Author's Note:
Apologies for the delay…in all honesty, haven't been that inspired recently, and these chapters are oddly some of the trickiest to write. This one particularly as it's quite literally a hop down memory lane. As I mentioned earlier on, I have every intention of finishing this story, especially given that I've written the ending already. It's now just a matter of writing the 'inbetween'. Please do stick with me as I'm gung-ho for To Save the Saviour and I'm committed to reaching the finale and seeing what y'all think of it.
DaenerysTargary3n
Chapter Four:
Returning to the present day and their own corporeal selves, Harry and Morgana stood silently staring at the pensieve for quite some time. Neither seemed able to move their limbs away from the pot of swirling memories.
After what seemed like eons, Morgana gulped loudly and said listlessly, "They were married…by Voldemort himself."
"Thank Merlin, he was kind to her." Harry murmured, equally as staggered by the events in the most recent memory as his friend's daughter.
"Throughout most of their marriage, they were kind to each other. When everyone else was unkind, they were each other's safe haven. That begun there and never changed all my life."
"I'm glad it grew into something like that," Harry replied, a faint smile turning up the corners of his lips, "but after…that, it seems surprising. It's so foreign, I guess, to me to see her forced to do anything like that. When I watch her go through that, it just makes me think that she deserved more. She deserved a normal life, a normal husband, a normal wedding. That's what we – her, Ron, and me – fought for and she never had it to start with."
With a gentle caress of Harry's wrist, Morgana reassured, "Her life had its hardships, to be sure, and we've probably got to watch a few more of them before this is over. But it also had its moments of joy and peace and love and hope. Those are things you were fighting for against Voldemort. Her life may not have been straight sailing or happy all the time, but she had her great love with papa, she had a child whom she loved and," Morgana's voice broke holding back a sob, "who loved her back with all her heart, she had a true vocation in helping you and she found friends at Hogwarts that she never did at Beauxbatons. All-in-all, she didn't do too badly."
"No," Harry smiled in agreement, finding the soft skin of her fingers delightful to their mutual caress, "I dare say she did all right, all things considered. Let's see some of these moments of 'joy and peace and love and hope'. There must be some coming up or I'm going to need something to drink before watching the rest."
Morgana inspected the rows of memory vials in the pensieve's cabinet for the next chapter of her parents' journey. "Next, there's a series of memories that lead up to my birth, it seems. It starts a week after their wedding night."
"What are we waiting for?"
Memory Date: 07-03-1980
Location: Spinner's End, Cokeworth
"You have been avoiding me, woman! You have been unrelenting in your desire to make this as unpleasant as possible for us both, to reject all entreaties I have made to make the best of our situation, and to throw my life into disarray! And I will not tolerate it further!" Severus bellowed at his week-old bride.
Hermione from her place, sitting in the library, looked up at her blustering husband who had just stormed into her formerly quiet space. "Don't be absurd! You do not tolerate me! Everything you say and do is full of disdain for my presence here! So please, Severus, forgive me if I choose not to be in the presence of your constant dislike of my presence in your life. You can be sure that if you treat me this way, your child will know for certain that its father is an incurable piece of shit!"
"So much for peace and joy and whatnot." Harry murmured with a sigh.
"Give them a chance!" Morgana hissed back.
The pair watched as the Snapes used their honeymoon period to practice the art of hurling insults at each other and blaming each other for their combined misery. Eventually (and after teaching the newly present several new profanities), Professor and Madam Snape wore themselves out – her sagging into a chair, eyes wearied from expelling tears, him leaning heavily on his desk, shoulders heaving with the weight of thundering out the contents of his heart.
"Hermione," Severus began, almost hoarse, "please."
She turned to him, and made a plea of her own, "It's been a week, Severus. One week. Tell me it will get better."
"It will. You and I are highly intelligent beings, as I've come to know from the literature you have read from my library, so, there is no reason to believe we will not work this out. Though, I agree, sooner rather than later would be…preferable. If for no other reason than it cannot be good for the child."
"Is there no part of you that cares, even a bit, for me as the child's mother? Is that why you subject me to your temper?" Hermione asked.
