A/ N - This is my final festive offering of the year, and also my last story of the year. I hope everyone enjoys it!

The weekend before Christmas, Hermione Malfoy, was enjoying a cosy catch-up with her closest female friend, Daphne Zabini. The two witches had become close when Hermione had first started dating Daphne's friend, Draco Malfoy, and it had been Hermione who had encouraged Daphne to give Draco's best friend, Blaise Zabini a chance when he'd first asked her out. Daphne had been wary due to Blaise's reputation with the women, but he'd proved remarkably loyal and he'd never once betrayed Daphne with another witch. In fact the pair were blissfully happy together, and had been for going on twenty years.

"Bloody hell, it's cold out there," Alex Zabini, Blaise and Daphne's seventeen year old son announced as he and Hermione and Draco's son, Scorpius, entered the living room rubbing their hands together.

"That's because it's snowing," Scorpius's sister, sixteen year old Lyra, retorted with a roll of her eyes. "Who goes flying in the snow?"

"We had fun," Scorpius protested.

"Even if I've now lost feeling in my toes," Alex remarked. "Not to mention other vital parts."

"That what happens when you sit on a frozen stick for hours on end," Lyra smirked. "You want to be careful you don't lose something to frost bite."

"Don't worry Lyra, I'm all intact," Alex countered with a saucy wink at his best friend's sister.

"That boy of yours is turning more like his father with each passing day," Hermione remarked to Daphne as the boys pulled out the chess set and began setting up a game beside the fire.

"Tell me about it," Daphne laughed. "I just hope he doesn't leave a trail of broken hearts in his wake."

"You mean like Blaise did when he settled down with you?" Hermione teased. "Hundreds of witches around the country were devastated to hear he was off the market."

"I think more people were disappointed to hear that Draco was no longer available," Daphne argued. "Witches liked the idea of a good time with Blaise, but Draco was the one everyone wanted to settle down with. He was the one they all wanted."

"Most of them only wanted his money and his family name," Hermione protested.

"True," Daphne agreed with a nod. "But some of them wanted him because he was hot."

"Have you just called my husband hot?" Hermione laughed. "Should I be worried about you?"

"Blaise is more than enough for me," Daphne assured her friend. "I am just pointing out what you already know, your husband is a very good looking man."

"As is yours," Hermione admitted. "And so is your son," she added, glancing back to where Alex was sitting playing chess with Scorpius, while at the same time obviously flirting with Lyra who was sitting nearby.

"He's showing an awful lot of interest in Lyra," Daphne muttered, following her friend's gaze. "Not that I can blame him, she's a beautiful girl."

"She's also a Daddy's girl," Hermione reminded her friend. "Alex may be Draco's godson, but he won't hesitate to hex him if he hurts Lyra."

"I don't think he's going to hurt her," Daphne said. "I think he's smitten. He reminds me of how Draco used to be around you before you started dating. Come to think of it, he reminds me of Blaise and how he used to look at me when he was trying to convince me to go out with him."

"And Lyra certainly looks taken with him," Hermione agreed, smiling slightly as her daughter blushed prettily at something Alex said to her. "I think there's romance in the air."

"Should we do anything about it?" Daphne asked. "Maybe have a quiet word with them?"

"I say we leave them to it," Hermione decided. "If anything is going to happen, it'll happen whether we want it to or not. Besides, I think they make a cute couple. I say we let nature take its course."

Daphne fully agreed with Hermione, and taking one last look at the flirting teenagers, they turned their attention back to the conversation they'd been having before their sons had interrupted them.

Half an hour later the two witches were still chatting, and making plans for Christmas, when their husbands appeared looking rather pleased with themselves.

"Why do I get the feeling the pair of you have been creating trouble?" Daphne questioned with a sigh.

"What a terrible thing to say about your husband," Blaise tutted.

"So what have you been up to?" Hermione asked.

"Just some last minute Christmas shopping," Draco replied.

"It's not last minute," Daphne pointed out. "Christmas isn't until the end of the week."

"I'm not going to wait until Christmas Eve to do my shopping," Draco snorted. "You won't catch me running around like a blue arsed fly because I've left everything to the last moment. For me, this weekend is last minute."

"You can see why he ended up with Hermione, can't you?" Blaise laughed, perching on the arm of the sofa beside his wife. "The pair of them organise everything down the last detail. I bet they even schedule sex into their busy lives."

"We do not schedule sex," Draco cried. "We're as spontaneous as anyone else in that department. We just give in to the passion when the mood strikes us. Only this morning we ended up back in bed after breakfast, and if the kids hadn't been dining with us this morning, we wouldn't have even made it back to the bedroom."

