[From Litha to Lammas]: Bend Before the Sun, Harry/Severus pre-slash, PG-13
Title: Bend Before the Sun
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Snape pre-slash
Content Notes: Rituals, angst, mentions of blood and wounds, AU in that Severus survives Nagini
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5900
Summary: Severus survives Nagini’s bite, but the wound bleeds continually and resists all attempts at closing it. A ritual held on the summer solstice might help, but it needs a wizard of immense power to conduct the healing rite-and Severus cannot believe that Harry Potter really wants to help him.
Author’s Notes: The first of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the Summer Solstice and the first of August. A request from goddess47 for Severus teaching Harry about Solstice rituals and something happy-making.
Bend Before the Sun
“I am not going to send the damn letter, Minerva,” Severus said the moment he saw the woman walk into the infirmary. He knew what she would say before she said it because she had been coming to the hospital wing to harass him about the same damn thing for weeks now.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to say anything about that.”
“Good.”
“Since I sent it for you yesterday,” Minerva continued, and seated herself in the chair by the bed as though she hadn’t just said something infuriating.
“Minerva,” Severus said, and tried to put some force behind the word, but that just made Poppy come bustling out from her office.
“Severus Snape, what have I told you about making that wound bleed?” she snapped at him as she waved her wand and stopped the thick rill of liquid rolling down the side of Severus’s neck. “I am going to chain you in the dungeons with those chains that Argus mentions so much if you don’t stop.”
Severus glared at her. “I’d like to see you try.”
Poppy got close enough that Severus could make out the flecks of gold in the centers of her blue eyes. “No,” she said, so softly that it matched the kind of threat Severus wished he could have made to Minerva. “You wouldn’t.”
Severus loosed as much of a long breath as he could without bringing on another scolding, and turned to face Minerva. “I do not need Potter’s help, and I resent you trying to interfere and ensure I receive it, Minerva.”
“Resent me all you like.” Minerva looked unfairly amused. “It wouldn’t be that much different from the relationship we had while you were still Head of Slytherin House.”
Severus found himself unfairly relieved that she didn’t mention the relationship they’d had while he was Headmaster. He scowled at her anyway as she stood up and prepared to leave the hospital wing he still couldn’t leave. “You know that the letters won’t make any difference anyway. Potter isn’t going to help me for-any reason.” He’d nearly said “love or money,” and that was ridiculous.
Minerva cast him a glance that had something of sharpness and something of sadness to it. “You never did understand him, Severus.” And then she turned and left the infirmary with a defiant swish of her robes.
Poppy was the one who went further, as she urged Severus back onto the bed and cast the Bandage Charm that would only hold the blood at bay for a few hours. “That young man walked willingly to his death for all of us, Severus. What makes you think he wouldn’t do this?”
Severus just shook his head, which made her strike him with a spell designed to hold his neck still. Severus glared at her and ignored the satisfied way that Poppy was studying her handiwork. “He walked to his death thinking that he had no choice. When he does have a choice, you think that he’ll be eager to help me?”
Poppy sighed and shook her head. “You don’t know him at all, Severus, even after years. And stop picking at it,” she added in an ominous tone as he lifted his hand to scratch at the side of his neck.
“I was not picking at it,” Severus hissed at her. His training in Potions had included enough healing craft that he would not have done such a thing.
He received a supremely unimpressed head-tilt before Poppy swept away, and Severus closed his eyes and laid his head against the pillow. He might have to put up with Potter’s presence when he arrived, but he would not look at Poppy’s smugness this evening.
*
“And his wound hasn’t stopped bleeding since Nagini bit him?”
Severus woke the moment he heard that voice, but he kept his breathing steady and even, having no more desire to see Potter’s face than he had had to see Poppy’s smugness.
“We can stop it bleeding for a few hours, but then it starts again,” Minerva’s voice answered from too close. At least it sounded like Potter was further away. “We think it has something to do with both the bite and the magic in the serpent, and of course the Mark on Severus’s arm doesn’t help.”
“Hm.” Potter actually sounded thoughtful, which made Severus wonder if he’d taken a Wit-Sharpening Potion before he came to Hogwarts. “I can do my best, but I don’t know that I’ll be completely successful.”
“I found a ritual that you can use. I told you that.”
“I know, Headmistress.” Potter sounded actually respectful, which made Severus wonder if he had somehow found a potion to induce that emotion in himself. “But I read the description of the ritual, and it requires complete trust in the person who performs it. I don’t think Professor Snape trusts me like that.”
It was a harsh struggle for Severus not to open his eyes and sarcastically give points to Gryffindor for the smartest thing Potter had ever said.
“I think you would be surprised by how things might change in the next few days,” was all Minerva said, as calmly as if they were all mice she had trapped beneath her paw. “After all, there is a cleansing and meditation that you need to perform before the ritual, as well.”
Potter paused for a long moment, and Severus held still. Then Potter said, “I did think that I read about that, but-well, Professor McGonagall, it doesn’t matter. Professor Snape hates me. The cleansing and meditation need to be done with good faith.”
Severus clenched his hands in the sheets underneath him. And Potter thought that good faith wouldn’t be sufficient to save his life? He thought Severus didn’t want to stop bleeding?
“I only ask that you give it a chance, Harry. If nothing else, you are the only one with the magic sufficient to power a Midsummer ritual. There are other rituals that could be performed on different days, but they mean that poor Severus would have to suffer for at least a season with the bite bleeding.”
“And Midsummer is different from the other days that we could do this? Why?”
At that, Severus absolutely couldn’t keep silent. He turned his head and opened his eyes, ignoring the way that his wound grew heavy and liquid again. “Are you sure that you want someone this imbecilic participating in a ritual on Hogwarts grounds, Minerva? What if he levels the building by accident?”
He let his gaze fall on Potter, and started a bit. For some reason, even though he had seen the boy shortly before he almost bled to death, he still looked unfamiliar. He was taller, perhaps, and leaner. And had a more settled look in his face.
But that face was still the James Potter one that Severus had always hated, and his hair was still ragged, and he still wore the same glasses. Severus sneered and looked at Minerva. “I notice you didn’t answer my question.”
“Hello to you, too, Professor Snape,” Potter said, his voice as dry as dust.
“I have explained the nature of the Midsummer ritual to Mr. Potter without explaining all the nuances,” said Minerva, still looking like a satisfied cat. “And frankly, Mr. Potter, the day of longest light is the most powerful of all days for rituals of healing. The world itself turns towards the sun and makes the healing easier.”
“Midsummer is not the same the world over,” Severus muttered.
“No, in the Southern Hemisphere the day we call Midwinter would be the day of longest light,” Minerva agreed. “But I know that you don’t care about that except as it gives you material to contradict me, Severus.”
