[Advent fic]: Beltane's Contrary, PG-13, S/H/D
Title: Beltane’s Contrary
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Snape/Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, AU in that Snape survives
Wordcount: 4200
Summary: On the coldest day of the year, Harry, Draco, and Severus meet in the graveyard at Godric’s Hollow, all of them come seeking surcease from different sorts of pain.
Author’s Notes: This is another of my Advent fics, written for
hpstrangelove, who requested: Harry-Draco-Severus (No prior relationship). All three have been leading separate and lonely lives. They find themselves in the same place (bar/restaurant/hotel/church/graveyard whatever) on Christmas Eve/Day. Angst but no unhappy ending. Here you are!
Beltane’s Contrary
Harry let the new gate of the graveyard fall quietly to behind him.
He stood there instead of walking forwards for long moments, his hands in the pockets of his new jeans. There had been a lot of changes to the place since he was here with Hermione on their desperate Horcrux hunt, notably that the graves had been cleaned up, and the snow that lay on the ground and the headstones now looked soft and clean instead of threatening. But there was still a loneliness about it, a silence, that he didn’t want to disturb.
He started walking after a few moments. The grass and the snow crunched together beneath his feet.
His parents’ graves were well-tended now. Harry came on every holiday and most weekends, and placed flowers on them, and cut back the grass that would have grown over them. He knew that people wondered about that, but most of them also seemed to accept there were some mysteries in Godric’s Hollow that simply wouldn’t be solved, and were wise enough not to inquire too closely into them, either. As long as they left him alone, that was all he wished for.
Not all he wished for.
Harry hunched his shoulders. Well, yeah, but that happy-ever-after with Ginny hadn’t worked out. It was silly to keep mouthing at it and turning it over in his mind when the reality was all around him.
He stopped a second later, his foot poised above the ground, and then darted behind a ridiculously tall stone with an angel on the top. His hand was on his wand, his heart pounding, before he thought about it.
Yeah, this was the reality, and part of that reality included no more war. But a tall figure in a black robe and cloak by his parents’ graves was still shockingly upsetting.
Harry closed his eyes and reasoned slowly through his immediate impulse. Sometimes he had found other flowers on the graves when he came, lilies, and always on his mother’s, not on his father’s. There were other people who could have loved his parents and wanted to honor them. He knew little about them, really. After the war, so many people talked about moving on and how they didn’t want to think about the past anymore that Harry had felt bad asking for stories.
And the ones who had known them best…he couldn’t possibly ask Snape about his mum, that would be silly. The celebrations and funerals after the war had consisted in large part of him and Snape avoiding each other’s eyes and presences.
Is that Snape over there?
It could be. Which meant it was silly to hide, and Harry understood his reasons for coming here, and hiding and hesitating and acting like an idiot would only exacerbate the problem, not make it go away.
Besides, it was getting cold, and Harry wanted to be in bed early. Christmas at the Weasleys’ was a complicated affair that required getting up at six or earlier in order to coordinate all the children. Harry paused one more time to lick his lips, and then stepped around the gravestone.
The figure’s head turned at once, and Harry nodded. It was Snape. Hard to mistake those dark eyes, or the long, darkness-fringed scar that ran down the side of his throat. Harry muttered, “Here goes nothing,” and walked towards him.
*
Draco looked in frustration at the two men standing in front of the gravestones he had planned to visit. What the fuck? Was life determined to spit on him no matter how many steps he took to mend his problems?
He shut his eyes and shook his head. You know the answer to that, Draco. The answer is yes, of course.
He clenched his hands down, and then swallowed and drew them back. He had his broken wand in his pocket. When he forgot and pushed his fingers too far into his jacket, the splinters pricked at him.
The Ministry had had no reason to break his wand. No reason. Yes, they had caught Draco in the middle of what turned out to be a Dark wizard’s apothecary, but Draco had only been buying ingredients. They’d examined those ingredients. They’d agreed that they had no reason to hold him, that he was an innocent victim of the raid.
And then they’d broken his wand anyway.
Draco clenched his hands again, this time welcoming the pain from the broken wood. No. They would not destroy his life again. He would show those with old grudges in the Ministry, those he was sure were behind the breaking, that he would not give up and crawl into a dark corner to die, or become dependent on favors from those looking only to use him, or swallow his pride and humbly beg the Ministry for a new wand.
There was a potion he could brew that would allow him to change one thing about the past, one concrete and fixable thing that focused on an object and not a person. He needed a chip of stone from the marker of a grave whose occupant had died for a sacrifice of love. He had known at once whose grave he wanted to use, since the Daily Prophet hadn’t shut up about Lily Potter’s love sacrifice since Potter announced it was the reason he’d won. What stone could be more powerful?
But now these men were in the way-and then one of them moved and his hood fell off, and Draco saw it was Potter
Better and better. Draco slumped back, wondering when in the world he would go away.
