Written for Hogwarts Challenges & Assignments - Term 14, Assignment 11 - Epidemiology, Task #1: Write about repeating a task.
Sharing the Joy of Snow
Oliver awoke to snow on the ground, a brilliant white blanket that stretched as far as the eye could see.
"Check out all the snow we've had, Perce!" he said excitedly.
Percy harrumphed and shook his head. "I'll take your word for it. I'm going to stay here under the covers where it's nice and warm."
"What?" Oliver exclaimed. "Look! There's easily enough to build a snowman—or several."
He felt like a kid again, eager to go outside and play in the snow until his stomach demanded that he stop and eat. Percy, on the other hand, seemed rather unimpressed by it all. He didn't even bother to look out of the window.
Percy sniffed. "I suppose so."
Oliver tilted his head. Percy seemed quite unhappy about the prospect of so much snow, now that he looked at him properly.
"What's gotten into you?"
"I always hated the snow," Percy said miserably.
Oliver stared at him. "What? How can you hate the snow?"
"It bungles everything up," he groused. "Muggles crash their cars, people want to stay home instead of going to work, and everything just goes to pot."
Oliver began to laugh. Of course Percy would see it that way, rather than appreciating the beauty of a fresh snowfall.
"What's so funny?" Percy asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing," Oliver said, climbing back into the bed. He wrapped an arm around Percy's shoulders and dropped a kiss into his curls. "Just thinking about how Percy-like that response was."
Percy let out a grumble that only amused Oliver even more.
"Look at it from my perspective, though," he said, running a hand through Percy's hair. "Snow can be a lot of fun, too. It's like...a fresh slate, or a new piece of parchment—the possibilities are endless."
Percy was silent for a moment while Oliver continued to play with his hair.
"Fine," he said at last. "I suppose we can venture outside for a little while."
Oliver let out a whoop, gave his boyfriend a kiss, and scrambled out of bed to get dressed.
...
"Are you actually comfortable in that, Percy?" Oliver asked, torn between amusement and concern. His boyfriend had donned what looked like several years worth of Weasley jumpers. The outermost jumper was a deep blue that matched Percy's eyes perfectly, but wearing so many layers gave him the appearance of a Pygmy Puff, rotund and fuzzy. Oliver privately wondered if he could even move his arms.
And that wasn't all. Percy was also wearing a thick pair of mitterns and a scarf that he'd had to wrap around his neck several times. Both knitted garments were probably courtesy of Mrs Weasley as well.
The redhead looked down at his outfit. "I'm more concerned about keeping warm. Frostbite is no joke—"
"Alright, I'm sorry I asked," Oliver said, cutting his boyfriend off before he could start spouting various facts about frostbite. He opened the front door and took a deep breath before stepping out onto the snow. It was his favorite kind of snow, the kind that crunched under his boots. He smiled as Percy emerged and looked around. "Isn't this amazing?"
"It's not bad," Percy acknowledged. "You were right about it being like a blank slate. It would almost be a shame to ruin it..."
"Nuh-uh." Oliver wagged a finger at him. "You're not getting off so easy, Perce. We came out here to build a snowman and that's exactly what we're going to do."
Percy sighed. "Fine. What do we do?"
"What do we—" Oliver shook his head. "Surely you've built a snowman before?" It was Percy's turn to shake his head. "Not even as a child?"
"No," Percy said, blushing. "I usually stayed inside while my siblings went out to play in the snow."
Oliver was momentarily lost for words. He knew that Percy was a homebody and preferred to stay inside whenever possible, but the idea that the other man had never experienced the joy of a quintessential snow day activity like making a snowman was incomprehensible. If Percy had never rolled large snowballs to stack as the snowman's body or spent the better part of an hour searching for the perfect stick arms, he had sorely missed out.
"Well, then," Oliver declared, "we're going to make the best snowman ever."
...
Oliver began by showing Percy how to roll a large snowball. Now that he was older, he had the option to use magic, but he wanted to do it the way that he had when he was younger—by packing a small snowball with his hands and rolling it around on the ground until it grew bigger and bigger.
"You have to sort of keep packing it down as you go, see?" He demonstrated this in an exaggerated way so that Percy understood what he meant.
Percy nodded. "Yes."
"We'll need three snowballs for the body, so why don't you make one that's slightly smaller than this? This one's the base."
Percy nodded and began to form a small sphere of snow with his hands. Oliver watched him for a minute before starting on his second snowball, the one that would become the snowman's head. He rolled it around just as he had his first, but stopped when it was a little smaller than the size he imagined Percy's would be.
Within a few minutes, both men were done, and Oliver helped Percy roll his snowball up onto the base.
"That's the torso," Oliver explained. "And this one here"—he lifted it up and placed it stop the torso—"is the head."
Percy smiled. "I see."
Oliver stood back to admire their handiwork. He was glad that they hadn't used magic, as he liked the slight imperfections of their snowballs—the rough texture, the uneven shapes.
"What do you think?" he asked, nodding at their creation.
Percy slowly walked around it, pausing from time to time to peer critically at it.
"It's not sleek and polished," he began, and Oliver waited for him to bemoan the mistakes that he saw. Percy surprised him with the next words that came out of his mouth, however. "But I kind of like it. My mother would say that it has charm."
Oliver began to laugh. "She absolutely would."
...
In the end, Oliver found a nice pair of sticks to serve as the snowman's arms, and Percy wrapped his scarf around its neck.
"Does it need a face?" he asked. "I thought snowmen were supposed to have faces."
Oliver grinned. "What, you're not ready to hightail it back inside? You're having fun, aren't you, Perce?"
Percy rolled his eyes and mumbled something about finishing what they had started. Oliver, still grinning, shook his head before conjuring a carrot and some pieces of coal.
"The carrot is the nose, and the coal makes up the eyes, mouth, and buttons," he said, handing the items to his boyfriend.
Percy pushed the carrot into the center of the snowman's head first, then carefully placed two pieces of coal above it. After checking to make sure that the eyes were properly centered, he moved on to making the mouth. This took him a bit longer—he couldn't decide whether to space out the coal or not. Oliver finally suggested that he space them out, and Percy did so with a small smile.
Now, the snowman's buttons were the final task to be done. This also took a bit of contemplating on Percy's part, but he was eventually able to find an arrangement that he liked with further input from Oliver.
"Well done!" Oliver clapped him on the shoulder. "Our snowman looks great."
"It does, doesn't it?" Percy said softly. He turned to Oliver and planted a kiss on his cheek. "I'm glad that we did this. It was, well, fun."
Oliver pretended to be shocked by this, even though he could tell that Percy had been enjoying himself. "Really?"
"Shut it, I know you're not really surprised," Percy grumbled. "Oh, don't give me that smug—stop it, Oliver!"
"Okay, I'll stop." Oliver tried to reign in his expression and made himself match Percy's more serious tone. "I'm glad that we did this too, Perce."
Percy shivered. "Can we go back inside now? My mittens are soaked through and I think our snowman is finished anyway."
Oliver took his boyfriend's hand and gave it a squeeze. "Of course. I think a nice, big mug of hot chocolate is in order."
WC: 1,403