Chapter Seventeen: Be Careful What You Wish For
Snape strode along impatiently. For the first time in his life, he longed for a broom. He couldn't apparate without his wand and a clear idea of where he was going, so he had no choice but to walk, but he begrudged every moment it took. One more moment he had to spend away from her. He couldn't wait to hold her again, to kiss her, to tell her how much he loved her. It had been so long since they were together…too long.
As he walked along he found himself remembering every detail of that last morning together…waking up and making love. The way she'd looked when she'd jumped out of their bed and wrapped her arms around him. Her fragrant hair…her beautiful smile…her ripening body…
Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks, frozen in stunned realization. The baby! My god…she must've had the baby. He was a father! The thought struck him like a bucket of icy water. He'd been a father for sometime now, and he didn't even know it. Is it a boy or a girl? He tried to picture his child in his mind, but he couldn't. He'd just have to wait and see. Hopefully whether it was a boy or a girl, it would take more after Evangeline than him. He snorted shortly. The poor thing would probably never forgive him if it ended up with his nose…especially if it was a girl.
A bemused smile spread gently over his face. He was a father. The thought made him feel warm inside. Suddenly he was more eager than ever to get to Evangeline's cottage.
Anxiously he began to walk again, quickening his pace. All this time wasted. Time they should have had together! Time they could never get back. Damn it. It was so unfair. He hadn't been there for her. His steps faltered again, but this time it was fear that stopped him. All this time…too much time? What if she'd moved on with her life without him? He hadn't been there for her…what if she didn't want him to be anymore? Could she possibly have replaced him with another man? Could his child be calling some other man, Daddy? A shiver ripped through him at the thought.
How long had it been anyway? It seemed like just yesterday that they were together…but it wasn't, was it? It's really been more than a year! A year of pain. That's a long time to be alone? If she is alone. She should be safely at Hogwarts. Why is she in Cornwall, anyway? Mrs. Trevalleyn didn't know. She never said how long Evangeline had been here either. Nor whether or not she lived alone. Fear began to build inside, but he forced it back angrily.
He shook his head sharply. No! Evangeline would never betray me with another man. I wasted a lot of time worrying about that with Remus Lupin before we got married…and that's all it was, a colossal waste of time.
A treacherous little voice began to gnaw at the back of his mind. Yes, but what if she thinks you're dead? Mrs. Trevalleyn said she told her that her husband was dead. As far as Evangeline knows, you ran out on her…abandoned her or something happened to you. It would make sense for her to think you dead.
It wouldn't matter, she loves me, he assured himself. She trusts me…she'd wait for me. She'd know I'd find a way to return to her! She wouldn't take up with anyone else so quickly.
She might…remember it's been longer than you think, whispered the voice. A whole year. She's been without you for as long as you were together, and don't forget she has a child to think of…a child who needs a father. That can change things. Perhaps Remus Lupin has made another try for her…he loved her! He wouldn't have ever tried to come between you and Evangeline before…not the noble Gryffindor, but remember…if you're dead there's nothing to stop either of them now, is there? You're not coming back, after all.
Suddenly anxious to quiet the suspicious niggling voice in the back of his brain, he increased his pace. Evangeline wouldn't betray me, wouldn't replace me…she wouldn't, he told himself firmly, but his heart felt a little colder than it had as he hurried up the road towards her cottage.
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Evangeline and Remus made their way downstairs together and started for the kitchen. Before they'd gotten very far, he grabbed her hand and spun her back into his eager arms. Brushing his face against her soft hair, he nuzzled her neck and began to kiss her throat enthusiastically.
She laughed as he then moved on to nibble at her earlobe. Placing her hands on his bare chest, she pushed back halfheartedly. "Remus, I'm not on the breakfast menu. We came down here for food, remember?"
"You're much more delectable than food, Evangeline." The besotted werewolf murmured as he pushed her silken bathrobe off her shoulders and began to work his way across her shoulder and down towards her breast, which was lurking under a thin layer of silk negligee.
Tendrils of desire tickled through her and she clutched at him and threw her head back as he slipped the strap of her gown down her arm and took her nipple into his mouth. "Ohhh…you're insatiable, you know that." She moaned in a tolerant tone.
