[From Litha to Lammas]: The Light of Summer Stars, sequel to Bend Before the Sun, Harry/Snape, PG-13
Title: The Light of Summer Stars
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Severus
Content Notes: Angst, AU in that Severus lives, rituals, Lammas
Wordcount: 5200
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sequel to “Bend Before the Sun.” The last thing Harry expects, after the Midsummer ritual to heal the wound in Snape’s neck that received only Snape’s reluctant cooperation, is for the man to invite him to a Lammas ritual.
Author’s Notes: This is the last of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics for this year, and the sequel to the first one posted for this year, “Bend Before the Sun.” I hope that you enjoy the story and have enjoyed the series.
The Light of Summer Stars
Harry frowned at the letter in his hand, then at the owl who had brought it. The owl, a heavy black bird that Harry thought he remembered seeing in the Owlery at Hogwarts, turned its head and preened a feather on its shoulder, as if to say it didn’t matter to it if Harry believed in the letter or not.
But Harry had cast every charm he could think of that would detect poisons, or curses, and every one that should end a Transfiguration if the letter had been shaped from another object. He thought he had to believe it.
Mr. Potter,
It would honor me greatly if you would join me on the night of August first beside the Hogwarts lake for a ritual to honor Lammas.
Severus Snape.
Harry put the letter down on the table and stared out the enchanted window. He’d been living in Grimmauld Place, and the first thing he’d done, beyond the most powerful Cleaning Charms he knew, was to set enchanted windows in every single room, even the kitchen on the lowest floor. Right now, it showed him a vision of a garden that didn’t exist, rippling green leaves dancing in the sunshine and the wind.
The first of August was the day after tomorrow. The day after his birthday.
Harry turned back to the letter and frowned. He didn’t know much about Lammas, only what he’d come across doing his research for the Midsummer ritual that Professor McGonagall had asked him to do to help Professor Snape. He remembered that it was a day of fertility and-fire? Light? Something like that.
He barely had time to do any research, especially considering that he would be going to a birthday party at the Burrow tomorrow. He had to decide today, essentially, if he was going to accept the invitation that Snape had given him.
You called him Severus, once.
Harry swallowed uncomfortably against his own blush and the memory. Yes, he’d had to call him Severus when they were in each other’s minds during the meditation and mental connection required by the Midsummer ritual. And he’d seen enough memories to make his decision about forgiving the man, and helping him.
It was-well, Snape had been against the ritual at first, Professor McGonagall had told him. He’d only accepted Harry’s help because otherwise his neck might not ever stop bleeding.
But the ritual had united them in ways Harry still wasn’t entirely comfortable thinking about. He was glad it had worked. He was glad that Snape had overcome his reservations so he could be healed.
The reason he had needed Harry for the ritual had to do with Harry’s magical power, though. So it didn’t make sense that he would invite him to a Lammas ritual that was-what had Harry read? A celebration.
Does he have anyone else to celebrate with?
Harry winced from the thought, but it might be true. Professor McGonagall and Snape could be friends, from the way she had reached out to get help for him, but on the other hand, that wasn’t the kind of friend you would automatically invite to a summer festival. And Madam Pomfrey was his healer, and half the time, from what Professor McGonagall had said, Snape fought doing what he was told.
But the relationship he and Harry had was even older and deeper and more fraught.
On the other hand, what happens if I accept this invitation and then I show up and Snape thinks I pity him?
Harry tapped his fingers against his knee, then made a possibly reckless decision, that the time they’d spent in each other’s memories really had changed the way Snape saw him, and scribbled a quick answer of Yes. The minute he lifted the quill, the owl sprang from its perch, skimmed across the table, and seized the letter.
“Wait, I didn’t sign it!” Harry yelled after the bird, but it took off through the window and was gone.
Harry rolled his eyes. Well, the worst that could happen was that Snape would see the lack of a signature as just one more part of Harry’s reckless and slapdash personality. He had never hesitated to call Harry on that before.
Hoping there weren’t really rigid ritual requirements like fasting for forty-eight hours before the ceremony or something, Harry went to fetch books from the same section of the Black library he’d used to research the Midsummer ritual. He didn’t want to disrespect Snape’s invitation or whatever was going to happen, but on the other hand, he was not going to miss the fabulous cake Mrs. Weasley would surely bake for his birthday tomorrow.
*
“What are you thinking about, Harry?” Hermione sat down next to him at the table in the Burrow after he’d opened the mound of gifts and was eating a piece of the, indeed, fabulous chocolate cake.
“Whether I should participate in a Lammas ritual with Snape,” Harry said.
He really was thinking about that, and had been all through the gifts of a new jumper from Mrs. Weasley and a book about Aurors from Hermione and an enchanted Muggle shoebox from Mr. Weasley (it kept trying to snap the shoes off Harry’s feet and run away with them) and a brand-new, functional Sneakoscope from Ron and everything from everyone else. But he hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and he flushed a little as Hermione’s eyes widened.
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“That’s what I don’t know. What I could read about them yesterday said that they aren’t like the Midsummer ritual I did with him.” Harry frowned and then smiled as he bit into the cake again. Frowns didn’t exist around Mrs. Weasley’s cakes. “But there have to be requirements for it like there were for the Midsummer one.”
“He didn’t tell you in the letter?”
“No. I barely got a reply to it in, and his owl stole it and took off.”
“Who are we talking about?” Ron sank into the chair beside Hermione and reached for another slice of cake, ignoring Hermione’s clucking tongue. “This isn’t some message from Malfoy begging you to forgive him again, is it?”
“No,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. He’d accepted Malfoy’s apology when he’d testified for the git and his mother, but Malfoy didn’t seem to think it had stuck or something, or maybe he thought that multiple ones would show he was really sincere, so he kept posting them to Harry. “This is about Snape and a Lammas ritual.”
Ron paused. “Huh.”
“Huh, what?” Hermione pointed her fork at him. “What do you know about them?”
That made Harry feel a little better, because he knew that Hermione hadn’t done some research that said he shouldn’t go to the ritual, either.
“Just that they’re usually rituals of a different kind of power than the Midsummer ones.” Ron’s voice was surprisingly neutral as he watched Harry, as if he had suddenly announced he was rooting for some Quidditch team out of the country. “Quiet, about giving thanks for the light you have and presenting a gift to the summer. The kinds of things family share.”
