Author's Note:
There's a little Bridgerton homage in this chapter (it's miniscule) but it occurred to me when thinking of dated British ideals! Have fun reading!
DaenerysTargary3n
Chapter Six:
"You will never say that again! EVER!" Morgana bellowed, as terrifying as her father was in the heights of his temper.
"I will say whatever I damn well please!" Harry retorted in matching fury.
Morgana's hazelnut eyes darkened to reflect the stormy rage percolating within her, becoming as coaly as the eyes of her father had been. She pushed the young wizard away from her person with a snide, "You were always quick to your conclusions, Potter. You never took the time to consider logic or sound reason. How stupid of me to expect you to be able to now!"
"I never had to take the time! I always had 'Mione there with me!"
Morgana watched as his ire morphed into grief. She had allowed her temper and anger at the young man who had had the last seven years of his life turned on their head to overwhelm her calm under pressure. She hadn't mean to holler at him, but his choler against her parents' – particularly her papa's – decisions had rankled her.
"I'm sorry." Both sighed at once before smiling at each other in truce.
"Harry," Morgana began, folding her hands together to stop them trembling with nerves, "I'm sorry I overreacted. It's just…I…I can't take you, or anyone, blaming them for what they did. They were so brave, Harry, so clever, so fearless in what they did to protect you. You can't say they didn't do enough and that they didn't act quick enough. You weren't there. Well, that's not strictly true. You were there, but you were a baby, you weren't there feeling the threat to your family, your child, your partner. They did and they never wavered. I'm sorry your parents never got the chance to raise you, but you can't blame that on my parents. It's not fair. It wasn't up to them to save the world, you know. It was more than enough that they saved you."
"You're right. I overreacted too. I guess I'm just…" Harry paused and pinched his spectacle-weary nose, "I'm just…"
"Weary of the world and all the people in it?" Morgana finished with a knowing smile, one all too familiar to Harry Potter.
"Definitely weary of the world. As for the people in it," Harry took her hands to stop her unconscious fidgeting, "I'm not weary of them at all. I just need to see the whole picture and where everyone actually fit into it."
"I understand. I think I should show you where I first appear in the picture. As an actual person rather than just the Snapes' unborn child."
"I'm completely in your hands. Show me whatever you want me to see." Harry instructed.
Morgana squeezed Harry's hand before marching over to the anthology of her father's memories in the pensieve cabinet. Harry observed as she scanned the contents, lightly brushing her fingers over the vials. There was something innately Snape about her manner. She could have easily been her father searching the highly organised inventory of potions ingredients with long, spindly fingers that moved gracefully. Harry briefly let his mind wander to imagine what the young Miss Snape would look like in the throes of brewing, when she would no doubt lose herself in the "subtle science and exact art of potion-making". Doubtless, she would be enthralling.
Eventually her hands found the clear vessel she sought, and it was deposited into the thrumming pensieve. Morgana turned back to face her seated companion and gestured him over, "You're going to know what day this is very quickly, Harry. It's not a happy day for you but it's the day when our fates truly intertwined for ever and irrevocably."
"When is it?" Harry questioned, more apprehensive than he had been before watching Hermione at the Selwyn Abbey revel.
"It's Hallowe'en in 1980." Morgana whispered. "The day…"
"The day my parents were killed." Harry whispered, finishing her thought.
"And the day of my naming ceremony. Are you ready to meet mini-me?"
"I bet you were a very cute baby." Harry murmured, once again taking her slender wrist in his before they were immersed in the memory.
"Oh, you have no idea…" Morgana reverted with a coy smile before she leant forward.
Memory Date: 31-10-1980
Location: Department of Magical Registry, The Ministry of Magic
Morgana and Harry fell into place in a crowd of six people queueing in true British form. They were in a long, plain corridor in The Ministry of Magic and were approximately third in line. Harry stood beside the tall figure of his former Potions Master and his wife, who was holding a small, evidently slumbering bundle.
