Chapter 38
"You look fucking disgusting."
Charlotte's eyes narrowed at the sight of a familiar, blonde head stooping beneath the thick sheet hanging over the apothecary's door.
Louisa brandished hands filled with a pink, cardboard box and a drink carrier of paper cups that smelled suspiciously like coffee. She set them on the floor before she dropped onto her own backside across a collage of paint samples spread across the floor.
"Dom has me drinking coffee now," the healer groused as she handed Charlotte a cup, "I told him I don't even like coffee. I'm sure he's putting something in it. Now I just crave a cup all through my shift and go home and make a giant pot of it and can't sleep for hours."
Milky, sugared coffee coated Charlotte's tongue as she reached across the paint samples to pop open the pink box and extract a fruit-filled Danish. She chewed as Lou perused the paint samples, a burgundy painted nail tapping colors in approval as she drank from her own paper cup.
"I like this color scheme. The olive works nicely with this shade of brown."
Flipping over the paint sample for a name, Louisa's eyes rolled, "Café Au Lait, of course."
Charlotte grinned around a mouthful of apricot preserves and sugared bread.
"Where is Severus? I thought he was coming by today."
Lou peered around the shop. Paint samples were painted in stripes against the refinished walls, fabric swatches were draped over a table in various shades of olive as prospective window treatments. A few workers were finishing staining the new hardwood floors in the office a dark shade of Jacobean.
Pyrus, Charlotte's new house elf, was dutifully sweeping after them. The long broomstick looked awkward in the especially short elf's hands, and he had whacked the contractor no less than three times with hurried, stammered apologies.
"He went around the corner," Charlotte popped the remainder of her Danish into her mouth with a satisfied hum, "Something about a textbook."
Her friend nodded, sipping away at her coffee, "How did he like the place?"
Severus was, surprisingly, pleased. He nodded at the darker choice of flooring, agreeing that it was the smarter option should spills occur. After she had given him the general tour, he busied himself for a period of time looking through boxes of cauldrons and scales.
Charlotte knew that he had no less than a half dozen lesson plans to finish. Slughorn had evidently destroyed those that Severus sent along with him at the beginning of the term. His students were – by his own words – likely to fail all of their examinations.
She doubted that would actually happen.
Fear was an especially effective tool, and Snape's students lived under a mix of extreme terror and admiration for their bristly potion's master.
It was a bit cute, Charlotte thought as she chewed.
Severus merely wanted his students to do well. He wasn't a fun professor like Flitwick or Sprout because potions were not especially fun. They could be dangerous. A mistake or mishap in the dungeons could send students to the hospital wing. He was inherently strict because he cared for his students' safety, despite his muttered threats about dousing them in various brews.
"Snape sent me an owl," Louisa fished out her own Danish, "I'm not sure I'm supposed to say anything."
Charlotte sighed, "Then don't."
"He told me to make you an appointment with me this weekend. Get your stuff done at St. Mungo's before he returns to Hogwarts."
Apricot preserves glued her teeth together. The sugared, pillow-soft dough was rapidly forming a similar adhesive between her tongue and the roof of her mouth.
"What?"
Lou's eyebrows rose as she shoved a mouthful of pastry into her own mouth.
"I was surprised. You hadn't said anything to me," the healer spoke after a moment, "You two have only been disgusting for a few months."
Charlotte failed in the effort to conceal her eyeroll.
Louisa Rosier had many wonderful qualities. She was a fiercely loyal friend. She could be patient and kind – when she wanted to be. For months she juggled her new position as Head Healer in the maternity ward of St. Mungo's with taking care of Charlotte and, occasionally, Severus when he drove himself to exhaustion.
She also thought that Charlotte had likely suffered brain damage. The symptoms being Charlotte's attraction toward Severus and her rueful daydreams of a family. A man who cared so much about his students, Charlotte rationalized, would likely be a wonderful father.
But those daydreams had been kept largely between the healer and Charlotte. She didn't want to bring the subject up again with Severus. Not when he had so adamantly insisted on their relationship blooming into something other than how it had started. For a time, it seemed as though they were watering a dead, shriveled plant. Things were different now, but it was only seven months ago that they went two years without so much as speaking to one another.
