Gloria Gibbon was draped over one of the chairs in the Gryffindor common room, a chair she pulled up to a table that ususally had exploding snap cards or wizards chess pieces on it but today it had her cauldron of potions notes. All the parchments, textbook, little bottles of ingredients. A smashed inkwell or two. She would really need to clean it out before next class.

"How does a Girding Potion even help endurance if all the ingredients are from flying things?" Gloria spoke to her textbook. Fairy wings, dragonfly thoraxes, Flying Seahorses! If Gloria had seen a seahorse flying past the window she would have thought the room had been transported underwater.

Instead, outside the frosted panes she looked at by rolling her head to the side, there was nothing but whiteness of snow covering every tree in the forrest and towards the distant mountains. Snow that begged to be packed into snowballs and chucked indiscriminately at targets. What would it take to organize an impromptu snowball fight?

Idea!

If she cleared the potions things she needed to review for the end of term final coming up out of her cauldron, she could make gigantic snowballs in the cauldron. Big ones that burst into snowdrifts when thrown, most likely. She tipped the cauldron on the side to spill everything out across the table.

Lydian Chenoweth had just finished having her daily snack from the kitchens in the dungeon when she heard the shout of laughter from her fellow peers of Hogwarts as they drifted outside into the landscape of snow. Lydian wasn't the type of person to join in with the crowds nor play with snow. It was far too childish for her to even comprehend.

She slowly decided to descend the moving staircases up towards the seventh floor and the Gryffindor tower. She had a fair bit of studying to do for her ongoing NEWT classes but as she made her way through the portrait muttering the password and sprinting towards the common room hoping to be completely alone, she noticed a small brunette student a few years her junior sat alone by the tables clearly studying. "Oh, I'm Sorry" she spoke weakly hoping she had not disturbed the girl in anyway.

With the last jingles and splats of Gloria shaking out the contents of her potion's kettle Gloria heard an older voice speak up.

"Oh, don't be, I wanted to do this," Gloria replied, not sure what the elder Gryffindor student was apologizing for. "Lydian, isn't it? Lydian Chinworth. No wait, I've got this: Chenoweth."

Satisfied at getting her name right, Gloria organized her now disorganized mess into two piles. "Potions homework should not be allowed when the snow is that good outside."

Lydian took her usual seat at the far of the room but this time she decided to move the table closer to the young students in case she needed anything as well as to keep her company if possible. She smiled warmly at the youngster and began to place her belongings upon the table neatly. "I know how you feel i have an assignment for Magical Creatures due in and everybody else seems to be having fun outside instead of working." She admitted.

With parchments now in one stack and incidentals clustered in another, Gloria brushed out the last bits of fluff out of the cauldron with her hand. "What sort of assignment has Hagrid left you that keeps you inside the castle?"

Care of Magical Creatures, by dint of involving magical animals tended to require work outside if not away from the castle courtyards entirely, given so many of the critters living along the pens and edges of the forest from Hagrid's garden to the Hospital Hut. The change of subject further distracted her from potions.

"We have a creature handling practical coming up," Gloria began, sounding so mighty and accomplished, "and I've managed to do the impossible by befriending a Porlock![1] I first noticed it by the horses Madam Nadge keeps by the Hut and then it started to go off by the pen of invisible horses that pull the carriages. Which why invisible horses need extra protection from a stubby Porlock I don't know."

1.	http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Porlock