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Harry notices the mistletoe hanging over the doorframe when she walks into the lab, but she doesn't notice notice it until she sees Lestrange's body tense and his eyes flick upward.
It may be stupid, that instead of pretending she hasn't, turning back to the cauldron or striding over to the ingredients cupboard to fetch more asphodel, she meets his eyes and smirks.
"Oh look," she says, words rolling off her tongue with the edge of a grin. "Mistletoe. Looks like you have to kiss me, now."
She expects him to bluster, for his face to contort into something hideously affronted and for him to trip backwards and away from her faster than it takes for her to come up with another line, but though his face goes red, he doesn't actually take a step.
And then,
"You better tell no one of this, Potter."
Harry just stares, mouth parted slightly open.
Was he actually—?
"What?" the words slip out. "Not scared of my dirty half-blood lips?"
"It's bad luck not to," he says, crossing his arms over his chest."Do they not teach that at that trashy American school of yours?"
Harry continues to gape. His lips are pursed, and there's slight lift to his jaw, as if he's daring her to challenge him on it.
The words "Are you sure you don't just want an excuse to kiss me?" are on the tip of her tongue, but in the moment she spends struck speechless, they drop away as the reality of the situation sinks in.
(Including the fact that, if she says that, he probably won't do it.)
(She's not sure why that matters to her.)
She really should step away, then, but her boots remain rooted to the floor. She can't stop her eyes from flickering to his face—his pale skin is a little reddened, though it might be from the cold. Or it might be from her.
Everything about his appearance is perfect, of course, but it's that that really gets her, tugging surprisingly hard on her gut. The way he almost looks like he's hiding nervousness.
"Okay," she says, word out of her mouth before she has a chance to fully articulate it inside her head. She swallows, looking up to meet his eyes.
He looks suddenly paralyzed, eyes frozen and wide, as if he hadn't really expected her to say yes. Harry relates. There's a moment where they both just stand there looking at each other, awkwardly hesitant, as if they're both not quite sure how they got to this moment. And then, he leans down, tilting his head just slightly to match up with hers.
The kiss at first is only the barest touch, his lips on hers almost ticklish, before he deepens it, pulling her body in just a little closer as he does. Harry's brain fizzes like it's full of melting sparks, all thoughts temporarily going out of focus.
He keeps his lips on hers for just a bare second longer than he has to, and something swoops in Harry's stomach on the second beat before he breaks away from her.
Harry has to fight the urge to tilt her head up and kiss him again, draw it out.
She does it anyway. Lets the kiss be just what it is—a peck on the lips to satisfy superstition.
They both need their plausible deniability.
Harry walks out of the Guild that day with her fingertips grazing her lips, and a cacaphony of confused thoughts echoing in her head.
In the days after, sometimes, when she looks at him, she's struck with the memory of how soft his lips had been on hers, the electricity of his fingers grazing her shoulder. She's been dealing with how distractingly pretty she finds him for as long as she's known him, though, and this isn't that much harder. It really doesn't matter to her in any meaningful way that Lestrange is a good kisser.
(It's not like they're going to be doing it again, after all.)
Why not? an insidious voice says from the back of her mind. It isn't like you didn't both enjoy it—
She cuts it off. She can't know what was going through Caelum's head. (Even though she thinks she does.) And it doesn't even matter if she's, right, because—
***
"Oh," Harry says, glancing lazily up at the ceiling as she slaps her ingredients down on the table next to Lestrange's. "This again."
The mistletoe is not in a different place, this time, but the cauldron is, moved (by Harry) from the middle to the end of the table, where the mistletoe hangs above it. Lestrange hadn't bothered to move it back when he'd come in.
Perhaps he'd hoped, like he seemed to have done the first time, that Harry wouldn't notice or say anything (again.)
She lets out an exaggerated sigh, though her heartbeat is thumping at double speed in her chest.
This might be really stupid. Is probably really stupid.
She watches his face carefully out of the corner of her eye. He hasn't made any move, like he had the first time, his fingers frozen over his mortar and pestle, and his face has gone red in a bright flush (worse than before).
"It's a good thing you're at least good at it," she says, turning to face him straight-on. "Unless this time you'd rather face the bad luck?"
His mouth has fallen open slightly, but he closes it then, jaw snapping shut. She sees his Adam's apple bob as he swallows.
"Probably not worth it," she says. "I asked someone after last time and they said it's really bad luck."
His gaze searches hers for several moments longer, before he finally seems to decide something.
He closes his eyes, dipping his head to close the distance between them. Neither of them cut things off short this time, and she has several long moments to explore the shape of his mouth, tracing out the contour of it, inhaling dizziness before they have to split apart for air.
When they do, Caelum's dark lashes flutter over his eyes, still mostly closed. He doesn't pull away yet.
Harry—slowly, hesitantly—raises her free hand to cup it around the back of his neck, and does what she hadn't the first time, burying her fingers in his dark curls, and rises onto her tiptoes, guiding him into another kiss.
He almost leans into her lead, and Harry's heart thrums pleased in her chest.
When they finally let go of each other, Harry is grinning, and he's staring at her like he's never seen her before, a new light in his eyes.
***
The mistletoe decorations are gone from the guild labs the next time they show up to brew together.
"We don't need it, right?" Harry says. She puts more certainty into it than she really has, a crooked smile.
Despite the false confidence, she's not really sure what he'll say. She thinks he likes her—
—Obviously, he likes her—
—but a kiss or three under the mistletoe in December, in an empty potions lab, is one thing. A kiss in January, she somehow senses, with the mistletoes gone, is another entirely.
Caelum's eyes track along the line where the ceiling meets the wall, now clear of its boughs of holly.
"Are you sure…" he swallows. "Are you sure you want to? With me?"
Harry's hand finds his, and squeezes. "Well. I certainly don't want to with anyone else."