May the thirtieth – by Aphrodeia
Disclaimer: All people, places, and things belong to J.K. Rowling. I just enjoy making them do my bidding.
Many more thanks to my invaluable beta, Azazello.
Severus Snape closed the Apothecary door behind him, locking and warding it securely before starting down the street. It was still two hours before closing time, but he was done for the day. He had done far more today than he'd intended.
He shook his head, scattering his thoughts before they could settle. He wasn't ready to think today. May the thirtieth. He ducked into the small grocery down the street, needing to pick up a few things for dinner that night. Then he would be on his way and back home in no time.
Since being away from Hogwarts these years, he'd discovered an affinity for cooking that he never would have expected. He'd been reluctant at first – After all, if we didn't need them, what would the house elves do all day? – but Hermione wouldn't take no for an answer. She had taught him, playing on his background as a Potions Master, how to make the beef stew her mother had made when she was young, and his need to perfect and re-perfect kept him busy with that single recipe for days.
It wasn't that unlike creating a potion, he mused, as he fished through the tomatoes, only safer. A dash too much oregano didn't wreak havoc quite the way that too much boomslang skin could. He scrutinized each tomato with a calculating eye, and had finally selected two, when a sound caught his attention.
He furrowed his brow in vague recognition, trying to place the tinny, Muggle tune that floated through the air. He grasped the edge of a nearby display, steadying himself when it came to him. The perfect tomatoes fell to the floor. It was the song to which they'd danced at their wedding reception.
Severus had been apprehensive, having a wedding that attempted to combine the Muggle and Wizarding wedding ceremonies, but Hermione would hear none of it. She had the whole thing planned out before he'd even had a chance to register she'd said "Yes," and he quickly found how annoying it was when she became set on something with which he didn't agree. She told him this was perfectly normal, wearing a grin that was utterly conspiratorial; most young Muggle girls have entirely planned their wedding by age ten. He agreed grudgingly, but her enthusiasm endeared the ideas to him.
She had been a vision in her robes, tears glistening in her eyes from the start, concerning him for a moment that she was having second thoughts. But then she smiled the smile that only brides and new mothers could achieve – that smile so full of hope and promise that the wearer radiated joy, as if they knew that they would never again be alone. And he had marveled at it; that smile was for him. He had made it. He had spent life as a destroyer, yet somehow this remarkable woman had seen through it all, to the heart he'd forgotten he had. He'd created something with her.
He had most been dreading the reception, something he viewed as an opportunity for people he hardly knew to eat their food and get drunk. Hermione had laughed and assured him it was nothing so bad as that, as they walked through the doors of the Great Hall, her holding tightly to his arm and smiling that smile. In her planning and conspiring, she had conveniently neglected to tell him about the Muggle tradition of a first dance for the newly married couple, and it took only a moment or two for that laughing woman to convince him it was harmless and drag him protesting to the dance floor. The song began, this Muggle tune he'd never heard before, and the world shrank to just the two of them on that floor as they danced. This was how life was supposed to be.
He never could have expected that, seven years later, she would be dead. Five years ago today she got into that horrible Muggle car, despite his constant protestations that they weren't safe, and she kissed him gently on the cheek, smiling against his skin and brushing her hand through his hair, telling him it would be okay. She'd done this a thousand times before.
Severus fled the shop, ignoring the inquiries of the shopkeeper asking if he needed assistance. He strode hurriedly down the street, not stopping until he had ducked into an alley around the corner and had the opportunity to compose himself. Five years he'd spent with these memories; they were nothing new. Most days, it was nearly an afterthought. Hermione was gone, and nothing he could do would change that. But May the thirtieth was always different.
Life had become a long calendar of memories. April the twenty-seventh, nearly two years after having walked out of the Great Hall following the Leaving Feast, Hermione had come back to Hogwarts to assist him with Potions research – much to his chagrin. He attempted to send her away, insisting that he hadn't intended some little know-it-all to be sent as his assistant. Had it not been for the intervention of the Headmaster, he would have carried her bodily from his classroom and told her never to return.
June the twentieth, she offered him her first smile, and she thought she'd got an almost friendly, not-quite-so-deprecating smirk in return.
August the fifteenth was the day that she, during a heated argument about the properties of red dragon scale, screamed that she was in love with him. They never quite concluded who initiated the kiss, but neither cared.
September the nineteenth, her birthday – while tangled in his silk sheets with her for the first time, he stroked her face as she drifted to sleep and whispered that he was in love with her, too.
That year, on Christmas Eve before all the staff and students, he asked her to be his wife. The display was entirely out of character for him, she'd said with a smile. He told her it was all her fault.
