Disclaimer: I don't own it; I just love it.
Twenty-One
When they arrived at the Shrieking Shack, Severus marveled at how quiet it seemed without all Henry's baby noises. He knew this was the best opportunity he and Hermione were going to have to talk (or not talk, as it were) without being interrupted.
"The house looks wonderful, love." He said, "You did an excellent job."
She smiled, "It's almost unrecognizable, isn't it?"
"And yet it's the same," He said, "I don't know if you understand what I mean."
"I think I do. It feels the same. Like we could be back in our sneaky days."
They hardly ever discussed the illicit nature of their origins, even when they were still sneaking around.
"In some ways, I miss those days," he admitted.
"When we weren't celebrities?" She teased.
"I liked having a world that was just the two of us."
"Nothing can live in a bubble forever."
"I know." He wrapped his arms around her, "But in all we've been through this past year, it makes me wish for the bubble."
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
They were interrupted by an urgent knock on the door. Hermione groaned. So much for no interruptions.
"We needn't answer it, love."
"No, I have to. Especially if it's Neville. He's in a spot right now."
"What's happened?"
"Only history repeating itself."
Severus frowned.
"He and Ginny have been sneaking around since last summer. And now she's pregnant and all of the Weasleys and Dumbledore are seething."
Severus shook his head, "Did you advise them to sneak?"
"I'd rather not answer that." She pulled the door open and did not find Neville. Ginny stood on the porch instead.
"Ginny! I thought it would be Neville."
"Has he been here? Have you seen him?"
Hermione glanced nervously at Severus. She knew this panicked expression.
"Has he done a bunk, Ginny?"
"No, no, no. Nothing like that." Her face was screwed up in an extreme effort not to cry. "I just can't find him."
"You looked in all the greenhouses? And the staff room? And his office?"
Ginny lost her battle with tears and her face crumpled. Severus made a hasty exit to his study.
"Ginny, what's wrong?"
"I lost the baby." Ginny whispered. "I went to see Madam Pomfrey for a check-up and she couldn't find its heartbeat. It's gone."
"Oh, Ginny." Hermione pulled her friend to her, "I'm sorry."
"And I didn't realize how much I wanted it until I didn't have it anymore." She whimpered.
"Wait here a moment, Ginny. I'll get Severus to start looking for Neville." She poked her head into Severus' study. "We need to find Neville."
"I just talked to Albus. Longbottom should be arriving momentarily. It seems he was proctoring an exam."
On cue, Neville flew out of the hearth in a cloud of soot.
"I'm here. What's wrong? Where's Ginny?"
Hermione sighed, "Follow the sobs."
Neville dashed into the next room to find Ginny curled up on the couch, crying uncontrollably now.
"She lost the baby." Hermione told Severus.
"How long will we be harboring them?"
"Once she stops crying, they'll leave…I hope."
She rested her forehead against his broad chest. "I can't imagine what she's going through." Hermione sighed, "If I had miscarried—
"But you didn't. You shouldn't think about that now. Henry's clearly a very normal, healthy five-month-old." He murmured, his voice soothing.
Neville appeared in the doorway, "Sorry to interrupt. We're going to be on our way. Thanks for your help." He dug into his pocket, coming up with a key, which he deposited into Severus' hand. "I, er, don't feel right keeping that now that you're back, sir."
"Thank you, Mr. Longbottom."
"I think you can call me Neville now, considering you've married one of my best friends and we work together. I believe that makes us peers."
"Lock the door behind him." Severus hissed, "We're seeing no more callers for the next forty-eight hours." He pulled her into his arms.
"I missed you."
"I missed you too." She whispered, "Can I show you how much?"
She snuggled close to him. His arm was across her body and their fingers intertwined.
"I'm sorry," he said softly, his expression guilty, "That wasn't quite up to the usual standard."
"Severus, what did you expect? It's been over a year." She kissed his palm, "I don't care. I'm just happy you're home. For now, that's enough."
