*:🎄･ﾟ✧ ❄️*:･ﾟ🎁✧

     THE BOX HIT THE FLOOR WITH A HARSH THUMP and a flurry of dust kicked up around it. There was a sprinkling of snow scattered across the top of the cardboard and I swept it off with my hand. This one was labelled bathroom but what with the four flights of stairs I had just climbed with this weighing heavy in my hands, I can't find the energy to move it a few feet into the room on my left.

     "If only we had magic wands to carry these up all of those stairs," I heard his voice come from behind me. I turned to see Cedric, red in the face, huffing as he too deposited a hefty box on the floor at his feet.

     I walked over to him and cupped his cheeks with my hands. "We live in a neighbourhood with Muggles now," I told him. "What on earth is magic?"

     He chuckled at my joke before shutting our new front door to a close with his back. "That was the last of them."

     "Thank, Merlin, for that," I said. Force of habit, I suppose.

     "Now, who on earth is Merlin?" Cedric chuckled.

     We may have underestimated how much adjusting to a mostly-Muggle lifestyle was going to be. Except for our professions, of course. But our neighbours certainly don't need to know that the new couple down the road fly brooms for a living. No, for the time we live under this roof, we must embrace the way of the Muggles. This city is, after all, quite a cramped one.

     Hogwarts, it turned out, was just the beginning of our time together. Cedric and I both went back home to live with our parents after we graduated and got part-time jobs working at our local grocery stores and library while we tried to figure the Quidditch thing out, sending each other masses of letters any chance we got.

     And we did indeed figure the Quidditch thing out. For the past year, both of us have been playing on our respective teams ─ Cedric for the Chudley Cannons and me for the Tutshill Tornados. We bought a house just outside of London and close enough to a train station for us to commute to practice when we are called. While working on the opposite sides of the country on competing teams, we come together for dinner and a daily catchup and its rather easy to make it to matches together. The competitive spirit comes out as soon as the train screeches into the station of whichever stadium we are playing that day.

     I stay in touch with Ava and Spencer as much as I can, and we have planned a New Years' Eve dinner party to reminisce the times before boyfriends and full-time jobs. It will be the first time I've seen them in a year.

     December first came and Cedric woke me up with a gingerbread latte in bed. He insisted we spend the morning picking out a Christmas tree and despite how hard it would be to carry it up all those stairs and how cold it had turned over the last couple of days, I didn't hesitate to say yes.

     And so, we bundled up in layers and layers, doubling up on socks and tucking ourselves in hats and scarves. Arms looped, our cheeks turning pink from the cold, Cedric and I strolled around the local village where the Christmas tree farm was located. Carol singers serenaded us as we kept our hands warm with steaming takeaway cups of mulled wine.

     "That one is wonky."

     "Not tall enough."

     "The stump is too wide."

     Living with my boyfriend for only one short month meant I had no idea how picky he would be when it came to choosing a Christmas tree for our flat.

     "You better chose one fast, Diggory because I can't feel my ears."

     He did eventually manage to pick one out ─ after a rather heated debate, our first official argument, some might say ─ and we decorated it that night.

     Over the festive season we had become quite fond of board games. And not the usual ones we would play at Hogwarts in the run-up to Christmas, but Muggle ones involving crime solving and property deals, trivia and guessing games. Cedric had insisted we played a new one at least once a week so that by the time we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with both of our parents, we could introduce the wizards to this new phenomenon, and guarantee that we won in the process.

     One day in mid-December, I caught quite a nasty cold. It was expected at this time of year so it wasn't anything to worry about, but I took time away from work for almost a week and felt useless on the sofa watching re-runs of old sitcoms on the TV in a pit of tissues and blankets.

     One of these miserable days, where the snow was picking up outside, Cedric came home from practice down south of the country, with a gingerbread kit and an obnoxious amount of mulled wine and medicine.

