Disclaimer: I still don't own these characters, well I suppose I own Narcissa's personality and I do at least own the plot. I'll have to work on kidnapping Severus somehow!
Review Responses:
Dark Comet – Glad you liked the presents, particularly that first one of Sev's because I was originally a little unsure about that one. Come on who else did you think Hagrid would bring? We know Madame Maxime could never mean as much to him as Fang! Narc is indeed a credit to her house, and someone needs to give Ron and Herm a push in the right direction! She had to wind poor Hermione up a little bit though with the furniture stuff! It's a girl, we already know that. I'm guessing Narcissa would be too curious to wait to find out. Thank you for dropping not just one review but two!
number seven – Ah yes, we all love fluff! I certainly do anyway! Don't worry, the baby's smart enough to realize its being born in Iceland would be inadvisable! Thanks for the review!
Bonezz – Glad you enjoyed it, it was a little bittersweet wasn't it but then much of their relationship has been. Baby names are here, well sort of anyway! Thanks for the review!
Soccergirl12044 – Sorry for the lengthy gap before this update, glad you enjoyed chapter 24. Thanks for reviewing!
Errisar – Do not worry about reviewing late, I'm the queen of late updates lately! Latin organization? Sounds interesting, I always wanted to learn Latin. Thanks for the review!
SiruisWillBeMissed – Can I just say I totally agree with what your username says! Glad you like it and I love it when people tell me it's an original idea! Sorry it took so long to update! Thanks for the review!
T.A. Skywalker - It would have been evil of me to have abandoned Narcissa with an evil Lucy like that and the fic certainly had a depressing ending in my head, you see I can be every evil to my beloved characters sometimes however I have a great love of happy endings so thankfully that and honest_iago (great friend and literary advisor!) prevailed upon me to break away from J.K.'s universe and give Narcissa the ending she deserved. You did indeed inspire me and I think my little one shot's finished now so I'll post it soon, sometime after I'm done posting this story I think. You see I just found myself going of on a tangent from what you were saying and suddenly this whole little thing just developed. The English countryside is beautiful, I'm glad you liked it here. London is a lovely city but it is very big and I know what you mean about not liking large crowds! Thank you for your praise about the last chapter and my characters. As to my Weasley story (looks sheepish) we have hit issues of timing, it will be done if I have to finfish it when I'm ninety but it won't be the next thing I post I don't think! Well not the Weasley story I was referring to anyway, I have another shorter story (around 10 chapters) practically finished about Percy and the Weasleys after the fifth book which I'm rather pleased with at the moment. I'm going to post that next but the other one needs a lot of time and work going into it and with essays due and exams coming up I can't do it right now, however this summer I will definitely get stuck into it and I'll be posting stuff in between this story ending and summer anyway so there'll still be things for you to read! They'll be a little sales pitch for the original Weasley story at the end of the epilogue to this fic though as they're both set in the same alternate universe so that'll give you a bit of an idea of what to expect in it when it's finally done! I don't know if I've said anything before but I do love the quotes you leave me at the end of reviews! Thanks for reviewing!
Widow767 - Thank you for reviewing, I'm glad you like my story! Sorry for the long wait for the update!
A/N: Ok, a thousand, million apologies for the lateness of this chapter and for that matter a lot of them lately. I'm snowed under with work and I just don't seem to be able to find the time to post even though the story itself gas been finished for months now! I'm so sorry! This is going to have to stop somehow. There's only one more chapter and an epilogue to come after this and I think I'll post them both at the same time and it will be sometime next week, I won't give you an exact day because then I'll only end up missing it but I promise I will post again next week for the last time! The last time, gosh that makes me sad!
I Found a Little Courage to Call it Off
**Narcissa's Thoughts**
***Severus' Thoughts***
_emphasis_
Chapter 25
As Narcissa's due date got closer she became prone to mood swings and slightly odd behaviour; well, slightly odder than usual. Also, there were the food cravings, particularly for chocolate. She even went through a phase of eating Dumbledore's sherbet lemons, at which point Severus became determined that they were drugged because anyone who ate them seemed to become addicted. However, after much analysis of the offending sweets, he discovered that they were no more addictive than any other sugary substance and that it really was just Narcissa's cravings that made her eat them; Dumbledore of course was simply mad.