"You, I presume?" Harry murmured to Morgana beside him, flicking his head towards Hermione's tightly clasped bundle.
"It is me. Turn around, Harry, and see who else came to my naming ceremony."
Swivelling round, Harry was stunned to come face-to-face with one of the least pleasant acquaintances he had made in the wizarding world. "Lucius Fucking Malfoy…Lucius Malfoy was at your naming ceremony?!"
Lucius Malfoy, famed Death Eater, was indeed standing straight as a ruler behind the Snapes. He had brought with him his own relatively new wife, Narcissa, and their infant – Draco, who was snivelling away in his mother's arms.
"Why are they here? Is it Draco's naming ceremony too?" Harry asked.
Morgana grimaced as she lamented how little Harry had read up on the old-fashioned wizarding traditions, especially the pureblood families of old, such as the Malfoys. "Mama really did you a disservice by reading for you, you know? It's astonishing how much you don't know about the world you live in!"
"Yes, we've covered my shortcomings in this already!" Harry retorted, rolling his eyes at her frustration with him that hadn't stopped reminding him of her mother since he accepted her existence. "Just tell me."
"For the pureblood families, like the Malfoys and the Potters, by the way – just in case you think it's only the mental wizarding fanatics, it is customary for girls to have their," she sighed, "betrothed noted at their naming ceremony."
Harry blanched and felt the blood stream away from his cheeks. "Betrothed? So, Malfoy – baby Draco 'Ferret' Malfoy – is your fiancé?! That's just sick!"
"Isn't it just? If it makes you feel any better, this is all for show at this point. Lucius was there more for Voldemort than he is for his son or to acquire me as a daughter-in-law. Don't forget, in everyone's eyes, except my parents' and Dumbledore's, I'm the daughter of one of the Dark Lord's most up-and-coming servants. I'm essentially a "diamond of the first water" to his followers – the perfect pearl for their sons. Fortunately for me, when I technically ceased to exist, that contract became null and void. So, to answer your question, no, Harry, I am not Draco's fiancée."
"Ceased to exist?"
"One story at a time, Harry, no rush…" Morgana pacified, as they wandered down to the front of the queue with the unwitting past participants.
Once they were inside the Ministry chamber itself. Harry inquisitively observed the presence of a clerk at a desk, a Healer and an elderly wizard in bright garnet robes that seemed to be in command of the room.
"Enter and present yourselves." He bellowed.
"I am Severus Snape, come with my wife, Hermione Snape to name our only daughter, born 30th September. With us are Lucius Malfoy II and his wife, Narcissa Malfoy, to bond their son, Draco Lucius Malfoy to our child in betrothal." Snape announced with an air of surety to which his students always fell prey.
"Noted, Sir." The Master of Ceremonies acknowledged before turning to Hermione. "Madam, please give your child to the Healer to examine. It will take but a moment."
Hermione reticently handed over her sleeping baby to the kind-faced witch who spirited Morgana away before returning her, still sound asleep, to her mother's eager arms.
"All is well with the babe."
"Thank you, Healer Swadden. Now, we can proceed with the ceremony." With a comforting smile, the wizard brandished his wand, pointed straight at the baby. "What name have you chosen for the child?"
Hermione looked up at her husband, who nodded his consent, before declaring, "Her name is Morgana Eileen Snape."
"Wonderful." With no word whatsoever, he began to dance his wand about as sparks in technicolour erupted silently around the newly named baby witch, recording every facet of her magical signature and identity.
Once the light show was over, the party retreated, offering fond farewells and wishes for the future of their children. After the Malfoys disapparated with their son, Severus turned to Hermione.
"I did not think you would say that name."
"Well, husband, as I looked at her face in that abysmal queue, it began to suit her features and her. I think she's been a Morgana Eileen all along. You just saw it before I did." Hermione whispered, caressing her baby's downy cheek.