     "If I'm going to beat you at Monopoly on Christmas day," he said, explaining his reasoning as he unloaded his shopping onto the dining table in our open kitchen, "then I'm going to need my opponent to be physically able to accept a harsh defeat."

     I told him that was not going to happen, and that it was actually going to be Will that would be his toughest competition, since my little brother had been a sneaky cheat since he could talk.

     After reluctantly leaving my cozy hole on the sofa, I trudged over to Cedric and after one sip of mulled wine, I felt instantly better (I suppose the drugs helped too). There was something about Cedric's warm smile that made my flu go away. He tended to have that affect.

     Twenty minutes later, I was tilting my head to one side to get a better angle at his gingerbread house. Although, there was no good angle because it looked like someone had dropped a bomb on this poor innocent confectionary home.

     "The world is grateful you never expressed your dreams to be a baker, Cedric," I sighed.

     "Excuse you," he gasped, holding a hand to his chest in mock hurt. He still had a piping bag intertwined in his fingers and the white tip drew all over his already messy shirt. "I happen to think I've created quite a homey composition, actually."

     "Oh really?"

     His attempt at outlining bricks on his roof just looked like a twisted snail trail. In fact, the detrimental lack of infrastructure meant the roof was caving in at the middle so the decoration was the least of his worries. There was absolutely no care for the colour scheme in terms of jelly tot arrangement, and he had decorated his gingerbread man to make it look like some kind of enraged cannibal.

     Mine, on the other hand, was elegant and tidy. With a little colourful garden out front with vegetable patches and roses, and meticulously crafted windows on each side, it wasn't falling apart and my gingerbread woman looked sane.

     "This is the construction plan I'm going to show the builders of our future house, just so you know," he told me.

     "So, I should just bulldoze it now, then, shall I?" I smirked. "Thanks for the heads-up."

     I went to grab the nearest solid weapon ─ a wooden spoon ─ in order to destroy his, frankly offensive, creation, but as an act of protecting his stronghold, Cedric grabbed the bag of powdered sugar to his right ─ the ingredient intended to make my perfect little cabin seem encompassed in a snowy wonderland ─ and threw it right over me.

     I stopped in my tracks. "So that's how you want to play this, huh, Diggory?" Using his last name always reminded me of our Hogwarts days. When we were worlds apart and yet were pulled closer and closer together by some kind of epiphany I had in my maturity. Maybe one day we'll share a last name, and that nostalgia will still survive.

     He gave a suggestive raise of his eyebrows. "I know you've been out of practice for a week, y/l/n," he said, "but you must remember players also defend their territory?"

     "Even if it's hideous?"

     "Especially when it's hideous."

     "So you admit your house is horrendously decorated?"

     Cedric's eyes narrowed into mine. "It's . . . on the uglier side."

     "That must have taken a lot of strength to confess," I told him, "So I respect it."

     "Thank you."

     But just as he thought we had called a ceasefire; I dipped my hand into the open bag of powdered sugar resting on his flat palm and hurled handful of the contents right onto his face.

     "Oh," he coughed, wiping it from his eyes, "I see how it is."

     Chuckling, I grabbed the bag of flour across from me and declared an all-out baking war.

     The remainder of December flew by in a whirl of end-of-season practices, cold train commutes and takeaway hot chocolates. I had mastered making a fire and found out Cedric was incredibly gifted at homemade mince pies (despite his previous displays of zero proof that he would be a good baker). We shared an advent calendar and learned how to use Muggle technology to the best of our ability, so Christmas movies were on the itinerary most nights. It was the most perfect month. So hectic and yet as smooth as the frozen lake in my favourite local park.

     That was until Christmas Eve.

     Cedric and I had plans to visit my parents for a late lunch and then we would see his for Christmas day itself since Amos Diggory loved hosting and had invited most of our school friends. But when we headed out around eleven to make our half past train into the country for a change of scenery, we were met with the man who lived one floor below, looking disappointed by the main entrance.

