Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
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Zinnia continued to return home on weekends.
While her visits had usually been to play her games, as Lily failed to recover, she took every opportunity to spend each available second at her mother's side.
Harry and Ginny usually stopped by on Saturdays while Severus hovered protectively beside his wife.
One such weekend, while Harry, Ginny, and Zinnia chatted with Lily, Severus left the room to fetch some more tea for his family.
When Zinnia had arrived the day before, she had brought her school bag with her and carelessly discarded it by the door.
Packed with books, parchments, quills, and potential ideas for her comic series, her bag was heavy.
Too heavy.
She foolishly failed to expect that it may fall.
Burdened by its weight, the bag did tip over and as it fell, its flap came undone.
Neville's necktie slipped out of Zinnia's school bag and stretched over the floorboards of the Snapes' foyer like an invading serpent.
It was that forbidden scrap of silk that Severus's dark eyes landed on as soon as he stepped off of the staircase.
A deep scowl formed on his face as he glided over, bent down, and pulled the silk tie out of Zinnia's bag.
His pale face twisted into a horrible grimace as he looked at the accessory and recognized that it was certainly not his daughter's.
Severus withdrew his wand from his pocket, pressed its tip against the tie, and whispered under his breath, "Revelio……."
Severus closed his eyes to infuse just a bit of mental magic into his quest to discover the tie's owner.
A face appeared in the darkness of his thoughts, fuzzy at first, then clearer, clearer…….until it became alarmingly unmuddled.
Severus's eyes snapped wide open after he had a good look at Neville Longbottom.
Fury boiled in his veins and an instant later, he apparated out of his home's foyer.
When Severus landed on the hillside next to Hogsmeade, he entered broomless flight and charged towards the castle in a raging, black ball of paternal protectiveness.
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It was a very bad day to be Professor Longbottom.
As soon as Severus had traced Neville to the greenhouse, he had rushed towards him in a whirling hurricane of dark anger to push him into his desk chair at the back of the room.
Although Neville's school years were long over, Severus Snape remained an imposing figure to him.
His eyes were wide with confused horror as he gazed at his captor, "M-Minister Snape…" Neville blinked, "W-What……?"
Severus had Neville held down with a firm binding spell but it still irritated him how his captive squirmed in his chair.
Wizards and witches shared the muggle world's disdainful view of sexual predators.
Neville had never seen such a harsh scowl on Severus's face before as he spoke, "I'm not certain why I'm surprised, Longbottom…..You were never anything less than disappointing, but this…...this…….."
"Minister Snape!" Neville gasped as Severus stalked towards him like a panther ready to kill, "What are you talking about?! What is it that I'm meant to have done?!"
Severus lunged towards Neville so that their noses practically brushed as he hissed, "SHE IS A CHILD!"
"WHO is a child?!" Neville demanded, "What are you saying that-"
Neville stopped when he saw Severus's arm move out of the corner of his eye.
He quieted as he felt an ominously slight point push against the soft flesh of his throat.
Severus spoke between grit teeth as his eyes bore into Neville's, "Of all the children that you could have victimized with your filth, Longbottom…..you made a grave error when you chose my daughter to be your waste receptacle……..You always were an idiot. Did you think that I would never find out? I'm her father, I know everything about her! I helped create her, you moronic, insolent-"
"-Minister, I have no idea what you're saying!" Neville repeated as he pleaded his innocence, "Your daughter?! Zinnia?! I've never hurt her! I've never hurt anyone!...Certainly not one of my students! How could you think such a thing of…..me?!!?"
"I don't believe you." Severus said in a voice so cold it could have caused icicles to grow on the floor. He glowered at Neville as he brooded, "...You've brought me such a temptation, Longbottom. How easy would it be for me to blast the life out of you right here?...You don't deserve to go to Azkaban. Scum like you shouldn't enjoy the luxury of prison."
Neville's eyes narrowed incredulously as Severus pulled back his arm and readied himself to cast the-
"DDDAAAADDDD!"