“Huh,” Harry said in turn, and blinked. He wondered if Snape thought of him as a son now. That would be-a bit disturbing.
“Or lovers.”
Harry choked on his cake, which was a terrible thing to do it to it. Then he managed to swallow thanks to Hermione pounding his back and croaked, “What?”
“I didn’t make the rules, mate,” Ron said, and ate some more cake before he continued. Hermione had been trying to make sure that his mouth was free when he spoke, and Ron was taking it seriously, at least around her. “That’s what a Lammas ritual is. Midsummer celebrates the beginning of the longest light, and Lammas celebrates what’s left as it declines. The harvest, or what someone’s achieved between Midsummer and the first of August, or…” He trailed off and raised an eyebrow. “Love.”
Harry stabbed his fork into the cake and scowled. Hermione leaned forwards long enough to catch his eye. “That’s something you should think about, Harry,” she said, softly and seriously. “It’s probably something Professor Snape will expect you to think about as a possibility.”
“But why is he thinking about it as a possibility?” Harry asked weakly.
“Got me, mate,” Ron said, and dedicated himself to eating in a way that said he wanted out of this conversation. Harry would have tried to imitate him if he hadn’t been the one who’d brought the subject up.
“Has it occurred to you,” Hermione asked very gently, “that he might like what he saw in your mind during the Midsummer ritual, and want to get to know you better?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Harry shook his head in irritation. “Because what he saw in my mind during the Midsummer ritual was-my worst memories. He had to know them for that healing ritual to work, because we had to trust me. But there was nothing there that should make him-” He fumbled for words the way he was fumbling with his fork for a minute, and finally muttered, “Want me.”
“Maybe it’s a beginning,” Hermione said, and squeezed his arm. “Maybe he wants forgiveness. Maybe he doesn’t want to be alone.”
“And that’s worth sharing a ritual meant for lovers with me?”
“Or family,” Hermione pointed out.
Harry nodded slowly. He supposed that it wouldn’t be easy for Snape to find someone to share with, at that. Harry thought both his parents were dead, and he knew Snape hadn’t had the best life with them. Dumbledore was dead, and even if Snape was sort of friends with Professor McGonagall, the way Harry had thought when she reached out to Harry for help with the Midsummer ritual, it might not be close.
Who else was there? A bunch of people who thought Snape had killed Dumbledore and still regularly wrote letters to the Prophet about that. People who had had to serve under him as Headmaster and probably hated it. Former students who hated him, or felt embarrassed about their debt to him.
Maybe Snape did just want to spend Lammas with someone who didn’t totally hate him, and who he knew better than other people after having access to Harry’s memories.
“I think I’ll do it,” Harry said, and if Hermione and Ron had any doubts, they kept them to themselves.
*
“Harry. Thank you for coming.”
Harry paused before he stepped off the path from Hogsmeade and through the gates of Hogwarts. Part of that was about Snape’s eyes being fixed intently on him, but the other part was just-
I didn’t realize we would stick to first names after the Midsummer ritual.
Harry hoped he concealed his hesitation as just surprise at being greeted, and nodded. “Severus. Hello.”
He was watching closely enough in return that he knew it wasn’t his imagination when Snape relaxed at being called by his first name. All right, so I know something about the mood that I should maintain.
“Have you been to a Lammas ritual before?” Snape asked as they walked slowly towards Hogwarts.
“No,” Harry answered, distractedly. There was new stone on the Astronomy Tower from the last time he’d been here, in June. “The rebuilding efforts are going well?”
“They are.”
The tone in Snape’s voice turned Harry towards him. It was a bit hard to see the man’s face since he was standing haloed in sunlight, but his words were soft and intense.
“I do not want to talk about the rebuilding efforts. I would like you focused on the ritual, Harry.” A pause as though the next words would have to be tortured from him. “And me.”
Harry felt his cheeks warm up, but he kept his gaze steady, while thinking, Ron was right. “That’s fine, sir. I mean, do you want me to still call you Severus?” He hesitated, then added in a helpless voice, “I just couldn’t find a lot about the ritual. There were too many different kinds.”
Snape stepped towards him. He was moving slowly, as though not to frighten a deer, and Harry felt a flame of stubbornness creep up inside him. He wasn’t afraid, and after what they had shared at the Midsummer ritual, he wasn’t about to back off. He stood where he was and met Snape’s eyes, and though he saw a flicker of approval in them.
“Please call me by my first name,” Snape murmured. “And at the Midsummer ritual, you called the sun for me. I want to show you that I can do the same thing at this one. Return the favor.”
Harry blinked. There had only been a scant mention of that kind of ritual in the books he’d read, not enough for him to tell what it really meant. “You don’t need to repay me.”
“Perhaps that is not the right way to think of this. Rather, think of me demonstrating for you what you did for me.”
“Compassion?”
“And strength.”
That didn’t sound terrible. Harry had to admit he was curious about what kinds of magic Snape was good at when he wasn’t cursing someone or brewing potions. “All right,” he said cautiously, but Snape didn’t relax. “Um. Please call me by my first name as well.”
Snape smiled then, and Harry stared. That smile made Snape’s face look so different from everything he’d ever seen that it was astonishing. Snape was turned into someone who wasn’t exactly handsome, but open.
Harry moved a step forwards without entirely meaning to.
Snape nodded to him and then turned towards the castle. “I thought you might want something to eat before the ritual began. It’s possible that the ritual will take from us instead of give..”
“I am hungry,” Harry admitted as he followed him. “I didn’t know whether I was supposed to fast or not, so I didn’t eat much today.”
Snape did glance over his shoulder then. “You could have owled me, and I would have told you.”
“Um. I was worried about offending you. The way I thought my signature not being on the letter might have upset you.”
Snape snorted, which sounded like an ordinary noise, and Harry relaxed as they walked through the entrance hall and around a portion of the wall that was still partially rubble, with a Stasis Charm over it. “That is simply Aeneas. He’s always been impatient. And you might have made him wait while you considered.”
It was subtle, Harry thought, but he could still see the tension running up Snape’s arm as he reached up to tickle the pear. “Yes,” he said simply. “I think it was worth thinking about.”
