Interlude: Hallowe'en
It was finally the true heart of autumn, the sky grey and dark and lowering, seeming to hang so close overhead that Harry almost thought he could reach his hand up and scrape away a handful of cloud for a spell or potion. It could be nothing short of purely magical. The winds blew, each one the fast-growing child of a gale, each gust whipping an armful of flaming leaves away from the parent tree and swirling them into fanciful shapes in the air. The air held the first hints of a bite, dropping daily a little further into winter.
Of course, it was raining too, fat measured drops plopping satisfactorily against every surface. If he'd been in a more pensive or depressed mood, Harry would have described the sky as weeping, huddled behind the safety of his scarf and coat and umbrella. Instead, bare-headed, he tilted his face up to the sky to feel the rain more fully against it, flung his arms wide as if to embrace the whole living glory of it all, opened his mouth, and laughed.
In his private workroom, Severus caught himself laughing as he hadn't in more years than he cared to count.