Sand and Sun
By Cynder2013
The first day of winter was always a snow day in Burgess. Always, without fail, for three hundred and six years. Them's the rules when you're the home of Jack Frost (and a few other spirits, but we'll get to them later).
On this three hundred and sixth Winter Solstice, Jack waved to his friend, and First Believer, Jamie Bennett, as he flew past the boy's window, leaving a trail of snowflakes behind him. Jamie grinned and watched the Guardian of Fun stir up the storm until it was too cold for him to have the window open any longer.
"Snow day?" his sister, Sophie, asked from his bedroom door.
Jamie grinned. "Snow day!"
Sophie cheered and went running to the living room to tell their parents the good news, her ragged bunny teddy swinging precariously by the one paw she was holding. Mom's sound of annoyance that she was going to have to shovel the driveway could be heard from all the way upstairs.
Jamie grabbed his favourite book, the crypto zoology manual that Phil the yeti had signed for him during the events of Easter six years ago, and curled up on his bed to read until Mom and Dad told him to go to sleep. After about ten minutes there was a knock at his window.
"You ready for the snowball fight tomorrow?" Jack asked after Jamie let him in.
"I'm always ready for a snowball fight," Jamie told him.
Jack grinned and the two boys (well, one was a three hundred and twenty year old boy, but he still counts as a boy) high-fived.
"Hal's going to try to drag Cupid out of her castle," Jack said, as he landed on top of Jamie's bookcase, "but you can guess how well that's going to go."
Jamie nodded. With less than two months left until Valentine's Day, Cupid was going to be working harder than North was, even with Christmas Eve three days away. There was no way she'd stop for a snowball fight.
"Isn't Hal still mad at you because of the snow on Halloween?" Jamie asked.
Jack shrugged and several snowflakes fell over Jamie's head. "Nah, he just needed a nap. You know how he gets."
The spirit of Halloween was a notorious grump when he stayed up after midnight, despite the fact that his job required it.
"Jamie, time to go to sleep," Mom said from the door.
Jamie and Jack both looked at her. "Five more minutes?" they begged.
Mom shook her head. "You were up late yesterday. Go to sleep. Who are you talking to anyway, the Tooth Fairy?"
"Jack Frost, Mom," Jamie reminded her.
Mom looked more carefully around the room and finally saw Jack perched on top of the bookcase. "Oh, right. Sorry, Jack, I didn't see you there."
Jack shrugged. "I'm used to it."
He had been invisible for three hundred years after all. Being seen by an adult was something that he was most certainly not used to just yet, but he was working on it. If Mrs. Bennett could get used to (usually) seeing Jack and some of the other spirits (long story) then Jack could get used to being (mostly) seen by all of the Bennetts in Burgess (again, long story).
"Judging by the storm outside, Jack needs sleep as much as you do," Mom said.
Jack and Jamie looked at each other.
"The guest room's free," Mom said. "Go to sleep."
Jamie sighed as Mom walked out of his room. "But tomorrow's a snow day!"
Jack jumped down from the bookshelf and ruffled Jamie's hair. "The sooner you go to sleep the sooner it'll be tomorrow. Later, squirt."
"I'm taller than you are!" Jamie called after Jack as he flew out the window. Jack just laughed and disappeared into the blizzard.
Jamie grumbled as he tucked himself into bed. In less than ten seconds he was asleep. A golden streamer of dream sand touched down on top of his head and anyone who knew what to look for would have seen the dreams of sledding and snowball fights that formed.
All of the kids in Burgess were the first human beings in town to wake up the next day. Most of them barely took the time to gulp down breakfast before running outside to play in the snow. There were a few that didn't make it. Some older kids decided to spend their snow day inside reading or playing video games, and we should respect their decision. It wasn't their fault that they were growing up.
Monty had caught a cold so his mother wouldn't let him out of the house, but all of the other teenage Believers gathered in Jamie and Sophie's front yard and shouted at the door until Mrs. Bennett practically pushed her kids outside.
