Swiping a loose strain of hair from her face, Mina took a step back from her snowball and pulled out her wand. It was the perfect size to be moved atop her base. It was going to be heavy and she knew that no one was going to offer to help her, so she might as well use what she was taught. Giving her wand a swish and flick, she cast a simple levitation charm on it and moved it to where it needed to be.

Giving her snowman a quick look, she smiled. It was coming along rather well and she just needed to form a head before she could start on the details. It was going to be all about the details!

Plopping herself in the snow, she started forming the last ball. The head was going to only take her a few minutes and then the fun was going to start!

Once she had finished rollling the first ball, Kourtney stood up and eyed it critically. Okay. She could make one kind of snowman....or she could make a different kind. Her gaze wandered around the clearing before an idea struck her. No one said the snowman had to be standing up did they?

With a grin, she began to roll two additional balls of snow. Roll, roll, roll, roll. After several minutes, she placed the smallest ball on the ground, and then followed it up with two more balls of equal size, but slightly larger than the original ball.

With a giggle, she grabbed a few loose sticks and stuck them into the balls of snow, making arms pointing toward and legs pointing straight up. Hmm.

She scooped up a few rocks and placed them as the eyes and the nose. Taking a few smaller rocks, she decorated the snowman with a semi-circle of rocks in a frown. Frown, then nose, then eyes since the man was flipped.

Stepping back, she surveyed her work. Not bad. From where she stood, the snowman was in an unpside down position, head on the ground. It looked as though it were performing a headstand while smiling. And since she often won the headstand contests for who could stay balanced on their head for the longest, it was no surprise that the snowman was built in this position.

As she continued to work on her unicorn head, Stella occasionally glanced around at the other snow creations being built around her, and raised an eyebrow as she saw a first year from her own house also making a unicorn. It didn't really bother her, simply because she was making sure to spend enough time on the details that she knew hers would be as realistic as possible. And once she finished with the head, minus details such as the horn she was still planning on working on, she moved back to the body. Time to sharpen the details there, and she spent time smoothing out the body until it looked almost velvety. At least, as velvety as snow could look. It was definitely smooth, though, so she moved on to the tail. Using her wand to carve out delicate lines to indicate hair, she stood back once she'd finished with a smile. It looked good, but still not quite perfect. She needed to go back to the join between head and body, make sure that area was as perfect as the rest of her sculpture was.

Therefore, she picked up a bit more snow and worked it into the neck area, building up the mane even more before carving out hair just as she'd done on the tail. Of course, she couldn't finish things off until she added the horn, so she glanced around again. It looked like there were a few icicles hanging from the treehouse, so she went over there and used her wand to slice one off. Holding the almost foot-long length of ice in her gloved hand carefully, she returned to her snow unicorn. Time to figure out how to add the new horn to her head, btu as she looked at the icicle, she decided more details were needed. Setting the icicle cut-end down in the snow on the ground, she pulled her wand out and murmured a charm that, as she traced a spiral out, carved the ice into a delicate matching spiral looping around the horn. Then she cast another freezing charm to harden her work, then picked the ice horn up again. Now it was time to give her unicorn its horn.

Reaching out with her free hand, she scooped out a shallow dip in the middle of her sculpture's forehead, then carefully lifted the horn into place. Returning some of the snow to the hole, she held the horn with one hand while she pulled her wand out yet again. "Frigidus." She froze the snow around the horn, then lightly cast a hot air charm to smooth the area out again, just so it was perfect. Then she added a few tendrils of snow mane hair around the horn to further disguise any join, before stepping back again to critique her sculpture. It still didn't quite look perfect to her, but as she kept looking, she realized the problem. The sculpted eyes looked too dead, and didn't correspond with the sparkling horn her unicorn now had. Thinking how to fix that, she came up with an idea. Reaching up, she took her earrings off, then held them in a hand as she brandished her wand yet again. "Geminio!" Replicating the earrings, she carefully returned the originals to her ears before moving forward again and sliding the duplicate diamonds into the eyes of her unicorn. Now its eyes sparkled too, so she stood back again. She was happy with her snow unicorn, which was the important part. She just had to hope others appreciated it as well.

Rose nodded as she finished her lions mane, stepping back and observing her work, liking what she saw. 'Right, I'll start on the face!' she smiled, getting to work.

Scott decided to take a quick walk around the grounds to see what he was up against. The competition was brilliant, as many had elegant sculptures, rather than snowmen.
Walking over from a magnificent looking unicorn, he passed many fantastic creations, before finally arriving at Cael's. He stared at the unicorn in disbelief, then glanced at the older girls unicorn, which was much better.

How original.