He grinned wickedly. "That's me, all right. I can never get enough of you.
Before he could continue to match thought with actions, there came a firm knock on the door of the cottage. The two lovers looked at each other in surprise.
"Who could that be? Especially this early." Wondered Remus.
Evangeline shrugged her shoulders. "I have no idea. I'm not expecting anyone."
She pulled her gown and robe back into place and went to answer the door while Remus stood and watched curiously.
A second knock was just hitting the wooden panel when she turned the knob and pulled the door open to find Severus Snape standing in the doorway.
He smiled warmly at her, drinking in her appearance. She looked just the way he'd last seen her, with her hair tousled and her skin slightly flushed…as if she'd been making love. When this thought crossed his mind, the smile faded slightly on his face.
She froze in the doorway and simply stared at this vision of her husband numbly. All blood drained from her head, and a faint buzzing suddenly began in her ears. "Severus." She whispered faintly. Her body flushed hot then cold and began to tremble. "Severus?" She whispered again as if her shocked mind was playing tricks on her.
With warm sparkling eyes and a smile still on his lips, her husband nodded and murmured lovingly, longingly. "Hello, Evangeline." He took a step towards her, lifted a hand, wanting to touch her, and it seemed to shock her into motion.
She stumbled back away from his outstretched hand and shook her head dazedly with every word. Her eyes were huge and filled rapidly with tears. "No…it can't be you…you're dead…you're dead! This can't be true…it can't be." Tears moistened her voice until it sounded strangled in pain.
Anxiously he shook his head and took another step forward, further extending his entreating hand to reassure her. "Please don't be afraid, Evangeline. I'm not dead. I'm right here…I'm alive."
Her body's trembling increased with her agitation, and she raked her hands viciously through her hair. She felt as if she were drowning; she couldn't get a real breath because of the heavy weight that had suddenly settled on her chest. The buzzing in her ears had increased to a roar and although she knew she spoke, she couldn't hear her own words. "Oh, my god…oh, my god…how can this be? You're dead…everyone was positive you were dead…I believed them…Oh, my god… how could I believe them…how??"
With an agonized moan, she whirled around and her wild eyes found Remus' stunned ones, then abruptly it all became too much to bear, her eyelids dropped, and she began to sag towards the floor. Snape stepped forward to catch her, but Lupin was faster. In one fluid motion, he swooped in and lifted the unconscious woman up in his arms. Then he stood there, holding her limp body clutched tightly against his naked chest, and stared in stunned fascination at her supposedly dead husband.
All of Snape's worst worries and fears crashed down on him full force as he found himself confronted with a half naked Remus Lupin holding his wife in his arms. Evangeline was wearing a nightgown and light robe, her feet were bare…so were Lupin's. He wore only loose fitting pants of some kind. Obviously they'd just gotten out of bed…it didn't stretch the imagination to decide that they'd both probably just gotten out of the same bed.
Unthinking red fury seized possession of Snape, and he stepped inside and slammed the door angrily in his wake. He aimed a nasty snarl at the stunned wizard standing in front of him. "Well, it didn't take you long to find a way into her bed, did it, Lupin?"
Lupin clutched Evangeline protectively against him and gaped at Snape. His mind still felt a little numb to actually see the man standing there…alive. Alive! "Long, Severus?" He somehow managed to choke out. "You've been gone for well over a year. We all thought you were dead, for god sakes!"
"A convenient excuse." The incensed wizard sneered bitterly. "There's little doubt what's been happening here, though. As soon as you thought me out of the picture…you moved in for the kill, didn't you?"
A dazed Lupin shook his head. "No. It wasn't like that, at all. You've got to listen to me."
"Listen to you? Listen to your lies, you mean. Don't play the innocent with me you sorry excuse for a wizard! You've been lusting after Evangeline since before I married her! Did you pretend to be her sympathetic friend? Hold her hand as she cried? Did you worm your way into her life, into her heart…into her bed and then crawl up between her thighs? Is that what happened, Lupin?" Snape was practically livid with rage by this point. His eyes snapped with fury as he stared hatefully at the man who held his whole life in his arms and yelled. "Have you been fucking my wife, you bastard? Have you?!"
