Snow Angels

Shivering, Harry pulled out his wand and cast a second Warming Charm. The insubstantial jacket he'd chosen upon leaving home that morning did not seem to be up to the task of shielding him from the frigid temperature of Diagon Alley. Never mind that the rest of London was experiencing a torrent of rain; around Christmastime, someone always magicked up a bit of snow to make Wizarding London seem more festive. The tiny flakes clung to Harry's unruly hair like a cobweb and slicked the cobblestones of the Alley, making the path as treacherous as any Trip Jinx.

"Bugger this," Sirius grumbled, stomping his feet on the mat outside the Leaky Cauldron's entrance and shaking the muddy, slushy snow from his boots. "Next year, I'm going to look into spending Christmas somewhere in the southern hemisphere. South America, maybe. Give me bikinis instead of balaclavas any day."

Harry's responding laugh rang out as they entered the cosy pub, the joyful sound echoing against the earthen walls. It was surprisingly uncrowded for lunchtime on Christmas Eve; Harry guessed the true, die-hard procrastinators must have decided to wait until late afternoon to rush to Diagon Alley in a panic to complete the last of their Christmas shopping. Aside from Tom, who greeted Sirius and Harry with a curt, "Morning," only a few patrons milled about, nursing their drinks, looking through their mounds of shopping bags, and, in the case of one brave fellow, having a daring meal of pea soup.

One snub-nosed face stood out amongst the pool of unfamiliar ones: Pansy Parkinson. She sat on her own, reading a day-old Daily Prophet and pursing her lips at whatever bad news she'd discovered in the Quidditch section. When she noticed Harry, her mouth turned up at the corners, and she gave him the tiniest of nods.

Sirius let out a barely audible whistle. "You know her?" he murmured, jerking his head in Pansy's direction and waggling his eyebrows.

"Err, yeah," Harry stammered, wincing. "We're kind of...seeing each other."

"So why do you sound like that's a bad thing?"

After ordering a pair of Firewhiskeys from Tom, Harry led Sirius to a table that was as far from Pansy as possible. "No one knows about us just yet," he explained. "It's a new thing. I'm not entirely sure how to break the news to the Weasleys and Hermione. They won't be pleased."

"Aww, what's wrong with her?" Sirius asked. "Because from where I'm sitting, those legs look like they'd make up for all manner of sins."

Harry snorted. "She's Pansy Parkinson: the one tried to get everyone to turn me over to Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts."

"Ah. Yes." Nodding sagely, Sirius shot him a lazy grin. "I can see why that might make relations between her and your friends a tad strained. How did you even end up together?"

Harry smiled. "She got a job at the Ministry last month — in the Department of Magical Transportation. She got very, very drunk at the office Christmas party—"

"I like where this is going," Sirius said with a smirk.

"I can't remember her exact words, because I was a bit pissed myself, but I think she said something like, 'Oi, Potter! Y'know, I'm sorry for that whole trying to convince people to hand you over to Old Snake Face thing. You're a prat, but I didn't want you to die. Much.'"

Throwing his head back, Sirius roared with laughter. "And that somehow led to the two of you shagging?"

"Not right away. I called her a hag first, then we insulted each other's friends for a while. There was some more drinking, and then — and this part is really hazy — we mysteriously ended up in one of the loos together."

Sirius tilted his chair back on two legs, his grin widening. "I knew I liked where this was going. Nothing like some good, old-fashioned angry sex."

"I'm not sure angry is a strong enough term, but yeah." Chuckling, Harry chanced a look at Pansy. Her eyes were focused on her newspaper, but the way her lips curved up suggested she knew Harry was watching her.

"By the time it was over, we'd both sobered up a bit," he continued. "She told me she really was sorry. She said she was just a scared, desperate kid who didn't want to die. For some insane reason, I decided to forgive her. When I told her as much, she said, 'Good. We're definitely doing that again, so it'd be preferable if we didn't hate each other.' And then I asked her out. Several dates later, here we are."

With a thoughtful hum, Sirius rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. "Since we're hosting Christmas this year, why don't you bring her along tomorrow?" Pausing, he laughed at Harry's responding grimace. "The longer you wait to come out about dating your erstwhile enemy, the more difficult it'll be. And I have it on good authority that Molly is thinking about setting you up with someone if you stay single much longer."

Harry frowned. "Hmm. We'll see."

"Percy," Harry said, furrowing his brow as he craned his neck to look around the long front hall. "Did you see where Pansy ran off to?"

"I saw her talking to George earlier," Percy replied, giving him a stiff version of a sympathetic look. "But not since then."

"That can't be good," Harry muttered.

"Maybe she left," Ron said, sounding delighted by the very idea.