Jamie was immediately hit in the face with a snowball.
He laughed and wiped snow out of his eyes. "Who threw that?"
"Jack!" Cupcake said.
Six snowballs smashed into Jack as the wind brought him down from the tree he had been perched in, followed by an entire bucket of snow poured on him from above. Hal Oeve swooped down on his flying broomstick and scooped up more snow in his jack-o'-lantern bucket.
"Come on, seven against one?" Jack complained.
"You are Jack Frost," Hal said unnecessarily as he started making snowballs that ended up having fake blood mixed into them due to his zombie costume.
The snowball fight most certainly did not stay as seven against one. Five minutes in it had turned into a complete free for all, with about ten other kids having joined in at throwing handfuls of snow at anyone within range.
Jamie ducked one snowball that was flying at him so that it would hit Pippa instead. She came running at him with a handful of snow that she threw at his face as she passed by. Claude and Caleb tackled her into a snowbank.
"Thanks guys!" Jamie shouted.
Another snowball hit Jamie in the back. He laughed and spun around to return fire, but was interrupted by a rib-cracking cough that caused half of the snowball fighters to stop and look at him. Jack landed next to him.
"Are you alright?" Jack asked once Jamie had stopped coughing.
"Yeah," Jamie said. "I just breathed in some snow or something."
Jack looked him up and down. "Are you sure? You're looking pale."
Jamie grinned. "I'm fine." He threw the snowball he was holding at Jack and ran in the other direction.
Jack laughed, worry forgotten. He brandished his staff and sent half a dozen snowballs flying through the air towards Jamie. Jamie's race to outrun them was brought to a sudden halt when he collided with a person taller than him who was standing on the sidewalk. Most of the snowballs had already been intercepted by Sophie and a few other kids who had run directly into their path, but one had survived to splatter on the unfortunate person's dark coat.
Jamie stumbled backwards. "Sorry!"
The person he had run into didn't reply. Jamie looked up at them and suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the snow. The man looking down at him had a sapphire crescent moon in the centre of his forehead and more tattoos of skeletal trees framing his green eyes. He was a vampyre.
"Jamie Bennett!" the vampyre said. "Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; harken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!"
He pointed at Jamie with one finger and Jamie's forehead started burning with pain. He fell to the ground and his friends all ran over to him.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" Pippa said. "He's got that thing on his forehead!"
All of the other kids who had joined the snowball fight immediately found somewhere else to be. Jack and Hal went over to Jamie and the others.
"Aw man..." Hal said when he saw the Mark outlined on Jamie's forehead. "Can he still see us?"
"Of course I can see you," Jamie grumbled while Cupcake hauled him to his feet. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Vampyres don't see us," Hal said. "Vampyres never see us."
"He's not a vampyre yet," Sophie said fiercely.
Jamie let out another cough that sounded like it should have landed his lungs somewhere in New York. His friends all looked at each other with worried looks on their faces, even Pippa.
"Let's get you home," Jack said to Jamie.
They all formed up around Jamie, hiding him from the many prying eyes there were sure to be once the news got out. A block away from the Bennett house, Hal jumped back onto his broom and told them that he was going to go tell Cupid what had happened.
"And I will drag her here with the Haunted House if I have to," Hal said. His Haunted House was the child (that was the easiest word to use) of Baba Yaga's hut and was as strong as a good team of horses.
Sophie unlocked the door with Jamie's key. "Mom! Mom!"
Mom went running downstairs when she heard Sophie's yell, brandishing the pair of scissors that she had been using. Jamie looked up at her and she gasped. Tears started running down her cheeks.
Jack and Cupcake took charge. Jack pried the scissors out of Mrs. Bennett's hand and got her, Jamie and Sophie seated at the table with mugs of hot chocolate. Cupcake put Pippa and Caleb to work making something for lunch while Claude booted up Jamie's laptop so that he could search for the nearest House of Night.
"Aww man," Claude said after a few minutes of searching. "It looks like you're going to be in Philadelphia."
"That's five hours away," Jamie complained. Then he coughed.