July the fifth, after classes were out, they were married.
Two years later, on April the fourth, she gave birth to their daughter.
Severus smiled faintly at the memory as he walked the street, paying no heed to the light rain shower breaking overhead. Hermione had been less than pleased at the news of her pregnancy when the Mediwitch first told her that she was nearly two months pregnant. They hadn't planned to become parents at any time in the near future, if at all; while Hermione wouldn't have minded it, Severus never had found much affection for children. In light of his opinion, she threw herself into work and had achieved a position at the Ministry working in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She had found a passion in her work and had just settled into her newfound ambitions when the pregnancy was discovered. We'll find a way, Severus had reassured her, all the while wondering if she shouldn't be the one saying such things to him.
And they had found a way. Despite her apprehensions, motherhood suited Hermione. She glowed with a sort of divine radiance from her fourth month of pregnancy, no matter how harried her job duties had left her. By the seventh month she was off work and staying in their quarters at Hogwarts, which was as it should be, Severus insisted. She laughed and asked if it was for her own good, or if he was hoping to turn her into his personal house elf. Both, he replied with a smirk.
Anna's birth had been an easy one, all things considered, excepting the fact that it had come on so suddenly that it took place in the enormous bathtub in their quarters. Had Severus not happened to check in on her that day between classes, she would have had the baby alone – as she was entirely capable of doing, she protested as Poppy rushed into the bathroom. It was weeks before she forgave Severus for setting the Hogwarts Matron on her, which was only fair, as it was likewise weeks before Severus stopped working into every conversation the fact that there had been placenta in his bath of 13th century Italian marble.
Severus was never an ideal father. He wasn't doting, he wasn't sentimental, he didn't make a habit of doing silly little "daddy" things, like making up songs with Anna's name, or playing with fingers and toes. He told Hermione that such things were demeaning and undignified, and she just smiled, convinced deep down that he had secretly blown raspberries on Anna's belly at least once when nobody else was around. But he was a good father. He was protective of her, and he was kind, though not accommodating.
Even as a baby, Anna was stunning. She had her mother's curly, brown hair, but eyes that were all her own. They were a deep brown, nearly black, and introspective. Hermione joked that Anna was born with all the knowledge it had taken her mother a decade to learn.
When Anna learned to walk, they decided to take a cottage in Hogsmeade, to provide her with more opportunities to play with children her own age. She made friends quickly, and Hermione delighted in the chance to take care of a house. A Hogwarts elf, courtesy of the Headmaster, looked in weekly and took care of anything Hermione hadn't the opportunity to do. It was a life Severus felt he didn't deserve.
As the child grew, so did the expectations. Anna was born to a witch who was one of the most brilliant in a generation and a wizard who was the last of one of the oldest pureblood families in Wizarding Britain. She would do great things, people were fond of saying - it was only natural.
It wasn't until Hermione became curious, and asked some questions at the Ministry that she discovered their expectations were misplaced.
"When were they going to tell us?" he'd shouted over Anna's wailing.
"I don't know, Severus," Hermione said, rocking the frightened child.
It had been a very long time since he'd had much cause to be angry. Anna, he admitted reluctantly, brought out some of the best in him. She had grown on him, and while her silly little mistakes were frustrating, he rarely raised his voice. He didn't need to; somehow, Anna knew when he was unhappy and she took it very seriously, with her furrowed brow and concerned eyes. But the fury that seized him with the realization that his only child would never be able to so much as wave a wand, and that the Ministry knew all along, was unlike anything he'd known in years.
He didn't remember picking up the vase, but the crash against the kitchen wall was satisfying. Hermione looked at him, eyes blazing, and informed him with every ounce of calm she could muster that she was going upstairs with their child, and he could come and speak with her when he was done behaving like a madman. After she left, he had braced his hands on the worktop and rested his forehead on the cupboards. He was an idiot.
They didn't speak until later that night, after Anna was sound asleep in bed. He was standing in the middle of her bedroom, watching her sigh in her sleep, when Hermione found him. She crept up behind him, sliding her arms around him and resting her cheek on his back.
"It doesn't change her, you know," she said, her voice quiet. "She's still the same little girl she was yesterday." He didn't reply, just turned in her arms, settling his own around her shoulders and kissing her forehead. He held her for a moment, and then spoke.
"But why didn't they tell us?"
Hermione shook her head. "I don't think they make a practice of doing so, not so early." Anna stirred in her bed, and Hermione carefully extracted herself from Severus's arms, took his hands in hers and led him from the bedroom.
