A/N: This is not the story I had intended to write - I decided that one had way too much exposition and not enough dialogue, and gave it up as a lost cause around midnight last night. This story, of course, is all exposition and no dialogue at all - go figure.

I swiped the overall format of this story from a Sentinel slash fic by Resonant entitled "Thirteen Christmas Traditions". Most everything else belongs to JK Rowling - the bits of folklore about festivals and plants are from various folklore sites around the web. What little left over is mine.

Dedicated to Emily, who held my hand through this and went above and beyond the call of beta duty to give me ideas and helpful suggestions. You rock!

Twelve Things About Christmas

When Christmas's tide comes in a like a bride,
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had.
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do the best that they can
To drive the cold winter away.

- In Praise of Christmas, Trad.


I. Snow

It was cold this year, colder than it should be, and the cold mixed with the ever-present dampness off the lake to form tiny localized snowstorms, swirling in toward the castle to coat everything in a soggy white mantle, churned to grey slush in the courtyards and lying across the Quidditch pitch like a thick colorless blanket. Hip-deep in places, snow covered the castle battlements and crenellations and made the whole place look faintly surreal. It gathered in drifts on the window panes, frosting the glass and making it difficult to see out, as though nothing outside Hogwarts existed.

The cold and the wet made going outside unpleasant, so for the most part the snow lay untouched on the grounds - partly because it was so thick and deep that trudging through it was no fun at all, and partly because the castle was emptier this Christmas than it had ever been. A narrow path had been dug from Hagrid's cabin to the castle proper, and the road to Hogsmeade was open, but other than that the snow was so crisply white that walking on it seemed a desecration.

Ginny liked to sit in her window and look at it, drawing pictures on the blank canvas in her mind. Mostly the pictures were of her family; she drew them safe and whole, together at the Burrow and celebrating the season instead of scattered across the country like windblown leaves. Sometimes she depicted friends, sometimes scenes from her classes. Sometimes she drew pictures in her mind of a man tall and pale, with white-gold hair and ice-gray eyes and her name on his lips.

But not very often.

II. Decorations

The staff was making an effort to keep things normal, and so the Great Hall was festooned with fairy lights and pine boughs and holly wreaths, in the spirit of the season. The suits of armour still sang carols, and snow fell from the enchanted ceiling, drier and warmer than the sodden stuff that fell outside. Fairy lights twinkled, candles floated in the air, and the castle was thick with the scent of spices and pine.

But there was a war on, outside the castle walls, so it didn't feel like Christmas after all.

III. Trees

Despite the snow and the cold, Hagrid still managed to find twelve trees to decorate the Great Hall, one for each day of Christmas. They were decorated in fairy lights and candles and draped in house colours, three for each table.

Ginny braved the clean sweep of snow between the castle and the woods one afternoon, trudging to the edge of the forbidden forest to stand just within its border and stare deeper into the trees, listening to the peculiar silence sheltered in their protective branches. The snow wasn't as deep here, and the air held a strange listening quality. She stood there for a long time, staring into the depths of the forest, looking for... she didn't know what. She drifted along the edge of the trees and finally found something that might have been a trail, leading into the forest's heart. She would have followed it, but Hagrid spotted her footprints and came to chase her back to the castle.

IV. Mistletoe

Ginny looked up at the heavy green bough hung over the Great Hall's main entrance with a frown. She made a mental note not to leave through those doors - she didn't want to meet any of the school boys under it, and the only man she might want to kiss was nowhere near Hogwarts. Or so she hoped - she didn't want to think on what would happen to him if he were here.

It had been a long year of fighting, a long year of war and death and struggle and toil, of waiting anxiously to see what news each new day would bring. The stress showed in every face, in the snow white of McGonagall's hair, in Snape's empty chair. Harry and Hermione and Ron were all gone, finished their schooling last year and moved on to the front lines of the war. Ginny would join them after this year was over, after she learned everything there was to be taught. Hogwarts was less a school now than a training ground for new Aurors - the Ministry needed every spare body it could get.

Draco Malfoy had joined the Death Eaters. They said he enjoyed killing, that he loved nothing more than to shout the words that would hang Voldemort's green skull in the sky, that he lived for torturing Muggles, took an unholy delight in it.

She didn't think that last was true, but one never knew. His hooded eyes looked the same in anger as they did in pleasure, that she did know, and that sometimes the one was the same as the other with him. Ginny stared at the small white berries hanging over the doors of the hall and thought about kisses - fierce and bruising, gentle and deep, the merest brush of his lips against hers or the searing touch of his mouth against her most private places.

Mistletoe carries the spirit of fire within it, and Aeneas used it to light his way as he ascended from the Underworld.

Persephone once used mistletoe berries to open the gates of Hades.


V. Food

Amazingly, there were still enough house elves to muster up a Christmas Feast, and the hall filled quickly with students when it was time. There were fewer now than there had been last year, or the year before, when the war began - most Muggle children didn't dare come here, and most wizarding children were either with their families or dead. Ginny picked at her goose and tilted her head back to watch the hypnotic drift of enchanted snow against the slate clouds in the ceiling.

There were even candies and tarts and treacle pudding for after the meal, and Dumbledore gazed solemnly into his goblet and didn't make a speech. The food tasted like ashes to Ginny; she demolished a pastry under numb fingers and slipped away from the table early, back to the dormitory she had to herself now, to curl up on the windowsill and stare out at the snow.

Last year he had given her a mandarin, peeled it into sweet, small pieces that he'd fed to her one by one, the wedges bursting with juice under her teeth. She had licked the tart liquid off his fingers, off his lips, reveling in the heaving of his chest and the lost, anguished sounds he made, long after all traces of the orange were gone.