Then Potter said, “What, even in death?” and the tall figure shifted, and Draco heard the hoarse, unmistakable voice, and knew it was Severus.
A plan came to him, as sharp as the broken wand, but one that might actually work, if Draco had the courage to carry it through. He swallowed and stepped out into plain sight.
*
Severus sneered at the boy. He had approached him in a conciliating fashion, and then he had asked the question that Severus had thought he would not ask-he had dared to hope that Potter had grown past being a boy in mind, no matter how much he still looked like one in body-and of course it had started it all again.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Your father deserves flowers, you say. Well, not from my hand. Never from me.”
Potter’s hands were held together in front of his chest, clasping each other as if that was the only safeguard that would keep him from shoving Severus. Severus waited for the push, for the tension to snap. His hand was on his wand already, and he didn’t intend to move it from there.
Potter closed his eyes, licked his lips, and stepped away. “Well, maybe that’s true,” he said, and turned to face the graves, dropping to one knee in front of them. As Severus started, he whispered, “Hullo, Mum, Dad.”
And that left Severus utterly wrongfooted. Potter wasn’t supposed to ignore him. Potter wasn’t supposed to act as though Severus’s answers were reasonable and he was entitled to his own opinion. Potter was supposed to argue with him, furiously, and wave his arms around, and yell in his high-pitched voice-ridiculously high-pitched given the age he was-that everything was Severus’s fault, and always would be.
A trembling shiver seemed to run through Severus, and the air in front of him seemed to fracture and change colors. He had felt that sensation only once before: the night he realized that he had caused Lily Potter’s death, however inadvertently, and that the only way he could think of to make up for it was to go and surrender his will to Dumbledore’s.
Severus clenched his wrist to his mouth, and closed his eyes.
“Severus. Potter.”
And then there was something else there, something wholly unexpected. Albus had at least once told Severus that he might someday find Potter was more grown-up than he’d thought. Nothing had prepared Severus for Draco coming to the Potters’ gravestones in the middle of the Godric’s Hollow graveyard.
Draco stood there with his gaze darting back and forth between them, and then he cleared his throat and lifted his head a little, importantly. “I need something,” he said in a loud voice. “Enough for me to go to Professor Scrubb and beg her help.”
It took Severus a moment to place the name. The new Divination Professor at Hogwarts. By all accounts, she was a true Seer, but Draco had disliked Divination, by the end of the war. He always said that he would have killed himself if he had known the future. Severus could do nothing now but watch him blankly.
Draco spread his hands and turned back and forth between him and Potter, watching them both intently, head down, eyes gleaming a little. “Listen. She said that I would meet both of you in the graveyard tonight, and that together, we could create a-a ritual, a charm, that would guarantee all of us a good life henceforth.”
Severus did some more staring, and saw Potter doing the same out of the corner of his eye. At least the boy had the sense to know that Draco was lying.
Why Draco was lying was the more interesting question.
Severus spoke, keeping his voice to the same low, smooth tone that had seemed to soothe Draco during the war, the rare times they had found to speak together. “Do you mean rituals such as the Amicitia, Draco? Those are rare, and hard to perform.”
“But all you really need is a special place that matters to at least two of the people involved,” Draco said eagerly. “This place matters to you because it’s your parents, Potter, and it matters because-because you hated Potter’s parents, Severus.”
Severus had never been sure exactly how much Draco knew about Lily, and he had never wanted to ask. If he had betrayed himself in a moment of weakness, let it stay a moment, and a silent one at that. He nodded shortly, and said, “Yes, it matters. But the rituals such as you speak of still need intense preparation and ingredients we don’t have.”
“Not the one that Professor Scrubb told me about,” Draco said, and dropped to his knees in front of the graves. Potter watched him without moving. He had shown remarkably little reaction to Draco’s presence, in fact, and Severus wondered if he was simply interested enough to allow the scene to proceed to its end. It could not be that Potter was sympathetic to Draco. “Look, all we need is the place and the commitment.” He scraped something off the grave. “And a bit of the place.”
“My parents’ headstones?”
Severus shivered. No need to remember the Dark Lord, not when that chill was in Potter’s voice. He listened to the rising wind around them. Yes, it did have an edge of accidental magic. He hoped Draco proceeded carefully.
“Yes,” Draco said, facing Potter again. He had concealed whatever he had taken from the stone in a pouch at his belt, and his face was guileless. “I promise, it’s nothing horrible, Potter. I just want to do something that would guarantee me a good life. I’ve had a pretty bloody miserable time of it so far.”
Severus watched Potter’s eyes darken, and expected a rant in response to that, with Potter emphasizing how much harder he had it.
Instead, though, Potter’s eyes only seemed to deepen as he watched Draco, and the next moment he held out his arm. “Fine,” he said. “Do what you need to do.”