Well, that got him another swift smile, before the pear swung open and they were overwhelmed by excited house-elves.
*
“So this ritual doesn’t require the kind of preparation that the Midsummer ritual did?”
Harry condemned himself for the stupid question as soon as he’d asked it. Of course it didn’t, or he and Snape wouldn’t be standing out here near the lake in their ordinary robes, with just a few objects floating in the air behind Snape. But Snape nodded and spoke as if Harry had asked a good question instead of a stupid one.
“That’s right. It would be antithetical to the kind of celebration that this ritual is meant to be. The other one needed to be prepared for and asked for. This is making an offering.” Snape abruptly stripped off his outer robe and dropped it on the shore of the lake with a casualness Harry never would have expected from him. “You are aware that the ritual we performed could have gone badly wrong?”
Harry stared at the definition in Snape’s arms for a second without answering. Not that it was much, not like a Beater’s arms, but he could have made a fair Keeper.
And you’re only looking at him like that because Ron’s words made you self-conscious. Harry jerked his eyes back to Snape’s face. “Of course,” he said in a low hoarse voice, and then cleared his throat. “Sorry. Got-got a bit of something stuck in my throat there.”
Snape smiled slightly at him and walked towards the lake water in his white shirt and black trousers. Behind him floated the small capped silver jar and the clay pot with a little fire bringing in it that he’d brought with him. Harry followed, although not before he stripped his own robe and dropped it where Snape’s was.
When given no instructions, do what the other person is doing, one of the books Harry had studied on rituals said.
From the slow glance Snape aimed his way, he at least appreciated the view. Harry quashed his desire to run and his desire to ask what was going on and just watched as Snape plucked the clay pot from the air, apparently ending the Levitation Charm it was under by touching it.
“This time,” Snape said softly, “I am offering thanks for my healing, and a glimpse of what I have achieved since the day of Midsummer. And a return for the light that was invested in healing me.”
Harry looked up at the sky, which was slanting towards sunset, the most cloudless day he’d seen at least since Midsummer. Long shadows bent around them, and banners of red and gold and orange light. Clouds floated in the east, glinting rose from the bottom. “Are you going to summon the sun’s light?”
“Not summon,” Snape said as he tipped the clay jar. He had to shake it before a bright ember tumbled out onto his palm. “Ask. And not the light of the sun.”
Harry bit back his objection to Snape holding the ember when he saw that it didn’t seem to be burning the man. It was difficult to relax, though. Maybe a side-effect of the Midsummer ritual was to be overprotective when he thought he saw Snape in a situation that could hurt him.
Or maybe he didn’t want to see the man die, after everything.
Snape raised a familiar sardonic eyebrow, apparently reading his intentions. Harry straightened his shoulders and shrugged a little. He wouldn’t apologize for his attempts to keep people safe.
Luckily, Snape didn’t say anything. He cupped his hands around the ember. “Breathe with me, Harry.”
Harry closed his eyes. He’d anticipated something like this. It had been part of the pre-ritual meditation for the Midsummer healing, after all.
It was easier than he’d expected to fall back into the quiet realm in the center of his mind where he had shared memories with Snape-Severus, the name drifted in, and it felt more right this time-and cleansed himself before the Midsummer ritual. When Severus murmured, “And now, come share the fire,” Harry opened his eyes and stepped forwards without hesitation.
The ember Severus held, if that was even what it was, had split in two. Harry cupped his hands and received the small spark in his. He smiled. It was soft, warm fire, cooling a little even as he held it, like the sun in the sky tending towards the west.
“I thank the summer for its light,” Severus breathed. Standing this close, he smelled a little of sweat, and a little of a sharp resiny scent that must be some ingredients from a potion he’d brewed today. Harry blinked up at him and found him swaying slightly in place, open-faced and weary and human. “Since Litha, I have brewed twenty potions, prepared the Hogwarts infirmary for the school year to come, and made a decision that will have momentous consequences.”
The ember in his hands abruptly leaped up and flared, turning perfectly gold, like the phoenix feather in Harry’s wand. Then it stretched up little fingers, and a finger of sunlight reached down from the sky and met it. They condensed in the air into a spark so brilliant a yellow that Harry had to blink and look away. When the light dimmed, he was able to see that it had faded, and there was a small dark shape like a sunburst in the middle of Severus’s palm where he’d held the fire.
“It will fade tomorrow,” Severus told him, flexing his hand. “But it’s a sign of the light’s favor. Now, what have you accomplished since Midsummer, Harry?”
Harry bowed his head. There was nothing he could think of, certainly nothing to compare to the potions that Severus had brewed. He hadn’t even seriously started thinking about entering Auror training, although the new class would start in November, and Kingsley had offered to let him. It was-
“It doesn’t have to be great,” Severus said, and his hand came and curled around both of Harry’s, holding them with a gentle squeeze. “Just think.”
Harry sighed and tried to let the tension, all the tension, go from him the way he’d had to do at Midsummer. “I’ve done research on magical rituals,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping a lot. Enjoying the first summer I can remember where I got to relax, and I could ignore the people who wanted me to do something.” He looked up into the sky and said, without planning to do it, “And trying to decide what I think about the Midsummer ritual and what it taught me.”
There was a long curl of red that reached down from the sky, and the ember in Harry’s hands leaped up to meet it. Harry gasped as the feeling from their meeting flooded him. He knew what Severus meant now about getting something given in the ritual. This was a sensation that didn’t really fill up his stomach, but came closer to that than any other feeling Harry could think of.
He felt full, and warm, and deliciously sleepy. He flexed his toes in the grass and blinked.
When he could focus his attention again, there was the mark like a sunburst in the center of his own palm, too. Harry admired it, and smiled.
“We have a short time before the second part of the ritual begins,” Severus said, his voice low and lulling like the slap of the waves on the lakeshore, or the shifting of that fullness in Harry’s middle. “Will you tell me what you mean? What did you learn from the Midsummer ritual? Why did you need to think about it?”
Harry blinked hazily and looked up. Severus’s face was outlined with sunlight again, but only in a way that seemed to point out all the intricacies of his features this time, and Harry studied him slowly while he said, “I learned that I could be good at ritual magic, something I’d never even heard of before then, and at meditation, which I thought I wasn’t.”
