Chapter One: Winter Wonderland

Later on, we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid
The plans that we've made
Walking in a winter wonderland

Who are you?

Ginny has written those three words hundreds of times in the three months since she realized she has fallen in love with her anonymous pen pal. However, just like the hundreds of times before, Ginny can't bring herself to send them.

Ripping off the bottom of the parchment, she crumples up those three terrifying words and tosses them into the grate. She feels no satisfaction watching the flames lick at the parchment, a line of ash swallowing the paper ball whole, but she knows those words are forbidden. If her pen friend—who she has come to think of simply by the initial with which he signs his letters, a swirly letter D—ever read them, their relationship would change. The easiness with which they communicated their thoughts, desires, and fears would become awkward and complicated.

Ginny knows this, but she can't stop wondering who and where he is. She can't help but wonder what he's doing now, the shape of his smile, the color of his eyes.

Instead of asking the question to which she's desperate to know the answer, she dips her quill in ink and writes:

I can't imagine being an only child. My family consists of a small army, and Christmas in our household is always chaotic and warm. Mum bakes every single day. The house smells like cinnamon from the end of November to Christmas Day. My siblings and I play pickup games of Quidditch in the yard, and we all play jokes on each other and tease each other mercilessly. My brothers can be really obnoxious sometimes, but I love when we can all get together under the same roof again.

She pauses, and her quill leaves a mouse-shaped blot on the parchment, muddling the word again and threatening to drown the entire letter. D would love that, she thinks, to open up her letter to find a page full of black ink. Maybe he would laugh. Maybe he would send her something just as absurd back. It wouldn't be the first time he'd received a questionable letter from her.

On the first of April, she'd sent her longest letter yet, words and ink blurred with tear stains as she’d shared her every happy memory of Fred with him, names redacted for privacy. Her heart had ached at the thought of George on his first birthday without his twin, and Ginny, wracked with grief and isolated at Hogwarts, had turned to her mysterious pen pal, a stranger, someone removed enough from her family to be her strength.

His replies had usually arrived within a day, so by the time the familiar owl landed in front of her at the Gryffindor table two mornings later, she had emerged from her grief enough to regret the word vomit to which she'd subjected D. His response had been short and confusing:

Words fail me. I wish I could comfort you in person.

Their relationship had changed after that. In the first few months of their exchanges, Ginny's letters had focused on her observations of others and the turmoil her friends and family faced daily. D had been reticent about the details of his life, his responses curt and devoid of emotion entirely. Since the twins' birthday, both of them have opened up, their letters laced with a vulnerability and intimacy that makes Ginny's heart pound and ache with each missive. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, Ginny's affection and yearning had gained traction and grown, until an avalanche had buried her under Feelings. Capital F absolutely necessary.

Point being, D knows that Fred died at the Battle of Hogwarts. He knows more about Ginny's trauma than her family does.

Last Christmas was just awful because of my brother's absence. Am I horrible for wishing this year could be the same as the Christmases from my childhood?

The letter soars out the window attached to the leg of an owl before she can second guess herself. Thoughts she doesn't dare speak aloud, especially to her family, she shares with D. Her secrets, even the ones that shame her, are safe with him.

Because of the quiet pain and understanding she reads in his letters, when she thinks of D, she imagines someone older than her, closer to thirty than Ginny's eighteen years. He probably didn't fight at the battle. Maybe he rebelled in his own small way, by tuning in to Potterwatch or deliberately sabotaging the folding of Umbridge’s anti-Muggleborn pamphlets. He must have been an innocent bystander, a simple civilian, not an Auror or a Hit Wizard and uninvolved with the Order. He doesn't know Ginny. He can't know her. That's the only way their friendship can work.

Sometimes she pictures him writing letters to her in counsel while a girlfriend or wife patters around in the background. She hates how much that breaks her heart, but she has no rights to D. Their letters are intimate but lack flirtation. Ginny knows she’s projecting and can’t help herself because, even surrounded by friends and family, she has felt so lonely since the war.

Sometimes she rues the day she allowed Professor McGonagall to convince her to sign up for the Ministry’s letter exchange program, an admirable attempt to support war-torn constituents in the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts. Sometimes she lays in bed devastatingly grateful for the program, for Professor McGonagall’s keen eye for trauma, and, most of all, for D.

She acknowledges that he has his own life, a whole life she knows absolutely nothing about and in which she plays a miniscule part. She is not entitled to him, but still, selfishly, she asks this question only to herself:

Who are you?

o o o o

Draco paces when he receives a letter from his pen pal.

The pacing began back in April on her brother's birthday. He hadn't known her. In fact, he hadn't put much effort in the letters he'd sent her before then, but for the first time since their pen friendship began over Christmas hols, she had revealed something of her life. Slipped. Now he knows exactly who she is.

When he had received her letter on the first of April, he had, for a moment, thought Ginny Weasley was playing a practical joke on him. He had paced around the Slytherin common room, letter crumpled up in his hand, as he had considered the possibility of Weasley discovering Draco’s participation in the Ministry letter exchange program. For a whole half-hour, he had raged from the portrait hole to the hearth, back and forth, seething at the idea of her mocking him for embracing his anguish.

Once he’d allowed himself to look at the letter again, he’d realized it was no joke. The handwriting was the same as the letters he had received before, and the writer’s tone was clearly one of despair, not mockery. Even in text, that was obvious as soon as he lowered his defenses.

He had paced for another hour as he contemplated his next move.

He had found out who she was, but his identity still remained a mystery to her. If she had known her pen pal and Draco Malfoy were one and the same, she never would have sent him such a revealing letter. She never would have bared her soul to him, not even in her most despairing moment. He had been certain of that.

Now, eight months later, Draco is thankful that he stamped out the urge to read her letter aloud in the middle of the Great Hall to humiliate her. Instead, he chose to continue writing to her as if he had no idea who she was, and, for some reason, he allowed himself to open up to her as well.

Draco wears a path in the Aubusson carpet that covers the floor of his study. Since leaving Hogwarts in June and returning to Malfoy Manor, he has claimed this room as his own, oftentimes passing out on the decorative sofa in front of the fire when his body expires after multiple days without sleep. It’s not comfortable in the slightest, but he can’t bring himself to sleep in his own bedroom, a habit that frustrates his mother endlessly.

He stops in the middle of the room and reads the letter again. Looks up. Thinks.

We should meet.

How many times has he almost put those words to parchment and sent them to her? How many times has he thought about pulling her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her, and sharing in her warmth? It’s a pipe dream, and Draco knows it, because as soon as she realizes that she has been sharing her deepest, darkest secrets with Draco Malfoy for almost an entire year, she will never forgive him and their letter exchange will stop.

There is no future where Ginny Weasley lets Draco touch her, not even for her own comfort. Still, increasingly with each letter he receives, he hovers his quill over his reply, those three single-syllable words threatening to leak out of the nib and splash on the parchment, becoming a reality and a challenge all at once.

It’s not that he is getting tired of her letters. It’s just that he isn’t sure what more there is to say, and at this point, all he wants is to look upon her face and see the acceptance there that he sees in her ink. At night he dreams of her fingers entwined with his, and if he allows himself, he dreams of more. A caress, a chaste kiss on his cheek, fingernails lightly scraping his scalp, a freckled hand cupping his Dark Mark—

It will never happen, and he knows it.

Only after he has paced off the urge to reveal his identity does he sit down and pen his reply.

If such a wish makes you horrible, I must be horrible, too. Last Christmas was the first without my father, and it was an unbearable disaster. I'd give anything to go back to the way things used to be.

I don't think we're horrible, but I've come to realize that wishing is an impossible waste. There are so many things that I wish for, that I know I have no right to wish for. I struggle coming to terms with my unrealized dreams, but once I accept the reality, it stops hurting. Sometimes.

He isn’t sure about this letter, what he’s trying to say. But maybe she will understand. He sends it off on the leg of his father’s eagle owl and watches as the bird disappears into the distance. Weak sunlight scatters across the fog, decreasing his visibility and ominously swallowing the owl whole.

Draco, too, feels suffocated by his environment, trapped in a fog he can’t escape, lost and isolated from outsiders—if any outsiders even care to look for him. Every letter he receives from Ginny is a sunbeam cutting through the fog, spotlighting him and blanketing him in warmth.

While he reads her letters, his shivering ceases, but as he waits for her response, his bones don’t stop trembling underneath his flesh.

o o o o

“You need a hobby,” Blaise says without turning around.

Draco stops in the entrance of the study. Sighs. He carries two sandwiches in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. Forays to the kitchen and the loo are the only sojourns he takes out of this room most days, unless Blaise comes over and drags Draco out for a walk on the grounds. Even Blaise knows he can’t persuade Draco to travel out farther, to the Zabini home, the Parkinsons’, or even into town. Draco hasn’t visited Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade since his sixth year at Hogwarts, well over three years ago.

Draco places his lunch on the oak desk that once belonged to his father, and Blaise reaches for one of the sandwiches, taking a bite out of whole wheat and turkey before Draco can protest.

Draco only notices what has caught Blaise’s attention after Blaise puts the sandwich down and lifts a piece of parchment. Instantly, Draco’s body tenses, but he doesn’t snatch the parchment out of Blaise’s hand like he wants to. He can’t let Blaise know just how important Ginny’s letters are to him, giving Blaise a weakness to exploit or, at the very least, make fun of. Neither outcome appeals to Draco. The letters he writes to Ginny leave him too raw for jokes.

