Pros & Cons

13. Christmas

The term had finished without a single word exchanged between Malfoy and I since that night on the Astronomy Tower, granted I hardly left my room although I did start going to meals. I felt awful leaving him up there and he must think that I left because he's a death eater and it repulsed me or something but that's not true. The fact that he, himself, is a death eater doesn't repel me as much as it should - I just don't see in Malfoy what I see in the other death eaters. Still, I can't get involved with him for my own safety; being closer to him is being closer to You-Know-Who and I can't let that happen, he tore apart my family piece by piece and he wouldn't even hesitate to destroy me.

I'm sure of it.

Bringing us back to the present it's Christmas Eve and me, Harry, Remus and Tonks are all staying at the Weasley's for Christmas. The Burrow looks beautiful every wall has tinsel and wreaths hanging from it along with bunting strung across all the ceilings. Everyone's been wearing Santa hats all week long and constantly breaking out into Christmas carols.

I've tried to get as involved as possible with all the different activities that have been going on. Molly has been teaching me how to cook all sorts of Christmas delicacies; we never really cooked at home, the house elves always did it for us.

I've also been watching the twins invent new items for their joke shop, it really is very amusing. They start out by making a colourful mind map but as they're writing on the parchment the mind map seems to fight back - it removes things they wrote or moves the words around on the page, in the end they hardly get anything done.

I spoke to Remus a lot, we got along really well ever since he taught us in third year. He was sort of like a father figure to me - I would always go to his office during breaks and lunch to just sit and talk to him, he would always offer me chocolate, but I think he enjoyed the company just as much as I did. He also told me about his problem just after the Christmas holidays in third year and he let me ask all sorts of questions about it, I found it truly fascinating although he obviously didn't hold it with the same intrigue I did. Whenever we met up since third year he would always ask how i'm doing and I would tell him what i'd been up to.

I met Tonks for the first time last year at one of the meetings for the Order and she was truly lovely to me, she got along well with all of us - especially the girls. Me, Ginny and Hermione adored Tonks and often wrote her letters while at Hogwarts, she would always ask us about boys or the most recent school gossip. She acted like she was at school with us and it always made us laugh.

It's now around four o'clock and I'm sitting on the sofa; Tonks is beside me eating mince pies and Remus is sitting in an armchair opposite us., I'm trying to spend as much with them as possible because they're going home tomorrow.

"... and Snape still sets us twenty inch essays to prepare us for our N.E.W.T.s but we don't even start them until next year!" I complain.

"Well Snape's always been a nasty bugger"

"Remus!" Tonks interjected.

"From personal experience anyway"

Harry appeared from around the corner to join in the conversation "I don't trust Snape, one bit."

We all turned our heads to look at him.

"Now, Harry I know I like to poke fun at Professor Snape sometimes-"

"Sometimes? All the time" I chuckled. Remus just smirked and me then turned back to Harry.

"But Dumbledore trusts him, so we must too"

"But I heard him the other day, with Malfoy" my ears perked up at the mention of him "he was talking about some task Malfoy had and how he made the unbreakable vow to help him with it. I'll bet you anything it's to do with Voldemort"