“Ah,” Severus said, and tensed. This time, Harry knew why. A literal arrow made of light didn’t appear to point out the reason, but it was as if it did.
“It wasn’t your fault that I didn’t consider myself good at meditation,” Harry said. “I never really connected it with Occlumency at all, and I didn’t try it.” Things that would have been impossible to say three years ago were flowing from his tongue now. “And I also learned that I’m very glad you survived.”
Severus went so still the gently bobbing silver jar in the air beside him looked more lively. “Why?”
“Why? Because you sacrificed so much, and yeah, you did some things that weren’t so great, but so did I.” Harry winced as he thought about using the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow, but the event was distant and gentle, held behind those walls of light so he could consider it carefully. “I can forgive you. I told you that before. Your actions were mine to forgive if I wanted. But if you’d died from Nagini’s bite, you never would have known that.”
Severus shut his eyes. “I cannot repay you for what you did for me.”
“I don’t want that. I want you to live. And keep doing things like this.”
“Like what?”
“Thinking of your potions brewing as an achievement. Deciding to take a chance and invite people like me to a ritual like this.” Harry waved his hand at the ground and the sky. “I know it wasn’t easy. You did it anyway. You have a lot of courage, you know.”
“No more calling me a coward?” Snape’s voice sounded like someone prodding a loose tooth with his tongue.
“No.”
Severus opened his mouth as to say something else, and the silver jar gave a sharp bobble beside him. He glanced at it, and then nodded. “It’s time for the second part of the ritual,” he said. He cupped his hands, and the jar floated over and into them.
Harry stared. “Wow. Is that wandless magic?”
“Ritual magic,” Severus said. “In this space, the magic does everything it can to facilitate the working of the ritual.” He was uncapping the silver jar as he spoke. Harry peered into it, but it was empty. Yes Severus turned the jar over and held it as if something was spilling out of it into the air, so Harry decided to wait and see what happened.
“But we didn’t seal off this space the way we did for the Midsummer ritual.”
Severus glanced up at him with an absent smile. Most of him seemed to be focusing on the silver jar and the invisibility it was pouring. Even that smile affected Harry more than he’d like to admit. “The Midsummer ritual required that so the power and light you called would be used for healing and nothing else. But this is about giving. Celebration. That which is open.”
His voice drifted off into silence for a moment, and then he held out his hands and said, “To the light, I offer my thanks. I offer my achievements.”
He paused. Harry had the distinct feeling, from the humming tension around them, right on the edge of sparking into fire, that there should be something more.
Severus swallowed noisily and said, “And I offer what I hope to have with Harry Potter, who stands beside me now.”
His voice shook on the last words, which told Harry how much they must have cost him. The last of the veil that had, in a sense, been keeping Harry from realizing that ripped, and the warm feeling in his stomach blew away, and he stared at Severus in shock.
But Severus was opening his hands and letting the nothing go.
Light answered him, a sharp spear of silver, and then another spear. Harry looked up, and saw, beyond the clouds, the first of the summer stars coming into view. They looked much bigger and more silver than they ever had before, glowing globes of light, even given that Hogwarts didn’t have the city lights around that a lot of other places did to get in the way.
The silver light came down and illuminated Severus, and then curled around him with a shattering, startling sound like a whip. Harry blinked away the dazed echoes and saw…
Severus, clad in a cloak of dazzling silver that didn’t resemble the Invisibility Cloak, but something brighter and more glorious. The silver light ran out to the side and formed a second figure, a shorter man in the same silver cloak, leaning against him.
Harry stared at the reflection of his own face in silent wonder.
Silence vibrated and shook under him, and the silver image fractured a little, like the image in a pond that someone had thrown a rock into. Harry looked up, and found Severus staring at him, more tense than he’d been when he met Harry at the gates.
And Harry understood. This was a gift, an offering, to him as well as the light. If he rejected it, then any image of the future that might be here would never come to pass. The ritual would shatter and the light would drain away.
That seemed intolerable.
Harry held his hands out, cupping as best as he could the invisible liquid that Severus had poured, and said, “To the light, I offer my thanks. I offer my uncertainties and my hopes for the future.
“And I offer what I hope to have with Severus Snape, who stands beside me now.”
Severus closed his eyes, hiding from his own involvement in the moment. Harry understood. But he was turning himself, to look as the light flared from the stars of summer and created its own image beside him.
Severus Snape, smiling in the way he had smiled several times tonight, beckoning Harry to come bend with him over a cauldron.
Harry let out a long, rushing sigh. To him, there was no clearer sign that they might have something together. Severus had taught him Defense, had shared ritual magic with him, had tried to teach him Occlumency, but the only brewing Harry had ever learned from him was indirect and secretive, from the Half-Blood Prince’s book.
That they would share it openly was a new thing.
Surrounded by silver, reflecting from the air and the lake and the ground and their own future selves, Harry looked up. Severus had taken a hesitant step towards him and then frozen. Apparently, he was unable to move further.
But that was all right. Harry knew the next part was up to him. Severus had invited him for this ritual, after all, and made the offering of his words, when Harry hadn’t even known that such rituals or offerings existed.
Harry crossed the ground to him.
Severus was shaking as Harry rested his hands on the man’s shoulders, although Harry doubted anyone would be able to tell who was more than a few centimeters away. It was a light, fine tremor that ran up through his arms to his shoulders and down to his hands. He didn’t move at all as Harry leaned up to him.
It didn’t matter. Harry had to stretch, standing on his toes, but he could reach.
Severus shook all over when Harry kissed him, but Harry knew that it was in relieved disbelief, more than anything else. Then he clasped Harry’s shoulder blades with both hands and crushed him in. Harry got the warmest, longest kiss he’d had in his life, and sighed out as Severus released him.
The silver images of themselves had disappeared, and the sun had set. The stars glowed above them, normal sizes now, and not so shiny. But Harry thought it wasn’t his imagination that a soft twinkle still animated them.
A blessing, Harry thought, and he was sure of that in a way no book on ritual magic could tell him.
“Thank you,” Severus said hoarsely. The light, Harry, himself, Harry didn’t know who he was thanking, and it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have traded this moment beside the dark lake under the light of the summer stars for anything.
