In Horace Slughorn's defence, he couldn't have known that all this would happen. All he had wanted to do was play match-maker between his two favourite students, Tom Riddle and Artemis Potter.
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----------------------> THE FIRST DAY BACK TO SCHOOL AFTER YULE BREAK never failed to be emotional as friends reunited with hugs and cheek kisses and eagerly shared whatever they had been up to. Artemis couldn't speak for the other houses, but the time after Yule break was always wonderful to a Ravenclaw due to a game they played inspired by the muggle game, Secret Santa.
Before the majority of the students had left for Yule break, all of them had to pick a name from a basket of chits of papers and on the day they returned from the winter holidays, they were supposed to gift a present to the person whose name they had drawn, keeping note to not mention to anyone else who they had chosen. The best part was, the only presents they were allowed to give were books that they thought the receiver would like.
Artemis had luckily selected Emily Vincent and remembering how she had trouble with history, bought her History For Dummies: Even The Most Simplest Of Minds Can Understand These Facts, something that while Emily had initially scowled at, had led to her eloping Artemis into a tight embrace after flipping through the pages and genuinely noticing how easy the book re-wrote the lessons to be. Reginald had drawn her name and recollecting how long he had had to wait for his turn in the career counselling session, happily gave her the book Careers For Conflicted Youths.
Roman had received a girl named Myrtle Warren and not knowing anything at all except that she was in the fourth year, selected the safe book of Everything To Know About O.W.Ls. In return, an upper-year gifted him a copy of the book, How To Create Strategic Quidditch Plays, a book that Roman had hugged the whole day and was about to sleep beside before Artemis pointed out that it might get crushed and folded under his weight if he were to roll on it.
Gen got a signed, first-edition copy of History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot which caused her to nearly faint upon unwrapping it by a second-year boy who Artemis suspected had a crush on her. Meanwhile, Gen gave the person whose name she had picked, a first-year named Poppy Pomfrey, a book about simple healing charms, having noticed how the girl -much like Roman- tended to trip over air sometimes.
The Ravenclaws spent their first day back eagerly reading the books that they had received and also exchanging, lending and borrowing each other's gifts that looked interesting.
Unfortunately, no matter how much they wished, they couldn't read it the whole night especially considering they had classes the very next day so with a heavy heart, just before the clock struck twelve, all the Ravenclaws were fast asleep in their respective beds.
The morning, however, saw them all back in their routines as they had never gone home in the first place with Roman trying a futile attempt at solving the crossword of his newspaper before wordlessly handing it to Artemis for her to complete. The only notable difference between before the holidays and after was the fact that Reginald and Gen had grown quite close and were sharing secret giggles and acting all lovey-dovey at breakfast, prompting Artemis to make a face at them.
