"She bruises, coughs, she splutters pistol shots
Hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks
She's morphine, queen of my vaccine
My love, my love, love, love, la, la, la"
"Breezeblocks" – Alt-J
The stillness of the post-operative recovery room was disturbed by the loud screech of wheels. A common enough occurrence, given the room's purpose, and one which heralded the arrival of a new patient being wheeled in to begin the process of convalescence.
The nurse on duty had taken care to cover the newcomer with a light blanket, to warm her legs, which had been fitted with a pair of pressure cuffs that, in a steady rhythm, filled with air and then released.
Nurse Maria Alaylay was a stout woman, of slightly older than middle age, and had worked within the obstetric care unit for the majority of her career. Consequently, she had a sunny bedside disposition, a nurturing spirit, and she took especial pains to see that the women in her care were comfortable.
She bustled about around the brunette woman's bed, affixing another pressure cuff to her arm, this one set to go off at intervals given the woman's history of high-blood pressure—a history which had precipitated both her surgery and her hospital stay—and gently palpating the poor girl's empty abdomen, her fingers seeking to locate her uterus and to check its firmness.
"Mmm—where?" The girl before her mumbled, her eyes cracking open and blinking sluggishly.
"Hello to you, lovely—you've had a bit of a scare there, haven't you?" Nurse Alaylay clucked, moving so she was beside Hermione's head on the bed. "You're at The Royal London Hospital, dear. We've moved you to the recovery room for now. Once I can see that you'll be okay we're going to take you down to the ward: I know there are a couple of people who have been in a bit of a fuss asking after you."
Hermione moved her jaw slowly, her mouth feeling dreadfully dry and her lips cracked. "Harry? And Gin?" She rasped, her brow creasing. She felt mildly surprised that they'd have made it to her so quickly—if her employer had reached out to them as her emergency contacts, they'd likely have still been at work, unable to answer the phone in Grimmauld Place.
The nurse frowned and looked at her with a bit of discomfort. "No dear, your husband. He's been a bit of a terror really, though he sat quiet enough when the girls at the visiting station told him he'd either have to pipe down or leave..."
"My husband?" Hermione groaned, her vision blurring once more. "I'm not..."
Nurse Alaylay watched with an amused grin as the woman drifted off into sleep once more. It sometimes took an hour or more for the general anesthesia to wear off in its entirety. She bustled about, recording the numbers the monitor read out for both heart rate and blood pressure, which was finally approaching normal, even if it was still slightly elevated.
She moved to the IV drip stand, first collecting her full bag of urine and replacing it with a new empty bag which she hooked up to the catheter, and then switching out the intravenous antibiotic for a bag of fresh. The girl's urine appeared to be far too dark and cloudy, which had necessitated the addition of fluids.
All of her notes, and the bag of urine, she passed on to another nurse who had come in to collect them for analysis. Mrs. Snape had very nearly died from the complications that came with her eclampsia, so they had resolved to keep her under observation in the ward for several days.
Once she was determined to be stable, a team wheeled her sleeping form into the ward where she could be cared for longer-term.
Hermione woke again after another hour had passed, and tossed her head to the side, trying to pull together her errant thoughts into something that was possible to interpret and convey verbally. She could scarcely remember anything beyond going in to work that morning... how had she made it into hospital?
Her surroundings took a frustratingly long time to sharpen. For several moments all she could make out were dark blurs, made all the more stark by the fact that the sun was now low in the sky.
The closest blur, a hulking black shape that was situated perhaps a meter to her left, shifted as she moved about.
'What on earth..?'
She made to sit up but was bowled over by a searing pain—one which seemed to encompass her entire lower torso—and which seemed to radiate outward, as if it would proceed to continue a rent seam from its origin out and down her thighs. Her resulting gasp brought the leering shape to her left closer, as a familiar hand reached to press down against her chest.
"Don't move, you'll make it worse."
Her lips moved, but no sound came out as she hadn't actually thought of anything to say.
"Here," the faceless voice continued. He, for it was clearly a he, began fumbling with something on the edge of the bed, and slowly, her body was elevated into a reclining seated position, the bed having shifted beneath her by some motorised mechanism.
As she blinked at the man, rather owlishly, his face and features finally sharpened into view, and she was confronted with the vision of Severus Snape: ex-Professor, one-time-lover, a man whom she'd considered a friend for the brief period they had interacted...
