(UPDATE 2018 THIS STORY HAS NOW BEEN COMPLETED! Find the full version on AO3 as "The Cursed And The Divine" by GES_Round_Robin_Fics. The contributing authors are: jamies_lady, MissFantastic, mrs_helenesnape and myself!)
A/N This snippet comes from a Round Robin story (written by several different authors) called 'The Cursed And The Divine'. I have taken the liberty to upload one of my contributions, which was the 8th chapter of a story in which Hermione, Lucius and Severus are tasked to find the cure to an apocalyptic contagion unleashed by Voldemort just before his demise. A ritual invoking the goddess Hecate's help took a decidedly physical turn and Hermione became pregnant with twins by the two wizards. I got the birthing scene to write!
Hope you enjoy! Leave a comment if you do :D
xox artful
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THE GODDESS-DECREED ONES
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"I HATE YOU, LUCIUS! ARRRRGGGHH! WHH!—WHH!—WHH!"
Hermione's face was a picture of beetroot-coloured fury, as she stormed and raged at the blond wizard kneeling to her right side. She was stark naked, half-lying back on a narrow bed well-stocked with supporting pillows, her knees drawn up and spread wide, an anxious wizard on each side of her.
Lucius ineffectually attempted to comfort her through a series of agonizing contractions. "Try to calm yourself, darling," he suggested, tentatively mopping her sweat-soaked brow like a man hazarding to pat an enraged hippogriff. "Just...breathe."
"WHAT THE FUCK—WHH!—DO YOU THINK—WHH!—I'M DOING?...NNNGGG!"
"Perhaps you should hold your tongue, Malfoy," snarked Severus from the other side of the bed. "Since you cannot seem to find anything to say but the patently obvious."
"AND YOU!" Hermione savagely turned her head to glare at her other wizard. "I HATE YOU, TOO!" She took a huge breath and uttered a long scream, throwing her head back and writhing in pain. "I HATE YOU BOTH EQUALLY!" And then she burst into panting sobs.
Lucius and Severus exchanged a glance which was far more suggestive of two guilty school-boys than two powerful, full-grown wizards.
"Mistress Hermione must ignore Master Severus and Mr. Lucius," said Tarry from the business end of the bed, throwing an extremely unservile frown at the pale-faced men. "Master Severus and Mr. Lucius are stupid, ignorant, insensitive brutes. Tarry will help Mistress Hermione. Tarry understands."
To the utter outrage and chagrin of the wizards in question, Hermione turned a weak and grateful smile on the little elf. "Thank you, Tarry," she whispered tearfully.
Tarry began to grumble loudly about pain-killing potions, fortifying wines, and anaesthetizing charms.
"We've been through this, Tarry," said Severus sharply. "We cannot risk interfering with the powerful magic with which Hecate imbued these...lives...at their conception."
"'Lives'?!" shouted Hermione lividly. "They're called babies, Severus!—whhh!—BABIES! You HAVE heard the term, haven't you?—whh!-whh!-whh!—Because there's TWO of them, which, —whh!—no thanks to you,—WHH!—are now trying to come out of my vaginaaaARRRRRGHHH!" Her body lifted almost off the bed as another painful contraction crashed over her.
Severus muttered an apology, his ashen face draining almost to whiteness and Lucius bit his lip to resist offering any more ill-chosen words of advice. Both men threw a longing glance at a small table on the other side of the room, on top of which sat a large decanter of fire-whiskey, glinting beckoningly in the candlelight. Hermione's eyes narrowed through her painful gasps, wordlessly making it clear that if they so much as took the smallest step towards it she would hex them into oblivion.
Wisely, the pair of wizards decided the best course of action from now on would be a meek and silent one, although this tacit resolution did not save them from a comprehensive, pant-punctuated tirade on the general uselessness of the masculine half of every variety of species inhabiting the earth.
Hermione's cries began to come thicker and faster, until, finally, she stopped her scolding lecture and simply screamed and screamed.
"Mistress Hermione must push now!" Tarry's squeaky voice commanded with surprising authority. "PUSH!"
Lucius and Severus gripped their witch's hands as she heaved forwards with a roar of determination, every muscle strained, blinded by sweat and tears, pushing for all she was worth... and then, quite suddenly, there was another voice in the room: the small, high, unmistakable cry of a newborn infant.
