It was on the Monday before the winter holidays that Michael Corner almost set the potions dungeon on fire. Harry and Ron had always agreed that it was perfectly rotten of the professors to schedule a pile of tests for the last week before the holidays, so they felt somewhat less than sympathetic when the hem of Professor Belby’s robe actually did catch fire. Michael Corner’s cauldron shot downward of its tripod after he added his fifth ingredient third and left a crack in the stone floor. The potion, which had apparently been acidic, ate through the grout between the stones, the bottom of a filing cabinet, and two of the legs of the table with the rest of his potions supplies. The table crashed down, and the supplies piled atop it slid down into the potion running over the floor. With a great bang, flames blazed up from the liquid. Belby’s robe, which the potion had been slowly dissolving, caught fire, and Michael Corner, trying to be helpful, attempted to stamp it out. Instead, Belby tripped and fell against Harry’s table. Harry caught his potion before it fell and put it back over the fire, but he mostly ignored it as he watched the chaos.

The fire itself seemed to be acidic, because everything it touched dissolved as much as it burned, and it ate through anything but the stone floor. The sides of the newly ruined filing cabinet gained big gaping holes where the flames had licked the metal. Harry could see loose papers and a collection of leather bound journals peaking out before he turned his eyes back to Michael Corner and Belby.

As he tried to put out the fire on Belby’s robes, Michael Corner hadn’t noticed his bootlace had caught as well. When he did, he hopped over to a chair, trying to pull his boot off. The hem of his robe suddenly freed, Belby sprinted to the supply cabinet, pulled out four small bottles, and tossed them each into the potion, counting silent intervals between each. The fire died instantly and the potion ran harmlessly down one of the many drains dotting the floor of the dungeon. Michael corner pulled his bootlace free from his boot and blew out the flame clinging to it like a candle flame to a wick.

“Class dismissed,” Belby exclaimed, shaken, “you will retake the test after the holidays.” He gazed around the room. “Except you, Mr. Corner,” he told him as he tried to slink off. Harry, Ron, and Hermione tipped their own potions down the drain and packed up, hiding grins all the while.

~*~

By dinner, the story had spread throughout the school. Severus gloated as Belby sat resolutely still to avoid squirming with discomfort. Try as he might, however, Severus couldn’t discount the man’s ability as a brewer. It he weren’t so skilled in the technical aspects of the craft, he wouldn’t be so convincing a fraud. He couldn’t invent so much as a cure for warts, but he could understand any potion he found. Still, the disaster had provided an amusing start to the week and Snape smirked on.

~*~

Harry walked with Ron and Hermione to the train, but didn’t board with them. Ron thought he needed to spend time with his brothers so soon after Fred had been murdered, and Hermione grumbled that her parents still hadn’t forgiven her for sending them to Australia, and she had to make it up to them. Ginny however, had elected to stay behind with Harry, because, as she claimed, she couldn’t spend another moment with her family, not right then, not when they were all mourning Fred and fighting with each other over the smallest things. At least for a while, she wanted to forget.

Ginny had also decided to wait in the tower while Ron and Hermione left for their respective homes, so that Ron wouldn’t wheedle her into joining him. Harry’s mind had floated up to her as he waved good bye to the train as it sped out of the Hogsmeade station, and he hiked back up to the school as soon as the train was out of sight. He pulled his scarf tighter and looped it around his neck again, burying his hands in his sleeves as he walked. A thin blanket of snow covered the fields and a vicious wind blew though him. He walked slowly, his feet crunching in the snow, a black dot distinctly visible against the white snow from above. As he tramped miserably, Ginny made her way down from the tower, a heavy coat hastily pulled over her shoulders. She burst through the doors and ran out to him, clasping his hand from where it rested inside his coat sleeve and pulled him inside with her. “Ginny, what…”

“Come on,” she whispered, “Neville went to stay with Hannah Abbot. We have Gryffindor tower to ourselves.”