Harry leaned his shoulder against Severus’s and held out his hands, for what light might come to them. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
Severus’s shoulder shook one more time against his, and then was still. When Harry looked up at him, he was smiling.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Severus
Content Notes: Angst, AU in that Severus lives, rituals, Lammas
Wordcount: 5200
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sequel to “Bend Before the Sun.” The last thing Harry expects, after the Midsummer ritual to heal the wound in Snape’s neck that received only Snape’s reluctant cooperation, is for the man to invite him to a Lammas ritual.
Author’s Notes: This is the last of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics for this year, and the sequel to the first one posted for this year, “Bend Before the Sun.” I hope that you enjoy the story and have enjoyed the series.
The Light of Summer Stars
Harry frowned at the letter in his hand, then at the owl who had brought it. The owl, a heavy black bird that Harry thought he remembered seeing in the Owlery at Hogwarts, turned its head and preened a feather on its shoulder, as if to say it didn’t matter to it if Harry believed in the letter or not.
But Harry had cast every charm he could think of that would detect poisons, or curses, and every one that should end a Transfiguration if the letter had been shaped from another object. He thought he had to believe it.
Mr. Potter,
It would honor me greatly if you would join me on the night of August first beside the Hogwarts lake for a ritual to honor Lammas.
Severus Snape.
Harry put the letter down on the table and stared out the enchanted window. He’d been living in Grimmauld Place, and the first thing he’d done, beyond the most powerful Cleaning Charms he knew, was to set enchanted windows in every single room, even the kitchen on the lowest floor. Right now, it showed him a vision of a garden that didn’t exist, rippling green leaves dancing in the sunshine and the wind.
The first of August was the day after tomorrow. The day after his birthday.
Harry turned back to the letter and frowned. He didn’t know much about Lammas, only what he’d come across doing his research for the Midsummer ritual that Professor McGonagall had asked him to do to help Professor Snape. He remembered that it was a day of fertility and-fire? Light? Something like that.
He barely had time to do any research, especially considering that he would be going to a birthday party at the Burrow tomorrow. He had to decide today, essentially, if he was going to accept the invitation that Snape had given him.
You called him Severus, once.
Harry swallowed uncomfortably against his own blush and the memory. Yes, he’d had to call him Severus when they were in each other’s minds during the meditation and mental connection required by the Midsummer ritual. And he’d seen enough memories to make his decision about forgiving the man, and helping him.
It was-well, Snape had been against the ritual at first, Professor McGonagall had told him. He’d only accepted Harry’s help because otherwise his neck might not ever stop bleeding.
But the ritual had united them in ways Harry still wasn’t entirely comfortable thinking about. He was glad it had worked. He was glad that Snape had overcome his reservations so he could be healed.
The reason he had needed Harry for the ritual had to do with Harry’s magical power, though. So it didn’t make sense that he would invite him to a Lammas ritual that was-what had Harry read? A celebration.
Does he have anyone else to celebrate with?
Harry winced from the thought, but it might be true. Professor McGonagall and Snape could be friends, from the way she had reached out to get help for him, but on the other hand, that wasn’t the kind of friend you would automatically invite to a summer festival. And Madam Pomfrey was his healer, and half the time, from what Professor McGonagall had said, Snape fought doing what he was told.
But the relationship he and Harry had was even older and deeper and more fraught.
On the other hand, what happens if I accept this invitation and then I show up and Snape thinks I pity him?
Harry tapped his fingers against his knee, then made a possibly reckless decision, that the time they’d spent in each other’s memories really had changed the way Snape saw him, and scribbled a quick answer of Yes. The minute he lifted the quill, the owl sprang from its perch, skimmed across the table, and seized the letter.
“Wait, I didn’t sign it!” Harry yelled after the bird, but it took off through the window and was gone.
Harry rolled his eyes. Well, the worst that could happen was that Snape would see the lack of a signature as just one more part of Harry’s reckless and slapdash personality. He had never hesitated to call Harry on that before.
Hoping there weren’t really rigid ritual requirements like fasting for forty-eight hours before the ceremony or something, Harry went to fetch books from the same section of the Black library he’d used to research the Midsummer ritual. He didn’t want to disrespect Snape’s invitation or whatever was going to happen, but on the other hand, he was not going to miss the fabulous cake Mrs. Weasley would surely bake for his birthday tomorrow.
*
“What are you thinking about, Harry?” Hermione sat down next to him at the table in the Burrow after he’d opened the mound of gifts and was eating a piece of the, indeed, fabulous chocolate cake.
“Whether I should participate in a Lammas ritual with Snape,” Harry said.
He really was thinking about that, and had been all through the gifts of a new jumper from Mrs. Weasley and a book about Aurors from Hermione and an enchanted Muggle shoebox from Mr. Weasley (it kept trying to snap the shoes off Harry’s feet and run away with them) and a brand-new, functional Sneakoscope from Ron and everything from everyone else. But he hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and he flushed a little as Hermione’s eyes widened.
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“That’s what I don’t know. What I could read about them yesterday said that they aren’t like the Midsummer ritual I did with him.” Harry frowned and then smiled as he bit into the cake again. Frowns didn’t exist around Mrs. Weasley’s cakes. “But there have to be requirements for it like there were for the Midsummer one.”
“He didn’t tell you in the letter?”
“No. I barely got a reply to it in, and his owl stole it and took off.”
“Who are we talking about?” Ron sank into the chair beside Hermione and reached for another slice of cake, ignoring Hermione’s clucking tongue. “This isn’t some message from Malfoy begging you to forgive him again, is it?”
“No,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. He’d accepted Malfoy’s apology when he’d testified for the git and his mother, but Malfoy didn’t seem to think it had stuck or something, or maybe he thought that multiple ones would show he was really sincere, so he kept posting them to Harry. “This is about Snape and a Lammas ritual.”
Ron paused. “Huh.”
“Huh, what?” Hermione pointed her fork at him. “What do you know about them?”
That made Harry feel a little better, because he knew that Hermione hadn’t done some research that said he shouldn’t go to the ritual, either.
“Just that they’re usually rituals of a different kind of power than the Midsummer ones.” Ron’s voice was surprisingly neutral as he watched Harry, as if he had suddenly announced he was rooting for some Quidditch team out of the country. “Quiet, about giving thanks for the light you have and presenting a gift to the summer. The kinds of things family share.”