Falling backwards with great gulps of relief, Hermione could hear Tarry busily incanting detaching, cleaning and swaddling spells. It only took a matter of seconds before the house-elf addressed her master.
"Master Severus may approach and hold his son." It was more of an order than a request, and vaguely Hermione registered her hand being momentarily squeezed in a crushing clasp, and then abruptly relinquished. She only had time to hear Severus say, in a dazed, almost astonished, voice, "He is...beautiful," before yet another powerful contraction ambushed her.
The following few minutes passed in a blur of wracking pain and pressure, made somehow bearable by the background snuffles and cries of her newborn son. She focused in on this single sound and let all other conscious thought fall away, unaware of the voices around her, urging her to push, push, push!; unaware of her own throat-shredding shrieks, and the heaving contortions of her body; unaware of anything except the single emblazoning thought: that is my son crying. My son.
And finally, it was all over. The pain and pressure was gone, and Hermione sunk down, exhausted and relieved, against the sweat-drenched pillows. A second feeble cry, faintly higher in pitch, joined the first, and for a moment the room was silent save for the sound of this mewling duet.
Soon Tarry addressed the second wizard. "Mr. Lucius may also approach and hold his daughter."
Lucius practically bolted to the end of the bed, and, through half-closed eyelids, Hermione watched the tall man gather the tiny bundle—already tended by the industrious house-elf—to his chest, a ridiculous, besotted smile plastered all over his handsome face. It could almost, almost be described as goofy.
Severus, likewise, was holding a bundle, but with the awkward reverence of a first-time father who had never had anything to do with babies in his life. A kind of beatific radiance softened his habitually grim expression, and in that moment he looked to Hermione as equally beautiful as his blond friend.
Hermione was too tired to feel anything except a sense of perfect rightness.
The wizards came forwards together to kneel at her bedside, each presenting their precious burthen.
"Our daughter," said Lucius, somewhat boastfully.
"Our son," whispered Severus, with infinite wonder.
They were...incredible. They were tiny, beautiful, perfect beings which she had grown. Their magic had flowed tangibly through her for eight amazing months, like shimmering electric currents coiling and humming in sympathy with her own intrinsic power. Their life-forces had already bonded inseparably to hers, invoking an infinitely-more-powerful, mysterious and protective kind of magic—the sacred love of motherhood.
Hermione realised then that she was crying, pure, joyous tears. She reached out to take first one little person, then the other, tucking them under her arms to nuzzle against her bare breasts. Immediately the babies latched on and began suckling greedily.
"They're so beautiful it almost hurts to look at them," Lucius said, a catch in his usually-so-silken voice. "Like looking into the sun." Ordinarily, such sentimentality would have been rewarded with a snarky rejoinder from Severus, but this time his silence spoke his complete concurrence.
"Helios...and Selene," murmured Hermione, her voice still gravelly from screaming.
"The sun and moon," Severus said quietly. "Yes."
Hermione smiled at her wizards. "I'm sorry for yelling at you before," she said. "I don't hate either of you. In fact, I...I love you both." It was the first time she had said so aloud, and the words trembled as they left her mouth.
"And we love you," said Lucius, leaning forwards to softly and oh-so-sweetly kiss her lips.
"All three of you," added Severus, reaching down to caress their babies' round, pink cheeks wistfully.
A tiny fist emerged from Helios's loose swaddling to curl around his long finger, and when it unclenched the dark-haired wizard caught the little hand and turned it palm-upwards. "Look," he said. There, in the centre of the tender pink flesh of the baby's right palm was a tattoo-like depiction of a flaming torch. Reaching over to Selene, Severus unfurled the delicate fingers of her left hand, revealing an identical mark.
"Twin torches," said Hermione. "The symbol of Hecate."
She gazed down at the wet tufts of snowy-white and raven-black hair plastered respectively to the two little heads, and instantly something clicked in her mind. "The Goddess-decreed ones," she gasped. "Of course!"
The wizards caught on immediately, and all three of them quoted in unison. "'One hair light and one hair dark'."
"The book wasn't referring to us," said Lucius, looking at Severus. "It meant—"
"Our children," Severus finished the sentence. He appeared to have regained his composure, and one black eyebrow arched sardonically, as if in appreciation of some private joke. "Well, well, well. I do believe we have discovered the missing ingredient for our cure."
…
"Stand still, Lucius," Hermione said irritably. "You're distracting me!"