Severus fell silent, and blinked. He had never thought she would talk to him like that in front of a student. They had never-
Then he saw the way she looked at Potter, and realized the truth. Minerva no longer regarded Potter as a student. He had to be an adult, in fact, to do the Midsummer rites, and it was true that he had passed his seventeenth birthday last summer.
And that going to his death was an adult act. Severus could think of few more adult. He simply-did not think that it could change the essential nature of who Potter was.
“Are you willing to perform the cleansing and meditation in good faith?” Potter asked.
“I am,” Severus said, and let his gaze linger, and waited for Potter to take offense.
Potter only looked at him with eyes as blank as mirrors, and then turned and faced Minerva. “I’m willing to try, professor.”
“Then I shall prepare the ritual room.”
*
“We only have a week until Midsummer. And you’re going to tell me that you’re good at meditation when you were pants at Occlumency?”
“I think my lack of skill at Occlumency had a lot to do with my teacher.”
Severus stared at him, silently outraged, but Potter wasn’t paying attention to him. In fact, he had already wrapped himself in the thin white robe that Minerva had left for him in the corner of the Room of Requirement-or the dark, sloping cave lit only with torches and the soft glow of a silver pool of water in the center that the Room of Requirement had become-and closed his eyes.
Severus could say something that would break the silence, but that wouldn’t be working in good faith. Still thick-throated with outrage, he wrapped himself in his own robe and sat down across from Potter. The floor of the cave had been softened with Cushioning Charms so that neither of them would become distracted with the discomfort as they meditated.
He flinched as he felt the blood roll down the side of his neck, but ignored it. They were here to cleanse themselves.
Severus sank immediately into ritual meditation as he had learned it, an image of a pool of water much like the one in the center of this cave, but more brilliant, opening in his mind. He submerged himself into it. His breathing evened out and steadied, and he imagined his body swimming through the water.
Whole. Undamaged. As he sat there, it became the truth, and even the blood at his throat ceased to bother him. It would not bother him because he willed it not to.
He drifted, and became aware what felt like hours later of Potter’s soft breathing. Severus opened his eyes and watched Potter. Potter seemed to resurface at the same moment, and nodded to Severus as he stood up and reached for his ordinary robes again.
“What do you see when you’re meditating?” Severus asked. His voice was softer than he’d like, his words lulled into the rhythm of Potter’s breathing. But he knew that was natural and didn’t fight it. It was probably far more than Potter knew about pre-ritual cleansing or the meditation that accompanied it, after all, and Severus would have to make up the deficits in his knowledge.
Potter said only, “The Forbidden Forest and the clearing where I died,” and walked out of the cave, leaving Severus staring after him.
*
It was by chance that Severus glanced out the window of the hospital wing the next morning, and happened to see Potter practicing-something.
It was a strange mixture of what looked like dueling moves and Muggle fighting ones. Potter dashed and leaped around the section of the grounds that Severus could see from the window, spinning on his heel and aiming his wand at shadows. Then he would reverse direction and roll or spin along the ground, ending up facing a new angle. He didn’t wear robes, but Muggle shoes and jeans and a white shirt that looked nearly as thin as the ritual robe.
Even as Severus watched, Potter seemed to decide that Muggle clothes were as bad as robes. He yanked the shirt over his head and threw it in one of the directions he’d aimed his wand in, and danced in the early dawn bare-chested.
Severus blinked. Potter wasn’t sweating, but perhaps that was because he was lean-on the far side of scrawny, if Severus wanted to tell the truth (and didn’t he always?) He simply chased his shadow across the grass, and finally landed in a crouch, his arms crossed in front of him on his knees and his head bowed, brow resting on them.
Severus found himself wondering if Potter’s scar still stood out on his forehead as jagged skin, and if that jagged skin pressed against his arm, and how it felt.
Then, even as Potter went to pick up his shirt, Severus jerked his attention from the window and winced at the flow of blood down his neck. The blood was real, he reminded himself as he drank one of the potions Poppy had left for him overnight. The vision of Potter he’d just spied on was not.
*
“Are you sure, Harry? There is little more intimate than this.”
“But the Midsummer ritual that you told me about is one of those things.” Potter was standing relaxed in the middle of the hospital wing, his gaze focused on Minerva, to one side of Severus. “So we need to do this first, or I don’t think the ritual is going to work.”
“Too good to look at me, Potter?”
Potter turned slowly to face him, his eyes a little wide. “When I first came in you glared at me, sir. I thought you probably preferred that I not look.”
Severus clenched his fists in the blankets across his legs that Poppy insisted on putting there even though it wasn’t like his wound would heal with a bit of warmth. It infuriated him that Potter was good enough at picking up on subtle cues that he had realized that.
And where had he learned to be that good? It was nothing Severus had taught him, nor anything he had ever seen in Potter before this point.
“Well, I want you to,” he snapped. “And if Minerva is going to cast the spell that connects our minds, you’ll need to. It requires eye contact, like Legilimency.”
“All right, sir,” Potter said, and settled into the same position he had used to meditate on the hospital bed across from Severus.
Severus turned to face him fully. He would not be the one responsible for this failing, as it inevitably would.
Minerva sighed and made one more comment that Severus didn’t bother to listen to. Instead, he locked his eyes with Potter’s and refused to flinch or look away despite the familiar color, and refused to give in to temptation and dip beneath the surface with Legilimency.
Besides, soon enough the spell took over and propelled Severus deeper than he could have gone with Legilimency.
Potter’s mind was thick and dark, a strange experience like looking through the windows of the Slytherin common room that opened on the lake. Severus gasped and struck out, and then calmed himself. Just because it felt as if he was drowning didn’t mean he was. He stared around and saw one particular light gleaming in the distance. He set out towards it, idly wondering if it was a trap like the ones that some deep-sea fish used to lure their prey.
Calm down, sir.
“I am perfectly calm!” Severus snapped, and then realized he could hear himself speak. He turned around, and the watery underworld of Potter’s mind had disappeared. Instead, he was in a deep blue space that curved around them like walls, but there was no floor. He simply floated within it.
Potter looked at him, and the blue walls quivered a bit, and then Severus felt the touch of his thoughts.
He nearly fought, but snapped his self-control down. He was not the one who was going to ruin this. Potter was the one who was going to ruin this.
Severus reached out and grasped the rope thrown to him, and the air around him shone and curved further, and then he was in the middle of a resignation so profound that it was like heavy water itself.
He sought the context of that resignation, and understood in answers. This was the way Potter had felt when he walked to his death.
He hadn’t rebelled, except for a few minutes in the back of his mind. There was envy of others who got to live their lives, and horror that Dumbledore had known the truth and set Potter up to be a sacrifice.
I did the same thing.
I thought you never cared for me, Harry’s mind-voice murmured back-Harry, because at this depth there was no such thing as the distance of a surname. It hurt me much more coming from someone who I believed did.
