Chapter Five

Disclaimer: JKR owns it all. I'm just having fun.

Chapter Five

Hermione stood motionless, the word "marriage" ringing in her ears as the blood drained from her face. She gasped.

He knew.

"Oh, yes," Severus said dispassionately, his expression unreadable. "I saw the binding mark when you left this morning. The ancient rune gebo, is it not? How apropos."

Hermione uttered a curse under her breath, her posture deflating as she seemed to fold into herself. She looked at him with sad eyes. "I knew I should have told you last night. I'm so sorry, Severus."

"It's true, then," he said, his words cold and clipped.

Hermione gave a short nod, and then watched with growing dismay as Severus' detached façade transformed into cold rage.

She was shaking now, and she lowered her head, unable to watch as his regard for her disintegrated before her very eyes. Hot tears trailed down her cheeks at his reaction to discovering their binding. A small part of her had dared to hope that the news of their marriage would be met with elation...well, at least pleased acceptance...and perhaps even a declaration of love. She had allowed herself to dream of raising their son together, of days filled with research and learning, and nights filled with passion ... a lifetime of love.

But it would never be.

All the heartache she had felt since watching Severus "die" as he begged to see Lily Potter's eyes seemed to expand and multiply, magnifying until the pain was a palpable throb in her chest. He loved Lily; he would always love Lily.

He would never love her.

She was a fool for ever thinking he could. At best, he considered her to be his friend and nothing more. At worst, she was a silly little know-it-all, a schoolgirl with a crush on her older, enigmatic professor.

Hermione could not stay in the room a moment longer. She stood, preparing to flee his presence, when he spoke.

"Who is he?" Severus whispered harshly.

Her gaze snapped to his. What was he on about? "I beg your pardon?"

"Who is he?" he demanded, his entire body trembling in apparent rage. "I believe I have the right to know!"

Hermione stared at him blankly as she attempted to decipher his words. Quickly, she thought through all that he had said in the past few minutes, gasping in outraged incredulity as she realised what he was thinking. Even as her indignation at his ludicrous assumption swelled within her, so did a spark of hope. If Severus was angry, then perhaps there was a possibility that he felt more for her than he had previously revealed.

For now, however, Severus Snape had something to learn about Hermione Granger. She straightened her spine, and her lips pursed in an unconscious imitation of Minerva McGonagall after being told the house-elves were out of catnip.

"Perhaps you need to tell me exactly what it is you think you know," Hermione said, carefully enunciating each word.

Severus had just opened his mouth to give her what was sure to be a scathing reply, when there was a knock at his door.

"Hermione?" Harry said from the hall. "I've brought Healer Attewell. She can begin the examination whenever Professor Snape is ready."

Severus' scowl darkened, and she could almost feel the waves of anger radiating off him. "Potter? You married Potter?"

That was the hair that broke the Kneazle's back. Hermione leaned forward until her nose practically touched his. "No," she snarled. "I married you!"

She stood slowly, her eyes never disconnecting from his, and then she spun on her heel and walked to the door. As she turned the knob, she glared at him over her shoulder and said, "Choke on that!"

*******

Hermione stormed into the hallway, pushing past a gobsmacked Harry, an embarrassed Healer Attewell, and a shocked Eileen before stomping down the stairs and heading toward the kitchen.

"Hermione!" Harry called, racing after her.

She stopped in the lounge. "I'm fine, Harry. I just need a few moments to myself."

Harry looked at her, his brow knitted in concern; but then he nodded. "Yeah, all right. I'll just ... hang out here then."

Hermione gave him a grateful, if brief, smile, and entered the kitchen, her ire with her so-called husband returning full force.

"How could he be so stupid?" she muttered angrily as she opened cabinet after cabinet searching for the drinking glasses. Finding them, she pulled one out and filled it with water before throwing herself into a chair at the kitchen table. "I can't believe he would think such a thing. Doesn't he know me at all?"

"I don't know about Severus, but I certainly don't."

Startled, Hermione nearly knocked over her glass. "Oh!"

Eileen's smile fell just short of her eyes. "I didn't mean to frighten you." She sat in the chair next to Hermione. "I think perhaps we need to have a discussion."

Hermione sighed. "I take it you heard, then."

"I did," Eileen said coldly, "and I do not appreciate being misled. You said this morning that you and my son were friends, and now I hear that you are his wife." The older woman folded her hands across her chest, her disdainful expression eerily similar to that of her son. "I would like to know how it came to be that my thirty-eight-year-old son married his eighteen-year-old former student."

"We are friends. The marriage was ... unintentional, and as you heard, even Severus didn't know until a few moments ago." Hermione sighed and nervously sipped her water. "It's a very long story."

Eileen gave nonchalant shrug. "I have time."

Hermione pondered how much to tell the other woman, who essentially was still a stranger. On the other hand, this was Severus' mother. Perhaps, she could tell her the vital information and leave it at that.

