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!
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"But muuuuuuummy, I want to stay up with you and daddy to bring in the New Year!" a cherubic little girl with fine, wispy curls the colour of chestnuts pouted up at her parents, a tiny little wobble to her lower lip, big brown eyes brimming over with earnest hope. Before this decidedly calculated use of infant feminine wiles could break her father down, her mother laughed and wrapped her arms around the little girl, blonde locks mingling with brown as she kissed her daughter's cheek.
"I'm sorry, love, but you'll do best to get some sleep. You don't want to be tired when we visit Aunt Daphne tomorrow, do you?" The little girl sighed, but at length, consented, returning her mother's hug.
"All right," Aria's voice was muffled against her mother's neck. "Maybe next year. Good night, mummy."
"Good night, darling." Aria broke away from the hug after a moment and turned to her dad, jumping into his lap and impulsively kissing both cheeks.
Michael Corner laughed wryly as he picked her up and made his way for the stairs. "Off to bed with you, itty bitty," he declared in a mock-severe voice. "Your brothers are already in bed, and you should be, too."
"Nuh UH!" Aria shook her head, curls bouncing around her shoulders, even as daddy twirled her and she giggled. "Teddy's in his room but READING! He's not sleeping yet! Uncle Theo should never have given him that Robinson Crusoe book for Christmas! A few nights ago his light was still on when I had a nightmare and he was totally awake when I ran in 'cause I needed a cuddle!"
Aria's mother listened to the remnants of this conversation as it faded away up the stairs and laughed. If anyone had told Tracey Davis fourteen years ago, when she'd snogged the incumbent Ravenclaw Quidditch captain on a lark, that she would fall desperately in love with him after a rather impetuous and unplanned friends-with-benefits relationship, she would've laughed in a subtly mocking way as only a Slytherin could manage. But perhaps stranger things have happened, and while there had certainly been rocky moments and a few tears that she had been horrified to shed, she couldn't regret any of it.
A jealous girl, making unsavoury remarks about her supposed lack of morals, had goaded Tracey Davis into none-too-gently yanking Michael Corner down for a kiss by his tie to naff the girl off. She had not expected him to kiss back, or to befriend her, or to like it so much. She had not planned to seduce him at all, or to fall in love, or to panic when she realised that she was pregnant and that the idea of him giving support out of pity and obligation chafed more than the idea of braving it alone. But the path to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say, and perhaps conversely the path to bliss is paved with naughty impulses. At a ripe thirty-one and still with an almost childlike habit of watching the light play and sparkle off her wedding ring, she smiled and stood when her husband came back down the stairs.
"She's dropped off then?" Tracey asked as she met him at the landing, cuddling close as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. It was three years after she'd given birth to their son-- three years of working and traveling and being in any place but Britain-- that they'd run into each other again. She had NOT expected to find out a day after the chance meeting that he'd ordered an engagement ring for her three years ago. But the shock of that hadn't been so great that she couldn't choke out an ecstatic yes. He chuckled as they sat back down at the settee.
"She's going to be trouble someday," he sighed, glancing up at her with a wry smile. "She has your pout, I'll have you know."
Seven years of marriage and she still giggled like a schoolgirl occasionally, and this was one of the times. "See, isn't it good then that she takes after you more than she takes after me? As a Slytherin, I suppose I have to admit that I'm not above using said pout when it is strategically advantageous, even though I may draw the line at weeping."
"She's going to be terribly, devastatingly gorgeous, and I rather think that a convent is as good an institution of learning as Hogwarts," he murmured darkly. "An Unplottable convent at that. Boys being the way they are and all."
This sent her into gales of merry, chiming laughter. "And how old was I when WE... began our rather felicitous acquaintance?"
"Exactly," he scowled. "Not that I didn't enjoy it. But still."
"Then you should be glad that she didn't inherit my 'incorrigible flirting', as Blaise calls it," Tracey chuckled. "And you've years yet before you have to worry about such a thing. She's just six yet-- Teddy's not in Hogwarts yet, even."
"But soon," he sighed, as the clock chimed a quarter to midnight. "Just a few months now... and it seems almost like yesterday that I ran into you again in Diagon Alley with him clinging to your hand."
"I daresay I'm a considerable bit more wrinkled and matronly," she said dryly, and that made him crack a grin.
"You do realise that you've only become sexier in the interim after having more children, right?"
This earned him a light shove. "You're terrible."
"And you forgive me because I love you."
"Something like that," she smiled, watching as the hands of the clock approached twelve. "So what do you think this new year will bring us?"
"Inquisitive questions from Teddy," he started with a faint smile. "Hugs and pouting in equal parts from itty bitty. Incongruously witty remarks from Charlie, who really acts older than four right now. And your 'incorrigible flirting'. Which is wholly acceptable because it's directed at me, and also of course because you've made me a very happy man and given me three disgustingly precocious children who will give me grey hair before my time." She laughed again, and the sound was partially drowned out by the chiming of the clock for midnight. "Oh, and lots of this." Cupping her face in his hands, he pressed his lips to hers, and now it was with the ease of familiarity instead of the shock of being snogged on a lark.
She kissed him back, fingers tangling in his dark hair-- hair the same shade of brown as Aria's-- and smiled against his lips. Twelve chiming beats later, they pulled back to breathe, and she ran her fingertip over his lips.
"See, I was doing you a favour making Aria go to bed," she quipped. "Otherwise you'd have to explain to your innocent little angel what THAT was and why people do it to bring in the New Year, and run the risk of inciting childish curiosity that can very well be tested on any number of boys."
"Oy!" he protested. "No boys!"
She simply laughed before kissing him again.