out, and then repeating as the day goes on," Fitz said. "Except for the 'other things' part of that, you're more than welcome to join us whenever you want."

The three of them spent the rest of the day playing outside in the snow, exploring the castle, and both showing the other tricks that they knew from being Shield Agents and an auror respectively, until Tonks finally said goodbye to them after supper with the promise of returning the following morning. And this pattern continued on until Christmas morning, the day that Tonks wasn't going to be able to spend with FitzSimmons.

When the Shield science couple awoke on Christmas morning, they didn't even waste their time looking down towards the bottom of the bed to see if anyone had sent them any presents until after they had already tired themselves out, knowing that any presents that had come could wait. But neither of their stamina's could last forever, no matter how many times they had practiced, so eventually they crawled down to the bottom of their bed to see who thought that they were close enough to give them anything.

As it turned out, two of their presents were from people who actually were close enough to get them something, Tonks and Sirius. And a third was from the twins and their joke shoppe, whom FitzSimmons had invested in to get them started in their thriving business. The final package, however, was from the Weasleys for the sixth straight year, despite them having told Ron the previous year not to get them anything anymore, and Mr Weasley now being dead. Ron had never mentioned to them how they were getting along now, if Mrs Weasley had got some job with the Ministry or somewhere to make ends meet now that the family's source of income was gone, or if Dumbledore or some of the Weasley children who had already left the house and were out on their own were supporting Mrs, Ron, and Ginevra Weasley, and FitzSimmons hadn't asked as there was absolutely nothing that they could do about it as two students, and they had never been close to the family, even the twins. As for which of the Weasleys the package was actually from FitzSimmons never knew, for as soon as they saw that it was from a Weasley that wasn't clearly the twins' package to them it, same as they had done previous years and told Ron the previous year that they would do, they tossed it to the side to throw in an out of the way fire, still having no reason to trust the family that insisted on inserting themselves into Harry Potter's life no matter how much FitzSimmons ignored them and told them to stay away.

Their other three packages, however, they did open. The twins had sent a large box of products from their business, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, mostly joke items but a few actually cool defense and protection inventions that they had been working on as well. Sirius had sent them a set of advanced DADA books, that while mostly just had spells that FitzSimmons had already ran across in library books and such, contained a few new spells or new suggestions on how to use or practice the various fighting spells. And lastly, Tonks had found a fully functioning scale model of the Firebolt that Sirius had given Harry Potter for Christmas three years earlier, along with several books that she had been assigned to read during auror training, knowing from their many talks over Christmas break that FitzSimmons would appreciate anything that the wizarding special agents had to learn before being deployed into the field.

Presents opened and mental notes made to thank Tonks when they saw her the next morning, and to send Sirius a thank you owl that afternoon since they wouldn't see him in person again until the next Hogsmeade Saturday in the new year sometime, FitzSimmons headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast and to start their day of the Lord Savior's birth.

That afternoon as FitzSimmons were enjoying their Christmas Day romping in the snow, tossing each other into snow drifts, and throwing snowballs at one another, Madam Rosmerta was delivering her Christmas gift to Dumbledore — a very nice bottle of poisoned wine. Of course, it wasn't actually her fault that she was potentially killing the headmaster, as she had been Imperiused by Lucius Malfoy on behalf of his son before the school year had started in order to give Draco an inside woman in Hogsmeade. An inside woman who had already been used once that year to Imperius Katie Bell into taking the cursed necklace up to the castle in that first failed attempt to assassinate the headmaster back in October. But this time it was poisoned wine instead of a cursed necklace, and thanks to Draco's father's suggestion that he make Madam Rosmerta, a very trusted bartender in Dumbledore's life, deliver the poison straight to the headmaster herself so that it didn't have to go through anyone else's hands and would go straight to Dumbledore this time, it was guaranteed to get in the intended target's hands unlike the failed necklace. Then all Dumbledore had to do was drink the wine for Malfoy to be successful in his mission from the Dark Lord, and who didn't drink fine wine that they were given as a gift from a beloved friend?

But gift wine that wasn't for a specific supper was rarely drunk on the day that it was given, and this instance was no different.

So a few days had passed and the wine remained unopened when Minister Scrimgeour met Dumbledore in his circular headmasters office to discuss the state of the war against Tom Riddle, Jr. Unlike Fudge, Scrimgeour wasn't so proud as to refuse Dumbledore's input, even if he didn't always agree with it or implement it. But he knew that the headmaster had good ideas and a lot of knowledge on the subject of You-Know-Who, so he was at least willing to listen to what Dumbledore had to say as he made his own decisions about leading the Ministry's efforts against He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. He was also still trying to convince Dumbledore to let him use the household hero name of 'Harry Potter' to convince the masses that the Ministry was winning the war and doing the right things.

And so the very first thing that he said after greetings and pleasantries had been exchanged, was, "Dumbledore, good Sir, I know that I have mentioned this before, but I am sure you can see how for the moral and future safety of the country it is important that I be allowed to speak with Harry Potter. People know of the rumors circulating that there is a prophecy regarding him and You-Know-Who, and it would be good for them to see the Ministry working with who they all believe will save them. He can be a symbol of hope to them, you know? The idea that there is somebody out there who might be able, who might even be destined, to destroy He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named — well, naturally, it gives people a lift. And I can't help but feel that, once you realize this, you might consider it, well, almost a duty, to let Potter stand alongside the Ministry and give everyone that boost in these darkening times."