     "Can't get out, I'm afraid," he said. "We're snowed in." He pointed at the door behind him. Where the usually see-through glass was, was a hefty pile of snow, wedged right up against the window, blocking all exits.

     When we headed back up to our apartment and checked the news, it turned out the entire north of England had been hit by a snowstorm and heavy fall would be expected all day. We felt deflated. But Cedric, for some reason unknown, significantly more so than me.

     He sulked through the door, and I followed after him, shutting the door behind me. He haggard over towards the fireplace and began aggressively throwing logs onto the open place, as if angry that he had to resort to building a fire instead of braving the cold outside.

     Cautiously, because I was completely oblivious as to what was causing his distress, I perched down on the sofa beside the fireplace, his back to me.

     "Cedric, it's not the end of the world," I told him. I didn't know the specifics, but it must be the news that we were snowed in that had brought this bout of annoyance. "We'll wait it out and hope it's not this bad tomorrow. I'll just tell my parents we can't make—"

     "No, no," Cedric huffed, dropping the logs that were in his hands and then dusting them off on his jeans. He turned to me. "That's not how I planned it."

     "Planned what?" I asked, but Cedric wasn't listening to me. His head was slowly drooping more and more. I thought he was about to put his head in his hands.

     "It was supposed to be Christmas Eve," he kept rambling, apparently ignoring my presence. "I've been mapping this out for months. Why does it all have to go wrong now?"

     Seeing as he wasn't showing any signs of being in the same room as me, I cupped his face in my hands and tilted his head backwards to direct his attention back on the other human being in front of him. I rubbed my thumbs over his cheeks to try and calm him down. Blood had rushed to his face and his skin was ever so hot.

     "Cedric," I said calmly. His word train came to a sharp halt. "What are you talking about?"

     He pushed against my hands and pulled away. But just as I thought he was going to get up and walk away and sulk so much he wouldn't even talk to me he fished something out of his pocket and his sunken eyes found mine once more.

     "I was going to propose."

     My eyes fell from his defeated irises to the ring now presented in his hands. The rock in the middle caught the sparkle of the tree lights from its velvety bed. He may have had something else in mind, but right now, Cedric was already down on one knee, no matter how disappointed he seemed.

     A flurry of warmth spread inside my stomach, a feeling somewhat equitable to butterflies.

     "I had it already to go," he told me. I couldn't focus on that. I was smiling far too much. "Ice skating, and then your favourite coffee shop. We'd end up at the park. In front of that waterfall, you always like to stop and look at. On Christmas Eve because you always said Christmas Eve was better than Christmas day. I was glad it was snowing but I didn't want this much."

     "Cedric," I whispered, "this is perfect."

     He didn't believe me.

     But he should. His plan sounded lovely and thoughtful and summed up everything I loved about this boy. But I didn't need it to convince me to marry him. Right here, in our first ever home, with our first ever Christmas tree and our first ever mornings spent waking up together. He could ask me anywhere and I would still not hesitate to answer.

     "It's still Christmas Eve, isn't it?" I offered in an attempt to consolidate him.

     He just shrugged. "I suppose."

     "So then ask me the damn question and we'll see just how successful this proposal was after all," I chuckled.

     An elated glint appeared in his eyes just then. He swallowed, stretched out his shoulders, and blinked a couple of times before uttering the only words I wanted to hear in that moment. "y/n, will you do me the honour of being my wife?"

     I caught the sob before it could make it out of my mouth. "Cedric," I said, the snow pattering on the window beside us, the fire crackling softly, "I have never wanted anything more."

     And that was the first Christmas we spent under one roof, together with the promise to love each other for the rest of our lives.

*:🎄･ﾟ✧ ❄️*:･ﾟ🎁✧

' ੈ˚ ❃ connie speaks! 

surprise!!

merry christmas from me to you:)

i hope you enjoyed this little bonus chapter
i thought would be a cute addition to this story

thank you for your endless support on this fic🤍🤍🤍🤍

have an amazing rest of your christmas
and a happy new year🎉🎉🎉