"All right," Hermione said. "As I said before, Severus was my professor at Hogwarts. Last summer he aided me in some research for the war. We became friends after a time, very good friends."

Hermione breathed deeply, turning her head to stare out of the kitchen window. "He was convinced that he would not survive the war, and he regretted that the Prince magical line would end with him."

Eileen's jaw dropped in shock. "Are you saying that you're ...?"

Hermione nodded, and her lower lip began to quiver before she suddenly spilled out the truth in a torrent of words. "Yes, I'm pregnant, and I love him, but he doesn't love me, he loves Lily, and I accidentally married him with that stupid spell, and all because I didn't take the time to research it properly, and it's all my fault, and now he's going to hate me, and I'm going to have to raise this child alone, and even though I planned for that contingency, I just don't think I can do it if I know he's out there alive!"

She concluded the verbal regurgitation with a wail and then dropped her head into her hands as she began to sob ... again.

Hermione could hear Eileen moving about the kitchen as she cried, and after a few minutes, she felt a cool cloth being pressed into her hands.

"Hormones?" Eileen asked kindly.

Hermione hiccoughed and cleansed her face with the cloth. "Yes. Sorry for falling apart like that. It seems to be happening more and more often."

With a laugh, Eileen returned to her seat. "Ah, yes. I remember it well. It will ease up in a few weeks, if you're anything like I was. Now that we've got that out of the way, perhaps you can start from the beginning."

Hermione gave her mother-in-law a watery smile. "Well, it really began a year ago ...."

*******

"And wiggle the fingers of your right hand ... good. And now the left ... very good."

"I married you!"

"Now the toes on your right foot. A bit painful? Hmm .... Try the toes on your left foot. No pain on that side? All right. Let's see ..."

"I married you!"

"Please stand. Thank you. Now, take fives steps forward. Ah. I see that's still a bit of a struggle. Nothing to worry about, however. A nerve regenerator and a muscle strengthener should help immensely."

"I married you!"

"Please sit on the edge of the bed. I'd like to take a quick look at your neck. Mmm. Yes. The phoenix did a remarkable job; not even the most minimal scarring."

"I married you!"

"Now, for a quick scan with the wand ... excellent. I've finished the physical examination. I'm going to prepare the necessary potions and put together some general instructions, including a few exercises to help strengthen your legs. Without a sample of the venom, I'm at a loss as to why it affected your legs so severely. Also, I am slightly concerned with the condition of your right leg ... even after treatment, you may have a bit of a limp, but it's nothing that would be too much of a hindrance to normal activity."

"I married you!"

"Do you have any questions, Mr Snape?"

The healer's question broke Severus of his reverie. "No, I have no questions. Thank you, Healer."

"I believe it is I who should be thanking you, sir. If not for you and the others who so bravely fought, You-Know-Who might have very well won, and then where would the wizarding world be?

"Now then," Healer Attewell said briskly, returning to the business at hand, "I will be downstairs should you have need of me. Otherwise, I shall return with the potions and instructions within the hour."

She bustled out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Severus remained seated on the edge of his bed, his mind spinning in confused turmoil. One moment, Hermione had been married to some unknown, and no doubt dastardly, wizard, and then said wizard had turned out to be Potter. Before Severus had been able to vent his outrage that she would have Potter raise his son, she was telling him that she had married him, not Potter, and then she had left in a huff.

What the bloody hell was going on?

"I'll tell you what the bloody hell is going on," his mother said as she entered the room.

Severus blinked. Had he said that aloud?

"You have a pregnant wife who is sitting downstairs at my kitchen table crying her eyes out because she believes you hate her."

It was all he could to do to keep from throwing himself from the bed and crawling to Hermione on hands and knees if necessary. He needed to speak to her, to hear her explanation and offer his own; but first, he apparently had to deal with his mother.

"This is none of your business, Mum."

Eileen closed the door and then sat in the chair next to his bed, her expression serious. "You're right. It isn't. However, it seems to me that you have learned nothing in the last twenty-odd years. You're still making stupid, rash, impulsive decisions. When it comes to women, Severus, you are a dunderhead."

"Mum ..." Severus warned, his temper flaring at his mother's words.

But Eileen would not be silenced. "I will have my say, and you will listen. I won't even pretend to understand what you could have possibly been thinking when you impregnated that young woman, knowing the chances of your survival were so slim. Just the thought that you would leave her alone with no help, no means of support...what would she have done? Did you think about that for a single moment?"

"Of course, I did! Do not presume that you know anything about either me or Hermione. That girl is as tenacious as a Gringotts goblin. She laid out every possible circumstance and her response to each. I merely acquiesced to her wishes." His excuse fell flat, even to his own ears. He could have refused her, and indeed, he had done on several occasions. Yet he had eventually been persuaded by her exuberance and optimism, as well as the promise that his magic would continue after his death. In addition, the thought of having a child with Hermione had been a temptation he simply could not deny.