Severus watched as images cracked and broke and fell into place around him: the spirits summoned by the Resurrection Stone (and he felt the rush of affection and a different kind of love Harry had towards Lily), the walk through the Forest, the murmur of Harry’s voice to the Snitch, “I am about to die,” and the gleam of the Dark Lord’s wand as he aimed it at Harry’s chest.
How could you stand there and permit it to happen?
The words had leaped out from him like a snarl, and there was a long, strained silence before Harry responded. How could I not? I was told I had to, and if I hadn’t, then Voldemort would have killed all sorts of people, and the deaths of others would have been in vain.
Severus shook his head, not in denial, but in simple lack of understanding. He could not have done it himself, and a black fire of self-loathing was burning in him now as he watched Potter go to his death, and then come back, and leap out of Hagrid’s arms to defend the entire school-their entire world. I could never have done something like that.
Harry laughed, soft and gentle, and for the first time, Severus heard a tinge of Lily’s laughter in it. Well, not many people would have done it, either. Hermione calls it my saving-people thing. You have to be a bit messed-up to do what I did. It wasn’t noble.
The world around them bent, blue and black again and full of whirling moments of funerals and people urging Harry to stand in front of a podium and speak to them. Sometimes he did, for a few minutes, but he always ended up deferring to someone else who he said would have far more interesting and enlightening things to speak about.
You never loved it. Your fame and your power.
No, Harry agreed quietly. When I was a child being ignored by my aunt and uncle, I admit, I did used to think how great it would be if I was important and loved by lots of people. But that was a fantasy that I gave up on the minute it happened. Having people shake my hand in the Leaky Cauldron when Hagrid took me to get my school supplies in Diagon Alley was an experience I never wanted to have again.
Severus swallowed. The world around him was coming back into focus, and that meant that he was done seeing the most important memories of Harry’s-the ones needed to change his perception and grow trust. And the flow of memories was about to reverse.
Can you stand to see this?
I hope much more that you can stand to show it to me.
Severus shook his head as the wash of power flowed into his own mind and he felt memories forming behind his eyes. I gave you my most intimate memories when I showed you the ones of Lily, when I thought I was going to die.
Then what will I see here?
Severus himself had no idea until they seemed to be standing in a glass bowl that contained within it the dungeon classroom of Hogwarts. And there was a little, bright-eyed boy in the front row, and Severus himself glaring at him with disgust and hatred.
Severus flinched. Harry was there, and he said simply, I know why you felt the way you did, now.
But how could you-how could you forgive someone who hated you so much when you were only a child who did nothing to him?
I told you I was messed-up.
Severus tried to digest that while they watched his harsh questions of the Potter child, and bathed in his roaring hatred, and his disgusted satisfaction when the brat replicated his father’s cheek. Severus might have to protect him, but he didn’t have to like him.
Now, of course, that realization ached in him like a crossbow bolt, while the generous, accepting mind around him shone brighter than the magic.
Who knows what would have happened if my life had been different, though? Maybe I wouldn’t have grown into someone who could die for the wizarding world, or someone who could forgive you like this.
You have no right to state that I should have abused you.
There was a long silence while they watched a memory of Severus ranting to Albus about his hatred of Potter and how the boy wouldn’t even try in his class. Now, that memory scalded Severus. Had he been so threatened by a child that he had to seek the counsel of his mentor? He had been a professor for ten years by that point, and although he hadn’t been the best one, he should have known how to handle an unmotivated student.
Perhaps not, Harry said finally. But I don’t see much point in excoriating ourselves for the sins of the past. This is supposed to be about understanding, not regret.
It cannot be about both?
Not if you want the wound on your neck to stop bleeding.
It was a little sharper than Severus would ordinarily have accepted, but he nodded and turned back to the memories passing them.
Harry nodded, or sent the sensation of a nod, when Severus came into the hospital wing, multiple times, and saw him lying there, still. You were worried about violating your Vow if I died and it turned out that you could have done something to prevent it, weren’t you?
It-shames me to admit it, but yes. I did not care for you as a person, but as a symbol of what I had sacrificed for and as the last connection to Lily.
And if I want to forgive that, I can.
They arrived at the memory Severus had already shared with Harry, the one of casting the silver doe and demanding that Albus look at it, and Severus would have turned away if that was possible. But how can you forgive someone like me, someone who hated you?
The same way I forgave people for turning on me when they thought I was the Heir of Slytherin and when they thought I cheated to get into the Tournament. Harry’s voice was low and weary. And honestly, sir? Your motives are more understandable to me than theirs ever were. At least yours were personal. They were just doing shit because-I didn’t exactly fit their preconceived notions.
Call me Severus.
If you will call me Harry, and accept that it’s my choice what I forgive.
Severus opened his eyes and found himself standing next to the bed instead of sitting on it, which surprised him. He blinked and sat down again, and Poppy promptly bustled forwards to check on him and examine the wound on his neck.
He caught Harry’s eye. Impossible to go back to thinking of him as Potter, now. Harry nodded to him and then stood and walked out of the hospital wing.
“Where are you going?” Severus called after him, and for once he didn’t care about what either Poppy or Minerva would hear in his voice.
Harry turned back with a small smile. “I just need to get my mind back into order, Severus. That was intense.”
And he disappeared down the corridor, leaving Severus to look after him. He could agree that it had been an intense experience, and that perhaps he had not reacted as strongly himself simply because he had Occlumency to detach him from it and calm the chaos that the memories had stirred in his mind.
But that did not explain his longing for Harry to return.
*
“Are you ready now?”
Severus nodded to Minerva without taking his eyes from Harry. They stood in a ring of stones formed with rocks that had been conjured by Harry and laid down in an intricate pattern that more resembled a spiral than anything else, although even then Severus saw some stones that were jaggedly sticking out from it.
“I am,” Harry said. He wore a green robe that sighed in and out with his breath, while Severus wore a white one. Severus would have sneered at the irony of it, but he didn’t think it was ironic. Of course, he wasn’t virginal, or bridal. He wasn’t innocent.
But Harry saw him that way, or at least as someone capable of becoming that way again.
“Good,” Minerva said. She glanced into the sky, where the soft clouds of a late sunset were glowing. “And you remember the steps that you need to take?”
This time, Severus nodded along with Harry. Harry smiled at him, and the power of it took Severus’s breath away. Already, golden light was gathering around the stones that Harry had conjured, and Harry extended his arms in front of him, palms cupped. Golden light gathered there as well, and brewed and began to hum, a soft, subtle sound on the very edge of hearing.
“You’re ready,” Minerva breathed. When she turned and crossed over the ring of stones, or the spiral, or whatever it was, it sealed behind her with a sharp spark. Severus moved forwards to stand in front of Harry.
“Why did you use this shape?” he asked.
Harry met his gaze and smiled. “It’s what the stones told me to use.”
Severus blinked. That was the right answer, but he was surprised beyond measure that Harry had been-clear-headed enough to sense it. It showed his commitment to this ritual better than anything else could have done.
