A Soulmate for Christmas

The wind is harsh and cold at Hermione's back, whipping her already bushy hair into a messy brown cloud around her head. She pushes a hand through it impatiently. Her pace quickens as she attempts to stay ahead of her pursuers. Well-meaning though they are, she simply isn't in the mood, and they won't fucking leave her alone.

Far too close, she can hear their voices just behind her. She breaks into a full sprint. Several students give her odd glances as she passes, which is probably due to the fact that she's running at top speed away from her friends whilst carrying a rather precariously balanced stack of books.

She thinks about just how inconvenient it is that her wand is currently inaccessible to her due to the load in her arms. She ducks as quickly as she can into the castle, taking the most obscure route as possible to the Room of Requirement. She paces in front of where the door should be three times thinking, "Hide me." Not soon enough, door appears and she struggles to get it open around the books before she slips inside. Just then she spots Ginny's tell-tale shoes coming around the corner.

The door shuts with a bang and she is momentarily stunned by the force of it. Slowly, she turns and surveys her surroundings. The room she has landed herself in is enormous, with teetering piles of every kind of knick-knack imaginable, both Muggle and Magical, stacked in mountains as far as she can see. Several jagged paths cut through the chaos, and, knowing she has time to kill, she chooses one at random.

Walking along, she takes note of the abundance of books; many, she's never heard of, which is a shock in itself, and a few that she recognizes to be banned. She has to stop herself from taking any of them. There's a reason these things are in here.

Suddenly, something cries out, startling her so badly that she flies backwards, dropping the stack of books she'd been holding this whole time. Shit. Her heart races and she is momentarily distracted from picking up the books strewn around her, just long enough that she doesn't notice it when a book that was not previously there makes it into the pile too.

Exasperatedly, she sets the reformed pile on the floor in front of her and takes out her wand. "Wingardium leviosa," she mutters. The books gracefully float in front of her as she stands and begins the trek back to the door. An intense feeling of being watched washes over her, and she jogs the rest of the way. She turns around one last time as she reaches for the rusted metal handle of the door, and a chill runs up her spine despite the pleasant temperature the Room has provided for her.

She pokes her head out the door, checking both ways for her friends. Although they are nowhere to be seen, she doubts they'd give up this easily, and she'll have to deal with them later. As it is, she levitates the books out in front of her and shuts the door gratefully.

The library is probably still open, and she grins in delight. The eerie feeling from the Room of Requirement dissipates as she makes her way to her favorite place in Hogwarts, but never completely leaves the back of her mind.

***

He has always hated Christmas. For all his genius, he is still unsure of whether or not it's the nearness the holiday has to his birthday or merely the fact that everyone else seems to be so utterly happy throughout the whole damn season that makes him despise it so much. Whatever the real reason is, he's had a nearly permanent scowl on his normally handsome face since the first decorations started going up (despite his many, albeit subtle, protests) at the beginning of November.

On more than one occasion, he's had to resist the painfully strong urge to hex the few people who've wished him a merry Christmas. Rather, he plasters a fake smile on his face and wishes them a merry Christmas as well, all the while imagining tearing them apart limb from limb. Now, on Christmas eve, the well-wishers had gotten even more unbearable.