Narcissa's sleep patterns were also upset and occasionally Severus would find himself woken up in the early hours of the morning, because when Narcissa couldn't sleep it was a pretty safe bet no one else was going to be allowed to.
She awoke on one of these occasions and began to be thoroughly annoyed with tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep without waking Severus. She looked across at the sleeping man, **it's not fair why should you get to sleep when I can't? Maybe I'll wake him up and then he can talk to me. Better not, he didn't like it last time I did that!** She idly stroked a hand through his glossy hair, **He could really use a hair cut, I'll have to remind him sometime. Then again, why wait?**
Narcissa picked up her wand from her bedside table and trimmed his hair back until it just fell to his nape of neck. Much better. I'm sure he'll love it. Oh well, I'm kind of sleepy now. She turned over and was asleep in moments.
*******
Severus woke up to see his wife was still asleep; he smiled at her briefly before sitting up. His neck felt oddly cold and he reached his hand up only to realise his hair wasn't where it should have been. He looked back down at his pillow to see snippets of black hair on it. ***What the hell!?***
He shook Narcissa awake. "Narcissa!"
She yawned, "What is it dear?"
"What happened to my hair?"
"Oh I cut it, do you like it? I didn't want to wake you."
"You cut my hair in my sleep?" Severus tone became more worried as he added, "You came near me with _scissors_ in my sleep?"
"No, I used my wand."
Severus paled slightly, "You were casting spells on me when I was asleep?"
"Don't look at me like that Severus Snape, I'm not some common psychopath!" she snapped indignantly.
"Well you have to admit pregnancy has left you a little, well, I don't think crazy's too strong a word!"
She sniffed, "You don't like it? I thought you would. I think it makes you look more handsome than ever!"
To his horror a tear slid down her cheek, "Narcissa, don't cry, I'm just a little shocked." He hugged her and she buried her face in his neck.
"You know it's much easier to bury my face in your neck now all that hair's out of the way!" she smiled brightly. "I'm so pleased you like it!" She jumped up and went into the bathroom leaving Severus sat, looking bewildered, on the bed.
As far as he was concerned the sooner this baby was born the better, he couldn't take any more mood swings!
*******
They were down to weeks rather than months and Narcissa seemed to have calmed down a little much to Severus' delight, explaining the hair cut (not that it was a bad one) had been interesting. McGonagall in particular seemed to think that nothing funnier had ever happened in the history of the universe; apart from perhaps the year Flitwick had got drunk and fallen in the lake and had to be rescued by the giant squid, all the while singing a sea shanty.
Narcissa spent much of her time out of doors and Severus would often find her singing softly, breaking off every now and again to make some comment or other. She was talking to the baby. Narcissa loved doing this, the baby was a good listener quite apart from anything else but also it made her feel closer to the life so intimately connected with her own. She was sat one evening on the sofa wrapped in a patchwork quilt, which had been one of Molly's many, many gifts, leaning against Severus and feeling utterly content with life.
"I can't wait for this little one to be born," she said, "I miss having a child in the manor."
Severus decided to voice a question he had often wondered about since finding out that Narcissa had always wanted children. "Why did you and Lucius never have any other children?"
She laughed a little bitterly, "Besides the fact I wouldn't let him near me? I may have loved him but he scared me Sev," she sighed, "And then I stopped loving him. There was never a chance of there being more children."
"Did the two of you plan to have more children originally?"
"We didn't plan at all. Draco was an accident, we were both delighted but he wasn't planned. I wanted children, I really wanted a little girl. I think that's why the death of that child in the dungeons haunted me so much, seeing something I had longed for so callously destroyed by the man I loved. Do you know what her last words were? 'I want my mum', and all I could do was hold her and tell her it would be alright, but it wasn't alright." A single tear coursed down Narcissa's cheek at the memory.