What was he to her now?
Her brain was filled with too many questions for her mouth to articulate in any sensible order, so she struggled to figure out which she should voice first, when suddenly a small, niggling awareness that had been pestering at the edge of her perception broke through.
Her hand seized at the blanket over her stomach, feeling flatness where once there had been a modest bump.
"Where—!?" she gasped, her face contorting in horrified realization, "Where's my baby?"
Snape's face looked grim, and had Hermione not been preoccupied by the fact that there was now an emptiness in her where previously she'd been carrying a child, she might have been concerned over his reaction. Her hands twisted in the material covering her, feeling bile rise in her throat. "Where... where is it?" She demanded, "Where's the baby?"
The man before her looked to be taking a deep, calming breath before he leveled his gaze on her, his expression deadly serious. "They delivered you of him a couple of hours ago,"
"Him?" Hermione's voice was rising with her hysteria.
"Yes, him." Snape continued, repressively, "He was very small—too young under normal circumstances,"
"Where is he!?" she cried, reaching out a hand to claw at Snape's arm.
His hands caught her own and he squeezed them firmly between his palms. "Hermione, stop, I wasn't finished. Our baby had to be put in... well. I hardly know how to describe it. An artificial womb of sorts, I should guess—"
Hermione began to heave with dry sobs, the motion of it feeling like it was ripping at her caesarian incision. "He's alive?"
Snape nodded, and finally his eyes softened, seeming to have realised now that their son's survival hadn't been a foregone conclusion. "Yes, he's alive."
For several moments neither said a thing. Snape watched the woman before him with a deep, abiding sense of disquiet as she tried to stifle her keening moans. Why she was crying was both obvious and, at the same time, not entirely clear.
Was it for the lost potential of having carried the small boy longer? Was it for his current internment in an isolated incubator pod situated in the NICU? Perhaps out of relief that he was still with them. Or was it terror that, given his delicate constitution, he wouldn't be for long?
Neither of them knew, nor did they want to voice aloud their fears and concerns. The new parents merely grasped hands, a thin, transient lifeline in a terrifying and roiling sea of uncertainty.
"Can I... can we see him?" She asked, her voice breathy after so much crying.
"I am given to understand that he's been sedated."
Hermione's lower lip wobbled, "Sedated? Why?"
Snape looked uncomfortable, "When I spoke to the doctors, they explained that he would need oxygen, and tubes for food and medication. The sedation is to make sure he doesn't thrash about and dislodge them."
"So I can't... I can't hold him?"
As she asked, there came a knock on the door, and Nurse Alaylay bustled in, a clipboard clutched to her breast. "Hello in here, everyone alright? I see you've woken up!"
Snape looked to the nurse and skewered her with a piercing glare. "When can we see the baby?"
Faltering ever so slightly under Snape's glower, Maria stiffened and assumed a business-like demeanor. "We can discuss that in a moment, Mr. Snape. I have a few items I need to run through with your wife first,"
Hermione started, looking askance at the nurse, "Wife—?"
Her hand was squeezed sharply, and when she went to look at Snape, he was giving her a look full of significance. One which clearly warned her to be silent.
She looked down at their clasped hands, and for the first time, noticed the curious addition of a silver-toned ring on the third finger of her left hand, and perhaps even more strangely, an identical ring on Snape's own left-hand ring finger. She shot the man next to her a look of mixed exasperation and annoyance. So that was how he had come to be beside her. How he had convinced the doctors to allow him to speak on their baby's behalf. The man was a wily bastard.
She almost snorted. Evidently, her husband was a wily bastard.
Though, she thought with no little wayward amusement, not a bastard in literal truth.
The nurse was making note of her vitals, checking the cuff about her arm, and spent a few moments flicking the plastic tubing that fed into the needle placed in her wrist. "Any headache?"
Hermione shook her head. "No."
"How's your pain? Can you feel it now, or only when you move suddenly?"
"Er..." she thought for a second and sat still. "Not really... maybe a bit of a dull ache,"
"You can press this button here for a bit of a stronger dose of medication—though it won't go past a certain level,"
She felt Snape pinch her hand, and when she glanced at him, he gave her another one of his heavy looks. He shook his head softly, perhaps to warn her off of dosing herself again.