Severus started at Potter in turn. The boy was doing nothing expected tonight, and that unnerved him.
*
Harry ached. He was tired. He wanted to be alone with his parents’ headstones, and he wanted to leave and never come back so Snape and Malfoy couldn’t make fun of him for seeking the company of the dead in the first place.
But if this place, this night, belonged to anyone, they belonged to him. Maybe Snape had the connection of loving his mother and Malfoy had the connection of being a right idiot with a knack for showing up at the wrong time, but Harry was not going to be driven away. Just like he wasn’t going to argue or flinch or yell. He was done giving Snape and Malfoy what they wanted.
“Fine,” he repeated, while Malfoy just gaped at him. “Do this ritual. Convince me.”
Malfoy licked his lips. His eyes were large, and flickered with several colors in the dim lights coming from their wands and the distant Muggle houses. Harry had the distinct feeling that he had come this far without a plan, and had no idea what to do next.
Well, good. That means that I’m not the only one out of place. Snape would never acknowledge being out of place, of course.
But the next moment, Malfoy took a sharp breath, nodded, and said, “You should do it with your wand, Potter. You’re the-the one with the strongest connection.” His voice sounded sharp, but his gaze kept straying back to the headstones and to Snape and to Harry’s arm as if he didn’t know which one was the least alarming to look at. “You should do it tonight, because this is Beltane’s contrary.”
Harry blinked. “I thought Beltane’s contrary was Samhain.” Not that he knew much about Beltane at all, but it made sense that a bright, beginning time of the year was countered by the dark and dying one.
Malfoy shook his head, his voice gaining strength as he spoke. “No. This isn’t exactly Midwinter, the solstice, that’s past. But this is the beginning of another time of year that a lot of people honor, and it’s a time of hope and beauty. Just in winter, not in spring or summer. It’s the opposite in time of year, not intention. The ritual will have a lot of power if you do it tonight.”
Harry regarded him in silence. Snape shifted his balance behind him, making the snow crunch.
Malfoy was almost certainly lying. Harry had no reason not to shove his wand in his pocket and walk away.
Except-
Except that he had sworn he wouldn’t allow them to drive him away from his parents’ graves. And because he half-wanted to see how far Malfoy would go with it, when he would admit that he had trapped himself in an impossible position.
And because he was tired and worn-out and far more unhappy than he should be on Christmas Eve, and a ritual to bring a bit of happiness into their lives didn’t sound half bad.
“All right,” he said. “Just tell me what I have to do, and I’m more than ready to go along with this.”
*
Just wonderful, Draco. That was the way his father had always said it, the slight tone of praise all the more fake for being layered over disappointment. What are you going to do now?
Draco swallowed. He had come up with this to get Potter, especially, to let him get close, so he could steal a bit of the headstone and then run. But it had worked, and now he was sitting there all wrongfooted and aching and tender in parts of his heart, and he had no idea what he could come up with next.
He had to come up with something, though, or admit he was lying, and Potter was likely to tear him apart for that. Or Severus, standing with his arms folded and the same look on his face he’d had when Draco ruined a Draught of Peace, would, and Draco shuddered even more to think of that.
So he flew.
“You need to touch your wand to something that reminds you of this place,” he babbled. “Not your arm. Blood won’t matter to this ritual, unless it’s your blood that reminds you of this place.”
With a faint, perfect smile, Potter closed his eyes and pushed his fringe back, letting his wand rest against his lightning bolt scar.
Draco stared, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Severus take a step forwards. The next moment, he froze as though the Dark Lord had just come into the room. The look in his eyes was one Draco had never seen before, but he suspected it was also the same one he was now wearing.
And that was all right, wasn’t it, for him to be struck and stricken by the gesture if Severus was? Because Severus had stronger shields and more reason to dislike Potter. Draco would have been his friend, once, if offered the chance. He was sure that Severus never would have.
“What now?” Potter whispered, the sound of his words odd because he had to speak while keeping his wand in the same place on his forehead.
Draco, shivering as though the enchantment was real and had already begun, whispered,
“Now I contribute something to the ritual, something that means a lot to me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a splinter of his wand.
Severus saw the motion, and saw the splinter, and his eyes widened. The glance he gave Draco was spear-deep, much like that splinter could have driven into his finger if Draco had been careless, and said he knew, and said that he wondered Draco could have stood to give up his secret like this.
Draco lifted his chin. Yes, he was shaking, but still, he was there, and there was snow under his knees, and Potter had his wand on his forehead, and if Severus wanted to speak, he could end this farce in a moment.
He chose not to speak. So Draco dared to incline his head as he laid down the splinter in the snow and said, “Now Severus has to cast a spell that means a lot to him, and you have to cast the spell at the same time.”
“The target of the spell?” Severus’s voice was queer.
