Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

An: This is in response to a challenge issued by SaSS, where Snape is forced to look after his children while Hermione goes out of town. There are guidelines, but I won't bore all of you with them, as they are rather long. I promise, I'm sticking to them.

Big thanks to Michmak and all the SaSSy girls for their encouragement, but mostly for Michmak, who helped me find names for the kids.

Fortuna Snape was the only girl in her family, sandwiched between two obnoxious, yet lovable brothers. Being the only girl, and far more mature than her rowdy brothers, she took her duties rather seriously and made sure to keep her parents apprised of everything that was happening in their house.

"Mummy, Tiberius just made a mess in the bathroom," she said conversationally as she draped herself across her parent's bed.

Hermione Snape looked up from the small bag she was packing. "Fortuna, I do not want to have to tell you again to stop tattling on your brothers! I'm going to be gone for the entire weekend, and I need you to try and help Daddy, not drive him up a wall."

Fortuna looked down at the design in the patchwork quilt she was currently laying on. "I'm sorry for tattling, Mummy, but I hafta pee, and I can't 'cause Tiberius peed all over the seat."

Hermione sighed. "Severus! Go check the bathroom!" she called into the hallway. "Fortuna, go and use my loo."

Fortuna walked primly into her mother's bathroom and listened, for she knew it was inevitable that Tiberius would come running in to defend himself.

"Mummy," the four-year-old cried, "Daddy just yelled at me!"

Fortuna smiled smugly to herself and finished her business, then washed her hands and exited the bathroom primly.

"It's all 'er fault, too," Tiberius cried, holding onto Hermione's leg. "She's a tattletale, Mummy!"

"You just tattled on me," Fortuna retorted.

Hermione threw her hands in the air and sighed in exasperation. "Both of you stop it this instant! Fortuna, go to your room and try to keep from tattling on someone for at least a half hour. Tiberius, go help Daddy clean the bathroom!"

Fortuna could not believe what she was hearing. "Go to my room, Mummy? Why? I didn't do anything!" It was her job to keep an eye on the boys. Her daddy had told her that on more than one occasion. He always told her, "Hold your brother's hand, Fortuna. Don't let go."

"Yes, Fortuna. Go to your room. I'll call you when dinner is ready."

Fortuna thought of a million retorts, but was cut short from saying them when her mother pulled out her wand.

"Now, Fortuna, or I'll have to levitate you."

Feeling very hurt and put-upon, Fortuna turned and stalked off towards her room, tears falling down her cheeks. She passed her daddy in the hall, and didn't even say anything to him. She knew he would take her mummy's side. He always took her side.

"I know why Tiberius is crying," Severus said when he walked into his bedroom. "But why is Fortuna crying?"

Hermione gave him an exasperated look. "She's turned into the most frightful tattletale, Severus! I don't know where she got the idea that she's the Prefect of the house, but she needs to be sorted."

Severus did not like to hear criticisms of his daughter, not even from her mother. She was a bright, intelligent young girl who needed to be nurtured, not stifled. She could be the greatest witch of her age, and he knew it.

"It doesn't help that you spoil her every whim," Hermione continued.

"I do no such thing!" Severus replied hotly. "She is not spoiled-she's precocious. Naturally, you would know nothing about that, would you?" He often had to remind his wife that she once used to be exactly like their daughter. And, as he often said in the next breath before she could hex him, she turned out just fine. Whenever she argued with him too much, he would take them all on a trip to London to visit Gram and Gramps Granger, who would exclaim for at least an hour that Fortuna was a copy of Hermione at that age, which was now six.

Hermione fixed him with a steely glare and continued to meticulously fold clothes and lay them gently in her bag.

"Mum, when's dinner?" Augustus their eldest, asked, standing in the doorway, his finger up his nose.

"Augustus!" Hermione exclaimed, grabbing her handkerchief from her pocket. "I insist that you stop picking your nose! What happened to your handkerchief?"

Augustus blew his nose. "Fortuna asked if she could have it for a doll blanket."

Snape could tell that his wife was at the end of her rope with the children, and led Augustus out of the room. "Come along, let's go check on dinner."

"Dad? Why does Mum always get mad when I pick my nose?"

Snape sighed. "It's disgusting, Augustus. I can never see an excusable reason as to why you, or anyone for that matter, would insert their finger into their nostril."

"It itches," was his eldest son's reason.

"Handkerchief, Augustus. Now wash your hands before we sort dinner."

Snape was dreading the next two days. He would be all alone with his children, being that his wife would be attending a Charms Convention in Latvia. She was the new Charms Mistress at Hogwarts. It was a weekend, so there was no daycare to send the children to, and he could not remember the last time he had all three children with him at once without Hermione. He reflected that it was because he never had been responsible for all three of them at the same time before. He and Hermione always split the load after Tiberius was born. She would usually take the boys leaving him with Fortuna. It was an arrangement that worked well, as Fortuna was too much like her mother and Augustus was far too much like his father. Tiberius was the only one that they all got along with, well, aside from Fortuna, who Ginny Potter insisted was simply trying to find her niche in the family now that she was the middle child after two blissful years as the baby.

