Day Eleven - Fairy Lights
Untangling the fairy lights is the most frustrating thing about decorating for Christmas. Draco is set the task of unraveling them without magic.
It was the start of the Christmas season, and Harry and Hermione had suggested they decorate the shared common room the muggle way. The seventh years were all sharing a common room and dormitories as part of the new inter house unity initiative, and so far, it was going surprisingly well.
Slytherins and Gryffindors were finally getting along, and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs no longer had to put up with being on the side lines of these ridiculous feuds.
Hermione and Draco, being head boy and girl, were told they were in charge of decorating the seventh years common room and dorms. They had liaised with the house elves (aftermath grumbling from Hermione) about getting smaller trees for the dorm rooms, and suggested that each member of the dorms select a few ornaments each to hang on these trees.
For the common room, however, they had decided to have a large tree in the centre of the room so it could be seen from all angles, and they'd both gone into Hogsmeade one weekend to get the decorations they wanted for the rest of the room, with money from the schools funds, of course. They had lots of baubles and tinsel for the tree, multiple garlands to hang around the rest of the room, and, of course, fairy lights. Hermione had suggested a mix of smaller and large ones, both for the tree and around the room. Draco had agreed, not knowing of the plan for the actual decorating of the room.
The first weekend of the Christmas season, Hermione and Draco sat all the seventh years down and told them what they would be doing.
'So we have smaller trees for each of the dorm rooms,' Hermione explained, 'and as you all already know, you've been asked to select a few decorations each to put on your respective trees. We thought it would be a good way to bring some personality to the decorations and it would be nice for people to see the kind of things their dorm mates like.'
'As for the common room,' Draco continued, 'we have garlands and fairy lights to decorate the room, and the tree is going to go up in the middle of the room so everyone can see it, and we can see all around it since we have plenty of decorations to cover the whole thing. Plus, it makes it easier for the secret Santa presents to be put underneath if there's more space around it.'
'We then have baubles in lots of colours, some tinsel, and fairy lights for decorating the tree. Plus, I even got some muggle fake snow for decorating the windows.' Hermione nodded to Neville who grinned. He had suggested it to Hermione a couple of weeks back when she had been talking to a few of her friends about the decorating.
Harry, who was sat next to Neville, cleared his throat loudly and gave her a nod.
'Oh yes,' she said before Draco could carry on with the rest of the instructions. 'Me and Harry thought it might be a nice idea if we decorated the common room the muggle way.'
There were a lot of murmurs over this, and some unsure looks from the pure bloods.
'I know a lot of you are used to it being done by magic,' Hermione rushed to try and bring them around on the idea, 'but the muggle way is still really fun! We could play a bunch of Christmas music, and it's a way we can all work together, so it counts toward the house unity stuff. Besides, wouldn't it be nice to see it all decorated and know that we did it ourselves, without magic? I think we'll enjoy it more knowing we did it and put in the work.'
More people were looking convinced, but a few others still looked a little unsure. Malfoy decided Hermione was right. After all, it was Christmas, and it did sound like it could be fun.
'I think that's a brilliant idea,' he spoke from beside her. Everyone in the room turned to him in shock, including Hermione. Sure, he had come around a lot more recently, but no one really expected him to be full yon board with this idea. Hermione expected he'd reluctantly agree to it. 'Well don't look so shocked. It just sounds like it would be fun to work together to decorate the common room.'
'Okay, hands up everyone who thinks we should all do it the muggle way,' Hermione called to the room. Almost everyone put their hands up straight away, the rest finally putting them up reluctantly. They seemed to have convinced everyone, thankfully.
'Okay, brilliant! Well, we've already assigned jobs to everyone, so there's a sheet here that I'll put on the bulletin board, and you can check what you're supposed to be doing and where. Obviously there'll be fairly big groups, but there's lots of space to decorate, so everyone'll be spread out.' Hermione strode over to the bulletin board and pinned the sheet up.
Everyone slowly made their way over to find out what they'd be doing. There was a group for putting up the tree, a separate group for organising the tree decorations and putting them up, another group in charge of the garlands around the room, and a fourth for putting the fairy lights up around the room.
'Everyone just remember to communicate with the other groups, just so we all know what we're doing and no one gets in someone else's way, especially with people having to hang things high up.' Hermione called out.
Each of the four groups consisted of about 10 people, a mix of each of the four houses. The two groups decorating the rest of the room rather than the tree decided to divide the room into two separate sides, so one group could decorate one side, while the other did the opposite, and then they'd switch so they wouldn't get in each others way.
The two groups assigned to the tree decided that the decorating group should separate out the decorations and untangle the fairy lights while they started putting the tree up, as it could take a while, and at least then they wouldn't be sat doing nothing while they were waiting for the tree to go up.
As they set about dividing up the decorations among themselves, Harry and Hermione decided to work with Draco to get the fairy lights sorted ready for going on the tree. It wasn't exactly going well.
'How the bloody hell do muggles do this?' Draco complained for the fifth time as he tried to untangle the lights. Harry and Hermione were each working on their own sets, and were managing fairly well, having had experience in this before. Draco, on the other hand, was only getting himself tangled in the lights.
'Just find one end and work you way backwards,' Hermione tried to tell him again. He tried doing what she said, and managed eventually managed to untangle the whole string of lights, but when he looked back down he found the previously untangled lights had now tangled themselves together again.
'For fuck sake!' He burst out loudly, throwing the lights down on the floor. The rest of the room chuckled. The others who had been assigned to untangle the lights had managed to find a way to do so without getting them tangled again, but Draco couldn't seem to figure it out.
Hermione finally decided to take pity on him and go and help with his set of lights. 'Here, I'll help,' she told him gently. He seemed more upset with himself than anything. He had really changed over the last few months. Finally, after another half an hour, Hermione had helped Draco untangle the lights and keep them that way, ready for going onto the tree.
The next task was winding them around the tree, which proved to annoy Draco almost as much as untangling them. He kept getting frustrated at having to weave them through the branches and finding out that there was still tons of lights left.
Eventually, though, the lights were on the tree and it was time for the people who had selected to sort the tinsel and baubles to decorate instead. Draco collapsed onto one of the sofas with a few of the people who had finished putting the tree up and watched as the rest of the room came together.
It was a pain in the arse to put up fairy lights the muggle way, but now he sat watching the rest of the decorations go up, he realised Hermione really was right. It was fun in the end, and he did enjoy looking around the room so much more knowing that he had worked hard to decorate it.
He'd be sure to remember that in the future when he decorated his own home for Christmas. As he was learning more and more this year, muggles and their ways weren't really so bad, even when it comes to putting up fairy lights.