“The gift I give the ritual, of course.” Draco stood up and backed away from the splinter. He knew he could brew the potion, now that he had the chip of gravestone in his pocket. He knew he didn’t have to have all the pieces of his wand for that. It was even possible that he was missing some of the small bits that had scattered in the initial explosion. But it would be easier if he kept the little piece of wood.
He hadn’t. Potter was nodding, his eyes half-open but with no sign of recognizing the piece of hawthorn, and he was the one who said, “What spell, Snape?”
Draco held Severus’s eyes, and said nothing. Yes, Severus could end this, could tell Potter definitively that the ritual was all made up, but Draco hoped that he wouldn’t. He was high-hearted and breathless, and he wanted to see how it ended.
*
Severus’s fingers tightened on the wand, and he pulled it out. His first instinct was to cast Sectumsempra, the perfect answer to Draco’s insolence, and one that would disrupt the moment for him and Potter in unique ways.
But it wasn’t what he wanted to happen, and not because of Draco’s pleading, bright grey eyes-or not only that. There was also Potter, kneeling there in the snow, like a sacrifice but not with that purpose.
Severus had not realized he wanted to see that until he saw it.
His hand tightened on the wand until he thought he would simply spin away and end it that way. Then he pointed his wand tip at the splinter instead and said, “Florissimus.”
A silly spell, one that he had invented when he invented Levicorpus and Sectumsempra and the rest of them. But it had been meant for a different purpose, not to humiliate and not to attack and not to defend. It had been meant to make flowers spring out of stone, and to make Lily smile.
A stupid spell. A silly one. One that he had never used in the last twenty years except to conjure flowers for Lily’s grave.
And they came now, bright lilies, curling out of the splinter of Draco’s wand-and when and how had that happened?-and drooping gracefully towards the snow. But there were other flowers, too, ones that Severus was sure he had not planted there, silvery-grey ones that echoed the color of the hawthorn wood.
And there was still a third wave of flowers as Potter quietly incanted the spell, and his hands were full of them, blue and clear, almost translucent as silk through the petals, but with no name that Severus knew, either. And they sprang from the splinter to mingle with Severus’s lilies and Draco’s grey flowers.
Potter opened his eyes, that shocking, striking green that had once meant so much to Severus, green in the middle of the winter.
Severus looked from him to Draco. Draco was kneeling on the ground staring at something in his hands. For a moment, Severus thought he had plucked one of the flowers or picked up the splinter, but then he turned his head in Severus’s direction, his eyes filled and ravaged with light, and Severus realized that he was holding a hawthorn wand.
Complete.
Whole.
Severus stared at the wand and shook his head. Yes, the potion he suspected Draco was planning to brew would have worked to put the wand back together, but he had never heard of a ritual that would-especially a ritual that he highly suspected Draco of making up as he went along.
“Wow,” Potter whispered. He was smiling. He looked at the wand in Draco’s hands, and then looked up to meet Draco’s eyes and nod. “It’s right that the ritual repaired your wand,” he said, and Severus did not wonder how he knew it had been broken, when he apparently didn’t know before. “It’s right that this happened, here, now, with us.”
Draco said nothing, but cast the spell that Severus and Potter had into the snow beside the splinter. Out of it rose more white flowers, narcissus. Draco reached for one, plucked it, held it to his nose, and closed his eyes.
“This-this means something,” Potter said, and Severus shifted his shoulders, irritated despite himself at the way that Potter had to cling hard to the moment, had to try and put words around it so it would do what he wanted. “I think it does, anyway. I think-I mean, we can’t just walk away. By ourselves. Can we?”
The question at the end, Severus could forgive him for, because it left them at least the illusion of choice. He looked at Draco, and Draco lifted his head, eyes liquid and wide and forgiving.
“Yes,” he whispered. “We could. But I don’t want to.”
Severus nodded before he thought about it, and then he had done it and could not take it back, any more than he could take back the spell he had invented for Lily and showed them. He stood there and watched Potter smile, and Potter nod, and knew that this was the beginning of something new, Draco’s nonsensical lies and theories about Beltane notwithstanding.
The spell should not have made two kinds of flowers grow before Potter even added his variation. They should not have come together like this in a graveyard, and Severus should not have been looking forward to seeing what happened next.
But they had, and he was.
*
They made plans-in low voices, but they made them. And the first plan was to meet on Boxing Day for dinner, and the second plan was to choose, randomly, another place that was important to them, at Hogwarts, and see what might happen if they went there.
They walked in their separate directions, though Harry paused once to look back, and drink in the sight of them before they vanished. So he saw the quick way that Malfoy’s head darted, too, hair swinging and gleaming in the starlight, and how Snape nodded to both of them, or at least gave curt head-snaps that could be interpreted that way, before he Apparated.
And Harry closed his eyes and whispered farewell to his parents and hello to something new before he, too, vanished.