“Oh.” She winked at him conspiratorially, and he wondered with a pang of jealousy if she had ever winked that way at her boyfriends before him. It struck him with more than a pang that she might have followed up on that wink before she dated him. His mind flashed to Eileen, but then Ginny smiled at him, and he shoved the memory away.

When they passed over the threshold into the school, Harry sank into the warm air like bath water, shivering as his body warmed up. Ginny laughed at him and tilted her head. “I lied, you know, we don’t have the common room entirely to ourselves. There’re a couple of second years left, but they shouldn’t be too hard to scare off.”

“You’re not very nice are you,” he teased. He liked that about her. She wasn’t afraid to be a little mean, but she was never cruel.

“No,” she replied unrepentantly, “not very.” Her fingers ran though his tousled hair and trailed over the shell of his ear. He backed away flushed and uncertain, and she chucked low in her throat. Her hand returned to his, and she gave it a soft squeeze. “But I can be.”

He blushed even harder and she grinned wickedly at his discomfort. “No you can’t.” She grinned even wider.

As soon as they stepped onto the staircase, it swung away from its previous landing, and Harry wondered if it were true that the staircases moved as they did because they didn’t like being taken for granted. They certainly seemed to shift most when he was distracted. Ginny kicked the base of the railing and the staircase swung faster. “I know a way back to the tower from here,” Harry commented when they had leapt to the safety of the landing.

She rested her head onto his shoulder as they walked. He smiled and ambled his way with her up to the tower. The Fat Lady sniffed at them as they came into view. “Password?”

“Norwegian Ridgeback,” Ginny told her, tapping her foot as the portrait delayed opening until she gave them one last disapproving glance. Harry and Ginny turned to each other and chortled before taking their seats in a pair of squashy armchairs next to the crackling fire.

“It’s a little difficult to get… er… close,” Ginny told him when he had flopped down into the chair next to hers, “when you’re in one chair and I’m in another.”

Harry leaned over the armrest and kissed her on the cheek. “Close enough?”

“Not quite,” she breathed, turning in towards him and deepening the kiss. She wrapped an arm around him and tangled her fingers in his hair as he tried not to topple back over into his seat with her on top of him. A smile spread across her face as she pulled away.

Harry pulled her back, and she let him. Her hands played with his hair as she kissed his neck and he tried to figure out where he should put his hands. He settled for her hips, but he ran them across the fabric covering her back and arms too. She slowly tried to peel his coat off him, untwining his scarf and tossing it aside.

A faint tapping which neither of them had noticed grew louder, and Harry glanced over at the window. Bodmin pecked at the windowpane, flapping lopsidedly with a rodent clutched in one talon. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, and slipped out of her embrace. Groaning with irritation, she released him and slid back into her own seat. He lifted the latch and tugged the window open just wide enough for her to come in out of the icy wind. The Owl fluttered into the common room, landing clumsily on the carpet. She hooted at him gratefully, and began to disembowel her rabbit.

“I don’t see a letter,” Ginny said doubtfully.

“There isn’t one,” Harry explained, sitting back down. His stomach turned and flipped as Bodmin ripped strips of flesh off her meal and choked them down.

“I thought owls swallowed their food whole,” Ginny said, her mouth twisting.

“I suspect it’s too big,” he replied, watching the bird eat.

They leaned back into the overstuffed cushions of their chairs, and when Bodmin finished eating, Ginny sighed with relief. Hey sat in companionable silence, watching her flutter around the room. Whenever she noticed them watching, she hooted at them reprovingly with a quick succession of seven hoots without stopping her flight. Circling the room, she rose higher and higher, searching for a roost, but she couldn’t find one, so she swooped down and perched on the back of Harry’s chair. He stroked her back uncertainly, and she nipped at his fingers halfheartedly when they came near.

The hours slipped past as the sky darkened, and Bodmin left the back of Harry’s chair. He stood up to open the window for her to leave, but she just drifted back to the bloody spot on the carpet where she had eaten her rabbit. “What…” Ginny asked, then Bodmin started gagging and coughing the bones and fur of her meal back up. “Does she have to do that in here?” she complained as the compressed remains of the rabbit landed on the floor in the middle of the blood. With a final hoot, she lifted off and glided to the window. Harry opened it for her, and she flew off.