While everyone, even Pippa, was assuring Jamie that they would be coming to visit him even if stealing snow globes from North was required (that was Jack's suggestion), Hal and Cupid arrived. Hal had changed out of his zombie costume into a more appropriate Gryffindor-on-Casual-Friday (which was the most normal outfit he owned), but all that fake blood probably wouldn't have been noticed next to Cupid's giant red butterfly wings.
After Cupid had hugged everyone in the room and pressed a box of chocolate into Jamie's hands, Caleb dished out the macaroni and cheese that he had made (with minimal help from Pippa). They lingered over the table until two things happened in quick succession; one of Cupid's lovebugs knocked frantically at the window, and Jamie coughed up a lung.
"There's a problem back at the Cloud Castle," Cupid sighed. She gave Jamie one last hug before flying out the door.
Jamie coughed again. Mom stood up and started ushering him to his room to pack before Jack revealed that he and Cupcake had already filled a suitcase. They couldn't all fit into the car, and the other kids couldn't leave without telling their parents anyway, so Cupcake, Pippa, Claude and Caleb had to settle for waving after the Bennetts as they drove away.
Jack flew close to the car for the entire drive. Hal didn't like being around all the exhaust fumes, but the look on Jamie's face whenever he looked up and saw that Jack was still there was well worth a little coughing.
At last they arrived at the gates of the Philadelphia House of Night. The huge wrought iron gate and towering wall were the only slightly scary things about the place as far as Jack could see, and those were dwarfed by the skyscrapers all over the city. The school itself was a fairly large brick mansion with one funny looking steel extension that was taller than the rest of the building.
Standing behind the gate was a tall vampyre with a Mark that looked like two stylized bulls butting heads over his eyebrows. Seconds before Jamie and Mom got out of the car, the gate opened soundlessly and the vampyre walked over to them.
"Jamie Bennett," the vampyre said. "Welcome to the House of Night."
"Kind of creepy how he knows your name," Jack commented.
The three Bennetts pretended that they hadn't heard Jack speak, but when the vampyre wasn't looking Sophie nodded.
Jamie got his suitcase out of the car and hugged his mother and sister before walking through the gate with Jack at his side. As the gate closed he turned around and waved. Sophie waved back.
Hal hovered beside them and said something about scouting out the area before flying off again. North and Bunnymund would have approved.
The vampyre, who introduced himself as Saber Blackthorn (yes, really; you know he chose it himself), told Jamie that he would be his mentor and would Jamie like a tour now or after breakfast?
"Breakfast?" Jamie asked.
"Vampyres sleep during the day," Jack reminded him.
"Oh, right," Jamie said. "Now is fine."
"And what do you want your name to be?" Saber asked as he walked up the drive. "This is the House of Night; you can have a new start here."
"Jamie Bennett," Jamie said quickly. He looked at Jack for a split second and added, "Frost."
Jack grinned.
"Jamie Bennett Frost," Saber repeated. "Cool."
The tour was long and after a while both Jack and Jamie were completely lost. They hadn't seen Hal since they arrived. Maybe he was having better luck. The student dorms were all in the weird extension, so at least Jamie would be able to reliably find his room.
"I think your roommate was waiting up for you," Saber said. "You're on the third floor, room three-oh-four."
Jamie picked up his suitcases from where he had left them in the front hallway of the dorm building. His roommate opened their door seconds after he stopped in front of it. The roommate was an excitable older boy named Thor Hercules (don't worry, we'll still be here when you finish laughing) who had clearly imbibed way too much coffee in order to stay up past his bedtime and just couldn't get over the fact that Jamie was only fourteen.
Jack looked on with more than a little amusement as Thor talked and talked and talked. It didn't seem like he was ever going to stop, but at around two o'clock the caffeine crash hit hard and he dropped to sleep in the middle of a sentence.
"About time," Jack chuckled.
Jamie started to say something but was interrupted by a huge yawn.
Jack laughed again. "You should probably go to sleep too. You have school at...does this say eight at night?"
