Snape took the first sip of coffee and winced, burning his tongue. Burnt scrambled eggs, overly hot coffee (in Snape's honest opinion, this elixir of the gods was too unfair to him this morning) and the general decadent atmosphere of Monday did not add to his mood.
Hermione overslept as expected. She jumped to her feet with a scream of panic, frightening Crookshanks, and alarming Snape, who had already been preparing an ointment for burns at Poppy's personal request for about an hour. After that slight hysterics on her part, she slipped on her jeans that were lying on the floor and bumped her forehead on the edge of the nightstand.
Snape gently stirred the bubbling greenish mass counterclockwise, turned down the fire under the cauldron, put the stirrer aside, sighed, and went into the living room currently occupied by Hermione. He never found the right moment to offer her to move, finally, to their married bedroom. Deep down, Severus was still convinced that the time was not right and that if he closed his eyes, his wife would immediately disappear without explanation.
Morning twilight and tightly closed curtains did not add light to the darkened room. Hermione was sitting on the floor and rubbing the lump on her forehead with a whiny expression.
"Severus, this is a disaster," she moaned as she saw her husband's broad figure block the pale nightlight.
"I don't see any disasters here," Snape grumbled, walking into the room and squatting in front of his wife. Gently taking her chin, he turned her head towards the light, trying to consider the extent of the tragedy. Hermione fumbled for her wand and called out Lumos, too bright in the early morning crown. Snape winced.
"Wouldn't it be easier to open the curtains instead of casting spells?" he muttered, thumbing his thumb around the bruise. Hermione squeezed her eyes against the light.
"I hate getting up early! I have my Artifactory exam today, Kingsley has agreed to review my petition for elf rights, I'm running late, and now this bruise. Can you imagine how I will look when speaking to the Minister?"
"You are a war heroine, Hermione, you can put on a potato sack, and the press will still catch your every word. As for Kingsley, you can always remind him that it was your best friend Potter and your husband, Severus Snape, who helped him get the necessary number of votes in the election."
Hermione got to her feet, still rubbing her forehead, then smiled broadly.
"I like your remark about being my husband, and as the best Potions Master in Britain, o husband mine, tell me, could you help me with my appearance?"
Snape grinned. "Minx."
"There's a suspiciously many quirky Slytherins around me lately, so I'm probably learning from the best," Hermione retorted and, winking at her husband, followed him into the kitchen.
Snape sat his wife down on a high chair and found the right one among the many jars. He saw to her bump, simultaneously reflecting on her words.
Hermione was right: somehow unnoticed by him, the Slytherins completely captured her attention. She and Draco worked on the restoration of ancient volumes from the Hogwarts library and occasionally drank coffee on Sundays. The portrait of Phineas Black, whom Hermione had befriended since the time of the Horcruxhunt, occupied a place of honor in Snape's office, and she spent way too many hours questioning Phineas on the dark artifacts of the Black family. Narcissa tactfully hinted to Snape a couple of times that she would like to get to know his wife better. Finally, Snape himself had been the Head of Slytherin for over twenty years. This left its mark on many things.
In addition, the Slytherins and Gryffindors, whom Snape and Lupine, in their great wisdom, decided to settle together, unexpectedly teamed up, which added problems to all the Hogwarts professors. A couple of days ago, in response to Snape's frustrated Howler, came a calm response from Minerva, who was still engaged in Wizengamot affairs: "You wanted to unite the faculties, my dear boy, and who, if not implacable enemies, can give this the best start?"
Snape only let out an angry breath: the Headmistress was right. And children always remained children, enemies or not.
In addition, he was much more worried about the relationship with his own wife and her obsession with Sirius Black. Hermione spent every free minute, surrounded by books and trying to learn as much as possible about the magic of the Veil. She also attracted Potter to the case and from time to time bombarded him with questions about what he managed to see in the Underworld. Snape, who had the same experience, was tactfully avoided by Hermione for the time being, much to the latter's annoyance.
With each passing day, Severus realized with growing frustration that, like the last idiot, he was falling in love with his own wife. Hermione wasn't exactly avoiding him, she just had some things to do, some unfinished projects to finish, and endless exams to pass all the time.
And even Snape's insidious trick of lectures on Transfiguration, which he dumped on Hermione, contrary to his expectations, did not bring them closer. She was constantly busy. Hermione answered politely to his questions, then kissed him on the cheek, and usually darted away.
Monday morning and her disappearance only added to Snape's general depression.
And no, it wasn't that Hermione had planned to bring the damned Sirius Black back from the other side. Of all people! Merlin the Great! Why did she have to choose him of all the fallen? His inner voice boringly continued its monologue, Snape slammed the cup on the table, abruptly pushed the chair back, and went back to making the ointment.
Sirius Black...
Once upon a time, at the mere mention of his name, an uncontrollable rage boiled up in Severus, once again proving that past grievances do not die. And at the same time…
For a long time, Snape hated Black with every fiber of his soul: he had everything that fate, life, and circumstances, for one reason or another, deprived Snape. Sirius had parents who, despite all the conflicts, were waiting for him to come back home. Whatever Black said, his bond with his parents was not limited to Breakfast Howlers. They sent him money and gifts for Christmas. They rushed in, barely learning that Sirius fell from his broomstick and broke his collarbone. And for sure, they did not care that it was Lucius Malfoy, the brightest Prefect of Slytherin, who threw him down. The Blacks have raised a scandal worthy of the front pages of The Daily Prophet, having too little to do with the image of cold aristocrats. Snape, on the other hand, always healed his bruises, abrasions, and fractures in splendid isolation. No, there was, of course, Lily, but the sunny girl from Gryffindor could hardly go to threaten Dumbledore and accuse him of lack of pedagogical training and provoking senseless bullying, as Walburga Black did. Sirius, for his part, kept throwing tantrums, unworthy of an aristocrat, to his parents and ran away to his gang, made up in his own image and likeness.