As he sinks into the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk, heart racing like stampeding manticores, Draco thanks Dumbledore, Merlin, and his ancestors that he has already sent his letter on its way. The words Blaise reads are Ginny’s concerns about spending Christmas with her family. He forces his body to relax (a contradiction that does not escape him), clears his mind, and lets a sarcastic smile grace his lips. His expression combined with the languorous spread of his limbs is enough to convince Blaise of his nonchalance. He hopes.

“What kind of hobby do you have in mind?”

“Sex, for starters.”

“With you?”

“God, no. You only wish you could have me.”

Draco doesn’t, actually. In fact, Draco can say with certainty that he has never thought of anyone in a sexual light before. But Blaise Zabini has more confidence than anyone Draco has ever known and an astronomical ego to go along with it, so convincing him that there is anyone alive who does not want to jump his bones is an impossible and fruitless feat. Draco chooses to ignore him.

“I don’t need any hobbies. I’m fine.”

Blaise lowers Ginny’s letter and levels a dubious stare at Draco, one dark eyebrow elegantly arched in disbelief.

“I am,” Draco insists, looking away from his friend before Blaise’s gaze can needle itself under Draco’s Occlumency. Blaise isn’t a Legilimens: he’s just annoying enough to get through Draco’s defenses. That’s the reason they’re friends now. Blaise knows he has an edge over Draco. He’s the only person in their social caste who does not fall at Draco’s feet in worshipful adoration. The Zabinis care little for social politics and think even more of themselves than the Malfoys do, despite having significantly less wealth. What they lack in money, they make up for in self-admiration.

This means that Blaise is the only person Draco trusts to tell him the truth. After years and years of believing that the Malfoy name makes him special and important and better than—well, everyone, sometimes it rankles to be told he’s a pathetic git who needs a hobby, but it’s also refreshingly new.

“Fine, no sex. You need to get out of this house and you need something else to occupy your mind besides these depressing letters.”

Draco can’t really deny that Ginny’s letters are depressing, but how does he explain to Blaise, whose family was unaffiliated with The Dark Lord and who left Hogwarts with most of the other Slytherins when the Battle of Hogwarts began, that he finds Ginny’s mutual depression comforting? He can’t talk about the war with anyone he knows. Emotions are unimportant and meant to be concealed. They’re not just a weakness, something that can be exploited, they’re shameful to the individual and the family. No one would listen to him, least of all Blaise whose experience with the war so vastly differs from Draco’s.

Ginny suffers the same way Draco does, and for nearly eight months between the war ending and Draco signing up for the Ministry’s pen pal program, the idea that anyone could share Draco’s emotions had been unimaginable.

“I’m fine,” Draco says again. He stands up and goes to the decorative sofa, throws himself down on it, making the delicately carved frame creak. A fire springs to life in the grate, and Draco stares into it broodily, as much a decoration now as the sofa on which he sits.

“You’re not,” Blaise says. He leaves Ginny’s letter on the desk as he takes the armchair across from Draco, his dark skin glowing with warmth from the fire. “Not one of us is happy, Draco. You can’t wallow here for the rest of your life. It helps to take your mind off the unpleasantness that is living and remind yourself that the world can be good again. Our lives can be good again.”

The words and the candor with which they are spoken surprise Draco. He considers how best to proceed in this conversation before he responds, too aware that just because Blaise has opened up this dialogue does not mean he truly understands Draco or wants to help him.

Instead, he deflects. “Is living so difficult for you?”

“It has its moments. Your family has it worse. So does Pansy’s. I’m aware of that, so I won’t complain. But what you do in this room alone is not living. I’m… worried you’ll forget what it means to have a life.”

“I’m not suicidal,” Draco huffs.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

There’s a medium-lengthed pause as Draco mulls over the conversation so far. Then: “I don’t know if I ever knew what it meant to have a life.”

Blaise smiles. His lips stretching across his face reminds Draco that when it comes to good looks, Blaise has a reason to be confident.

“Now is as good a time as any to learn. Take up a hobby with me. Off Malfoy property. I’ll convince Pansy and Greg to join us, and we can have a little reunion.”

Like the obnoxious git he is, he manages to worm that award-winning smile under Draco’s defenses, so Draco concedes.

“Fine.”

o o o o

Later that evening, Ginny’s owl pecks on the glass pane of the study window. He’s surprised to have a response so soon; usually it takes a day or two for him to hear from her again. He snatches the letter off the owl’s leg and shoos it back out the window without a treat, too impatient to read her reply to be polite to the creature.

He’s immediately disappointed to find such a short missive.

Dreams are meant to be chased. What a waste to have them if you won't even try to reach for them.

His heart beats like a bass drum, the sound echoing against his rib cage until he can’t tell the original pounding from the reverberations. Maybe she understood him too well. He wants so much to believe this letter is permission to pursue her, wrapped up like a chastisement, but he can’t. He just can’t. His identity would ruin everything. The truth would shatter the one good thing he has in his life, and he can’t risk the certainty of her letters for the possibility of her because he knows she is as impossible as the idea of Potter turning to the Dark Arts, as his mother cavorting with Muggles, as Draco erasing the Dark Mark from his arm.

He holds her letter to his chest and feels his heart beating against it, and Draco can’t stop himself. He begins to hope.

Chapter Two: Greensleeves

Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously
And I have loved you oh so long
Delighting in your company

Ginny grits her teeth when she, Hermione, and Luna reach the pond to find it already occupied.

“There’s plenty of room,” Luna says, sensing the tension from Ginny and Hermione. “We can share.”

A protest is on the tip of Ginny’s tongue until Hermione shoots her a quelling look. Ice skating was Luna’s idea, after all. Not just her idea—her special request. So Ginny swallows her pride and carefully navigates down the snowbank, ignoring the four people cutting lines into the surface of the frozen pond as well as their matching green and silver scarves.

“Hello!” Luna calls with a frantic wave.

Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, and Gregory Goyle all stop and look up, like clockwork figures programmed to move in sync. They stare for a moment before Zabini skates to the edge of the pond, a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Is it all right if we join you?” Luna asks, her own smile oblivious.

Zabini eyes Hermione and Ginny, both of whom are hanging back. “I don’t see why not. We don’t want any trouble.”

A skeptical sound comes out of Ginny’s throat, but she says nothing and Zabini doesn’t pursue an argument. Meanwhile, Luna nods vigorously and says, “Who does? We’ll behave.”

Zabini looks at Luna more carefully, one eyebrow raised in consideration as he takes her in, from her fuzzy purple earmuffs down to her rainbow-striped stockings. His face cracks open when his smile widens, and that’s exactly what it looks like to Ginny. One moment, his expression is wary and closed off. The next, he’s grinning, charmed by Luna’s honesty. He skates back to his friends, who are standing together in a huddle, waiting for his verdict.

“We’ll behave?” Ginny says. “They’re the ones who have to behave!”

Luna bends down to charm her boots into ice skates, not dignifying Ginny’s objection with her full attention. “We will all behave. If there’s trouble, we’ll leave and skate somewhere else.”

Then Luna takes to the ice, leaving Ginny fuming on the side of the pond. Hermione’s gaze is understanding, and her mouth grim, as she charms her own boots and waits for Ginny.

But it really is as simple as that. Zabini and his crew avoid Ginny and hers. They pass each other on the ice but do not exchange words and barely exchange glances.

Hermione and Ginny spend at least twenty minutes hobbling around the edge of the pond, their ankles trembling and threatening to collapse underneath them. They hold onto each other for support, but this seems to do more harm than good. Their mutual instability exacerbates their unsteadiness, and Ginny spends most of her time bracing herself for an impact that, thankfully, doesn’t occur.

Around them, Luna skates like a professional, though a confused one. Her preferred direction to skate is backwards and with her eyes closed, but she does it so gracefully and with no risk of barreling into anyone else. She skates like she has eyes in the back of her head, like she was born on the ice.

Ginny tries not to pay any attention to Zabini and friends, but it’s hard when they, too, move so nimbly. Even cumbersome, awkward Goyle seems proficient in the art. He doesn’t twirl like Parkinson, preferring instead to skate in straight lines back and forth down the middle of the pond, but there’s a surety in his movements that does not exist in Hermione’s or Ginny’s.

Zabini skates as fast as he can, grinning into the wind, clearly enjoying his own increasing speed. Malfoy, on the other hand, sets a reasonable pace. He pushes off against the ice to pick up speed and then lets himself glide until his momentum runs out. Like Luna, he skates with his eyes closed. Unlike Luna, he lifts his chin to allow the wind to ruffle his hair, his enjoyment of the activity understated but obvious.

Every time he passes Ginny and Hermione, Ginny expects a snide remark about their ineptness. The tension in Ginny’s body escalates until she is all too aware of her awkward skating. Her boots with their enchanted blades are heavy, making her calves ache and tremble with exertion. Her arms are sore from holding onto Hermione, and she’s afraid they will permanently freeze into ninety-degree angles. She hopes Malfoy doesn’t notice her red, dripping nose or her wind-burned cheeks or that her favorite pair of mittens, knitted for her by her mum several years ago, have started to unravel. She hopes he is less aware of her than she is of him.

After their second lap around the pond, Hermione abandons Ginny to sit in the snow and rest her legs. Ginny continues on, shaky as she inches along the ice and tries not to fall. She can’t get the hang of the smooth gliding motion, so her feet scissor precariously underneath her. An image of a cartoon character Hermione showed her on the telly once comes to mind, and she scowls.

