A crowd hurried into the corridor, two of them sprinting forward without even having their robes properly on.
Manus:?
After thinking it over, Manus decided to go see who was bold enough to start a fight on Christmas morning.
After rounding the corner, the young couple from the corridor had already disappeared. They had probably gone to watch the excitement too.
When Manus arrived, he found that the commotion was much smaller than he had imagined. Pushing to the front, he saw that it was only a snowball fight.
It was a group of Gryffindors against a group of Slytherins. Black and Lupin, who had supposedly gone to clear snow, were conspicuously among them, while the younger Black was on the Slytherin side.
Each side had a massive pile of snow beside them, probably cleared away during the snow shoveling earlier. Now, they had become the two sides' ammunition depots.
Fist-sized snowballs flew back and forth through the air. The moment someone packed one, they tossed it without bothering to aim, then ducked down to make another without even checking whether they had hit anything.
No one knew who had hit them. They only knew that they kept throwing and kept getting hit.
At the sight, some people who had come expecting a good show sighed in disappointment.
Others watched eagerly, tempted to join in.
Of course, not to join that snowball fight. While the ammunition here was still snowballs, the intensity had clearly gone far beyond an ordinary game.
"Let's find somewhere else and have a snowball fight."
"Let's go!"
A heavy snowfall had begun yesterday afternoon and continued through the night. It had not stopped completely even now, only weakened. Outside Hogwarts, snow deep enough to swallow two-thirds of a boot was everywhere.
They could pick any spot