He looked back at his eagle, and then around to check that no one copied him, or worse; him them. Next he walked over to Cael and spoke softly. "That's fantastic" he said, now impressed by the unicorn. "Have you seen my eagle?" he said gesturing at his creation, and then laughing. "And Nate's egg?"

Ira quickly sketched out a dragon as good as she could...
She proceeded to form the head of the dragon. She shaped a handfull of snow into a ball and thought about the various spells she can use to modify it...She imagined the dragon in her mind and carved it with hands. She felt that she could carve her dragon much better with her hands rather than using magic! She carved out a long horn from another handful of ice. Now how to fix it to the top of her dragon's egg? Maybe gluing spell would be of help, but she was doubtful. Whats the harm in trying? "Lentesco!" she cast the spell at the horn..She had kept them on the ground in the way she wanted to position it. It did not stick properly as she had feared. So it was better to join without use of magic!

Edvard headed out onto the grounds clad from head to toe in winter clothes complete with mittens and a cap. He was heading out to the snowman building competition with a less than enthusiastic Charms professor in tow. "Come on Thea it will be fun, I promise! You can't stay cooped up in the dusty castle when the weather is marvelous, it's not good for you.." Eddie had seen the snow and sunshine from his window and had decided to take a day outside. Forget the grading and lesson planning for a day and just have fun in the snow with the kids. Dash and Gemma were supervising along with a special guest judge so Eddie decided to head out. He only stopped to drag along Althea who was as per usual was sitting in her office poring over a charms book.

As they came out to the lake where all the kids were gathered he called back to her "Althea come and help me build a snow man complete with a carrot nose and bowler hat and everything...." Eddie said enthused hoping that she wouldn't protest. Crouching down he started to scoop up snow.

Ira proceeded to make neck. Should the neck have scales or no? It would look nice to have scales on neck.So she carved lots of small small triangular shapes from the snow and proceeded to attach them to the neck. Then she joined the neck to the head part. It looked really nice to see, at least according to her.
Ira felt like something was missing from her dragon...Oh yes! Eyes! She wondered what she should do for eyes. She looked over to her fellow students to see what they were doing. She saw a girl making maybe unicorn or some animal. She had fixed beautiful diamond eyes...How to do it? Maybe here transfiguration could help. She tried to remember what Kurumi had taught her in the practice room...

Ira took a piece of paper that had been lying in her bag and tried to transfigure it into small beautiful stone. She formed an image in her mind of what she wanted and "Co-vah-dium" She swished her wand and tapped once on the paper...Her spell had worked correctly! She now held a beautiful small stone which was exactly as she had visualized.
But the dragon has two eyes, right? So, maybe duplication charm would help her... "Geminio!" and with a swish her stone was duplicated.
She fixed the stones as eyes to the head of her dragon.


OOC: Sorry for double posting...Can the two posts be merged, please?

Althea appreciated the matchy-matchiness of Eddie's winter gear. There was something that irritated her about hats and scarves and mittens and things not matching in some way or another. Colour schemes, or something.

"Its perfectly good for me." She answered, but of course had gone right along anyway. It wasn't like she was often thought of to go to these things, so she actually appreciated being dragged along. Probably she'd have fun in spite of herself.

"Oh you're ridiculous." She said, at the 'build a snowman' request. But she was smiling as she said it, and it came out fondly instead of shrewish, and his enthusiasm was sort of hard to turn down. She was dressed warmly too of course, Althea not being one to take stupid risks with her health. She snugged her scarf tighter around her neck and went over to join him.

...

"... what do I do?"

''Ryan had finished what he was doing so he got to work on the next thing.He smiled at what they created.

But no, look, she had HAIR!

Paulie laughed as she pulled out a random blonde wig. "That's pretty realistic, actually." Huh. So, she borrowed it from a friend. "What, like from that evil queen girl?" The one from the bouncy castle? Oh lordy, that girl was somethin' else!

So, his job was to find some rocks. Hahhhh. Okay, that was easy enough. "As good as done, Princess," he said with a salute, then he did an about-face and wandered off a little further to get some good rocks.

Alyssa looked over when she heard Professor's Roslund and Schirmer's voices. She looked over and saw them trudging in the snow towards them. "Hey look guys. That's our Astronomy and Charms Professors coming to join us. That's so cool. They're going to build a snowman too. Now we've almost got the entire teaching staff here. I wonder whether Professor Thereos and Lafay will join us too. That would be awesome. I can't wait to see what creation they'll come up with."

"It's a sampo." Eino replied nervously as they walked side by side to a vacant area. The two of them, they would need a lot of space to build their snowman. "That means it's bewitched to bring good luck." He didn't now how true that was but even if it lacked the magic it could still be used for other things astrolabes were usually used for.