Lupin had backed away from the irate wizard. Overwhelmed by the sheer hatred and rage that radiated from Snape's every pore. Now, he moved over to the couch and laid Evangeline gently down on it while Snape continued to yell at him. Then he stood up and did a little yelling back.
"Yes, damn it, I have been, but I didn't know she was still your wife, Severus! I thought she was your widow! We both thought she was a widow!"
Snape's eyes burned with rancor, but his voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "Well, you were wrong."
Lupin stepped away from the couch and walked toward Snape with his hands spread wide in supplication. "There was no way for us to know that, Severus. Be reasonable."
"Reasonable?" He growled angrily in a low menacing tone. "And what would you consider to be reasonable, werewolf? Not cutting off your private parts and stuffing them down your miserable throat?"
Lupin went pale and stopped dead in his tracks. "That's a good start." He swallowed hard. "Look, we all need to step back a minute here and talk about this. You have no idea what Evangeline's gone through, thinking that you were dead. Do you know how she found out you were dead?"
Snape crossed his arms and stared at Lupin as if he was a lunatic. "I'm not dead, you idiot! You must have all been pretty eager to believe in my demise if you accepted it without any proof."
"Oh, we had plenty of proof. At dinner the day you left Hogwarts, a huge vulture delivered a box to Evangeline. The box contained your wand, your wedding ring, and your severed head!"
Snape dropped his arms abruptly and gaped at Lupin. "What?"
Lupin nodded angrily. "That's right. Evangeline got your head in a box, Severus. Do you have the slightest idea what that did to her?"
Snape's face went paler than usual, and he stared down at his unconscious wife.
Lupin was just getting warmed up, though. "Have you happened to notice that there's someone missing, Severus?"
Dazedly Snape tore his attention away from his wife and frowned darkly at Lupin once again. "What do you mean?"
"Shouldn't there be someone else here, other than the three of us? After all, the last time you saw her, Evangeline was pregnant, wasn't she? Wouldn't you be expecting to meet your son or daughter by now?" There was a slightly mocking edge to the werewolf's tone.
Horrified understanding came suddenly to Snape and a massive shiver went through him like the slash of a knife. NO…oh gods no.
Lupin nodded coldly as he could see his shot hit home and crossed his arms over his slender chest. "That's right…no baby. When she opened the box, she went into convulsions. She lost your baby, and we almost lost her. She was in a coma for days. It took her months to even begin to come out of her depression. She didn't want to live without you, Severus."
Shaken to his core by this painful news, he instinctively tried to retaliate and lashed back at Lupin wanting to hurt the man however he could. "Well, obviously she got over that. The two of you seemed to be having a pretty good time "living" when I arrived. Malfoy did you a favor when he "forced" you to have sex with Evangeline on the eve of our wedding, didn't he? I imagine he didn't have to force you very hard. It was the answer to your prayers, wasn't it? You were probably only too glad to have the opportunity, and now…here was the same golden opportunity once again, and you didn't even have to get your hands dirty this time. Voldemort and his Death Eaters have been very supportive of your love life haven't they, werewolf?"
Before Lupin could even begin to answer this appalling charge, Evangeline came back to consciousness with a soft moan. Both men broke off their argument and turned to focus on her. She opened her eyes and stared up at her husband. Snape stood there straight and tall and obviously very angry. He seemed painfully thin to her as if whatever ordeal he'd suffered through for the last year had been difficult on him, indeed. His hair was a little ragged, and he was wearing Muggle clothing under a threadbare black cloak. She'd never seen Severus in Muggle clothes before, but the burgundy shirt and slim straight jeans that he wore actually suited him fairly well. But all of that was irrelevant. The only truly important thing here was that he was really alive. It was a miracle. A miracle!
Ignoring the cold expression on his face, she sat up slowly and slid off the couch. Never taking her eyes from his, she crossed the room to his side and reached up a shaking hand to touch his cheek gently. He trembled involuntarily at her touch, but his expression never wavered. It remained cold and hard as if covered with armor.