"I still love her," he said when they reached the hallway. His voice was quiet, his eyes were unreadable.
Hermione smiled. "She knows that. She was just startled. When I tucked her in, she told me not to worry, that you were just being grouchy." He smiled a little at this. That little girl did have such a way with words.
Hermione rested one hand on his chest, the other tracing his jaw. "Besides, what would we have done if we'd known? We can't just take her back to the baby shop."
His lips twisted into a smirk. "No, but we could have tried again. Frequently."
"If I recall, we certainly didn't stop practicing. Frequently," she added with a grin of her own.
He hummed in agreement as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "Well, I do like to keep my technique honed."
"I think you've done so admirably." She tipped her head back to study him for a moment. "We can have another, Severus. We can still try again." He seemed to consider this for a moment, and she added, "But it may take a few tries."
He nodded. "It may, indeed. We'd best get started, then." He scooped his giggling wife into his arms and strode toward the bedroom.
Hours later, when she had taken him deep inside her for the second time, he had gazed openly in admiration at this woman he'd married. She rose above him exquisitely, arching her back as his hands guided her. This is something of which I will never tire, he thought fleetingly as her pace quickened and she trembled around him, pulling him over the edge.
That night had been April the tenth, just after Anna's fifth birthday, and it was both one of the most trying and one of the most promising nights of his life. Things fell apart and were put back together again. It was a turning point.
Severus remembered that night well. He pulled up the collar of his coat, shielding his neck from the chilling rain, and his pace slowed as he realized where he was walking.
May the thirtieth. She died without preamble, without warning. She got into the passenger seat of that car and it drove away. He held up a hand in farewell as it rounded the corner, and he saw her smile and press her fingers to her window. They'd argued about automobiles before; he'd never believed them to be safe, nor were they reasonable when one could simply Apparate. But she had always insisted that, in the company of Muggle friends, she should behave in kind. Besides, it was the way she was brought up, and these Muggle things were a part of her.
He'd felt it when it happened, barely ten minutes later. He didn't know what it was at the time; it was a feeling of incredible wrongness, as if something in him had hidden itself away. It was Albus who came to tell him, who had the burden of holding the proud man after the denial had ebbed and Severus was left broken and empty.
Nothing could have prepared him for telling their daughter that her mummy wouldn't be coming home. When he told her, Albus standing close by, she blinked at him serenely. "I know. She died," she'd said, those five-year- old eyes deep with understanding. "I felt it."
Shortly after Hermione's death, Severus resigned from his position at Hogwarts. Every smell, every location, every seemingly insignificant item reminded him of her, and Albus encouraged him to try his hand at something other than teaching dunderheads. He opened a small Apothecary on the edge of Hogsmeade, and Anna was enrolled in a Muggle school to begin that Autumn.
That was one thing upon which Hermione had insisted before her death – that Anna begin school with non-magical children. There was no shame in being a squib, she knew, but it was a fact of Wizarding life that squibs are anomalies, and that was a stigma no child needed. Anna would not be a second-class citizen. Severus had protested, saying that she would be just fine in a Wizarding school. After all, magical education didn't truly begin until age ten or eleven. But Hermione was unwavering. Anna would attend Muggle school until she had learned her basics – reading, writing, basic maths, some history. After Hermione's death, violating her wishes was out of the question. Anna went to a primary school in a Muggle village near Hogsmeade.
The rain was beating a steady rhythm by the time Severus entered the small cemetery. He walked to the back corner where the flowering tree stood and dropped to his knees at the small granite headstone. It was nothing elaborate; it bore simply her name, the day of her birth, and the day she died. May the thirtieth. At the corner, nestled in the grass, was a miniature lion, carved of the same stone. He didn't know where it had come from; it had simply appeared one autumn day and had stood vigil at her grave ever since.
"I miss you," he whispered, tracing her name in the cool stone. "My lioness. I don't think I ever called you that, but I often thought it. So determined, and so beautiful. So perfect. I sometimes don't know what I'm doing without you." He drew an unsteady breath.
"I hate today. I work and I struggle all year to find a way to forget it all, but there it is, every year. Even on your birthday, or our wedding day, or when Anna was born... all I can remember are the happy times. But not today." His breath was coming in choking sobs. "Today is when I remember you getting into that damned car. I told you they weren't safe. I told you something would happen one day. Why wouldn't you listen?" he cried out. He dropped his hands to the grass, and the tears came unchecked, falling to the ground where they mingled with the rain.