Harry lowered his head and breathed on the golden light between his palms. This time, the singing became audible, and Severus could hear the edge of what sounded like a chant in Latin.
The implications took his breath away. Most of the time, someone had to perform this ritual with a vocal component, another reason that Severus had been unsure Harry could manage it. It wasn’t like he’d ever heard the boy sing.
But instead, the stones and the light would sing for him. The power and the trust in his own magic, in the ritual, in the power of the solstice, that had to be happening for this…
Severus watched with dazed eyes as Harry stood up in front of him, and the light spread out around his arms and head, surrounding him with a flaring yellow corona. Then Harry looked up at the sunset sky and extended his hands.
“I ask you,” he said simply, “for healing.”
That unadorned plea to the sky and the sun was the oldest way of conducting the ritual, but also a way that meant, if something went wrong, they would both bear the brunt of the magical backlash. Severus opened his mouth to say something about that-
But the light was approaching them. A jagged spiral formed in the sky as Severus watched, leaping between the clouds like slow peach lightning, echoing the shape of the “circle” Harry had made out of the stones. The light extended down, and Harry closed his eyes with a soft sigh as it encircled him, adding a rich tinge to the golden aura encircling him.
The power in the air was palpable and audible now. If he had wanted to leave the spiral of stones, Severus wasn’t sure that he could have.
Harry turned his head and opened his eyes to regard Severus, his smile faint. “Yes,” he murmured, “He wants to be healed, and I ask that he be healed. We are here in an accord, and we are here that the gift may be granted.”
Severus belatedly remembered his part in the ritual, and nodded, staring directly into the heart of the light that hovered over Harry’s head. “Yes,” he said. “We ask, we are joined, we ask that this wound stop bleeding forever.”
The light shifted and seemed to regard him with eyes that Severus could, again, feel rather than see. He shivered, but kept his posture still. There was nothing frightening about the Midsummer ritual when they had come this far. Even if the power of the summer declined to help them for some reason, it would dissipate instead of hurt them. They had been found worthy.
And then the power grabbed him, and Severus remembered what was frightening about this, after all. To be so close to the fire of the sun itself, only half-tame and sparking all around him, so much greater than himself that it could swallow him up and it would be the end of him…
Harry stepped towards him, and Severus’s breathing slowed down again as much as it could when he was the focus of such an intense regard. Harry would interfere if the magic tried to destroy him. He was the caller and the conduit of it, and he could stop it if he wanted to. Severus bowed his head and shuddered a little as the hair on his arms stood up.
The warmth lingered there only a moment before it moved to his neck.
Severus felt as though hot fangs were stabbing him again, but what flowed from them was not venom, as it had been from Nagini, but soothing fire. He gasped, and Harry caught his hands and held them.
“I promise that I would break the healing if I thought it was doing you harm,” Harry whispered.
Severus could barely respond, caught up as he was in the feeling, now warm bars down the middle of his chest, but he did distantly wonder how someone could call this power and speak, casually, in the middle of it.
The bars slid and turned through him, and Severus realized abruptly that they were mimicking the motion of the sun across the sky. The tilting continued until they were parallel with the sinking light in the west, and then there was a muffled burst of power from behind him.
Severus gasped, because he could not scream, as he watched sparkling drops of blood fly away from him. They caught on fire in mid-flight, and spiraled to the ground, glowing bright gold. In a few seconds, they had gone out in the midst of the grass at his feet, the last small glare leaping to the stones and extinguishing itself there.
Harry knelt down in front of him a second later, his eyes bright and worried. He laid a hand on Severus’s arm. “Are you well?”
Severus could not answer that for himself until he could get a hand up to the side of his neck. For a second, he thought, when his fingers found deep-dented grooves, that it had all been for nothing. But then he moved his hand, and no liquid came off on it. Old scabs stretched, and flaky dried blood tumbled when he scratched.
The wound was healed.
Severus swallowed and looked at Harry. “More well than I have been since before the serpent bit me,” he whispered.
Harry ducked his head, as if he wanted to hide the bright, victorious smile bubbling up across his face like spring water. But in the end, he couldn’t do that. He said simply, “Good. I’m glad,” and got to his feet. Severus knelt where he was, feeling the side of his healed neck, and the dying warmth in him, and what had leaped up in him when he saw the smile.
“Madam Pomfrey wanted you to come back to the hospital wing when we were done here,” Harry continued, as if oblivious of what Severus was feeling at the moment. “So she could check you over and make sure-”
His voice trailed off when Severus laid a hand on his arm. Harry blinked and looked at him, and Severus let himself tilt his head back and a little to the side as their eyes met.
“I will go to be checked over,” Severus said. “But I wanted to tell you thank you first.”
Words could not convey what he felt, which was why he had wanted to meet Harry’s eyes. A flush broke out over Harry’s face now, and his eyes, which had been so brilliant and steady all through the ritual and before that, too, wavered and sought out the ground. Severus reached out and tilted his chin up with one finger.
“Why are you doing that?” Harry asked in a voice that wasn’t a whisper only because it wavered a little higher.
“Because I want to see your eyes.”
Harry reached up and closed his hand around Severus’s wrist. Severus didn’t move. He wondered if Harry was about to make some speech about the ritual ending everything between them, paying back all debts, or that he would state he was dating Weasley’s sister.
He did neither. Instead, Harry cleared his throat with a difficult sound, and whispered, “I-I didn’t do this so that you would be in my debt.”
“If I had thought that, I would never have mustered up enough trust in you to allow the ritual to take place,” Severus murmured back. “I was inside your mind and saw what you think and feel, remember?”
Harry swallowed. “Yes. I remember it,” he said, sounding as if it had happened ten years ago. “I-we should get to Madam Pomfrey.”
With a faint smile, Severus stepped back and allowed Harry to withdraw. There was a difference between denial and allowing someone to avoid what made them uncomfortable, and Severus could afford to let Harry do the latter. He simply would not indulge the former.
As a sign of that, he made sure to touch Harry’s arm as Madam Pomfrey gestured him to a hospital bed, and let a sign of what he felt show in his eyes when Harry met them.
Harry flushed brighter and murmured, “You’ll feel better after getting some rest,” before darting off like a rabbit. Madam Pomfrey shook her head when Severus opened his mouth, presumably anticipating a protest.
“You still have to rest after going through a ritual like that.”
“I know that,” Severus said, and called softly after Harry, “We will speak of this again in the future.”
There was no answer, but Severus was sure that he had been heard. He closed his eyes as he listened to Madam Pomfrey perform the diagnostic spells, and heard Minerva come in to ask questions-questions whose answers she would be able to see for herself in the restored skin of his throat, so Severus didn’t see the need to speak about them.
His mind was considering the future, and the next ritual of light, which was the first of August. Lammas, Lughnasadh.
The day after Harry’s birthday.
Yes, they would be speaking of this again, and this time, Harry would get to see Severus’s prowess in calling the light.
