Author: Thalia Kendall
Category: Vignette, Romance
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. Characters and situations are used without permission, no infringement is intended.
Summary: Four separate vignettes with different Ravenclaws on different holidays. Chanukkah, Christmas, New Year's Eve and Chinese New Year... and how Ravenclaws and non-Ravenclaws celebrate.
Author's Notes: Dedicated to Lyta, best Ravenclaw webmistress ever! Happy belated... lots of things!
* * *
All right, so the last thing that Zacharias Smith wanted to come home to after a long work day on CHRISTMAS EVE of all days and the coffeepot being broken at the office and enough paperwork to line every owl cage in Eeylop's Owl Emporium AND Hogwarts castle combined... may NOT have been startling his maddening flatmate off of her precarious perch on a ladder as she methodically removed every last sprig of mistletoe that he'd hung up earlier in the spirit of the holidays.
But it was pretty high up there on the list.
"Luna? What are you DOING?" The question had been posed in a rather indignant voice before she'd noticed his presence, and she'd turned abruptly, apparently not remembering she was ten feet above the air, and fallen off the ladder with a little shriek. He instinctively held out his arms and broke her fall, both of them tumbling to the ground in an inglorious heap.
Zacharias felt the wind knocked out of him and reflected that this was going to be a damnably underwhelming Christmas. It had been seven months ago that he'd entered into a flat-sharing situation with the former resident kook of Ravenclaw, but he'd not foreseen the implications then. It had been a mutually beneficial arrangement-- he knew that he was a considerate roommate, he figured that he'd not really be home enough to be much affected by her strange habits, and the house elf that he'd inherited would keep the flat clean even if she herself had inclinations to the contrary.
Of course, that was before she actually moved in and started chattering with him in the evenings about Humperdinks and Snorkacks and Flitterclucks and whatever the hell else was a favourite non-existent beastie of hers. This was supposedly an attempt to get him to talk about work, in a sort of 'If I talk about mine you can talk about yours' way, but there was no way in hell he'd inflict the darker moments of working as an Auror upon her. It'd not be gentlemanly to do such to a girl who was utterly uninvolved in that kind of thing, to be sure. And moreover, he was certain that that bloody bedamned Potter, for whom she harboured a most unhealthy admiration, probably had no compunction in loading her down with any manner of gory details.
She also had terrible taste in clothes and next to no concept of proper social mores. One night when he came home from work with elegant, sophisticated Rhianna Moon to go over a work case, she'd wandered out of the kitchen with a mazy smile and a tea set, wearing nothing more than a pair of blue knickers, rainbow-striped knee-length socks, and that shirt of his that he could've sworn he'd discarded after he'd spilt Pinot Noir down the front and wasn't able to clean it off. She'd greeted his surprised guest with a gracious smile and the information that the tea was made from blackberries and myrtle, which was supposed to enhance fertility, among other things. Rhianna had eventually gotten over the shock of it and laughed about it with him at the office about a week later. The whole thing had annoyed him, Rhianna's reaction not the least of which.
Bringing himself back to the present, Zacharias struggled into a sitting position, dusting himself off and scowling at her. "What in the world do you think you were doing?" he demanded harshly. "You could've been killed. Why did you take the mistletoe down?"
"Because mistletoe is the preferred breeding host plant for Nargles," she said crisply, also sitting up, her long golden hair tumbling in messy waves down almost to her waist. "I shall not risk having them bite you by accident, you know. You have enough to deal with from work and such without suffering a Nargle attack on top of it all, actually."
"Nargles don't exist," he grumbled, belatedly noticing that in the spirit of the holidays she was wearing a festive green jumper with a reindeer's head on it, a red puffball on the reindeer's nose where her heart would be on her chest, and what looked like a string of cranberries for a necklace. The attire would've looked unspeakably tacky on anyone else. "And if you HAD to take down the mistletoe that I put up just yesterday, you could have asked me first."
"I had an office party at the Quibbler headquarters yesterday night," she reminded him. "And we were all there til quite late, and when I'd gotten home, you were sleeping, and it would have been rude to wake you when you don't get enough sleep as it is, you know. Speaking of which, I am glad that Harry saw me home though, actually. Did you know that he has learnt to muffle the sound of his Apparition entirely? It helped him defeat You-Know-Who, you know. And also that way you didn't wake up when I got home."
That Potter was squiring his flatmate home at any hour of the night without his knowledge did not sit well with Zacharias at ALL. "Bloody Potter," he muttered under his breath, before turning a glare towards Luna. "You still should've told me. And if you HAD to take it all down, you could've levitated it instead of going about on a dangerous, unsupported ladder. What would you've done if you'd fallen and broken your neck and I wasn't around to catch you? And besides, what the devil ARE Nargles anyway, since you're so insistent that they exist?"