"Gods, I miss you," he managed. "I feel so helpless today. I'm afraid to go back into that shop, for fear they'll play some bloody song that you liked. I'm afraid to look at Anna, afraid I'll see you again. I'm even afraid to run home and hide in bed until the day is over. All I can remember is you in that bed – how you felt and tasted, the sounds you made.... Today, everything hurts.
"I wish I had the courage to come here when I didn't hurt. I'm sorry I haven't been here since last May. I'm sorry if it seems like I don't care. It's... it's as if I don't want to risk ruining my happiness every other day. I still miss you, not a day goes by when I don't think about you. But I've found a way to live now.
"I think it's her. Anna. She's become so beautiful, Hermione, and she's brilliant. You would be so proud." He released his grip on the grass, smoothing it instead. His sudden outburst had ebbed and tears now silently slipped down his cheeks. "So proud. She reminds me so much of you. She's ten now, and given your propensity for trouble at that age, I'm a little nervous." He smiled ruefully. "And I've put off the puberty talks for as long as I can, I think. I wonder if there's anyone I can hire to have those conversations with her." He chuckled, picturing the look of exasperation Hermione would have given him at such a statement.
"Did you know that a boy kissed her on the cheek the other day? On the playground. Anna made me promise that I wouldn't hex anybody before she would tell me. She's too clever for her own good. Were it not for the elf Albus sent – yes, paid and free, by the way, I even gave her the little hat you made for the last elf who ran screaming out the door when you offered it – I would never be able to keep track of that girl.
"It was a constant worry for me, I'll have you know, putting her in that Muggle school. I used to have nightmares that the PTA had found out that I was a wizard and came after me with torches and pitchforks. I hope you're pleased. But I think you were right. She truly enjoys it, being with others like her. Well, not exactly like her. I don't suppose other children have to come up with explanations for all those oddly-labeled containers in their basement when their friends go wandering. She told them my cauldron was a chamber pot, for Merlin's sake! I rather think that explanation created more questions than it answered."
His hand moved to the stone lion, one finger stroking it thoughtfully.
"She says she wants to go to a Wizarding school next year, 'to be around people like you and mummy,' she said. Perhaps it's time she met everyone, heard all the stories. 'Uncle Albus' is the only other wizard she's met; despite everything I've told her, I think she still believes that wizards and witches are these rare, special people. She'll be so surprised. Albus told me I would be welcome back to Hogwarts any time. Who knows? Maybe their Dark Arts professor will disappear at the end of term. They still don't last more than a year or two.
"I'm a little afraid of seeing everyone again. I don't want pity. Pity makes the pain last longer. Merlin, I sound so vulnerable right now. I feel it. Don't tell anybody," he added with a sad smile. "I haven't seen any of the Hogwarts Professors in years, save for Albus. I even began closing the shop on Hogsmeade weekends. But perhaps it's time I tried again."
"Daddy?"
"Anna, what are you doing here?" He straightened up and ran his hands through his sodden hair, hoping the rain had erased evidence of his tears. He turned to look at her.
"You weren't at the shop, and the grocer said you had left in a hurry without your tomatoes." She lifted a small brown paper bag for him to see. The girl studied him, concern in her eyes. "I was worried."
She came to sit beside her father, wrapping one arm around him and leaning her head against his shoulder. "I miss her, too."
"I know, Annie." The endearment was rare, and one he'd never used in front of Hermione when she was alive. He'd never have heard the end of it. He cradled her to him as they sat together, the sound of the falling rain surrounding them.
"I think we're doing alright, though," she said, looking up at Severus. "I bet she thinks so, too."
A slight smile tipped the corners of his lips as he returned her gaze. "I bet you're right."
"Did you tell her that your Victoria Sponge Cake won first prize at the school fete?" Her sudden grin was perfectly devious.
His eyebrows raised sharply. "I thought you weren't going to mention that again," he bit out in his best Potions Master voice as he poked at her sides. She giggled madly, flailing, and he was forced to abandon his teasing in order to save the tomatoes still clutched in her hand.
"I suppose I'm just not very good at being serious yet. But I'm a Snape. I'll learn." She beamed a smile at him as she rose to her feet, touching the headstone affectionately before turning to walk away. A moment, and she turned back to where Severus still kneeled, palm pressed against the engraved name. Hermione.
"Daddy?" She stepped nearer and placed her hand on his shoulder. "It's time to go."
He swiped at his face with his damp sleeve and rose to his feet. "You're right. I think I'm finished today." She reached for his hand, and he took hers firmly, his large hand engulfing her smaller one.
Redemption comes in mysterious packages, he thought, turning to look over his shoulder just once as they left the cemetery. I never would have guessed that mine would be sponge cake.