The End.
The Hogwarts Campaign.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/509677.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Snape/Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, AU in that Snape survives
Wordcount: 4200
Summary: On the coldest day of the year, Harry, Draco, and Severus meet in the graveyard at Godric’s Hollow, all of them come seeking surcease from different sorts of pain.
Author’s Notes: This is another of my Advent fics, written for
hpstrangelove, who requested: Harry-Draco-Severus (No prior relationship). All three have been leading separate and lonely lives. They find themselves in the same place (bar/restaurant/hotel/church/graveyard whatever) on Christmas Eve/Day. Angst but no unhappy ending. Here you are!
Beltane’s Contrary
Harry let the new gate of the graveyard fall quietly to behind him.
He stood there instead of walking forwards for long moments, his hands in the pockets of his new jeans. There had been a lot of changes to the place since he was here with Hermione on their desperate Horcrux hunt, notably that the graves had been cleaned up, and the snow that lay on the ground and the headstones now looked soft and clean instead of threatening. But there was still a loneliness about it, a silence, that he didn’t want to disturb.
He started walking after a few moments. The grass and the snow crunched together beneath his feet.
His parents’ graves were well-tended now. Harry came on every holiday and most weekends, and placed flowers on them, and cut back the grass that would have grown over them. He knew that people wondered about that, but most of them also seemed to accept there were some mysteries in Godric’s Hollow that simply wouldn’t be solved, and were wise enough not to inquire too closely into them, either. As long as they left him alone, that was all he wished for.
Not all he wished for.
Harry hunched his shoulders. Well, yeah, but that happy-ever-after with Ginny hadn’t worked out. It was silly to keep mouthing at it and turning it over in his mind when the reality was all around him.
He stopped a second later, his foot poised above the ground, and then darted behind a ridiculously tall stone with an angel on the top. His hand was on his wand, his heart pounding, before he thought about it.
Yeah, this was the reality, and part of that reality included no more war. But a tall figure in a black robe and cloak by his parents’ graves was still shockingly upsetting.
Harry closed his eyes and reasoned slowly through his immediate impulse. Sometimes he had found other flowers on the graves when he came, lilies, and always on his mother’s, not on his father’s. There were other people who could have loved his parents and wanted to honor them. He knew little about them, really. After the war, so many people talked about moving on and how they didn’t want to think about the past anymore that Harry had felt bad asking for stories.
And the ones who had known them best…he couldn’t possibly ask Snape about his mum, that would be silly. The celebrations and funerals after the war had consisted in large part of him and Snape avoiding each other’s eyes and presences.
Is that Snape over there?
It could be. Which meant it was silly to hide, and Harry understood his reasons for coming here, and hiding and hesitating and acting like an idiot would only exacerbate the problem, not make it go away.
Besides, it was getting cold, and Harry wanted to be in bed early. Christmas at the Weasleys’ was a complicated affair that required getting up at six or earlier in order to coordinate all the children. Harry paused one more time to lick his lips, and then stepped around the gravestone.
The figure’s head turned at once, and Harry nodded. It was Snape. Hard to mistake those dark eyes, or the long, darkness-fringed scar that ran down the side of his throat. Harry muttered, “Here goes nothing,” and walked towards him.
*
Draco looked in frustration at the two men standing in front of the gravestones he had planned to visit. What the fuck? Was life determined to spit on him no matter how many steps he took to mend his problems?
He shut his eyes and shook his head. You know the answer to that, Draco. The answer is yes, of course.
He clenched his hands down, and then swallowed and drew them back. He had his broken wand in his pocket. When he forgot and pushed his fingers too far into his jacket, the splinters pricked at him.
The Ministry had had no reason to break his wand. No reason. Yes, they had caught Draco in the middle of what turned out to be a Dark wizard’s apothecary, but Draco had only been buying ingredients. They’d examined those ingredients. They’d agreed that they had no reason to hold him, that he was an innocent victim of the raid.
And then they’d broken his wand anyway.
Draco clenched his hands again, this time welcoming the pain from the broken wood. No. They would not destroy his life again. He would show those with old grudges in the Ministry, those he was sure were behind the breaking, that he would not give up and crawl into a dark corner to die, or become dependent on favors from those looking only to use him, or swallow his pride and humbly beg the Ministry for a new wand.
There was a potion he could brew that would allow him to change one thing about the past, one concrete and fixable thing that focused on an object and not a person. He needed a chip of stone from the marker of a grave whose occupant had died for a sacrifice of love. He had known at once whose grave he wanted to use, since the Daily Prophet hadn’t shut up about Lily Potter’s love sacrifice since Potter announced it was the reason he’d won. What stone could be more powerful?
But now these men were in the way-and then one of them moved and his hood fell off, and Draco saw it was Potter
Better and better. Draco slumped back, wondering when in the world he would go away.