"Well, I made it for Friday. My Saturday was entirely booked – everyone gets knocked up over the holiday – and I've taken Sunday off to go see Dom's parents."
A brow rose on Charlotte's face.
"Shut up. It isn't what you're thinking. Dom doesn't want another wife, and I don't think I ever want to get married. It's their anniversary. We're having supper."
The relationship between Dominic Avery and Louisa Rosier had certainly bloomed. It had grown into a ripe, fat flower. For all that Lou complained about the giant shows of affection from Dominic, she still carried home every bouquet of roses he sent to her office and dried a single stem from each of them to collect in a drawer at the bottom of her dresser.
That, Charlotte thought, counted as disgusting by Louisa's measurements.
"You'll probably be stuck in bed for a few days, so it's nice that you have a new mattress," Lou continued, unbothered by the unyielding brow on Charlotte's face, "It'll feel like your uterus is ripping off the nursery wallpaper but with more enthusiasm."
Charlotte's brow dropped, "How are you even a healer?"
"Probably the lowered exam requirements during the war."
Lou smiled as she chewed her breakfast pastry and sipped at her coffee, her eyes returning to the collage of paint samples and squares of fabric swatches.
"I like this linen one."
A shouted yelp came from the office. It was quickly followed by a stammered stream of apologies, and Charlotte sighed. Pushing herself from the floor, she limped over to where the general sound of the high-pitched elven voice wailed.
"Pyrus," she called gently, watching the house elf grovel on the floor with weary eyes, "Come here."
Sniveling, Pyrus lifted himself to his feet. The contractor fixed her with a sharp glare and marched back into her office where the thick fumes of hardwood stain were wafting. As Pyrus reached her, he wiped his huge green eyes on the sleeve of his curtain remnant toga and sucked in a loud, hiccupping breath.
"Pyrus is sorry, Mistress Snape," Pyrus wailed, the dams reopened at his eyes, "Pyrus is a stupid, stupid elf who deserves to be cursed at! Yelled at! Pummeled!"
Charlotte's eyes fluttered close. Imaginary fingers reached for the taut thread which held her patience.
For weeks she made painstaking effort to smooth the house elf's worries. She was not like his previous mistress. She would not beat him. The greatest punishment she supposed she had given him was by taking away his punishments in the first place. Pyrus seemed to live for discipline. Charlotte just hadn't quite figured out the best way to create that in a healthy way.
"Please go down to the basement," Charlotte watched as the house elf blew his nose on his toga, "Your punishment is to dust the storeroom until I can't find a single cobweb."
Shockingly green eyes peered up at her, suspicious, "Mistress is giving Pyrus a punishment?"
"Yes, this is a punishment."
Skepticism showed in the twitch of his long, bat-like ears.
"Have you even seen how many cobwebs are downstairs, Pyrus?"
Louisa's wry voice carried from where her fingers were sorting through paint samples, "It's practically an acromantula lair down there."
Despite all of Louisa's pitfalls and general distaste for the way Charlotte treated her house elf, she was not an unkind woman. She knew a desperate, thinning patience Charlotte from the quiet sharpness in her voice.
Bat ears bounced as Pyrus nodded eagerly, "Thank you, Mistress! Thank you!"
She watched him scamper towards the basement stairwell door and throw it open, effectively whacking another worker in the forehead.
Thankfully, he appeared not to notice.
Bibsy, Charlotte thought absently, had been the same way in the beginning. Skeptical, fearful, craving capital punishment as though it were a bar of fine chocolate. Over time those had faded until her oversized ears had fluttered in excitement each time Charlotte poked into her cabinet with cups of tea and asked for her company in the sitting room.
Hopefully, Pyrus would come around, too.
Charlotte retrieved her cup of coffee from the ground and sipped as she watched Louisa sorting slips of samples into stacks. Louisa alternated her sorting with shoving a frosted, cherry Danish into her mouth and taking large swallows of coffee that were most definitely burning her mouth.