"And I have given you my answer on that already, Rufus," Dumbledore said coldly. "I will not allow you to bother my pupil about becoming the Ministry's mascot or lap dog. Now I thought that we had actual business to discuss about stopping Voldemort."

After that the meeting went pleasantly enough, until finally they had done all of the talking that they had to do, and in the spirit of Christmas cheer, Dumbledore said to the Minister, "If you have time, I have this wonderful bottle of wine given to me for Christmas by Madam Rosmerta of the Three Broomsticks, and I feel sure that it would be better enjoyed together than alone."

The Minister was agreeable, so Dumbledore had soon poured them both out full goblets, and they toasted to the future riddance of Tom Riddle once and for all. As it so happened, Scrimgeour was the first one to actually take a sip of his wine, and the moment that he swallowed he dropped his glass and crumpled over in his chair with his extremities jerking uncontrollably. Dumbledore immediately leapt up from his own chair and hurried over to where he kept an anti-dark arts kit handy to get a bezoar, while Scrimgeour began foaming at the mouth and his skin started turning blue. Dumbledore quickly returned to the Minister's side and shoved the stone down his throat, his body finally stilling and his gargling breathing easing up.

Content that the immediate threat was over, Dumbledore called up St Mungo's on the Floo, and within fifteen minutes the Minister was in a private, secret room of the hospital being looked at by the doctors, everyone under strict secrecy charms not to reveal that the Minister had been poisoned or that he was in the hospital and would be for a week or so, and the bottle of wine vanished so that no one else could be poisoned by it.

Figuring that he had a little time before the Minister would wake up and could tell anyone that Dumbledore had said that the bottle of wine was a Christmas present from Madam Rosmerta of the Three Broomsticks, Dumbledore lied when asked and said that he didn't remember where the bottle had come from, and then when he had been dismissed back to his own office at Hogwarts, immediately headed into Hogsmeade to surreptitiously observe Madam Rosmerta. He was sure that she hadn't intentionally tried to kill him, having known her for years since she had attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry herself, and was even more certain since he knew that the Malfoy boy was already trying to kill him that year. And while he was definitely famous and people off and on did want to wack him, the likelihood of two people in the same year when one of them had never shown any inclinations of wanting to kill him before, made a single assassin the much more probable likelihood, with Madam Rosmerta merely under the Imperious curse for Draco. Which would also help explain the cursed necklace that had clearly been intended for him, that had instead hit Miss Bell, who while still alive for the moment, wasn't going to be forever and was never going to wake up from the coma that she was in as the curse slowly killed her.

And if this was the case, Dumbledore wanted to be able to prove that she was under the curse and therefore innocent, before the Ministry swept in and arrested her for attempted murder of the Minister, and as likely as not plastering her all over the front cover of the Daily Prophet as an arrested Death Eater to make it look like they were having any success at all fighting back against Voldemort, and send her to Azkaban without a trial that would show that she wasn't actually guilty. Not even including the fact that even if she was found innocent, half of the British wizarding population would for the rest of their lives remember her only as having been accused of being a Death Eater, and therefore unwilling to go to her pub in Hogsmeade, destroying her livelihood forever despite her innocence.

Meanwhile, the entire rest of the castle — including Malfoy — and the rest of wizarding Britain in general, were completely unaware that anything had happened in Dumbledore's office that morning, or that the Minister of Magic was lying in St Mungo's for a week of recovery and observation.

Dumbledore also called Snape into his office a few days later to discuss the whole thing with Malfoy's Head of House, who was supposed to be watching the boy to make sure that nothing like this or the Gryffindor girl's cursing happened as the Slytherin boy tried to kill him.

"Severus, you have to get Malfoy under control, or at least know what he's planning," Dumbledore told him coldly. "He nearly killed the Minister of Magic, and if I had been the one to drink first, he probably would have successfully killed me since Rufus wouldn't have known where to get a bezoar from in my office, and it would have taken too long even by Floo for St Mungo's to do anything. But more important than that, we can't let the boy become a murderer, because it will be so much harder to save him later on, and to justify letting him stay a student in the school next year if anyone else figures out that he's behind all of these attacks."

"He won't let me help him or tell me anything he's doing, and Aunt Bellatrix has taught him occlumency that even I can't break through," Snape growled. "And to be quite honest, Sir, you take too much for granted. I'm already spying on the Dark Lord for you, teaching a class that everyone is a year behind in, and having to teach a completely full sixth year NEWT class that almost none of them should have been allowed to progress in, to deal with what the Malfoy boy is doing as well."

"Severus — you agreed to do this. I will tolerate no more discussion on that, or I might find myself having to explain to the Minister or Harry Potter exactly why I allow the former Death Eater who told Voldemort the prophecy that resulted in Harry Potter not having any parents, to teach at my school," Dumbledore answered threateningly. "Malfoy is your responsibility, and you will keep this under control."