"Severus." She whispered in a tender yearning tone, and her eyes filled up with tears. Her voice was breathless with loving emotion. "Oh…oh, Severus…it's so good to see you…to touch you." She slid her other hand up his chest to cup the other side of his face. Then she moved it hesitantly to touch his hair and let its familiar sleekness slip softly through her fingers as she smiled and gasped wonderingly. "How can it be you? Where have you been all this time?"
For a moment his anger faded. His expression softened and his eyes caressed her face longingly and then fell on the livid purple bruise on the side of her neck. No doubt freshly put there by her lover. Her lover! Abruptly, fresh anger blossomed, and he stepped swiftly back away from her, jerking his face roughly from her grasp. His voice was ice cold. "Where do you think I've been, Evangeline? I've been in one of Voldemort's prisons. Whiling away my time thinking about you, while you've been busy making love with other men. Has Lupin been the only one or is he merely the latest in a string of replacement lovers?"
She flinched as his cruel words cut deeply into her soul. The sparkling tears that filled her emerald eyes began to course down her cheeks like rain. Her protests burst from her like water through a broken dike. Somehow she had to make him understand…make him listen. "No! I believed you were dead! Everyone was certain that you were dead! If I'd known that that wasn't true, I'd never have gotten close to anyone else. Never! Never! Please, you have to believe me! I love you, Severus! I've always loved you, Severus…only you!"
Lupin winced at her heartfelt words, true as he knew them to be, but Snape merely raised a mocking eyebrow. "Oh, so you don't feel that you need to be in love with someone in order to go to bed with them, Evangeline? I thought better of you than that…obviously I was sadly mistaken as to your character."
Horrified that he'd reject her like this, Evangeline threw herself bodily at her husband with a sob in her voice as she tried to embrace him and pleaded desperately. "Please, Severus…don't do this. This should be a happy time for us. I'm so glad you're alive! I love you so much! Please, don't turn your back on me…on us! Please!"
Abruptly he caught her arms in his hands as she lunged for him and with a sharp motion pushed her roughly away from him so that she fell back against the couch. "I'm not the one who broke our marriage vows, Evangeline. It appears there is no more "us"." His voice was harsh and cold, but he couldn't quite keep it from trembling. Her touch had unnerved him, he could feel the tears he despised rising up to the surface. All of a sudden the pain of this situation threatened to overwhelm him, and he knew that if he didn't get away from her as quickly as possible he'd break down and lose all control of himself.
As she looked back at him in horror, he turned swiftly away from her with a flurry of his black cloak and headed rapidly for the door, desperate to end this torture.
Unable to simply let him walk out on her, Evangeline drew herself up and called out to his stiff back. "Severus wait! Before you go, I have something of yours that you're likely to need." She held her breath.
Reluctantly, he halted, his fists balled tightly at his side hidden under his cloak. Ever so slowly he turned around and just stared at her expressionlessly. Holding onto the iron control he was forcing over his feelings was getting harder and harder the longer he remained in her presence.
Evangeline was also trying desperately to keep her emotions in check as she took a step towards her husband and stared earnestly back at him. "Where are you going to go?" She choked out in a strained voice.
Not having thought that far ahead, he frowned and stated the only destination he could think of. "Hogwarts."
She nodded. "How were you planning on getting there? Flag down a passing broom? Without a wand you couldn't even summon the Knight Bus, much less apparate."
A shiver ran through him. She was right. Why hadn't he thought of that? How was he to get back to Hogwarts? Without magic, it would be a very long walk.
"I have your wand in a box in the basement, Severus. If you'll wait a moment, I'll get it for you."
He crossed his arms, holding his feelings inside by sheer force of will, and glared coldly down his nose at her. "Very well."
With a dazed nod, she turned around a bit unsteadily and headed for a door in the wall. She opened it and started down a flight of stairs to the basement.
As she disappeared through the doorway, Lupin, mired in his own pain, glared at Snape in frustration and tried once more to defend her. "You're not being fair, Severus. Evangeline has gone through hell thinking you were dead for this last year. Doesn't that matter to you at all?"
