Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of JK Rowling and her assigns.

The kitchen was a mess of half-drunk coffee cups and full ashtrays mixed with piles of parchments. Some were full of notes while others contained results from their work. Septima swallowed back her lunch and started by clearing the table. She had dinner in the oven when Severus walked in. He looked at the now-sparkling clean kitchen and said, "Whatever it is smells delicious."

"Thank you."

"I have to say that I'm smitten by the look of you in my kitchen, doing my housework."

"You should go back to the cave."

He smirked at her. "An excellent idea, my dear." He reached around her hips and tossed her over his shoulder. After taking her to the bedroom and depositing her on the bed, he said, "I do feel like a cave man around you."

He undressed her and looked at her as he undressed himself. "I don't know why," he said. "You seem so full and lush. You are like life itself." He made love to her eagerly.

She lay in his arms, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. He carried her to a dizzying height and then held her tenderly when it was over. "You're incredible, Septima."

She loved him so much. There was so much to share with him, and she had her whole life to do it. She brushed his hair out of his eyes and whispered. "I wasn't feeling very well, so I went to a Healer today, Severus." She swallowed hard and blinked. "She told me that I'm pregnant."

She knew he was practicing Occlumency, but she was amazed at how well he had developed the art. Not a muscle in his face was different. There was no change in his eye. Yet somehow she knew he had closed something away from her.

"I want to reassure you that I have been taking the potion, every day just as you told me. The Healer told me that there isn't one we could have used that was better. She said that sometimes they just don't work. One or two percent, she said..." She drifted off, not sure how to continue.

Severus sat up and reached for a cigarette. He signaled for her to sit up next to him and put his arm around her when she did. "Did she say everything was all right?" he finally asked.

"She said everything is perfectly healthy."

"When did it happen?"

"Around Christmas."

"Almost three months? Merlin, Septima, why can't you keep better track of things like that?"

"I... I don't know. I'm just so interested in other things...There's our research, and then our time together..."

"Are you saying this is my fault?"

She shook her head. "No, Severus, it just happened. It's my fault I didn't notice sooner. I just never expected... and we have been working hard..."

"I suppose what's done is done." He took a drag that seemed to suck the cigarette down to its filter and with it all the air in the room.

They were quiet for a few minutes. She had known all day that he wouldn't be happy, but their work had gotten to the point where he could possibly start writing his thesis that summer and do just a few last experiments over next winter. He would be finished in just about a year. Her own work would proceed more slowly. With a baby due in September, if the Healer was right, she would have to take that semester off and delay her own work for that long.

She looked up at his profile. He was reaching for another cigarette. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know this puts the cart before the horse..."

There was something in the way he shrugged and sneered that told her what she had been hoping not to know all along. Septima had recently been trying equations that no self-respecting arithmancer would meddle with. It was a branch of the science that only fortune tellers and fools would pursue. The numbers never told her what she wanted to know, but now she knew they were right.

She lay back among the pillows and tried to remember how to breathe. Her eyes welled up and her breath came back with a sob. She finally sat up and tried to find her underwear. "There isn't going to be a 'horse,' is there?"

He just looked at her, his cigarette held halfway between the ash tray and his mouth.

She shook her head. "We're not putting the cart before the horse because you have no intention of marriage, do you? You said I didn't need to worry about anyone else, but that doesn't mean she doesn't exist. She does, doesn't she? I know you sketch a woman, the same woman, all the time."

She couldn't find her underwear and couldn't remember the spell to retrieve it. "I fell in love with you that first night in the coffee shop, but you never did. I was just a fun time for you... an easy lay..."

She couldn't focus on anything that was on the floor except her robe. "Oh, screw it," she whispered. She could wear the robe and her cloak as far as her apartment with no one the wiser about her lack of clothing underneath. "I should have listened to the numbers. I'm sorry for the presumption, sorry for throwing myself at you, sorry for everything. Have a nice life."

A/N: I was hoping to cover twenty years worth of relationship in just a few chapters. I didn't quite manage that, but there will be some skipping around. Thanks for reading and reviewing, and thank you to Mark Darcy for beta reading!