Harry was awakened on Christmas morning by Ron throwing a pillow at him.

"Oy! Wake up!" Ron shouted happily. "It's Christmas!"

Harry stared in shock at the foot of his bed. For the first time in his life he could remember, he had Christmas presents! He opened the first present, which was very small. It consisted of a note:

We received your message and enclose your Christmas present. From Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Harry looked and saw that they had attached fifty pence to the paper.

"Why are they sending me a 'gift' at all?" Harry wondered aloud. "I don't live with them anymore, and they hate me."

"My mum knows a woman like that," Ron said through a mouthful of chocolate. "They're total enemies, but they give each other real insulting gifts at Christmas—like used dental floss and stuff like that—because giving someone a really lame gift is more insulting than no gift at all."

"I see," said Harry. Now the gift made a lot more sense. Ron craned his neck to see what it was.

"Weird!" said Ron when he saw it. "What a shape! This is money?"

"You can keep it." Harry tossed the coin to Ron. "Okay, I got one from the Dursleys…but who are the rest from?"

"I think I know who that one's from." Ron pointed to a lumpy present. "My mum. I told her you didn't expect any presents and—oh no, she's made you a Weasley sweater."

When Harry opened the present, he found an emerald-green sweater and some homemade fudge. After that, there was only one present left—but Ron and Harry's present-opening was interrupted when Hermione burst in.

"Merry Christmas!" she cried happily. She was holding two gifts, presumably her gifts for Harry and Ron.

"You too," said Ron, but Harry suddenly had a new worry—he had been expecting to see her at the feast this morning, not in his dorm! Why did he have to wear his babyish reindeer pajamas this morning? Why had he opted to take a shower in the morning as opposed to taking a bath last night? He probably stunk to high heaven! After all, he hadn't had a chance to brush his teeth yet, either…what a disaster!

Hermione, meanwhile, was looking around.

"You know, I think I finally understand why the founders allowed girls into the boys' dorms, but not vice versa," she said, wrinkling her nose. "No girl would ever want to go into a boys' dorm."

"What do you mean?" Ron was now eating some of the fudge his mother had sent him.

"Well, for one thing, you have a ton of empty pizza boxes scattered everywhere," said Hermione, pointing. "You haven't even got pillowcases, and it smells awful in here—no wonder, you've got two piles of smelly, sweaty clothes on the floor."

"For your information, Hermione," said Ron in a matter-of-fact voice, "we use the Two-Pile System, wherein we separate our worn clothes into two piles—those we can wear again, and those which will get us sent to Madame Pomfrey for a lecture on hygiene—"

But he shut up then, because Harry was waving his hands frantically, and Hermione was looking revolted.

"Anyway," said Harry nervously, "did you get my present, Hermione?"

"Oh, yes, I loved it," she told him, tearing her attention away from the Two-Pile System. "Do you and Ron want your gifts?"

"Sure!" said Ron. "What'd you get us?"

"I got a box of sugar quills for you, Ron," Hermione said, tossing a present to Ron. "Because I know you'd like to eat candy in class."

"Awesome!" Ron tore open the present at once.

"And for you, Harry…" Hermione smiled. "I picked this up in the school bookstore."

She handed him a scarlet hoodie with a lion on the front. On the back was the word Potter.

"I got it custom-made," she explained. "It's a Gryffindor hoodie with your last name on the back. I expect you'll need it, since it's going to be so cold."

"Wow, thanks, Hermione!" Harry took the hoodie and made to put it on when he heard Hermione giggle, so he asked what was so funny.

"What's with the reindeer pajamas?" she asked, smirking.

"Oh, um…" Harry felt his face getting red. "Well, you see, uh…my dad was an Animagus, and he turned into a deer, which means I really like deer…and so I wore these deer pajamas because I thought…because I thought it would be like being with my dad on Christmas."

Harry thought this would sound stupid, but Hermione's eyes were glistening with tears.

"That is so sweet, Harry!" Hermione cried, kissing Harry on the cheek and making him turn all shades of red. "You're so adorable! Well…I'm going to go get dressed. See you two soon, breakfast ends at eleven!"

Hermione beamed at them both and slammed the door shut behind her.

"I thought you were only wearing your old reindeer pajamas because your green ones are in the laundry," said Ron suspiciously.

"Oh, hush," said Harry, trying to hide his blushing face. "You don't know anything."

They were interrupted next by Sirius, who burst into the room as Padfoot, jumping on Harry and Ron and licking their faces. They laughed, trying to push him off. When he finally turned back into Sirius, wearing red Christmas robes with green lining, he grinned and said, "Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas," Harry and Ron chorused.

"Ah," said Sirius, taking a present out of his enchanted pockets and tossing one to Ron. Then he walked towards the two dirty laundry piles. "Using the Two-Pile System, are we, boys?"

