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James was elbows-deep in a number of very complicated rune charts, minding his own business, thank-you-very-much, when a loud but distant rumbling interrupted his intense concentration. He scowled toward the corridor leading from the library and fought his persistent curiosity down. He had stayed at Hogwarts over the holiday break for a reason, after all. And it wasn’t just because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. No, O.W.L.s weren’t very far away and he was determined to score ‘O’s in all of his subjects. He’d get the best scores this school had seen since Hermione Granger and then he’d show everyone. Everyone who had ever doubted him or kicked him down or rejected him...they’d see just how clever and brilliant he was. And that was why he was in the library on Christmas Eve surrounded by every book on ancient runes he could find.
Anyway, this Christmas Eve wasn’t going to be as lousy as all the rest of his Christmas Eves had been because he was simply pretending like it was any other day. It was just a normal, boring, ordinary day and he had plenty of normal, boring, ordinary work to do. And none of that work had anything to do with silly, ridiculous holidays. Maybe he could even avoid the sad little feast with all the other Christmas orphans tonight. He didn’t need anyone’s pity, including his professors’. Shoving his glasses back up his nose, he determinedly returned to scribbling runes on parchment, intent on ignoring the obnoxious rumbling.
The rumbling, however, didn’t seem to want to be ignored. In fact, it seemed to be growing louder and louder with every passing second.
Finally, the dogged insistence of his inquiring mind made him get up and move to the corridor outside the library to investigate. He never could resist a good mystery. He stood in the hall and strained his ears. Yes, the sound was definitely louder out here and the portrait frames on the walls were starting to vibrate with the force of the mysterious noise. In fact, the occupants of all the paintings had scattered, leaving empty canvases of woodlands and landscapes with no characters at all, which was very curious.
He inclined his head and listened more carefully. The massive rumbling sounded almost like hooves, actually. But that was ridiculous, of course. What would a stampeding herd of hooved...somethings be doing inside a near-abandoned-for-the-holidays Hogwarts on an unremarkable, drowsy Tuesday? He had just decided to return to his runes when a scarlet, gold, and black blur hurtled around the corner with a whoop.
He didn’t have time to register much before the person-shaped bullet grabbed his hand, gleefully shouting at him to run before dragging him along with her. His robes billowed out behind him and his glasses slipped down his nose as his long, gangly limbs struggled to keep up with the madly laughing creature beside him. He managed a furtive glance sideways when they slowed down for a moment to jump the gap between two staircases, trying to get a glimpse of his running partner. The person towing him away from what she apparently considered a very funny mortal threat with his hand in a vice grip, was a girl. A fourth year, perhaps? She looked to be about his age but she wasn’t in his year; he would have recognized her. She seemed vaguely familiar, like he should perhaps know who she was but he couldn’t remember. Maybe he’d seen her in the halls?
“Why are we running?” he panted to her as they skidded around a corner, apparently heading toward the entrance hall.
“So we don’t die!” she responded cheerfully, putting on another burst of speed as the sound of pounding hooves behind them increased in volume once again.
“Ah,” he answered eloquently, using his free hand to shove his glasses back up his sweaty nose.
Their trainers slipped on the slick stone floor as they pounded their way to the main doors. He noticed absently that she was wearing muggle shoes similar to the ones he favoured, plimsoles, they were called, although hers were Gryffindor maroon while his were a dirty off-white. They burst out the doors together, and the sudden bitter bite of the cold December air knocked the wind from his lungs and made his glasses fog up. The girl tugged hard on his hand, sending him reeling off to the side, and then both of them fell into the cold, powdery snow beside the doors in a pile. Moments later, what had to hundreds of large, shaggy creatures came pouring out of the entrance doors, their hooves pounding the snow less than a meter away from their tangled legs.
James watched in stunned silence, propped up on his elbows, as the animals streamed across the grounds, apparently headed toward the Forbidden Forest and then, to his great surprise, they all took flight, soaring over the treetops. “Are those -” he began, stammering out the words.
“Yep!” the girl answered cheerily, popping the ‘p’ at the end of the word with glee. “Reindeer!” The sound of her voice so close to his ear and the feel of her warm breath on his chilled skin made him try to scramble away from her. However, he only seemed to succeed in tangling them together more, as the ridiculously long, multi-coloured scarf around her neck seemed to wrap itself tighter around his arms of its own volition.
“And they’re -” he continued, in astonishment.
“Flying. And breathing fire. Cool, huh?” she responded, still annoyingly chipper. She seemed completely unfazed by the whole situation, both the running from flying, fire-breathing quadrupeds and the basically sitting on top of a complete stranger in the snow.