"When can we see the baby?" This time it was Hermione who asked, her face pinched with worry.
"Very soon, dear," the nurse reassured her, patting her shoulder. "We'll have to get you a chair. While it's good for you to try and get on your feet a bit, it's a long ways away to the NICU and I've no doubt that you won't be up for walking such a distance for a while."
"Severus said you were feeding him through a tube,"
"Yes, he's on a specialised high-calorie formula,"
"So I can't... I can't feed him myself?"
Nurse Alaylay squeezed at her shoulder once more, "We can certainly get you started with a lactation specialist and a breast pump. The specialist can explain more when she comes in to speak to you, and for now you can pump your milk to get the supply started and in order to supplement what your baby is taking in in formula. Given how small he is, however, I have a feeling that his paediatrician will want him on the high-calorie mix for a while longer."
The witch frowned, her mouth twisting with anxiety. "How... how small is he, exactly?"
The nurse looked down at the clipboard before answering, "Just under three pounds,"
"Less than three!?" Hermione gasped. Next to her she saw out of the corner of her eye that even Snape had cringed at hearing his son's concerning birth weight.
"Two and fifteen ounces. And fourteen inches tall,"
Quite against her wishes, Hermione felt her lip wobble again. She strained to hold in the tears that wanted to flow freely once more. Had it not been for Snape taking the reins of the conversation once more, she may well have descended again into a fit of anguish.
"Besides his shortcomings in stature, are there any other obvious deficiencies with our son we should be aware of?"
Hermione's head jerked on her shoulders to stare at him, not quite believing he would phrase it that way. She shot him a rather poisonous glare, to which Snape merely shrugged his shoulders as if to ask why she was upset.
"It sounds like he's in decent condition. Perhaps a bit on the small side, yes, but in fine fettle, besides—"
"You're quite right, Mr. Snape," the nurse broke in, looking like she was desperately trying to read the room and determine how to respond appropriately. "Your son, though he's here far earlier than we'd like, does seem otherwise to be on the determined side. He certainly was born with a strong will, and given the proper care and attention, there's no reason to believe that he won't develop as expected."
Snape gave Hermione a look as if to say 'There,' and she merely rolled her eyes. He had recovered himself, sure, but he'd been as taken aback by the news of their son's weight as she had.
Then again, he'd only had a matter of hours in which to come to terms with the fact that he was expecting a child at all...
Not for the first time, she envied Snape's adaptability and imperturbable nature. It seemed as if not one aspect of the proceedings had agitated him. As the nurse bustled around, making sure that Hermione was well enough for a short stint of travel down the hall to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Hermione wracked her brains for the pieces to her fractured jigsaw memory from before she'd awoken in a hospital bed.
She had left for work that morning. She, Harry and Gin had parted ways at the door to Grimmauld after they'd all helped to prepare James and Al for their daily trip to stay with their grandparents at the Burrow. It had been a very normal Monday morning, perhaps a bit busier given that it was the beginning of the month and there were a host of new, updated product maps to follow... but nothing explicitly out of the ordinary.
What had she stocked that day? She'd seen to the toothpaste—she remembered, because it was a brand her parents held in contempt—and then had gone to stock large bags of cat food... There had been the pasta sauce, and then arranging the hooks for all of the new sets of cutlery in the kitchen section. She'd snacked on a Mars bar out of her pocket while she'd spruced up the refrigerated dairy, as no customers could see her from the back. Then had been cereal—and then what?
Had there been something else... or—no! That was when she had seen Mr. Sullivan arguing with that customer. It had been a farcical argument... to which she had paid especial attention...
Then it struck her with absolute clarity: she'd paid it such attention because the person he had been arguing with had been none other than Snape himself! The rest of the afternoon then began to unfold before her mind's eye, neither a comedy of errors nor a tragedy of circumstance. So human... so rote that it could have happened to anyone, she might have thought. Anyone but her. Anyone else.
And yet she was the one sat in a hospital bed, pressure cuffs pulsing on her legs, incision biting with pain, and aching for the baby she'd yet to lay eyes on. A baby that she'd begotten from an ill-timed romp with her inebriated ex-professor on his mother's sofa one cold, Christmas night. Even having been told at eleven that she was a witch and having been shipped off to a magical boarding school hadn't quite impressed on her exactly how strange life could be at times. That had nothing on her present set of circumstances.