He finally stopped and began to gather some snow by sweeping it with his feet towards the center, creating a small heap. At least now that they could begin their snowman building there wouldn't be any awkward silents. "Any creative ideas for a snowman?" He asked as he continued to sweep some snow towards the heap, this time with his hands. He didn't want to use too much magic, because that defeated the purpose of building it. This was something we could do without it, so he would keep his wand in his pocket. He also didn't want Sierra to have to get on her knees and start gathering the snow, that would get her clothes wet and dirty, and he didn't want that to happen.

"You know, Eino," Sierra said, getting down on the ground to get closer to the snow, "good luck is something I'm running a little short on these days." It was a short and simple admission, but it was true. He'd never even begin to imagine what she'd gone through this past summer. This past holiday break, too. She looked over at him for a split second then focused some on the snow.

"I don't know," she said, shrugging as she used her gloved hands to push the snow together. "This is...the first snowman I've ever made." She didn't look as she said that. It was another admission. She was a serious person, and she typically involved herself in practical things. This snowman building, though, she was finding it...well, fun. "Let's just start building and see what we end up with." She looked up at Eino, gave a tiny smile, then got right back to shoving the snow together.

Eino caught Sierra looking at him for a brief moment, but then she looked away. He hoped that wasn't as a result of something he did. He was rather happy that she seemed to like her gift, and it also seemed like luck was something she needed so that astrolabe better get its charm on.

The first time building a snowman?! Eino looked up, shocked. He built snowmen, well snowdragons, frequently when he was younger, but ever since he began spending his winters at Hogwarts he had stopped. "Not even when you were a young lass? I used to build them when I was younger, but not anymore." There was always too much to do, and no good reason to build them, but now he had the perfect reason to build a snowman. He glanced over at Sierra and smiled, then turned away quickly.

He continued to push the snow together, until they had sufficient to create the base for the snowman. "We should start creating a ball, for the bottom of the snowman." He said and began to shape the big heap of snow into a ball, then smooth the surface.

"Nope, not even when I was younger," she said, shaking her head. "I wasn't deprived or anything, though." She laughed a little. "I have a wonderful father who's done everything he can to give me a padded life." She pushed the snow together as she said this. Soon, she started to notice they had pushed together enough to create the bottom half of a snowman. She helped Eino push it all together and smooth it out.

"I just never had the urge to run out into the snow and build a snowman. I just gathered snowballs and chucked them at my brother," she added. She passed him a smirk on that note. Somewhere in the middle of shaping the ball, Sierra's hand managed to smooth right on over Eino's hand. Sure, her hands were gloved, but it embarrassed her all the same. She blushed a teeny, tiny bit then sat back a little. "You know, we could just create a wizard snowman. Nothing elaborate, just...an awesome looking snowman maybe carrying a wand." Or, a stick made to look like a wand. She sure as heck wasn't going to give up her wand.

"That is great! They aren't going to beat our Yogi though." Minerva turned towards the professors. "Hello Professor Roslund and Professor Schirmer."

Well, it hadn't really been Eino's parents who encouraged him out into the cold to build snowdragons. In fact, quite the opposite. His mother dreaded the idea of Eino out in the cold weather, touching the cold snow with his bare hands. She often protested against it, but Eino always found a way to sneak outside and do it. "At least now you are building one." He said and smiled. Since it was her first one, Eino had to make sure it was extra special, so she could be proud of it. They couldn't build just any dopey looking snowman now.

"Snowball fights... I've never had one of those." He admitted shyly. They seemed rather fun, but his upbringing had been rather solitary and he didn't have any brothers or sisters to play with. Snowman building was something he could do by himself, so that was all he did. That and snow dementors, but when he actually found out what dementors were he stopped doing them. "I didn't know you had a brother." He didn't know much about her at all, but definitely not that she had a brother.

Then, as he was smoothing the surface of the snow, their hands touched. Eino was wearing no gloves and the warmth of her gloves made him realize just how cold the snow really was. He couldn't help but to be a little embarrassed, but he rubbed his hands together, to warm them, pretending it hadn't happened. "Splendid idea!" He exclaimed and nodded in agreement, as though nothing had happened. A wizard snowman would be fantastic. "Perhaps he could be casting a spell?" He suggested, as he thought of any possible spells that would make their snowman even more awesome.

Of course Eino had never had had a snowball fight. He just didn't seem like the type to unexpectedly pelt someone in the head with a huge ball of snow. Sierra, on the other hand, had loved to catch her brother off guard. "So I'm making a snowman with you, ...which means you'll have to have a snowball fight with me," she answered. Just not now, since someone had just gotten in trouble for that.

