Eternal Patience

Christmas

Rowan helped Barnaby craft a very persuasive letter to his Gran. "Don't use such big words," he kept saying, "she'll know I didn't write it."

To his delight, he received the best response he could have hoped for. 

Happy not to see you until Summer. - Belladonna

Barnaby was the first person to rush up to McGonagall and put his name on the list of students staying at school. 

She smiled at him. "We'll be happy to have you," she said. "Christmas at Hogwarts really is a treat."

On the last day of the term, Barnaby and Sarah climbed up to the Astronomy tower to watch as all the students who were going home followed Hagrid through the freshly fallen snow down the hill to Hogsmeade station. 

Barnaby felt the smile breaking out on his face, his heart thumping madly. Two whole weeks without being at home. No one to yell, curse, or insult him. An actual Christmas dinner, not just knicking a few extra apples from the pantry in the middle of the night. 

"There they go," said Sarah, as the last of the students disappeared from view. "Free at last."

"Yep," said Barnaby. "I suppose we should start studying."

Sarah smiled wickedly at him. "Well, we could...but it'd be a shame to ignore all that beautiful snow down there."

He grinned. "I hope you're not challenging me to a snowball fight, Spellman. I won't being showing you any mercy."

She trotted off toward the stairs. "I'll grab my gloves and meet you on the training grounds!"

Barnaby went to put on his own winter clothes, then crunched through the snow to the training grounds. He didn't see Sarah anywhere, but he did notice that quite a lot of snow had been piled up over by the frozen training dummies. 

"Sarah?" he called, stepping over to it. 

She popped out from behind the snow mound and flung a snowball at him. It hit him in the chest, coating his Slytherin sweater. Sarah giggled as she ducked down again.

"Hey! That's not fair! We didn't say 'go' yet!" he yelled, running over to to use a training dummy as cover. 

"This isn't about 'fair,' this is war!" she shouted. She threw two more snowballs at him, though they both missed by several inches. 

Barnaby rolled up his own snowball, waiting for her to pop up once more. "Got ya!" he yelled, knocking her knitted Gryffindor hat.

Barnaby had better aim than Sarah, but Sarah was using magic to form and throw snowballs faster. He could hardly move without being hit over and over again. 

"That's it!" he finally yelled, dropping his last snowball and sprinting toward her. 

She screamed and threw several more snowballs at him. Two of them hit, one on his leg and one on the shoulder, but he ignored them and dived over her snow fort, tackling her to the ground. They landed in the soft snow, laughing.

"I win," he said. 

"You cheated."

"Like I said, 'no mercy.'" 

She shook her head at him, her face pink from the chilly air. Tiny snowflakes clung to her eyelashes, and he could see tiny ribbons of green around the pupils of her blue eyes. Realizing he was still lying on top of her, he scrambled up and helped her to her feet. 

He was about to suggest they head inside to study again, when she asked, "Do you wanna build a snowman?"

She looked so excited that he had to laugh. "Well, of course."