Snape, somewhat shocked by his wife's admission, cleared his throat, before uplifting his daughter into his own arms ready for apparition back to Spinner's End. "I've seen something else before you, wife, and I would very much like to discuss it with you now that things are in order here. Will you take my arm?"
Hermione grasped her husband's proffered forearm and with a slight gasp, they and their silent future observers, were flung away to the Snape family home.
While the baby Morgana's parents settled her before their impending discussion, the adult Harry and Morgana simply remarked on the naturality of them being together.
"They look different. It's as though they take pleasure just from each other's presence now." Harry marvelled, watching his friend and her husband move about the room attending to their child's needs as if engaged in a synchronised dance.
"They do," Morgana replied, with a knowing smile, "and it's just occurred to me what's coming. I forgot that my naming ceremony really wasn't the main event for our family on this day. I've always wanted to know exactly what happened now. I've only heard mama's stories. Watch, Harry."
With that, Morgana held her fingers to her lips and held fast to Harry's hand as she watched events unfold.
"What did you want to discuss, Severus?" Hermione asked, as the parents quit their child's nursery.
"Sit down, please." Her husband replied tentatively, gesturing to his wife's favourite armchair in the adjoining library.
As his wife gazed up at him, her eyes wide with anticipation with a touch of apprehension, Severus almost caved under the weight of what he was about to do, of what his pending words would alter in his small family. He almost caved, but he could not. He was hard pressed to disclose to the mother of his child what had changed in the past months since Morgana had come into being so that he could find his peace.
"I have considered long and hard what I am about to say, Hermione, and you know that I am not a man of many – or the right – words, so it has been…arduous. The words I wish to say to you are…that is, the words I have to say to you are these: I so fervently admire you – your brain, your wit, your love of our child; I long for the moments that we share together in conversation and in silence; I find every time I watch you with Morgana a revelation and my care for you grows past space in my chest; I desire you above any other and have taken no other since we met and never will; I love you in body, mind and soul and can no longer bear to live as your husband in name alone. I am…imprisoned in this house by love of you, wife, for as I can not leave you as well as live, I long to flee to spare myself the pain of being always with you but apart. I know we came together in pain, and suffering, and fear, but in the past months, we have found our contentment with life here. Now, I ask if you might allow us to be truly happy." Severus finished, wheezing with the strength of his blazing declaration.
"Bloody hell…" Harry swore, reminding himself quite a bit of Ron, "way to barrage a woman. 'Mione looks like someone told her Hogwarts library burnt to cinders."
"Wait for it."
Without further ado and no announcement, wide-eyed, confounded Hermione Snape ejected the contents of her stomach onto the floor in front of her at her still-panting husband's feet.
"Evanesco." Snape whispered, wandlessly magicking away the putrid mess, in full horror at the result of his heartfelt profession of love.
"Sorry," Hermione apologised weakly, "sorry, Severus. Please don't take that as a response to your…to you."
"Bit difficult not to, wife." Severus replied, a downcast pallor now conquering his face.
Hermione sighed and pulled his hands into her own, giving them a certain, reassuring stroke. "I know. I'm sorry. What you said, so beautifully, so well, well, it was a shock. Such a shock, Severus. Let me say first that I don't think you can claim not to know the right words anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth after all that. That was quite something to be on the receiving end of and I'll never forget it."
"Yes, but what do you say?!"