“Huh,” Harry said in turn, and blinked. He wondered if Snape thought of him as a son now. That would be-a bit disturbing.
“Or lovers.”
Harry choked on his cake, which was a terrible thing to do it to it. Then he managed to swallow thanks to Hermione pounding his back and croaked, “What?”
“I didn’t make the rules, mate,” Ron said, and ate some more cake before he continued. Hermione had been trying to make sure that his mouth was free when he spoke, and Ron was taking it seriously, at least around her. “That’s what a Lammas ritual is. Midsummer celebrates the beginning of the longest light, and Lammas celebrates what’s left as it declines. The harvest, or what someone’s achieved between Midsummer and the first of August, or…” He trailed off and raised an eyebrow. “Love.”
Harry stabbed his fork into the cake and scowled. Hermione leaned forwards long enough to catch his eye. “That’s something you should think about, Harry,” she said, softly and seriously. “It’s probably something Professor Snape will expect you to think about as a possibility.”
“But why is he thinking about it as a possibility?” Harry asked weakly.
“Got me, mate,” Ron said, and dedicated himself to eating in a way that said he wanted out of this conversation. Harry would have tried to imitate him if he hadn’t been the one who’d brought the subject up.
“Has it occurred to you,” Hermione asked very gently, “that he might like what he saw in your mind during the Midsummer ritual, and want to get to know you better?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Harry shook his head in irritation. “Because what he saw in my mind during the Midsummer ritual was-my worst memories. He had to know them for that healing ritual to work, because we had to trust me. But there was nothing there that should make him-” He fumbled for words the way he was fumbling with his fork for a minute, and finally muttered, “Want me.”
“Maybe it’s a beginning,” Hermione said, and squeezed his arm. “Maybe he wants forgiveness. Maybe he doesn’t want to be alone.”
“And that’s worth sharing a ritual meant for lovers with me?”
“Or family,” Hermione pointed out.
Harry nodded slowly. He supposed that it wouldn’t be easy for Snape to find someone to share with, at that. Harry thought both his parents were dead, and he knew Snape hadn’t had the best life with them. Dumbledore was dead, and even if Snape was sort of friends with Professor McGonagall, the way Harry had thought when she reached out to Harry for help with the Midsummer ritual, it might not be close.
Who else was there? A bunch of people who thought Snape had killed Dumbledore and still regularly wrote letters to the Prophet about that. People who had had to serve under him as Headmaster and probably hated it. Former students who hated him, or felt embarrassed about their debt to him.
Maybe Snape did just want to spend Lammas with someone who didn’t totally hate him, and who he knew better than other people after having access to Harry’s memories.
“I think I’ll do it,” Harry said, and if Hermione and Ron had any doubts, they kept them to themselves.
*
“Harry. Thank you for coming.”
Harry paused before he stepped off the path from Hogsmeade and through the gates of Hogwarts. Part of that was about Snape’s eyes being fixed intently on him, but the other part was just-
I didn’t realize we would stick to first names after the Midsummer ritual.
Harry hoped he concealed his hesitation as just surprise at being greeted, and nodded. “Severus. Hello.”
He was watching closely enough in return that he knew it wasn’t his imagination when Snape relaxed at being called by his first name. All right, so I know something about the mood that I should maintain.
“Have you been to a Lammas ritual before?” Snape asked as they walked slowly towards Hogwarts.
“No,” Harry answered, distractedly. There was new stone on the Astronomy Tower from the last time he’d been here, in June. “The rebuilding efforts are going well?”
“They are.”
The tone in Snape’s voice turned Harry towards him. It was a bit hard to see the man’s face since he was standing haloed in sunlight, but his words were soft and intense.
“I do not want to talk about the rebuilding efforts. I would like you focused on the ritual, Harry.” A pause as though the next words would have to be tortured from him. “And me.”
Harry felt his cheeks warm up, but he kept his gaze steady, while thinking, Ron was right. “That’s fine, sir. I mean, do you want me to still call you Severus?” He hesitated, then added in a helpless voice, “I just couldn’t find a lot about the ritual. There were too many different kinds.”
Snape stepped towards him. He was moving slowly, as though not to frighten a deer, and Harry felt a flame of stubbornness creep up inside him. He wasn’t afraid, and after what they had shared at the Midsummer ritual, he wasn’t about to back off. He stood where he was and met Snape’s eyes, and though he saw a flicker of approval in them.
“Please call me by my first name,” Snape murmured. “And at the Midsummer ritual, you called the sun for me. I want to show you that I can do the same thing at this one. Return the favor.”
Harry blinked. There had only been a scant mention of that kind of ritual in the books he’d read, not enough for him to tell what it really meant. “You don’t need to repay me.”
“Perhaps that is not the right way to think of this. Rather, think of me demonstrating for you what you did for me.”
“Compassion?”
“And strength.”
That didn’t sound terrible. Harry had to admit he was curious about what kinds of magic Snape was good at when he wasn’t cursing someone or brewing potions. “All right,” he said cautiously, but Snape didn’t relax. “Um. Please call me by my first name as well.”
Snape smiled then, and Harry stared. That smile made Snape’s face look so different from everything he’d ever seen that it was astonishing. Snape was turned into someone who wasn’t exactly handsome, but open.
Harry moved a step forwards without entirely meaning to.
Snape nodded to him and then turned towards the castle. “I thought you might want something to eat before the ritual began. It’s possible that the ritual will take from us instead of give..”
“I am hungry,” Harry admitted as he followed him. “I didn’t know whether I was supposed to fast or not, so I didn’t eat much today.”
Snape did glance over his shoulder then. “You could have owled me, and I would have told you.”
“Um. I was worried about offending you. The way I thought my signature not being on the letter might have upset you.”
Snape snorted, which sounded like an ordinary noise, and Harry relaxed as they walked through the entrance hall and around a portion of the wall that was still partially rubble, with a Stasis Charm over it. “That is simply Aeneas. He’s always been impatient. And you might have made him wait while you considered.”
It was subtle, Harry thought, but he could still see the tension running up Snape’s arm as he reached up to tickle the pear. “Yes,” he said simply. “I think it was worth thinking about.”
Well, that got him another swift smile, before the pear swung open and they were overwhelmed by excited house-elves.
