Hogwent Calendar | The Coldest Morning of the Year | Sebinis | AO3
Winter arrives without a sound, settling over Feldcroft in the night with a single breath.
Winter arrives late, like a guest who’s grown tired on the road — yet from her very first step she commands the world with a mistress’s hand, ordering the cold to bite.
Winter arrives.
And Ominis wakes — sharply, with a jolt, as if someone has nudged him beneath the ribs. But Sebastian beside him is asleep.
As is the whole house; the space dozes under layers of silence and the occasional soft sigh.
Ominis can’t understand what stirred him.
If only he had sight — he would see snow drifting slowly outside the window, surprisingly large flakes, soft, downy. If only he could see — the world is bright, bright, bright, almost like day.
But Ominis’s eyes hold only night, and he reaches carefully for his wand, whispering, Tempus.
Tempus answers in the same quiet whisper somewhere at the base of his skull: 3:15 AM.
Ominis sinks back into the pillow and exhales.
Goes still.
Draws in the air through his nose.
Opens his eyes wide.
The air hits him with the sharpness of a honed knife, the bite of strong alcohol, the mercilessness of a winter that has only just begun.
Ominis swallows, pushing the ache down his throat, and breathes out — softly — warming himself from inside.
His nose starts to chill, and he burrows deeper into the pillows, pulling the blanket tighter.
But beneath that blanket is Sebastian as well; they share one between them, and Ominis’s movement tugs Sebastian closer. He presses a hot — nearly searing — nose somewhere into Ominis’s shoulder, and Ominis can’t help the uneven breath that escapes him.
It feels unbearably loud.
“Wha’s wrong…?” Sebastian murmurs, sleepy, hoarse, quiet.
And Ominis answers in the same whisper.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something woke me…”
Sebastian stills — completely. Ominis feels his heat, his sudden attentive tension.
A few seconds later he relaxes.
“It’s all right,” he says.
“It’s just the night,” he says.
He pauses for a moment.
“…it’s snowing,” he adds — softer, far softer, almost on an exhale you could miss.
“Snowing, then,” Ominis echoes.
“Snowing…” Sebastian repeats, and in his voice Ominis hears something inexplicably warm. He can’t make sense of it.
“Cold?” Sebastian asks when Ominis has already decided they won’t be talking anymore.
“No,” Ominis blurts out immediately — in a whisper. And hides his nose in the blanket.
A quiet chuckle reaches him.
“Sure,” comes from somewhere above his ear.
“Sure,” Ominis grumbles back, barely audible.
Sebastian goes quiet. Huffs. Sighs.
“Come here,” he says.
Ominis doesn’t know where here is supposed to be, but Sebastian pulls him in anyway — drawing him under his arm, slinging a leg over him, wrapping the blanket more tightly around them both.
“Sleep,” he says. “It’s nowhere near morning.”
And Ominis wants to protest, but — his heart is beating too wildly somewhere up in his throat, and Sebastian’s arms are far too warm.
He falls asleep.
They are thirteen.
Snow settles slowly over Feldcroft.
Tomorrow they’ll say it was the coldest morning of the year.
October was rich in stories. Truly.
And, as it turns out, it’s easy to write when you have a map to follow —
or a little box to reach into blindly, pulling out a fragment that suddenly becomes a piece of a whole world.
We thought about it and decided: winter should be the same. ✨
A gentler path. A small guide. Something to lean on.
31 tiny winter windows — to peek into, to open, to remember something old and discover something new.
We made this for ourselves.
But if you’d like to open the windows too — you’re welcome to. ✨