"Alex is...sort of my twin brother," she explained. "He's my half brother, but we were born at the same time." ...and that's just all she'd say about that. Other than... "We have different fathers, which means he's really not a Greingoth." She didn't know what his real name was supposed to be, though. "He's a Hufflepuff." What a shame. Although, supposedly his father had been one, too.

Realizing they'd finally built the bottom half of the snowman, Sierra sat back and admired their work. Snowman building was hard. Wasn't there a charm for this? "Hmm. Okay," she agreed. "We can put a stick in his hand to make the wand," she said, because again, she wasn't offering up hers.

The corners of Tori's mouth twitched into a smile. "Maaaaaaaaaayyyyyyybe," she drawled sneakily. "Maaaaaaaaaybe not." Oh but she totally had. Lola's wig, meet your new master! They could call their snowoman Miss Jones in honor of the insane Quidditch captain.

She waved bye to Paulie as he trotted off to find some rocks and decided to get started on Miss Jones' snowman mate. Tori picked up a nice big clump of snow and started rolling it, rolling right past Sierra Greingoth in route to building her snowman.

Oooooh it was SO tempting to start a snowball war right now... SO tempting!

Ira was by now really tired from all the carving. And she had just still carved out only the head part! She wondered if she would be able to finish her dragon or no before the competition ended...
But the surface of the dragon was still very rough. Ira decided that she would use the smoothening charm later at once for the whole body. She proceeded to make the back of her dragon.

Eino nodded and chuckled. That seemed to be the safe response for everything. Nothing could go wrong with a simple nod and smile, right? He would love another excuse to spend more time with Sierra, he just didn't know if he would be able to throw a snowball at her. "I would be honored." What in the name of Merlin was that? Yeah, this was why he would rather just nod and smile.

Alex... from Hufflepuff? "Oh my buttons, I do know an Alex from Hufflepuff!" Eino exclaimed after hearing Sierra's story, which confused him a little, but he didn't want to be nosy and ask questions. As for the boy, he did know him, maybe not the same one, but he knew an Alex from Hufflepuff. He had met him last year, during Astronomy lesson. "Sounds like a complicated family..." He commented nervously. He had his own share of complications within his family, but he hadn't told that to anyone yet, not even that his real name wasn't Eino Uronen. He felt like he was lying to everyone, but most importantly to himself. He hoped that if he continued to pretend he was Eino he would be Eino, not knowing he wouldn't change just by acknowledging his real identify.

"Oh, yes... A stick will work." Eino said as he snapped out of it and turned his attention to Sierra. After the bottom was completed he began to work on a different snowball for the snowman's middle part. "This one should be a tad smaller, then we put it on top of it and smooth it out." He told her as he continued to build it.

Ok... so it was winter. And cold... and the plants were hibernating. That didn't mean that she had to as well. After dressing warmly in a button up, navy, fleece trenchcoat, Seren had pulled on her scarf and her boots. She had almost left her office when she remembered her gloves! How was she supposed to build a snowman without gloves?

Arms swinging, and singing a little tune as she made her out onto the grounds, Seren couldn't help but beam at the scene before her. Students!!! so many students and all building snowmen! But of course, she had heard of the competition.

It was going to be such good fun!

Finding a good spot, with plenty of snow, Seren took a handful of it and started pressing it into a ball.

Harlow was looking round for someone who needed help, or someone who could helo her if she got buried under a mountain of snow what was entirely possible.

She spotted Professor Bentley and she squealed in delight and picked her way over to her favorite professor. "Hi Professor Bentley," she threw her arms around the woman's calves. "I didn't know professors like to play in the snow," she giggled once she released the woman's legs for her tiny bear hug.

Harlow bent down and grabbed a handful of snow and started to roll it into a ball. She could make a pint sized snowgirl with icicles for hair. "Can I help you?" she asked showing Professor Bentley her little ball. It was a start.

If it hadn't have been for that tell-tale voice, Seren would have been at a complete loss as to why her legs were suddenly being bound. But because she was so familiar with little Harlow, she hadn't been taken by surprise. Patting the girl on the back gently, she gave the young snake a smile.
"Hello Harlow, and how are you doing this fine winters day?"
It really was a fine day, perfect for playing in the snow.

She laughed lightly as Harlow remarked on Professors playing in snow. Why wouldn't they? It was so much fun.
"Well I can't speak for the others, but I for one, love it!... it's far too much fun to miss out on." And there was no way she was going to keep herself holed up in her office or in the castle. Not unless hell freezed over. Pun intended.

"Oh help would very much be appreciated. I'm not very good at building snowmen... are you?"