Admittedly, having a baby out of—well... was it actually out of wedlock if your former professor lied to the authorities about the state of your institutions? 'Probably,' she ultimately decided—out of wedlock, was a far more garden variety shocker than finding herself bleeding and held under a Cruciatus on the floor of the Malfoy's drawing room.
Yet, one she had somehow anticipated might have been the possible had someone asked her at any time after her fifth year. Her current predicament was something she'd not have foreseen in a million years.
Sybill Trelawney must be somewhere laughing her patchouli-scented arse off, she concluded.
The next half hour passed in a grueling series of interviews, first with a procession of three different nurses, then with the surgeon, checking the state of her incision, and then with a hospital administrator which was, strangely, the most difficult of all of the meetings, as Hermione and Severus were obliged to lie through their teeth for the majority of the answers.
First came the questions about their medical histories, the clinics they frequented, who was their GP, then came the questions about work which, blessedly, they had been able to answer, given that both of them had actual, tax-paying jobs in the muggle world. It was when they had been asked for an address that Hermione drew a blank and looked overwhelmed.
Snape took one look at her and answered for both of them.
"Fourteen sixty-seven, Meadows Way, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire."
Hermione turned a sharp look at the man, her eyes wary.
"And once the child is home with you, do you assent to visits from the Health Visitor at that address?"
Snape looked as if he'd dearly wished to say no, but that likely would have been a bit suspicious, so he merely nodded his head in a sullen affirmation.
"What brought you down to London for birth if your home is so far north?" The administrator questioned, his beady eyes surveilling them with a look that spelled suspicion.
Again, Snape answered for the both of them. "Merely visiting, weren't we? After all, she was only twenty-nine weeks, there was no indication that this would have happened today,"
"Visiting?" The man pressed, his hand tapping the tip of his ballpoint pen against the clipboard.
Snape sneered at him. "That's right."
"Your wife indicated that she works in London. At the store where the ambulance was called,"
Hermione looked between the two men with a bit of uncertainty, "I'd been asked to travel,"
"Oh?"
"Yes..." she fibbed, "Sometimes if there's a vacancy in a department they'll have someone from another store in a different region come in to fill it until the new hires can be trained,"
"I see." The man sniffed and recorded something on the clipboard before he began rattling off instructions for how they were meant to conduct themselves while their son was in the intensive care unit.
It was far too much to swallow all at once, and while Snape seemed to be listening attentively, it was all Hermione could do to smile and nod at the appropriate times. She feared that near the end of the spiel, her face had betrayed her lack of comprehension.
Yet she somehow found the wherewithal to give a feeble acknowledgement of the terms as he wrapped up the lecture.
"If that's all," the man said with another pretentious sniff, "we'll be in touch." He backed out of the room with another rude glance appraising Snape and herself.
They were left in the silent room, neither of them knowing quite what to say to one another. Before he had parted, he'd indicated that he would be summoning a nurse to bring them to their son within the next few minutes, and after the sequence of formalities that had finally concluded, Hermione found that she was so nervous as to be fighting to keep the bile down.
She must have looked a bit green about the gills, for Snape, rather unexpectedly, reached out and grasped her hand in his own.
The witch looked down, startled, to see that his hand, with his false wedding band, was holding onto her with a white-knuckle grip. When she raised her gaze to look into his face, she observed that the lines surrounding his navy-black eyes were taunt with strain and what looked to be apprehension.
The wizard swallowed. His mouth tightened into a thin-lipped rictus, but ultimately all he said when he finally deigned to speak was: "I'm worried too."
She squeezed his hand. It was all she could think to do.
"It's possible that now is not the time to have this conversation," he began, his eyes locked on her own, "but... hell—" He shook his head, causing his greasy hair to whip about his shoulders and in front of his face. The hand that wasn't holding her own moved up to push it angrily back from his temples, exposing the whole of his troubled face.
"Why didn't you tell me, Hermione? If... if he's mine... Why not come to me? You knew where we were—"
Hermione's lower lip wobbled a bit, but with a fearsome effort she managed to keep the tears at bay. "I didn't know that I'd be welcome..."
"I as good as told you—"
"No, Severus, you didn't," she refuted, shaking her head. "You said I'd know where to find you. That's not exactly an invitation."