"Please, kill me now," Scorpius moaned. "We don't need to hear this."

"No, they really don't," Hermione agreed, giving her husband a stern glare.

"Sorry," Draco chuckled, although he sounded anything but sorry.

"So what sort of last minute shopping did you do?" Hermione asked to change the subject. "You said you'd finished buying gifts last week. Aren't they all wrapped?"

"They are," Draco confirmed with a proud smirk. "I just bought a few last minutes bits and bobs, including a little bit of something that brings back happy memories."

"What?" Hermione questioned.

"This." Reaching into a bag Hermione hadn't even spotted at his side, Draco pulled out a large sprig of mistletoe. "I thought we could hang it somewhere for our Christmas Eve party."

"Mistletoe?" Scorpius questioned with a frown. "What's so special about mistletoe? It's not like you and Mum need an excuse to snog, you do it all the time."

"It was Mistletoe that brought your mother and I together," Draco informed his son. "Well that, and some Slytherin cunning."

"Mistletoe and Slytherin cunning, I don't think I've heard this story," Alex remarked.

"Well then young Alex, let me tell you the story of how I convinced Hermione I was the right wizard for her, using Mistletoe and a little bit of cunning," Draco said, settling himself on the sofa beside Hermione. "As you know, Hermione and I did not get along during our early years at Hogwarts."

"Not surprising really considering you were such a bigoted prat," Lyra commented with a snort. She may have been a Daddy's girl and worshipped the ground Draco walked on, but she was also a fierce believer in equal rights and she was well aware of her father's less than glorious past.

"That I was," Draco agreed with a guilty nod. He'd never hidden who he used to be from his children, but he'd also made sure they knew that he was no longer that person. "But even when I was at my worst, I would like to think I wasn't stupid. It didn't take long for the beliefs I'd entered Hogwarts with to be questioned. After all, there's only so many times a muggleborn can beat you in lessons and you still think you're better than them."

"We've heard this story before," Scorpius pointed out. "You started to question what you'd been told by Grandpa, but you never felt you were able to question his teachings. But then You-Know-Who tried to come back, only to fail and to end up killing himself completely. That gave you the freedom to admit to Grandpa that you didn't think like he'd taught you to. Grandpa wasn't happy at first, but ultimately he accepted you had a right to your own opinions, and not only did he respect them, but he came to share them once Mum came into your lives."

"You've heard that story, but you've never heard how your Mum and I came to be together," Draco argued. "Have you?"

"No, I guess not," Scorpius admitted. He knew his parents had gotten together in their last year of Hogwarts, but he had no idea how it had happened.

"By seventh year my views in muggleborns had completely changed," Draco began.

"Mainly because by that point he was head over heels in love with your mother," Blaise interjected. "He was totally hooked, and she didn't even notice he existed."

"I don't think it was quite that bad," Draco pouted, turning to his wife. "You knew I existed, didn't you?"

"You were the bane of my life in those early years, of course I knew you existed," Hermione snorted. "But I didn't see you as anything other than Malfoy the annoying Slytherin until seventh year when we were head students together."

"You thought I was annoying?" Draco questioned. "Really?"

"Like you didn't think I was annoying," Hermione laughed. "I still annoy you now."

"Maybe occasionally," Draco admitted. "But the point is, in seventh year we were head students together and sharing dorms. We were living and working together, and early on I suggested a fresh start in the hopes I could win your mother around. But she seemed oblivious to me in a romantic sense. Then Dumbledore saved the day."

"Dumbledore?" Daphne snorted. "How could he have saved the day? I'm sure if he'd known what was going to happen between you, he wouldn't have allowed you to share dorms. He dreaded the thought of sex in school."

"He may have been against sex, but he wasn't against romance," Draco argued. "After all, it was him who decided to plant some mistletoe in the front hallway."

"Isn't that a bit risky?" Alex asked with a frown. "What if you got caught underneath it with a Professor?"

"Ugh," Scorpius muttered with a dramatic shudder.

"I think that's why he placed it in the hallway," Draco said. "All the Professors knew to avoid it."

"Much to Pansy's disappointment," Daphne chuckled. "She was desperate to catch Snape underneath it."

"Severus?" Draco gasped. "My godfather, Severus? Our Potions Master? Our head of house?"

"That would be the one," Daphne confirmed with a chuckle. "Pansy had such a crush on him."

"I always thought she liked me," Draco muttered.

"She did, but she also fancied Snape," Daphne replied with a shrug. "He was unattainable though, just a mere fantasy. But she would have killed to get him under the mistletoe."

