The Hufflepuff common room was almost empty with the exception of Blaine lying on the sofa and a couple of third year girls sitting by the fire with their papers and pencils. The sun had barely just risen and it was beaming warmly through the tiny little windows in the room.

"Hey, dude." Sam stormed in through the door and managed to completely startle Blaine who was still kind of sleeping.

He sat up, squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath before turning to look at his best friend. Though he wanted to be annoyed, he was far too sleepy to be.

"It's 8.30am, and we don't have classes today. How were you out already?" Blaine asked, rubbing his eyes. He wrapped the duvet around himself tighter and pulled his feet farther under it to keep them from the cold.

Sam hurried to sit on the sofa next to Blaine, but he threw a pillow on the spot his legs weren't taking up and shrugged his shoulders, leaving Sam no choice but to sit in the armchair.

"I woke up like two hours ago, because I remembered I had detention-"

Blaine's eyes widened. "You what?"

Sam chose to ignore that and went on with his explaining.

"And then, after that, I went out for a walk and what do I see? There is snow. So much snow-" He threw his arms in the air with the widest smile on his face.

"Principal Sylvester said that the Quidditch match is canceled because of the snow though." He then said, sounding apologetic, whilst he unwrapped himself out of his scarf and jacket.

"Apparently it isn't ideal to play when it's so freezing cold or something."

Blaine shuffled a bit on the sofa, managing to tuck a pillow between his back and the back of the sofa. "That was Sebastian Smythe, for sure. He's complained before. I see no reason why he wouldn't have complained now." He cuddled one of the pillows, shaking his head. "I just can't see why. Last time it was because one of their beaters was out with scrofungulus or something. I thought he'd be overjoyed to play against a team with a cripple as their captain." He wasn't that upset about not getting to play. He also wasn't sure if that was because of how sleepy he still was or just because he really didn't mind that much.

Sam shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, maybe it really just was principal's call. Smythe's the devil, but I'm sure he was sure they'd win easily."

-

Not two hours after Sam had left to meet Quinn somewhere, there were already plenty of people scattered around the room chit-chatting and laughing, whilst Blaine was still half-asleep on the couch – and nobody seemed to care.

That could've been for many reasons.

Maybe they were just trying their best not to stare at him and focused on something completely else with full commitment to do just that.
Maybe they were letting him be because he was still ‘the poor guy with the knee injury', or maybe it was because he was a prefect and they wanted to be on his good side.
Or maybe, just maybe, they really didn't care about a fellow, though older, Hufflepuff sleeping in the middle of their lounge. They were witches and wizards after all, and that was maybe the most boring thing imaginable.

For whatever reason none of the people had attempted to push him off the sofa, he still couldn't spend the entire day sleeping. He knew very, very well that he had to get up and get things done, even though he didn't have any actual school for the day.

With all of his willpower he set the pillows back in a neat row against the back of the sofa, got up with his duvet burritoed around himself and walked up the stairs to the dormitory of theirs. The steps were cold under his bare feet, and that made him get up to the bedroom even faster.

Once he did, he threw the duvet on his bed and sprinted to his closet in search of something to protect him from the cold – because no socks at all and plaid pajamas that were a size too small certainly weren't going to do the job. Not outside in the snow, anyway.

The Hufflepuff quickly found his uniform as well as the winter season cloak he owned, changing into those.

In the process of gelling his hair he went to the window and opened the light yellow curtains, revealing the prettiest, all white scenery he had ever witnessed. He put his fingers through his hair a couple more times, making sure his hair really would stay in place, before running – but not really, because uh, recovering knee injury, out of the Hufflepuff headquarters.

-

"We have no classes for the entire day and you waste it by doing what- Laying on the floor? Really, Satan?"

Santana huffed, waving her hand above her head. "And what exactly are you doing?"

Kurt shook his head, walking towards the Slytherin common room door. "I'm going out."

Santana got up immediately and smiled widely. It was hard to tell if the smile was genuine or mocking, but then again, it was Santana, so it was basically impossible for her to do anything without sounding or looking even the slightest bit mocking.

"Yeah you are." She said, throwing a robe at him. "I'll see you at lunch."

He got a wink from her before she was practically pushing him out of the door.

-

When Blaine got out of the two massive, wooden main doors of the castle and stepped into the snow, he was very mildly concerned about falling, especially considering that his knee was almost fully recovered from its last injury now.

The whole entire ground was covered in white, powdery snow and it glistened in a way that was like all the stars had landed on earth and powdered stardust all over it.

As he walked down the courtyard, headed to the lake, he was surrounded by tiny, sparkling snowflakes making their way down to the ground. Some of them didn't get just that far, instead gracefully setting on top of Blaine's head and his gelled hair as well as his cloak.

He came to the lake and sat down on a stump, taking a deep breath. ¨

He couldn't think of a better way to spend a day of cancelled classes than sitting by the lake, surrounded by snow.

-

"Oh, hi."

It kind of felt like Blaine jumped two feet into the air, but maybe more realistically he flinched and nearly fell on the ground. Keeping it totally cool after noticing who had greeted him, he put on a smile and shook his head.

Kurt chuckled, ducking his head. How did he feel so horrible for unintentionally scaring Blaine? For the first four years of his career at Hogwarts he had been going around scaring younger housemates of his with Santana all the time, enjoying it immensely.

Blaine showed to be an exception, in every aspect of the word and in every situation Kurt found him in.

"I'm really sorry. I didn't really expect anyone to be here."