Severus looked absolutely stunned at his wife's question. It was plainly as he had feared – he would and had become his father. "I…I…I have maybe been sharper than needed to you this past week. And for that, I am sincerely sorry. I make no excuses. I believe it may have been a response to your rejecting my offerings of friendship."
"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."
Severus frowned, "Don't speak untruths. I have been leaving books out for you that given your appetite for literature I thought you might enjoy reading, when I have attempted to discuss them with you, you told me to put them away. I ask you to join me in the parlour every night after supper, so we can talk and get to know each other properly but you are eternally otherwise engaged. I have booked all your antenatal appointments with my healer of choice, whom I trust and you inform me curtly that you will not go and will see to yourself, which I understand means I will have no role to play in the wellbeing of my child. I then seek to undo whatever my mistake was and try to discuss baby names with you and I'm shrugged off with regards to that as well! All the while, you are leaving your wasted mugs of tea and wasting my good coffee, shifting things in the study, and intercepting my mail! Tell me, Hermione, how is it possible you have unwittingly rejected these offers of friendship, or will you admit you were lying and simply wish to draw a line down our house and you and I stick to our respective sides? If that's the case, I warn you, this room in particular will be the site of a major battle!"
Once her husband had ceased his tirade, Hermione's eyes had blown full open. It truly was news to her that he had been making these strides towards friendship between them. She had misinterpreted everything that had gone on in Spinner's End since they had lain down together for the first time as husband and wife. He had too, it seemed from the genuine hurt and the subsequent anger he had just unloaded on her.
"This is a failure to communicate – at its pinnacle," Hermione replied softly, once she had gotten over the shock of his allegations, "and we're both to blame, as I see it. Firstly, let me say this: thank you, thank you so much for the book suggestions, trying to get us to talk, and the antenatal appointments. I didn't realise that's what you were doing – truly – and please believe that I would have taken you up, at least on the talks after dinner, if I had any clue. I'm not heartless, Severus, and I don't hold you to fault for our situation, so take my word on it that I'm not trying to avoid you or turn you away. I'm also not trying to ruin your life here. So, when you get upset that I have not noticed your attempts to bridge the gap between us, you have hurt me that my olive branches and gestures have gone unreciprocated too. I do not leave undrunk tea and coffee around – when I make a cup for myself, Severus, I make one for you and leave it for you without disturbing what you are doing as I never know if you are brewing, as by your simply stunning collection of teas and coffees, I know you enjoy it. I do apologise if I have been using the wrong coffee that you are saving, but I do not know all that much about the different types of coffee – one jar is much the same as another to me. Perhaps that could be a topic we could discuss after dinner one evening? Or you could recommend a suitable author? As far as moving things around the study, I know you have it organised in your own way – any fool with a brain could notice that – but from what I can see it's the only room that will be able to convert into a nursery and I have simply started making an inventory to see where things can be rehoused about the rest of the house. I don't always finish one section, so I leave reminders out to mark my place, so to speak. Regarding the healer appointments, apparently you don't know what I have been apprenticing in since I left Beauxbatons. I am a second-year healer, Severus, so I don't need appointments. I am perfectly capable of literally seeing to myself and the second issue of not wanting you to be involved, I do. Wholeheartedly, I do, Severus, because quite frankly, though I am capable of carrying, birthing, and raising this child alone, I simply have no wish to. Not when you're right here and in spite of a bit of initial miscommunication, it seems, you have the potential to be a good father."
Snape interrupted, "You think I'll be a good father?"
"If you had asked me that this morning, I would have said I have my doubts," Hermione responded with a glimmer of her usual humour, "but now, I think we can see eye-to-eye and have a better impression of each other, so yes, Severus, I think you have the makings of a fine father."
"What about my mail, Hermione, and why you'll never have my company after supper?"