He bore his tooth in a snarl, though whether it was directed at her or himself was up to interpretation, "Isn't it?" he demanded, his voice tight.
"No. And I tried to get you to come to me so I could speak to you about it in person... without showing up, sans job and sprogged up on your doorstep... I didn't want you to think I was trying to trap you... for you to think I only wanted your money or something..."
"You'd have been entitled—" he bit out, his patience obviously thinning.
"I would not have—" she huffed, hunching over somewhat defensively.
Snape shook his head again, causing his hair to, once more, fly about with whip-like violence. "Then, at the very least, he is entitled!" Snape hissed. "Would you have denied me the right—nay, the duty—to support my issue!?"
For all of her efforts in suppressing her rising tide of emotions, Hermione began to sniffle, and tears leaked out even as she shut her eyes tight to rein them in. "I would deny you nothing." She admitted, her voice small.
There was silence. Silence that felt thick with all that remained unspoken. Hermione dared not open her eyes. Dared not look upon the face that she was certain held nothing but distain.
The hand closed around her own squeezed, and then made to prise open her fingers. His own fingers latticed their way through.
She let loose a choked, shuddering sob.
His words came so softly she had to strain to hear him over her own blubbering. "Would you deny me the chance to be a part of his life?"
"No-nothing... I would deny you no-nothing, Se-Severus..." she wept, somewhat breathless and repeating herself.
"And... if I were to ask..." he began, his voice uncharacteristically hesitant.
"A-ask," she prompted, opening her eyes once more.
The man beside her wore a withdrawn frown, and he'd ceased to look at her, instead staring at the shiny tips of his boots. "If I were to ask," he started again, his words looking like they were being drug from him against his will, "whether you could consider... coming with me... staying... with us—"
Hermione's face, shocked as she was, betrayed her as her mouth formed a small 'o' of surprise. The fact that she'd been shocked speechless, however, only served to spurn Snape on.
"I shouldn't expect that you'd be able to answer. After... after all, you've not seen us in months," he said, looking put out by the fact. He still hadn't glanced up into her face to see how his words were affecting her, "and I should imagine you'd need time to think..."
Snape's uncharacteristic stuttering sent a sharp stab of affection rocketing through the witch on the bed. She wiped at the final tear yet to fall at the corner of her eye with the tips of her fingers and directed a shy smile at the man. A mere twist of the lips, though it reached fully to her eyes.
As she went to answer, however, a knock came at the door, and a rather large male nurse entered, pushing a wheel-chair before him.
Together the nurse and Severus managed to lever her up and out of her bed, removing her pressure cuffs for the time being, and she was wheeled out into the hall, Snape following a step behind, propelling the IV stand, from which she was still receiving anti-biotics and fluids, before him.
The neonatal unit was a heart-wrenchingly depressing place. Hermione did her level best not to stare at any of the other babies in residence, fearing she might break apart once more if she did. Near the end of the ward, behind a cloth partition, was the plastic-domed incubator that supposedly housed their own newborn.
She held her breath as they approached, looking up and to the side to try and gauge Snape's own feelings.
His face was grim. His eyes hard.
When she reached back for him it took a few moments before the withdrawn man caught on to what she desired of him, and took her hand to marry with his own once more.
It was hand-in-hand that they faced this new frontier. The uncertain horizon of a child, born far too early, whose existence had been an unwelcome shock to his mother, and sobering punch-in-the-gut to his father.
It shouldn't have happened as it had. There should have been romance. A bed. Perhaps a mutual understanding of how—why—they were coming together on that cold Christmas night.
Hermione winced as she reminisced, wondering how different things might have been had she made Snape talk it out on Boxing Day...
Perhaps not so different, she then realized, as the vision of their mutual future seemed to grow in size, practically loomed before them with each step that was taken toward the incubator.
Such a small, frail thing, to be able to have such an outsized impact.
Once in situ behind their own privacy screen, the sight of their son was all the more devastating due to his diminished size.
He lay, affixed to tubes of all sizes, in the centre of the plastic pod. He appeared miniscule by contrast.
His limbs were twig-like, wrinkled and covered in mottled red, near translucent, skin. The boy's legs were bowed, feet pointed out to each side, looking like a frog on its back, and it seemed his entire lower half was encased in a nappy that looked like it belonged on a baby twice his size.