They napped for a few hours, before waking within minutes of each other. She turned to face him.
"There's something I want to ask you."
He nodded, his eyes still somewhat drowsy.
"When we were talking to Harry and Draco earlier, and Draco asked you what it was that made you willing to risk everything…you never answered him."
"I did not realize it was something that needed a response. I was under the impression he was just trying to prove a point." Severus said evasively.
"Sev. It's just me. You don't need to be so cagey."
"I'm not trying to be cagey." He frowned.
"Is it easier for you if I start; if I tell you the moment I knew you were worth risking everything?"
"Yes." Severus admitted.
"You probably don't remember this." She began, "It was ages ago, only a few weeks after we first started having sex. It was the first time you were summoned while we were together. I remember sitting in your living room, panicking. It was even before we'd started coming here. I kept trying to convince myself that my fear was irrational, firstly because you were always so cautious and secondly because I didn't think I had the right to care because we had nothing but a physical relationship. I remember looking at your books to calm myself down and think about something else and I came across your shelf of Muggle classics. Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Shakespeare, Wilde and the Tennyson poems. And there was a black and white photograph on the shelf with them."
"My mother." Severus said softly. "They were her favorites."
"I know. They're my favorites too."
"That seems like such a small thing."
"That's not the whole story. When you got back you were surprised to see me. That I could surprise you was thrilling to me. But you were shaking and hurt and my fear came back to me. You knew I was afraid and you took care of me before anything else. You were tender and gentle and comforting and that was the first night we made love."
He frowned. "The detention—
"Was the first time we had sex," she finished, "With you I learned to differentiate between the two. It was the first night that I felt like I saw the man you really are, underneath all the different roles you were forced to play. It was knowing that I'd see that man—a man that keeps his mother's favorite books and put my own needs before his own, even when he was in serious pain—again once everything ended and you could stop acting out all your roles that made me willing to risk everything."
He kissed her deeply. "Thank you for having the faith that you'd see that man again. I know sometimes I got lost in the lies I had to maintain."
"If getting lost in the lies kept you safe then I was willing to put up with all of that." She nudged him, "Your turn."
"I worry my story might give you the wrong idea about my initial intentions."
"Sev, if it got us to where we are today, it doesn't matter to me."
"You were fourteen."
Her mouth dropped open, "You noticed me then?"
"Not in a perverted way."
"I wasn't thinking that. I just always assumed that I was an insignificant silly little girl to you before I threw myself at you during that detention."
"No. I was always aware of you. I admit you were an annoyance at first in my classes. You made it too easy for the others. People rarely learn when they know they can expect someone of your intelligence to shout out the answers."
She flushed. "I apologize for that."
"As you grew older, I realized your answers did not show just an ability to memorize the textbook. You had a genuine thirst to know more about the subject that a Potions professor rarely gets to see, as it's not a flashy enough field for some. I'm sure you understand that now that you've been a Potions professor yourself." He smiled. "I still treated you horridly, of course. I knew you were the reason Longbottom, Potter and Weasley were passing my classes. And probably others as well."
She smiled at that. "Seamus and Dean."
"I still saw you as an annoyance, I'm afraid to say, well into your fourth year. You were dating that great goon Krum and it caused distractions during my class."
"Viktor was not a goon." She rolled her eyes, "Just painfully awkward everywhere but in the air."
"The business with your teeth was unforgivable. My comment crossed the line both as a professor and as a decent human being. You would have been justified in hating me, but you did not."
"No." She admitted, "I had something of a crush on you, even then."
"A few days after the teeth incident, I happened to be about to emerge from one of those corridors behind one of the many goblin war tapestries on the fourth floor. Fred and George Weasley walked by. They had been punished for some sort of misbehavior in my class earlier that day and were still griping about it. They called me a great greasy git and were thinking up plans for revenge. You were in earshot, and you defended me. You told them they'd deserved whatever punishment they'd been given and that they ought to have more respect for a professor and then you threatened to write Molly. You were always protecting the downtrodden and fighting against whatever injustices were happening. You had every right to agree with Fred and George with the atrocious way I treated you, but you didn't.