In addition to the big name and position in society, Black had the main thing - friends. Let the same brainless impudent people like himself, except, perhaps, Remus, who was too quiet to stop their antics, but they stood behind Sirius like a mountain. Their pranks often crossed the line between fun and cruelty. The Marauders owed their academic success rather to Lupin's mind than to their own intellect, but the professors often turned a blind eye to their tricks, while Severus, who tried to stand up for himself, got it in full. He long ago learned to put up with the injustice of life, but sometimes he wanted so much to have someone other than the-eternally-forgiving-everyone-but-Snape Lily and acquaintances from his own faculty who appreciated his potion-making skills, but not Snape himself.
Sirius was again inventing another funny, in his opinion, jokes, and Snape felt anger boil inside. He recalled how in childhood when his father did not yet consider him a shameful geek and did not drown his own life in a bottle, he taught him to emerge victorious from street fights, which often happened in the working districts of Manchester.
"Now, mi laddo. Now you will go out into the street, you will approach their chief. Without any further ado, you will punch him. And then you will hit further until he falls."
"He won't fall, Da'!" Seven-year-old Severus tried to argue. "He is a cut above me! And there are still his friends! They will blow me so!"
"Oh, they will, Sev'rus", his father continued harshly. "They will definitely blow you out. But don't pay attention to it at all. Look only at him. And hit it as hard as you can. Don't stop. Don't push, don't shout. Just hit. Not on the sides, not on the hands - in the face. Don't stop."
Many years after his father's rhetorics, Snape happened to apply its rules on Black, simply punching him in the eye with his fist instead of a curse released from a magic wand, and then another, and another, while his dumbfounded friends stared stupidly at this street fight. Without rules.
And then there were wars, losses, ridiculous deaths, which managed to force everyone to change their point of view.
Snape remembered shaking a dumbfounded Black and yelling in his face that Pettigrew was a traitor and that the Potters were in danger. And how a few months later, the same Black in a low voice muttered into a glass of cheap liquor found in Snape's house that Lily did not want to listen to anyone, that both she and James were too stubborn to be afraid of some kind of prophecy, and that there was no hope.
After that, Black was thrown into Azkaban, and Snape continued his wanderings in life on, until one terrible night Sirius saved Hermione from death.
Strange and unpredictable, Black died protecting Harry, and Snape lived protecting the same boy. Severus' stubbornness collapsed, some values were replaced by others, and it was Black that Snape owed everything that he had in this world now.
Later in the afternoon, without waiting for Hermione to return for dinner, Snape donned his teacher's robes and angrily set off to patrol the corridors. Not that he didn't have a better job for the evening.
The measured sound of boots on the masonry, the sound of the wind behind the walls, the mocking comments of Peeves hovering nearby, and Snape could almost forget about the future, cease his worryings about the present, and stop remembering the past for at least a couple of hours.
From time to time he managed to scare the hesitating dunderheads, and they scattered about, hearing Snape's footsteps from afar. He did not want to deduct points from them and assign detentions, the only thing he wanted was to kiss his own wife and finally understand what was going on in her bushy head.
The Mirror of Erized migrated around the Castle, obeying neither the Headmaster's orders, nor any travel bans, nor anything else. Like a beacon in the fog, it appeared here and there, giving hope or depriving him of sleep. A couple of times Snape himself bumped into the damned artifact, but each time he passed by, not wanting to see how in deep childhood he saw Albus, Poppy, and himself in the Mirror. And even though Madame Pomfrey, nevertheless, managed to become his named mother, and Minerva instilled in him strictness and responsibility, in the absence of a father, remembering his childhood dreams was still unpleasant.
Hermione, frozen in front of the Mirror that evening, obviously had a different opinion. Snape came up from behind and stood beside her. She fumbled reached her fingers to take him by the hand, unmistakably recognizing his approaching footsteps, and pointed to the reflections with her chin.
"Don't you want to take a look? I know you can."
Occlumency, of course, gave him the opportunity to spy on other people's dreams, but, now, did he have the right to do so? Snape raised his head, meeting the insidious magic of the Mirror, and could hardly resist a hysterical laugh: the cursed artifact in all its glory depicted himself, hugging Hermione, kissing her on the neck, caressing her breasts. She erotically hugged his thigh with her leg, and Snape blinked a couple of times, chasing away the obsession. He was definitely out of his mind if this was his unfulfilled future.
Unable to resist temptations, he slipped into his wife's mind, and boldly met her innermost desires. The mirror showed him a sunlit glade in the Enchanted Forest, a summer evening, bluebells, Hermione and himself, lying on a checkered bedspread. Obviously a picnic. While Snape, out of the corner of his mind, tried to figure out what was so impossible in Hermione's dream, a girl of about five with a shock of curly brown hair and black eyes like his own ran up to their reflections.
His wife wanted to have a child….
Suppressing the pain that clenched at his heart, Severus turned Hermione away from the Mirror and pressed her back against his chest.
"Let's go back home, Severus, please."
"Let's go, darling. And if this is so important to you, I will help you get the damned Black out of the Arch."
Hermione's smile that lit up the gloomy room was definitely worth Snape's agony.