Secret Santa One Shot Exchange 2016

Eagle Eyed Collision Theory

This one shot was written by kasar91 for Butterflyincocoon! It's so cute, I'm an absolute mess over this fluff.

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Black hair hanging down her back and swaying gently as she walked, Libby Baxter fluently patrolled through the corridor with her head immersed in a book.

The half blooded witch had brown eyes that captured the words scattered across the pages with delicate ease.

Her lips parted in surprise as she reached the end of the chapter, the mere intensity of the tale peaking, and as she caught sight of a dot on the end of the page her quick fingers flew to turn over the page, before she crashed into a rather lanky boy.

He toppled on top of her, and a pair of bright green eyes met Libby's brown ones through a layer of glass.

"Libby, hi," the boy grimaced, blatantly annoyed at himself for his affluent awkwardness.

"Albus," she nodded, flickering her eyes down to his blue and bronze tie that hung down slightly to meet her own matching one which lay on her chest. "As much as the proximity is interesting, any chance of you moving?"

The boy blushed, internally cursing himself before rolling off the girl, pushing himself to his feet and offering the hand of his right arm to assist the girl to her feet.

Libby smiled, noting the muscular forearms of Albus as his sleeves were folded up messily to the elbow as she graciously accepted his ever so slightly shaking hand.

"I like the glasses, by the way," she smiled, brushing down the crinkled edges of her skirt.

Blushing again, Albus pushed the glasses up his nose and grinned bashfully at the pretty witch. "Thank you, I got them a bit late I think, seeing as I'm technically an adult now and all."

"Oh I forgot about that! How was your birthday?" She exclaimed, bending down to retrieve her fallen book.

Eyes large as galleons, Albus was distracted as he looked at something he probably shouldn't have, before out of pure politeness averting his eyes.

"Albus?" She spoke, large brown eyes staring at the boy who appeared to be lost in his thoughts.

The boy blushed again, causing Libby to giggle. He was an awfully cute character, and the glasses only appeared to make him all the much more attractive .

"Sorry, uh my birthday was good, thanks for asking. All the family had to be involved so it was pretty hectic."

The girl nodded, although with her one older brother she couldn't really relate that much to the famous Ravenclaw boy.

"I have heard about your fair bounty of family members. What is it, two siblings and like seven cousins?"

"Actually nine," the boy spoke, brushing his messy hair back with his hand. "Technically ten, if you count Teddy, who is kind of my god brother."

"Wait, who is there then?" The girl questioned, leaning up the wall and brushing a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.

"Well, there are Uncle Bill's three kids, Victoire, Dominique and Louis, and there's Fred and Roxanne, Uncle George's kids, Fred's the one working with James at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes while they're finishing Healer training. And then Hugo and Rose, you know Rose obviously because she's in your dorm room I think she said. Plus Uncle Percy's two children, Molly and Lucy."

Libby's eyes were wide and her head was shaking gently. "How on earth do you keep up," she laughed. "And afford Christmas presents?"

Albus chuckled, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his neat school pants and crossing his leg over as he stood. "Actually, with all the cousins and aunts and uncles we don't buy for everyone. It's kind of become a tradition at Christmas to only buy proper presents for the immediate family, but we have a big secret santa kind of thing going, my grandpa Arthur found out about it and they decided that we would do it."

A sweet laugh escaped Libby's lips once more, and the boy before her was soon grinning himself at her contagious laughter.

"What're you reading this time anyway Libby? I always see you reading in Charms," asked Albus, looking curiously at the book in the girls arms.

She blushed lightly at his comment about her reading in class. "Well I only read in Charms because I'm ahead, which is lucky. It's an old muggle story, it's called Oliver Twist."

"You read muggle books?" Queried Albus, realising he did not know much about the witch.

Libby smiled at him, pushing her hair back further. "Yeah, my aunt is a muggle, and she works teaching English at a high school in Edinburgh, so she likes to give me books, and I like to read them."

"Are your parents Magical then?"

"Yeah, my dad is a muggleborn, and mum's pure blood, they both went to school here, they were second year during the war and had me really young."

Albus' eyes lit up. His entire family had come to recognise his interest in the house placement production of both Hogwarts and Ilvermorny, and he had a great curiosity as to what circumstances affected house placement.

"Do you mind if I ask you about their houses? I'm trying to get some research done about the systems," gushed the enthusiastic boy.

"Of course! I have seen you working on piles of parchment in the common room some nights, and it didn't look like any homework I recognised."

"Cool," smiled Albus. "Okay, so what houses were they in here?"

"My mum was in Slytherin, but she got withdrawn from the school for a while during the peak of the war. She was living with her grandparents, they were very safety conscious. Dad was Hufflepuff, he stayed during the war, didn't come into contact with his family because the older students told him it'd be dangerous."

Albus grimaced, he knew the inside details of the war, but it was often difficult to hear more of the tales of muggleborn students in Hogwarts.

"I'm sorry about that Libby."

"No need to be, history happens for a reason, and as horrible as it was at the time, history is taught so we don't repeat the mistakes we've made in the past."

There were a few moments of awkward silence, eyes flickering back and forth between the pair as a slight flush grew on each students cheeks.

"Libby," stated the young wizard, straightening his back and messing up his already messy hair as he stood before the witch.

"Albus?"

"Do you want to come to lunch with me? There's pumpkin ravioli for lunch I heard."

A grand white smile erupted on the face of the young woman, and she nodded, gathering her book more tightly in her arms and pushing herself off the wall.

With courage that certainly pushed the Gryffindor standard, Libby gently slipped her free hand into Albus', and smiled as she saw his ears glow flaming red, before they headed down to the Great Hall together.