"I admit that I became rather too interested in you after that point. You were too young and too intelligent to get mixed up with the likes of me and I refused to let myself think of you as anything but an exceptionally bright student. Of course, I forgot this during that detention and then I decided you were allowed to make your own mistakes and if you chose to get involved with me, so be it. I was being selfish, of course. I wanted you for myself. If I had been any sort of respectable man I would have convinced you to find someone your own age."
"I wouldn't have listened." She smiled at him. "You know I'd be bloody miserable with someone my own age. I'd rather be with you, my intellectual equal, than someone with whom I have nothing in common but the year we were born."
"I consider myself lucky that you are so stubborn, then." He teased. "And so intelligent."
"I know a keeper when I see one." She smiled and kissed him again. They did not feel the need to speak for the rest of the weekend, and spent their time otherwise occupied with the business of lovemaking.
--
It seemed all Harry and Draco did that weekend was avoid one another. If Draco had the baby, Harry was as far away as possible. If Harry was with the baby, Draco did his best not to put any extra pressure on him, which meant being as far away as possible.
When the Snapes returned on Sunday evening with the undeniable glow of two people who have not done anything but love one another uninterrupted for days on end, Draco had to admit jealousy. Severus had never liked children and here he was, absolutely thrilled to be married and settled down with a son. Hermione and Severus stayed for dinner. The tension over the dinner table was obvious. Hermione kept shooting Severus worried glances. She was convinced that Harry and Draco been overwhelmed by Henry and were trying not to show it, with their false smiles and exaggerated cheerfulness that did not ring true. Severus suspected the tension was between Harry and Draco, not directed toward the Snapes in any way.
All in all, dinner was quick and quiet and Severus, Hermione and Henry did not linger.
"We need to talk." Harry said in a clipped tone.
Draco's heart sank. "Okay."
"Why the hell did you keep leaving me alone with the baby all weekend? I don't know anything about babies. I could have done something horribly wrong."
"Is that what you're angry about?"
"Yes. What else would I be angry about?" Harry frowned.
"I thought my being there would put extra pressure on you to start liking children."
"I do like children." Harry felt horribly guilty at the hope that lit up Draco's face, "Please don't look at me like that. It makes this so much harder to say." Draco's face fell again. "I'm not ready to have children."
"Is that a permanent state or something that might change?"
"I'm not finished." Harry sighed. "We've barely been together a year. I know this is very selfish of me, but I'm not ready to share you with anyone yet. And I know you want children desperately, but I don't think either of us is ready for fatherhood. But I think you'll be an excellent father someday."
Draco grinned and tackled Harry. They landed on the floor with a loud thud. In the past this would have made the house elves come running, but they'd learned quickly what the roughhousing would lead to. Pinning the slightly taller, darker haired man down, their faces inches apart, Draco looked absolutely ecstatic.
"Do you have any idea when someday is?" Draco braced himself for an evasive answer or a date fifteen years in the future.
"Five years." Harry suggested. "I think that would put us on track with when our friends will be having children. At least then we send ours off to Hogwarts with friends. I thought about our options and I like adopting from one of the orphanages too. And we could get twins or if they're aren't any twins up for adoption we can adopt two at the same time so we don't have to go through the process twice. I like the idea of having one of each, too. It's always been in the back of my mind that if I ever had a daughter, I would name her after my mother…if that's okay with you, of course."
Draco did not answer. Instead he kissed Harry bruisingly hard. Harry's arms wrapped around him in an iron grip, his long narrow fingers digging into the taut muscles of Draco's back. They broke apart for air; Draco's forehead pressed against Harry's, their eyes closed.
"Thank you," Draco whispered. "You have no idea how happy I am."
"Probably something close to how happy I am."
"Love you."
"Love you too."
After that point, words became unnecessary.
A/N: One chapter and the epilogue left.
Review, please.