She senses the Slytherins staring at her, but she doesn’t dare lift her head to confirm because she knows as soon as she takes her eyes off her feet, her arse will hit the ice. In her peripheral vision, Parkinson, Goyle, and Malfoy are standing close together, tittering like gossips while Zabini continues speeding around the pond, ignoring everyone else except Luna. He smiles at her every time they pass one another.

As she nears them, Parkinson says in a carrying voice, “Draco, please help the poor girl. She’s going to break her neck.”

Ginny grits her teeth and keeps her head down as Goyle responds with, “Who cares?”

“What do you think will happen if Ginny Weasley seriously injures herself while in our company?” There’s a pause as if Parkinson expects an answer, but then she makes an impatient sound and continues. “It won’t look good for us. Do you think anyone would believe we didn’t have something to do with her hurting herself?”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Ginny says, her voice raising at the end as her legs slide out from under her and she begins to fall.

She doesn’t, though, because Malfoy has caught her. It isn’t a graceful fall or a graceful catch. Malfoy manages to hook his arms under hers from behind, and it’s a miracle that her weight doesn’t make both of them crash down onto the ice. He hefts her up back onto her feet, but she can’t get them under her again. One of Malfoy’s arms shifts down around Ginny’s waist and pulls her against him, her back to his front.

“Steady now,” he says, his breath hot against her skin where her knitted cap has skewed, uncovering her ear. A shiver shoots down her spine in response to the tingling in her skin.

“Let go of me!”

He tries his best to hold her up as she struggles against him, but she slips through his arms and falls anyway, right onto her bum.

Parkinson laughs with Goyle. Zabini and Luna skate over, each taking one of Ginny’s arms and helping her to her feet.

“All right there, Weasley?”

“Did the Wrackspurts get you? I knew I should have brought my Spectrespecs.”

“I’m fine!” Ginny dusts ice off herself and loses her balance again, but Malfoy’s arm is there to support her, and she takes it to save her tailbone.

Now that he has verified Ginny is unhurt, Zabini turns to Luna and says, “You’re a lovely skater.”

It’s just starting to snow and she’s staring at one snowflake in particular as it drifts through the air, but she grins. “Thank you. So are you.”

He follows her as she skates away, his gaze intent on her back.

Parkinson eyes Malfoy and Ginny before she, too, beckons Goyle and leads him away.

Alone, her dignity still mostly intact even though her cheeks are burning, Ginny says, “You can let go now.”

“You’re the one who is holding on.” Malfoy’s lips lift up into a smirk, and he shakes his arm as evidence.

He’s right, of course. Ginny is the one grasping his forearm as if her life depends on it. Her face heats further.

Before she can pull away, he swings in front of her and takes both of her palms, clutching them lightly between his gloved fingers. Now they’re moving, Malfoy skating backwards as he pulls Ginny along.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice rising in panic. Instinctively, she bends at the waist, trying to lower her center of gravity so her fall will be less severe when it inevitably happens.

“You have every reason not to trust me, but I’m asking you to right now. After this, we never have to speak to each other again.”

The snow falls a little faster, entangling in her eyelashes and melting when she blinks. Malfoy continues to pull her, but he tugs on her hands, too, urging her to straighten her posture, asking her to put her faith in him, to entrust him with not only her safety, but her enjoyment, as well.

They are close enough to each other that she can’t help but notice the flush in his high cheeks and the tip of his pointed nose. Snowflakes drift into his eyelashes, too, as if they are meant to be there, and Ginny, for the first time in her life, takes note of the color of Draco Malfoy’s eyes.

Like his skin and his hair, his eyes are pale, and they are the exact same color as the frozen pond on which they’ve chosen to skate. It’s a fleeting thought, but she imagines him as a frosty spirit, a mischievous presence that might disappear with a gust of wind. There’s an air of the eternal about him, something both older and younger than she remembers him being during the height of the war, something wizened, saddened, and grown.

His eyes pierce her and her heart stutters in her chest, certain that he can see straight into her. Every heartbeat, every silly thought, every shameful emotion. She feels exposed to him, and she hates it because there’s only one person who knows her, the true her. There’s only one person she wants to open up to. Malfoy is not D. He’s not her pen pal. He’s not her confidante, a man so far removed from her life and the war that she feels safe with him in a way she didn’t feel safe with Harry.

Malfoy is the complete opposite of safe. In fact, his gaze and his touch and his words, they all burn her. With him, Ginny can’t help but remember how the war felt. She can’t help but be reminded of children suffering under Unforgivable Curses in classrooms, rebellions in the corridors, her brother dying, her friends dying, her mother crying, fire and smoke and multi-colored lights from spells.

The memories are too much for her, too immediate, so she breaks her connection with Malfoy, just closes her eyes and yanks her hands out of his grasp.

She falls. Of course she falls. But, sprawled out on the ice, she looks up at Malfoy, meets his eyes for the last time, and says, “I will never trust you. Don’t speak to me ever again.”

Her voice carries enough to alert Parkinson, whose eyes narrow at Ginny when she glides past them and stops at Malfoy’s side.

His face shutters, suddenly as frozen as the pond and as impenetrable as a Gringotts vault. He nods and leaves her on the ground, Disapparating with a faint pop that is incongruous with Ginny’s mood. She wants the loud crack that sometimes accompanies Apparation to alleviate her urge to break something.

Zabini once again helps Ginny to her feet while Parkinson watches in disapproval, but she shakes off his hand as soon as she’s standing and hobbles back to the snow to sit with Hermione and wait until Luna is ready to leave.

o o o o

Her next letter doesn’t mention ice skating. Instead, Draco stares at the three words she has written and wonders if he wrote them himself.

We should meet.

She doesn’t know that she already met him and rejected him just three days ago. She doesn’t know how much that rejection devastated him. He can’t be angry at her for not anticipating her own devastation when she finally puts his handwriting to a face.

But he is angry. Enraged, even. Partially at her, but mostly at himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he offered to help her on the pond. Benevolence, maybe? Understanding? Not outright hate. Not an order to never speak to her again.

She doesn’t know that the man she has banished and the man she now wants to meet are the same person. He would laugh if he wasn’t so damn angry.

“What's the matter with you now?” Blaise says in a bored tone. He's flipping through a book he found in the library, casually turning pages as if he's only interested in the illustrations. “Bad news from your pen pal?”

Draco stops pacing and turns to the hearth, where Blaise has laid claim to an armchair. “How do you know I have a pen pal?”

Blaise rolls his eyes without looking up. “I’ve been reading his letters for the past few months. If you didn’t want anyone to find them, maybe you should have locked the box you hide them in.”

A flash of anger at the trespass flares through him for a moment, and then dims under the light of the hotter fire burning in the vicinity of his heart.

“Is that why you visit so often?”

“How else will I uncover information about your secret boyfriend if you won’t tell me?”

The anger switches to a mild irritation and quickly shifts to annoyance. Draco drops onto his favorite uncomfortable sofa across from Blaise and hands him the letter.

“I don’t have a boyfriend. Ginny Weasley is my pen pal, but she doesn’t know that I’m the one writing her back.”

Blaise is hard to surprise, but Draco can tell he has surprised him now. His eyes widen and dart from the letter to Draco and back again.

“Pansy thought you might have fancied her at the pond the other day, but I thought the idea was absurd. You haven’t left the manor in months, and you weren’t besotted with her at Hogwarts.”

Draco doesn’t explain the situation further. He lapses into silence instead, his fury sucked out of him and consumed by the fire in the grate. An emptiness wells up inside him in its absence, threatening to swallow him whole.

Normally, he would write to Ginny when he began to spiral into feelings of loss and loneliness, but she’s the catalyst for those feelings this time, and he can’t very well discuss them with her. There isn’t a truth he could stretch wide enough for a convincing hypothetical story, and Draco is afraid that once he opens up to her, he’ll end up revealing everything.

Draco tries to ignore the serious look in Blaise’s eyes, but it’s difficult when there’s an air of expectation between them. Blaise wants to know more, more than Draco is willing to share, and Draco wants comfort that Blaise can’t give.

“Are you going to meet her?” Blaise asks.

There’s no question what Draco will do next. “No,” he says. “I’m not.”

Chapter Three: Last Christmas

Once bitten and twice shy
I keep my distance but you still catch my eye
Tell me, baby, do you recognize me?
Well, it's been a year, it doesn't surprise me

In fact, Draco doesn’t reply at all.

Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while. I hope things are okay.

A week later: Are you all right?

Five days after that: D, you’re starting to worry me. Please let me know that you are okay.

Two days later: Is this about my letter saying we should meet? I’m sorry. I wasn’t in a good place, and I wasn’t thinking. I’ll take it back. I don’t want to jeopardize what we have.

Draco paces when he receives her letters, but no amount of pacing gives him clarity. He doesn’t know what to say to her anymore. Ginny will never accept him, so why should they continue their letters as if they have any sort of future together?

He misses her more than he can say. The rage he felt after the ice skating debacle has long since been extinguished, and now he’s just empty due to her absence. As her letters become less concerned and more desperate, he paces more—longer, harder, faster. He never meant to hurt her. In fact, he thought stopping his communication with her would be the kinder course of action. At least she’ll have good memories of the letters they shared. If he told her the truth about his identity, her disgust would taint all past interactions with her pen pal. What he’s doing is a kindness for both of them. Draco avoids rejection and Ginny avoids the dissolution of a dream.