Severus placed a hand on her arm and she continued, "After that I knew I'd rather not have children than allow Lucius to be a father, to pour his twisted ideals into innocent minds, but of course in the end I let him do just that."
"You offered Draco a more balanced view of the world," Severus said firmly, "You let him see that there was another way."
She smiled, "I was terrified when I went into labour, I knew it was far too early. I was frightened I'd lose the only chance I'd ever have of being a mother." She was crying again and her husband gently drew her into his arms.
"Narcissa, you are a mother, a wonderful one, and you're soon to be again."
She sniffed and gave him a watery smile, "Sorry, pregnancy, hormones."
"That's alright," he kissed her head, "Have you thought about names yet?"
"No. I'm a firm believer in seeing the baby's character before choosing the name."
"What made you pick Draco then?"
"He was a fighter, he had such a spark of life in him." She smiled fondly and patted the bump, "So what do you think she'll look like?"
"Probably like her mother, blonde and beautiful."
Narcissa snorted, "I doubt it, blonde's a recessive gene, any blondes in your family?"
Severus shook his head.
"Then she'll probably have dark hair and she'll probably have dark eyes like you. Even Draco didn't really get my colourings."
"That's true, where does he get that hair from? Your hair's golden but his is almost silver."
"You know it took me a while to work that one out myself. I used to look at Draco and think he reminded me of someone, but not me or Lucius or even my parents. And then I realised his hair comes from my Grandmother. She had that exact silver blonde hair all her life. She was great, one of the few relatives I could really talk to and the only one I truly mourned, she died when I was in my early teens. She was over ninety when that happened and she was as energetic as a twenty year old! She blew herself up with a faulty potion." Narcissa could feel Severus shaking slightly though his face remained impassive. "It's alright, you can laugh, I did in the end. It's too daft to take seriously, a ninety year old woman blowing herself up like that!" Then they were both laughing and Narcissa began to reminisce fondly. "You know she was a quirky old woman. Her name was Madrigal, Mad to her friends and Mad Madrigal to the local children who she used to scare by muttering nonsense under her breath as they passed, they were determined she was trying to curse them. Of course, it's just possible she was! I think she'd have liked you and she definitely wouldn't have been impressed by Lucius, she liked her men a bit rough around the edges!"
Her husband raised an eyebrow, "Are you saying I'm rough around the edges?"
"Well, the Daily Prophet did call you my bit of rough!" Narcissa giggled, "Don't worry love, I think Grandma was right about men they're better when the edges are a bit rough! She married for love you know, a working class wizard with no fortune and no old family name to recommend him! The family nearly disowned her, I mean the man was a cobbler! It was scandalous, he was a nobody and she was a gentleman's daughter! Frankly I think the family should have seen it coming, she bought ninety eight pairs of shoes form the shop he worked in all within six months."
They both laughed again, "Yeah she'd have liked you," Narcissa muttered and buried her head sleepily in Severus' chest.
Severus smiled and gently lifted his wife into his arms and carried her up to the bedroom. "Gosh you weighed less last time I did this!" he groaned rubbing his back.
"When was the last time?" she yawned, "I don't remember that."
"No, well you wouldn't, you were unconscious. It was when you ran into me after the attack on that child and you fainted. I brought you up here, remember?"
"You carried me up two flights of stairs?"
"Yes, I did."
"Sev?" she asked sleepily, "Why didn't you just use a levitation charm?"
She was asleep before he could answer and he was very grateful for that as he had no more idea now than he had had then why he had carried the unconscious woman, other than there'd always been something about Narcissa that had made him want to look after her. He kissed her head and left her to sleep, puling a blanket over her. He laid a hand on her stomach for a moment before smiling softly and going back downstairs.
*******
What do you think? Sorry I tempted you with baby names then didn't actually give any! I'm mean sometimes aren't I? Anyway next chapter's the birth, it's also the last chapter! There'll be an epilogue as well and as I said at the beginning I'll post them both together next week, or would you prefer a couple of days between them? That way I can give review responses you see and as I'm on holiday next week there'd be no danger of my falling behind with the update. Well tell me what you'd prefer and I promise faithfully to post both next week whether together or separate.