Hermione felt a sob escape as her eyes roamed upward along his fragile body. She bit down on the meaty part of her palm under the thumb to try and fight back the surge of helpless terror that threatened to overtake her.
Tubes had been fed into the baby's cord-stump, pumping things she could only guess at into, or perhaps out of, their tiny child, and a couple of adhesive pads were affixed to his thin chest, the rising and falling of which was only barely perceptible. It was impossible to get a clear look at the newborn's face, as it was obscured by tape which held in place a feeding tube in his mouth, and an oxygen cannula to his nose. The rest of his head was obscured by a too-large blue knit hat that dwarfed his crown and covered him to his eyes which were shut fast.
The new mother felt a scarcity of breath overtake her, and the witch tried to pull in several heaving inhales within a scant few seconds. Around her the world began to swim, when the gentlest of pressure brought her back to the present moment: the squeeze of a roughened, calloused hand around her own.
Hermione glanced up, having momentarily forgotten that she wasn't alone, to find Snape staring down into the incubator, his expression unreadable.
"Mrs. Snape?" The nurse asked, coming around the chair to look at the new parents, "I'll be back in around half an hour to take you back to your room," he said, finding the plug at the end of the IV stand and hooking it up to the wall outlet. "I'm afraid with the number of babies we have in the ward at this time that visitation is rather limited, but I'm sure you and your son's paediatrician can discuss the particulars for what his treatment will be as soon as you're able,"
"Can't I hold him?" Hermione asked, looking away for only the briefest second.
The nurse frowned for a moment, considering his answer, before shaking his head. "Probably not this time. We do allow our preemies to be held, but I'm not in the position to okay that at this moment, it'll depend on your son's treatment. If it's approved by his doctor then I think you'll have the opportunity to get some skin-to-skin time very soon," the man remarked with a mild smile.
"But for now," he indicated the hole on the side of the incubator and, after having instructed them to both wash their hands, coached them on all of the various tubes sustaining the small boy.
"That's his feeding tube, there—once you're up to pumping some milk we can add that to his diet along with formula, and when you're sent home, we encourage you to keep pumping and freezing the milk. You can either bring it to us here, or use it at a later time,"
"He'll have to stay here?" Snape asked, having spoken for the first time since seeing their child. His eyes hadn't left the newborn infant since he'd needed to look away to wash his hands. They were glittering with some unnamable emotion.
"Probably until he's near to his original due date, Mr. Snape. We like to make sure they're in good condition before being sent home," the nurse instructed, patient. He'd clearly gone through this rigamarole numerous times before.
"That tube going into his cord stump is for medication and drawing blood as the need arises,"
"Why would you need his blood?" Snape questioned, his tone sharp.
The nurse gave a small, put-upon sigh. "For testing, sir. We need to test semi-frequently in order to ascertain how he's doing, check his bilirubin levels and the like. We can learn a lot about his health as it develops by running tests. The umbilical catheter simply makes it less of an ordeal for him when we have to draw more."
Snape gave a terse nod, though he didn't turn his attention back to the man as he finished explaining their son's course of treatment. He gave a short, somewhat speculative frown at the IV bags, one which supplied medicine and the other, food, but otherwise he didn't speak again until the nurse had left them alone.
Once it was just the three of them, Snape reached his hand in the incubator and poked his finger at the red, spindly digits that were his son's own fingers.
They gave a small twitch, and, likely out of reflex, grasped the tip of his index with the slightest pressure imaginable. Snape let out a shuddering sigh, his eyebrows drawn into what might have been a frown.
Hermione's hand joined his, after a moment's hesitation, and her own fingertips probed at and stroked what little was exposed of their son's cheek, which was soft and smooth, despite the appearance of his under-developed skin. His small chest rose and fell in a barely perceptible pattern, and she felt her breath catch as she considered the utter fragility of the small babe before them. How unlikely his survival had been. The delicate balance of muggle technology that served to sustain him.
Snape moved his hand from where the boy had grasped at his father's index finger to slide up and along his side, his fingers straight and outstretched and his palm open.
"He's barely larger than my hand..." the man marveled.
Hermione swallowed a hoarse sob, biting at her lower lip. "I'm so sorry—"
"For what?" the wizard asked, obviously distracted.