Jamie took his class schedule (which, as an aside, had been printed two days before) from Jack. "Yeah, eight o'clock. And breakfast starts at seven? Do I really have to work on less than five hours of sleep?"
He did.
"I'll see about making it a snow night," Jack promised. Jamie grinned before yawning again.
Jack decided to hang around until Jamie fell asleep. An hour of tossing and turning later, he was pretty sure there was something wrong. He cleared his throat. Jamie lifted the pillow that was currently on top of his head and looked up at Jack.
"Are you okay?" Jack asked.
Jamie sighed. "It's not nighttime."
For a second, Jack wasn't sure why that was important. Then he realized that it was, in fact, very important. He opened the window and told Jamie that he'd be back in a minute before flying out.
Jamie continued to toss and turn while he waited. His mind wandered. He thought about the plastic rings that showed up at their school last Valentine's Day, leftover spiders, skulls and bats from Halloween that Hal had painted hearts on (like an adorkable, lovesick fool) after he and Cupid had started dating. He remembered the experimental dark chocolate and pumpkin chocolates that Cupid had snuck into the Burgess Easter eggs and how much Sophie had laughed when Tooth chewed out Bunny for encouraging tooth-harming behaviour in impressionable children. Then there were all the snow days, as many as Jack could get away with without them falling behind in school, when they all skated and had snowball fights and raced their sleds until their faces and hands were numb from the cold.
Jamie was never going to experience any of that again. He would be at the House of Night until he graduated and Changed into a vampyre, or until his body rejected the Change and he died. Either way, he'd never see his human friends and family again. Humans and vampyres didn't mix. (He was wrong about this, by the way. He would see his human friends and family again, Parent's Day is a thing at the House of Night, and humans and vampyres did mix, it just normally didn't go very well. However, it was way past vampyre midnight and he was way too tired to think straight.)
Jack got back before Jamie's inner monologue could get really depressing. He was holding his staff out behind him and using it to carry a yawning Sandy, who had been following Jack too slowly for his liking. Sandy took one look at Jamie and his eyes widened. He looked at Jack and formed a crescent moon in sand above his head, followed by a pair of eyes and a question mark. Jack hadn't taken the time to fully explain the situation.
"He can see us, Sandy," Jack said. "Like I told you, he needs some help getting to sleep."
Sandy rolled his eyes and shook his head. Jack really hadn't taken the time to explain.
"I'll have dreams if you use your sand, right?" Jamie yawned.
Sandy nodded and collected a handful of Dreamsand. He looked at Jamie and formed a question mark above his head.
Jamie nodded. "Yeah, hit me. And, thanks."
Sandy smiled and blew the Dreamsand into Jamie's face. The boy's eyes fluttered shut and he fell limply onto his bed. Sandy grabbed one side of the twisted blankets, Jack grabbed the other, and the two Guardians straightened the blankets out and made sure that Jamie was snuggly tucked in. Jack grinned when he saw the golden snowflakes dancing above Jamie's head.
Sandy yawned again. He should have been sleeping too—there was only so much time between nightfall in the northern hemisphere and nightfall in the southern hemisphere—but working overtime for one of their kids was well worth it. Speaking of working...Sandy tapped Jack on the shoulder and formed snowflakes and sleds and snowmen with his sand.
Jack sighed. "Yeah, Northern Ireland is scheduled to get some extra snow. Do you think Hal will mind keeping an eye on him?"
The images above Sandy's head changed and somehow became what was unmistakably a kid wrapped in bubble wrap. Sandy formed an X over this image and raised an eyebrow at Jack.
"I guess you're right," Jack said. "But...I did promise him a snow night."
Sandy smiled and shook his head.
The two Guardians flew away, closing the window softly behind them. Jamie Bennett Frost rolled over in his sleep and smiled, caught up in dreams about snow days. Outside, the sun shone.
A/n: Because the RotG fandom needs more weird crossovers.
That sentence can be as sarcastic as you want it to be.
-Cynder2013