Please review!! Not many chances left!
Review Responses:
Dark Comet – Glad you liked the presents, particularly that first one of Sev's because I was originally a little unsure about that one. Come on who else did you think Hagrid would bring? We know Madame Maxime could never mean as much to him as Fang! Narc is indeed a credit to her house, and someone needs to give Ron and Herm a push in the right direction! She had to wind poor Hermione up a little bit though with the furniture stuff! It's a girl, we already know that. I'm guessing Narcissa would be too curious to wait to find out. Thank you for dropping not just one review but two!
number seven – Ah yes, we all love fluff! I certainly do anyway! Don't worry, the baby's smart enough to realize its being born in Iceland would be inadvisable! Thanks for the review!
Bonezz – Glad you enjoyed it, it was a little bittersweet wasn't it but then much of their relationship has been. Baby names are here, well sort of anyway! Thanks for the review!
Soccergirl12044 – Sorry for the lengthy gap before this update, glad you enjoyed chapter 24. Thanks for reviewing!
Errisar – Do not worry about reviewing late, I'm the queen of late updates lately! Latin organization? Sounds interesting, I always wanted to learn Latin. Thanks for the review!
SiruisWillBeMissed – Can I just say I totally agree with what your username says! Glad you like it and I love it when people tell me it's an original idea! Sorry it took so long to update! Thanks for the review!
T.A. Skywalker - It would have been evil of me to have abandoned Narcissa with an evil Lucy like that and the fic certainly had a depressing ending in my head, you see I can be every evil to my beloved characters sometimes however I have a great love of happy endings so thankfully that and honest_iago (great friend and literary advisor!) prevailed upon me to break away from J.K.'s universe and give Narcissa the ending she deserved. You did indeed inspire me and I think my little one shot's finished now so I'll post it soon, sometime after I'm done posting this story I think. You see I just found myself going of on a tangent from what you were saying and suddenly this whole little thing just developed. The English countryside is beautiful, I'm glad you liked it here. London is a lovely city but it is very big and I know what you mean about not liking large crowds! Thank you for your praise about the last chapter and my characters. As to my Weasley story (looks sheepish) we have hit issues of timing, it will be done if I have to finfish it when I'm ninety but it won't be the next thing I post I don't think! Well not the Weasley story I was referring to anyway, I have another shorter story (around 10 chapters) practically finished about Percy and the Weasleys after the fifth book which I'm rather pleased with at the moment. I'm going to post that next but the other one needs a lot of time and work going into it and with essays due and exams coming up I can't do it right now, however this summer I will definitely get stuck into it and I'll be posting stuff in between this story ending and summer anyway so there'll still be things for you to read! They'll be a little sales pitch for the original Weasley story at the end of the epilogue to this fic though as they're both set in the same alternate universe so that'll give you a bit of an idea of what to expect in it when it's finally done! I don't know if I've said anything before but I do love the quotes you leave me at the end of reviews! Thanks for reviewing!
Widow767 - Thank you for reviewing, I'm glad you like my story! Sorry for the long wait for the update!
A/N: Ok, a thousand, million apologies for the lateness of this chapter and for that matter a lot of them lately. I'm snowed under with work and I just don't seem to be able to find the time to post even though the story itself gas been finished for months now! I'm so sorry! This is going to have to stop somehow. There's only one more chapter and an epilogue to come after this and I think I'll post them both at the same time and it will be sometime next week, I won't give you an exact day because then I'll only end up missing it but I promise I will post again next week for the last time! The last time, gosh that makes me sad!
I Found a Little Courage to Call it Off
**Narcissa's Thoughts**
***Severus' Thoughts***
_emphasis_
Chapter 25
As Narcissa's due date got closer she became prone to mood swings and slightly odd behaviour; well, slightly odder than usual. Also, there were the food cravings, particularly for chocolate. She even went through a phase of eating Dumbledore's sherbet lemons, at which point Severus became determined that they were drugged because anyone who ate them seemed to become addicted. However, after much analysis of the offending sweets, he discovered that they were no more addictive than any other sugary substance and that it really was just Narcissa's cravings that made her eat them; Dumbledore of course was simply mad.
