Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

In retrospect Hermione was never quite sure what it was she and Ron were fighting about so viciously at the end of November -- but whatever the provocation, the end result was monstrous: Ron moved back to the Burrow, Hermione's Christmas was ruined, and the wedding was most definitely off.

"You're both just being stupid," Ginny said the next day, when she found out. "Just apologize and let it be over. There's no reason to make yourself miserable."

"I'm not apologizing unless he apologizes first," Hermione said stiffly. "He started it." Or at least she thought he had.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "For someone so clever, you're awfully stupid sometimes, Hermione."

*****

Ginny Flooed her at seven-thirty in the morning on December 1, three days after the fight. "Have you read the Daily Prophet yet?" she asked.

"No," Hermione said, glancing over to where her copy lay on the doormat.

"Don't." Ginny's head vanished from the fireplace.

Resigned, Hermione padded over to the door and picked up the Prophet. The front page copy was normal enough, a fairly dry report on trade negotiations with Indonesia, but . . . She flipped the paper open and groaned. There it was on page three, a splashy layout headed "TROUBLE IN PARADISE: Potter pals pack it in".

She sighed. Hermione was used to being in the news; because of her proximity to Harry Potter, she'd been making headlines for twelve years, ever since that debacle with Rita Skeeter during her fourth year at Hogwarts. Skeeter's rubbish had stung, yes, but she'd always been able to console herself with the thought that it was totally false. This was all the nastier for being true.

Hermione dropped the paper back onto the doormat, disgusted, and went to dress for work.

*****

She Flooed into work and skulked through the Atrium, trying not to look at the rampant Christmas decorations or her coworkers. She managed to catch a lift just as it stopped in the Atrium, sliding on and frantically jamming the Door Close button. Just as the doors were grinding shut, though, Doris from the Portkey Office squeezed into the lift.

"Good morning, Hermione," she said chirpily.

Hermione shut her eyes, waiting for the axe to fall. Doris was a malicious busybody who never spoke to Hermione unless it was about some item of gossip. "Good morning, Doris," she said.

"They've got house-elves decorating the Ministry today, did you see? I just love the holidays." Without giving Hermione a chance to respond, Doris barrelled on, "So I saw there was an article about you in the Daily Prophet this morning."

"Yes," Hermione said, wondering why the lift was taking so long to arrive at its first stop.

"What a shame," Doris said, clucking her tongue in what Hermione knew to be false sympathy. "That Ron has always seemed like such a nice young man. I knew Molly Weasley at --"

To Hermione's relief, the lift clanked to a halt and the annunciator said in its cool voice, "Level Six: Department of Magical Transport."

"Oh, there's my stop," Doris said. "Good talking with you, Hermione. Lunch?"

"I have plans," said Hermione. She didn't.

Doris stepped out of the lift. Hermione leaned on the button for level four, hoping to keep other people out of the lift.

It was going to be a long day.

*****

She walked into the Beast Office, where she worked as a minor functionary, to find a cadre of house-elves scurrying about bearing greenery. "I don't want a wreath on my desk, thank you," she said loudly, plunking down her briefcase on her desktop.

"Is it true?" Katherine, her cubicle-mate said, turning away from a teetering stack of parchments. "Did Ron really leave you for Lavender Brown? Witch Weekly said he and Lavender were going on holiday in Majorca and that's why he's not around."

"Lavender Brown is in Geneva with Neville Longbottom, I told him to get out, and yes," Hermione said. "Not that it is any of your business."

"It was in the Prophet, wasn't it? What were you two fighting about, anyway?"

"I don't remember."

"You have to remember. It must have been important if you cancelled the wedding over it."

"I really don't remember. No, no garlands!" Hermione said to the house-elf who had been sneaking up behind her with an armful of holly. It slunk off and she immediately felt terrible for snapping at it.

"You have to make up," Katherine said, tapping a quill against her desk. "The wedding's only a month away."

"Not anymore it isn't."

"I've gone on a diet specially for your wedding! You can't just call it off."

"I can and I have," said Hermione. She looked down at the house-elf that was attempting to slip under her desk. "Is that mistletoe? I especially don't want mistletoe. I don't want holiday clutter this year."

"Please, miss," the house-elf said squeakily, "Minister Alderley is ordering us house-elves to decorate all the employees' desks. Minister Alderley is saying he wants the entire Ministry to be festive this holiday season."

"Oh, all right," Hermione said irritably. "Honestly. Put a wreath somewhere out of the way."

She revised her earlier estimate: it was going to be a long month.

