Yule
Severus returned to his Dublin cottage with Avi and a massive stack of student assessments to grade. Normally he didn’t mind having to grade over the Yule holiday. He would sit in front of the fire sipping tea and eating holiday biscuits while he spattered potions essays in red ink. However, this would be Avyaan’s first Yule without those poor excuses of humans that he used to live with. Avi had never experienced a muggle Christmas, let alone a wixen Yule.
Severus himself had not celebrated either holiday since his mother passed. Eileen had always decorated the house for Christmas and they “celebrated” the muggle traditions with Tobias, but once the drunkard had passed out for the night his mother would come and wake him for the Prince family traditions. They were often hastily done so as not to wake the sleeping man, they both knew that Tobias hated anything that had to do with magic and could often become violent when it was even mentioned in his presence. His mother had often taken the brunt of his anger to protect Severus, but once she passed there was no one left to protect him. Severus had forged his father’s signature to remain at Hogwarts during his fifth year over the winter break and every year after until he graduated.
It felt odd when he had left the castle to buy decorations from Hogsmead earlier this month. He had never bothered to buy any of his own when he moved out. Several of the shopkeepers had watched him in bafflement as he perused the shelves of brightly colored baubles. Most knew him from his mandatory Hogsmead weekend chaperoning and were caught off guard by his sudden interest in holiday cheer. Severus rolled his eyes as he clocked several adults failing miserably to watch him with any form of subtlety as he gathered up some silver and blue ornaments for the Yule Tree. He had also purchased the supplies for Pureblood Yule traditions and rituals. This required a stop at the apothecary for candles, pinecones, mistletoe, quartz, and agate. Looking at it all had him oddly emotional as he thought back on some of the only happy memories he had of his childhood.
He pushed the bitter-sweet memories away in favor of focusing on why he was here. Avi had been oddly reserved ever since they had returned to the cottage for the holidays. He had spent much of his time in his room yet seemed reluctant to unpack his belongings. It was concerning. Avi had opened up so much while at Hogwarts, befriending Mr. Boot and the terror twins that Molly had been struggling to wrangle since the two could crawl. He seemed to be coming out of his shell in recent weeks. That’s why the sudden change in behavior had him worried.
Severus sighed and looked at the items he had purchased. He hoped these would be enough to cheer his son up.
***
The next morning Avi woke to a sight he never thought he would see. Overnight the little cottage had been transformed. The banister to the oak stairs was draped in thick evergreen garlands with tiny blueberries, as was the hearth over the fireplace and the archway leading to the kitchen. On the mantle, there were seven white candles lit and glowing merrily amidst the foliage. There was a low black stone table near the fire with several unlit colorful candles along with bits of stone and tools. As he approached the kitchen he could see Omi stirring a large pot over the stove and the table already set with laden with food and his father reading the paper at the table.
Severus gave him a nod of greeting over the top of the newspaper and a ‘Happy Yule.’ Avi sat down and had a plate of toast solders placed in front of him. He carefully reached for the bowl of soft-boiled eggs, and peeled a dippy egg, and placed it in the offered egg cup. They ate their breakfast in semi-comfortable silence and Avi could feel his shoulders starting to relax. Ever since they had returned home from Hogwarts Avi had felt on edge. Something about the approaching holidays had him feeling like a fish out of water. With the Dursleys he had never been allowed out of his cupboard to participate in holiday celebrations other than to help his aunt cook copious amounts of holiday foods that he was never allowed to eat.
Once they had given him a tiny package wrapped in old newspaper. Harry had been so excited at the thought that his family might have been happy enough with his work that they might care enough to give him something for Christmas. They made him wait for three days until the day of Christmas to open it after everyone else had finished opening all of their presents. But when he gently peeled back the faded paper all he found was a lump of coal. While Harry had cried, Dudley had laughed at him and threw the rock into the fire.
“Avyaan?” his father’s voice broke him out of the memory. He hadn’t noticed that he had stopped eating or that his hands were shaking with suppressed emotions. “I’m fine,” he reassured his dad, not wanting to burden him with his dark thoughts.
The man raised a skeptical brow but let the matter rest. “You’ll want to bundle up after breakfast, so we can go out and select our Patron Tree for the season.”
“Is that like a Christmas tree?”
“In a way,” Severus explained. “Unlike muggles, we don’t cut down trees to bring inside to decorate. We just take one branch from the tree for the ritual and then use magic to make a mirror image of the selected tree by our hearth. The runes and rituals we do will then feed the spirit of the tree with our magic as an offering to Mother Earth to rejuvenate the land for the coming year.”
