A/N: Guess what, guys? TWP is back. Yes, My muse and I finally came to a meeting of the minds… sort of and we managed to get this chapter together… finally.

You will be pleased to know that by popular demand, the story is following the 'Good Vine' ideas that I had but mostly not the original ones as I've completely changed how I'm going to get to the end of the fic.

Hope you enjoy… and if I'm a bit rusty on the facts of this story, please let me know as it's been a while since I wrote it.

Chapter 14

Hermione took a deep breath as she stepped through the shimmering barrier, tightly clutching her calla lily at the conical base. She wasn't as nervous as she thought she'd be, her love for Severus was sound, had been for a long time and his words had reassured her as they were meant to. If Severus Snape could find a way to break the repellent that would come in the worst case scenario then Hermione trusted him to do so. He seemed to feel the same way about their relationship as she did which was a reaction Hermione had never expected but was immeasurably grateful for.

'This isn't a regular portal,' she suddenly realised as she reached the other side of the shimmering barrier that looked so similar to a heat-haze and swung around quickly to examine it more closely – it had vanished. She had experimented with portals during the Christmas holidays of her sixth year when her grandmother had broken a hip and couldn't get up and down stairs easily. Once she turned seventeen, Hermione had been able to place a portal on her grandmother's landing that bypassed the stairs and allowed the older woman to pass through it and enter the living room.

She was still angry and confused by Minerva's reactions; and disappointed, she'd really wanted that Transfiguration apprenticeship. She had a fair ability in Potions but it wasn't her best subject; coupling that with the idea of apprenticing under her now husband and despite the idea of some fun roleplay ideas taking root, Hermione had to doubt her decision to request his mentorship. Severus was formidable, strict and exacting as an instructor and she didn't want it to negatively impact their relationship.

So lost in her thought process of how her life would pan out; assuming she would pass this test of her love – she was amazing at tests - she failed to see the blue glow emit from her calla lily or take in her surroundings as she stood on a small dirt path surrounded by dense forest. A slight dizzy feeling and the loud caw of a raven shook her from her musings and she finally looked around at where this 'test' was starting; feeling a little ashamed for her lack of concentration.

"Well I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore." She said out loud, giggling to herself at the reminder of her first understanding of witches and wizards. This forest was much more daunting than the one in her favourite childhood film, despite the lack of a yellow brick road or flying monkeys. "Well I'd better go find my wizard so I can go home."

She took off down the dirt path with a subtly determined stride and watched as cobblestones formed beneath her feet. It was like walking through a dream, where you only had to think something to make it happen… the only difference was that she didn't feel like she was calling the shots.

The path she was on led her on through a sort of corridor made of trees. They looked very similar to the ones that curved along the walls in that fairy's office and as she moved deeper amongst them the same feeling of blissful calm came over her. Hermione assumed that meant that she was going the right way and that these were the same sort of trees. Her need-to-know mind wondered what they were called as the corridor seemed to be narrowing toward some type of glade.

She reached a tall wrought-iron gate at the end of the cobbles and noticed that the width of her path had narrowed so considerably that the only way forward was to enter through the locked black frame that was blocking her way. Still practically high from the pheromones of the surrounding foliage, she didn't panic - she'd been in worse scrapes than this, after all – but pressed against the gate and checked for a lock or a catch. There was nothing.

'It's just a tall, impenetrable, immovable object of looming, black-painted presence.'

She gasped as that particular set of descriptors set of a train of thought in her mind, concluding in…

"Just like Severus…" she whispered and something reminded her of 'The Monster Book of Monsters' from her third year. Hagrid's words to Malfoy echoed in her mind "Just stroke the spine…"

A moment later, she was softly caressing the seam of the solid gates before her and watching them creakily part before her. She felt a soft thunk as something dropped into her enlarged calla lily and looked down to see a golden key as she walked through the gates. Everything in her field of vision changed.

Severus stepped through the barrier with his trademark scowl on his face. The day had started so wonderfully, so beautifully with his little witch wrapped in his arms… and then wrapped around his cock. He could imagine waking up that way every morning for the rest of his life and if he played this stupid pixie game right then he would be doing just that.

The portal didn't feel like ones he had used before. He'd created one with undetectable wards around it during his time as a spy so he could travel easily between Hogwarts and wherever the Dark Lord summoned him to. It was little known magic that he had found in the Prince Family Library when he was ten… before his Hogwarts letter had come and his father had found out about magic. All communication with that side of the family had stopped after that. Before that point, it had all been a very special secret between his mother and himself.

Determined not to fall into haunting thoughts about his childhood, he surveyed where the portal had brought him. He seemed to be in some sort of garden; it was gated with tall, black, wrought iron; a potioneer's garden for certain, he noted mentally taking in the neat rows of herbs and fungi, magical trees, bushes and shrubbery. It was like a dream. All that was missing was Hermione… his beautiful little know-it-all to spout off what each of them could be used for… verbatim… from the textbooks he had written under a pseudonym.