He sees her again at a Ministry Christmas party that Draco only attends because Blaise doesn’t know how to let a thing go. Draco finally got tired of hearing Blaise harp on about hobbies and socializing and free alcohol, so he gave in for the sake of his own sanity.

The Atrium might seem like a strange, transient venue for a party, which is exactly what Draco thinks when he, Blaise, and Pansy are spit out of the Floo, but there is no other location that could hold as many people as the eighth floor of the Ministry of Magic. The room is warmed by the soft glow of fairy lights wrapped around columns and strung along the edges of tables, draped from the center of the ceiling to the edges of the room like a tent. They twinkle, imitating starlight against the peacock-blue ceiling, which reflects in the dark, polished wood floors. Christmas trees stand in the corners, their ornaments glinting silver and gold. The effect is enchanting, transporting the guests from the reception hall of the Ministry of Magic to an unearthly arena.

Banquet tables line two sides of the vast room, laden with a medley of holiday foods ranging from chicken to goose, roasted vegetables to roasted potatoes, gravy to sauces, and more pudding than Draco can fathom, from simple butter biscuits to elaborately decorated pastries. The Ministry puts Hogwarts’ Christmas supper to shame and reminds Draco of Malfoy Christmases of yore, before Potter had freed the Malfoys’ house-elf.

Intimate round tables draped in white litter the Atrium floor, leaving just enough room in the center for dancing where the Fountain of Magical Brethren—and its successor, the Magic is Might statue—used to stand. A live band plays from a platform in the corner near the lifts. Every once in a while, the lift doors open to emit bemused passengers who must skirt around the platform and the loud music to reach their destination.

Blaise’s eyes are as large as serving platters as he takes in the offerings on the banquets.

“I’ll find a table,” Pansy says.

Draco and Blaise get in line to serve themselves. Draco fills his plate conservatively, a small sample of different dishes spaced out around the plate so that nothing touches. In contrast, Blaise’s plate is piled high, servings of food stacked one on top of the other, precariously capped with a serving of boozy Christmas pudding. They seek out Pansy in the crowd of seated guests, and Draco’s stomach—nearly his plate, too—plummets when they find her sitting at a table with Granger, Lovegood… and Ginny.

Draco hesitates next to the table and shoots a narrow-eyed glare at Blaise, who can’t be bothered to notice Draco’s displeasure. He’s already sitting next to Lovegood, pleased as punch by the company they’ve found themselves in.

“Draco, sit down. You’re hovering,” Pansy says with a roll of her eyes.

There’s only one available spot, and it’s between Blaise, oblivious to Draco’s plight (or pretending to be), and Ginny, only too aware of the empty chair’s portent. But her expression doesn’t crumple into one of distaste as he sets his plate down and takes a seat next to her. Instead, she turns her body, props her head up with her hand, and feigns interest in Granger’s conversation with Pansy.

Draco knows she’s not paying attention to anyone else because her eyes are unmoving, as if she’s lost in thought. Maybe she is simply listening intently, but Draco knows better.

In her letters, she has written about her difficulties in social situations, how sometimes she suddenly dissociates, forgetting where she is and what she’s doing as she gets lost in her memories. Her friends don’t notice until they direct a question or comment to her and she doesn’t respond, but she laughs and waves them off with an apology for her silliness when she eventually gets drawn back.

It wasn’t until he’d read her description of the phenomenon in her letters that Draco recognized the experience happening in his own life. He just never noticed because he passed his time alone in his study, no one around to call attention to his inattention.

It’s agony to sit next to her and know that she is avoiding him as much as she can, that she’s suffering at this very moment and he can’t comfort her. She’s physically turned away, mentally lost in another world, emotionally distant from him. The urge to apologize for ignoring her letters ignites like an ember in his gut, threatening to burst into a flame that can’t be tamed. He thinks about what he would say as he picks at his food.

I’m sorry for not responding sooner. I’ve been going through a rough patch and didn’t know what to say. —It’s not really the truth, but it’s a white enough lie to earn him some sympathy and her forgiveness possibly.

I’m sorry for not responding sooner. I recently realized that I’ve built you up to be something you’re not, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with the reality. —Well, that technically is the truth, but it doesn’t sound very complimentary. Such a letter would probably enrage her at best, hurt her at worst.

I’m sorry for not responding sooner. I’m a little in love with you, and the thought that you could never want me back has made me realize that we might need some distance from one another. —His heart pounds as he considers a scenario wherein he sends her such a letter, the truth laid bare, ugly and free. She wouldn’t understand. Even if she reciprocates his feelings, she would want to know why he’s already come to this conclusion without discussing it with her first. He follows the scene to its inevitable conclusion:

We can’t meet. Ever. The fact is, I know exactly who you are, and I know you would hate me if you knew who I was. I want to continue as your friend, but each letter is an agony to write and to read, knowing that I can’t comfort you with my arms, knowing that the sound of my voice would only hurt you further. I can’t bear to lose what we have, either, but I also don’t want to taint the memory of it. I hope you can understand.

She wouldn’t understand and she would never accept such an explanation. He knows her well enough now to recognize that she would fight him, demanding answers and urging him to meet her to settle everything once and for all.

She would bristle at his audacity to suggest that he knows her well enough to make a decision for her, and Draco would, once again, stop responding to her letters, or he would cave and agree to meet her.

He imagines waiting for her at an approved location—the Three Broomsticks, maybe—his breath catching in his lungs as she walks through the door, her eyes scanning the establishment for a sign of the man with whom she’s been exchanging letters. She thinks she’s spotted him on the other side of the pub and smiles, walking up to a table that isn’t Draco’s. He gets out of his chair to intercept her, but he doesn’t get there fast enough.

The man she greets stares up at her in confusion, and Draco gently touches her arm to get her attention. She turns her head, her embarrassed smile wilting as she realizes Draco is the man she has come to meet, Draco is her anonymous pen pal, her confidante and friend, and the man who has admitted to being in love with her.

He can’t maintain the fantasy any longer, her shock and betrayed expression painful even though it’s imagined.

Something cold, wet, and hard bounces off Draco’s forehead, forcing him out of his thoughts and returning him to the Ministry Christmas party and present company. Pansy flicks water off her fingers, and as Draco wipes his face with his sleeve, he realizes she has just chucked a piece of ice at him.

“What?” Draco says, and even though there are no sibilant consonants in the word, it manages to come out as a hiss. Everyone at the table is staring at him.

Pansy’s expression is serious, but not disinterested. Blaise, too, looks bleak as he takes in more than just Draco’s facial features, his gaze roaming to the floor and back up to Draco’s eyes.

“You’ve gone absolutely pale,” Pansy says. “I think some dancing will put some color back in your cheeks.”

He swallows the harsh refusal sitting on the tip of his tongue when Pansy jerks her head, a gesture that suggests she will not let him dismiss her. Before he stands, he glances quickly around the table to gauge everyone else’s reactions. Blaise’s severity is clearly concern. Lovegood watches with wide eyes that might suggest surprise if Draco didn’t know her well enough to recognize her resting weird face. Granger observes the proceedings, a frown in her brow the only sign of her puzzlement. And Ginny is looking at him as if she’s seeing him for the first time. Like Blaise, her eyes trail him, head to toe, her eyebrows meeting in a V above the bridge of her nose as she tries to decipher him.

He doesn’t know how long he had been lost in his thoughts, doesn’t know what was said to him, but clearly his mind had wandered long enough for everyone at the table to notice.

Draco stands and goes around the table to Pansy, taking her hand and drawing her to the dance floor.

“Blaise told you, didn’t he,” he says, tone flat, when they have twirled far enough away from their dinner table. Tension clenches his jaws tight. He holds himself just as tightly, his frame too stiff for the dance.

“Every word. We’ve been laughing about those letters behind your back for months. I should have known it was a Gryffindor spilling her heart out onto a page like a fool.”

His muscles tense further. This is why he needed Ginny to be someone anonymous that he could be open to. His own friends find emotional vulnerability and suffering laughable. What would they think of him if they could read the contents of the letters Draco had sent back to Ginny?

“I thought, perhaps, that you were toying with her. You know, supporting her for a laugh, so she would share all her embarrassing secrets with you for your own satisfaction. But after Blaise told me she was the one writing to you, that afternoon on the pond began to make sense. You care about her, don’t you?”

He doesn’t answer. He can’t. His jaws have locked together, and his whole body has frozen as hard as the ice sculpture decorating the center of the dessert table. In fact, having his affection for Ginny thrown in his face so baldly makes him tremble, as if he’s made up of hairline fractures and one gentle nudge would shatter him.

She sighs, accepting his silence and rigidity as an admission. “Blaise and I haven’t been very good friends to you,” she says. “We don’t know how to be. I’m glad you found someone you can talk to, even if it is her.”

Draco doesn’t ask what is wrong with Ginny. Pansy is petty, so she needs no true reason to dislike her. He relaxes slightly and mutters, “Thank you.”

“From what Blaise has told me about her letters, you two clearly have a lot in common when it comes to the war.”

“Not enough,” he says, thinking about the gulf between them, everything that separates Ginny from him. Their allegiances, their families, the Dark Mark on his arm. His animosity over the years. Her righteousness.

The music swells in the last strains of the song, and then it ends. Pansy and Draco bow to each other, Pansy lifting the hem of her dress robes in a sarcastic curtsy.

Ginny is there when he turns to leave the dance floor, her face crumpled in indecision.