*****

The flat was too empty without Ron, Hermione decided, as she opened the door to silence and blackness. She dropped her briefcase by the door and kicked off her shoes before moving through the flat, turning on lights and the Wizarding Wireless, just to have some noise.

Her stomach rumbled. She padded over to the kitchen and stood staring into the refrigerator for five minutes before she realized she wasn't sure what she wanted to eat -- or even what she could cook. Ron was usually the one to handle the cooking.

"Takeaway curry again, then," she said, scanning the menu stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet.

She was halfway through an order of chicken tikka masala when the phone rang. "Hermione, dear," her mother said as soon as she answered, "I've got to start on my Christmas shopping. What do you want, dear?"

"I don't want anything," Hermione said, poking at one of the larger pieces of chicken with her fork. "I'm not doing Christmas this year."

"That's nonsense, Hermione. Of course you'll celebrate Christmas, just like everyone else does. Really, darling, what do you want?"

"Just get me a Waterstones gift card or something, Mum, I'm really not in the mood."

"How about you and I go shopping this weekend? I've got to go up to London anyway. We can go shopping together and check off our Christmas lists. Mother-daughter time. I can help you pick out a gift for that young man of yours."

"Ron and I aren't together anymore, Mum, I meant to tell you --"

"So I'll see you tomorrow afternoon?" her mother said, totally ignoring her. "I'm sure we'll find something for Ron. Ta, darling."

Hermione punched the off button on the phone and held it in her hand for a moment. "No wonder Mum's a dentist," she grumbled; "she doesn't want to listen to what the other person is saying."

On the Wizarding Wireless, Celestina Warbeck wailed, "Ohh, but Christmas is a time for family, and you and me . . ."

Hermione threw the handset at the radio.

*****

The gossip about her and Ron at the Ministry eventually died down, particularly after Hermione adopted a wall of silence and became suddenly deaf whenever the name "Ron" was uttered around her. Her friends, however, were harder to dissuade from talking about the situation. "We're just worried about you," Ginny said when Hermione crabbily asked why she had to keep bringing up the breakup. "You should be happy at Christmas and you're not."

"I'm fine," Hermione said, knowing full well that she wasn't.

Harry called her on the afternoon of the sixteenth, startling her as his head appeared suddenly in the fireplace. "Hi, Hermione," he said. "I just wanted to see how you were doing."

She tucked her knitting needles into her ball of wool, marking her place in the pattern, and gave Harry a level look. "Ginny put you up to this, didn't she."

"Well, all right, she did," Harry said, running a hand through his hair, "but I do want to know. I mean, you're my friend, Hermione, and so is Ron, and I can, from time to time, check in on how things are going."

"I'm fine," Hermione said, "and Ginny knows that."

"Ron is not fine," said Harry.

She snorted. "I know better than to believe that." She had heard from sources -- namely Arthur Weasley -- that Ron was drowning his sorrows by practicing Quidditch in the family paddock at all hours of the day, eating abundantly, and both driving mad and being driven mad by his mother. All right, so she missed him fiercely and keenly. She still wasn't going to apologize not one second before he did.

"Does it really matter who started it, Hermione?" Harry said, responding to the look on her face. "You should just apologize and get it over with."

She set her jaw and Harry recognized it for the sign it was. "Anyway, Ginny also wanted me to ask you what I should get you for Christmas," he said hastily.

"I don't want anything this year."

"I have to get you something, at least."

"Then buy a goat in my name from Heifer International or something, but honestly, Harry, I'm just not in the Christmas mood this year. I don't want people to buy me presents, I'm not putting up any decorations, and I'm planning to spend Christmas reorganizing my bookshelves."

Harry gave her a pitying look. "Ginny also wanted me to invite you over for dinner tonight. Eggplant parmigiana."

"Will I be your only guest?" she asked shrewdly.

"Yes," Harry said, and then he looked to the side: "No."

"No, then."

"Hermione," Harry said. "Can't you just put it on hold or something for one evening? Ginny and I would both really like to have you over, I promise Ron will behave himself, and besides, I know it'll be the only decent meal you eat this week. Come on."

"Oh, all right," she said, wondering how she kept getting pressured into these things. "Just don't expect me to be festive."

"If you say so."

*****

Dinner was, despite Harry and Ginny's best efforts, a strained and uncomfortable affair. The Potters had at least had the sense not to seat Hermione and Ron next to one another, instead seating them across from each other. This had the unfortunate side effect of allowing them to glower silently and heatedly at each other for most of the meal.

Hermione pretended not to notice Harry and Ginny's increasingly more desperate looks at each other and at her. The atmosphere in the room grew tenser and tenser, until finally over the pudding Harry said, "What a lovely meal this has been."

