Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.
A/N: Yay for reviews!
This is a Severus chapter. It's fairly introspective. Like the last chapter, it's one of my favourites.
For those that have asked for a little more info about me… I'm eighteen and I live near Sydney, Australia. And as to where I get my ideas from… I can only answer that I get them from my muse… because I don't know where they come from!
And there have been some excellent guesses as to who Sirius and Regina's child is… but I'm not saying anything!
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Severus did not know why he had gone to Remus last night. His heart had been constricting painfully, and then Aemilia had spoken those words - Your little priestess, Snape, is pregnant - and it had felt like it was going to burst in his chest. He had felt the colour drain from his face, felt Aemilia's accusatory stare as she looked at him and just knew, and then he had fled from the room.
To Remus.
He knew that there was a chance that the wolf might still be violent. He had studied the codices, of course, when he first began making the Wolfsbane Potion. But he didn't care.
He could have bitten me, Severus thought, and I wouldn't have cared. It wouldn't have made any bloody difference.
All he had known was that he needed a confessor and that he couldn't face anyone right now.
So he confessed to a wolf, even though the wolf understood every word he said.
He wondered what Remus thought of him now, in the pale gold of the early morning. If he was laughing, or merely thinking, pondering.
How the mighty Potions master has fallen, the little voice jeered in his mind.
And he knew he had to do it. I have a duty, he thought firmly, and I will carry it out to the end of my days.
He pushed open the Hospital Wing doors.
*
Helena was asleep. Severus pulled up a chair and sat beside her bed, just looking at her.
Sleeping, Helena looked so unbelievably… innocent. Her golden hair spilled out on the white hospital pillow like a coronet, and her skin was very pale - paler than usual, Severus reminded himself. She was still suffering the after effects of shock.
I was right, he thought dazedly. She does look like a porcelain doll.
He could see little of the serene priestess of Telae Domus in her now, and even less of the violently passionate woman he had argued with that first night back at Hogwarts. Certainly not the lover he remembered from his vague memory of Midsummer.
Instead, Severus saw a little girl. And that scared him, because - whether he liked it or not - that little girl was the mother of his child.
And then he realised he remembered her.
"What comes next?" Regina asked, stirring the cauldron with the tip of her wand.
Severus consulted the book. "Ah… two ounces of crushed Billywigs," he said, smiling at her. Enemies in daylight, friends in secret, he thought. It had an odd romance about it - even he, who had never been romantic, could see that.
"Could you start chopping the dried Flobberworms, please?" she told him as she measured out the Billywigs. "They will need to go in soon."
He pulled the chopping board towards him, still looking at the book. "You'll need to stir that in an anticlockwise - sweet mother of Merlin!" He clutched his bleeding hand to his chest.
Regina looked up, saw the dripping blood. "Show me," she commanded him, holding out her hand for his.
He shook his head. "No… it's okay."
"Stop being stubborn, Severus, show me." Her voice was lilting, calming, like trickling water on a day in new spring.
"No," he said firmly. "You need to finish the potion. I will go to Madam Pomfrey and be back soon."
"Severus -"
"Keep going," he told her. "I'll only be a second."
The flickering light caught the gold in her hair. "All right," she said softly.
"Nine times anti-clockwise," he told her, and left the room.
Out in the corridor, he pulled up his sleeve with a gasp. His finger was still bleeding quite profusely, but he knew it was only a shallow cut. He'd done it on purpose, and he wasn't fool enough to slice off his own finger.
And the pain was nothing compared to the pain of the Mark, burning black on his arm.
The sound of Regina's voice floated out into the corridor. She was singing over her cauldron. "From skies of blue you call me… run far from the light. From skies of blue you call me… kiss the night, kiss the night…"
What was someone like him doing - someone with the Mark burned black on his arm - consorting with someone like her? By all rights, he shouldn't even be within ten miles of her. She was so far above him that she was like a star, burning brightly but ever so far away in the sky. So pure, seventeen year old Severus Snape thought, so innocent.
"Are you - all right?"
Severus looked up. "What?" he said shortly, hastily pushing his sleeve back down.
The girl could hardly have been more than a first year. Golden hair spilled down her back, tied back with a blue ribbon. Ravenclaw, then. Her grey eyes were clear, innocent and questioning. "Are you all right?" she asked concernedly. "You looked like you were in some pain before."
He managed a weak smile. Under normal circumstances, he would have snarled at her, scared her away. But the burning of the Mark had sapped all his energy, and he had none left for cruelty. "Quite all right, thankyou."
"Are you sure?" Her eyes were wide, concerned. "I can get Madam Pomfrey -"
"No," Severus interrupted her, holding up a hand. "It was - momentary." He hid another wince as the Mark burned again. "Thankyou for asking."
"Miss Seraphim! Get back to your common room!"
Aemilia's voice. She and Lily Evans walked up. They were on prefect patrol, by the looks of it. Lily cast a quizzical eye on him. "What are you doing out so late, Severus?" she asked.
"None of your business, Evans," he retorted.
Lily quirked an eyebrow. "I think you'll find it is my business, Severus," she said, tapping the Head Girl badge on her robes pointedly.
Severus did not have the energy to argue. "If you must know, Miss Lupin and I are brewing a potion for extra credit. She's in there, if you want to ask her." He jabbed a finger at the dungeon door.
Lily nodded. "Just see you get back before your curfew, then," she told him. He scowled at her, but was in too much pain to do any more.
Aemilia rounded on the girl. "But you, Miss Seraphim, are out well after your curfew. Back to the common room with you. Come on!"
Severus watched as Lily and Aemilia led the little girl away. Just before they passed out of sight altogether at the end of the corridor, the little girl looked back at him.
"Be safe," he saw her mouth, and then she was gone.
He had never paid much attention to the little girl after that, never bothered to learn her name. He saw her every now and then, of course - passing other students in the corridor was something that could scarcely be avoided, even if you were a Slytherin. He never gave her much thought - he was too wrapped up in his obsession with Regina Lupin to give much consequence to a first year, even if she had showed him kindness.
But the memory had stayed with him. The memory of a time when someone had looked at him and shown him compassion, even though he was what was he was. What he had been, and what he still pretended to be. A Death Eater.
Now, he looked down on that little girl once again. She had grown up, and she had grown up beautiful, but when she slept she was still that same little girl. That little girl that had shown Severus Snape kindness.
A woman that now carried his child.
Her eyes opened, and they were still grey and clear, just like they had been that night when she had first spoken to him.
"Hello, Helena," he said softly.
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