Bells had always held a sort of mysterious quality for Draco. He didn't know why – they were just bells, after all – but something in their sound pierced through him and reached deep into his core. Some bells were small and some were large, some jingled and tinkled and sang, haunting in the sunny spring morning. Others boomed in authoritarian baritones, usually from muggle churches but sometimes from wizarding clock towers and ritual places as well, announcing the hour.
Draco could never associate bells with anything other than magic, the sort of magic that is ever-present, all-penetrating, ancient and omniscient. Sometimes he felt like whenever he cast a powerful spell, bells rang in his ears, just barely there, like a rushing of blood but sharper and clearer.
Sometimes, he thought there was a tingle of bells when Severus was in the room, but that was a flight of fancy.
Mayday or Beltane was one of those holidays which had almost been abandoned by the wizarding community. Even Samhain was on the decline by the time Draco was old enough to go to the Ball, which was more of a wild-and-free festival under the stars, the one night when Pureblood reserve gave way to passionate magical heritage and the dark-haired witches claimed their superiority over their blonde counterparts in a single night of an ancient resurrection. But after the War things changed. The Purebloods had lost more this time around, perhaps because they had less left to keep or lose, so every single thing and person taken was a harsh blow. But witches and wizards had always been resilient and Purebloods pooled together to form political blocks, economic strongholds and, of course, alliances that would continue the magical heritage. So the bells could keep ringing.
Reviving tradition was so important that even Beltane suddenly became significant and Draco found himself awake in the early hours of the first day of May, three years after the war ended, with an owl on his shoulder holding an envelope and a hawthorn branch. He opened the envelope and found a portkey there that would take him to the ritual grounds.
Draco dressed, meticulously, his robes a subdued green and silver instead of the usual black. He cast a spell on the branch and it grew and twisted, becoming a wreath. He went to his father's study and laid it on his desk there, knowing that Lucius would appreciate the token once he woke up. He took breakfast alone, not wanting to encounter his parents before leaving but not taking so much pain to avoid them as to rush. Tea with milk and the traditional holiday rice cake along with jam and bacon and eggs were set before him by one of the house elves. The morning sun slid through the large windows of the Malfoy breakfast room, colouring the floor and walls and tablecloth with golden strokes of light and somewhere in the distance there was a eerie ringing of bells which made Draco shiver and smile at the same time.
He rose and took the portkey, went outside and activated it. The bells rang louder as he spiralled through space and in his head those bells were silver with small golden tongues, hung on the branch of a blooming mountain ash tree by a satin, green ribbon.
The maidens came back from the woods by the midday. They wore white gowns and wreathes of flowers on their heads. The men had spelled the maypole so it shimmered in the sun, enthused with magic. The ribbons on the pole were also charmed to not tangle until the dancing began but they still fluttered in the warm spring breeze. Draco, along with a few others, had just finished brewing the fertility potions and several large cauldrons had been set out for the dancing. The girls walked around and gave bouquets of the wild flowers they had picked to men of their choosing. Draco was presented with one by a girl still of school age who blushed and curtsied. Draco took her flowers and bowed formally, then watched her flit off with a wistful longing. Not for her but for something else that wasn't there and that should be, something he was missing.
Witches laid out food on blankets, unpacking bottomless picnic baskets. Daphne came by to say hello. She was engaged to Theodore and Draco could not forbid himself the smug thought that she would be jumping most enthusiastically over cauldrons later on in hopes of becoming pregnant. "Will Pansy be here?" she asked.
"I don't know. We've been out of touch." Draco swirled the potion in his cauldron and listened to the jingling of the bells that some of the children were charming to float through the air. He had felt disconnected since the War, detached, lacking something. It wasn't material.
"Will your parents come?"
"Perhaps for the fires." She left him then, understanding that Draco was disinclined to make conversation and not wanting to bother and provoke him. He could be sharp and that was one thing that hadn't changed.
The dancing started and the music floated over the field in gusts and spurts of joviality. The laughter of girls and children and the chiming of bells mixed together into a symphony of life. Draco stood at first to watch the engaged and newly married girls dance around the cauldrons, holding hands, then take turns jumping them in hopes that the fertility magic of the potions would empower their reproductive cores.
The younger or unattached girls took to the maypole with the boys and young men. The ribbons wound and unwound, creating shapes and designs, hypnotizing the viewer. Draco ate some of the sweets brought out for the picnic and felt a lightheaded unreality in the bright sun. "Come and dance, Mr. Malfoy," a beautiful blonde girl – was Astoria her name? – coaxed him gently. She wore one of the white gowns and her blonde hair streamed over her shoulders, straight and plain. The flowered wreathe on her head was lopsided and she was blushing from the warmth and the dancing.