She could easily see he was like a dog with a bone. Once an inquiry started, it was something that had to be seen to completion – she was the same way. "I do not intercept your mail, but now that I'm here, owls deliver to me while you're downstairs because I sit in the library with the window open, so I get the drop – and often, the bites! I simply put it outside whatever room I know you to be in and leave you to it. If you told me when you had brewing to do or simply spent more time with me upstairs, I could put an end to my duties as Spinner's End postwoman. As far as not sitting with you after supper goes, I have been trying to learn to cook the things you cook for supper. I am not a proficient cook, Severus, and I leave a small portion of my meal every night so I can 'dissect' it to try and figure out the recipe. You are such a good cook and it was a surprise. I also feel guilty that you do all the cooking, but I can't compete. I suppose I could have told you that's what I was doing."
"Wife, you could have discussed cooking with me after supper." Severus chuckled, finding the humour now in the sidestepping he and his wife had been doing.
"Husband, you could have labelled the coffee." She grinned back.
Memory Date: 19-05-1980
Location: Spinner's End, Cokeworth
"When are we now?" Harry asked, still reeling from the swirl of the memories as they changed from one to the other.
"Well, judging from the look of mama, not very far into the future…" Morgana responded, nodding towards the seated figure of her mother, whose belly only had the gentlest of swells.
The pair were in the former study of Spinner's End, which now only held a velveted amethyst armchair in which Hermione was sitting. As the expectant mother sat, cradling a worn book in her lap, humming away while silently reading, Severus was twirling his wand at the wall influencing the strokes of an ungrasped paintbrush coating the wall in a pastel shade of periwinkle paint.
"Blast!" Severus exclaimed as the paintbrush clattered to the floor, spraying an ombré of the paint on the wooden floor.
"Severus?"
Wincing and clasping his forearm, Severus moaned, "I am being summoned. I must go. At once."
"Be careful, Severus. And return safe." Hermione replied, the worry for her husband gleaming from her tawny eyes.
"You have my word." With that, he disapparated.
Harry and Morgana felt the room swim out of focus as quickly as it had appeared as they were transported along with the memory's owner.
As they 'landed' in their new situation, Harry swore under his breath, "Bloody hell, Morgana, I know what this is…"
Recognising the dingy and bedraggled interior of The Hog's Head, Harry felt an odd sense of foreboding. "I have a feeling this is when your father heard the prophecy. When he betrayed my mother to Voldemort."
"Then you have seen this before?" Morgana asked.
"Yes, I have. But Dumbledore did not have the memories of Hermione in his pensieve."
Morgana smiled, "So, then papa had more to tell us than what he told Albus."
The pair of young adults watched as Hogwarts' Potions Master crept behind the door to the private room of the public house. With the door slightly ajar, all three eavesdroppers caught wind of the words spoken by the oft unbelieved seer.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"
"Hey, what business have you here?" The gruff voice of Aberforth Dumbledore surprised the two Snapes and Harry.
"I…I…" Snape stuttered back.
"Gerrof with you!" The landlord urged, shoving the young Death Eater away from the door.
Snape staggered down the stairs towards the main bar. He thought he had come to his master's side when he answered the painful call of the Dark Mark as it throbbed on his arm, but no. Instead, he had heard the unthinkable, but now the most desirable: the fall of the Dark Lord. He had heard how Voldemort would die.
As Severus poured himself out onto the street, his forearm burned once more. "What in the blazes?!" He cursed. Once more disapparating away, he fell into the company of his master, pulling his unwitting daughter and her companion with him.
"Ah, Severus, we have been waiting for you." Voldemort hissed from his throne.
"My Lord, I have news." Severus announced, feeling his situation for the test it was. "A prophecy has been given. A prophecy that foretells…your demise."
"We shall have the details from you."
As Voldemort spoke, Severus felt keenly his invasion of his own mind. He took pains to conceal Hermione and life at Spinner's End from him but offered up freely what he had just witnessed inside the Hog's Head.
Suddenly, Harry and Morgana were whipped away. Falling backwards out of the pensieve with the force. As they lay aground trying to regain their breath, they both knew Voldemort now had Harry and his parents firmly in his sights for murder. This was the moment the lives of Harry James Potter and Morgana Eileen Snape irrevocably fused together.