Snape pounced on Lupin again, eager to unleash more venom on the werewolf. "Don't you dare talk to me about hell, Lupin. It's where I've spent the last year of my life!"
Undaunted, Remus snarled back. "Well, Evangeline's been there, too! She lost her husband and her child, and she almost died. Have some understanding! You weren't the one who had to sit at her bedside after she lost your baby and plead with her not to give in to her desire to die."
Unable to let himself contemplate the pain of what might have been, Snape kept his focus on his anger, which he kept tightly aimed at Lupin. "You must have been pleased when she lost the baby, Lupin. It's much easier to seduce a woman without a child clinging to her skirts. Then you don't have to play Daddy to someone else's brat, huh?"
Lupin was stunned at the hatred in Snape's tone. "Do you even want to know whether you lost a son or a daughter, Severus?"
Another agonizing piece of knowledge that he didn't feel capable of receiving at the moment, not from this source at least, Snape stiffened sharply as if Lupin had slapped him and stared blankly at his tormentor. "No." He whispered harshly. "That part of my past is dead. Let's leave it buried in the past…with my marriage."
Finding himself at the limit of his endurance, he turned away from Lupin to see a very pale Evangeline standing at the head of the cellar stairs watching him sadly. As her eyes met his, she slowly crossed the room and handed him a set of his robes and his wand. He accepted them from her without comment, stared down at her with those bottomless eyes of his for a moment, and then turned sharply on his heel and left the cottage without another word, slamming the door viciously behind him.
As soon as the door closed, Evangeline lost the tight control she'd been asserting over her emotions and with a horrified gasp she collapsed bonelessly to the floor and began to sob uncontrollably. Remus immediately ran over to try to offer comfort and sank down next to her attempting to take the devastated woman into his arms, but she refused to be held by him. Instead she roughly pushed him away from her and curled into a tight ball, trying desperately to block out the misery of her reality by crawling inside herself. The crushed wizard stroked her hair helplessly and felt his happy world crumble into ashes with each tear that she shed. As her life was once more cruelly pulled from her grasp, Evangeline's delicately mended heart shattered into a million pieces.
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Author's Notes: This was a rough chapter to write. I know it was probably rough to read, too. I'm anxious to know what you think about it. (Many, many thanks to gotsnape for all her help and advice with it! You're the best, lady!)
Manic: As you can see Severus selected choice number two! Although now he may be a little sorry. :)
Werecat99: Shame on you! Nothing was implied about the gifts. Remus was making a joke. Besides, he's seen the portrait of Snape in all its glory, remember? That's not a remark he'd make to Evangeline. :) Oh yeah…Lucius. Yeah, I remember him. :)
Elbereth94: Oh sweetie, I'm sorry. I felt so bad when I read your review and realized that I was going to have to burst your happy bubble. Severus, Remus, and Evangeline have some rough road to travel before the end of the story I'm afraid. I will tell you that there's no climactic battle with the Dark Lord in this story. The story plays out in just a few days of story time and wraps up before the next school term begins.
Jezebel: Yup. Sorry. It'd be too easy and not very believable considering the personalities involved.
Brittany: Glad you're enjoying the story. I'd say tense and awkward is a bit mild myself.
Arsinoe: I did contemplate letting her keep both of them, but I couldn't find a way to quite make it work. :) Lovely idea, though!
Sage and Snape: Sorry to make you worry, but as you can see, you had good reason.
Lina Lupin: No, Snape does most of the attacking even without his wand. He was also the one who wasn't interested in explanations.
ProphetDreams: Thanks. That's a big responsibility. :) I'd keep the Kleenex handy if I were you.
Carpathiaa: Thank you. I hope you liked it.
Jtyw: Trouble indeed.
BookWitch: Thanks, I'm glad "Steven" seemed in character. Yes, it was definitely a surprise for the three of them to meet at the cottage. You're the second person who wants Severus to meet his portrait. I'll have to think about it, but at the moment I don't see how it could work. Severus doesn't return to the cottage in this story, and the portrait isn't particularly mobile.