*
“So this ritual doesn’t require the kind of preparation that the Midsummer ritual did?”
Harry condemned himself for the stupid question as soon as he’d asked it. Of course it didn’t, or he and Snape wouldn’t be standing out here near the lake in their ordinary robes, with just a few objects floating in the air behind Snape. But Snape nodded and spoke as if Harry had asked a good question instead of a stupid one.
“That’s right. It would be antithetical to the kind of celebration that this ritual is meant to be. The other one needed to be prepared for and asked for. This is making an offering.” Snape abruptly stripped off his outer robe and dropped it on the shore of the lake with a casualness Harry never would have expected from him. “You are aware that the ritual we performed could have gone badly wrong?”
Harry stared at the definition in Snape’s arms for a second without answering. Not that it was much, not like a Beater’s arms, but he could have made a fair Keeper.
And you’re only looking at him like that because Ron’s words made you self-conscious. Harry jerked his eyes back to Snape’s face. “Of course,” he said in a low hoarse voice, and then cleared his throat. “Sorry. Got-got a bit of something stuck in my throat there.”
Snape smiled slightly at him and walked towards the lake water in his white shirt and black trousers. Behind him floated the small capped silver jar and the clay pot with a little fire bringing in it that he’d brought with him. Harry followed, although not before he stripped his own robe and dropped it where Snape’s was.
When given no instructions, do what the other person is doing, one of the books Harry had studied on rituals said.
From the slow glance Snape aimed his way, he at least appreciated the view. Harry quashed his desire to run and his desire to ask what was going on and just watched as Snape plucked the clay pot from the air, apparently ending the Levitation Charm it was under by touching it.
“This time,” Snape said softly, “I am offering thanks for my healing, and a glimpse of what I have achieved since the day of Midsummer. And a return for the light that was invested in healing me.”
Harry looked up at the sky, which was slanting towards sunset, the most cloudless day he’d seen at least since Midsummer. Long shadows bent around them, and banners of red and gold and orange light. Clouds floated in the east, glinting rose from the bottom. “Are you going to summon the sun’s light?”
“Not summon,” Snape said as he tipped the clay jar. He had to shake it before a bright ember tumbled out onto his palm. “Ask. And not the light of the sun.”
Harry bit back his objection to Snape holding the ember when he saw that it didn’t seem to be burning the man. It was difficult to relax, though. Maybe a side-effect of the Midsummer ritual was to be overprotective when he thought he saw Snape in a situation that could hurt him.
Or maybe he didn’t want to see the man die, after everything.
Snape raised a familiar sardonic eyebrow, apparently reading his intentions. Harry straightened his shoulders and shrugged a little. He wouldn’t apologize for his attempts to keep people safe.
Luckily, Snape didn’t say anything. He cupped his hands around the ember. “Breathe with me, Harry.”
Harry closed his eyes. He’d anticipated something like this. It had been part of the pre-ritual meditation for the Midsummer healing, after all.
It was easier than he’d expected to fall back into the quiet realm in the center of his mind where he had shared memories with Snape-Severus, the name drifted in, and it felt more right this time-and cleansed himself before the Midsummer ritual. When Severus murmured, “And now, come share the fire,” Harry opened his eyes and stepped forwards without hesitation.
The ember Severus held, if that was even what it was, had split in two. Harry cupped his hands and received the small spark in his. He smiled. It was soft, warm fire, cooling a little even as he held it, like the sun in the sky tending towards the west.
“I thank the summer for its light,” Severus breathed. Standing this close, he smelled a little of sweat, and a little of a sharp resiny scent that must be some ingredients from a potion he’d brewed today. Harry blinked up at him and found him swaying slightly in place, open-faced and weary and human. “Since Litha, I have brewed twenty potions, prepared the Hogwarts infirmary for the school year to come, and made a decision that will have momentous consequences.”
The ember in his hands abruptly leaped up and flared, turning perfectly gold, like the phoenix feather in Harry’s wand. Then it stretched up little fingers, and a finger of sunlight reached down from the sky and met it. They condensed in the air into a spark so brilliant a yellow that Harry had to blink and look away. When the light dimmed, he was able to see that it had faded, and there was a small dark shape like a sunburst in the middle of Severus’s palm where he’d held the fire.
“It will fade tomorrow,” Severus told him, flexing his hand. “But it’s a sign of the light’s favor. Now, what have you accomplished since Midsummer, Harry?”
Harry bowed his head. There was nothing he could think of, certainly nothing to compare to the potions that Severus had brewed. He hadn’t even seriously started thinking about entering Auror training, although the new class would start in November, and Kingsley had offered to let him. It was-
“It doesn’t have to be great,” Severus said, and his hand came and curled around both of Harry’s, holding them with a gentle squeeze. “Just think.”
Harry sighed and tried to let the tension, all the tension, go from him the way he’d had to do at Midsummer. “I’ve done research on magical rituals,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping a lot. Enjoying the first summer I can remember where I got to relax, and I could ignore the people who wanted me to do something.” He looked up into the sky and said, without planning to do it, “And trying to decide what I think about the Midsummer ritual and what it taught me.”
There was a long curl of red that reached down from the sky, and the ember in Harry’s hands leaped up to meet it. Harry gasped as the feeling from their meeting flooded him. He knew what Severus meant now about getting something given in the ritual. This was a sensation that didn’t really fill up his stomach, but came closer to that than any other feeling Harry could think of.
He felt full, and warm, and deliciously sleepy. He flexed his toes in the grass and blinked.
When he could focus his attention again, there was the mark like a sunburst in the center of his own palm, too. Harry admired it, and smiled.
“We have a short time before the second part of the ritual begins,” Severus said, his voice low and lulling like the slap of the waves on the lakeshore, or the shifting of that fullness in Harry’s middle. “Will you tell me what you mean? What did you learn from the Midsummer ritual? Why did you need to think about it?”
Harry blinked hazily and looked up. Severus’s face was outlined with sunlight again, but only in a way that seemed to point out all the intricacies of his features this time, and Harry studied him slowly while he said, “I learned that I could be good at ritual magic, something I’d never even heard of before then, and at meditation, which I thought I wasn’t.”
“Ah,” Severus said, and tensed. This time, Harry knew why. A literal arrow made of light didn’t appear to point out the reason, but it was as if it did.