"Can't you be nice to each other at least for appearance's sake?" Ginny said, annoyance clear in her tone.

"Tell Hermione that I'll be nice when she apologizes for picking a fight and throwing me out of our flat," said Ron.

"Tell Ron that I'll apologize when he does."

"Tell Hermione that she's being pointless and childish."

"Tell Ron that he's a fine one to be talking about pointless and childish."

"Enough!" Harry said, thumping a fist on the table. "Ginny and I hoped that if we got you two in the same room, you'd come to your senses and see that what you have is worth too much to be thrown away over some stupid quarrel. Looks like we were wrong. But if you can't be nice to one another, then don't talk. I'm tired of all the bickering. Why can't you just let it be?"

Hermione stood. "Tell Ron," she said shakily, "that all I want is for this to be over."

She Apparated away before she started to cry.

*****

A gloomy and freezing fog settled over the city in the week leading up to Christmas. Hermione thought it suited. She buried herself in researching a hippogriff cruelty case at work and ignored her boss Owen's repeated and sleazy attempts to invite her to the staff holiday party.

Christmas Eve rolled around, and Hermione grumpily sat in her flat with a carton of eggnog and a box of Milk Tray, rewatching her Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs (but pointedly not the one with the magical Christmas snow.) She was watching the adventures of evil vampire Willow when she heard a knock on her door and then an abrupt crack!, like someone had Apparated away while standing practically in front of her door.

There, on her "Welcome" mat, sat a snow globe and a card. "Read me first!" was written on the outside of the card in Ron's loopy scrawl. She flipped the card open.

It's a Portkey. Grab it and go. (Don't worry, I cleared it with the Portkey Office.)

"I just bet," Hermione muttered, thinking of who in the Portkey Office would have cleared Ron's request.

She stepped into her shoes and shrugged on a coat before grabbing the snowglobe, closing her eyes against the unpleasant rushing feeling Portkeys always gave her. She landed someplace cold, dark, and . . . wet?

Hermione opened her eyes. She had landed in the edge of a large snowfield. Beside her lay a broomstick, one of the ragged old Weasley family broomsticks, and another note in Ron's handwriting, saying simply "Up." She extended a hand over the broomstick and commanded, "Up!"

It jumped into her hand obediently enough, and she mounted clumsily -- she had decided her first year at Hogwarts that brooms weren't her preferred means of magical travel, and she hadn't spent much time since honing her flying skills. She hovered on the broom, feeling a little silly, and the note changed: "Higher," it now read.

Well, all right, she could do higher. Not much higher, but high enough. Hermione pulled back on the neck of the broom, and it slowly began to rise. As she flew, she noticed that the snowfield had lumps -- and then, she saw that the lumps were letters and what they spelled.

In letters six feet high and sculpted out of magical snow, Ron had written: I'M SORRY.

She laughed, aiming her broom back at the ground. Ron appeared from underneath an invisibility cloak, helping her off the broom and taking it from her. "Hermione, I really mean it," he said. "I've been being stupid and I should have just apologized before now. I don't know why I didn't. Manly pride, I guess. We're dumb that way. But I'm apologizing now, Hermione, I'm really sorry."

She looked at Ron, looked at the sheepish expression on his face and the tips of his ears, which were turning bright red, and realized that she'd forgiven him weeks ago without realizing it. "I'm sorry too," she said. "I just got -- all wrapped up, I guess. Ginny was right, I was being stupid."

"So we're back on?" Ron said hopefully.

"Yes," said Hermione, "we are, definitely."

"All right," Ron said, stepping closer to Hermione. She lifted her face to his, and he kissed her -- and then shoved a handful of snow down the back of her collar.

"Ronald Weasley!" she shrieked, and they were off, flinging snowballs at each other, panting, laughing, and thoroughly soaking the legs of their trousers. Hermione holed up in one of the Os, using it as a snow fort until Ron tunneled in from behind, pushing a load of snow on top of her and making her sputter.

They flopped down together, making side-by-side snow angels. Hermione sighed happily. "It must have taken you all day to do this."

"A couple of hours," said Ron. "I had Ginny show me how to do the charm. She had to demonstrate several times before I completely understood the wand movement."

She looked over at Ron, who was grinning. "So how much of the snowfield did she end up doing?"

"Only about a quarter is all."

Hermione snickered.

They were silent for a few minutes. Hermione watched the stars overhead and thought that as Christmases went, this one was turning out to be all right.

"So," Ron said, "it's a little early to be asking, I know, but . . . did you get what you wanted for Christmas?"

She smiled. "Everything I wanted," she said. "And more."