Disclaimer: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling. None of the individuals in the banner or the people who photographed them are in any way affiliated with me.

Pairing: Severus/Harry.

Rating: R

Warning: Mpreg.

Summary: Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.

Author's note: Since I've never written an mpreg before, I tried to make this bit as realistic as possible. I'm not sure how well I did on that account. So tell me how I did. On another note, I do not envy anyone who has ever had to name a child.

Author:Spirit

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CULPA INTERNUM

The Fault Within

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PROLOGUE

Harry careful closed the door to the fridge with the tip of his toes. Grumbling below his breath, he balanced a pre-packaged loaf of sliced bread, a pre-packaged slab of ham, cheddar cheese and a jug of orange juice, and carried them carefully to his dining table. He yearned to pull out his wand once he got there but luckily the fact that he had no more fingers available to pull out the chair meant that his fingers were still too occupied to go casting about his person for his wand. In his condition though, he wasn't supposed to be using magic. He was delicate enough as it were and if eight months and some weeks without magic hadn't rendered him insane it was obvious that he was hardly going to lose his mind now.

In his condition.

Harry chuckled out loud at that thought. It was still so strange to be thinking along those lines. But, while he laughed to himself his now free hand moved to lightly glide over the protrusion of his abdomen.

In the history of the world no other man had ever laid claim to this particular condition, and after everything that Harry had been through for nearly nine months he had a pretty good idea why nature chose women to carry out this particular task. Men were wimps of the biggest kind. They may act as if the world was created from their fingertips but it was women who were the brave, strong, completely under-appreciated gender. Pregnancy was no drop in the bucket. Harry should know, he had willingly decided to subject himself to this unique experience.

"To women," he laughed, raising his glass of orange juice to the empty air before him. "To Hermione and Ginny, Luna and Lavender, and every woman I have ever known. Wouldn't you all like to see me now?"

It had begun as a promise to himself.

There had been so many deaths in the war that for the year that Harry had sought out Voldemort, he had made a thousand silent promises to himself. That if he lived one more day he would never again forget to appreciate the beauty of a starlit sky. That if he managed to save Ron's life he would personally hunt down the Death Eaters that had attacked them. That if Hermione didn't die the next morning, he would somehow convince his best friends to go home where they were safe. It was all centered on life and death. For a year he bargained one for the other and he didn't always get what he wanted. There were things that he would have given his soul to see happen, but there were other things that he would never have expected to happen.

Like the moment that Severus Snape had been cursed on his behalf, and it was the opening that Harry needed to destroy Voldemort.

Harry had made many promises to himself but as he looked down on the still form of his former Potions professor he knew that the wizarding world had a right to know about Snape's sacrifice. He had fought the Wizengamot to see what Snape had done, using his memories to convince them, but even being told that Snape was a war hero, had not been enough. Perhaps he had gone a little crazy then. Gratitude and a war did strange things to the mind. A powerful wizard such as himself wanting to have a child at eighteen would have been perfectly understandable, but for the fact that he intended to bear the child himself. And more importantly, he intended for the child to be sired by Snape, because he couldn't think of a better way to preserve the man's legacy than to provide an heir.

The one Healer that he had divulged his plans to immediately told him to seek psychological help. But after months of tests both Muggle and magical, it became apparent very quickly that he was not so much mad as he was determined to repay the wizard's bond, even if it was in a very unconventional manner. He was powerful enough. In fact, his power made it possible. The male form was not designed to carry a child through gestation and it was more likely that he would die from his internal organs rupturing from trying to accommodate not only another organ, but another being. Harry spent a few weeks working with his Healer to tweak a fertility potion in just the right way, though neither of them believed that they had managed it until the second trimester when, apart from the usual swellings and aches, Harry had not died of internal bleeding. The more difficult part was acquiring the pint of Snape's blood that was needed to perform the ritual that would result in the actual fertilization. But as luck would have it, Snape had spent a lot of time in the Muggle world while he spied for the Order and there had been a time when he had been coerced somehow into parting with blood. Harry had been ecstatic at the find.

"But the bastard couldn't even stay dead, could he?" Harry mused into his third glass of juice and his second sandwich.

Five months after he had been proclaimed missing in action and therefore assumed to have died from the curse, Snape was found to be alive and going to be just fine. He had been in a coma for three of the five months and some Healers at St. Mungo's had just happened upon him lying in the Muggle hospital. They transferred him to the magical hospital and put him under intensive care for two months, not wanting to risk telling the world that he was alive, only to have him die again. When the news was finally released, it had been too late for Harry to undo what he had done.