“It wasn’t your fault that I didn’t consider myself good at meditation,” Harry said. “I never really connected it with Occlumency at all, and I didn’t try it.” Things that would have been impossible to say three years ago were flowing from his tongue now. “And I also learned that I’m very glad you survived.”
Severus went so still the gently bobbing silver jar in the air beside him looked more lively. “Why?”
“Why? Because you sacrificed so much, and yeah, you did some things that weren’t so great, but so did I.” Harry winced as he thought about using the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow, but the event was distant and gentle, held behind those walls of light so he could consider it carefully. “I can forgive you. I told you that before. Your actions were mine to forgive if I wanted. But if you’d died from Nagini’s bite, you never would have known that.”
Severus shut his eyes. “I cannot repay you for what you did for me.”
“I don’t want that. I want you to live. And keep doing things like this.”
“Like what?”
“Thinking of your potions brewing as an achievement. Deciding to take a chance and invite people like me to a ritual like this.” Harry waved his hand at the ground and the sky. “I know it wasn’t easy. You did it anyway. You have a lot of courage, you know.”
“No more calling me a coward?” Snape’s voice sounded like someone prodding a loose tooth with his tongue.
“No.”
Severus opened his mouth as to say something else, and the silver jar gave a sharp bobble beside him. He glanced at it, and then nodded. “It’s time for the second part of the ritual,” he said. He cupped his hands, and the jar floated over and into them.
Harry stared. “Wow. Is that wandless magic?”
“Ritual magic,” Severus said. “In this space, the magic does everything it can to facilitate the working of the ritual.” He was uncapping the silver jar as he spoke. Harry peered into it, but it was empty. Yes Severus turned the jar over and held it as if something was spilling out of it into the air, so Harry decided to wait and see what happened.
“But we didn’t seal off this space the way we did for the Midsummer ritual.”
Severus glanced up at him with an absent smile. Most of him seemed to be focusing on the silver jar and the invisibility it was pouring. Even that smile affected Harry more than he’d like to admit. “The Midsummer ritual required that so the power and light you called would be used for healing and nothing else. But this is about giving. Celebration. That which is open.”
His voice drifted off into silence for a moment, and then he held out his hands and said, “To the light, I offer my thanks. I offer my achievements.”
He paused. Harry had the distinct feeling, from the humming tension around them, right on the edge of sparking into fire, that there should be something more.
Severus swallowed noisily and said, “And I offer what I hope to have with Harry Potter, who stands beside me now.”
His voice shook on the last words, which told Harry how much they must have cost him. The last of the veil that had, in a sense, been keeping Harry from realizing that ripped, and the warm feeling in his stomach blew away, and he stared at Severus in shock.
But Severus was opening his hands and letting the nothing go.
Light answered him, a sharp spear of silver, and then another spear. Harry looked up, and saw, beyond the clouds, the first of the summer stars coming into view. They looked much bigger and more silver than they ever had before, glowing globes of light, even given that Hogwarts didn’t have the city lights around that a lot of other places did to get in the way.
The silver light came down and illuminated Severus, and then curled around him with a shattering, startling sound like a whip. Harry blinked away the dazed echoes and saw…
Severus, clad in a cloak of dazzling silver that didn’t resemble the Invisibility Cloak, but something brighter and more glorious. The silver light ran out to the side and formed a second figure, a shorter man in the same silver cloak, leaning against him.
Harry stared at the reflection of his own face in silent wonder.
Silence vibrated and shook under him, and the silver image fractured a little, like the image in a pond that someone had thrown a rock into. Harry looked up, and found Severus staring at him, more tense than he’d been when he met Harry at the gates.
And Harry understood. This was a gift, an offering, to him as well as the light. If he rejected it, then any image of the future that might be here would never come to pass. The ritual would shatter and the light would drain away.
That seemed intolerable.
Harry held his hands out, cupping as best as he could the invisible liquid that Severus had poured, and said, “To the light, I offer my thanks. I offer my uncertainties and my hopes for the future.
“And I offer what I hope to have with Severus Snape, who stands beside me now.”
Severus closed his eyes, hiding from his own involvement in the moment. Harry understood. But he was turning himself, to look as the light flared from the stars of summer and created its own image beside him.
Severus Snape, smiling in the way he had smiled several times tonight, beckoning Harry to come bend with him over a cauldron.
Harry let out a long, rushing sigh. To him, there was no clearer sign that they might have something together. Severus had taught him Defense, had shared ritual magic with him, had tried to teach him Occlumency, but the only brewing Harry had ever learned from him was indirect and secretive, from the Half-Blood Prince’s book.
That they would share it openly was a new thing.
Surrounded by silver, reflecting from the air and the lake and the ground and their own future selves, Harry looked up. Severus had taken a hesitant step towards him and then frozen. Apparently, he was unable to move further.
But that was all right. Harry knew the next part was up to him. Severus had invited him for this ritual, after all, and made the offering of his words, when Harry hadn’t even known that such rituals or offerings existed.
Harry crossed the ground to him.
Severus was shaking as Harry rested his hands on the man’s shoulders, although Harry doubted anyone would be able to tell who was more than a few centimeters away. It was a light, fine tremor that ran up through his arms to his shoulders and down to his hands. He didn’t move at all as Harry leaned up to him.
It didn’t matter. Harry had to stretch, standing on his toes, but he could reach.
Severus shook all over when Harry kissed him, but Harry knew that it was in relieved disbelief, more than anything else. Then he clasped Harry’s shoulder blades with both hands and crushed him in. Harry got the warmest, longest kiss he’d had in his life, and sighed out as Severus released him.
The silver images of themselves had disappeared, and the sun had set. The stars glowed above them, normal sizes now, and not so shiny. But Harry thought it wasn’t his imagination that a soft twinkle still animated them.
A blessing, Harry thought, and he was sure of that in a way no book on ritual magic could tell him.
“Thank you,” Severus said hoarsely. The light, Harry, himself, Harry didn’t know who he was thanking, and it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have traded this moment beside the dark lake under the light of the summer stars for anything.
Harry leaned his shoulder against Severus’s and held out his hands, for what light might come to them. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
Severus’s shoulder shook one more time against his, and then was still. When Harry looked up at him, he was smiling.
The End.