The End.
The Light of Summer Stars, sequel.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Snape pre-slash
Content Notes: Rituals, angst, mentions of blood and wounds, AU in that Severus survives Nagini
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5900
Summary: Severus survives Nagini’s bite, but the wound bleeds continually and resists all attempts at closing it. A ritual held on the summer solstice might help, but it needs a wizard of immense power to conduct the healing rite-and Severus cannot believe that Harry Potter really wants to help him.
Author’s Notes: The first of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the Summer Solstice and the first of August. A request from goddess47 for Severus teaching Harry about Solstice rituals and something happy-making.
Bend Before the Sun
“I am not going to send the damn letter, Minerva,” Severus said the moment he saw the woman walk into the infirmary. He knew what she would say before she said it because she had been coming to the hospital wing to harass him about the same damn thing for weeks now.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to say anything about that.”
“Good.”
“Since I sent it for you yesterday,” Minerva continued, and seated herself in the chair by the bed as though she hadn’t just said something infuriating.
“Minerva,” Severus said, and tried to put some force behind the word, but that just made Poppy come bustling out from her office.
“Severus Snape, what have I told you about making that wound bleed?” she snapped at him as she waved her wand and stopped the thick rill of liquid rolling down the side of Severus’s neck. “I am going to chain you in the dungeons with those chains that Argus mentions so much if you don’t stop.”
Severus glared at her. “I’d like to see you try.”
Poppy got close enough that Severus could make out the flecks of gold in the centers of her blue eyes. “No,” she said, so softly that it matched the kind of threat Severus wished he could have made to Minerva. “You wouldn’t.”
Severus loosed as much of a long breath as he could without bringing on another scolding, and turned to face Minerva. “I do not need Potter’s help, and I resent you trying to interfere and ensure I receive it, Minerva.”
“Resent me all you like.” Minerva looked unfairly amused. “It wouldn’t be that much different from the relationship we had while you were still Head of Slytherin House.”
Severus found himself unfairly relieved that she didn’t mention the relationship they’d had while he was Headmaster. He scowled at her anyway as she stood up and prepared to leave the hospital wing he still couldn’t leave. “You know that the letters won’t make any difference anyway. Potter isn’t going to help me for-any reason.” He’d nearly said “love or money,” and that was ridiculous.
Minerva cast him a glance that had something of sharpness and something of sadness to it. “You never did understand him, Severus.” And then she turned and left the infirmary with a defiant swish of her robes.
Poppy was the one who went further, as she urged Severus back onto the bed and cast the Bandage Charm that would only hold the blood at bay for a few hours. “That young man walked willingly to his death for all of us, Severus. What makes you think he wouldn’t do this?”
Severus just shook his head, which made her strike him with a spell designed to hold his neck still. Severus glared at her and ignored the satisfied way that Poppy was studying her handiwork. “He walked to his death thinking that he had no choice. When he does have a choice, you think that he’ll be eager to help me?”
Poppy sighed and shook her head. “You don’t know him at all, Severus, even after years. And stop picking at it,” she added in an ominous tone as he lifted his hand to scratch at the side of his neck.
“I was not picking at it,” Severus hissed at her. His training in Potions had included enough healing craft that he would not have done such a thing.
He received a supremely unimpressed head-tilt before Poppy swept away, and Severus closed his eyes and laid his head against the pillow. He might have to put up with Potter’s presence when he arrived, but he would not look at Poppy’s smugness this evening.
*
“And his wound hasn’t stopped bleeding since Nagini bit him?”
Severus woke the moment he heard that voice, but he kept his breathing steady and even, having no more desire to see Potter’s face than he had had to see Poppy’s smugness.
“We can stop it bleeding for a few hours, but then it starts again,” Minerva’s voice answered from too close. At least it sounded like Potter was further away. “We think it has something to do with both the bite and the magic in the serpent, and of course the Mark on Severus’s arm doesn’t help.”
“Hm.” Potter actually sounded thoughtful, which made Severus wonder if he’d taken a Wit-Sharpening Potion before he came to Hogwarts. “I can do my best, but I don’t know that I’ll be completely successful.”
“I found a ritual that you can use. I told you that.”
“I know, Headmistress.” Potter sounded actually respectful, which made Severus wonder if he had somehow found a potion to induce that emotion in himself. “But I read the description of the ritual, and it requires complete trust in the person who performs it. I don’t think Professor Snape trusts me like that.”
It was a harsh struggle for Severus not to open his eyes and sarcastically give points to Gryffindor for the smartest thing Potter had ever said.
“I think you would be surprised by how things might change in the next few days,” was all Minerva said, as calmly as if they were all mice she had trapped beneath her paw. “After all, there is a cleansing and meditation that you need to perform before the ritual, as well.”
Potter paused for a long moment, and Severus held still. Then Potter said, “I did think that I read about that, but-well, Professor McGonagall, it doesn’t matter. Professor Snape hates me. The cleansing and meditation need to be done with good faith.”
Severus clenched his hands in the sheets underneath him. And Potter thought that good faith wouldn’t be sufficient to save his life? He thought Severus didn’t want to stop bleeding?
“I only ask that you give it a chance, Harry. If nothing else, you are the only one with the magic sufficient to power a Midsummer ritual. There are other rituals that could be performed on different days, but they mean that poor Severus would have to suffer for at least a season with the bite bleeding.”
“And Midsummer is different from the other days that we could do this? Why?”
At that, Severus absolutely couldn’t keep silent. He turned his head and opened his eyes, ignoring the way that his wound grew heavy and liquid again. “Are you sure that you want someone this imbecilic participating in a ritual on Hogwarts grounds, Minerva? What if he levels the building by accident?”
He let his gaze fall on Potter, and started a bit. For some reason, even though he had seen the boy shortly before he almost bled to death, he still looked unfamiliar. He was taller, perhaps, and leaner. And had a more settled look in his face.
But that face was still the James Potter one that Severus had always hated, and his hair was still ragged, and he still wore the same glasses. Severus sneered and looked at Minerva. “I notice you didn’t answer my question.”
“Hello to you, too, Professor Snape,” Potter said, his voice as dry as dust.
“I have explained the nature of the Midsummer ritual to Mr. Potter without explaining all the nuances,” said Minerva, still looking like a satisfied cat. “And frankly, Mr. Potter, the day of longest light is the most powerful of all days for rituals of healing. The world itself turns towards the sun and makes the healing easier.”
“Midsummer is not the same the world over,” Severus muttered.
“No, in the Southern Hemisphere the day we call Midwinter would be the day of longest light,” Minerva agreed. “But I know that you don’t care about that except as it gives you material to contradict me, Severus.”
Severus fell silent, and blinked. He had never thought she would talk to him like that in front of a student. They had never-
Then he saw the way she looked at Potter, and realized the truth. Minerva no longer regarded Potter as a student. He had to be an adult, in fact, to do the Midsummer rites, and it was true that he had passed his seventeenth birthday last summer.