"When did he send it? The owl?"
Louisa shrugged, "I've been staying a few days at Dom's. It was there when I came home yesterday."
Chewing her coffee cup lid, Charlotte glanced at the heavy, canvas curtain covering the front doorway. A new door was scheduled to be delivered for the afternoon and the constant billowing of frigid January air was only partially stemmed by the thick fabric. Before Severus left for Madame Malkin's, he set his wand on the drape, and suddenly it was as good as a door.
It was what Louisa would call a quiet act of affection.
Severus was not one for long monologues or declarations of his love for her. He thought public displays of affection were embarrassing. While he could be affectionate at home – tucking blankets around her legs, sitting in the bathroom while she showered to discuss their schedules for the day, and kissing her forehead at opportune moments – he was not, in a general sense, particularly physically affectionate.
Instead, Severus's love language was actions.
It was in the way he charmed the stained canvas at the shop's door to keep her warm while she waited for the door delivery. It was how he brewed oolong tea in the morning, despite not particularly caring for it himself. How he procured an unused bookshelf from his basement to put in their bedroom to store her growing collection of romance novels.
Now, it was by writing her best friend to ask her to make an appointment for Charlotte's fertility procedures despite not having any great personal desire for children.
"I've decided I'll be godmother, of course," Louisa flicked a crumb from her blouse, "I'm a much better option than Narcissa. You don't want your baby pecked to death by their fucking peacocks."
Charlotte snorted, "Draco seems to be doing just fine."
"That's no small miracle."
Not for the first time, Charlotte wondered how Louisa ever procured the idea of becoming a maternity healer. It didn't seem to her taste, with its need for a general sense of caring and matronly behavior. Lou was about as matronly as a grindylow.
A week ago, Louisa had dragged her down to Diagon Alley for tea with Narcissa at Rosa Lee's. It was an old tea shop, one that Charlotte could recall sitting in with Walburga during her school years. The one Wilhemina Wilkes had yanked her from to concoct their scheme to free her from Grimmauld Place.
Narcissa had brought her platinum-haired son with her. Despite the understanding of time, Charlotte had not pictured him larger than the last time she had seen him when he was little more than a drooling toddler. Draco was six years old now, hardly a baby, the same age as Molly's Ronald. He was a soft-spoken, affectionate child who had little qualms about personal space. No sooner had Charlotte seated herself across from Narcissa had the boy come to sit next to her. By the end of tea, he was shyly declaring to his mother that Charlotte was his girlfriend.
Something Severus had found hysterical. As much as Severus could find anything hysterical.
Already, Narcissa's owl had graced their windowsill twice inviting her to Malfoy Manor for lunch and a playdate with Draco. Narcissa addressed her invitations to 'Aunt Charlie', and an unintelligible scrawl was likely meant to be Draco's signature.
The day after Severus returned to Hogwarts, she was expected at the Malfoy Manor for a late brunch. A fat bag of sweets sat on her bookshelf for Draco. She'd dutifully signed the tag 'Aunt Charlie'.
"Just don't ask Remus to be godfather. I know you adore him, but Dominick is the obvious choice. He won't accidentally eat your baby."
Charlotte's thread of patience was pulling too taut.
Despite a good night's sleep, she woke with an aching, crampy hip. Under the cold, damp weather outside it was expected. But halfway to the bathroom for her shower, she'd tripped and slammed herself into a wall. When Severus had come lunging out of their bedroom to help her back to her feet, her head had promptly collided with his knee.
Now, a dull throb continued just beneath her forehead to join the tempo of the cramping in her calf and the stiffness at her knee. Rather than twenty-five, she felt as though the numbers had swapped in her sleep to make her fifty-two.
She regretted declining Severus's offer of a tablet for her head before they left that morning.
"Severus doesn't even want a baby," Charlotte muttered around her coffee cup.
Lou's blue eyes lifted to watch her. Her shaped, taupe eyebrows drew together, and her shockingly, ruby-red mouth thinned.
"Do you even want one anymore?"
On most days, Charlotte supposed she didn't.