Harry took a moment to cast a withering look in his friend's direction before he returned to his mission of scouring every room in 12 Grimmauld Place. In the kitchen, he found Sirius, Ginny, and Hermione baking mince pies, but no Pansy.

Well, Hermione and Ginny were baking, at least. Sirius's contributions seemed to consist of flirting with Hermione and munching the finished pies.

In the dining room, he found Mrs. Weasley bickering with Bill and Charlie over the length of their hair, while Mr. Weasley tinkered with some Muggle plugs Hermione had given him and George looked on in amusement. Fleur stood on the sidelines, occasionally piping up in defence of Bill. All of them denied any knowledge of Pansy's whereabouts.

Moving upstairs, Harry continued his search, finding nothing but the huge Christmas tree in the drawing room and some dust bunnies under the bed in the spare bedroom. There was no sign of Pansy in any of the bathrooms and cupboards, either. Sirius's room yielded no clues, nor did Harry's (though he had rather hoped to find Pansy there, snuggled under the quilt on his bed and wearing only a smile).

Defeated, Harry gave up. Perhaps Ron's guess was closer to the truth than he'd expected. It was probably a mistake to follow Sirius's advice and invite Pansy to spend Christmas with them. She and Harry had only been dating for two weeks; their knowledge of each other was mostly limited to what they looked like naked. It wasn't until he learned that she'd spent her Christmases alone since her father died in the war that he'd been compelled to ask her to join in with the festivities at Grimmauld Place.

As he walked past the drawing room again, a flash of bright colour caught Harry's eye. Tilting his head, he watched, bewildered, as a foot clad in a pink shoe wiggled back and forth underneath the Christmas tree.

A moment later, he was grateful for the presence of his glasses. They shielded his eyes from the pine branches that poked him in the face as he clambered behind the tree, knocking several delicate baubles down as he went, and flopped onto...a snowdrift?

Pansy lay on her back, arms and legs splayed out in the process of making a snow angel, staring up at a vast array of twinkling fairy lights. She'd cast some sort of Expansion Charm on the corner behind the tree, filling it with extra decorations and conjured snow.

"You're it," Harry said, prodding her shoulder with his index finger. "If you want to keep acting like a frightened little Hufflepuff, it's my turn to hide. Or hey, here's a radical notion: you could just come back downstairs with me."

"A Hufflepuff?" she squeaked, her breath coming out in a puff of warm fog and her ice-blue eyes glimmering with mirth. "Damn, Potter, that's cold. Even at my meanest, I never would've called someone a Hufflepuff." Sitting up, she grabbed the front of Harry's shirt and pulled him close for a quick kiss on the lips. "It's amazing that I put up with your abuse, you cruel, cruel man. And for your information, I'm not hiding. I just needed a little break. Your friends are rather...overwhelming at times."

"Were they mean to you?" he asked, thinking of George in particular. "I'd hate to think I missed any really good pranks."

Pansy let out a gasp of laughter. "Mean in comparison to who?" With a rueful smile, she shook her head. "No, they've been surprisingly fine. George did try to get me to eat some toffee thing, but there was no way I was going to fall for it. As if I didn't go to Hogwarts at the same time as you! I know better than to accept food from a Weasley twin."

As Harry absentmindedly rubbed a hand up and down her back, he felt the rustle of paper underneath his fingertips. He knew, without having to look, that it was a "Kick Me" sign, placed there by George.

"Indeed," he said, fighting a grin. "You're far too clever to fall for any of his tricks. So, why the snow? Isn't it cold enough in this draughty old house?"

Instead of answering him immediately, Pansy turned her attention towards the tree. Sighing, she ran a finger along one of the sparkling glass baubles that Mrs. Weasley had given to Harry and Sirius. A pure gold unicorn foal pranced around the inside of the ornament, shaking its mane and sending rainbow coloured pinpricks of light scattering over the tree and Pansy's face. The quiet, nostalgic smile that tugged at her lips reminded Harry of a Care of Magical Creatures class during his fourth year, when a certain hard-faced, mean girl tried very hard to pretend that she didn't like something as gentle and innocent and good as a unicorn.

"I like snow," she murmured, her voice laced with some bittersweet, undefined emotion.

Harry wondered if she was reenacting some memory from her childhood Christmases, but he supposed he wasn't going to find out any time soon. Rather than press her for more information, he carefully unhooked the unicorn bauble from its place on the tree branch and pressed it into her open palm.

"Happy Christmas," he said, brushing his lips against hers. "Hag."

He thought he'd never seen such a warm smile on the face of a Slytherin.

"Happy Christmas," Pansy said, her responding giggle tinkling like sleigh bells. "Prat."

The End