Christmastime creeps up upon them all; so busy committing their small crimes against Umbridge's rules and regulations that time just gets away from them.

It's the last day of practice before everyone leaves for holiday, and after an hour or so of practice time and an exchange of well-wishes, Harry bids them farewell, watching his classmates obediently file out the door with a sense of pride.

He busies himself with putting away the cushions they use for Stunning practice, purposefully taking his time in pathetic, desperate hopes that Cho Chang would linger behind and wish him a Merry Christmas. And his heart jumps, does a pirouette, when he sees her stop in her tracks! ...But she merely waves to him as she starts to leave with Marietta.

Sighing laboriously under his breath, he stuffs the box filled with cushions underneath a dusty shelf and he's about to leave, but he walks over to take one last look at the picture of the Order of the Phoenix. His attention, of course, squarely rests upon his parents more than any of the others. His eyes mournfully search their faces, yearning for the contentment they hold, just beyond his reach.

"They were very brave."

Harry blinks in surprise, turning to see Parvati Patil walking over to stand beside him. She must've stayed behind after Lavender and Padma left.

He smiles at her before turning back to the picture, the grin on his face slackening ever so slightly.

"Yeah," he says simply. "They were."

"And so are you," she insists, matching his grin with a brilliant one of her own, gingerly elbowing him in the ribs. "Teaching all of this stuff you learned, risking being expelled or worse."

He clears her throat, heat nipping at the edges of his cheeks. He never did well with effusive praise, let alone from girls.

From pretty girls.

He struggles in vain to subdue the heat rising on his face, and Parvati's grin does little to help. It's a cruel betrayal of his body, but it's a little gem of a moment for her to witness.

"I'm serious, though!" she laughs, before she looking at him, her head tilted to the side, warmly appraising him. "Listen to me, Harry," he tears his gaze away from the picture to meet hers, a smile widening on her lips as the red-pink of his cheeks becomes ever ruddier. "They'd be proud of you."

All he can do at this point is nod, and he does so humbly. He turns back to the photo so he doesn't have to see the implicit amusement in her expression at how ridiculously daft he must look.

"At least for pulling one over Umbridge, that absolute hag," she offers magnanimously. It exempts him from his ruddy-faced embarrassment, and when he catches the malevolent glint in her eye, they both burst into a hushed laughter that seems to go on for ages before it recedes into silence.

What she says next though, catches him completely off-guard, if only for the sheer novelty of the question.

"Your dad, Harry, where was he from?"

It's a question no one has ever really asked him, he realizes with a jolt. One look at the photo, at the swarthy hues that color Harry's face, and people made their own conclusions. He looks at her almost incredulously and she gazes back at him, a determination in her that's much less present in him.

"He was Indian, British-Indian," Harry says, tasting words he hasn't heard in a long time. Words that were spat out at him from the small, vicious mouth of his aunt, at the receiving end of a sneer from his uncle, said like a bitter curse. With such cruelty for company, he had always wondered if the color of his skin was like dirt - sullying and tainting the unblemished porcelain whiteness that must've lain underneath: the whiteness of his cousin, of his aunt, of his mother's side.

They were thoughts of tarnished self-worth he'd struggled to bury inside along with an identity he only knew by name. And here was Parvati Patil, asking him about it, with wide, curious eyes. With a brilliant golden-brown shine to her skin only a few shades darker than his own, unearthing parts of him he had forgotten about. It feels right.

And because he's a dunce, bless him, Harry slowly asks, "Are you—"

"Yeah, I am too. Padma and I, we're Gujarati, specifically." She smiles at him again, tentatively, almost sadly, knowing the answer he's going to give her, "Do you know where his family was from?"

"I—No," he says numbly, "I…I don't know anything, really. No one ever..." He trails off.

"Told you."

"Yeah."

They stand in a comfortable, albeit melancholy, silence together for a few long moments, before Harry stirs, remembering something, so he pulls this something out of the ether.

"My godfather— he said he celebrated Holi with my dad's family. The first year they were out of Hogwarts." Harry laughs thickly, and she smiles as his eyes glisten with moisture, "He— he said he was washing the colors off his face for days."

And because he's so lost in the grasp of almost-memory of love and parents and the person he could've been and the life he could've had, that he doesn't notice Parvati's hand drop to her side and slowly travel over to clasp his.

He's startled by the sheer warmth of it, not that she's overwhelmingly hot, but he becomes aware of just how cold he's been.

"Padma and I get permission from Dumbledore to go home for Holi," Parvati says, staring ahead at the photo, eyes fixed upon his image of his beaming father holding Lily Evans close, before turning to look to him, "And Diwali. Do you want to come with us sometime, Harry? You're welcome to."

He opens the spaces between his fingers, just slightly, so that her fingers can nestle in between his.

"That would be nice."

A neat fit, he thinks absently to himself, as he looks to his parents, as he searches Parvati's face before smiling softly.

The right fit.

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