“And they were inside the castle because -?” he said, huffing in frustration as, once again, he attempted to pry off the ridiculous wool creation, only to pull her even closer.
“No idea!” she laughed, easily extricating her scarf from his grip and jumping to her feet. She stood over him, watching the retreating herd of reindeer with interest. “Well, actually, I have some idea. My guess would be Freddie. Things like this are always Freddie. Mind you, he’s not even here. He’s with his family in Romania. But still, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Freddie - ?” James began, still feeling completely lost.
“Weasley,” she replied with a snort. He wanted to be annoyed with her for dragging him out of the library, for knocking him down in the snow, and for repeatedly cutting off his sentences but then she turned back to him with a wide, brilliant grin and he forgot all about being annoyed. James wondered if the temperature had suddenly shot up forty degrees because, in the face of that smile, he was suddenly feeling much, much warmer. She was petite, a good head shorter than he was and he could see muggle jeans underneath her long, black robe. She had on a winter hat emblazoned with the Gryffindor lion and her long, blonde hair was hanging down under it in pigtails. Her multi-coloured scarf looked a bit ridiculous (blimey, it was probably longer than she was!) but its funky style seemed to fit her bright personality. Her wide, toothy grin spread across most of her face and sparkling hazel eyes glimmered at him with mischief.
He couldn’t resist the urge to smile back at her as she offered him a hand up and pulled him gingerly to his feet. Her small, warm hand felt lovely in his own and, despite the fact that they had been holding hands during their entire mad dash through the halls of Hogwarts, this time a little electric current zapped up his arm, jolting his heart and making him feel breathless once again. He grinned down at her, his own smile wider than it had been in ages, enjoying this odd little spontaneous moment. Then, with a start, he realized she had said something.
“I said I’m Rose. Rose Tyler,” she repeated, smiling again and shaking the hand that was actually still attached to hers.
“Right! Yes, right!” he babbled, pumping her arm up and down. As was usually the case when he was nervous, his mouth went on autopilot, making up for his previous hesitation by now attempting to fit as many words as possible in a short amount of time. “Rose Tyler. What a brilliant name. Sounds quite familiar, actually. Rose Tyler Rose Tyler Rose Tyler!” he exclaimed, letting the name roll around on his tongue. Oh yes, he quite liked the sound of that.
“And you are…?” she prompted, obviously trying not to laugh at his exuberance.
“James. James Noble. Not Bond, though those are some brilliant Muggle films. Have you seen them? Don’t quite understand the fascination muggles have with the shoot-y wand things, but James Bond. Very suave fellow, he is. I bet he’s seen a few fire-breathing reindeer in his day, eh?”
Rose seemed a bit taken aback by him for a moment and then she grinned. “Live and Let Fly?” she punned and, though he wouldn’t have thought it possible a moment before, his smile widened. Charming, beautiful, and able to make a good pun?
He raised an eyebrow at her and looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Dr. Snow?”
“From the North Pole with Love?”
“The Deer with Crimson Nose?”
“The Bull Who Loved Me?”
At the last title, both of them dissolved into giggles, falling against one another like old friends. To his surprise (and delight) he realized that Rose hadn’t let go of his hand yet. He usually didn’t care for physical contact from anyone. This, apparently, was something entirely outside his realm of expertise. It was exciting. Then he shivered involuntarily, though whether it was due to her surprising proximity or the biting chill in the air, he wouldn’t admit.
“Sorry, sorry!” Rose said, tugging him back in the doors. “You’re not dressed for the weather.”
“Yes, if I’d known when I woke up today that I’d be dragged out of the castle by a crazy girl, out into the snow, away from a mad herd of flame-broiled reindeer, I’dve worn a thicker jumper,” James drawled.
“Shut up,” Rose said, bumping him with her shoulder as they stopped in the entrance hall. “Would you rather I’d left you there to get run over?”
“Nah, they wouldn’t have been able to catch me,” James answered, impishly. “I’m very light on my feet. So why is this Freddie character sending stampeding mammals after you over holiday?”
“Just a prank,” Rose said, waving her free hand. “I got him really good right before he left for Romania and he told me that he had something big planned over break. You know, they might not’ve even been real reindeer, but I wasn’t willing to risk it. His dad owns Weasley Wizard Wheezes and he’s always trying out new stuff on me.”
