Daylight

 On Christmas morning Hermione wakes to a warm fire in her dorm’s hearth, along with a small pile of presents at the foot of her bed. She tears through them, grateful to have the room to herself so she can gorge on sweets, ruining her breakfast, without judgement. Once she’s had her fill she pulls on her new purple sweater embellished with a gold H and makes her way down to the common room. There she finds a wonderful spread of hot teas and cocoas, flapjacks, toasties, and all she could possibly ever need in syrup. 

Once she’s had her fill, she grabs her bag of presents to be owled out and makes her way through the castle to send them. When she nears the Great Hall, she sees Theo sitting on a bench reading a book. “Theo, Happy Christmas!” she calls, breaking him from his focus. 

His eyes find hers and he gives her a megawatt smile that could steal her breath if she let it. “And to you, Hermione. What have you got here?” he asks, taking stock of the bag that looks as though it might burst. 

“I’m heading to owl out presents for everyone. Care to join me?” 

With no hesitation, he grabs the bag she had been struggling with as though it were a feather and leads her through the doors. Once they make it outside she has the mind to cast a warming charm around them. Theo looks up, impressed. “Where did you learn to cast that?” 

She smiles proudly, “Fifth year charms reference book I found in the library.” 

Her friend smiles and shakes his head. With that, they trudge up to the owlery. She sends off her missives with multiple school owls, giving plenty of treats and scratches along the way to make up for the long trips. Hermione watches the birds go, and doesn’t speak until they’re dots in the highland sky. 

“Theo” She says, looking over at her friend, “I left your gift in the tower. Would you like to join me there?” 

He gives her a wry look and grabs her arm, pulling her along as he walks towards the door. “I have a better idea, Hermione. Let’s stop by your common room first, but I want to take you to the dungeons.” 

She stops short as he finishes. “The dungeons? Aren’t I banned from your common room for multiple reasons?” She feels the nerves creeping up from her chest. What if other Slytherins are there? Going into a snake den as a muggleborn Gryffindor is just asking for trouble. 

He keeps tugging on her arm, “Nobody is there Hermione. We won’t be bothered I swear” 

When he flashes her his roguish grin she knows there is no way she could say no. She lets her friend tug her through the castle up to her common room entrance. As he crawls through the portrait hole behind her she holds up a hand to tell him to stay put. Nervously she runs up the stairs to her dorm. Hopefully Theo likes her gift. Hermione knows that she’ll never be able to match what he gave her for her birthday, but hopefully this works. With a reassuring breath, she makes her way back downstairs and lets Theo guide her to the dungeons. 

When the door to the Slytherin Common Room appears, he gives Hermione an apologetic glance “Purity” he mumbles to the door, and ushers her inside. She can’t believe her eyes when she enters. Where she expected cold darkness, she found a warm homely space adorned with leather, lush green rugs scattered around, and large fireplaces keeping the space warm. On the far end of the room, she sees a wall almost entirely of glass looking into the black lake. The water is murky and almost fully frozen, but the light reflecting through casts dances all along the floor below. Theo grabs her hand and slowly walks her down the stairs. “Not what you were expecting?”

“No, not at all. When Harry and Ron described it they made it seem so-”

“Wait” He interrupts, “When have Potter and Weasley been in here?” 

Her eyes widened, realising her mistake. “Erm.. Last year. We thought Malfoy was the one controlling the basilisk so we made a plan to sneak in here and find out.”

He looks at her in shock, “What? How did you get in?” 

“Not important” she says, hopefully quelling his curiosity for now she tries to distract him.  “Theo! I didn’t know you had a library down here!” 

He laughs, “Yes, we do. Not as large as the ones in Ravenclaw so I’ve heard but still modest.” 

She combs through the shelves, mentally marking the ones she would like to ask him to borrow. Some of these titles can’t even be found in the Hogwarts library! But before she can interrogate him on the selection, he interrupts her thoughts. 