She woke up in the morning to the scent of oolong, freshly brewed by Severus, being placed on her bedside table. He sat on the bed while she dressed for the day and she could tell whether he liked what she wore by the angle of his jaw, the subtle movement of his eyes. They had spent too much time in the other's mind to not have some unspoken language between them. After she dressed, they had breakfast together. She read her books and he turned open his paper. He read half and descended into the basement. Sometimes, Lou would come to help her with her stretches if she weren't scheduled for a shift at the hospital. Charlotte brought lunch down to the basement for Severus, and in the evening, he came up for dinner and to listen to a show on the radio with her.
It was a soft, peaceful life. One that she spent most of her youth fitfully craving.
Soon it would be ending.
In two weeks, Severus would return with his students on the Hogwarts Express. He would remain in Scotland until June. The summer holiday lasted two months. In September, he would return to the castle for another three months. A continuous, rolling cycle.
She would be alone, and on days when she spent too much time thinking about time and how much of it was left, the desire for a baby consumed her until it stung at her eyes.
Maybe it was unhealthy. Maybe it wasn't a true, genuine solution. A baby wasn't a tool. A baby was a person. Someone who would fill her life with responsibility and an innate need for her to remain limber and alive. Something that the obscurus in Charlotte combatively worked against.
"I don't know."
Louisa's taupe eyebrows lifted impossibly high on her forehead, "Really?"
"I don't want to talk about this right now," Charlie snapped as she resumed her position on the freshly waxed floor, "My head feels like it's on the verge of exploding. My leg feels like it's going to just snap off like an icicle and I can hardly breathe through these fucking fumes-!"
As she spoke, Louisa's hand darted into her purse. She fished around and procured a green bottle of tablets. Popping two out of the bottle, she thrust them in Charlotte's direction and rose to her feet to poke her head into the office and ask the contractor to open the office window. Her wand tapped the doorframe with a white noise charm as she returned to where Charlotte pinched the bridge of her nose.
A cool hand pressed against her forehead, "You've got a bit of a lump here. Tell me what's been going on in this lumpy head of yours."
Charlotte cleared her throat and recounted her morning. Every excruciatingly embarrassing detail from the wall to the sound of Severus's solid kneecap colliding with her forehead. The worries that plagued her about babies and the obscurus, too. It was what Severus himself suggested. To stop hiding how she was feeling from others. To be unapologetically honest and forthcoming to the people who loved her. Lou, as prickly and hard-edged as she was, loved Charlotte. She was a safe pair of ears to listen to Charlotte's whining.
"Look, Charlie," Lou said when she was finished, her voice a soft sigh, "If Severus didn't want a baby, he wouldn't have sent me an owl. I don't care what you have to say otherwise. Maybe he didn't have any burning desire for fatherhood, but you know what? Most of the wizards I see in my department don't."
The healer's frown deepened, "But I think you should talk to Severus about this, too. Maybe you need to hear it from his own mouth why he's done it rather than imagining up all these scenarios."
Lou fished a curl of sawdust from Charlotte's hair as she chewed her lip.
Several minutes later, Severus reappeared with a shopping bag from Madam Malkin's. He blinked when Louisa dragged Charlotte to her feet and shoved her towards the wizard, ordering him to take her home. She promised to stay at the shop until the door was delivered and the contractor finished, adding that she would even escort Pyrus back to Finch Street when he finished his cobwebs.
In the alley, Severus kept his dark eyes on her. They flickered to the soft limp in her leg, the wince in her eyes each time a sliver of sunlight pierced through the gray sky. When they left the Leaky Cauldron, his arm wrapped around her midsection and a familiar tug placed them just outside the rusted, iron gate of Spinner's End.
Inside Charlotte kicked off her trainers. Her fingers kneaded against the taut bundle of muscles in her hip as she moved to settle on the sofa. Severus disappeared upstairs with his shopping bag and returned with the romance novel she left on her nightstand.
But three pages in, she looked at Severus turning through his newspaper at the kitchen table and found herself unable to wait for a second longer.
"Why did you tell Lou to make me an appointment with her?"
