“I expect Lillian will be thoroughly spoiled with her Christmas at the Burrow.”
“I expect she’ll be thoroughly spoiled before she goes anywhere near the place. At least we’re able to fortify ourselves against the holiday music in advance.” Ginny stepped into her black evening gown carefully. It was too restrictive to put on shoes in, and she didn’t want to snag the fabric with her heels. “So,” she began, and pulled up the dress, “it’s one thing for the Gryffindor daughter of a notorious Muggle-lover to go out for a night at the opera, and quite another for a Slytherin of alleged pureblood sympathies to do it. And yet “ season tickets. Why?”
Her companion took two quick steps and slipped the zipper’s tag from her fumbling fingers. After sliding it up, he left his hands on her almost-bare shoulders for a moment before retreating. “Because there is no Wizarding opera company, of course. It’s all Quidditch and Celestina Warbeck.”
He frowned and reached for his wand. Ginny stopped him with a light touch on his sleeve, then fastened the right cufflink herself. She picked up her hairbrush and began the hundred strokes her hair always seemed to need before it would behave. “Does our culture really have such appalling taste?”
“Perhaps “ since I’ve yet to be caught in this suit by anyone we know. Very few of them seem interested in large-scale music, probably because there’s no chance to study it at the right age. Conservatory, or Hogwarts?”
“I suppose. And if they choose Hogwarts, they no doubt use all that drive to, I don’t know, Charm a teakettle to sing Canio’s Aria, timed to last until the water boils.”
Her husband gave her a long thoughtful look. “If it sang well, that might be preferable to the whistling sort.”
As sister to six brothers, Ginny already knew how impossible it was to buy Christmas presents for men, but her husband had them all topped. She made a mental note and said casually, “All I’ve seen is the Wizarding Wheezes’ Jigging Teapot, though.”
“Spare me.” Ginny finished with the brush and offered it. Her husband scowled at it as though she had offered him an elderly herring. “You know it never makes the least difference.”
He took the brush anyway, giving himself a quick and catlike grooming. Halfway through, or so she would have judged, he snorted and tossed the brush more or less at the vanity. Ginny smiled to herself as her husband glowered at his reflection. She came to him, resting one hand on his shoulder and taking up the brush with the other. Even after years of good Weasley cooking, and his own, he felt fragile under her touch. Even after years of care, he still tensed slightly under her attention. “It won’t help,” he told her, but sat as she indicated.
She stroked his hair with the brush, the black like oiled silk, the plentiful strands of grey coarser and dryer. “Some things aren’t about appearances.” Their eyes met in the mirror. She had fallen in love with those eyes, not knowing at first that she had, merely accepting the challenge of understanding their secrets. She knew him better than anyone else did, and respected him for what she had learned.
“We should go,” he reminded softly.
In the hall, she paused to listen to George telling a bedtime story as only he could, with lots of bang and flash to keep a small child awake for at least an extra hour.
“Is everyone all right?”
Every impulse of favouritism he’d shown as a teacher had taken on a new light when he became a father, those impulses multiplied a thousandfold with an outlet for that long-stored love. Ginny smiled at the worried father. “Fine. George seems to survive her a little better than Bill does.”
Her husband offered a dark, proud chuckle. “He was not my worry, but I take your point.”
He had once been father to seventy Slytherins at a time, and in his own way had loved them. One child, he’d hinted, seemed a lonely creature. Lillian didn’t seem a bit lonely to Ginny, who’d said quite bluntly that a horde of children never appealed to the youngest of an earlier horde. She drew her mate down the hall and out, thinking of singing teakettles and self-linking cufflinks, books and biscuits, new robes.
None of those things mattered to him.
They Apparated to the alleyway behind the hall, where the sounds of the orchestra warming up clashed with the Christmas carols drifting on the chilly air. As they walked around to the front, trying to blend in with the crowd of other opera lovers, Ginny thought about motherhood, pregnancy, and labor pains as she clipped along. She thought about Lillian. Every colicky night and dirty diaper had been balanced, and then overshadowed completely, by their daughter’s clever playfulness. Ginny had enough love for another child.
Severus brushed her fingers with his. “Thinking?”
“Thinking.” She also loved him enough. “Thinking that two is not a horde.”
His fingers left hers, and she realized two steps later that he’d stopped in surprise. She paused and turned back to find his expression guarded. He would not show hope until he was certain not to have wasted it.
“Unless you think Lillian is a horde all by herself, of course,” she added with a teasing smile.
He gathered Ginny into his arms then and kissed her forehead as though in ritual. Pulling back to study her face, he asked, “Do you really want another?” His face still showed nothing, but the slightest emphasis on the pronoun betrayed him. He wanted children that were all his, not the borrowed Slytherins of his past, not the nieces and nephews whose parents still looked at him askance. He wanted more of Lillian.
“Yes.”
He kissed her properly then, a kiss that made her hope for twins. They did run in the family.
“We’ll be late for Don Juan,” she murmured once she could.
Severus started their walk again, one arm still firmly about her shoulders. “Thank you,” he said, so softly she almost missed it.
She looped her arm around his waist. “Happy Christmas.”
Happy Christmas by Vindictus Viridian
Chapter Notes: This was actually written the December before the release of DH. However, it had a million spoilers for my then-WIP and I didn't want to post it. Now the other is finished, so here it is!