He waits for her to make her choice, silent. But she’d already made her choice as soon as she stepped onto the dance floor, as soon as she reached Draco’s side.

“Will you dance with me?” she asks, uncertainty in her tone as well as hope—hope that he will decline, perhaps? He can’t fathom her hoping he will accept.

He takes her into his arms, his limbs more flexible than they’d been before, but still a bit stiff. He doesn’t hold her close, leaving a good foot of space between them as he sweeps her around the room, and she seems to like that just fine. It’s impossible to miss her discomfort, the tension in her own body, her lack of eye contact, the slight grimace around her mouth. He pretends he doesn’t see it.

When she finally speaks, she doesn’t look at him, instead watching another couple twirl next to them. “I’m sorry about what I said at the pond.”

It’s not what he expected her to say. “Are you really?”

“Yes. I feel badly for the way I behaved.”

Something about that answer irks him. “Well, thank you, but your apology is unnecessary. I know where things stand between us, and I know an apology doesn’t erase the underlying dislike.”

She glances up at him, her brow furrowed. “I can apologize to someone I don’t like! Are you angry because I don’t like you?”

“Of course not. You should just say what you mean. All this nobility sounds insincere, and since I know the truth, I don’t appreciate your disingenuous apologies.”

He’s captured her complete attention now, her body canting towards him, her grip tightening around his, her eyes blazing. “I take it back, then! I’m not sorry at all! You’re a git, and I don’t know why I ever tried talking to you.”

“I don’t, either. I guess you only want me to speak to you when you initiate the conversation, is that it? So not only are you insincere, you’re a hypocrite, too.”

For some reason, Draco and Ginny haven’t stopped dancing, the energy of their argument fueling their dance until the force of it pushes Ginny against Draco, their bodies warm and close, their faces nearly nose to nose. Their sharp tones have earned pointed stares from the other dancers even though their volume has remained low enough to keep the words between them.

Draco hates himself for falling for this woman. Even though he’s known since April that Ginny would never accept him if she knew her pen pal was the infamous and hated Draco Malfoy, he had let himself hope for a different outcome. That hope was small, but she was the one who had inspired it within him, and now he wants her to hurt as badly as she hurt him.

She doesn’t know that she hurt him, but that is beside the point.

“You were always so kind in your letters, so understanding. How silly of me to think you would extend that kindness to me in person.”

Her eyes narrow. “What letters?”

“The letters you’ve been sending to me for a year, Weasley. Over 140 letters about your brother dying, Creevey dying, your family forgetting about you, your friends forgetting about you. The letters you sent comforting me when I told you about my mother’s emotional withdrawal after my father went to prison. You assumed he’d died during the war, and I never corrected—”

Draco’s head jolts sideways with the violence of her slap. His hand comes up to his stinging cheek in awe, his eyes wide with the shock of it.

Her eyes, on the other hand, fill with tears. “You’re a bastard.”

“I know.”

She darts into the crowd of stalled dancers, titters following her and surrounding Draco in the wake of her departure. He doesn’t know where she’s gone, but he’s had enough socializing for a season and heads for one of the Floos on each side of the Atrium.

Blaise will bitch about him leaving later, and Draco doesn’t care. His heart aches, his blood surges. Everything is wrong but this is how it should be. This is what he deserves.

Chapter Four: All I Want for Christmas is You

I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you

An ocean of letters drowns Ginny’s bedroom as she sits on the floor, a lone island, and wades through months and months of correspondence. There are over 140 letters—just as Malfoy had said—dating from the end of December 1998 to the beginning of December 1999, when she received her last letter from D.

She had cried while rereading every one of them, her memories skewing in her brain in light of Malfoy’s revelation. She hadn’t wanted to believe him. In fact, for an hour or so, she’d entertained the notion that he’d tricked her. Maybe he’d found out about the letters and simply wanted her to think he was her pen pal as a way to hurt her. But such a scheme seemed too elaborate, even for him.

Her cheeks are dry now, though her nose is rubbed raw and her eyes are swollen from crying. She searches through the sea of words for the letter Malfoy had mentioned at the party, the one about his mother. When she finds it, she settles back against the side of her bed, ignoring the creaks in her bones and the strain of her muscles from hours of limited movement. Her eyes narrow, and she realizes for the first time since she set herself to this task that her room has grown too dark to adequately see, let alone read nearly 150 handwritten letters.

A swish of her wand lights the lamp on her bedside table. The letter is dated July 20th.

Remember when you told me your family makes you feel lonely? I’ve found myself going through the same experience. I moved back into my family home with my mother a few weeks ago, but I’ve hardly seen her since my return.

I’ve been lonely for a long time. Except for you, I haven’t felt free to speak about the war with anyone, and I assumed my mother and I would have that in common. I assumed she would want to talk about it, but she doesn’t want to talk at all. Any form of conversation ends with her dissatisfaction and impatience with me. Sometimes, she won’t even look at me when we’re in the same room. She takes her dinner in her bedroom as if she can’t stand to share a meal with her only son.

You have to understand, I grew up knowing how loved and special I was. My father was a cold man, but he doted on me, though never as much as my mother did. All the same, as difficult as it was to grow up in this household, my family loved each other. So my mother’s sudden cold shoulder is worrisome.

She took enormous risks during the war to ensure my safety, and now that she won’t speak to me, I wonder if she regrets them. At first, I wrote off her behavior as mourning my father, but now? I don’t know. Sometimes I think she actually hates me.

Ginny remembers reading this letter and trembling with every word, both aching and elated at the thought of D sharing her pain. Never had she ever felt so understood by anyone, though she hated that someone else had to suffer in order for her to feel that kind of acceptance.

At least… no one besides Tom had ever understood her before.

She shuts down that thought as soon as she thinks it, refusing to compare the two men, refusing to drudge up those memories. Draco Malfoy may be a git, but he’s not Tom Riddle. However, now that she’s thought it, she can’t help but notice the similarities here.

Ginny writing to an anonymous friend, sharing her darkest secrets, her fears, her pain with this person and receiving comfort in return, only to find out that her confidante is an enemy. It’s too soon to know whether Malfoy, like Tom, intends to destroy her, but the revelation on the dancefloor feels like a destruction in itself. He’d said those words to her, revealed himself like he had, with the intention of hurting her. What he gains from this situation still remains to be seen.

The letter falls to the floor as Ginny buries her face in her hands again, tears flowing without her consent, her body shaking with sobs. She never wanted to feel like this again. She never wanted to equate D, the man she trusted and loved, to fucking Voldemort. How had this happened? Why had Draco Malfoy been allowed to sign up for the letter exchange program? Who had thought it would be a good idea to pair a Malfoy up with a grieving citizen?

It takes her a few minutes to compose herself and control her nausea, and even when she does, she can’t stop the sniffles or hiccups. She picks D’s very first letter out of the sea and reads it for the third time.

I don’t know why I’m writing to you at all. This is a waste of my time.

She wishes she could reread her reply. Her memory is fuzzy, but she remembers feeling annoyed and disappointed. A cough-like laugh escapes her throat at the similarity to her situation now.

Instead of responding right away, Ginny had sat on his letter for another day. She had almost shown it to Luna to ask for her opinion, but self-consciousness had prevented her from speaking up.

Finally, she’d come to the conclusion that whoever this annoying person was, they still needed a friend to talk to, and they must have known that, too, or they never would have answered Ginny’s initial letter. If sending letters had truly been a waste of this person’s time, why didn’t they just ignore hers and forget all about the program?

With that thought in mind, she had responded in kind. Though the exact words escape her now, she must have said something like, I know what you mean. I’m so busy with schoolwork, this is honestly the last thing I need to add to my plate. So why did you sign up for this program?

She’d half expected him to ignore her, but at breakfast the next morning, she’d received a response. Ginny picks up this letter now and reads it.

Schoolwork, you say? Do you attend Hogwarts?

He’d avoided her question completely. It wasn’t until March that he finally told her he’d been forced to participate in the pen pal program by an authority figure (Professor McGonagall, perhaps? Or maybe Professor Slughorn?). His letter had dripped with disdain at the admission.

They had passed letters back and forth in this manner through Christmas hols and well into the spring term, he deflecting her questions back at her and she rambling about her observations of post-war life at Hogwarts. She hadn’t known anything about him until April, when their letters had changed, becoming more personal and intimate.

Ginny had had a breakdown over Fred and he’d sent her his first hint of compassion: Words fail me. I wish I could comfort you in person.

Ginny rereads this letter for the hundredth time, trying to decipher why the change. Suddenly, it clicks into place and she stiffens; the parchment—soft and well-worn from countless rereads—nearly rips in her grip.

She had told D all about Fred and her happiest memories with him growing up. Even though she had never named names, anyone familiar with the Weasley family would have recognized them in her letters. How many female Hogwarts students enrolled in April 1999 had multiple brothers, including twins, one of which had died at the Battle of Hogwarts? Draco Malfoy, of all people, would have known her instantly.

Why, then, the compassion? Is this when he’d devised his elaborate plan to string her along and learn all her secrets just to throw them in her face?

She picks up the July 20th letter again and rereads D’s worries about his mother.

No. No, this was no plan. Her instinct back in December 1998 still rings of truth. Draco Malfoy may have been forced to sign up for the Ministry’s letter exchange program, and he may have reluctantly sent her curt letters until April, but part of him had needed someone to listen to him. Over time, he had finally seen the value of the program and he’d used it for its intended purpose.

