Story Dreaming of a White Christmas [Ginny Weasley Oneshot for Holiday Tropes Challenge]

Title: Dreaming of a White Christmas

Fandom: Harry Potter. Set before the first Harry Potter book when Ron and Ginny are growing up in the Burrow.

Genre: Family; Fluff; General.

Characters: Ginny Weasley; Ron Weasley; Weasley Family

Summary: As a young girl, Ginny dreams of a white Christmas.

Author's Note: Written for @Briannakin's Holiday Tropes Challenge. My holiday trope was "Let There Be Snow;" my outfit was ugly Christmas sweaters and plaid pajamas; my random winter elements were hot cocoa, snow falling, snowball fight, and gifts.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Ginny heard the Burrow stairs creak for the final time as Mum and Dad finished carrying the armloads of wrapped presents downstairs to place underneath the Christmas tree—decorated with shining ornaments, glittering tinsel, and a gnome from the garden captured and forced into an angel’s wing—in the living room.

There would be the Christmas sweaters Mum always knitted for everyone., Cauldron Cakes, Chocolate Frogs with cards for collecting, a book on chess strategies for Ron, model broomsticks (because Mum and Dad couldn’t afford the real thing) for the twins to build, a potions set for Percy (because he thought that was fun), something dragon related for Charlie (because he never wanted anything else), new robes for Bill (because he was obsessed with looking cool) and probably a new doll for Ginny.

Mum always got Ginny a new doll or something else girly even though Ginny hated dolls and other girly things. Ginny could only suppose that Mum had spent many years wishing for a daughter, and when one had finally come, she was eager to dump dolls and other girly things on that daughter whether the daughter in question was interested in dolls or not.

Mum and Dad would surely have labeled some of the gifts as being from Father Christmas instead of from themselves. They did that every year even though tomorrow would make it three Christmases since Ginny, the youngest of the seven Weasley children, had stopped believing in this white-bearded old man who spent Christmas Eve traveling from house to house leaving presents for good little boys and girls. Being a younger sister to Fred and George meant innocence about anything was short-lived as melting snow.

Snow. That was what Ginny really wanted for Christmas. She wanted a white Christmas, a blanket of fresh snow covering the ground She longed to hear it crunch beneath her boots. She hoped to be able to build snowmen and snow forts with her brothers in the garden. When they were done constructing the snow forts, they could roll snowballs and hurl them at each other. After their snowball fight if they had any energy left, they could climb to the top of the nearby hill and sled down it, laughing and shouting until they were hoarse.

Then when they were finally exhausted, they could return home where Mum would heat up mugs of steaming hot cocoa for them. Steaming hot mugs they could pile with clouds of whipped cream white and frothy as snow and mountains of marshmallows.

Yes, Ginny wanted snow for Christmas, but the weather wizard on the radio had said that there was no snow expected all night—no snow expected all week in fact. Yet somehow as she lay in her bed, she felt a strange awareness tingle through her, and she believed without knowing why that it must have started to snow. That somehow her one true Christmas wish had been granted.

With a flare of impossible hope sparking inside her, she leapt out of her bed and crossed to her window. Her breath frosted the glass pane when she yanked away the curtain, but she could still see the white flakes—each as unique as fingerprints, Dad had once told her when they stood outside, catching snowflakes on their outstretched tongues—falling, accumulating in the garden and on the roof of the shed.

The sight of the freshly fallen snow excited her so much that she ached to share the good news with someone. She didn’t want Mum and Dad to know that she was up this late. Percy would scold her if she came to him with anything less than an emergency in the middle of the night. Bill and Charlie would pretend to be kinder but not share any of her joy at the snow. Fred and George would tease her mercilessly. That left only Ron with whom she could share this midnight delight.

She glided her feet into her slippers. Then, quiet as a mouse, she hurried to Ron’s bedroom. Ron’s door was unlocked so she entered without knocking and shook him awake.

“Is it morning?” Ron mumbled, rubbing groggily at his eyes. “It’s a very dark morning if it is.”

“It’s not morning.” Ginny stifled a giggle by stuffing the sleeves of her nightgown—another girly, purple thing Mum had foisted on her—into her mouth. “It’s midnight, but it’s snowing, Ron. Snowing! Would you believe it?”

