The field stretched before them, golden in the dying light, speckled with wildflowers and dandelions swaying like tiny suns in the breeze. The air smelled of earth, of grass, of something faintly sweet, and Severus tried—tried—to focus on the task at hand.
They were gathering dandelion roots for a potion, fingers working through the dark soil, pulling up plants and shaking loose the dirt. It was quiet work, simple, rhythmic. But Harry—Harry could never do anything quietly.
Severus watched from the corner of his eye as Harry plucked a dandelion puffball and brought it to his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if making some grand, silent wish, and then he blew, sending the tiny seeds swirling into the sky like stars shaken loose from the heavens.
A smile curled at the edges of his lips, soft, secret, utterly Harry. He chuckled under his breath as the wind carried the seeds away, and something in Severus’s chest twisted, burned.
Oh, to be the wind. To carry pieces of him wherever I go.
He clenched his fingers in the dirt, forcing himself to look away. It was unbearable, this feeling—this knowing, this aching knowledge that love had settled into his bones, had taken root in him as surely as these dandelions in the earth.
And still, he did nothing.
Because Severus Snape was not a man who reached first.
Harry’s voice, light as the drifting seeds, broke the silence.
“Have you ever wished on a dandelion?”
Severus let out a quiet scoff, shaking his head. “We are wizards, Potter.”
Harry laughed, bright and golden, as if the very sun had found a voice. “So? Magic doesn’t mean we don’t wish.” He twirled a dandelion between his fingers, thoughtful now. “What would you wish for, if you did?
Severus hesitated.
He could have deflected. He could have said nothing and let the moment pass.
But the evening air was thick with the scent of summer, and the sky was streaked with the kind of light that made the world feel endless, and Harry was standing there, looking at him—and Severus, for once, did not bite back the truth.
“I would wish for you to be mine.”
The words slipped from his lips like a spell cast into the twilight, weightless and irreversible.
Harry stilled.
The world held its breath. The dandelion in his hand trembled.
And then—so gently it hurt—he turned to Severus, green eyes filled with something vast, something aching, something Severus had never dared to name.
“You don’t need a wish for that,” Harry murmured.
The breeze stirred the air between them, rustling the grass, catching in Severus’s throat.
And then Harry was stepping closer, close enough that Severus could see the fine specks of gold in his irises, the faint curve of a smile waiting to bloom. Close enough that when he reached for Severus—light, careful, as if afraid the moment might shatter—Severus did not pull away.
Harry’s fingers curled around his wrist, warm and steady, and Severus—who had spent years teaching his hands to never reach first—let himself reach back.
And somewhere, forgotten in the grass, the dandelions swayed, their tiny seeds still dancing on the wind.