A Wonderful Fortuitous Love

30. Shoes of Welcoming

“Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”

- Ray Bradbury

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With Christmas on the vast approach, it was amazing how Draco overlooked something so important and clearly missing from the little flat they shared. He didn’t even notice until he overheard one of the employees talking about it at lunchbreak – a Christmas tree.

Draco wondered for a long time how he could forget about that part of Christmas. He’d risked a glance over at Hermione and saw that she seemed to have also forgotten. And so it was that evening after work she summoned up the courage to ask him about it. Under normal circumstances, Draco would have laughed or made some arrogant comment, and told her to just do the ruddy thing herself. In all honest, he was sorely tempted to do just that. But Hermione had already half turned her back on him, and he realised with a burst of irritation that she had already expected him to do just that. How dare the woman think she knew him? So Draco, with an immature need to prove her wrong, got up from his chair and followed her up the stairs. He helped her pull the tree from her cupboard, and they both set it out downstairs.

He ignored the questioning looks she shot him and agreed he would have the left side of the tree, and she the right.

An hour later, Draco fed up with all the bright colours and Hermione with sparkles and bits of tinsel in her hair, they were done. What both seemed to notice as they stepped back to admire the tree was that Draco’s side was full of silver and green decorations, while Hermione’s was red and gold.

An annoyed-driven comment about house rivalries led to the familiar pure-blood/Muggle-born debate and soon they were yelling and screaming at each other as usual, the colourful decorations in the background contrasting oddly with the argument.

But neither wanted to actually take down the tree and do it all over again, so they came to a heated conclusion that it would be left the way it was, standing there in all it’s Slytherin/Gryffindor pride.

And Draco, who came down for a drink of water hours after the fight, for reasons he did not understand, decided he actually liked the tree. It was even, dare he think it, beautiful. In it’s own demented and non-traditional kind of way. But he liked it, and he thought Hermione secretly did too, because he caught her the next morning staring almost admirably at it.

But they had succeeded, nevertheless, and Draco was thankful for this, because the last time he’d used teamwork with Hermione was when McGonagall thought it’d be ‘educational’ to pair them up with members of different houses, and it hadn’t gone well. They had been trying to turn a brocade of flowers into a family of doves (something that was usually done for weddings, as the old bat had said) and both far too used to be paired up with partners lacking in brains (Draco with Crabbe or Goyle and Hermione with Potter or Weasley), had tried casting at exactly the same time. The flowers exploded into flames, emitting not just a family of doves, but a whole freakin’ flock, and for a long time, it was not uncommon to come across the occasional dove nestled on a windowsill or the back of a classroom.  

But they had succeeded with the silly tree without setting it to flames, and if Draco had been one more for Christmas, he would have said it was a Christmas miracle.

***

“Where is my shoe? Oh my god, I’m going to be late, argh! Where is it?! Draco stop following me damn it and do something helpful! Where is my –? Mph!” Not watching where she was going, Hermione collided into a very firm chest.