The Hufflepuff laughed and nodded. "Yeah, me neither. Apology accepted." ¨

Clearly Blaine had taken up this habit, but he scanned Kurt from his perfectly styled hair to his toes that were hid inside the shiny, black shoes he was wearing and noticed that he wasn't necessarily prepared and dressed appropriately for the cold weather.

He furrowed his brows, which the Slytherin noticed.

"What?" He probably imagined it, but there was a hint of insecurity in the ever so confident Kurt Hummel's tone.

"I feel like maybe you didn't expect yourself to be here in the snow, either. Did you get kicked outside or-?" He asked with a hint of a smile, gesturing him to sit next to him.

Kurt bit his lip, breathing in the cold air through his nose. "Yeah, uh, Santana was very eager to get me out of her way. She had to catch up on so much homework and papers. I'm fine, though."

He sat on the edge of the stump, feeling like doing that had been the most stressful task of his life. Blaine was only inches away from him and that was very, very hard to ignore. Especially when he could feel his eyes – the breathtaking honey-colored eyes filled with golden specks of confetti, on him.

"Okay." Blaine breathed out with a smile, now sure that the best way he could spend the day was to be surrounded by snow and be accompanied by this particular boy sitting oh so close to him.

The two of them fell into fairly comfortable conversation about quite the most ordinary things you could talk about in the Wizarding world, including school and food and potions and spells and whatnot, never mentioning Quidditch. It wasn't that big of a deal anyway, and well, the last thing Blaine wanted to do was to go bashing the Slytherin team to Kurt – a Slytherin, who made his heart flutter in a way that certainly felt like it was caused by magic.

From the corner of his eye the Hufflepuff could see Kurt shivering and pulling the cloak around himself tighter, immediately without any further thinking causing him to duck his head and unwrap the black and yellow striped scarf from around his neck, handing it to him.

Kurt looked up from where he was looking at his hands on his lap and raised a brow at the other boy.

"You're freezing." He stated, quiet and kind, holding the scarf in front of him to take.

The Slytherin could feel his face heating up. His brain turned into mush, unable to produce any coherent sound not to mention words. If he was to believe any of the romantic comedies he'd ever seen, this was a thing that was done between people who cared about each other. People who cared about each other a lot. Of course, Kurt couldn't possibly take that in. Surely that wasn't the case at all. Wizards were far, far from muggles.

Hummel, get over yourself.

"Yeah, I- no. I'm okay."

Blaine lifted the scarf up and put it behind Kurt's neck despite his objections.

"A part of being a Hufflepuff is helping others, even if they're Slytherin." He said, effortlessly tying the piece of fabric around the other boy's neck.

Kurt felt like he couldn't trust himself with his words. Instead he looked up at Blaine, who was looking at him with the most breathtaking smile.

Not only was being kind the nature of Blaine's house, it was also the nature of his very self. So much so that when he was smaller, he only really knew how to be kind. People could've been throwing rocks at him and he wouldn't say a single mean word. Being in an environment where there were people who were mean by nature for years had taught him to be snarky and even mean when needed, but that truly fought against everything he was.

"Besides, you helped me. It's about time I returned the favor."

Kurt ducked his head, chuckling. "Okay, fine. I kind of always thought Slytherins were the persistent ones."

The Hufflepuff laughed and shook his head. "That is not something only Slytherins can do, no."

Oh, if Kurt hadn't noticed that.
And countless of other things Blaine just somehow magically was perfectly amazing at. Things that had never really fazed him before, too, but with this boy and at this point where he already kind of knew him, it almost felt like only seeing him breathe was like witnessing the eight wonder of the world.

He was in deep?
Yeah, he was, and very aware of that.

"Breaking the stereotypes every so often is important. I understand that the houses are old and respected and they are truly wonderful-"

Kurt quirked an eyebrow at him, trying not to laugh, which Blaine noticed. "They are."

"Bur what I don't understand are the problems created between the houses today. There have been rivalries from the very beginning, and the ones of us who haven't slept for all of our History classes, we know why and we respect that. But the students of this day being afraid of being seen talking to anyone but people who wear their colors? That is something I would personally like to change."

"Right." The Slytherin said, a little breathless. "Listen, Blaine."

He pinched his thumb to feel if he could actually still feel it. Was he really going to say what he was thinking of saying?

"Do- uhm. Are we, I don't know, friends?"

Blaine blinked at the question, not even sure if it had been an actual question. He searched Kurt's eyes, only finding unsureness in them as if they were reflecting his own feelings, being wildly unhelpful.

"Yeah. Of course." The Hufflepuff found himself saying, getting a hesitant smile from the other boy.

"Right. Okay. If that isn't breaking the stereotype." Kurt grinned.

Blaine leaned on his shoulder, returning the grin.

"As much as I would love to sit here with you the whole day and avoid any responsibility I have, I think I should probably head back in."

Kurt nodded, knowing exactly what the Hufflepuff was talking about. He also had several spells to learn and a paper on transfiguration that he had to write.

They both got up at the exact same second and before either of them knew anything, Blaine's arms were wrapped around Kurt and Kurt's hands were gripping Blaine's back a bit too tightly.

They stood there for a while that was so minimally uncomfortable it would've been weird if either of them had given it any thought. Neither of them really did, though.

They let go of each other, both a bit short on breath.

"See you."

"Yeah."

It was going to be very, very challenging to be friends with someone who smelled so good and who he was head over heels into.