He hadn’t just taken from Ginny—her memories, her fears, her trauma. He had given part of himself back to her, filling his letters with vulnerable, intimate information. Reciprocating. This isn’t a one-sided relationship. She’s not sure what kind of relationship it is exactly, and she doesn’t know precisely what Malfoy feels for her, but they were—they are—friends at the very least.

Like magic, as if he can read her mind, there is a knock at Ginny’s bedroom window, an owl fluttering in the dark waiting for her to let it in. With a wave of her wand, the ocean of letters empties and separates into stacks organized by month. Another wave instantly weaves twine around each stack, turning them into bundles. Then she stands and opens the window to admit the eagle owl that has been delivering D’s letters since Ginny finished at Hogwarts. It makes sense now. Prior to leaving school, he must have used Hogwarts’ owls to deliver his letters.

The letter reads simply: I’m sorry. For everything. —Draco

According to her watch, it’s nearly 10 pm. The party had ended at midnight the night before, and Malfoy had bolted early, right after his revelation. More than twenty-four hours later, and this is all he has to say? An apology is a good start, but she can’t help but expect more.

She turns his letter over and pulls a quill out of her desk drawer, scribbling on the back of the parchment, You should be.

She tells herself that she will not respond again, no matter what he says. But she needn’t worry. No reply is forthcoming.

o o o o

“Face it, Draco, you screwed up.”

Draco grits his teeth and tightens his grip on the putter, his gloved hands twisting around the plastic handle almost as if he is envisioning Blaise’s neck between his fingers instead.

“You should have gone for a big gesture, you know? Most girls don’t find insults romantic.”

Forgetting the shot for a moment, Draco straightens. “I didn’t insult her!” Blaise’s eyebrow arches in skepticism. “I was merely devastatingly unkind.”

“Very romantic.”

Draco returns his attention to the golf ball sitting on the green felt that lines the course and readjusts his feet and his grip. He swings the putter, lightly this time. His first attempt had sent the ball sailing through the air nearly fifty feet, missing his target by at least forty.

He doesn’t swing hard enough. The ball rolls up the slight incline but never reaches the top. It comes rolling back down to Draco who tosses his bright red putter onto the ground and stomps off to the side of the course, giving Blaise another go.

“What do you know about romance, anyway?” he asks as Blaise sets up his ball and readies his blue putter between his hands.

“More than you, apparently. I’ve scored a date with the woman I’m interested in.”

He hits the ball, sending it up the felted incline and through the mouth of a man wearing a red cap and a bushy, white beard. An obnoxious, static-filled “Ho ho ho!” sounds from the man, celebrating Blaise’s shot.

The fact that Blaise is good at this horrible Muggle game irritates Draco, and it only irritates him further when they walk to the end of the course to find that Blaise’s ball has neatly rolled into its intended target, a hole demarcated by a flag.

Blaise pounds the air. “Hole-in-one!”

“I quit,” Draco says.

“Oh, but we just got here,” a voice says from behind them.

Standing on the other side of the bearded man structure, Luna Lovegood looks mildly disappointed and Ginny looks horrified. Perfect.

“Did you know I was going to be here?” she and Draco say at the same time. “No! What are you doing here? Stop that!”

Blaise grins outright and intervenes, physically placing himself between Draco and Ginny as if fearful of a fight. “We are all gathered here today because I want to spend more time with Luna. Throwing you two together was just an added bonus. Now, let’s divide into teams. Draco needs all the help he can get.”

Before either Draco or Ginny can claim a teammate, the desired teammates in question walk off to the next hole together, leaving each other as their only option for a partner.

“If I’d known you were going to be here,” Draco says as they follow their evil friends, “I wouldn’t have agreed to come.”

“Oh, really?”

He hears the frostiness in her voice and sighs. “It’s not like that. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Well, it’s a bit too late for that, don’t you think!” She stomps off to catch up with Blaise and Lovegood, who are already in a position to putt. In fact, Draco feels mildly uncomfortable watching them as Blaise wraps his arms around Lovegood, showing her exactly where she needs to place her hands on the putter to hit the ball correctly.

Draco’s heart pangs watching them, and he wonders why it can’t be that easy for Ginny and him. He knows why, of course. Not only do they have an explicitly antagonistic history, but she feels tricked and betrayed by him. He completely understands, which makes wishing for a different outcome worse. In order to achieve his wish, an easy, whirlwind romance made up of a deep, meaningful connection, compassion, and love, he would have to undo their entire lives. And that wouldn’t make any sense because who would Draco be if he wasn’t a Malfoy? If his father had never been a Death Eater? If he hadn’t?

No, those things that she despises about Draco make him who he is—both the bad and good parts of him.

“If you think you’re going to put your arms around me like that, you better think again,” Ginny mutters.

“It would have to be the other way around, I’m afraid. I’m awful at this idiotic game.”

As it turns out, Ginny is nearly as adept as Blaise, and after she manages to get her ball into the hole at the end of the course in two strokes, she shrugs. “My father became obsessed with this game one summer and turned our whole house into a minigolf course. Mum wasn’t pleased, but the boys and I had a lot of fun.”

“Careful who you spill your secrets to, Weasley,” Draco warns, though he can’t help but smile at her easy admission.

She scowls as they move on to the next hole, making Draco smile even wider, though he smothers it before she turns around and sees it.

Blaise and Lovegood are wrapped up in their own little world, either because they are too absorbed in each other or to give Draco and Ginny some privacy. Draco suspects the latter. When it is his turn to putt again, he turns to Ginny and says, “Why don’t we make this game a little more interesting?”

“I’d rather finish it as quickly as possible, if you don’t mind.”

He ignores that and continues. “Every time we miss the hole, we have to say something that’s true. One truth for each stroke. Here, I’ll go first.”

Draco really does try, but this course features a curvy layout that Draco would call impossible if he hadn’t just watched Blaise get another hole-in-one on it. He aims his putter so that the ball will hopefully ricochet off the walls to get around the curves into the open area where the hole is located, and then he swings—

The ball ricochets, all right. Off one curve and right back at Draco, smacking him in the shin. He scowls at his feet, where the ball has landed innocuously, and notices Ginny trying to conceal a smile in her scarf.

“You did that on purpose,” she says, not quite succeeding in ridding her face of her grin.

“Swear to Circe, I didn’t. But here we are. One stroke, one truth, right?”

“I’m not playing this game with you.”

He ignores her. “I figured out who you were back in April. Your brother’s birthday, remember?”

“Of course I remember, and I already figured out that much myself.”

Draco swings his putter again. They watch the ball hit the back wall of the curve and roll down to the next one, but it slows and stops before it gets around the bend. He’s about to open his mouth and deliver another truth, when she surprises him by speaking up instead.

“If you’ve known this whole time, why didn’t you say anything?”

There’s an expression on her face that Draco can’t read, probably because she’s feeling too many things at once. Her brow creases in a frown that he wants to smooth out with his fingers, and there are wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that he wishes he could kiss away. She stands with her arms crossed, closed off to him, trying to contain something within herself, and he’s dying to pull her arms away and wrap them around his own torso, to wrap himself around her, to take whatever confusion and pain she’s feeling and parse it out between them. Figure it out. Fight it, dissolve it. It’s what they’ve done in their letters, dissecting their worries and sharing them with each other until they are no longer burdens that are too big to carry because they’ve broken them down into digestible pieces. Draco aches for a piece of parchment and a quill, but he knows that their letters will never be like they were. The illusion has disappeared, revealing the unsightly reality.

“I almost did,” he says. “I was so angry. I thought you were mocking me, and my first reaction was to read your letter out loud in the middle of the Great Hall for everyone to hear, to hurt you before you could mock or hurt me. I don’t know why I didn’t—and that’s the truth.

“I almost told you in every single letter I sent since leaving Hogwarts, but I valued our friendship too much. I knew it would end if you found out the truth, and I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

Her eyes flutter closed and a shiver wracks her frame. Draco wonders if the temperature has dropped further without him noticing, but he’s too warm in his Muggle coat (courtesy of Blaise), scarf, and gloves to tell. When she opens her eyes again, they’re blazing. Again, he can’t read her expression, can’t tell if she’s furious or if she even believes him.

It hadn’t occurred to him until now that she might not believe him, and Draco’s heart hammers in his chest, desperate for her to understand. Nothing could ever happen between them, but he needs her to know that he never set out to hurt her, that she was—is—important to him. More important to him than she knows.

“What changed?” she asks.

“One stroke, one truth, remember?”

She nods and he returns to his ball, evaluating the course and its angles to figure out how best to swing. He doesn’t know why he’s trying so hard. Now that the truth has been revealed, he wants to tell her more. He will swing as many times as necessary to get her to listen to him.

His swing is a good one, and the ball clears the curved part of the course, rolling into the open area and inching toward the hole. It stops just a few inches short of its destination, and Draco releases his breath in relief. He gets one more shot.

Ginny is there at the hole, right next to him. “What changed?” she asks again. “Your letters changed after Fred’s birthday.”

“Before I figured out who you were, you were just some Hogwarts student who had nothing to say about the war except how it had affected other people. After I figured you out, I realized you were protecting yourself just like I was, and I knew you had seen some of the same things I had. You’d sacrificed and fought and hurt the same why I had. That’s why I opened up to you.”

Draco turns back to his golf ball and taps it into the hole. He fishes it out and hands it to Ginny, who carries it back to the beginning of the course.

Her swing is even better, and the ball ricochets around the curves, into the open area, and just misses the hole, overshooting by a foot.