Then Potter said, “What, even in death?” and the tall figure shifted, and Draco heard the hoarse, unmistakable voice, and knew it was Severus.
A plan came to him, as sharp as the broken wand, but one that might actually work, if Draco had the courage to carry it through. He swallowed and stepped out into plain sight.
*
Severus sneered at the boy. He had approached him in a conciliating fashion, and then he had asked the question that Severus had thought he would not ask-he had dared to hope that Potter had grown past being a boy in mind, no matter how much he still looked like one in body-and of course it had started it all again.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Your father deserves flowers, you say. Well, not from my hand. Never from me.”
Potter’s hands were held together in front of his chest, clasping each other as if that was the only safeguard that would keep him from shoving Severus. Severus waited for the push, for the tension to snap. His hand was on his wand already, and he didn’t intend to move it from there.
Potter closed his eyes, licked his lips, and stepped away. “Well, maybe that’s true,” he said, and turned to face the graves, dropping to one knee in front of them. As Severus started, he whispered, “Hullo, Mum, Dad.”
And that left Severus utterly wrongfooted. Potter wasn’t supposed to ignore him. Potter wasn’t supposed to act as though Severus’s answers were reasonable and he was entitled to his own opinion. Potter was supposed to argue with him, furiously, and wave his arms around, and yell in his high-pitched voice-ridiculously high-pitched given the age he was-that everything was Severus’s fault, and always would be.
A trembling shiver seemed to run through Severus, and the air in front of him seemed to fracture and change colors. He had felt that sensation only once before: the night he realized that he had caused Lily Potter’s death, however inadvertently, and that the only way he could think of to make up for it was to go and surrender his will to Dumbledore’s.
Severus clenched his wrist to his mouth, and closed his eyes.
“Severus. Potter.”
And then there was something else there, something wholly unexpected. Albus had at least once told Severus that he might someday find Potter was more grown-up than he’d thought. Nothing had prepared Severus for Draco coming to the Potters’ gravestones in the middle of the Godric’s Hollow graveyard.
Draco stood there with his gaze darting back and forth between them, and then he cleared his throat and lifted his head a little, importantly. “I need something,” he said in a loud voice. “Enough for me to go to Professor Scrubb and beg her help.”
It took Severus a moment to place the name. The new Divination Professor at Hogwarts. By all accounts, she was a true Seer, but Draco had disliked Divination, by the end of the war. He always said that he would have killed himself if he had known the future. Severus could do nothing now but watch him blankly.
Draco spread his hands and turned back and forth between him and Potter, watching them both intently, head down, eyes gleaming a little. “Listen. She said that I would meet both of you in the graveyard tonight, and that together, we could create a-a ritual, a charm, that would guarantee all of us a good life henceforth.”
Severus did some more staring, and saw Potter doing the same out of the corner of his eye. At least the boy had the sense to know that Draco was lying.
Why Draco was lying was the more interesting question.
Severus spoke, keeping his voice to the same low, smooth tone that had seemed to soothe Draco during the war, the rare times they had found to speak together. “Do you mean rituals such as the Amicitia, Draco? Those are rare, and hard to perform.”
“But all you really need is a special place that matters to at least two of the people involved,” Draco said eagerly. “This place matters to you because it’s your parents, Potter, and it matters because-because you hated Potter’s parents, Severus.”
Severus had never been sure exactly how much Draco knew about Lily, and he had never wanted to ask. If he had betrayed himself in a moment of weakness, let it stay a moment, and a silent one at that. He nodded shortly, and said, “Yes, it matters. But the rituals such as you speak of still need intense preparation and ingredients we don’t have.”
“Not the one that Professor Scrubb told me about,” Draco said, and dropped to his knees in front of the graves. Potter watched him without moving. He had shown remarkably little reaction to Draco’s presence, in fact, and Severus wondered if he was simply interested enough to allow the scene to proceed to its end. It could not be that Potter was sympathetic to Draco. “Look, all we need is the place and the commitment.” He scraped something off the grave. “And a bit of the place.”
“My parents’ headstones?”
Severus shivered. No need to remember the Dark Lord, not when that chill was in Potter’s voice. He listened to the rising wind around them. Yes, it did have an edge of accidental magic. He hoped Draco proceeded carefully.
“Yes,” Draco said, facing Potter again. He had concealed whatever he had taken from the stone in a pouch at his belt, and his face was guileless. “I promise, it’s nothing horrible, Potter. I just want to do something that would guarantee me a good life. I’ve had a pretty bloody miserable time of it so far.”
Severus watched Potter’s eyes darken, and expected a rant in response to that, with Potter emphasizing how much harder he had it.
Instead, though, Potter’s eyes only seemed to deepen as he watched Draco, and the next moment he held out his arm. “Fine,” he said. “Do what you need to do.”