"Levitating would make the Nargles float into something else, and then they'd just hide and it would be for naught," she explained. "And Nargles are dark creatures that are invisible and about the size of an ant... and if they bite you, you immediately fall in love as though you've drunk Amortentia Potion, and that's why it's so dangerous. Why, my father did a story once on a man who got caught in a cloud of Nargles while at a Christmas party and started snogging the bodyguards that were hired to protect Celestina Warbeck, since she was booked to perform. And he ended up in St. Mungo's for a month and a half, you know." Luna's big eyes grew wider with concern and she bit her lower lip, reaching out and brushing a fleck of lint off his shoulder. "I'd be very sad if you ended up in St. Mungo's because of the Nargles when I could've prevented it."
Shockingly, that was the most concern that anyone had shown him all day, and that it came in such an outlandish form added to his ire, and his scowl deepened further. "You still could've broken your neck. Since Precious Potter's so helpful, you should've made him help you, if you were so concerned."
"But Harry doesn't know what they look like," Luna explained, standing up on slender legs and brushing out a short black skirt trimmed with silver bells. "And it would not have been good if he'd gotten bitten, either, actually. Because I would have been the only girl around, and that would be kind of a mess if he fell in love with me, you know. I don't think Mrs Weasley would approve, actually. I think she still hopes that Harry and Ginny will marry each other."
Zacharias privately thought that Potter the drama queen and the snippety redheaded bint deserved each other, but didn't mention this aloud as he stood up as well. "Why the devil do you care what Mrs Weasley thinks? It's not like Weasley's a nicer girl than you are, or a prettier." And why was HE advocating Luna and Potter's supposed union? HE didn't want that to happen. Not that he was going to analyse why, of course. It had to be his long work day and this fall they both took. "Though you could do better than Potter. He's too self-absorbed. You need a bloke who likes you for YOU." He got no further when a pair of slender, wool-encased arms suddenly encircled his neck, and his eyes widened to saucer-like size when a pair of soft, warm lips pressed to his cheek. "What are you doing, Luna?"
"You're being awfully sweet, even though I know that you've had a long day and it's terrible that you had to work on Christmas Eve," she whispered, her breath feathering his hair. "And I know that you didn't want to catch me when I fell off that ladder, but I'm glad you caught me, and I hope you have a Happy Christmas this year, Zacharias, and I think you're quite lovely, even though you're still recovering from Loser's Lurgy because that takes a full ten years to heal and you've only had it for nine, and I promise to always watch out and make sure that you won't get bitten by Nargles or attacked by Diminisprites because sometimes it seems like no one else around you worries about you enough."
Zacharias was racking his brains for a gentlemanly way to react to the unexpected hug and the following ramble. There HAD to be a happy medium between 'throw her off of him' and 'wrap arms around her and never let go'. There just had to be. And then again, despite the continued insistence on the existence of creatures never seen or heard of before by any magizoologist, that she was concerned enough about him to risk breaking her neck to watch out for his well-being was touching, in an odd sort of way. And while he was quite sure he did not have Loser's Lurgy, whatever the deuce that was, her candidly voiced support soothed a part of him that he hadn't even quite realised was aching inside. It was enough to take away his typical articulateness. "Well, umm... that's... rather nice of you, Luna," he said finally, somehow unable to do anything about the fact that her arms were still wrapped around his neck. "So thank you."
"You're quite welcome, Zacharias," she gave him a sweet smile, and the light in her big blue eyes made it seem as though he had hung the damned moon for her or something equally heroic and extraordinary. He gulped. "I'm glad you didn't have to stay any longer at work than normal, though," she continued. "I have made some hot cocoa for you, and it would've been a pity if it had all gotten cold. Heating charms take the flavour out of things, Mrs Weasley always said, and since I just finished making it before I got the ladder out to take down that mistletoe, it should be about perfect right now." She beamed up at him and reached up to kiss his cheek again. "I know that it's dreadfully cold outside, so you should drink something warm when you come home, you know."
"Bugger this," Zacharias was only dimly aware that his hands had come up to cup Luna's waist, and really, he was too tired to truly THINK about what he was doing and why, but just as she moved to kiss his cheek, he turned his face slightly so that her lips met his, and then it was as though floodgates had been opened because their faces were close enough that he could almost feel the bristle of her eyelashes as they brushed his cheeks, and she tasted sweeter and warmer than even hot cocoa. This wasn't supposed to happen, and yet it felt right and perfect and he felt a bit of a smirk creeping up the corners of his lips as she moaned against his mouth and tangled her fingers in his hair.
It wasn't because of the Nargles in the mistletoe that lay forgotten on the floor, that was certain. Nargles, after all, did not exist.