Severus's long fingers turned the page of his paper. His dark eyes watched her above the crimped edge of the front page. A subtle twitch tugged at his lips.
"I see that Rosier has the same bad habits as her brother," he said finally, folding the paper onto the table and turning in his seat to face her, "She can't keep her mouth shut."
He rubbed the side of his face.
"How was I not going to know? We were going to go to St. Mungo's, she was going to knock me out with some potions?"
A wry grimace crossed Snape's face, "I was going to discuss it with you this evening."
"It's close enough now."
Snape leaned forward until his elbows were on his knees, giving her a sighting of the padding of muscle across his chest through the loose collar of his shirt. From his position, she could appreciate the thick cords of veins in his arms and the long grace of his fingers.
She briefly wondered if he was doing it intentionally. There was no way he didn't know how he looked sitting like that.
"When we last talked about this, I told you I needed to see some improvement," Severus's voice was a mashup of soft and sharp, "Do you remember what I said?"
Of course, she remembered.
He had been seated at that same chair, at that same table. It seemed a lifetime ago, but only two years and a few months had passed. It was a chasm of time between them. One that she felt alternatively grateful and resentful for. Grateful for the time it had given her to accept what had become of her. Resentful that it had been necessary at all.
"You said that if I got better – if I got rid of the obscurus – and we got better, you would do it."
Her husband's lips twitched.
She had been unsuccessful in her attempt to keep her growing irritation from her voice. It climbed from her mouth in sharp edges and enunciation.
"But I haven't gotten rid of it," she snapped, irritated at his exasperated expression, "I'm still an obscurial."
As Severus stood, she became acutely reminded of how tall he was. He towered over her as he approached her pillow nest on the sofa. All his sharp edges were on display, the harsh blade of his nose, the razor cut to his jaw. His thumb was gentle and warm as it brushed across her jaw and fit itself into the hollow behind her ear.
"I've not said that I want a child with you within any deadline, Charlotte," Snape murmured softly, "I merely wanted to convey that I was open to the possibility. That I'd prefer to have options to choose from when the time arises."
Something hot and electric fizzed in her belly, "What?"
He leaned forward until his lips brushed the curve of her jaw. She could smell the lingering scent of bergamot and vetiver that clung to his skin. A cologne she'd purchased for him two years ago. One that he kept replenished with regularity. She liked it on him, she thought. It was a reassuring, grounding smell. It smelled like home.
"I know that you're mine, Charlotte," his voice was soft velvet in her ear, "I know that you belong here, with me. That you belong in my bed when I wake up in the morning, and before I go to sleep."
Her eyelids fluttered as he pressed a kiss to the hollow his retreating thumb occupied. Warmth fluttered in her belly as his fingers brushed the back of her neck.
"But that thing in here doesn't. It needs to understand what I'm willing to do to keep you. That there is nothing I would not give to ensure that you remain here with me."
When he pulled away, his dark eyes were seas of obsidian.
"I don't know what we will make a good family. But I know that you want one. That you need something more than this house and me. So, I'll give it to you. If you promise to stay with me, I'll give you a family."
Louisa often laughed at her for being attracted to Severus. She, like so many others, saw nothing but the shine of his feather-soft hair and thought it was greasy. She looked at the strong length of his nose and saw something beaky, rather than dignified. But Lou didn't know the constellations of moles on his face or the way his dark eyes held tiny galaxies in them. Lou never looked at the cords of veins in his hands as they stretched taught beneath his skin. She didn't appreciate the edge of his jaw or the deep rumble of his voice in the morning.
Charlotte didn't want her to. She didn't want any of them to see him like this, with darkened eyes and an expression of reverence on his face.
This Severus belonged to her.
AN: Hello, Snarlies! I hope you all are well and enjoying the incoming Spring weather! I am READY for some sunshine. Someone recently asked me if I have a song for Snarlie and I do! It is Someone to Stay by Vancouver Sleep Clinic. It's what I listen to whenever I write fluffy scenes with the two of them. Let me know if you listen to it! I'd love to know what you think or if you have something for me to listen to!
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