Severus started at Potter in turn. The boy was doing nothing expected tonight, and that unnerved him.
*
Harry ached. He was tired. He wanted to be alone with his parents’ headstones, and he wanted to leave and never come back so Snape and Malfoy couldn’t make fun of him for seeking the company of the dead in the first place.
But if this place, this night, belonged to anyone, they belonged to him. Maybe Snape had the connection of loving his mother and Malfoy had the connection of being a right idiot with a knack for showing up at the wrong time, but Harry was not going to be driven away. Just like he wasn’t going to argue or flinch or yell. He was done giving Snape and Malfoy what they wanted.
“Fine,” he repeated, while Malfoy just gaped at him. “Do this ritual. Convince me.”
Malfoy licked his lips. His eyes were large, and flickered with several colors in the dim lights coming from their wands and the distant Muggle houses. Harry had the distinct feeling that he had come this far without a plan, and had no idea what to do next.
Well, good. That means that I’m not the only one out of place. Snape would never acknowledge being out of place, of course.
But the next moment, Malfoy took a sharp breath, nodded, and said, “You should do it with your wand, Potter. You’re the-the one with the strongest connection.” His voice sounded sharp, but his gaze kept straying back to the headstones and to Snape and to Harry’s arm as if he didn’t know which one was the least alarming to look at. “You should do it tonight, because this is Beltane’s contrary.”
Harry blinked. “I thought Beltane’s contrary was Samhain.” Not that he knew much about Beltane at all, but it made sense that a bright, beginning time of the year was countered by the dark and dying one.
Malfoy shook his head, his voice gaining strength as he spoke. “No. This isn’t exactly Midwinter, the solstice, that’s past. But this is the beginning of another time of year that a lot of people honor, and it’s a time of hope and beauty. Just in winter, not in spring or summer. It’s the opposite in time of year, not intention. The ritual will have a lot of power if you do it tonight.”
Harry regarded him in silence. Snape shifted his balance behind him, making the snow crunch.
Malfoy was almost certainly lying. Harry had no reason not to shove his wand in his pocket and walk away.
Except-
Except that he had sworn he wouldn’t allow them to drive him away from his parents’ graves. And because he half-wanted to see how far Malfoy would go with it, when he would admit that he had trapped himself in an impossible position.
And because he was tired and worn-out and far more unhappy than he should be on Christmas Eve, and a ritual to bring a bit of happiness into their lives didn’t sound half bad.
“All right,” he said. “Just tell me what I have to do, and I’m more than ready to go along with this.”
*
Just wonderful, Draco. That was the way his father had always said it, the slight tone of praise all the more fake for being layered over disappointment. What are you going to do now?
Draco swallowed. He had come up with this to get Potter, especially, to let him get close, so he could steal a bit of the headstone and then run. But it had worked, and now he was sitting there all wrongfooted and aching and tender in parts of his heart, and he had no idea what he could come up with next.
He had to come up with something, though, or admit he was lying, and Potter was likely to tear him apart for that. Or Severus, standing with his arms folded and the same look on his face he’d had when Draco ruined a Draught of Peace, would, and Draco shuddered even more to think of that.
So he flew.
“You need to touch your wand to something that reminds you of this place,” he babbled. “Not your arm. Blood won’t matter to this ritual, unless it’s your blood that reminds you of this place.”
With a faint, perfect smile, Potter closed his eyes and pushed his fringe back, letting his wand rest against his lightning bolt scar.
Draco stared, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Severus take a step forwards. The next moment, he froze as though the Dark Lord had just come into the room. The look in his eyes was one Draco had never seen before, but he suspected it was also the same one he was now wearing.
And that was all right, wasn’t it, for him to be struck and stricken by the gesture if Severus was? Because Severus had stronger shields and more reason to dislike Potter. Draco would have been his friend, once, if offered the chance. He was sure that Severus never would have.
“What now?” Potter whispered, the sound of his words odd because he had to speak while keeping his wand in the same place on his forehead.
Draco, shivering as though the enchantment was real and had already begun, whispered,
“Now I contribute something to the ritual, something that means a lot to me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a splinter of his wand.
Severus saw the motion, and saw the splinter, and his eyes widened. The glance he gave Draco was spear-deep, much like that splinter could have driven into his finger if Draco had been careless, and said he knew, and said that he wondered Draco could have stood to give up his secret like this.
Draco lifted his chin. Yes, he was shaking, but still, he was there, and there was snow under his knees, and Potter had his wand on his forehead, and if Severus wanted to speak, he could end this farce in a moment.
He chose not to speak. So Draco dared to incline his head as he laid down the splinter in the snow and said, “Now Severus has to cast a spell that means a lot to him, and you have to cast the spell at the same time.”
“The target of the spell?” Severus’s voice was queer.