He was just about to laugh at the image his mind conjured of her face when he divulged that little tidbit when there was a grinding, screeching sound ahead of him as something large started growing out of the ground. This was no botanical though… he was hard and grey and gold as it rose in walls of stone from the fertile grounds. It seemed to take a long time as it ascended towards the crystal blue, cloudless sky

He has imagined Hermione might come on the spot to know he was an author, not to mention her heart attack and visible swooning when she saw the full extent of his book collection and the never –ending stream of blow-jobs if he took on the Prince title and she saw the family library which could be boasted as a more extensive collection than that residing in Wiltshire, belonging to his pompous friend.

The screeching and grinding sounds halted and in the sudden silence Severus allowed his mind to drift from fantasies of his new bride to the beautiful and large cottage that now stood some ten metres away. He felt drawn by the low windows on the ground floor and the ivy covering the stone walls; the thatched roof and the perfect periwinkle flowers that adorned the window-boxes on the top floor. The colour reminding him of something significant… Hermione's dress from the Yule Ball several years ago.

He'd seen her altercation with the dunderheaded duo, how she'd shouted at them to grow up before disappearing out of the Great Hall. When he'd returned to the dungeons two hours later, he'd found her brewing in his classroom – a 'Boil Inducement Draught' if the smell was anything to go by. He imagined her friends would be uncomfortable for a few days after that and not wanting to stop such an amusing process, he'd watched her for several moments, noting the frizz of her hair from the steam rising from the cauldron and the way her periwinkle satin robes had clung to her. It was a wake-up call that they were all growing up but he hadn't lingered on the thought at the time and had chosen to retire to his quarters, knowing, as much as he was loathe to admit it at the time, that Hermione Granger was a responsible student and wouldn't fail to make sure the fire was out, the cauldron was clean and the ingredients were put away.

Strange, he thought, that those specific flowers should be here. But his confusion was short lived as he reached the first window on the ground floor and peered inside. On the mantle above a roaring fire was a happily moving picture of him and Hermione at what looked to be a clean version of the main living room at 12 Grimmauld Place. Between them was a baby girl with dark, tight black curls. Severus's eyes widened at the implication of that picture before looking at the block lettering attached to the frame which read 'Peri's 1st Birthday'.

As he gasped, a bloom from the periwinkle flowers overhead floated down in front of his face and dropped into the calla lily that he had forgotten he was holding. He knew the fae were tricking creatures but their magic was stunningly beautiful in its execution. He realised the barrier had passed through had transported him to some sort of dream state and he wondered where his body really was at the moment or if he was somehow inside Hermione's mind. Stranger things had happened.

He had been staring at the other photographs on the mantle and around the walls, including one of him holding a child that looked to be about two and looked remarkably by like Potter. He winced at the thought but relaxed only moments later after remembering that this seemed to be a glimpse into his future and that future meant he and Hermione had a daughter.

A ripple of gentle but powerful magic whispered over his senses and made him whip around just in time to see his beautiful wife slip through those ominous gates he'd spotted only minutes ago, curls bouncing in the sunlight and a dazed look on her face. In the time it took for her to look up and recognise him he felt as though he'd lived every moment from this one to the one displayed in those photo frames in the intermittent time.

She smiled as she saw him and began running toward him and the cottage at a speed he wouldn't have thought her capable of; it was as if she was on a broom when she collided into him, her lips descending directly on to his as his arms wrapped around her.

"I was so scared I was never going to see you again…" She breathed between kisses.

"I've got you now. I'm never letting you go, Kia." He responded as his lips slid along her jaw and down her neck.

"Take me home." She pleaded, whimpering as he found a very sensitive spot.

"I think… oh Hermione… I think we are home."

At that, she removed her hand from where it had slid stealthily into his pants from the waistband, stepped back and said… "What?"

"Look…" he pointed at the window, following her as she walked as he directed.

As she gasped at the beautiful living room with white and cornflower blue accents, plump grey/blue suede sofas and pale grey hardwood floors, he stepped up behind her as kissed the side of her neck, his arms wrapping around her waist.

"Our future…" he breathed into her ear as his movements manipulated her to see the photograph of their daughter.

"Oh Severus." She replied, her words almost as breathless from both his ministrations and the overwhelming emotions flooding her at finally getting her man exactly the way she wanted; at being able to give him everything she wanted to, everything he deserved. Her heart was about fit to burst and as she closed her eyes to blink back a tear, his closed in empathy with her; she was so happy it rolled off of her in waves.

Neither of them noticed the shift in their surroundings as the both enjoyed the moment but were rudely jarred from it by searing pains in Hermione that forced her to grunt and scream and grab blindly for Severus's hand as she screamed.

A/N: This is not as much as I wanted to write today but it's an ok place to stop, it helps feed my cliff hanger addiction and I have to go to work and wanted to post before I left. Hope you all enjoy it. Please leave a review, just pop a comment about something and nothing if you prefer… subscribe, follow, favourite, leave kudos (it all depends on which site you read this on. I'm being all inclusive..

Love and Blessings

Moon Out! x