A Fluke of Sorts

Keeping You Warm With Me

"Still in the Christmas mood?" Hermione stopped humming the Christmas tune that had been running in her head for the past few days to look up at an amused Cedric Diggory. He sat down beside her and looked over her shoulder to peek at the book in her hands. "I see you've gotten a new book as one of your Christmas presents."

"How was your Christmas?" Hermione asked with a smile.

"Jolly good. Dad and I picked out the tallest tree we could find, Mom shouted at us when we couldn't get it in the house so Dad reckoned we should magically reduce its size. It didn't quite solve the problem though."

"Why not?"

"Because when Dad had it enlarged again to its normal size, he imagined it bigger than it was supposed to, so naturally, the tree shot up through the ceiling and into the study, which of course, gave Mom another reason to shout for the next few hours." Cedric winced at the memory. "Besides that, Haden decided to crash in our Christmas and got the both of us kicked out the house on the Eve because he had thought it would be funny to ask Jingle, that's our house-elf – " Upon seeing Hermione's raised eyebrow, Cedric quickly added, " – not that we have him for hard, manual labor. Just to help out with the gardens because Mom's really big with the whole green hands thing. As I was saying, he got Jingle to believe he was Santa's Elf which didn't quite pleased Mom when Jingle started merrily singing Christmas carols at the top of his voice as he unwrapped the presents under the tree and wrapped them again as if he was working in Santa's workshop."

Hermione laughed. "And whatever happened to the both of you then?"

"Oh, Mom let us in once the clock struck 12." Cedric shrugged with a grin.

"Sounds like you had an interesting Christmas."

"Yours was just as eventful." Cedric answered, referring to Mr. Weasley's incident at the Ministry of Magic. Hermione had written to Cedric about it when she had needed a source of comfort during the tumultuous period. Her emotions had run fragile on thin ice, on the verge of breaking, as she comforted Ginny and Mrs. Weasley while pacifying a furious Ron and trying to reason with a distraught Harry. Between them, her own emotions were ignored and casted aside as she placed their emotions on the pedestal. Cedric had immediately replied with an offer to apparate to her side but upon Hermione's request for him not to, Cedric had glumly obliged by her request. "How are the Weasleys doing?"

"Much better. Ginny has started smiling again and Ron's eating like he usually does. Fred and George, well, they have started going about again trying to get unsuspecting students to be their guinea pigs for their nonsense."

Cedric chuckled as he looked up at the redheads in the room. Everyone was back for their first DA meeting since Christmas. He curiously watched George and Fred toss something bulky across the room. Whenever either one twin had the small, bulky rectangle in his hand, he would bring it to his eye-level before clicking on the shutter. "Whatever are they doing with the camera?"

"It's a Muggle camera." Hermione explained as she closed her book. "It's an ancient model that my dad had gotten a hold of. He had it fixed and gave it to me as a Christmas present. " She pointed to the twins, "Fred and George are acting like baffling loons over it because it uses film and makes loud clucks and whirls every time you take a shot – though I don't really see what's so fascinating about that. I thought it was their fascination with stationary photographs, but that doesn't seem to faze them much."

Before Cedric could reply, he heard a call of his name before he was greeted with sight of said ancient camera soaring through the air. With his Quidditich skills, Cedric easily caught hold of it as Hermione shot a glare at Fred. "So how does this works again?" Cedric curiously examined the camera in his hands.