Eileen nodded. "Yes, I am well aware that the arrangement was her idea; she just told me. What I cannot fathom is how you...a grown wizard...could have agreed to it. However," she said, cutting him off before he could speak, "that is neither here nor there. You now have a wife and a child on the way. You have to make this right!"

"And just what is 'right?' I'm married to the girl...a circumstance I assume you know more about than I do, at the moment," he added with a trace of bitterness. "What more do you want from me?"

Eileen stood and towered over him. "I want nothing of you, Severus! But Hermione does!" she declared, her finger pointed toward the closed door. "That 'girl' cares for you a great deal...surely you've noticed!"

"Yes." Severus sighed, his rigid posture relaxing as he fell into the once familiar pattern of his relationship with his mother.

"She believes herself to be in love with you."

"Yes." Of course, she did. Hermione would never have asked to have his child had she not believed that she loved him.

Eileen eyed him shrewdly, her head tilted to the side. "And you, how do you feel about her?"

"Mother, I..."

"Do not 'Mother' me! Answer the question!"

"I love her!" he bellowed, and then he dropped his head into his hands. "Merlin, help me. I love her."

Eileen rolled her eyes. "Stop being so melodramatic, Severus. You love your wife and the mother of your son. This is a good thing. Stop acting like it's the end of the world."

Severus lifted his head to glare at her. "A good thing? Forgive me for saying so, Mother, but in my experience 'love' has been anything but 'a good thing.'"

He saw the confusion on his mother's face and raised a hand as she opened her mouth to speak.

"It is my turn to speak. Let me explain."

Eileen returned to the chair and waited expectantly as Severus gathered his thoughts.

"My earliest memories are of Tobias screaming at you, of the physical abuse you suffered at his hands. When I was a young child, I asked you why he hit you and why you allowed it. Do you remember what you said to me?"

Tears filled his mother's eyes, and Severus could see that, yes, she did remember. "You said, 'It's all right. He loves me, and I love him.' I knew then that if that was love, I wanted nothing to do with it ... until I met Lily Evans."

His memories of Lily seemed more distant, now that he had "given" them to Potter, and he was able to see the events in a more objective light. "I loved Lily from the moment I saw her, and for almost twenty years after her death, I mourned her. My decision to spy, my dedication to the Light, every painful, excruciating moment of the last two decades was done both as a memorial to her and to redeem myself in her eyes."

"That is not love, Severus. That is obsession."

Severus nodded. "Perhaps it was. It was only after Hermione's friendship came to be so dear that I found my thoughts of Lily becoming fewer and further between. I began to feel foolish for sacrificing so much of my life for the memory of a woman who had never truly returned my affection."

"As well you should," Eileen said curtly. "Lily Evans was never the paragon of virtue you believed her to be."

He glared but grudgingly agreed and then continued. "What I feel for Hermione is in many ways similar to what I felt for Lily. I think of her often. I feel possessive and ... jealous. And yet, it is different as well. With Lily, it was as though I had to prove myself worthy of her; but Hermione accepts me for who I am, who I was, and who I will be. I feel no need to hide when I am with her. It is ... remarkable."

Severus gave a brief huff of laughter. "She has this amazing capacity to care, to show compassion to even the lowliest of creatures. She is unbelievably intelligent and fiercely loyal to her friends. And yet, unlike with Lily, I do not see her through rose-coloured glasses. She is bossy and irritating. She is rash and at times, impulsive. Her temper matches my own if she is riled up enough, and sometimes, I must confess, I bait her purposefully, just to see her eyes blaze with fire."

Eileen smiled softly. "You do love her."

Severus nodded, his expression bleak.

His mother huffed in exasperation. "What is the problem, then? She loves you, and you love her. You're married with a child on the way. Why so glum?"

"I have ... doubts," Severus replied haltingly. "Hermione is young. It is possible she is confusing infatuation with love." He rubbed his throbbing temples with his fingers, then dropped his hands to his lap. "What if she wakes up one day and realises that she doesn't love me, she only thought she did?"

Eileen reached out and clasped his clenched fist. "Oh, Severus..."

The door to the room flung open, startling both mother and son. Harry Potter stood in the doorway, his face white as a sheet and his eyes filled with terror.

Severus was enraged at the invasion of his privacy, but upon seeing Potter's face, his anger quickly gave way to alarm. "What's happened? Where is Hermione?"

"It's the baby," the young wizard said, his voice trembling with emotion. "Hermione's bleeding."

A/N: Don't kill me! I won't leave you hanging for too long, as I know this is a terrible cliffhanger. I will post again very soon.

Thanks as always to my very own golden trio: Subversa, DeeMichelle, and LettyBird. You are amazing!