A single cry sent both men turning to look at the opposite end of the greenhouse.
"DAD! STOP!" Zinnia shouted with tears pouring down her face.
"Stay back, Zinnia!" Severus growled as she took a step towards them, "Whatever he's told you, whatever he's made you believe, it's all lies. This is my duty as your father….to protect you. It wounds me to the core that I've failed so miserably at my task. I'll rectify that now…..have no fear."
"I haven't told her anything!" Neville snapped.
Zinnia reasoned with her father, "Dad! I knew you had come here when I walked downstairs and saw, um…..something…..missing from my bag. Please let Professor Longbottom go! This isn't his fault!"
Severus's black eyes narrowed to slits as he stared at his daughter and growled, "Of course it's his fault, Zinnia. You're a child, you-"
"-I stole the tie!" Zinnia admitted in a desperate wail.
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment when Neville looked at her in disbelief.
"You……..what?" Neville asked his student.
"I…..I-I-I stole your tie, Professor Longbottom." Zinnia confessed shamefully as she glanced down at her feet, "When your back was turned, two weeks ago. I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean for this to happen though! You have to believe me!"
"Why would you do such a thing?" Severus hissed at his daughter, clearly not convinced.
"I…...I needed to use the silk for a Charms assignment." Zinnia lied to her father and her crush, "And…..I was too shy to ask if I could borrow it."
There was a limited amount of honesty which she was willing to exhibit that day.
Zinnia felt she had to preserve what small fragments were left of her dignity, after all.
"Professor Longbottom hasn't done anything wrong, Dad." She frowned.
Severus whirled around to face Neville again as the bewildered professor defended himself, "I can't harm anyone, Minister. I've entered into a soul bond…...There's no one else on earth that I'll ever look for, woman, man, child...no one. Her name is Hannah Abbott and she's absolutely lovely…...I can take you to meet her if you like, we live in a small flat over The Leaky Cauldron. We can prove our union too, if need be. You can read my thoughts, scan my memories, whatever you want to do, I have nothing to hide! I haven't hurt anyone and I certainly would never harm a child!"
Neville's statement was an unintentional mistruth.
He claimed that he would never harm a child, but Severus's daughter had clearly heard the words that shattered her heart and stomped on her dreams.
She's absolutely lovely.
As Zinnia listened to Neville confess his love for another woman, her green eyes welled with an unending pool of bitter tears.
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Zinnia wasn't the only one who felt ashamed after Severus scanned Neville's mind, with his permission, and found no evidence of anything involving his daughter, but did in fact, confirm his enemy's claim about loving a woman named Hannah Abbott.
Both Severus and Zinnia apologized to the startled professor before they left the greenhouse together and walked out of the castle to reach the hillside.
Severus was no fool.
Although he had refrained from using Legilimency on his daughter, he had a suspicion as to why she would have stolen an article of clothing from…….a grown man.
The notion turned his stomach.
Severus's voice was low and cutting as he growled, "...You do realize that Professor Longbottom is old enough to be your father, don't you?"
Zinnia frowned but stayed silent as they walked along.
Although she declined to say anything else about Neville, Severus continued to throw her glares of disapproval until she found the courage to meet his gaze and ask, "Dad? What's a soul bond? I understand, you know, that it's a bond between two people, er, souls, but can you explain it a bit more?"
"...And why should I do that?" Severus fumed.
Zinnia slyly understood how to goad her father and twist her way into his heart, "Because I want to understand the severity of my mistake...I've never seen any writings on soul bonds. How should I know about them or what they are if I'm not taught?"
Severus frowned at his little girl for a long moment while they continued their walk.
After a thoughtful pause, he slowly began to explain, "A soul bond...is not something that one enters into lightly. It is an eternal tie between two people, in some ways similar to an Unbreakable Vow. I've told you about those before, remember?"
"Oh yes." Zinnia agreed, "I remember."