“The gift I give the ritual, of course.” Draco stood up and backed away from the splinter. He knew he could brew the potion, now that he had the chip of gravestone in his pocket. He knew he didn’t have to have all the pieces of his wand for that. It was even possible that he was missing some of the small bits that had scattered in the initial explosion. But it would be easier if he kept the little piece of wood.
He hadn’t. Potter was nodding, his eyes half-open but with no sign of recognizing the piece of hawthorn, and he was the one who said, “What spell, Snape?”
Draco held Severus’s eyes, and said nothing. Yes, Severus could end this, could tell Potter definitively that the ritual was all made up, but Draco hoped that he wouldn’t. He was high-hearted and breathless, and he wanted to see how it ended.
*
Severus’s fingers tightened on the wand, and he pulled it out. His first instinct was to cast Sectumsempra, the perfect answer to Draco’s insolence, and one that would disrupt the moment for him and Potter in unique ways.
But it wasn’t what he wanted to happen, and not because of Draco’s pleading, bright grey eyes-or not only that. There was also Potter, kneeling there in the snow, like a sacrifice but not with that purpose.
Severus had not realized he wanted to see that until he saw it.
His hand tightened on the wand until he thought he would simply spin away and end it that way. Then he pointed his wand tip at the splinter instead and said, “Florissimus.”
A silly spell, one that he had invented when he invented Levicorpus and Sectumsempra and the rest of them. But it had been meant for a different purpose, not to humiliate and not to attack and not to defend. It had been meant to make flowers spring out of stone, and to make Lily smile.
A stupid spell. A silly one. One that he had never used in the last twenty years except to conjure flowers for Lily’s grave.
And they came now, bright lilies, curling out of the splinter of Draco’s wand-and when and how had that happened?-and drooping gracefully towards the snow. But there were other flowers, too, ones that Severus was sure he had not planted there, silvery-grey ones that echoed the color of the hawthorn wood.
And there was still a third wave of flowers as Potter quietly incanted the spell, and his hands were full of them, blue and clear, almost translucent as silk through the petals, but with no name that Severus knew, either. And they sprang from the splinter to mingle with Severus’s lilies and Draco’s grey flowers.
Potter opened his eyes, that shocking, striking green that had once meant so much to Severus, green in the middle of the winter.
Severus looked from him to Draco. Draco was kneeling on the ground staring at something in his hands. For a moment, Severus thought he had plucked one of the flowers or picked up the splinter, but then he turned his head in Severus’s direction, his eyes filled and ravaged with light, and Severus realized that he was holding a hawthorn wand.
Complete.
Whole.
Severus stared at the wand and shook his head. Yes, the potion he suspected Draco was planning to brew would have worked to put the wand back together, but he had never heard of a ritual that would-especially a ritual that he highly suspected Draco of making up as he went along.
“Wow,” Potter whispered. He was smiling. He looked at the wand in Draco’s hands, and then looked up to meet Draco’s eyes and nod. “It’s right that the ritual repaired your wand,” he said, and Severus did not wonder how he knew it had been broken, when he apparently didn’t know before. “It’s right that this happened, here, now, with us.”
Draco said nothing, but cast the spell that Severus and Potter had into the snow beside the splinter. Out of it rose more white flowers, narcissus. Draco reached for one, plucked it, held it to his nose, and closed his eyes.
“This-this means something,” Potter said, and Severus shifted his shoulders, irritated despite himself at the way that Potter had to cling hard to the moment, had to try and put words around it so it would do what he wanted. “I think it does, anyway. I think-I mean, we can’t just walk away. By ourselves. Can we?”
The question at the end, Severus could forgive him for, because it left them at least the illusion of choice. He looked at Draco, and Draco lifted his head, eyes liquid and wide and forgiving.
“Yes,” he whispered. “We could. But I don’t want to.”
Severus nodded before he thought about it, and then he had done it and could not take it back, any more than he could take back the spell he had invented for Lily and showed them. He stood there and watched Potter smile, and Potter nod, and knew that this was the beginning of something new, Draco’s nonsensical lies and theories about Beltane notwithstanding.
The spell should not have made two kinds of flowers grow before Potter even added his variation. They should not have come together like this in a graveyard, and Severus should not have been looking forward to seeing what happened next.
But they had, and he was.
*
They made plans-in low voices, but they made them. And the first plan was to meet on Boxing Day for dinner, and the second plan was to choose, randomly, another place that was important to them, at Hogwarts, and see what might happen if they went there.
They walked in their separate directions, though Harry paused once to look back, and drink in the sight of them before they vanished. So he saw the quick way that Malfoy’s head darted, too, hair swinging and gleaming in the starlight, and how Snape nodded to both of them, or at least gave curt head-snaps that could be interpreted that way, before he Apparated.
And Harry closed his eyes and whispered farewell to his parents and hello to something new before he, too, vanished.
The End.
The Hogwarts Campaign.
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