As she sets up her stance, readying her putter to hit the ball again, Draco thinks she isn’t going to play along with his truth game. And then she surprises him.

“One stroke, one truth, right? I fell in love with my pen pal, D.”

She strikes the ball and both of them watch it glide into the hole, shaking the flag.

Draco’s mouth dries, and his heart is no longer hammering inside his chest. It’s pounding against his ribs, begging to be set free, desperate to jump into Ginny’s mittened hands. His imagination had always fallen short of her falling for him, but now she’s said those words and he wants so much to give himself to her, to belong to her. He knows from her letters that she would take good care of his heart.

But their relationship has left the page and now exists in reality, here on a minigolf course. He doesn’t know if this Ginny can bring herself to transfer her love from the man she corresponded with to the man in front of her now. He doesn’t think she can.

She seems to be waiting for him to say something back to her, but Draco doesn’t know what to say. So she retrieves her ball and goes in search of Blaise and Lovegood, skipping the next hole entirely.

Their game is over.

Chapter Five: (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays

Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
If you want to be happy in a million ways
For the holidays you can't beat home, sweet home

Ginny’s admission continues to haunt him for the next few days, and despite Blaise’s best efforts, Draco has resumed his reclusive habit of confining himself to the study.

“No matter,” Blaise says after unsuccessfully convincing Draco to go bowling. “We’ll just bring the party to you.”

Draco hadn’t paid any heed, but now it’s Christmas Eve and Malfoy Manor is full of people. People he most certainly did not invite over.

“Happy Christmas, Draco,” Mrs. Parkinson says with a kiss to Draco’s cheek. She’s holding a crystal goblet filled with what looks suspiciously like punch, which Draco hopes she brought from her own home.

He continues down the stairs and into the formal dining room, and the source of the punch becomes apparent. The table overflows with food and beverages, and all the chairs have been removed so that people can serve themselves in the manner of a buffet. People—as in multiple persons—linger around the room in clusters, chatting and laughing about who knows what.

Mrs. Parkinson joins a cluster made up of Madam Zabini, her most recent husband (whose name she has not bothered to take this time around), Theodore Nott, and Mrs. Greengrass. A quick scan of the room reveals several of Draco’s former classmates and their families in attendance.

Draco backs out of the room and heads for the parlor, but there is no respite there, either. Blaise and Greg converse in a corner with Daphne Greengrass and…Luna Lovegood. Draco’s heart rate spikes when he sees that familiar shine of dirty-blonde hair, and he nearly goes into cardiac arrest when he spots Pansy sitting in chilly silence with his mother in front of the fire, neither woman speaking. He approaches them, suddenly dizzy from lack of oxygen or blood or maybe shock. He’s not a Healer; what does he know?

“Mother?”

Her cold gaze swings to him, but she looks relieved in her own, aloof way. “Draco. I hope you have an explanation for this.”

“He doesn’t,” Pansy says in a dry voice that makes Draco think she has been assigned to Mrs. Malfoy duty by someone too annoying to refuse. “This is all Blaise’s doing. Happy Christmas one and all.”

“He had no right—”

Pansy cuts Draco off. “Yes, I know, but you try telling him that. His mother is even more impossible than he is.”

Narcissa makes a scoffing sound.

Draco begins to back away. “I need to speak to Blaise.”

“Are you going to leave me here with all these people?” Narcissa asks, a disgusted look in her eyes that Draco has never seen before when acting as a hostess for her own friends. Though he supposes she never volunteered to host this party in the first place.

Her expression stops him and gives him something new to consider. Maybe she, like he, hadn’t known what to do when Draco came home from Hogwarts. Maybe mother and son both have spent the last several months isolating themselves to such a degree that they no longer know how to interact with each other anymore. What if Narcissa doesn’t regret the choices she made during the war on Draco’s behalf? What if she doesn’t hate her son?

“I… I’ll be back. Promise.”

Blaise grins at Draco’s approach, ignoring the fierce expression on Draco’s face.

“What do you think? It’s the best I could do on short notice, but everyone was pleased to hear the Malfoys would be hosting their annual Christmas party once again.”

“I think you’ve meddled quite enough!”

“Have I? No, I don’t think I’m done meddling yet.” He looks at Luna, who smiles up at him blithely, as if she hasn’t noticed that she’s found herself in a viper pit.

Blaise’s ominous words and Luna’s presence induce more dizzy spells, and his stomach plummets while his heart rate increases once again. His hand comes up to his temple, and he wills away a headache before one can begin.

“Please tell me you didn’t invite Ginny.”

“Me? No, no, of course not.”

Draco sighs, mollified.

“Luna did, though.”

Blaise looks all too innocent, sipping his brandy and smiling into his glass. For the thousandth time in the last few weeks, Draco wonders why he opened his arms to this man in friendship, until he realizes, for the thousandth time, that he didn’t. Blaise had knocked down the study door and thrust himself into Draco’s arms, forcing his friendship upon Draco and refusing to relinquish his grip.

Blaise cannot be deterred, and Draco tells himself that that’s what he likes about him. At this particular moment in time, the characteristic is infuriating more than appealing.

“Well, at least she chose not to come,” Draco says, his pulse pounding but slowing in relief.

“Oh, no,” Luna says, her eyes wide and sparkling. “She’s here. We locked her in your bedroom.”

Blaise’s shrug sets Draco off. He ignores his mother’s sharp, “Draco!” as he exits the parlor, ignores the greetings of guests as he ascends the stairs, filters out the sounds of the party below as he flies through the west wing to the bedroom he abandoned after returning home from Hogwarts.

The door crashes against the wall with the force of his entrance, and Ginny, standing at the window, jumps. She’s the first thing he sees when he walks in, but a moment later, he notices that his room is not how he left it.

Fairy lights are strung up around the bedposts and the perimeter of the window, hanging like strings of stars from the ceiling, lining his desk and chest of drawers. The room is illuminated solely by their soft, twinkling glow, and Ginny is radiant in the middle of it all, her hair glittering, her eyes alight.

Those eyes narrow at Draco as the door shuts behind him.

o o o o

“Was this your idea?” Ginny asks with a lazy gesture indicating the room as a whole. Since Zabini and Luna had locked her inside, she had avoided staring at the bed, averting her eyes to examine everything else in the room, including the festive lights and the dust that coated every solid surface.

It is a difficult thing, though. The bed is a beautiful piece of furniture, and the fairy lights wrapped around the posts only draw more attention to it.

“No,” Draco answers. His cheeks are flushed in exertion and his breath comes out in puffs. “No, I had no idea about any of this. The party, you, I—I haven’t even slept in this room in months.”

“I know,” Ginny replies. “I remember from your letters.” Draco is still standing just inside the door, staring at her, as wary of her as prey would be to a predator. “I was kidding anyway. Zabini shoved me in here on the pretense of giving Luna and me a tour.”

“Why did you come?”

She turns away from the window, devoting her full attention to the man hovering close to the exit. She can see his urge to flee in the way he keeps one hand on the doorknob, in the way his body settles on the balls of his feet, prepared to bolt at any moment. The war ended a year and a half ago, but he looks just the same as he had in the midst of it: shaky, pale, frightened. She isn’t sure if it’s a compliment or an insult that he looks like this because of her.

"I had to. I need to apologize."

She doesn't know how to begin even though she's been thinking of this moment non-stop since Luna invited her to the party. He's already skittish, and she knows how high he can construct a wall to protect himself, so she treads carefully.

He hasn't said anything in response yet, which makes her nervous, but she takes a deep breath to steady herself. Every version of the apology that she has rehearsed over the last couple days goes out of her head, which leaves her surprisingly focused.

"I've been unfair to you from the beginning, at the pond, at the Ministry party. I can see that now. I have been so fixated on this idea that you betrayed me or tricked me, I didn't even see what you were really doing."

"What was I doing?" he asks, his voice hard, his face matching his tone.

"You were telling the truth when you said you didn't want to make me uncomfortable."

His eyes roll. "I know I was."

"Well, I understand now. That's why you stopped sending me letters after I asked to meet. I told you at the pond to never speak to me again, and you could have continued writing to me, pretending to be someone else—"

"I never pretended to be anyone else!"

Ginny stops, stunned by his sudden outrage, which has caused him to take two steps closer to her. At least he's wearing a different expression, she thinks. At least his fright has disappeared. His feet are planted, his hands are clenched. He's ready to stay and fight, not flee, and Ginny is willing and ready to fight this out with him.

"I know that," she says as she slowly approaches. "But you could have. Instead, you did as I asked. You stopped speaking to me, even in our letters. You didn't make up an excuse for us not to meet and you didn't agree to meet me because you knew either option would hurt me. And I had already hurt you, so you were protecting yourself, too. I understand now. I'm sorry."

His outrage doesn't dwindle; instead, he seems to grow even more affronted, and Ginny realizes he must have had a similar reaction when he'd discovered her identity. Anger is such an easy emotion to draw from and rely upon. She knows firsthand the warmth of its flame, licking her from the inside out, protecting her from outside hurts. Before you know it, you've been burned, destroyed by the emotion.

Anger is easy. Choosing to open yourself to someone, to make yourself vulnerable—that's hard.
It's a fight he wins, though, because after a moment he closes his eyes, and when he opens them he's no less tense, but the fire threatening to spark to life inside him is gone.

"I'm sorry, too. I was a prat."