"Good job Dumbledore placed it in the hallway," Draco sneered. "If Pansy was that desperate, she might have used underhand tactics to catch Severus out."

"Like you did?" Blaise laughed. "You used a bit of cunning to get Hermione under the mistletoe, didn't you?"

"I'm getting to that Blaise," Draco tutted at his friend before returning his attention to the story he was telling. "I knew the mistletoe was my chance to grab Hermione's attention. I knew once she'd kissed me, she wouldn't be able to resist my charms."

"Such an ego," Hermione muttered with a roll of her eyes.

"It worked though," Draco shot back with a smirk. "One kiss and you were putty in my hands."

"If you say so, dear," Hermione chuckled.

"Come on Uncle Draco, don't keep us in suspense," Alex urged. "How did you get Aunt Hermione under the mistletoe. It sounds to me as though no-one could be caught unless they wanted to be."

"Everyone knew where the mistletoe was, so you're right, no-one could be caught unawares," Draco confirmed. "But I planned on finding a way to trap Hermione underneath and then come to her rescue. I was still mulling over a few ideas when fate played into my hands, and one day when I was lurking around, hoping to catch your mother on her own, she came hurrying down from the library and her bag split, spilling books everywhere. While she was busy picking them up, I saw my chance and used magic to roll one of her quills under the mistletoe. When she went to retrieve the quill she was stuck."

"Which was when you appeared like a hero and kissed her and released her," Scorpius predicted.

"I didn't just kiss her, I gave her the best kiss of her life," Draco boasted. "After that, she was never going to say no when I asked her out."

"It was a good kiss," Hermione recalled with a wistful smile playing around her lips.

"I have a question," Lyra piped up thoughtfully. "When your bag split, why didn't you just summon everything back?" she asked Hermione. "Why pick everything up by hand, and why chase after a quill when it had landed under some mistletoe?"

"She didn't notice it had landed under the mistletoe," Draco answered for his wife.

"Actually, that's not true," Hermione admitted. "And Lyra actually makes a good point. I guess you could say that since I'd been raised in the muggle world it was second nature for me to pick up my books by hand, but that's not why I picked them up that way."

"I think there's another side to this story," Blaise chuckled. "Come on Hermione, tell us your version of what happened under the mistletoe."

"Okay," Hermione said, glancing at Draco and finding he was looking shell-shocked at what was happening. "Despite what your father thought, I had noticed him in a romantic way in seventh year. In fact, I was convinced he liked me and I waited for him to ask me out. But he never did, which made me doubt myself. I hadn't had a lot of experience with boys, and I thought I was just projecting my feelings onto him and convincing myself he liked me because I liked him."

"Why didn't you just ask him out?" Lyra asked. "It's what I would do if I liked a boy."

"I'm sure you would," Hermione chuckled fondly. "But I wasn't as confident as a teenager as you are, Lyra. I was scared he would reject me and it would make the rest of the year awkward, so I kept quiet. Like your father, I figured the mistletoe could be the way to find out if he felt the same way, but I had no idea how to get us underneath it together."

"You split your bag deliberately," Draco accused, suddenly seeing where Hermione's story was going. "You lured me under the mistletoe."

"I tried," Hermione admitted. "I spotted your lurking, so I used magic to split my bag. I hoped you would be a gentleman and come to my aid, and maybe then I could accidentally get caught under the mistletoe."

"Which is why you were picking things up by hand," Lyra chuckled. "You were giving Dad time to come to your rescue."

"Which he didn't," Hermione remarked, giving her husband an accusatory glance. "But then I spotted my quill sliding along the floor. It didn't take a genius to work out who was manipulating the quill. So I decided to do what was obviously expected of me, and step under the mistletoe to retrieve my quill."

"I was duped," Draco whined. "All this time, you were the one manipulating me."

"I wasn't manipulating you, I was merely giving you what you wanted," Hermione argued, placating her husband by giving him a quick kiss. "And it all worked out in the end, didn't it? You were right. One kiss and I was yours."

"I guess I can live with that," Draco said, pulling Hermione closer for another kiss.

"I think I know the moral of this story," Scorpius remarked, stopping his parents before they went overboard and scared him and Lyra for life with their public display of affection.

"And what is the moral of the story?" Hermione asked with a laugh.

"Don't wait for sodding mistletoe to get you what you want," Scorpius replied. "Has it ever occurred to you, that if one of you had acted on your feelings sooner you could have been together longer?"

"You know Scorpius, that is pretty good advice," Alex muttered, his eyes darting to where Lyra was sitting.

"Oh no you don't Zabini," Scorpius said sternly, shaking his head at his best friend.

