--The Bachelor's Curse--
Author's Note: Siobhan is pronounced Shi-vaun in Irish Gaelic
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Chapter IV
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July 29th : That night: The Burrow
The summer sun had begun to set and Harry's conscious had finally gotten the better of him. Tossing aside his pride, he lightly tapped on Ginny's bedroom door."Come in," her feminine voice called.
He opened the door slightly, "Hey, Ginny."
Sitting on her bed, she looked up from her journal. "Oh, it's you," her voice dropped, sounding very disappointed.
Harry knew he was in for fight. The only problem was he was great with spells, but horrid with girls. "Hope no one's writing back these days," he joked.
Ginny's eyes narrowed, "What do you want?"
Obviously, she didn't think he was being very funny. He came in and sat down on the edge of her bed, "I wanted to apologize."
Her response was a short, "Hmmppff."
"I was being a real jerk earlier today."
She snapped her journal closed, "Yes, you were."
"Anyway," he continued, looking down at his shoes, feeling very hot, "If you want to marry me, that's cool."
There was a long pause, then, "Get out!" Ginny yelled, her pale face turning crimson.
"What?" He'd just apologized, he just asked her to marry him, hadn't he? What more did she want?
"I said get out!" Her journal flew past his head, just missing its intended target.
He stood, still confused, "So you won't marry me?"
Her face contorted, her eyes narrowed even more, voice hot with fury, "I'd marry Snape before I'd marry you!"
He just exited her room just as a shoe hit the backside of the door with a swish and a thump; again just missing him. Harry sighed; this was going to be much more difficult than he thought. On the plus side, at least she had bad aim.
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Western Ireland: Connamara
Severus Snape hadn't seen Mary Rafferty in nearly twenty years; and thus, he wasn't quite where to start. He pulled out the last letter she'd sent him, the one warning him to, "never return", but there was no return address and no name for the convent she said she had joined. Finally, as the sun was beginning to set over England, he decided he would start with her old house, their old house, which had been located on the West coast of Ireland, in beautiful, desolate Connamara.
With a 'pop' of apparition, he was there. A cold whipping wind blew from the east, and the sun hung low over the Benbaun Moutains. He shivered slightly as he took in the haunting beauty of the bleak and rugged hills. Even after twenty years, he still found this the most beautiful place on earth. Perhaps because it beauty came not from prettiness, but from a deep and longing sadness, from sorrow and struggle; a naked elegance.
Before him, not thirty feet away, was her stone cottage with a thatched roof and blue shutters. Yellow lights brightened the windows, the front garden was tended, and he could smell the rich flavor of peat, rising from the chimney. Apparently, someone was still living there and perhaps that someone could tell him how to findhis wife.
He knocked and within moments a young woman with silky black hair, twinkling dark eyes and the clearest, most perfect pale skin he'd ever seen, opened the door, "Hello. Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for a woman who once lived here, Mary Raffery."
The girl smiled and opened the door wider, "Well, you've found her! Come on it."
The shock nearly knocked Snape off balance, but somehow he managed to nod his thanks and step through the threshold.
"She's in the kitchen, take a seat and I'll get her." The girl's smile was strangely familiar, yet he could not recall her from his past.
"Mum, you've got a visitor!"
Snape didn't sit, but stood in the small pallor by the crackling fire. The smells of peat, lavender and baking soda- bread rekindled old memories.
Finally a woman called, "Ah, hello!" As she rounded the corner. Suddenly, she froze as her blue eyes fell on the tall, dark figure in her living room.
She was nearly the same as he remembered her. Ocean blue eyes, thick rose red lips; thin and elegant in a blue sweater and skirt. The only change was her black hair, which pulled back at her neck, showed threads of silver.
Crash! The teacup she'd been holding shattered against the wooden floor boards, but she didn't move. At barely a whisper, she said his name, "Severus."
"Mary," He replied softly.
After that, they just stood starring at one another for what seemed an eternity.
"Mum, is everything alright?" The girl asked looking from her mother to the strange man by the fire.
Breaking the trance, the woman turned to the girl, "Yes pet, just the shock of seeing an old friend." Somehow she managed to smile, "Can you give us a moment."
The girl nodded and with another curious glance, disappeared in the kitchen.
"Mary, we need to talk." Severus said sullenly.
She motioned him to the sofa where they both sat and both awkward in their feelings towards one another.
"What brings you here?" Mary asked, her voice calm, but her chest heaving with anticipation.
He pulled a copy of the Daily Prophet from his frock coat, and pointed to the headline, "I need to know if we're still married."
She looked at the article, and then into his eyes, "Yes, in the eyes of the Church we are still married."
Severus sighed heavily, "Thank god." Then regaining his composure, he continued, "I suppose that's all I needed to know really. I'm sorry for upsetting you."
He made to stand, but she took his hand, pulling him back, "Severus, there's some things we need to talk about."
His dark eyes bore the pain of twenty years of confusion and hurt, could tonight change all that?
"I never joined the convent."
"What?" He barely mouthed.
Mary smoothed a black strand of hair from her face and looked up at him, tears pooling her eyes. "When I learned you were a wizard, when I found out all those horrible things you did for your Lord; you must understand, I was only nineteen, I was so frightened."
He nodded with understanding, releasing a great burden from his conscious, "I should never have kept it a secret from you. I came here to escape my past, to escape my demons and the lie I told was a part of that escape, but I never should have lied to you." It felt so good to tell her how he really felt, even if it was twenty years over due.