"How do you know about the Two-Pile System?" Ron asked.

"Well, I was an obnoxious teenage boy once, wasn't I?" said Sirius, raising an eyebrow.

"Did you and my dad use it?" Harry asked.

"We would have, but Moony wouldn't allow it," Sirius replied. "He said he couldn't study when our dorm room smelled like the rear end of a goat."

Ron snorted with laughter. He had already torn open his present, which was of course candy, and he was eating it. Sirius walked over to one of the piles and picked up Ron's dirty, smelly Chudley Cannons T-shirt. He sniffed it, then pulled a face.

"Merlin, that's ripe," he said. "I'm guessing this is the hygiene-lecture pile, then?"

"No." Ron pointed at the pile next to it. "That one is."

"Well...I guess I'm not the one sitting next to you in class," said Sirius, shrugging and crossing to Harry's bed. Harry felt the mattress sink slightly as he sat down on the end. "It's funny…boys actually sweat more than girls, yet you never see girls doing stuff like this."

"Contrary to popular belief, you don't really need to take a shower every day or anything, y'know?" Ron was saying in between mouthfuls of Chocolate Frog. "You can just spray yourself every morning with body spray."

"Um, that's actually not true," said Sirius, the corners of his mouth twitching. "What actually happens is, the sweat just mixes with the body spray, so you smell worse than ever."

"Huh," said Ron, looking shocked.

"Anyway…" Sirius rolled his eyes and pulled three more presents out of his pockets. "Harry, do you want your presents from me, Moony and Barbara now?"

"Of course," said Harry. The first present he unwrapped was Barbara's, because it was more brownies. Harry took a bite out of one; he hadn't realized how much he had missed their delicious taste. Next he opened Sirius's gift, but he was at a loss as to what they were. They looked sort of like black gloves. There was a helmet in the box, too. Ron seemed to recognize what Harry's present was.

"Dueling gloves!" he moaned, falling back onto his bed in envy. "You are so lucky!"

"What are dueling gloves?" Harry asked.

"Gloves you use in a duel," Sirius explained, taking the gloves out of the box and fitting them onto Harry's hands; they were a bit big, but they soon shrunk magically to fit his hands. "They were your dad's. The padding on them blocks most unfriendly spells, and the part that covers your knuckles is as strong as steel. If you punch someone in the face with these on—well…"

Sirius set the helmet down on the bed. "Try punching this."

Harry punched the heavy steel helmet. He felt absolutely nothing.

"You probably won't ever need them for real, but I thought you'd like them," Sirius replied, setting the helmet on Harry's head. It was heavier than he'd thought, and hung over his eyes. "They'll come in handy during our hand-to-hand combat unit in Defense Against the Dark Arts, too."

"We're learning hand-to-hand combat?" Harry asked, pushing up the brim of the helmet so he could see properly. Sirius grinned at the sight.

"Yes, during the spring," he said. "You never know when you'll be stuck in a battle without your wand. Most wizards don't know squat about fighting without magic, so knowing how to fight with your fists can be advantageous."

"Thanks, Sirius," said Harry, hugging Sirius around the waist. Sirius hugged him back.

"You might need that helmet shrunken a bit too, though," he said jokingly.

Harry liked Remus's gift, too. Remus had gotten him a three-pack of Christmas-themed scented candles (gingerbread cookie, pine, and candy cane).

"That reminds me…" Harry was suddenly feeling guilty. "You got me such a great gift, and Sirius, I just couldn't find anything for you. I didn't know what you would like, and I wanted it to be something really special…so what do you want for Christmas?"

"I don't need a gift, Harry," said Sirius, putting his arm around Harry. "Just having you with me on Christmas is enough of a gift."

Harry didn't have anything to say to that. Ten years, ten Christmases, of knowing the Dursleys wished he wasn't there, getting him insult-gifts, and now…Sirius was happy just to have Harry here with him at all. All he could do was hug Sirius as tight as he could, knowing that his father couldn't have picked a better godfather in all the world.

When the hug was over, Harry noticed that Ron had nicked one of Barbara's brownies, and that reminded him of something.

"Sirius," he said, "what did Barbara give you for Christmas?"

"Well, as you know, I'm spending Christmas here, so on Friday the twentieth she invited me over to her apartment and cooked me a fantastic, romantic Christmas dinner with all my favorite foods. Then I stayed the night, and in the morning, we went to that place with the really good milkshakes."

"Don't forget the mozzarella sticks," Harry added.

"How could I?" Sirius grinned. "Anyway…have you two finished opening your presents? Or can I join you for the rest?"

"I've opened all mine," said Ron, "but Harry's got one left."

"I have?" Harry looked at the foot of his bed, and a small, light package was still there. He opened it, and something fell out of it.

"Oh, wow," Sirius breathed. "It's your dad's old Invisibility Cloak!"

