Chapter Text
He’d never seen snow before. Not in all his 23 years as Evan did he get to see a single flake. Sure he knew about snow—he’d seen it in movies and read about it in books—but he’d only ever lived in Arizona, so he never got to see it in the flesh.
The first time Rose took Briar out in the snow, he could only stare transfixed at the falling stars around them twinkling in the streetlights. The tears on his face stung a bit as the cold nipped at them, but he paid it no mind. He was half convinced that it was soot raining from the sky, but Rose insisted otherwise as she explained to him that it was snow. She gave him a warm smile when he tried to catch a snowflake, frowning as it disappeared before it hit his hand.
He’d woken her in the middle of the night, and she’d taken him outside to try and sooth him with the snow. It worked enough that he’d stopped crying. Too fascinated by the new phenomena to remember any discomfort.
Still very young, the Evans siblings were only allowed to play in the snow if they were bundled in wool until they could barely budge a limb. This made getting around—which was already difficult with clumsy baby limbs—practically impossible. So, they just sat in the garden, and played with the few inches that accumulated overnight. Lily bursting out into a fit of delighted giggles every time he threw a handful of snow into the air.
It never got old. They did it for hours, until Briar’s face hurt from smiling.
It never got warm enough again that season for the snow to melt completely. Instead, it got brittle and disgusting. Only getting worse when a few more inches were added to it every couple of weeks. It ended up being pushed aside into piles, which his mother skillfully dodged with the double pram on their daily walks.
They weren’t allowed to play in the snow once it got like that—not that Briar would touch the stuff—but instead they were confined to the house. Outside of their walks, all he had access to were his siblings, and his mother’s endless variety of floral décor.
When he closed his eyes he saw the tiger-lilies dancing on the wallpaper in the kitchen. When he opened them he was met with the nursery’s daisy sheets.
The next winter was much of the same, and Briar decided he didn’t like snow much. It wasn’t anything like the movies. The screen had once promised him a white blanket covering the hillsides; women in fabulous winter coats and men with charming hats forced into romantic situations due to the weather— his personal favorite being when they got snowed in and were forced to spend the night together. But instead of something beautiful, snow turned out to be a rather nasty substance that quickly got caked in road muck and soot and just sat in ugly piles around Cokeworth. It was something that kept him from playing outside, shrinking his already tiny cage.
He wasn’t much looking forward to the his third winter, but he certainly didn’t anticipate what was to come. That December it snowed so much that the factory shut down for a few days. Then the workers were just forced to hike through the snow to run equipment that could barely start in the sub 0 temperatures. Everyone tried to stay hopeful, but it never quite got better.
Briar was half convinced that the whole world was going to freeze.
It was so cold, that Lily, Briar, and Petunia, all squished themselves into the same bed just to keep from shivering in the night. It didn’t matter how many logs his father threw on the fire, the house simply would not stay warm.
But the outside. The outside was absolutely brilliant at first.
Briar didn’t know he could even have so much fun. With the twins coming on three now, and Petunia already well into her fourth year, they could properly enjoy the snow. They chased each other around the garden with armfuls of snow and chucked snowballs at the neighbor kids in the streets. Each of them made a snowman to stand guard over the house, decorating them with Eric’s hats and scarfs that Rose had given them free reign over.
Briar felt like a real kid. Being called in for hot chocolate, sipping it as they warmed their feet by the fire and whispered about Father Christmas. Once given leave by their mother, they would run back out the door for more fun. Sometimes they got their parents in on it too. They went sleding with their father down the neighborhood hills and made a thousand snow angels with their mother in the field.
It all felt much more like the dream movies had promised him before. It filled his bones with a gentle, warm light.
For a while, he felt a bit uneasy about it. Not trusting the unfamiliar sensation that he didn’t quite know how to identify. Then, one night—squished between his sisters under their daisy patterned comforter—it came to him.
Home.
The feeling was home.
Briar had a home.
He had a family who loved him. Who he loved in turn. When he cried, they comforted him. When he laughed, they smiled. When they talked, he listened.
It was just too bad he didn’t actually belong there. A little feeling, deep in his bones, nudged him and reminded him of that every day, so he could never forget it.
He was an imposter. Playing the act of someone’s child. It didn’t matter how childlike he felt at times, that didn’t change the way his mother looked at him. The way his older sister looked at him. The way his father looked at him.
He was different. Not quite right. They all knew it,
After a while the snow’s excitement wore off, and it started to become more scary than fun. Their brick town was not built to withstand such cold temperatures. His father came home every evening more irritable than the night before. Cursing about broken down machinery and work-place injuries as he ripped off his snow encrusted boots. Rose would hover around him anxiously, trying to check him for signs of frost bite from his walk home. She barely flinched when he’d snap at her, fighting him for his socks so she could check his toes.
Christmas time passed. Then New Years. It got warmer for a few days before Briar and Lily’s third birthday, and there was hope. But then the snows just returned again with renewed vigor, just in time for cake.
Briar had never felt anything like it. There were freezing fogs, and the ice on the streets got so bad that people started skating to work. January was the coldest month in over 100 years, or at least that’s what his parents said. They also said that on the coast, the ocean froze, but he didn’t believe that for a second. He didn’t care what the newspapers claimed.
As the days passed with little hope of the snow ever thawing, a fire started to lap at his chest. As far as he knew, he was very possibly in a parallel universe to the one he was in before. This one—theoretically—had magic. And some of the people with magic may want to hurt people without it.
What if the cold was a curse to cull away those that couldn’t use magic to warm themselves?
What if Briar’s birth—just by nature of the butterfly effect— had caused the end of the world?
He’d just found a home, a real home, and it was going to be taken away.
His home was going to freeze over, and it would be all his fault.
Briar would get up in the middle of the night in those long weeks, and sit in the window in the living room. Staring at the world being drowned by winter. The freezing glass against his head helped to sooth his burning chest, but did little to slow the racing thoughts.
***
March brought Spring with her. Not even a fortnight into the month and the snow was gone without a trace. Briar didn’t know what to think, feeling a little silly for his existential thoughts the month before. Time moved so differently now than it did before, and the three freezing months had felt like an eternity.
Still, on restless nights he couldn’t help but wonder what his presence might do to the world. Whether he was truly in the Harry Potter universe or not, he was still in the past. He needed to be extra careful not to step on any butterflies, or could lose his newfound home for good.