She wants to take the burden of blame. Just as he'd said, her apology at the Ministry Christmas party had been insincere, a gesture to soothe her own conscience. If she hadn't dismissed him or provoked him, he never would have thrown their letters in her face the way he had. She can't disagree with him, though, because she knows how much it cost him to return her apology. If she takes responsibility for everything that happened, she dismisses him again, rendering his apology useless.

It's not useless. His vulnerability is important, and his attempt to embrace it with her, without the anonymity of their letters, that's important, too.

"I also need answers," she says.

“I’ll give them to you.”

“I sent you a letter that said… well, it’s right here, I’ll read it.”

She goes to the desk and opens a wooden box stuffed to the brim with Ginny’s letters. She’d found the box not long after realizing she had been locked inside the room, and she’d gone through it with her heart in her throat. Every letter was there. Every letter she’d written him over the past year.

She withdraws the pertinent one and reads, “‘Dreams are meant to be chased. What a waste to have them if you won't even try to reach for them.’”

“Where did you get those?”

“They were here when I got here, but don’t change the subject.” She’s relieved to see his lips twitch, as if threatening to smile, and a small smile crosses her own lips for a moment as if his amusement is contagious. “What is your dream, Draco? I want the truth. Mine was to meet my pen pal, to tell him that I love him and that I’m grateful for him, and for him to tell me that he loves me, too.”

He takes another step closer to her, his expression suddenly gone blank. Ginny’s heart pounds as he advances, afraid because his fear is gone and because she can’t read him. But that’s what she has been afraid of this whole time, that’s why she’s been so angry. She doesn’t know how he feels, and she needs to know if she’s ever going to get closure or move on.

“Why would you say that to me, knowing your dream could never come true?”

“Because you needed to know how I felt.”

“So you don’t feel that way anymore?”

She doesn’t expect this question, and she flounders for the correct response.

“I don’t know. I had an image in my head of what D looked like and who he was. It feels like I lost him when you revealed your identity to me.”

His eyebrows pull into a V over the bridge of his nose and his mouth flattens into a scowl, shattering the impassive mask. He’s about to take a step backwards again, physically withdrawing from her, and she speaks to stop him.

“It’s going to take some time to reconcile the man who showed me so much compassion and shared with me his pain with the boy who tormented me and my friends for years, Draco. But I’m willing to make an attempt if you are. I just need to know how you feel.”

She had already decided to give him a chance the day after the Ministry Christmas party, after reading all his letters again. D was definitely there in those letters, his voice, his worries, his fears, but reading them with D’s true identity in mind, she had also found Draco Malfoy there. They are the same person, one just less restrained and more forthcoming than the other. The open, honest man is the Draco Malfoy she wants to know.

It’s out there now, out in the open for him to embrace or ignore, and he looks stunned for a moment, absolutely shell-shocked. Indecision keeps him at bay for a few long moments, moments that Ginny feels in her soul, before he closes the distance between them and hesitantly takes her hands.

He’s looking down at her with those ice cold eyes, but in the glow of the fairy lights, she can see them thawing.

“I’ve been in love with you for months. My dream was for you to know and accept me for who I am. I didn’t think you ever could.”

It seems too good to be true that D could love her back, and she closes her eyes as she lifts his hand to her lips and kisses his knuckles, overwhelmed by emotions that are too difficult to separate and identify. Relief is there in the way she releases her breath, shock in the rush of adrenaline that shoots through her veins, happiness in her pounding heart and flushed cheeks. Besides those, her emotions are a tangle.

“Thank you for telling me,” she finally says, the words warm against his fingers.

He lifts her chin and looks into her eyes, his expression so serious and bleak. She can tell, he doubts her even now, too afraid to put his trust in her after the way she’s treated him in person over the last few weeks.

“I’m sorry again for my appalling behavior.”

He shakes his head, smiles a little. “It doesn’t matter. I know what I deserve.”

“You don’t, though. The war is over and you deserve a second chance. You received one in the eyes of the law, why shouldn’t I give you the same?”

He doesn’t speak, but she sees his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows thickly, and she does the only thing she can think to do. His body stiffens for a moment as she wraps her arms around him, burying her face in his chest and squeezing in an attempt to deliver warmth and comfort. Soon his arms come up and hold her tight against him, his body shuddering.

This is all Ginny has wanted from D for months, and it takes her breath away that her dream is finally coming true.

“We’ll take this slow,” she says.

She feels him plant a kiss on top of her head and nod, and together they tremble beneath the twinkling lights, lost in a world that is all their own.

o o o o

The party is still in full swing when they rejoin it later. The number of guests has grown since they’ve been away, and Draco grasps Ginny’s hand as they navigate through the crowds. Her grip is warm and strong and anchors him even as he seeks an escape, the number of people littering his home making his breath come short and his head light.

Even after they’ve made it through the thickest clusters, Ginny doesn’t let go of his hand, and a thrill runs through Draco. He never imagined she would let him touch her, and yet here they are, together at Malfoy Manor, fingers entwined. She let him hold her earlier and odds are good she will let him do it again. A giddy feeling swells up inside him, expressing itself as what is undoubtedly an idiotic smile, but Draco can’t seem to care, not when his deepest wish has come true, not when this Christmas is set up to be better than the last.

“Draco!” his mother calls, halting their progress to the parlor.

“Mother,” Draco says, drawing Ginny closer to his side. He senses Ginny’s hesitation and surprise and delights in defying her expectations. He’s been lonely and unhappy for so long now; he won’t let the opinions of others define how Draco receives his happiness. Now that Ginny has given him her hand, he’s afraid he won’t be letting go anytime soon.

Narcissa looks between the two before settling an imperious gaze on Draco, no hint of her verdict visible.

“I’ve had quite enough of this nonsense. Everyone needs to leave.”

He knows exactly how she feels, having had quite enough of socializing until the new year at least.

“We were just looking for Blaise. I’ll ask him to help send everyone home.”

“He left with that Lovegood girl not long ago. It’s completely unacceptable for him to invite all these people to our home and then leave before the event is even finished! I shouldn’t be surprised considering he is Zainab Zabini’s offspring. That woman is as dependable as a centaur.”

“Blaise left?”

“Yes, yes,” she says with a long-suffering sigh. Then she reaches into a pocket and pulls out two envelopes. “He asked me to give you these. I’m going to go look for Zainab. She will have to take care of this in the absence of her son.”

The envelopes are addressed to each of them, and Draco hands Ginny’s letter to her. It’s too crowded here in the foyer so Draco takes her outside. A layer of snow coats the grounds, giving the shrubbery and the topiaries the image of frosted cakes. It’s freezing out and he and Ginny don’t have cloaks, but they sit down on the steps that lead to the driveway and huddle against each other for warmth. A warming spell on their robes helps keep out the chill until they can read their notes.

“Has your relationship with your mum changed?” Ginny asks as they each break the seals on their envelopes.

Has it? There is something there in her imperious attitude that seems different to Draco, maybe because it isn’t directed at him. Not really, anyway. It was brief, but they bonded over their mutual distaste for the invasion of their home. Maybe, just maybe, that bond will not break after the party guests leave.

“No. I don’t know. I think I’ve figured out what happened, and I’m going to work on fixing the strain between us as soon as I can. It was a recent discovery.”

“I’m glad. I hope it works out between you two.” She lays her head against his arm and unfolds her letter. For a moment, Draco is distracted by her glimmering hair and the solid weight of her against his side. He comes back to himself when she says, “What does Zabini have to say?”

Light from torches on each side of the door illuminates them from behind, and Draco separates letter from envelope and begins to read.

Merry Christmas to you! Did you like my gift? Before you start planning my execution, remember that big gestures are romantic, and I’ve done you a favor.

If you’re reading this (as I suspect you are), you have probably finally gone after what you want. If you haven’t, well, you’re most likely in a foul mood, and nothing I can say will make you feel better. Either way, I’m going to try to make you feel better, dammit.

Not one of us is happy, Draco, but we need to do the best we can to find happiness even when it seems like all hope is lost. You deserve to be happy just as much as anyone else. I hope you see that, and I hope one day you will believe it. You’re my best mate, whether you like it or not. It hurts my soul to see you so frowny all the time.

Luna and I are going to build snowmen on Boxing Day at my family’s estate, and we expect you and Ginny to be there, so I really, really hope you two have worked through your differences. In the meantime, enjoy the party!

—Blaise

Draco rolls his eyes in exasperation as he folds the letter back up and tucks it into his pocket.

“Well?” Ginny says.

“Just usual Blaise claptrap. You?”

“Typical Luna wisdom.”

They descend into silence until Ginny reaches for Draco’s hand, interlocking her bare fingers with his until they are palm to palm. Draco swears he can feel her pulse, but that’s probably just his own. His heart beats a rhythm against his ribs, urging him to action, and he leans down.

He’s happy when she reaches up at the same time, her lips meeting his before he’s ready for them. Her kiss is warm and a little chapped from the cold, but it’s perfect, and Draco doesn’t feel the cold anymore. He’s only aware of her.

They’re interrupted when the door opens behind them as grumbling party guests are shooed out of the manor by Draco’s and Blaise’s mothers. Ginny’s eyes flutter open and Draco’s mouth curves into a smirk at the satisfied expression on her face.

“Happy Christmas, D,” she says with a smile in her voice.

Draco rests his forehead against hers and responds in kind. “Happy Christmas to you, Ginny.”

A symphony of pops sounds around them as guests depart via Apparation, but, to Draco, they sound like jingle bells celebrating Draco’s Christmas wish come true.

End