"His what?" said Harry, picking up the Cloak, which almost felt like liquid in his hands.

"It's a Cloak that makes the wearer invisible, of course," Sirius explained. "Try it on and see."

Harry put the Cloak around his shoulders, and Ron yelled as Harry's body vanished. Only his head remained. Sirius looked pleased that Harry had the Cloak. Harry looked in the mirror and threw the cloak over his head, making him completely invisible. Something caught Sirius's eye, and he bent down.

"Hmm, it looks like you got a note," he said, picking the note up and giving it to Harry, who pulled the cloak off of him and read it.

Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well. A Very Merry Christmas to you.

"That's Dumbledore's writing," Sirius commented, looking closely at the gift-giver's note. "Wonder why he didn't sign it—I guess he just likes being mysterious. Anyway, I didn't know James left the Cloak with him…be that as it may…"

Sirius picked the Cloak up off the floor.

"With this and your Marauders' Map, I suppose you'll be capable of much more mischief-making, won't you?" he said, smirking. "Dumbledore's right. It is about time you got this."

…

The rest of Christmas day was even more fun than the morning. Needless to say, the feast was spectacular, surely even better than Barbara's dinner for Sirius. There were wizard's crackers, which gave you prizes when you opened them. Harry got tons of things in his, including a new Wizard's Chess set. Harry, Hermione, the Weasleys and Sirius had another enjoyable snowball fight on the grounds; then, they sat under their favorite tree and watched students ice-skating on the lake. Sirius told Harry a very funny story about how his parents had been "couple-skating" one winter and Sirius (not the best skater himself) had been flying along and knocked into them, causing all three to tumble backwards onto the ice.

Around nightfall, they all headed back to Gryffindor Tower for a mini-Christmas party, Sirius included. Ron was watching Holly, who (along with a few other seventh-year girls) had donned a form-fitting Santa's Helper outfit for the occasion. Hermione didn't go with them, because she had a book she wanted to return to the library. The party was going fine when Harry realized he had left his Wizard's Chess set in the Great Hall. He was just about to open the door to the portrait hole when it swung open and there was Hermione, looking surprised…but then she stopped short. She looked up, and her cheeks turned pink.

"Oh," she said. "Mistletoe."

Harry's heart nearly stopped as he looked up. Indeed, there was the plant, right above their heads.

"Y-You know the rule, don't you?" Hermione asked, a little awkwardly.

"Yes," Harry told her, feeling absolutely mortified. "We've…we've got to kiss."

"Well, I-I'm never one for breaking rules…" Hermione laughed nervously. It was probably only a few seconds, but it felt like hours as they looked into each other's eyes. It was awhile before Harry realized Hermione was waiting for him to do something.

But what was he going to do? He had never kissed a girl before! This was a disaster! When Sirius had talked to Harry in the Owlery that day—why had Harry not asked him how to kiss someone? Now it was too late…Harry tried to remember, as Hermione kept staring at him, all the times he had seen Sirius and Barbara kiss…but he couldn't do that! They had looked, sometimes, as if they were eating each other's faces! This was just one single, romantic kiss—their first kiss, their CHRISTMAS kiss, and he COULDN'T ruin it!

In desperation, Harry thought back to the horrible soap operas he had watched at the Dursleys' and with Hermione. He didn't know whether to grab her shoulders or her cheeks or her waist. He just wished she would stop staring…God forbid, what if he missed her lips?

Finally—

"D'you…d'you want to just kiss me on the cheek, maybe?" Hermione asked hesitantly.

Harry swallowed.

"No," he said.

And before he could lose his nerve, he grabbed her shoulders, pulling her closer, and pressed their lips together for a split second. True, it was only a second, but it was a second filled with the knowledge that this was Hermione Granger he was kissing, no other; the thought caused his fingers and toes to be filled with the most delightful tingling sensation, and his heart flew.

When they had separated their lips, with a surprisingly loud (and awkward) smacking noise, Hermione grinned, and Harry was surprised to see she was blushing.

"Not bad," she told him, giving him another kiss, this time on the cheek. Before he could say anything more, she turned on her heel and positively bolted for the girls' dorms.

Harry, meanwhile, was stunned. He could feel his burning-hot face, but he couldn't feel his legs. All he could do was just keep rubbing the part of his face where Hermione had kissed, remembering the sensation of her lips on his own. Finally, somehow, he managed to stumble back to the chairs in front of the Gryffindor fire.

Sirius was there, reading the Christmas Prophet, legs crossed. When Harry approached, he saw that his godfather had a very broad smirk on his face.

"Shut up," said Harry.

"I didn't say anything," Sirius said back, but it was obviously taking all his self-restraint to fight back a laugh.

"So we kissed!" Harry flopped into a chair. "Big deal!"

It was a big deal, but he wasn't going to say that.