Avi thought about that as he chewed on a toast stick. “I like that a lot better. I always hated having to cut up the remains of the Dursley’s tree and throw it away at the end of the holidays. Not only was it a lot of work, but I always felt sorry for the tree. It always seemed like such a waste to cut down a beautiful tree just so we could watch it slowly die.”
Avi watched the minute facial movements as his father processed the information. The subtle downturn of his brows and the small tick at his jaw from trying not to clench his teeth. Severus tried to keep from showing how upsetting these stories were from his childhood, but Avi had years of watching diligently for any hints of anger to be fooled. He had talked to Andromeda about this during his therapy sessions. He knew that his father was not mad at him, but for him, but the thought of upsetting him at all still made him uncomfortable.
He pushed his plate away abruptly and buried off to get ready, not wanting to talk more about the Dursleys. They were no longer a part of his life. They had no right to be ruining his holidays anymore.
***
They both trudged out into the snow, his father layering warming charms over them both to keep Avi protected from the chill. His core sickness was mostly passed, but Severus was a bit paranoid about him having a relapse. He could be quite the mother hen.
His father led him to a clearing with a patch of Juniper trees, explaining that their needles and berries had protective properties in potions and was the best choice for Yule rituals. The clearing had several massive trees, reaching proudly towards the sky, all the way down to gangly-looking yearling saplings that barely reached Avi’s knee. Severus let Avi pick which tree to cast this year’s spell on. Avi spent over an hour trying to find the perfect tree. He honestly didn’t feel qualified enough to make this kind of decision. He didn’t know if his choice could change the outcome of the rituals, but he eventually settled on a short squat tree with lots of berries.
Severus chanted a long spell, but when they returned to the cabin there was a replica of the tree sprouting out of the floorboards next to the hearth. Omi had ginger newts and rich hot chocolate waiting for them and they took a moment to indulge and warm up before starting their next task.
They strung white mistletoe berries on silver thread and decorated the tree with it and tiny white candles to represent healing, love, hope, and protection. Then Severus pulled out a dusty black velvet box lined in soft fabric. “These are the blessing runes I carved with my mother growing up. Many of them were broken by my father over the years, so there aren’t many, but each wizarding family chooses a rune to carve every year to represent their hopes for the coming year.”
He pulled out a sliver of Agate stone that was banned in cream and lavender with a silver symbol carved into it. It looked like a straight vertical line with two other lines criss-crossing over it until it looked like a blocky braid. “This was one me and my mother carved when I was six, to ask Lady Magic for protection in the coming years.”
Next was an Amber stone that had a similar symbol but it was missing the three spokes at the top. “This was one she chose for me when I was eleven and was struggling with bullies during my first year at Hogwarts.”
“What does it mean?” Avi asked, curiously.
“Courage and strength,” he said in a distracted voice.
Last, he pulled out a green stone with an oddly shaped B. “Of course, this would be one of the few survivors,” Severus muttered in a voice choked with emotion. His voice went oddly distant as he continued to explain, “This is the last blessing I carved with my mother. I was fourteen when my mother finally told me that she had Lou Gehrig's disease. She had known for a long while, but she could no longer hide it from me anymore. I had always wondered why she never stood up to my father when he was in one of his rages. After all, she was a very talented witch and should have been able to defend herself and protect me with ease. What she told me that summer made everything make sense.”
“Up until then, she had been able to hide the symptoms with magic, manipulating herself like a living marionette. But wandless magic like that takes all of one's concentration. Even if she had dropped the spells she used to function in order to protect us, she never would have been able to muster the strength to do much of anything. She was constantly magically drained to the point of exhaustion. The constant need to sleep that I had mistaken as chronic depression was her body desperately trying to recuperate the magic she was forced to expend daily.”
Avi watched as his father gently ran his thumb over the marking. “By the time I returned for the holidays in my fifth year, her magic had given out and she was wheelchair-bound. My father was enraged at having to care for a useless invalid and I was unable to protect her because of the trace on my wand. We waited until he left to go out drinking with his coworkers at the plant before we hastily found a tree and carved our rune. A rune of healing that Lady Magic never answered.”
***
Severus never knew how his mother truly died. He had just received a letter from his father saying that she was dead and that he was never to darken his father’s door again. By that point, his friendship with Lily had already fallen apart and he had nowhere else to go. Lucius’ father, Ambrax, had eventually agreed to allow him to stay at the manor in exchange for his potion skills and he had quickly been ushered into the Dark Lord’s ranks after that.