And that going to his death was an adult act. Severus could think of few more adult. He simply-did not think that it could change the essential nature of who Potter was.
“Are you willing to perform the cleansing and meditation in good faith?” Potter asked.
“I am,” Severus said, and let his gaze linger, and waited for Potter to take offense.
Potter only looked at him with eyes as blank as mirrors, and then turned and faced Minerva. “I’m willing to try, professor.”
“Then I shall prepare the ritual room.”
*
“We only have a week until Midsummer. And you’re going to tell me that you’re good at meditation when you were pants at Occlumency?”
“I think my lack of skill at Occlumency had a lot to do with my teacher.”
Severus stared at him, silently outraged, but Potter wasn’t paying attention to him. In fact, he had already wrapped himself in the thin white robe that Minerva had left for him in the corner of the Room of Requirement-or the dark, sloping cave lit only with torches and the soft glow of a silver pool of water in the center that the Room of Requirement had become-and closed his eyes.
Severus could say something that would break the silence, but that wouldn’t be working in good faith. Still thick-throated with outrage, he wrapped himself in his own robe and sat down across from Potter. The floor of the cave had been softened with Cushioning Charms so that neither of them would become distracted with the discomfort as they meditated.
He flinched as he felt the blood roll down the side of his neck, but ignored it. They were here to cleanse themselves.
Severus sank immediately into ritual meditation as he had learned it, an image of a pool of water much like the one in the center of this cave, but more brilliant, opening in his mind. He submerged himself into it. His breathing evened out and steadied, and he imagined his body swimming through the water.
Whole. Undamaged. As he sat there, it became the truth, and even the blood at his throat ceased to bother him. It would not bother him because he willed it not to.
He drifted, and became aware what felt like hours later of Potter’s soft breathing. Severus opened his eyes and watched Potter. Potter seemed to resurface at the same moment, and nodded to Severus as he stood up and reached for his ordinary robes again.
“What do you see when you’re meditating?” Severus asked. His voice was softer than he’d like, his words lulled into the rhythm of Potter’s breathing. But he knew that was natural and didn’t fight it. It was probably far more than Potter knew about pre-ritual cleansing or the meditation that accompanied it, after all, and Severus would have to make up the deficits in his knowledge.
Potter said only, “The Forbidden Forest and the clearing where I died,” and walked out of the cave, leaving Severus staring after him.
*
It was by chance that Severus glanced out the window of the hospital wing the next morning, and happened to see Potter practicing-something.
It was a strange mixture of what looked like dueling moves and Muggle fighting ones. Potter dashed and leaped around the section of the grounds that Severus could see from the window, spinning on his heel and aiming his wand at shadows. Then he would reverse direction and roll or spin along the ground, ending up facing a new angle. He didn’t wear robes, but Muggle shoes and jeans and a white shirt that looked nearly as thin as the ritual robe.
Even as Severus watched, Potter seemed to decide that Muggle clothes were as bad as robes. He yanked the shirt over his head and threw it in one of the directions he’d aimed his wand in, and danced in the early dawn bare-chested.
Severus blinked. Potter wasn’t sweating, but perhaps that was because he was lean-on the far side of scrawny, if Severus wanted to tell the truth (and didn’t he always?) He simply chased his shadow across the grass, and finally landed in a crouch, his arms crossed in front of him on his knees and his head bowed, brow resting on them.
Severus found himself wondering if Potter’s scar still stood out on his forehead as jagged skin, and if that jagged skin pressed against his arm, and how it felt.
Then, even as Potter went to pick up his shirt, Severus jerked his attention from the window and winced at the flow of blood down his neck. The blood was real, he reminded himself as he drank one of the potions Poppy had left for him overnight. The vision of Potter he’d just spied on was not.
*
“Are you sure, Harry? There is little more intimate than this.”
“But the Midsummer ritual that you told me about is one of those things.” Potter was standing relaxed in the middle of the hospital wing, his gaze focused on Minerva, to one side of Severus. “So we need to do this first, or I don’t think the ritual is going to work.”
“Too good to look at me, Potter?”
Potter turned slowly to face him, his eyes a little wide. “When I first came in you glared at me, sir. I thought you probably preferred that I not look.”
Severus clenched his fists in the blankets across his legs that Poppy insisted on putting there even though it wasn’t like his wound would heal with a bit of warmth. It infuriated him that Potter was good enough at picking up on subtle cues that he had realized that.
And where had he learned to be that good? It was nothing Severus had taught him, nor anything he had ever seen in Potter before this point.
“Well, I want you to,” he snapped. “And if Minerva is going to cast the spell that connects our minds, you’ll need to. It requires eye contact, like Legilimency.”
“All right, sir,” Potter said, and settled into the same position he had used to meditate on the hospital bed across from Severus.
Severus turned to face him fully. He would not be the one responsible for this failing, as it inevitably would.
Minerva sighed and made one more comment that Severus didn’t bother to listen to. Instead, he locked his eyes with Potter’s and refused to flinch or look away despite the familiar color, and refused to give in to temptation and dip beneath the surface with Legilimency.
Besides, soon enough the spell took over and propelled Severus deeper than he could have gone with Legilimency.
Potter’s mind was thick and dark, a strange experience like looking through the windows of the Slytherin common room that opened on the lake. Severus gasped and struck out, and then calmed himself. Just because it felt as if he was drowning didn’t mean he was. He stared around and saw one particular light gleaming in the distance. He set out towards it, idly wondering if it was a trap like the ones that some deep-sea fish used to lure their prey.
Calm down, sir.
“I am perfectly calm!” Severus snapped, and then realized he could hear himself speak. He turned around, and the watery underworld of Potter’s mind had disappeared. Instead, he was in a deep blue space that curved around them like walls, but there was no floor. He simply floated within it.
Potter looked at him, and the blue walls quivered a bit, and then Severus felt the touch of his thoughts.
He nearly fought, but snapped his self-control down. He was not the one who was going to ruin this. Potter was the one who was going to ruin this.
Severus reached out and grasped the rope thrown to him, and the air around him shone and curved further, and then he was in the middle of a resignation so profound that it was like heavy water itself.
He sought the context of that resignation, and understood in answers. This was the way Potter had felt when he walked to his death.
He hadn’t rebelled, except for a few minutes in the back of his mind. There was envy of others who got to live their lives, and horror that Dumbledore had known the truth and set Potter up to be a sacrifice.
I did the same thing.
I thought you never cared for me, Harry’s mind-voice murmured back-Harry, because at this depth there was no such thing as the distance of a surname. It hurt me much more coming from someone who I believed did.
Severus watched as images cracked and broke and fell into place around him: the spirits summoned by the Resurrection Stone (and he felt the rush of affection and a different kind of love Harry had towards Lily), the walk through the Forest, the murmur of Harry’s voice to the Snitch, “I am about to die,” and the gleam of the Dark Lord’s wand as he aimed it at Harry’s chest.