"Good thing there was mistletoe, then," Sirius said casually, raising the newspaper once more.

There was a pause. And then—

"You!" Harry exclaimed in outrage. "You were the one who put the mistletoe over the portrait hole!"

"Yeah." Sirius was still grinning. "What are you going to do, call the police?"

"I hate you!" said Harry (although of course he didn't mean it). "I had to kiss her! On the lips!"

"And you're complaining?"

"Well, I don't know how to kiss! I didn't know where to put my hands or whether or not to close my eyes or how long it should last or whether I should—"

"You know what, kid?" Sirius leaned over and ruffled Harry's hair. "You make me laugh."

"What d'you mean?" said Harry irritably.

"Well, are you really complaining?" Sirius asked. "You got to kiss the girl you loved on Christmas, didn't you? Tell me that's not romantic."

"I guess it was romantic," Harry admitted. "And it did feel good. I-I've never felt anything like that before."

Sirius smiled. "I guess I made the right choice, then."

"And you really knew all along?" Harry said. "About me fancying her?"

"Well, yeah...Did I mention, you and your dad have the exact same 'thinking-about-a-girl' face?" Sirius pulled a mock-gooey, romantic face, then laughed. "I could always tell when James was thinking about Lily, which means I can always tell when you're thinking about Hermione."

Harry frowned; he thought about Hermione a lot. But Sirius had been able to read James like a book. Was that why he seemed to be able to read Harry, too?

"Hmm..." Sirius smiled. "Did I ever tell you the story of your parents' first kiss?"

"Oh no, you haven't!" Harry straightened up right away. "Tell me! What happened?"

"Well, they first started going out in seventh year," Sirius began, "and it was at a Quidditch game, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. I was commentating, and we were winning…"

Gryffindor was definitely flattening Slytherin, and James Potter was sure he had played a big part in it. He was scoring goals today like nobody's business. It was raining slightly, but he did not mind, for he could still see the goal hoops perfectly clearly.

There, in the stands, Lily Evans was cheering for him, something she never would have done even one year ago. Sirius and Remus were saying that she liked him back, but how to know for sure?

James was snapped out of his thoughts by one of his teammates tossing the Quaffle to him; he quickly caught it. He could hear Sirius commentating down in the stands.

"Gryffindor in possession, James Potter has the Quaffle, can he make it? He shoots—HE SCORES!"

The entirety of Gryffindor House cheered. James grinned at Lily, back in the stands with the rest of the crowd; she was jumping up and down in excitement. Cheering for him! Then he realized…if he was curious to see if she loved him back by now, there was really only one way to find out…

James sped towards the stand on the broom, flipped himself upside down and—although he was now hanging onto the broom with his knees alone—grabbed Lily's shoulders and kissed her, right there during the middle of the game.

"Ah, here's a new development…Gryffindor Chaser James Potter decides to take some time out for a little snogging…"

James had no time to concentrate on Lily's reaction, or on Sirius's commentary; the Quaffle had come at him again and he seized it under one arm as he flipped himself right-side-up again, grabbing onto the front of the broomstick with his other hand. He waved to Lily, who looked shocked, and shot another goal, just as the rain began to let up. And then…

"GRYFFINDOR SEEKER HAS SEIZED THE GOLDEN SNITCH!" Sirius hollered. "SLYTHERIN IS PULVERIZED, 300-60! GRYFFINDOR WINS!"

Beaming with triumph, James descended to the ground, along with the other thirteen players. Remus and Peter were standing under a big red umbrella, looking shocked out of their minds; Sirius was running down out of the stands to meet them, shaking his wet hair out of his eyes the way a great big shaggy black dog might. But James wasn't focused on the other Marauders right now. He was focused on the beautiful girl running straight at him.

"James!" Lily cried, her shoes splashing through the mud puddles the rain had left.

"Lily," James said calmly, placing one hand on her shoulder. "I have something to ask you."

"What?" Lily raised one eyebrow.

"Will you go out with me?"

There was a long pause for a second, in which hazel met green; then Lily gasped, "Does this answer your question?"

It was the best kiss James had ever received. Kissing Lily wasn't the way he had imagined it to be; it was worlds better. It was as if time had stopped, and they were the only two people on Earth, surrounded by sunshine and rainbows and then—

"Yes," James told her softly as their lips parted. "Yes, it does."

With that, he lifted her up into his arms, bridal-style, and kissed her on the forehead. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were all cheering wildly. James looked over at his friends—Sirius was grinning from ear to ear, Peter was looking as shocked as ever, and Remus had burst into tears. James winked at them, Lily saluted like a soldier to the entire stadium, and he carried her back to the castle.

"Wow," said Harry, once the story had ended. "Now that was romantic."

TO BE CONTINUED!

Author's Note: Yes, I'm aware Harry didn't discover the Mirror of Erised. I'm going to put that in later. ;)