“Here, Hermione. This is for you” He says while handing her a small wrapped gift. With a quick glance to her friend’s smiling face, she tears into the parcel. 

She smiles in return, examining her new journal. “This is lovely, Theo. Thank you!” As she cracks open the cover, she sees a note on the inner cover. 

Write in this when you feel alone, scared, bored, or elated and know I will be with you. 

Theo 

He pulls out a journal of his own, and holding up a finger he begins to write. Suddenly the journal in her hand warms, and she opens it to find a new note. 

Happy Christmas

“Amazing! How did you figure this charm work?” She exclaims, examining the book in his hands and comparing the two. They look identical and she can’t see any distinguishing runic work on the covers. She runs her hands over the brown leather, her brain working overtime to find an answer. 

He gently pulls his journal back onto a nearby table. “It took me a while to figure out, but it’s more of a modified protean charm along with some privacy wards so it will look like arithmancy notes to anyone who tries to snoop.”

Hermione pulls him into a tight hug, “I love it Theo, truly. This is amazing!”

He smiles down at her “I know that you can take care of yourself, but I wanted you to always have a way to contact me.” 

Her heart is now a puddle at the bottom of her chest. She wants to run her hands through his hair and pull his lips down to meet hers, but something stops her. Hermione breaks the hug and digs through her bag for his gift. “Now I feel slightly insecure. It’s no crazy invented charm work or anything. Really i just thought that since you probably didn’t know much about the muggle world I could get you something new and interesting but now I’m just not sure. If I worked I could probably try to find some sort of obscure cha-”

“Hermione, take a breath. Please. I’m sure I’ll love it.” He says, cutting her off with a smile. 

He pulls the gift out of her hands and opens the wrapping. He pulls out the muggle pen with a curious look in his eye. “Wait. Let me guess what it is.” He says, still eyeing it. Slowly, he opens the cap and inspects the ballpoint end. “AHA! Have you given me muggle makeup?” 

She laughs louder than intended, not expecting his guess. “No! No, it's similar to a quill, look.” She demonstrates with a few scribbles. Pointing back to the gift she continues, “You’ve also got a highlighter which can colour what you’ve written and a pencil. Pencils are like quills but with charcoal instead of ink.” 

Theo looks at her with a rare light in his eyes “And muggles always use these to write? This is what you used to use?”

She nods in confirmation. 

“These are amazing, Hermione. Thank you, truly.” 

With a smile in return, she embraces him. She is so glad Theo likes her gift, which is nowhere near as amazing as hers. She turns back to her journal and sighs, usually she is on the receiving end of books, but never one as thoughtful as this. Just as she is imagining all of the ways she can use it, Theo turns his body towards her. 

“Okay, time to fess up. How did Potter and Weasley get in?”

Drat. Maybe she can explain this one away. 

“I may have brewed polyjuice potion for the three of us, drugged Crabbe and Goyle, then Harry and Ron snuck down here with Malfoy. Obviously it wasn’t him in the end but I still was able to learn a lot about brewing!” Silently, she begged any gods listening to grant her answer good enough in her wizard’s eyes. 

Nope. 

“HOW did you manage to brew that in second year? Where did you even find the instructions?” He sputtered out at her, mouth agape. 

“I may have found a book lying about in the back of the library.” She said evasively. 

He stared at her, eyes narrowed as if to suss her out just by looking at her. 

“Hermione Granger, do you mean to tell me you snuck into the restricted section?” He asked, laughing heartily. 

She whacked his arm as hard as she could, “Theodore! It isn’t funny. I could be expelled for it, you know.”

He nodded at her, “Oh I know Granger, that’s the part that makes it so funny!” 

Eventually, she gave in and laughed with him. Once they calmed down, they stared into the fire with her head on his shoulder. 

“This is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.” Theo admitted quietly. 

She turned and placed a small peck on his cheek. “I’m so happy to be here with you.”