“Oh yeah!” James exclaimed. He, like every other kid in the wizarding world, knew of the Weasley family and all the things they’d done in the last war. He’d even known that there was a Weasley at Hogwarts. He’d never actually met this merry prankster but practically everyone in the school had been the subject of a Weasley Wizard Weeze at least once. “That Fred Weasley! Plays quidditch, too, doesn’t he? Wait, wait, that’s how I know you! You’re the seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team!” Gryffindor had utterly flattened Ravenclaw in the first match of the season and he, like most of the Ravenclaws, had been a bit sore over it for a few weeks. But he wasn’t about to tell her that the reason he’d recognized her name was because he’d heard it repeated by his housemates a number of times in the days following the match (generally surrounded by a litany of very colourful insults).
“Guilty as charged,” Rose answered, sticking her tongue in her teeth and grinning at him, which made his heart inexplicably beat faster once again. Then she suddenly eyed him up and down and he felt a heated blush creep up his face, spreading from his freckled cheeks to the tips of his ears. Honestly, he was sixteen years old. It wasn’t like this was the first pretty girl he’d ever seen.
She was, however, the first pretty girl who’d ever paid him any real attention and certainly the first one he’d ever held hands with for going on ten minutes, now. Plus, he’d really like to continue holding her hand, if she was amenable, of course.
“You know, you don’t really look much like a sports fan,” she said as she’d finished her once-over of him .
James sniffed and straightened, adjusting his glasses once more and willing his heart to slow back down. “I like Quidditch just as much as the next wizard, thanks very much. What, you think just because I’m in an academically-minded house and I wear glasses, that I don’t like sports?”
“Actually, I quite like your glasses,” Rose answered and then, to his interest, she blushed and looked away.
“That’s quite a scarf,” he said, wanting to fill up the silence now growing between them. “Did you steal it from a giant?”
Rose snorted, taking off her hat, shaking some snow from it, and shoving it in the pocket of her robe. “My mum made it for me. I also got a pair of mittens that would fit a troll. She just learned how to knit and she’s taking it way too far. She also sent them two weeks ago because she thought owl post would take that long to get here.”
“Are both of your parents muggles?” James asked, as they climbed up a staircase toward the great hall. It was nearing dinner time and there would be a feast tonight, after all. Surprisingly, hand in hand with Rose, the idea of a feast didn’t seem too bad at all.
“No,” Rose replied and she suddenly looked sad. “My dad was a wizard but he died when I was really young. Mum didn’t really know how to deal with the magical world without him, so she went back to what she knew and I was raised as a muggle. She almost didn’t let me come to Hogwarts at all, actually. How about you?”
“My family were all wizards,” he answered simply, not really wanting to go into the entire (tarnished) legacy of the Lungbarrow family. “But they’re all gone now. Just me.”
Rose squeezed their still-joined hands and, to his relief, didn’t offer any of the normal hollow condolences or pressing questions people usually gave him. She seemed to sense that he didn’t want to talk about it, just as he knew she didn’t want to talk about her dad anymore right now. He didn’t ask her why she was spending the holiday here instead of with her mum and she didn’t ask him why he’d been alone in the library on Christmas Eve.
“You know an awful lot about James Bond for a wizard-born guy,” she teased and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“I know an ‘awful lot’ about a great many things, Rose Tyler,” he said in a mock-grandiose fashion, taking the out that she had given him gratefully. “I am a man of many talents.” He blushed again as he belatedly realized that phrase could come off as quite dirty.
“I bet you are,” she answered, smiling up at him once more and then she winked at him and his blush went a few shades darker.
They walked through the doors into the great hall and James heard Rose sigh happily beside him. The hall was just as stunning as it had been for the feast before the other students had left. The enormous, brightly lit pine trees dominated the room, twinkling fairy lights (or were they fairies?) shimmered on every surface and gently falling snow cascaded from the enchanted ceiling. No one else was in the hall yet and so Rose and James simply stood alone, admiring the room. James couldn’t help but think that it all seemed more beautiful now that he was standing here beside Rose. He felt Rose squeeze his hand again and he looked down to see her watching him with soft eyes. Her fair hair looked golden in the shimmering lights and he knew that even if he lived to be nine hundred and ten, he would never see anything more beautiful than her.
“I’m really glad I met you, Rose Tyler,” he said, tenderly cupping her cheek with his free hand.
“Me too,” she whispered.
And in that moment he knew, just as he knew the exact meaning of every rune in his textbook, just as he knew exactly where to find a bezoar and how to make sleeping draught, just as he knew the title of every James Bond film ever made, that he would spend the rest of his Christmases with Rose Tyler at his side.
Five years later, to the day, when an enormous, fire-breathing reindeer leapt out of the wedding cake, flew around the pavilion twice, and then exploded in a shower of blue and gold confetti, Freddie Weasley claimed full responsibility for bringing together the beaming bride and the sputtering groom.