How could you stand there and permit it to happen?
The words had leaped out from him like a snarl, and there was a long, strained silence before Harry responded. How could I not? I was told I had to, and if I hadn’t, then Voldemort would have killed all sorts of people, and the deaths of others would have been in vain.
Severus shook his head, not in denial, but in simple lack of understanding. He could not have done it himself, and a black fire of self-loathing was burning in him now as he watched Potter go to his death, and then come back, and leap out of Hagrid’s arms to defend the entire school-their entire world. I could never have done something like that.
Harry laughed, soft and gentle, and for the first time, Severus heard a tinge of Lily’s laughter in it. Well, not many people would have done it, either. Hermione calls it my saving-people thing. You have to be a bit messed-up to do what I did. It wasn’t noble.
The world around them bent, blue and black again and full of whirling moments of funerals and people urging Harry to stand in front of a podium and speak to them. Sometimes he did, for a few minutes, but he always ended up deferring to someone else who he said would have far more interesting and enlightening things to speak about.
You never loved it. Your fame and your power.
No, Harry agreed quietly. When I was a child being ignored by my aunt and uncle, I admit, I did used to think how great it would be if I was important and loved by lots of people. But that was a fantasy that I gave up on the minute it happened. Having people shake my hand in the Leaky Cauldron when Hagrid took me to get my school supplies in Diagon Alley was an experience I never wanted to have again.
Severus swallowed. The world around him was coming back into focus, and that meant that he was done seeing the most important memories of Harry’s-the ones needed to change his perception and grow trust. And the flow of memories was about to reverse.
Can you stand to see this?
I hope much more that you can stand to show it to me.
Severus shook his head as the wash of power flowed into his own mind and he felt memories forming behind his eyes. I gave you my most intimate memories when I showed you the ones of Lily, when I thought I was going to die.
Then what will I see here?
Severus himself had no idea until they seemed to be standing in a glass bowl that contained within it the dungeon classroom of Hogwarts. And there was a little, bright-eyed boy in the front row, and Severus himself glaring at him with disgust and hatred.
Severus flinched. Harry was there, and he said simply, I know why you felt the way you did, now.
But how could you-how could you forgive someone who hated you so much when you were only a child who did nothing to him?
I told you I was messed-up.
Severus tried to digest that while they watched his harsh questions of the Potter child, and bathed in his roaring hatred, and his disgusted satisfaction when the brat replicated his father’s cheek. Severus might have to protect him, but he didn’t have to like him.
Now, of course, that realization ached in him like a crossbow bolt, while the generous, accepting mind around him shone brighter than the magic.
Who knows what would have happened if my life had been different, though? Maybe I wouldn’t have grown into someone who could die for the wizarding world, or someone who could forgive you like this.
You have no right to state that I should have abused you.
There was a long silence while they watched a memory of Severus ranting to Albus about his hatred of Potter and how the boy wouldn’t even try in his class. Now, that memory scalded Severus. Had he been so threatened by a child that he had to seek the counsel of his mentor? He had been a professor for ten years by that point, and although he hadn’t been the best one, he should have known how to handle an unmotivated student.
Perhaps not, Harry said finally. But I don’t see much point in excoriating ourselves for the sins of the past. This is supposed to be about understanding, not regret.
It cannot be about both?
Not if you want the wound on your neck to stop bleeding.
It was a little sharper than Severus would ordinarily have accepted, but he nodded and turned back to the memories passing them.
Harry nodded, or sent the sensation of a nod, when Severus came into the hospital wing, multiple times, and saw him lying there, still. You were worried about violating your Vow if I died and it turned out that you could have done something to prevent it, weren’t you?
It-shames me to admit it, but yes. I did not care for you as a person, but as a symbol of what I had sacrificed for and as the last connection to Lily.
And if I want to forgive that, I can.
They arrived at the memory Severus had already shared with Harry, the one of casting the silver doe and demanding that Albus look at it, and Severus would have turned away if that was possible. But how can you forgive someone like me, someone who hated you?
The same way I forgave people for turning on me when they thought I was the Heir of Slytherin and when they thought I cheated to get into the Tournament. Harry’s voice was low and weary. And honestly, sir? Your motives are more understandable to me than theirs ever were. At least yours were personal. They were just doing shit because-I didn’t exactly fit their preconceived notions.
Call me Severus.
If you will call me Harry, and accept that it’s my choice what I forgive.
Severus opened his eyes and found himself standing next to the bed instead of sitting on it, which surprised him. He blinked and sat down again, and Poppy promptly bustled forwards to check on him and examine the wound on his neck.
He caught Harry’s eye. Impossible to go back to thinking of him as Potter, now. Harry nodded to him and then stood and walked out of the hospital wing.
“Where are you going?” Severus called after him, and for once he didn’t care about what either Poppy or Minerva would hear in his voice.
Harry turned back with a small smile. “I just need to get my mind back into order, Severus. That was intense.”
And he disappeared down the corridor, leaving Severus to look after him. He could agree that it had been an intense experience, and that perhaps he had not reacted as strongly himself simply because he had Occlumency to detach him from it and calm the chaos that the memories had stirred in his mind.
But that did not explain his longing for Harry to return.
*
“Are you ready now?”
Severus nodded to Minerva without taking his eyes from Harry. They stood in a ring of stones formed with rocks that had been conjured by Harry and laid down in an intricate pattern that more resembled a spiral than anything else, although even then Severus saw some stones that were jaggedly sticking out from it.
“I am,” Harry said. He wore a green robe that sighed in and out with his breath, while Severus wore a white one. Severus would have sneered at the irony of it, but he didn’t think it was ironic. Of course, he wasn’t virginal, or bridal. He wasn’t innocent.
But Harry saw him that way, or at least as someone capable of becoming that way again.
“Good,” Minerva said. She glanced into the sky, where the soft clouds of a late sunset were glowing. “And you remember the steps that you need to take?”
This time, Severus nodded along with Harry. Harry smiled at him, and the power of it took Severus’s breath away. Already, golden light was gathering around the stones that Harry had conjured, and Harry extended his arms in front of him, palms cupped. Golden light gathered there as well, and brewed and began to hum, a soft, subtle sound on the very edge of hearing.
“You’re ready,” Minerva breathed. When she turned and crossed over the ring of stones, or the spiral, or whatever it was, it sealed behind her with a sharp spark. Severus moved forwards to stand in front of Harry.
“Why did you use this shape?” he asked.
Harry met his gaze and smiled. “It’s what the stones told me to use.”
Severus blinked. That was the right answer, but he was surprised beyond measure that Harry had been-clear-headed enough to sense it. It showed his commitment to this ritual better than anything else could have done.
Harry lowered his head and breathed on the golden light between his palms. This time, the singing became audible, and Severus could hear the edge of what sounded like a chant in Latin.