"I say this. I was brought to you on a silver platter for you to use, ravage and then discard, but, for all my sins, you, you brilliant man, you showed me kindness and pity in that room at Selwyn Abbey. You hid me away and protected me from the first moment you clapped eyes on me, though you didn't know me from Eve. Ever since, you've been my companion, my friend and my rock throughout the pregnancy and our marriage, even when it wasn't easy. When you came to me three months ago and said you would no longer serve your lord's interests or cause, I could have kissed you in that instant. That was the moment for me, that very second, when I knew without a shadow of a doubt that you would become the man I would be honoured to share the rest of my life with. I never in my wildest dreams dared hope that you would feel the same way. I'm sorry I can't put my feelings in as eloquent words as you found, Severus, but I never intended to reveal myself at all for fear of your rejection and then my ejection from this house. I realise now how impossible that would be for you, after all your promises of eternal care and security for Morgana and me, but when you love somebody with your whole heart and believe there's no chance of your ever finding happiness or satisfaction, it is what you tell yourself. But, unless I wake up now, which I do think I may, it would appear all my bumper days have come at once."
"So, what you're saying is…?" Severus interrupted.
With as demure a smile as she could muster, Hermione finished, "What I'm saying is I love you too, husband, and will continue to love you until my dying day with my body, mind and soul and yes, by all means, let's allow ourselves to be happy at last."
"Thank Merlin!" Severus swore before tugging his wife's whole body up to him and capturing her lips in a long-awaited, desperate kiss. As Severus plied her lips open and plunged his tongue in between, relishing her taste and the bite of her returned kiss, he revelled in his wife's new attempt to leave no gap between their heating bodies and plaster herself into his firm chest. Wrapping her in his arms, he proceeded to lave her neck and clavicle in heaving kisses.
"Fast forward, Morgana, fast forward!" Harry cried, covering his eyes.
Morgana did not hear his first words, focused as she was on the scene that had played out between her mama and papa. Having been told the story of how her father had professed his undying love for her mother and the vomiting and admission of shared feelings and long-forgotten hopes of fulfilment all through her formative years, she was blinded by just how frightened her father must have been after such an out-of-character declaration and how relieved her mother was to hear such a rush of feeling from her husband.
"Yes, sorry, best go! Let's go to later." Morgana agreed, rubbing unshed tears of joy from her eyes. As her eyes then closed, she clasped Harry's hand and in a blur of shifting bodies and moving rooms, willed the daytime become the night at Spinner's End on Hallowe'en in 1980.
Now standing in Hermione's bedroom, where she gently rocked baby Morgana to sleep and a post-coital Snape lay shirtless on the bed watching his wife and child, the interlopers from the future beamed at this perfect picture of peace and family bliss.
"They look happy with you. This was the start, Morgana, the real start of their love story." Harry mentioned to his companion.
Harry was surprised as Morgana let loose a woeful gulp and turned to face him, repeating her earlier words with a sobbing sigh, "Wait for it."
Interrupting the Snapes' newly found wedded bliss, there came a sharp, sudden argent flash of light. Harry and Morgana covered their eyes along with her parents at the glare of it before it fell into form as a wispy iguana. Hermione and Severus' eyes widened, the former instinctively shielding the infant in the room with her own body, as the Patronus uttered its dire message:
This is Rabastan Lestrange. The Dark Lord has fallen. The Potters are no more.
The cause is imperilled.
Come together, brothers and sisters, come together under the Lestrange banner.
Fall in to Idylwyld Heights. Rodolphus, Bellatrix and I await the faithful amongst you.
The cause is not yet lost. The Order must be exterminated.
He may rise again. We must fight on in his glorious name.
Magic is Might.
"Oh." Harry breathed, having forgotten that at the end of this Hallowe'en, his life changed irrevocably for the worse.
"Hermione," Snape muttered as the Patronus dissolved, "I need to see what they're doing. I, I…I need to go to her. And get word to Dumbledore if he doesn't know already. If the Potter child and the Dark Lord are dead, everything will change for us."
Hermione put Morgana in the bedside crib and enveloped her husband in her stable embrace. "Go, my love, go to the Potters. The Death Eaters can wait. I will send word to Dumbledore."
With an impassioned kiss farewell, Severus donned a shirt and disapparated.
"Oh Merlin, we're following him." Harry groaned, already sentient of travelling through to the next destination of Severus Snape's tumultuous Hallowe'en night.