"He's so small... He's not... not well—it's my fault," she gasped, her finger still stroking on the baby's cheek.
The wizard frowned, looking slightly irritated, "How could it be your fault?"
"I didn't... I didn't see a healer. I didn't go to my midwife appointment,"
At this, Snape finally turned to her giving her a shrewd and perturbed look, "Whyever not?"
"I hadn't known for that long. I found out early in May,"
"So your first letter—?"
"That first letter I sent, I didn't know. I was just responding to your letter. And then you never wrote back," she sniffed.
Snape looked uncomfortable. "It's a rather long, pointless story that doesn't likely need telling: but I didn't receive any of your letters until last Wednesday. There was a mix-up in the mail room. But finding out in May... that was a month and a half ago, at least. Why didn't you schedule an appointment?" he demanded, his voice serving to underscore his rising sense of irritation.
The woman swallowed and shrugged, struggling a little in the chair to get comfortable as her incision site was radiating a biting, persistent pain. "I'd just been fired from that Muggle care home I wrote about... I was scared, and I was so far along without having noticed... I thought I'd be okay. Everything seemed healthy at the time, and what I really needed was another job—"
"At a grocer—" Snape cut in, his tone a mixture of incredulous and snide.
"Yes, at a supermarket," she growled, feeling defensive. "It was the only place that would have me at nearly six months and on such short notice... I didn't want them to think that they'd picked up a liability, so I didn't ask for the time off. I needed the money, Severus—"
The man growled and glowered down at her. "No. You didn't."
She scoffed. "Of course, I did! I couldn't rely on Harry and Gin's charity throughout his entire life, could I? Babies need nappies, and I'd need a cot, and clothes—"
"Don't play dumb, Hermione," Snape snarled. "You know I have more than enough for the both of you—"
The witch quailed a bit under his look, her face twisting into a grimace of regret and deep pain. "You didn't write back."
She swallowed a sob, the action of it choking her. "You didn't write back, and I'm not the kind of woman—I wouldn't—"
The dour man's eyes softened a fraction as he seemed to take pity on her. "You wouldn't? What, Hermione?"
"I wouldn't try to trap a man into taking care of me. You... you asked me about my contraception, and I told you I had it covered. And before you go thinking that I lied: I didn't. I thought it would be good enough... but it wasn't. It's my fault. He's my responsibility. You didn't have a choice—"
Snape scoffed and rolled his eyes, the action of it surprisingly uncharacteristic as far as Hermione was used to from the man. "Since when have I ever had a choice?" He asked, the question obviously rhetorical.
"Life is not about choice, or at least it rarely is. We think we get to chart our own destinies but that is nothing more than an opium dream, or perhaps a luxury for a lucky few. Things happen, and others outside of ourselves do things that affect our own lives, and the only choices we are granted are how to respond to challenging circumstances. The choice we made was to engage each other on Christmas—drunken though it was. The choice I made was to not insist on giving you a potion as a back-up precaution.
"There is no way of living without consequences, Hermione." He remarked, his voice strangely soft. "And sometimes I think we forget: sex is possibly the most consequential action that a wizard and witch can undertake. It is never without some danger. It is never without a slight risk of procreation, provided all is in working order. It was sheer hubris for us—for me—to have thought that I could get off scot free."
She whimpered, blinking rapidly, "You make it sound like you've been sentenced for a crime,"
The man shrugged and turned his attention back to their son. "In a way, I have been. I partook of a laden table meant for a man whose business it was to sit at the head. One who had earned that right. And now I am remanded into the custody of this child: to serve as his father until the end of my days,"
"Severus, I am so, so sorry—"
"Shush, woman," Snape sneered, though his manner was not unkind. He had a kind of amusement dancing in his eye, and his lip twitched up slightly into a small smirk. "There are far worse fates than fatherhood." His voice was beginning to adopt an edge of strain. A bit of a gravely roughness.
"Never," he swallowed, "never again apologise to me for this boy. I ought to kiss the hem of your hospital gown."
His lips twisted and his brow creased. His eyes glittered fiercely as he stared down at the improbably small baby in the incubator. "I should thank you 'til the end of my days on this planet."
"Muscle to muscle and toe to toe
The fear has gripped me but here I go
My heart sinks as I jump up
Your hand grips hand as my eyes shut"
"Breezeblocks" (reprise) – Alt-J