Narcissa's sleep patterns were also upset and occasionally Severus would find himself woken up in the early hours of the morning, because when Narcissa couldn't sleep it was a pretty safe bet no one else was going to be allowed to.
She awoke on one of these occasions and began to be thoroughly annoyed with tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep without waking Severus. She looked across at the sleeping man, **it's not fair why should you get to sleep when I can't? Maybe I'll wake him up and then he can talk to me. Better not, he didn't like it last time I did that!** She idly stroked a hand through his glossy hair, **He could really use a hair cut, I'll have to remind him sometime. Then again, why wait?**
Narcissa picked up her wand from her bedside table and trimmed his hair back until it just fell to his nape of neck. Much better. I'm sure he'll love it. Oh well, I'm kind of sleepy now. She turned over and was asleep in moments.
*******
Severus woke up to see his wife was still asleep; he smiled at her briefly before sitting up. His neck felt oddly cold and he reached his hand up only to realise his hair wasn't where it should have been. He looked back down at his pillow to see snippets of black hair on it. ***What the hell!?***
He shook Narcissa awake. "Narcissa!"
She yawned, "What is it dear?"
"What happened to my hair?"
"Oh I cut it, do you like it? I didn't want to wake you."
"You cut my hair in my sleep?" Severus tone became more worried as he added, "You came near me with _scissors_ in my sleep?"
"No, I used my wand."
Severus paled slightly, "You were casting spells on me when I was asleep?"
"Don't look at me like that Severus Snape, I'm not some common psychopath!" she snapped indignantly.
"Well you have to admit pregnancy has left you a little, well, I don't think crazy's too strong a word!"
She sniffed, "You don't like it? I thought you would. I think it makes you look more handsome than ever!"
To his horror a tear slid down her cheek, "Narcissa, don't cry, I'm just a little shocked." He hugged her and she buried her face in his neck.
"You know it's much easier to bury my face in your neck now all that hair's out of the way!" she smiled brightly. "I'm so pleased you like it!" She jumped up and went into the bathroom leaving Severus sat, looking bewildered, on the bed.
As far as he was concerned the sooner this baby was born the better, he couldn't take any more mood swings!
*******
They were down to weeks rather than months and Narcissa seemed to have calmed down a little much to Severus' delight, explaining the hair cut (not that it was a bad one) had been interesting. McGonagall in particular seemed to think that nothing funnier had ever happened in the history of the universe; apart from perhaps the year Flitwick had got drunk and fallen in the lake and had to be rescued by the giant squid, all the while singing a sea shanty.
Narcissa spent much of her time out of doors and Severus would often find her singing softly, breaking off every now and again to make some comment or other. She was talking to the baby. Narcissa loved doing this, the baby was a good listener quite apart from anything else but also it made her feel closer to the life so intimately connected with her own. She was sat one evening on the sofa wrapped in a patchwork quilt, which had been one of Molly's many, many gifts, leaning against Severus and feeling utterly content with life.
"I can't wait for this little one to be born," she said, "I miss having a child in the manor."
Severus decided to voice a question he had often wondered about since finding out that Narcissa had always wanted children. "Why did you and Lucius never have any other children?"
She laughed a little bitterly, "Besides the fact I wouldn't let him near me? I may have loved him but he scared me Sev," she sighed, "And then I stopped loving him. There was never a chance of there being more children."
"Did the two of you plan to have more children originally?"
"We didn't plan at all. Draco was an accident, we were both delighted but he wasn't planned. I wanted children, I really wanted a little girl. I think that's why the death of that child in the dungeons haunted me so much, seeing something I had longed for so callously destroyed by the man I loved. Do you know what her last words were? 'I want my mum', and all I could do was hold her and tell her it would be alright, but it wasn't alright." A single tear coursed down Narcissa's cheek at the memory.
Severus placed a hand on her arm and she continued, "After that I knew I'd rather not have children than allow Lucius to be a father, to pour his twisted ideals into innocent minds, but of course in the end I let him do just that."