He walked away from the window, and a great roar of cold air whipped into the room. Ginny wrapped her arms around herself. “Close it Harry,” she begged, but he didn’t. Instead, he gingerly picked up the pellet and tossed it out the window behind Bodmin as she flew off into the twilight. Neither of them felt much like kissing after that.

~*~

On Christmas morning, the sky was white, threatening to snow. Harry awoke alone in the chilly morning air to a respectable pile of presents. He had sent his off the night before with Bodmin, who was, he assumed, sleeping in the owlery by then. He only had two presents left to give. He set them both, wrapped and ready to go, on his bedside table and loaded his arms down with presents to take down to the common room. He balanced his two gifts for others on top and made his careful way down the stairs.

By the time he succeeded in traversing the staircase, Ginny was already seated by the fire, waiting for him. “I was just about to go up to fetch you,” she told him, helping him arrange the pile on one of the tables. She handed him a wrapped package with a sort of nervous pride, and he took it from her carefully. “Well open it,” she demanded impatiently after he had stared at it for a minute.

He peeled the tape away delicately and unfolded the glittering paper. Inside was a strange leather contraption with straps and a long narrow pouch. “It’s a wand sheath, for inside the wrist,” she told him happily, but her tone took on a note of bleakness as she informed him, “Tonks had one, and I always thought it was really cool.”

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah it is.” He stared at it a moment longer. “Can you help me put it on?” She slipped it on over his hand and tightened the straps, tongue between her teeth. “Thanks Ginny,” he said, embarrassed. He reached down and picked up her present to hand it to her. “Here,” he thrust it at her. She snickered at his abruptness and goofy smile, taking the present and tearing off the paper. “I didn’t know what to get you,” he confessed. Actually he didn’t know what to get a girl, any girl, but he knew she liked Quidditch, so he bought her a new pair of Quidditch gloves, nice ones, made out of dragon hide, to replace the hand-me-downs from Charlie she had been using.

“Oh thank you!” she cried, kissing him, “they’re wonderful.” Harry blushed a bit and she chuckled at his expense. They ripped their way through their respective piles of presents, and Ginny came away with a box of pranks from George, which made her blink back tears, assorted sweets from the rest of her brothers, a hand knitted sweater from her mother, and a box of light bulbs from her father, which he had apparently found absolutely fascinating. Harry received his own Weasley sweater with a lightening bolt on it, which he promptly packed away, somewhat embarrassed, a prank box from George, a box of sugar quills from Ron, “so we can fool Hermione into thinking we’re studying, mate!” and a book of Quidditch strategies from world cup matches from Hermione, who resigned herself to her friends’ less than scholarly interests, but felt compelled to give them some form of book anyway. Ginny asked to borrow it just before they left for breakfast.

~*~

Severus gritted his teeth as he yanked open his office door to see Potter waiting behind it. In his hands was, revoltingly, a brightly wrapped package. “What do you want?” he demanded, clenching his teach even harder.

“Merry Christmas to you to,” Potter grumbled, shoving the gift at his chest.

Severus fumbled with the package for a moment and snarled, “Why are you still here?”

The boy leapt backward, glowering at him, and marched stiffly out. Severus shut the door behind him with a tense smile.

~*~

“I got Dad a couple of Matchbox cars for Christmas, and he’s been bugging Hermione to tell him how they work, and exactly what they have to do with matchboxes.”

Harry snorted. “So Hermione came to the Burrow to visit?”

“Came down yesterday; she and Ron are going up to the train together.” Ginny giggled, but it was a wicked sort of giggle. “Actually Dad’s letter said that he asked Hermione, but she told him to ask you, because they were really a boy’s thing. I think she told him that to shut him up.”

“Probably,” Harry acknowledged, “poor Hermione.”

