Nine short days to come to terms with the fact she would be Severus Snape's bride and her life as she knew it would come to a crashing halt. One chapter would close harshly and another not-so-great one would open and she would have to cut her way through the path of uncertainty, grin and bear it no matter how much she was dying on the inside.

She sighed forlornly, lying on her back in bed with the drapes drawn shut she lay just looking up at the canopy over the bed wishing and hoping a portal would open up and whisk her away to another dimension where she didn't have to take Severus as he lawfully wedded husband.

Turning over on her side, she punched the pillow violently as she did so. No matter how hard she tried, sleep eluded her, much like her rights not to marry. This law was utter unicorn bollocks, and she wouldn't stand for this. How was she supposed to face the world every day knowing she was going to marry the dreaded dungeon bat everyone feared and others loathed beyond measure?

He already told her he wouldn't be the husband she wanted or needed, and that tore at her heart just so. It was one thing to be forced into a loveless marriage, but it was another to be told straight up you were basically unwanted and he wouldn't be the man you needed.

o-o-o-o-o

Severus sat on his lounge in his sitting room and looked around the bleak, uninviting quarters. A threadbare mat sat in the middle of the room, bare walls tied it all in, and a wooden coffee table was the centerpiece, adorned by various spirit bottles of varying levels. It might have come as a shock to many, but the amount Severus drank some nights could put a sailor to shame. Then he would roll out of bed the next morning, still probably slightly intoxicated, and go back to teaching as if he hadn't just drunk himself another day closer to liver failure and imbibed the night away with nary a few hours sleep.

Tonight's poison was a delightful vodka from the deepest depths of Russia, sent to him from a good friend when they were away on holidays. The alcohol content was enough to put a heavy-weight drinker right on their arse with a few sips… he was currently three glasses in and still going strong although for some reason the room would not stay still, and his legs felt they were about to give way.

He couldn't believe he was being saddled with Hermione Granger. Of all the people in all the world, of all the students within these walls, he was being forced together in matrimony with probably the most annoying, boring, and insufferable little bitch he had ever had the displeasure of knowing. Condemned to a portion of his life of having her as his lawfully wedded wife made him want to throw himself from the astronomy tower if he were being honest, not that it would do any good because the whole immortality thing that he had attached to him was utter Niffler shit.

Standing by the fireplace in his sitting room, right hand clenching the mantle as if his life depended upon it, his left clutching the one thing that would keep him going through this marriage. Alcohol. At least there was one way in which he could cope with being saddled with a teen bride.
And that brought him to his second conundrum. Being wed to a teen bride was one thing, but being expected to sleep with her in order to produce a child was another. The feeling of anguish washed over him momentarily, and a sick feeling gnawed at him. He was supposed to sleep with a teen and the ministry was orchestrating the whole thing, and he felt a pang of remorse for the girl having to sleep with him and lose her innocence to a man she would never love and who would never love her back.

It was unjust to chain a girl of that magnitude to a child and a husband at such a young age instead of becoming whatever she wanted to be because deep down he knew her only limit was her imagination.

And thus that brought him to his third problem, a child. He swore black and blue he would be the end of the Snape lineage. Not wanting to create a legacy nor extend the miserable name he had come to loath. A world with no Snapes was a better world for all, and he stood steadfast by that statement. His father, a wretch of a man and his mother, a pushover and a coward, deserved not to have their legacy bred on. He could only hope that the fact he was now an immortal, the ability to sire a child, was taken away as well. At least that would save both himself and the poor wretch of a girl from having to suffer the inconvenience of a crotch nugget imposing on their lives.

He upended the bottle and drank the rest of the contents. He must confess, he would regret this in the morning.

o-o-o-o-o

The headache tore through his head like a horde of angry wasps had taken up residency in his cranium and were being poked and taunted with a stick. He knew this would happen, and yet he still did it. A lesson never learned nor gained despite doing the same thing day in and day out was utter madness to him, but here he was.

Thankfully, the first lesson of his day was the seventh years repeating from the year before, and thus he didn't need to mediate arguments. Hell, he barely had to teach, so much so he looked forward to this class twice a week so it was unwelcoming to him when Hermione Granger stormed in with the surliest look etched upon her face and threw her bag on the floor with a resounding thud that tore through his head like a pickaxe.

"Must you be so loud, Miss Granger?," He snapped from his desk, rubbing his temples so.

"Sorry, Sir," she snapped back, fishing around in her bag for parchment and quill. Setting them on her desk, she sat primly, folding her hands in her lap, and waited for everyone else to come to class.

"Do you want to play that game, Miss Granger?" He spat, getting to his feet he closed the small gap between them. She looked up at him as he loomed like a shadow over her and smiled.

"What game might that be, Professor?"

"Just because you are to become my wife doesn't mean you can be smart. You will behave in the manner you always have and will not take that smart tone with me." Slamming his palms flat on her desk, he noted she didn't even flinch, not even a centimeter at the intrusion upon her personal space. Instead, she only gave him a tight-lipped smile, and he knew right at that moment that she would be a most difficult and headstrong wife, and he was unsure if he dreaded that or it would be good for him. At least she wasn't like his demure and pathetic mother, and for that he was thankful.

A shuffling of footsteps stampeding down the hall alerted him to the fact they wouldn't be alone for much longer. Pulling himself up to full height, he strode away, never looking in her direction again for the duration of their lesson.

A/N: Sorry it's only short. I realized I hadn't updated since January and thought a small update it better than no update at all.

-Aliasmel1