All things not Allosia and Gabriel belong to JKR.

This chapter contains the first of the first person stuff – it should appear in italics, if it doesn't, I'll keep uploading a few versions til I get it to work.

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Gabriel Severus Hemrand was born at 3:42 in the morning on December 18th and weighed seven pounds and two ounces.

During the last thirty minutes of Allosia's labour, Snape had thought he'd go insane. Screams like that had only ever meant one thing to him, and she no longer had the presence of mind to be reassuring. Eventually, Pomfrey had offered him a sedative, which he had refused. She had snapped at him then, ordering him to focus on what was going on. This was why she was a school nurse. This was why her attitude had actually worked on him.

When Snape was encouraged to hold his child, he looked at Allosia, Pomfrey and Hooch as if they were all insane. "I've never done this before. I don't even like children!"

Hooch rolled her eyes and Pomfrey pretended she hadn't heard it. Allosia just muttered, "if you can make breakthroughs in the potions development process I'm sure you can figure this out," in an oddly encouraging tone. As long as he viewed Gabriel as just another intellectual challenge to solve, everything would be just fine. For all his fretting though, his enthusiasm and pride were somewhat obvious on his perpetually smug face.

Allosia had insisted they at least put in an appearance at the Yule Ball, although Dumbledore had excused them both. The event held sentimental value, and she saw no point in forgoing it, even if she was still weak on her feet, and the baby had made the last seventy-two hours merge into one incredibly long day.

Eventually, Snape had relented, and they went, with Gabriel, for all of twenty minutes, during which, he didn't stop scowling once.

What I remember most, about that first year, was how you never heard baby talk in the apartments. Not from us anyway. Others would do it, when they came to visit, and no amount of stern glares from Severus could get some of them to stop. Hana and Minerva were the worst, and when Albus did it, I couldn't escape the feeling that he and Gabriel were having an actual, and quite serious conversation.

I talked gently to Gabriel, certainly, but never in one of those strange, melodic cooing voices people tend to use. If I wanted to provide him with music, I simply sung, and in those first weeks singing was my only exercise. It seemed to sooth Severus, as much as the boy.

Severus, for his part, managed to avoid sarcasm with him, which is, I suspect, more than anyone would have asked for. He would speak to him in all his languages, reminding me again, as if one could ever easily forget, just how dangerous of a mind he had. Our lives then were lived to the murmur of many languages – Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Medieval Italian, a smattering of Japanese and of course, the Queen's English. It seemed to give Severus great pleasure, although even now I can't tell you if it was at having Gabriel about, or at having an excuse to use these skills in the company of something other than his notebooks and the early morning hours.

That summer, my parents came for an extended and somewhat trying visit. Severus felt it was too dangerous for Gabriel and I to travel, and as much as I chaffed at this, he was right. Pain had never been a useful way of controlling him, despite the amusement Voldemort and his servants had always taken in inflicting it. We would have been more useful.

I think the only thing my father said to Severus the entire time they were here was, "well, you certainly wasted no time." He had leaned over and whispered to me then, "Thank Merlin you weren't early, the man would try to kill me," and I had had to stifle a laugh. Severus never understood my father's objections to him were far more about himself. But then, it's not like Severus ever understood that about anyone.

Gabriel's first word came at ten months, and while it sounded like "all," it came during morning mail, and so we decided it was "owl." Hagrid was quite taken with him, and always volunteered to baby sit, but we never thought it a wise idea to trust him with a small non-fire-breathing creature.

When one of us couldn't be with the baby, Albus or Poppy or occasionally Hana watched him, even taking him for the night from time to time when we needed some time alone, which was as much to argue as it was to screw. I don't think that would have surprised anyone much.

I will always be struck by how much Severus worried about Poppy watching Gabriel. Of course, I knew how much time he had spent in sick wards as a child, but he had always seemed so uninterested in it. It took me a long time to realize the degree to which it had shaped him. Those days were not responsible for his ill-temper as most would suspect, but for his strength, much of his linguistic knowledge, and perhaps most depressing of all for anyone who loved him, his endurance.

In the first year, Snape was summoned to the Dark Lord's side seven times, and was twice offered gifts he did not have the option of refusing.