VI. Presents

Ginny woke Christmas morning to a scant handful of gifts scattered across the foot of her bed; books on the Dark Arts from Harry, a new wand case from Ron, a sweater from Mum. She opened them all in solemn contemplation - most of the gifts from her brothers were the useful sort, things that would come in handy when she left school and joined the Ministry.

She searched the detritus of wrappings and ribbon for more, but there was nothing. No note, no gift, no card. She hadn't really expected anything, but disappointment was bitter in her mouth as she descended for breakfast.

VII. Ivy

There is a small abandoned room at the top of the North Tower, its windows so overgrown with ivy that the little light that enteres is filtered green and gold even in winter, and small drifts of dust and dead leaves pile in the corners. It is still and cool, sound and sight muffled by the vines that curl across the walls and hang over the casements.

Ginny discovered it late in her fifth year, and in her sixth it became a private study hall and hideaway, a place where she could be totally alone. She brought a worn blanket up to sit on, a lap table for writing, and did her homework there, or lay soaking in the faint emerald light, watching dust motes sparkle in the few sunbeams that could work their way inside.

Towers were never his natural habitat, but Draco loved the tiny room from the first moment she showed it to him. He stood in the centre of the circle marked by the tower walls, a druid in his private henge, with his eyes closed and head tilted back like an ancient statue as he drank in the peace and solitude. They made slow, sweet love there for the first time last Christmas, on a bed of furs Draco brought from home and piled in the middle of the room, altar and core of their own sacred space.

Ginny thought about going there, making the long climb up the spiral stair to the room consecrated by their love, to lie in those furs and stare at the dust drifting in the faint light and lose herself in memories of last Christmas. But she didn't; it seemed sacrilegious to lie alone in the place where they had first learned each other.

VIII. Holly

In the Great Hall, wreaths of holly were hung below every window, green spines stretching forth to snatch evil spirits out of the air. Ginny stared at the waxy leaves as she helped herself to breakfast and smiled to herself - holly was a protection against witchcraft, but it didn't seem to interfere with anyone's magic here. Another Muggle myth debunked, she thought wryly, and wondered what evil the holly wreaths might catch this year. The berries were poison, like mistletoe, and red, like drops of blood.

In ancient times the Holly King would carry a club wrapped round with leaves and berries, crowned with holly like Jesu in thorns, to die at midwinter so that the sun might be born. Ginny wondered who would die this year, and if it would bring the light back, end the war. She thought of Harry, dark-haired king of light, and Draco, bright angel of the Death Eaters, and closed her eyes.

IX. Ice

Along with the cold and the damp and the snow came icicles dangling from the battlements of Hogwarts Castle that needed to be seen to be believed. They hung from the gables and overhangs six and seven and eight feet long, daggers of ice that would be certain death to anyone below them when they fell. They caught the rays of the moon and refracted blue-black light back into the sky. Like mirrors they reflected dark shadows in the air, the cloaked figures approaching along hidden paths and tramping ominous tracks through the drifting snow.

The castle lay still and waiting, as though the stones themselves could feel the approach of dark-wrapped figures, slipping out of the woods to surround the sprawling building. All was silent and still, the only witnesses those jagged spires of ice.

X. Candles

Late Christmas night, the candles cast a golden glow, outlined in diamond panes on the snow underneath the tower; it caught in her fiery hair and framed her head in an aureole of light. She looked like a Madonna - untouchable, pure and clean and warm.

Draco rubbed at the mark on his arm, and stared up at her window for a long, long time, but she never looked down. Finally, she left the window and the candles went out, one by one, leaving the castle in darkness. Around him in the night came the susurration of muffled boots on snow.

XI. Darkness

She was awake when he came for her, staring up at the drapes surrounding her narrow bed, shivering slightly in the chill that seeped through the stones of the walls. He was wearing an Invisibility cloak that shimmered in the air like wet silk as he swirled it off his shoulders. Cold eyes swept her body before settling on her face, one eyebrow raised in a neat arch, a silent question.

Ginny smiled and raised her hand, letting him pull her up, off her narrow bed and into his arms. The question died in his eyes, replaced by a shining certainty, and he lowered his mouth to hers. She twined her arms around his neck and sank into the kiss, savouring the feel of his lean body against hers, broad hands hot against her back. The urgency was still there, the frantic need to meld into one another that never seemed to fade no matter how often they touched.

But there was no time for that, not now. She could hear the cries and shouts of others from far below, spells crackling through the castle defenses, the desperate struggles of the Death Eaters as they met the well-prepared guardians of the school. Draco murmured softly in her ear, waited for her nod of understanding before he pulled away and flung his cloak at her, waiting as she slipped it over her shoulders and vanished into nothing. And then it was only a matter of snatching the bag she'd left prepared under her bed and following him, sliding unseen past the other attackers as they were driven from Hogwarts, to the safe house Draco had prepared for her when Voldemort first announced his plan for a frontal assault on the school.

XII. Light

And then they were alone. Alone at last, finally, completely, in a ramshackle cottage on a far western shore, they gave themselves over to wild, fierce joy; like ancient Romans at a Saturnalia festival, they lit all the candles and lamps to chase away the darkness, the battered windows casting long fans of light out onto the surrounding snow. Inside, the light limned their bodies, sheathing skin and hair in a nimbus of gold, pale white and rich red, odd shadows dancing around them in the flickering glow as they moved together in a dance as old as time.

Winter solstice, the Yule feast, the longest night. Elsewhere a false king was crowned, one who would later be dethroned, a misbegotten Lord of Misrule, but here was only light, and joy, and life. Draped in greenery, quarrels forgotten, bathed in radiance to chase away dark spirits, they celebrated the return of light to the world.

~*~