Draco went with her and they took ribbons and danced the next round with the others. Miss Greengrass was lovely and Draco felt himself smiling despite himself. It was not her specifically, but it was the life of the thing, of the dance. He felt the magic in it, the belief. He needed this, now, perhaps, more than ever while he was still searching for who he was in this new world and where his happiness hid.
Draco must have felt the watching eyes land on him at some point and he heard the bells – the ones inside his soul – begin to sing but until the dance was over he lost himself in the colours of the ribbons.
"You haven't lost your dancing touch," Severus said smoothly once Draco had joined him at the edge of the festivities after the first round of dancing was over with and the men began to prepare for the fires.
"And you have not lost your touch for black," Draco shot back, his eyes sweeping Snape's perpetual black robes with some accusation. "Has no one told you, Severus, that today is a day for life and colour, not death and gloom." He smirked even though something within him twisted painfully. He insisted on using Severus' first name these days, despite Snape's initial abhorrence at such audacity. Draco thought that he'd earned that right after everything.
"This is a farce," Severus scowled.
"It's a tradition."
"What are you trying to achieve here, Draco?"
"Achieve? Nothing." Draco made himself look away from Severus and look at the festival grounds instead where the first fires were being lit. "Perhaps we just want to…recapture a meaning. This…there's purity here."
"Those are your mother's words."
Draco laughed but there was something dark within the sound. There were no bells in his laughter and he quieted instantly, the realization unbearable. "Severus, I am sure you would be welcome here still if you made an effort." There was a pause after which Draco added, almost bitterly, "But of course that is too much to ask."
Severus grabbed his arm and turned him around. "Draco, come with me."
Draco raised an eyebrow up at him questioningly "Where? Why?"
"Just come."
Draco goes with Severus with no hesitation, no regret. He can always come back for the end of the dancing if need be. Severus takes him to a secluded spot, a small alcove between two green hillsides, protected by bushes and shrubbery. He kissed Draco in that dry, harsh manner Severus had. "I watched you dancing. The sun in your hair, the way you moved. You haven't written. Why?"
Draco smirked at the uncharacteristic disjointedness of Severus' sentences. "I was busy. I haven't forgotten."
"Your tradition. So much of it is in the fertility ritual." Severus' hands slide over Draco's shoulders and arms, onto his chest and under his robes, palms flat against the soft fabric of his waistcoat.
"We are two men," Draco said, not really fighting this, his own hands going up to Severus's shoulders, eyes wide, pupils dilated even in the bright sun.
"There are other things to produce than children. Other ways for life."
"Bells."
"What?"
"When I'm with you, I hear bells," Draco said quietly, unclasping Severus' cloak and letting it fall in a pool of black onto the lush grass. Severus looked concerned but Draco only smiled. "I don't know what that means but there is magic in it."
Draco never figured out how Severus had managed to survive for as long as he did after Nagini's attack. He was certain, when he and his father had found him, that Severus was dead. But he had been alive, just barely. He was also comatose.
Lucius, who had put some puzzle pieces together, did not wish to have anything to do with Snape but Draco did. There was no amnesty for Severus yet at that time, although it would come soon enough from Potter's babblings, so Draco had taken him to the Manor despite Lucius' protests. "Professor Snape is like family to me," Draco had implored. "He kept me safe when you and Mama could not. I owe him, Father."
Over the long months that Draco spent with healer's books and help from friends bringing Snape back into the world of the living, he had become 'Severus' to Draco. They had kissed but never made love. Draco did not know why, it simply never happened.
There was no incredible, explosive orgasm, no revelation, no bewilderment at the newness of a first time. There was just something natural and sharply real about making love with Severus. They lay afterwards atop Severus' cloak, Draco's head on Snape's shoulder and his arm around the older man's waist. He traced the long, thick scars on Severus' neck with gentle fingers and smiled quietly at the thought that that disaster was over.
Severus let him look and touch. There was nothing Draco hadn't seen while nursing him back to life. "I have a proposition for you," he said finally, lazily. "A good potions program in southern France. I was invited to teach and was going to send them to hell, but if you would like to apply, get your High Degree there…I would go with you."
Draco hummed thoughtfully, his fingers tracing circles and triangles over Severus' pale skin. Somewhere in the distance, bells chimed. These were real, Draco knew, perhaps from the festivities but that ringing was the only sound, other than the rustling of leaves in the breeze, that his ears picked up. The sound echoed somewhere deep inside him and Draco felt both reality and dream fade slowly into one. The sun was starting to go down and the shadows it cast lengthened slowly. Once it set, the Beltane festivities would be over and the magic would disperse again. So Draco decided, while he still had that magic to guide him. "I was thinking about getting my High Degree in potions…Yes, Sev, yes."