"Don't what?" Draco asked. "What am I missing?"

"Nothing," Scorpius said, shooting his friend a warning glare.

"For Merlin's sake," Lyra muttered as she got to her feet and grabbed the spring of mistletoe her father had placed on the side of the sofa. "What I learnt from the story was that if us women don't take the initiative things never get done. So this is me, taking the initiative."

Before Draco could ask what his daughter meant, she'd used magic to attach the mistletoe to the ceiling above her head. Caught under the magic of the sprig, she was then unable to move without someone releasing her with a kiss.

"Well," she demanded, looking right at Alex as she reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him into the magic of the mistletoe. "Are you going to kiss me, or are we going to stand her until next Christmas?"

"You really want me to kiss you?" Alex asked with a wide smile.

"No, she doesn't," Draco interrupted, jumping to his feet. "What are you playing at, Lyra?"

"Getting myself a boyfriend for Christmas," Lyra answered with a smirk as she pulled Alex even closer and connected their lips in a searing kiss.

Not one to miss out on a fantastic opportunity, Alex wrapped his arms around Lyra, pulling her closer and deepening the kiss at the same time. Outside of the sphere of the mistletoe, Scorpius had turned away from the sight of his best friend and little sister kissing, while Hermione and Daphne were sharing a knowing smirk. Blaise had been totally taken aback by the kiss and was watching with an open mouth, while Draco was slowly turning red as the steamy kiss continued and Alex's hands began to wander further south.

"Stop," he cried, jumping to his feet as Alex's hands settled on Lyra's backside. "Enough! Cease. Put my daughter down, mini Zabini."

"I think your Dad wants us to stop," Alex whispered breathlessly as he and Lyra finally parted.

"Problem?" Lyra asked her father with a smirk.

"Yes there's a problem," Draco spat. "Where did you learn to kiss like that? No way was that a first kiss. You've clearly kissed each other before."

"That was the first time," Alex insisted. "But what a first time."

"No-one kisses like that for the first time," Draco argued.

"We did," Hermione pointed out. "Our first kiss was just as passion filled."

"That was different," Draco argued with a wave of his hand.

"How?" Lyra asked, her brown eyes flashing dangerously as she put her hand on her hips and glared at her father.

"Because you're my little girl," Draco argued weakly, knowing full well that Lyra was not a child any-more and she was every bit as feisty as her mother, meaning he wasn't likely to win any argument with her.

"I am not a little girl," Lyra retorted sharply. "And it's not like Alex and I are ripping each other's clothes off over here. It's just an innocent little kiss."

"That kiss did not look innocent to me," Draco grouched. "Kissing like that leads to more."

"Not yet it doesn't," Lyra laughed. "Don't worry Dad, I'm not about to hop into bed with Alex. We haven't even had our first date yet."

"There's nothing I can say which will stop this, is there?" Draco asked with a sigh, looking between his daughter and his godson.

"Not a thing," Lyra confirmed with a smile. "Thanks to your mistletoe, I've got what I want for Christmas."

"Fine," Draco conceded with a sigh. "But you treat her like the princess she is, Alex. If you break my little girl's heart, you will regret it."

"I won't," Alex vowed. "I'm like you and Dad, a one woman wizard. And Lyra is the one for me."

"Ugh, I'm going to be sick," Scorpius muttered. "I've been dreading this happening."

"You've been dreading it?" Draco questioned, turning to his son. "You mean, you knew they liked each other?"

"Of course, I'm not blind," Scorpius retorted with a roll of his eyes. "I was just hoping it was a phase and they would both move on without grossing me out. But no, I get to be the wizard whose best friend is dating his sister."

"Just think Draco, in a few years we could be family," Blaise said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, you could become grandparents at the same time," Daphne added, laughing at the horror which appeared on both of their faces at the thought.

"Let's not get too carried away," Lyra said hastily. "As I've already mentioned, Alex and I haven't even been on one date. We might decide we're better off as friends."

"No way," Alex replied confidently. "We're meant to be together, I know we are. But kids are way into the future. Way, way into the future."

"I second that," Lyra agreed. "For now, I'm just happy I've got my Christmas wish. Who knew you could have so much fun under the mistletoe?"

"You need to get yourself under the mistletoe, Scorp," Blaise laughed. "It's looking like a family tradition to find love under the mistletoe."

As he looked back towards his wife, Draco couldn't help but smile. Mistletoe had brought him and Hermione together, and they'd been very happy together, so if Lyra ended up with Alex and they were even half as happy as he and Hermione were, he was pleased for them. After all, who was he to deny his daughter the chance of love under the mistletoe.

The End.