"You offered Draco a more balanced view of the world," Severus said firmly, "You let him see that there was another way."
She smiled, "I was terrified when I went into labour, I knew it was far too early. I was frightened I'd lose the only chance I'd ever have of being a mother." She was crying again and her husband gently drew her into his arms.
"Narcissa, you are a mother, a wonderful one, and you're soon to be again."
She sniffed and gave him a watery smile, "Sorry, pregnancy, hormones."
"That's alright," he kissed her head, "Have you thought about names yet?"
"No. I'm a firm believer in seeing the baby's character before choosing the name."
"What made you pick Draco then?"
"He was a fighter, he had such a spark of life in him." She smiled fondly and patted the bump, "So what do you think she'll look like?"
"Probably like her mother, blonde and beautiful."
Narcissa snorted, "I doubt it, blonde's a recessive gene, any blondes in your family?"
Severus shook his head.
"Then she'll probably have dark hair and she'll probably have dark eyes like you. Even Draco didn't really get my colourings."
"That's true, where does he get that hair from? Your hair's golden but his is almost silver."
"You know it took me a while to work that one out myself. I used to look at Draco and think he reminded me of someone, but not me or Lucius or even my parents. And then I realised his hair comes from my Grandmother. She had that exact silver blonde hair all her life. She was great, one of the few relatives I could really talk to and the only one I truly mourned, she died when I was in my early teens. She was over ninety when that happened and she was as energetic as a twenty year old! She blew herself up with a faulty potion." Narcissa could feel Severus shaking slightly though his face remained impassive. "It's alright, you can laugh, I did in the end. It's too daft to take seriously, a ninety year old woman blowing herself up like that!" Then they were both laughing and Narcissa began to reminisce fondly. "You know she was a quirky old woman. Her name was Madrigal, Mad to her friends and Mad Madrigal to the local children who she used to scare by muttering nonsense under her breath as they passed, they were determined she was trying to curse them. Of course, it's just possible she was! I think she'd have liked you and she definitely wouldn't have been impressed by Lucius, she liked her men a bit rough around the edges!"
Her husband raised an eyebrow, "Are you saying I'm rough around the edges?"
"Well, the Daily Prophet did call you my bit of rough!" Narcissa giggled, "Don't worry love, I think Grandma was right about men they're better when the edges are a bit rough! She married for love you know, a working class wizard with no fortune and no old family name to recommend him! The family nearly disowned her, I mean the man was a cobbler! It was scandalous, he was a nobody and she was a gentleman's daughter! Frankly I think the family should have seen it coming, she bought ninety eight pairs of shoes form the shop he worked in all within six months."
They both laughed again, "Yeah she'd have liked you," Narcissa muttered and buried her head sleepily in Severus' chest.
Severus smiled and gently lifted his wife into his arms and carried her up to the bedroom. "Gosh you weighed less last time I did this!" he groaned rubbing his back.
"When was the last time?" she yawned, "I don't remember that."
"No, well you wouldn't, you were unconscious. It was when you ran into me after the attack on that child and you fainted. I brought you up here, remember?"
"You carried me up two flights of stairs?"
"Yes, I did."
"Sev?" she asked sleepily, "Why didn't you just use a levitation charm?"
She was asleep before he could answer and he was very grateful for that as he had no more idea now than he had had then why he had carried the unconscious woman, other than there'd always been something about Narcissa that had made him want to look after her. He kissed her head and left her to sleep, puling a blanket over her. He laid a hand on her stomach for a moment before smiling softly and going back downstairs.
*******
What do you think? Sorry I tempted you with baby names then didn't actually give any! I'm mean sometimes aren't I? Anyway next chapter's the birth, it's also the last chapter! There'll be an epilogue as well and as I said at the beginning I'll post them both together next week, or would you prefer a couple of days between them? That way I can give review responses you see and as I'm on holiday next week there'd be no danger of my falling behind with the update. Well tell me what you'd prefer and I promise faithfully to post both next week whether together or separate.
Please review!! Not many chances left!
