Winter hits Salamandastron.
The volcanic mountain was always dormant but its inhabitants never were.
All doors and windows were shut to the cold and fires stoked, the fire lizard lay in quiet dormancy, polished and put away in a closet until the season of the corsairs came again on the frosty sea, and the mountain was white. Lava had long ceased to pour down the sides of the rocks, but it was replaced by droves of laughing hares tumbling down the snowy sides with their bright scarves flying, leverets kicking up snow at each other and squeaking ungracefully as companions stuffed snow down the back of their uniforms.
More often than not, a "wot!" was punctuated by someone being nailed in the face with a snowball and the roar of hooting laughter and pursuit that could wind on for hours ("Nail him, Brackers, nail him, wot!" "'Nail him'? I'll nail you, you foppish flippin' piece of slush! Get back here, wot! Surrender!") until someone smelled food–and then the stream of boiling hares reversed and fled back up the mountainside, with anyone standing in their way at risk of their own peril as they blazed a path through the snow-
("Oh bally bloomers, that was the corporal! You just ran over the corporeal!"
"I–sweet sainted aunt, I did! Speak t' me, sah, speak to me! Cripes, someone call the brigade! Call the whole infirmary; I've plastered the poor sah an' he's not gettin' up! I've laid 'im out; I've put him to pushin' up bally daisies!"
"No, you dunderbrain, he's comin' around, see, wot? Just needed some persuasion with a muffin or two.")
Not a moment of stillness was to be had until every last hare slumbered. Salamandastron's fires lay not entirely in their forges, after all.