Severus nodded as he went on, "No one can enter into a soul bond by force and after the binding has been done, the two within it are together for the rest of time."
"You mean for the rest of their lives? Like a marriage?" Zinnia asked.
"No, for the rest of time." Severus scowled, "Even once one half of a soul-bonded couple dies, the other half will seek only them, want only them…..love only them. There is no liberation from a soul bond."
"So then…..An accidental death won't break it?" Zinnia asked.
"No……….." Severus scowled at his little girl suspiciously, "Nothing can break the tie. Usually only very serious couples take such a vow."
"It's for people in love, then?" Zinnia frowned.
"That's correct." Severus glowered. He spoke slowly to carefully enunciate his words as he pressed the point to his daughter, "It's something that people truly and deeply in love do…….Don't get any ideas."
"Well, I've got one idea, Dad." Zinnia shrugged arrogantly.
As they reached the hillside, Severus scowled down at his daughter.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she found her words first as she asked, "Why aren't you and Mum soul-bonded?"
Severus Snape was quick-witted and sharp-tongued.
It took quite a bit of cunning to render him speechless, but as he and his daughter stood there on the hillside that afternoon, Zinnia managed to do just that.
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Zinnia spent the rest of the day in the guest bedroom studying magical law as punishment for what she had done.
Although she obediently completed the at-home detention sentence that her father had levied on her, her question haunted Severus.
As he and Lily laid down to go to sleep that night, she laughed at the deep, morose frown that she saw on her husband's face.
"Sev, love, what's the matter?" Lily asked with a smile, "It's all settled now. She apologized and you punished her. She understands what she did wrong…...From what you told me, Harry's friend doesn't harbor any ill feelings towards us. What's gotten you so upset?"
"Why didn't we ever take the vow, Lily?" Severus asked.
His eyes stared into his wife's emerald eyes but his mind was clearly focused on his musings.
"Why didn't we ever take what vow, love?" Lily asked as she combed a strand of Severus's black hair behind his ear.
"Why didn't we ever enter…...into a…..soul bond?" Severus asked very quietly.
"A soul bond?!" Lily asked with an amused laugh, "That's a bit archaic, isn't it?"
Severus's reply came quickly, "Neville Longbottom has taken the vow with a girl that he can't possibly know that well. You and I never even talked about going into-"
"-We never had the chance!" Lily laughed, "I was pregnant with Harry, he was born, the war happened, I was unconscious…….Zinnia came when I woke…...Then by the time that we may have thought about it, that wasn't something on our minds. You and I love each other, we're a married couple, soul-bonding has been out of fashion for decades…...Is Harry's generation popularizing it again?"
Severus frowned at Lily in silent response.
Lily chuckled at the forlorn look on his face as she cupped his cheek in her hand and asked, "Would you like to enter into a soul bond with me, Severus?"
There wasn't a bond in existence that Severus would refuse with Lily.
The reverent softness that crept into his eyes as he stared at her in rapt admiration sent her leaning forwards to press a gentle kiss to his lips.
Severus closed his eyes and kissed his wife back before she pulled away with a smile as she spoke, "Sev, if you want us to enter into a soul bond, I'd be glad to! Anytime, any day, love, I have no objections to it, it's just something we've never given much thought to."
"Perhaps it may help you……" Severus said as he took one of Lily's hands in his.
They both frowned as they glanced down at the unmentionable purple streaks across her fingernails.
"...Do you think so?" Lily asked with a wry smile.
"I think it's worth a try, my love." Severus drawled in his velvet voice.
Lily tried to fight back the tears that welled in her eyes as Severus pulled her into his arms and gave her a deep, loving kiss.
A soul bond felt like the natural next step for the Snapes. It would be a bold declaration of their feelings that they had been too busy living to acknowledge, although few couples would share the depth of the sentiment that Severus and Lily held for each other.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Snape clung to the silent, reassuring hope that perhaps they may finally find a way to free Lily from her affliction.