Thirteen.

Disclaimer: The following characters and places you recognize do not belong to me and are the property of JKR and her affiliates.

~*~

After finishing his lukewarm tea, Snape had asked Hermione where Marie and he would sleep.

She had shown him through the hallway leading from the kitchen, rounded a corner and climbed a curving staircase. Snape, still walking behind her, had noticed the fine trim on the witch’s robes she wore – and the curves accentuated by them. Coughing (a side effect of the smoke inhalation, no doubt), he had turned to his right and looked at the many magical paintings lining the walls.

“Do you like them?”

The autumn leaves in the last landscape had blown across the canvas in a painted breeze. “They are… charming.”

Hermione had smiled, holding on to the banister at the top of the stairs. “I painted them.”

“All of them?”

“I started out with one of those paint by numbers kits. They were easy enough to do, and I needed something other than N.E.W.T.s to keep me busy after Julie was born. Then I decided – why not do my own? God, I’m rambling again… This is your room.”

Snape had opened the door and saw that this room was much larger than the one in the cottage. “Hermione.”

“Yes?” She had looked amused.

“This house…” He had stepped out of the room.

“I saved my Sickles and Knuts.” She had pointed to the room across the corridor. “This is Marie’s room.”

“Do you sleep here?” he had asked, gesturing to the room on his right.

“That’s Harry’s room. I’m at the end of the hall.”

“And your son?” There hadn’t been any more unclaimed doors in the hallway.

“He sleeps in the bedroom we have downstairs. Was the only one he took a liking to when we moved here… I’ll leave you to unpack then.” Snape had entered his room and restored his possessions to their original size.

Now he sat on the bed he would have to call his own for only a short amount of time. He started to organize the things littering the floor, but his eyes began to droop, and he was already on the bed…

Snape fell into a dreamless sleep.

~*~

He only woke when Marie shouted for him to do so.

“What is it, girl?” He sat up gingerly, the pain in his lower legs returning.

“It’s nighttime. You’ve been asleep for too long.”

“How kind of you to shout as if we were in another fire.”

Seeing the hurt look in her eyes, Snape cupped her chin. “I didn’t mean it that way… Forget I said it.”

She took Snape’s hand from her face and held it. “It was my fault, wasn’t it? Why our house is gone?”

Snape shook his head. “Of course not. The fire was an accident.”

“No, it wasn’t; I saw those wizards, too.”

It was pointless to try to protect her from the truth. “If the fire was intentional, it wasn’t your fault. There are quite a few people who wouldn’t mind seeing me dead.”

Marie’s eyes widened, but before she could ask anything about his last few words, he said, “Was there another reason for you waking me?”

“Yeah. We have guests!”

At least someone is excited about this event. “Who’s here?”

“Uncle Ron and his family.”

That was too vague a term, either referring to his wife and children or the entire passel of redheads. He hoped for the former. “And I suppose I’m expected to greet them?”

Marie nodded enthusiastically.

I won’t be able to go to sleep again now. “Only if you honestly tell me how many peanut butter biscuits you had earlier.”

“Three.” He rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. Eight.”

He quirked his eyebrow.

“I was hungry!”

“Not if you only had eight.”

“Daddy has bigger hands than me – he could take three at a time out of the tin!”

Hurrah for Potter. “Since you answered, I suppose we must go.”

He stood, and the two walked hand in hand to the sitting room.

~*~

Hermione sat in the middle of the couch, Julius and Potter sitting awkwardly on either side of her. Snape’s hopes were a reality, with Weasley and his wife seated in the loveseat to the side of the couch, their three children fidgeting in the other chairs that Snape hadn’t noticed in the room before. All of them had stopped speaking upon Snape’s entrance.

“Hi, Severus. We were worried about–”

“I’m alright.”

“Okay.” Hermione looked at the people in the room. “I don’t think I need to make introductions.”

“I’ve told our children about my former Head of House.” Weasley’s wife did look familiar, and Snape remembered Hermione’s telling him the news two years after the war had ended. Her face looked rounder now, and her homely appearance from her teenage years had softened into a more kind and pleasant one. She was almost pretty now.

“Miss Bulstrode.”

She smiled gently. “It’s Mrs. Weasley now, but you can call me by my first name.”

“Millicent. Mr. Weasley.” He nodded to both of them. Weasley inclined his head in return.

“Oh, I forgot about chairs.” She conjured only one as the youngest child left her chair to wedge herself in between her parents.

“This is our youngest, Quiessa,” Weasley said, putting his arm around the girl. “Then we have Ginevra Ann and Arthur, our firstborn.”

Snape noticed that only the boy had red hair, the girls carrying their mother’s dark brown hair. He sat in the chair recently vacated so that Marie could sit in the newly conjured chair next to him. Hermione glared at Snape, but he paid her no mind. He didn’t know those children and preferred to be a buffer between them and Marie. That and he didn’t want to sit too close to Potter.

“Would anyone like some tea?” Hermione asked.

~*~

Author's Note: This chapter was beta'd by the amazing Southern_Witch_69.

I try not to make my author's notes too long, but I just wanted to say that I might not be able to write another chapter for another two weeks because of RL and such, and that I apologize for being so slow with my mini-chapters when I post them normally.