The implications took his breath away. Most of the time, someone had to perform this ritual with a vocal component, another reason that Severus had been unsure Harry could manage it. It wasn’t like he’d ever heard the boy sing.
But instead, the stones and the light would sing for him. The power and the trust in his own magic, in the ritual, in the power of the solstice, that had to be happening for this…
Severus watched with dazed eyes as Harry stood up in front of him, and the light spread out around his arms and head, surrounding him with a flaring yellow corona. Then Harry looked up at the sunset sky and extended his hands.
“I ask you,” he said simply, “for healing.”
That unadorned plea to the sky and the sun was the oldest way of conducting the ritual, but also a way that meant, if something went wrong, they would both bear the brunt of the magical backlash. Severus opened his mouth to say something about that-
But the light was approaching them. A jagged spiral formed in the sky as Severus watched, leaping between the clouds like slow peach lightning, echoing the shape of the “circle” Harry had made out of the stones. The light extended down, and Harry closed his eyes with a soft sigh as it encircled him, adding a rich tinge to the golden aura encircling him.
The power in the air was palpable and audible now. If he had wanted to leave the spiral of stones, Severus wasn’t sure that he could have.
Harry turned his head and opened his eyes to regard Severus, his smile faint. “Yes,” he murmured, “He wants to be healed, and I ask that he be healed. We are here in an accord, and we are here that the gift may be granted.”
Severus belatedly remembered his part in the ritual, and nodded, staring directly into the heart of the light that hovered over Harry’s head. “Yes,” he said. “We ask, we are joined, we ask that this wound stop bleeding forever.”
The light shifted and seemed to regard him with eyes that Severus could, again, feel rather than see. He shivered, but kept his posture still. There was nothing frightening about the Midsummer ritual when they had come this far. Even if the power of the summer declined to help them for some reason, it would dissipate instead of hurt them. They had been found worthy.
And then the power grabbed him, and Severus remembered what was frightening about this, after all. To be so close to the fire of the sun itself, only half-tame and sparking all around him, so much greater than himself that it could swallow him up and it would be the end of him…
Harry stepped towards him, and Severus’s breathing slowed down again as much as it could when he was the focus of such an intense regard. Harry would interfere if the magic tried to destroy him. He was the caller and the conduit of it, and he could stop it if he wanted to. Severus bowed his head and shuddered a little as the hair on his arms stood up.
The warmth lingered there only a moment before it moved to his neck.
Severus felt as though hot fangs were stabbing him again, but what flowed from them was not venom, as it had been from Nagini, but soothing fire. He gasped, and Harry caught his hands and held them.
“I promise that I would break the healing if I thought it was doing you harm,” Harry whispered.
Severus could barely respond, caught up as he was in the feeling, now warm bars down the middle of his chest, but he did distantly wonder how someone could call this power and speak, casually, in the middle of it.
The bars slid and turned through him, and Severus realized abruptly that they were mimicking the motion of the sun across the sky. The tilting continued until they were parallel with the sinking light in the west, and then there was a muffled burst of power from behind him.
Severus gasped, because he could not scream, as he watched sparkling drops of blood fly away from him. They caught on fire in mid-flight, and spiraled to the ground, glowing bright gold. In a few seconds, they had gone out in the midst of the grass at his feet, the last small glare leaping to the stones and extinguishing itself there.
Harry knelt down in front of him a second later, his eyes bright and worried. He laid a hand on Severus’s arm. “Are you well?”
Severus could not answer that for himself until he could get a hand up to the side of his neck. For a second, he thought, when his fingers found deep-dented grooves, that it had all been for nothing. But then he moved his hand, and no liquid came off on it. Old scabs stretched, and flaky dried blood tumbled when he scratched.
The wound was healed.
Severus swallowed and looked at Harry. “More well than I have been since before the serpent bit me,” he whispered.
Harry ducked his head, as if he wanted to hide the bright, victorious smile bubbling up across his face like spring water. But in the end, he couldn’t do that. He said simply, “Good. I’m glad,” and got to his feet. Severus knelt where he was, feeling the side of his healed neck, and the dying warmth in him, and what had leaped up in him when he saw the smile.
“Madam Pomfrey wanted you to come back to the hospital wing when we were done here,” Harry continued, as if oblivious of what Severus was feeling at the moment. “So she could check you over and make sure-”
His voice trailed off when Severus laid a hand on his arm. Harry blinked and looked at him, and Severus let himself tilt his head back and a little to the side as their eyes met.
“I will go to be checked over,” Severus said. “But I wanted to tell you thank you first.”
Words could not convey what he felt, which was why he had wanted to meet Harry’s eyes. A flush broke out over Harry’s face now, and his eyes, which had been so brilliant and steady all through the ritual and before that, too, wavered and sought out the ground. Severus reached out and tilted his chin up with one finger.
“Why are you doing that?” Harry asked in a voice that wasn’t a whisper only because it wavered a little higher.
“Because I want to see your eyes.”
Harry reached up and closed his hand around Severus’s wrist. Severus didn’t move. He wondered if Harry was about to make some speech about the ritual ending everything between them, paying back all debts, or that he would state he was dating Weasley’s sister.
He did neither. Instead, Harry cleared his throat with a difficult sound, and whispered, “I-I didn’t do this so that you would be in my debt.”
“If I had thought that, I would never have mustered up enough trust in you to allow the ritual to take place,” Severus murmured back. “I was inside your mind and saw what you think and feel, remember?”
Harry swallowed. “Yes. I remember it,” he said, sounding as if it had happened ten years ago. “I-we should get to Madam Pomfrey.”
With a faint smile, Severus stepped back and allowed Harry to withdraw. There was a difference between denial and allowing someone to avoid what made them uncomfortable, and Severus could afford to let Harry do the latter. He simply would not indulge the former.
As a sign of that, he made sure to touch Harry’s arm as Madam Pomfrey gestured him to a hospital bed, and let a sign of what he felt show in his eyes when Harry met them.
Harry flushed brighter and murmured, “You’ll feel better after getting some rest,” before darting off like a rabbit. Madam Pomfrey shook her head when Severus opened his mouth, presumably anticipating a protest.
“You still have to rest after going through a ritual like that.”
“I know that,” Severus said, and called softly after Harry, “We will speak of this again in the future.”
There was no answer, but Severus was sure that he had been heard. He closed his eyes as he listened to Madam Pomfrey perform the diagnostic spells, and heard Minerva come in to ask questions-questions whose answers she would be able to see for herself in the restored skin of his throat, so Severus didn’t see the need to speak about them.
His mind was considering the future, and the next ritual of light, which was the first of August. Lammas, Lughnasadh.
The day after Harry’s birthday.
Yes, they would be speaking of this again, and this time, Harry would get to see Severus’s prowess in calling the light.
The End.
The Light of Summer Stars, sequel.