Black and Yellow.

Chapter 20- Christmas

Dedicated to ForeverRue for leaving super nice comments! :D 

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The Great hall is so beautiful at Christmas time. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of twinkling lights adorn the celling, dangling and shining and shimmering like little snowflakes. Christmas trees line the edges, and there is a surprisingly small amount of kids still here, choosing to stay at Hogwarts instead of going home for holidays. That included Ruby, Jade, and their friend from Slytherin, Willow.

There was only one table set up, with all of the teachers, and the students wedged in, eating together. It was cozy and fun and Jade loved every minute of it. She would have gone home for the Christmas holidays, but, being her own distracted, disorganized self, she hadn’t actually known that  option was available. And after everything that had been going on with Ruby and Robyn lately, Jade was kind of glad she ended up staying home. Ruby of course, hadn’t gone home, she would much rather be here than at the hospital. And Willows family was still mad at her for ending up in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor, so the three girls ended up eating and laughing together at Christmas.

The food was delicious and abundant, there was everything that Jade liked, spread out before her on platters that refilled themselves, and endless waterfall of food. It was easy to explain the couple of pounds both she and Ruby had gained since coming here, although on Ruby they were necessary, while on her they were extremely unwanted. Willow was as tall and as pretty as usual, her long dark let loose around her face in a perfect pinwheel black curls, her dark skin glowing. She looked very mature, and very well, Slytherin. But she was as nice as always to her two Hufflepuff friends, and the three girls hit it off just as they had on the first day of school.

Set in the middle of the table, Jade and Ruby quickly discovered that the crackers in the centre of the table exploded to reveal random, and often times useless presents. Jade would go home with a silly jester hat and three pincushions, Ruby had gotten a small windup robot, one live muse that quickly escaped between her surprised fingers, and one, tiny shoe. Willow donned a huge, fluffy, pink feathered scarf, and tucked the two rings around her wrist, all three of them laughing.

Jade noticed something odd however, as the night stretched on. That across the table, there weren’t that many kids, so the pattern was easy to see. Even when shoved together, even when gathered in one, unified table, the houses were not mingling. Hufflepuff stayed with their fellow housemates, and the story was the same in the other three houses. She and Ruby seemed to be some of the few who were actually interacting with anybody from the other houses, let alone making friends with them. They prejudices and the hatred too deeply engrained in people heads, that even when they had the opportunity to interact, they stuck with their own people.

Another thing Jade noticed was that the one house who was more open than the others, the more willing to talk, to forsake the colors on their robes and just talk, were the Hufflepuff. And honestly, that didn’t surprise her. But she and Ruby managed to easily discard their loyalty of their house that night, letting the Black and yellow behind their eyes fade, welcoming in any color they could possibly want. And they had fun.

Ruby wasn’t being quite as analytical as Jade was during dinner. She simply it go, all of the worries and the scared and the tears of the past couple of days washing off her shoulders slipping behind her to be replaced with laughs and friends and open eyes. And she forgot she was a werewolf, she even forgot she was Hufflepuff, for now, she was just another student, just a friend, just a girl who happened to be happy. And she was.

And then, when the dinner was over, and the girls split up, hugs and laughs following each back to their dormitories, the memories still clinging to their minds. Jade and Ruby stumbled through their dormitory, and collapsing, exhausted, into their beds. Jade eyes fluttered closed as soon as her head hit the pillow, and that night, she, and all the other students, slept well.