"Severus, if you hadn't of lied to me, then I'd never have fallen in love with you in the first place."
His heart broke at her words, the sorrow of lost love filling his usually numb heart .
"Oh God!" She cried, wiping tears from her eyes, "I had never been out of Connamara, I didn't know the ways of the world Severus. I spend my entire childhood in a Catholic orphanage. When I met you, I thought you were a fallen angel, and then when I learned the truth, I truly believed you were some demon from the pits of Hell. But now I know," her blue eyes pierced him, "I know you were just a man."
A strange wetness was blurring his vision, and he had a strong urge to touch to her, to hold her until she cried away every last tear. The stone, which had been his heart for the past twenty years, fractured and for the first time, in a long time, he remembered what it was like to love and what it was like to forgive.
"Mary, we both have our wrongs," he whispered as he took her hand.
She clutched it tightly, "But mine is worse, must worse."
He looked at her with confusion, when suddenly, the girl came back into the pallor, her eyes steely against him, "Is everything alright, mother?"
Mary gulped back some tears and reached out her hand, "Come here, Siobhan. I want you to meet someone."
Severus stood up, wiped back some of his own tears, straightened his frock coat and tried to smile at the girl.
"Siobhan, this is my husband, Severus Snape. This is your father."
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The Lupin HouseTonks opened the oven and gave the chocolate cake inside another poke as the sun ducked behind the horizon.
"You know Remus, wedding cakes are traditionally white."
With a snack of the oven door, he replied with a crooked smile, "And if you don't keep your fingers out of it there will be no cake at all because it won't rise."
Tonks laughed, "Alright, alright! Cease and desist already!"
He took up her goblet and poured her another glass of wine.
"You know I have some vacation time stored up. We should take a honeymoon to Spain or the Canary Islands."
"You know I can't afford that," he replied dryly.
"But I can; so, get use to it." Tonks took up his hand and kissed it, and added gently, "I know you married me for my money and I married you for..."
Remus tilted his head, and gave her a questioning stare at her long pause.
Tonks wrinkled her nose and replied, "Actually, I married you because of the curse, but I'm staying with you because you're the only one that can put up with me." Then she flushed, the wine making her words easy, "And you're pretty cute."
"You're drunk," he responded, leading her to the sofa.
"Like you're not! You just hide it better."
He smiled broadly, the wine was going straight to his head tonight, but he'd never tell her that, "Perhaps."
"Maybe while we're both inebriated this would be a good time to practice our kissing again. Then if anything does happen, we can just blame it on the alcohol," Tonks mused as she ran a hand up Remus's thigh.
Without flinching at her lasciviousness, he replied, "I think you may be a very naughty woman, Nymphadora Tonks." Then smiling broadly, "And I think I'm going to like it."
Returning his knowing look, "I know you're going to like it." She leaned forward to kiss him, but stopped an inch away from his lips, teasing, "And by the way, I'd prefer that you can me, Nymphadora Lupin."
With wine soaked lips and warm hearts, they kissed with the passion of new lovers.
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Western Ireland: Connamara: The Home of Mary Rafferty
Severus staggered, as he looked upon the beautiful girl standing before him, bringing his fingers to his lips in disbelief.
"I have a daughter?" He asked to Mary, who nodded back. How could he not have seen the resemblance before? She looked much like his own mother, and so much like himself, a striking combination of dark and light. He was speechless.
"How could you!" Siobhan yelled, her face reddening. "How could you leave us? Leave mum? Leave me?" Tears were racing down her cheeks.
He was dumbstruck, "I didn't know."
"We've been alone all this time and now, eighteen years later you just show up on our doorstep and want to be my father?! No, no!!!"
Mary rushed to throw her arms around her distraught child, "Siobhan, he didn't know about you."
The girl looked into her mother's eyes, answering with a pathetic, "What?"
"Severus and I had a very bad misunderstanding eighteen years ago. We hurt each other very badly and it was a wound that only time could heal."
The girl sobbed harder.
"Eighteen years ago, I told him our child died at birth, I was very foolish. Please forgive me."
She pulled away from her mother still sobbing and looked to the strange dark man, mopping his face with a handkerchief, "How long have you known about me?" She asked him between sobs.
Pain ready in his eyes, he replied, "As long as you have known about me."
Siobhan, still crying, took another step closer, gazing at his face. "I look like you," she finally said, her sobs ceasing.
"You look nothing like me, thank Merlin!" He chuckled, then reaching out, he stroked her smooth cheek, "You're beautiful." His old avarice dead, replaced by love and hope.
Without thought, Siobhan threw her arms around this ugly, dark man that, in some ways, so much resembled herself.
And although he'd never held anyone in his arms besides Mary, he knew exactly what to do. He buried his nose in her hair, happy that it wasn't greasy like his own, and happy that her nose was small and straight, and smiled. Siobhan was good and clean and kind and healthy and beautiful and he'd created this. His love for Mary had made her, and she was his flesh, his redemption.
Somehow, he knew that even if he never saw her again after this day, his life had had purpose; and right now, that purpose, this young woman, was weeping in his arms...
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Thanks for the reviews; you all make me laugh! BTW : Chelles, I think you have a dirty mind concerning McG & D :) , KittyWillow: sorry, but you're not in this story ;), however, I respect your Snape worship and Elevencherry: Draco isn't in this story either, but Neville is; please be patient!
More soon... Lyra