The weekend would be hard on all of them, he was sure. As much as the children drove Hermione crazy, she loved them all fiercely and being separated from them was something she had never had to do before. He knew that she would worry about them at night. He was slightly offended when she had confessed to him the night before that she hoped they would all be all right, and that she would only be a floo away if he needed her. He was determined that it would all go well.

Perhaps he could even talk Augustus into staying over at the Potter's house one night. He and James were good friends, even though James looked almost exactly like his namesake, and Augustus was the copy of his father.

Fortuna lay in her room, upset that her daddy hadn't come in to rescue her yet. She knew that her mummy had told him that she had been a tattletale. Her parents always got cross with her when Tiberius did something wrong, like the time when he spilled his soup on the table, or the time that he dumped out an entire pitcher of milk onto the floor. They yelled at her for not telling them, yet when she did tell them, they yelled at her. She always got yelled at. Augustus and Tiberius never got yelled at like she did. She knew it was because she was the girl.

She also suspected that her mummy hated her. Anytime they went to the shops, her mummy always sent her with her daddy to buy clothes and toys and books. Her mummy always took the boys. Her mummy loved the boys best. She probably wished that Fortuna had been born a boy, or maybe that she had never been born. She turned on her side and hugged her teddy bear to her, crying sadly.

She was still crying when her door opened, the light from the hallway spilling into her darkening room.

"Fortuna, love," her daddy called, "time for dinner. Come along."

She started crying even harder. Her mummy would make her daddy start to hate her, too!

"Fortuna?" he asked, walking over to the bed, his large boots echoing against the wooden floors. "Fortuna, why are you crying?"

He lifted her into his arms, and she grabbed onto him tightly. "Mummy...hates me..." she wailed.

She heard her daddy laugh, his chest jiggling under her face. She started crying even harder. He was happy that her mummy hated her!

"Oh, Fortuna...Fortuna," he whispered, his hands smoothing through her dampened black curls. "Mummy doesn't hate you, my love. Mummy loves you very much. I do, too."

"Mummy wishes I was a boy," Fortuna insisted, rubbing her nose against her daddy's robe.

"Mummy already has two boys, what would she want with three? That would leave her short a little girl."

"She wouldn't care." Her tears were stopping slowly, and she tried hard to sniffle convincingly. In her daddy's arms, she knew he was right. She knew her mummy didn't hate her.

"She would care very much, Fortuna. I would as well." He pushed her back a bit and took her face in his large hand. "We love you, Fortuna. You're our little girl, and we think you're special. Mummy just has a lot on her mind right now, and she really doesn't want to leave you for the weekend."

Fortuna sniffled again. The last time her mummy went away, she came home with Tiberius. She wondered if babies came from Lautia or wherever it was that her mummy was going to.

"Daddy, where do babies come from?"

Snape felt himself freeze in place. Wasn't six a little young to wonder about such a thing? And where did that thought come from, anyway? He was sure that he had just recently been assuring his daughter that her mother did not, under any circumstances, hate her, and suddenly the child was asking about babies? He sat down, deciding that this was a conversation best handled in that position, and settled Fortuna on his lap.

"Babies come from their mummies, love. What brought that question on?"

His daughter's black eyes were shining with tears and something else that he couldn't quite read. "How do they come from their mummies?"

Snape was sure that Hermione should be the one answering this question. "Well...do you remember how we planted those flowers at the beginning of the summer?"

Fortuna nodded.

"Well, that's sort of how babies are born. The daddy plants a seed in the mummies' stomach, and when the baby is ready, it comes out."

He could tell that he just confused his daughter. "Is that how Tiberius was born?"

"It's how all of you were born."

"He didn't come from Lautia?"

Lautia? "Oh, Latvia. No, darling, they don't come from Latvia."

Her eyebrows knitted together, making her look like a black-haired version of her mother. "Are you going to plant any more seeds in Mummy?"

Snape latched onto the first explanation he could find for that question and took Fortuna's hands. "I don't think so, love. Why? Were you hoping for a little sister to play with? Tired of the boys?"

The look that Fortuna gave him reminded him of himself when he was in a particularly cranky mood. "No more babies," she muttered.

Ah, so that was it. He had a feeling that life was a little hard for Fortuna, especially since her brothers were constantly teasing her, and she really didn't seem to have a sense of humor. Plus, she was the only girl, and he could imagine what it would be like for himself if he was the only boy in a family of girls. There were also no other girls in the neighborhood to play with. The Potters lived just down the way, in walking distance now that Augustus was eight, and just across the road lived a friend of Tiberius's. Though her friends were only a floo away, Snape and Hermione both knew that she did not share the same ease with her friends as her brothers did with their neighbors. The boys would play in the yard and be joined by their friends, leaving Fortuna to her own devices.

Snape stood and lifted his daughter into his arms and snuggled her against his chest. "Come along, let's go eat dinner and say goodbye to Mummy."

TBC