So in a very un-Gryffindor manner Harry fled from England to the United States. His secret embarrassment and shame had him cursing all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, but he had grown attached to the idea of having this baby and after spending all those months where he had finally done the impossible, it was difficult to imagine not holding his gift in his arms.

So this was where he was, two months later sitting in his dining room, single, barefoot and magically pregnant by a wizard who would no doubt curse him six ways to hell if he ever found out.

Harry groaned aloud, and as if in sympathy a small twinge of pain shot through his stomach.

He absently rubbed a hand across his belly again, in a gesture that was meant to soothe his unborn child. Rising from the chair slowly, he gathered the leftovers of his snack and tried to tamper down the ridiculous idea that he probably looked like a polar bear waddling towards the refrigerator.

He barely managed to close the fridge door again when a stronger slice of pain ripped across his insides and he leaned unto his kitchen counter, gasping.

"You will not do this now," he groaned, but his body refused to listen as yet another contraction ripped its way through him.

He let out a string of expletives as his fingers gripped the edge of the counted so tightly that his knuckles became white.

"Harry?"

Salvation came in the form of the only person who would understand. He would never again be so grateful, as he did in that moment, for the instincts that Healers developed. The instinct to know when a patient needed them.

Harry ground his teeth and dragged himself down the hallway and into his living room where, standing before his lit fire, his Healer raised one eyebrow at his obvious plight.

"You don't look so well Mr. Potter," she teased, although she was already steering him towards the closest bedroom. "Just breathe the way I taught you and try not to push. I know the urge is strong but, though you might have achieved this particular phenomena, try to remember that certain parts of you are still very male."

He gave her a dirty look, filled with all the curses that the quickly increasing pain was wiping from his memory.

"How far apart are the contractions?" Harry looked at her blankly and she laughed, obviously enjoying herself. "Well never mind then. I'll just find out for myself."

Her warm fingers pushed his clothes away so that she could properly view the anomaly that was his stomach. Harry groaned and gasped as the length and intensity of the contractions increased. His fingers gripped one of her hands. She merely laughed again.

"Be very grateful that I don't have to wait for dilation," she said almost soothingly. "Don't worry, I'll be as quick as I can to perform the birthing ritual."

Three hours later, she was still chanting and Harry was sure that he had skipped purgatory and gone straight to hell.

o

He woke up an hour later from the depths of unconsciousness and immediately ran his fingers down the length of his stomach.

It was perfectly flat, even slightly muscular, in just the way that a nineteen year old male Quidditch player's body would feel. There was no indication that it had ever showed signs of being any other way. Harry felt a hollowed sensation wash over him. For nine months he had carried the weight of another human being inside of him, and now there was nothing to show for it.

Well almost nothing.

"Oh look, he's awake." The whispered words came from across the room. "Your daddy may be the most powerful wizard that ever lived but that didn't stop him from passing out stone cold from a little pain. Don't ever let him forget how hard he had to fight for you, little girl."

Harry groaned while he tried to sit up in the bed.

"Little pain, my arse," he grumbled, but other parts of the small monologue caught up with him. "It's a girl?"

And she was there, being held out to him, wrapped in a conjured up blanket.

Her tiny fingers were curled into fists, one hand raised to her mouth. She had Harry nose. A perfect tiny replica of it. This was something for which he was incredibly grateful. Her tuft of hair was jet black, still too early to discern which one of her parents she got the color from. But, when she opened her bright eyes, Harry smiled. They were as black as midnight and it was only as he reached to take her that he noticed the flecks of green hidden in their depth.

"Hello little angel," he whispered, unable to take his eyes off her perfect little face. "If your father was here, what would he call you?"

Shaelan Haylee Potter-Snape.

"Shae." He stroked her hair. "A gift."

He held her gently against his chest, breathing in her baby scent. No one but him and his Healer knew that this little girl existed and no one would ever know, especially not Snape. He had done a rash thing by letting his respect and gratitude for Snape spill over into the decision of having her, but he swore softly against her hair that he would protect her. If it meant giving up his status as the person who gave birth to her - no one would believe it anyway - he would make sure that she never felt like something to be ogled.

"It's just the two of us now," Harry murmured, kissing her forehead lightly. "It can't possibly be that hard to do."

o-X-o