“It’s winter, Ginny. Snow isn’t that unexpected, is it?” Despite his dismissive words, Ron rose from his bed and walked over to his window to peer out of his curtains and confirm that it was indeed snowing as Ginny had said. Ginny had to muffle another giggle at his red-and-green plaid pajamas.

“The weather wizard said it wasn’t going to snow, didn’t he?” Ginny retorted, coming over to stand beside her brother so that they were shoulder-to-shoulder, staring out at the snow they could play in tomorrow. “That makes it unexpected, doesn’t it?”

“How should I know?” Ron fired back, beginning to draw pictures in the mist their breath left on the glass. Pictures of broomsticks and his Quidditch heroes from the Chudley Cannons who always hovered near the bottom of any league rankings. “Not like I listen to the radio.”

“Mum does.” Ginny began painting images of the dragons Charlie told her about when Mum wasn’t around to yell at him for sharing facts about frightening magical creatures to young children. “That’s how I heard from the weather wizard it wasn’t going to snow.”

“I don’t listen to whatever Mum’s got on the radio.” Ron snorted, adding more frost to the window. “It’s always Celestina Warbeck warbling on about lost love or first love, and I don’t know which is worse.”

“If the weather wizard said it wasn’t going to snow, and now it’s snowing, that makes it a Christmas miracle that my wish came true, doesn’t it?” Ginny nudged her brother, irked by how far he had wandered from the point.

“Nah.” Ron rolled his eyes. “The weather wizard’s forecast being wrong happens all the time. Mum’s always complaining about that. If the weather wizard was any good at predicting, he’d earn his Galleons and Sickles as a Seer, she says.”

“But aren’t you at least a little excited that it’s snowing on Christmas Eve and we’re going to have a white Christmas?” Ginny persisted, undaunted.

“Maybe a little bit,” Ron admitted, and Ginny could see the excitement he couldn’t hide lurking in the shadows of his face in his dark bedroom lit only by the moon and stars in the black sky outside his window.

 

@amidalachick As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing my work especially if you aren't familiar with Harry Potter I understand not being a fan of snow and winter in real life. I have to admit that winter (especially after Christmas and New Year when it starts to feel like a long, cold stretch of three gray months) is my least favorite season, and snow for me loses its charm when I have to try to travel to work in it. It's nice and peaceful to watch fall when I'm warm inside and don't have anywhere to go, but other than that, it can be a bit of a trial to deal with...That being said, I do remember being little and being so excited for snow because it meant playing in the snow and sledding and hot cocoa when I was done playing in the snow, so that was the sort of childhood innocence and spirit that I was trying to draw upon and capture in this fic. And it makes me so happy that you could be so excited for Ginny getting her wish for snow in this story. It does make me happy whenever I can capture and communicate that childhood sense of excitement since it can be hard for an adult like me to write in that mindset!

I really wanted to make this story a celebration of home and family. Those sort of warm family moments that can mean everything but can be so easy to overlook. So it makes me so happy that you appreciated those little details that brought the sense of home and family alive in this fic.

The simplicity and innocence of Ginny's wish for snow was moving for me, so it's great to hear that it was also touching to you. Childhood is indeed a wonderful time for being able to feel wonder and excitement and just generally enjoy something as you say without any sort of stress, worry, or thought about a million other things which tends to creep into moments of joy and leisure for us adults. I think that childhood sense of joy and innocent excitement was what I was most hoping to convey in this story, so I'm so happy that is what stuck out to you the most. In many ways, I like to think of this story as a tribute to the innocence and excitement of youth.

And I definitely think the burning desire to share excitement is a very child thing to want to do, so I couldn't resist having Ginny be eager to share her excitement about snow with Ron.

And the two descriptions you highlighted at the end were two of my favorite bits of prose from this story, so yay!

I couldn't resist having Ron be the older brother trying to play it cool with Ginny but secretly being just as excited for the snow as her

I really enjoyed writing the sweet sibling moment in this story, and it's so awesome to hear the story as a whole could make you so happy. Thank you again for your kind words that help keep me motivated to write and share what I write