The blond wizard had been pacing back and forth like a caged tiger while Severus and Hermione completed the final steps of the potion they had spent so many months researching and testing—and which had cost them so many bitter pangs of disappointment.
Helios and Selene lay tucked up and fast asleep in a crib a few feet away, well guarded against the unlikely possibility of an accidentally-exploding cauldron by a powerful barrier of protective enchantments.
Severus hadn't spoken for the best part of three hours, so concentrated was he on concocting the potion correctly. His face was shiny with sweat, his black hair clung to his sallow cheeks, and his eyes were underscored with dark hollows. Silently and deftly he added each component, then simmered, heated, cooled, and added some more.
Hermione stood by his side, preparing the ingredients: pulverising the salt, basil and asphodel root to a fine paste in her pestle, measuring out the required units of rose-water, and counting out the pieces of willow-bark, valerian sprigs and bryony petals. She had just started on finely dicing the all-important mandrake root when Lucius's restless movement had caught her eye.
"It's taking longer than usual," griped Lucius, with obvious agitation. "Why is it taking so long?"
Hermione bestowed on him a withering look. This was exactly why he had been banned from helping. His impatience to cure Draco was affecting his judgment and could compromise the whole process.
"It's taking this long, because it takes this long," Hermione replied, with sweetness bordering on sarcasm. "If you can't think of anything constructive to do, Lucius darling, why don't you ask Tarry if there's some housework you could help her with?"
Lucius scowled and stalked off with many a disgruntled mutter about impudent young chits of girls.
Hermione conjured a dry towel and wiped her face then took a sip from her glass of water. She knew better than to break Severus's concentration by offering him one.
She watched him stir the bubbling brew with rhythmic precision. He had a wonderfully instinctive lightness of touch, constantly adjusting the temperature and monitoring the consistency, adding each ingredient at just the right moment with an assurance that seemed truly masterful. She felt a wave of admiration and respect for the man, which was quite separate from her love for him as her partner and father of her son. In some ways, he would always be her professor, her teacher—someone to look up to.
Of course, she looked up to Lucius in quite a different way. His over-protective and rather condescending manner often irritated her, and his arrogance and selfishness had by no means disappeared with his former prejudices. But his anxious, fierce love for his sick son, and the way he doted on the two babies, was really very endearing. Not to mention he had the body of a Greek god and wasn't afraid to display it.
Strangely, their triad relationship perhaps worked better than if she had been coupled with only one of them. The wizards acted as a foil to each other—Severus's introverted and sometimes despotic nature was balanced and lightened by Lucius's naturally charming humour, which in turn was prevented from turning into levity by the other's studiousness. They even acted as a physical buffer between her and whichever one she was arguing with—which happened rather often—if things became overly heated. ...And they were really both fantastic in bed. Lucius was a tender and generous lover, whereas Severus's love-making was deeply intense and emotionally requiring. Both of them were intuitive to her desires and indulgent to her whims...oh yes, they both fulfilled her needs very nicely...
"Concentrate," Severus growled.
With a start, Hermione reined her thoughts back to the task in hand. She blushed scarlet. Here she was, contemplating the, ahem, ins and outs of her incredible sex-life, when the fate of her friends and compatriots—possibly, of the entire world—was at stake.
"Sorry," she whispered and quickly finished slicing up the mandrake root, depositing it into Severus's extended and waiting hand.
They were so nearly finished; just a few, pivotal steps to go.
She watched the wizard scatter the pieces of root into the roiling liquid, and the brew changed from a deep purple to a translucent silvery colour. Quickly she unstoppered the vial containing their mixed blood—the "blood from one pure, one between two worlds, and one outsider that has come in"—and handed it to him.
Reducing the temperature to a low simmer, Severus added three drops with unfailing accuracy and they both watched in silence as the red streaked through the silver and the whole mixture began to fizzle and turn pink.
With a sigh of relief, they both took a step back from the table. Severus turned his dark eyes to her. "Now, Miss Granger, we wait," he said.
Hermione nodded, too tired to even bother chastising him for reverting to her school name. She reached up and pecked his cheek and was rewarded by one of his so-rare and therefore so-precious smiles.
The final ingredients lay beside the cauldron, to be added at the stroke of midnight, under the light of the full moon. Two tufts of downy hair, one inky black, the other pure white, carefully snipped from the heads of the peacefully sleeping "Goddess-decreed ones."
...