“So what exactly do Matchbox cars have to do with matchboxes?”

“They’re small?”

“That’s all?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Dad’s going to be disappointed.” She laid her head across his lap and smiled up at him. “He thought them might be used to light matches or something similar.”

“I’m sure he’s having tremendous fun trying,” he said, remembering Mr. Weasley trying to get the fire started at the Quidditch World Cup.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe next time you can get him a car shaped lighter.” He stroked her hair and tried to calculate how awkward it would be to try to kiss her when her head was on his lap.

“He’d burn the house down,” Ginny laughed. “Mum would murder me.” Harry chuckled with her.

“Have you figured out what to do with the light bulbs yet?”

She snorted. ‘I’ve been thinking about enchanting them to tell jokes. This one girl in my year tells these jokes about how many people it takes to screw in a light bulb, and I want to see if I can get them to follow Filch around spouting those jokes every time he opens his mouth.”

“How many Ravenclaws does it take to change a light bulb?”

“How many?”

“Depends on what you want it changed into...”

“That’s really awful,” but she laughed anyway. “Mind if I use it?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Anyway, I have much bigger plans for the fireworks and the trick quills. The latter will make a lovely addition to the staff room, don’t you think?” The smile she flashed him was quite terrifying.

“I have some exploding ink pots to go with them.”

“That’s the spirit!” An arm snaked around his neck as she pulled herself upright. He braced her with his arm around her back, and she kissed him cheerfully. “Do you want to hear my plans for the fireworks?”

“I don’t think I want to know!”

She put a finger to her lips. “You’ll see,” she murmured, “You’ll see.”

“Now I really don’t want to know.”

She grimaced and kissed him again. “Yes,” she replied pensively, “you’ll need plausible deniability when the Professors ask you about it.”

Ginny twisted around until she was sitting next to Harry in the oversized chair instead of on him. Her hair fanned out behind her in a fiery arch against the chair’s cushioned back as she placed a hand on Harry’s knee, which was brushing hers.

He sidled away from her, until he couldn’t move any further, pressed against the armrest. “I didn’t mean,” he mumbled nervously. “I didn’t mean to crowd you.”

Surprised, she glanced over at him. “You really have no idea sometimes, don’t you? You weren’t crowding me.”

“I wasn’t?”

“Get back over here,” she crooked a finger at him.

He shifted back to where he had been. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she whispered into his ear. “It’s actually sort of charming, knowing I’m the first to do this,” she squeezed his knee “and this,” she kissed his neck, “and this,” she breathed, nibbling his ear. Harry’s blood ran cold.

~*~

Harry found himself taken aback at the sight of the door to Snape’s office ajar, Snape standing within waiting for him. “How did you know I was coming?”

“Thank you for the Foe-Glass,” he smiled nastily. Harry wrinkled his nose and pondered the merits of exchanging the birthday present hidden in his trunk for a repackaged box of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes sweets or something equally unkind. “Well? What are you waiting for? State whatever idiotic business you have with me or leave.”

There was nothing about Ginny Weasley that should have brought Eileen Prince to mind. Ginny was fiery where Eilleen was dark, Ginny was boisterous where Eileen was sullen, Ginny was energetic where Eileen was calm, and Ginny was confidant where Eileen was coy and uncertain. Yet Ginny had brought her so forcefully to mind that he found himself out of the common room and down the corridor with Snape’s office before he realized where he was going. “How,” to his mortification, his voice cracked, but he plowed on. “How did Eileen die?”

Ten or twelve different emotions passed over Severus’ face before he managed to school it into fury. “Get. Out.” Harry fled.

~*~

That evening, Severus paused by the table in the library where Potter was putting the final touches on a Herbology paper. “She died falling off the roof. She broke her neck.”

Harry stared down at his paper, his stomach twisting. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“Are you happy, Mr. Potter? She survived years with her husband, the Dark Lord’s rise to power, my arrest, and everything else to slip and fall trying to patch the roof.” He felt disgusted, but not with his mother, “An accident.”