However, today was not the day to dwell on these dark thoughts. So Severus went through books of runes with his son and picked out Thurisaz, symbolizing protection, defense, conflict, strength, chaos, and uncontrollable power. They picked it out in the hopes that Lady Magic would grant them protection in the next term from whatever creature had taken up residence at Hogwarts this year. Avi picked a smoky quartz stone that together they polished into a smooth disk and carved the vaguely flag-shaped rune into. Severus then cast a spell to inlay gold into the fine lines of the rune and another to let it hover in the branches of the tree with the other runes and candles.
Then they ate a delicious meal of mulled wine, roast goose, and spiced cake, courtesy of Omi. Before settling in the sitting room in front of the fire for tea and presents. Avi was very hesitant about opening his gifts and was oddly insistent on making Severus open his gift first, which turned out to be potion ingredients he had managed to grow with the help of Professor Sprout. Most of which, took months of careful cultivation to reach maturity. The potions master was slightly overwhelmed by the evidence that his son had been thinking of him since the start of term and working so hard to give him this gift.
Avi beamed with pride as Severus told him how much he appreciated his gift, but still eyed the other colorful packages with trepidation. He eventually worked up the courage to grab the largest package first, pausing for a moment to see if he would be scolded for going out of some unknown order. When no complaints came, he gently removed the sprig of mistletoe and the dark green paper to reveal a new blanket. This one was the same warm velvet as his favorite throw blanket but was several sizes larger to cover his whole bed. The material had a ribbed texture, with little animated snowflakes drifting around in lazy patterns. Avi immediately wrapped himself in the soft fabric to enjoy the built-in heating charms. After that, Avi became much more comfortable unwrapping his presents. Receiving a new potion kit, books, and a practice broom.
They wrapped up the night with the traditional ritual. Severus set up the Prince family's obsidian altar in front of the dying coals of the fire and arranged the candles. On the left, he placed the gold candle carved with runes to represent Lady Magic and placed a small wreath made of small pieces of the juniper branch they had taken from their Patron Tree around the candle. Then they each took one of the juniper needles and pricked a finger before placing them by the wick and lighting it with one of the last dying coals in the hearth.
Next, they arranged the bronze candle in the center to represent Mother Nature and surrounded it with the element candles. Light blue for water, red for fire, green for earth, light yellow for air, and lavender for magic. Severus formed a pentagram with ground quarts around the bronze candle and connected the elements in the circle. Then he lit the bronze candle with the gold. Avi gasped in surprise as the five elements lit simultaneously with the bronze candle and the quarts began to glow faintly around them. Severus lifted a brow at his son and deadpanned, “It is a magic ritual after all.” This earned such a petulant glare in return that it had the potion mast holding back a smile.
Lastly, he set up the silver candle amidst framed photographs of the people they had lost. Photos of his mother Eileen, Avi’s parents, Lily and James, of course. But also Avi’s lost godparents, Alice and Frank Longbottom, Pandora Lovegood, among others Severus, had lost in the war. He then used the bronze Mother Nature candle to light the Silver candle representing death, and they both silently reflected on what they wished to convey to their lost loved ones.
Severus’ eyes instantly fell on Lily, asking for her forgiveness for his mistakes and hoping she would approve of his efforts to take care of her son. Then he looked at Pandora, his other childhood friend, wondering if he too could have prevented her death if only he had known what he knew now from the Potter’s will. Lastly, his eyes drifted to Regulus. They had only gotten to know one another during their missions for the Dark Lord, but he had been shocked when their Lord announced that he had been killed trying to defy their cause. Severus had already turned traitor months back, and he often wondered if he had been honest with the scared boy who had been forced to join a bloody cause by his parents if he might have been able to save his life as well. In truth, Severus had nothing but regrets in his life until he Harry, but choosing to adopt him as his son would never be one of those regrets.
Once the clock struck twelve, Severus lifted the phoenix feather from the altar and lit it with the silver candle that represented death. He used magic to place the smoldering feather in the core of the Yule Log he had cut from the base of their Juniper branch, not unlike a wand core. He placed the log atop the now long-dead coals in the hearth and they watched as it burst into flames. To mark the passing of the longest night of the year and the rebirth and the sun began to return. The feather would keep it burning until the new year to represent the spirits of their loved ones continuing on with them into the coming year and watching over them.