Chapter Nine:

"I started to love you, Harry, and I never stopped as we grew up."

Harry's eyes widened at the witch's confession. He had only been on the receiving end of one such admission like it – Ginny's own profession of love. That had been different. He had known Ginny and her burgeoning feelings since he was twelve years old. Their relationship had been adolescent and had been as fiery as her hair but had burned out fast. Ginny had been wrapped up in his desire to be part of a family and wanted. He more wanted to be a Weasley than to be with Ginny. He cared for her and loved her in his way, but he was not in love with her and could not see a future for himself in her arms.

Now, here was a witch who knew his pain, knew his suffering and had been cast aside so he might live. He owed Morgana Snape something, he owed Morgana his future and more importantly, her own. With her bright hazelnut eyes glimmering up at him as she waited for him to respond, he saw her and her mother. He loved Hermione more than any other woman in his life and there was no doubt he was beginning to transfer those feelings to this orphan daughter she left behind. Did he love her, though? Could he love her in the future? Would her love for him last now that her parents were dead, and he was the cause?

"Do you still love me? Even now?" Harry whispered.

Morgana smiled demurely, "Since that day, Harry. Since the day I first forgave you and really saw you as a person not as an object to be protected and a rival for my parents' attention, I have loved you. Since that day, I wanted to know you and I wanted you to know me. I wanted to be a part of your life rather than exist in its wake."

Harry winced at the reminder of her seclusion and pulled away.

The young girl sighed, "I think it's time we changed this up a bit. I think the next memory you see needs to be one of mine."

"Yours?"

"Yes, one of mine," Morgana stated, moving back towards Harry, "so you can see once and for all that my childhood was not awful, was not bad at all. So, you can stop feeling guilty every time I mention my life while you were at school here. Yes, I was lonely but what child doesn't feel lonely at one time or another? Yes, I felt hard done by that I didn't have friends my own age, but I had people who loved me and cared for me. Yes, I was pushed into the shadows so you could thrive in the light, but it was worth it."

Harry watched as Morgana's eyes suddenly lit up and she stopped her tirade. She withdrew her wand from its beautiful leather holster and held it up to her temple. As she shut her eyes, a wispy argent smoke drifted from her forehead to her wand's tip. She then gracefully swished it into the pensieve where it fell into the thrumming basin and became invitingly luminous.

"Let's go, Potter." Morgana ordered, channelling her father's animus, as she pointed over to the cupboard.

"When is it?" Harry asked, apprehensive to say the least.

"Just go. You'll see when it is."

Memory Date: 25-12-1994

Location: Dungeon, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry

"Mama," a fourteen-year-old Morgana gushed, "you look…gorgeous."

Harry and his Morgana stood by as they looked at the scene in the dungeons as it played out. The younger version of Morgana was sitting on the sofa, Transfiguration book forgotten on her lap, gazing at her mother.

"I'd forgotten how she looked that night." Harry stammered, understanding when in his own timeline this memory took place.

Hermione was standing in the Snapes' bedroom doorway in an elegant gown. It was blush pink that grew into a darker ombre as it fell to the floor. It accentuated her blossoming figure and made her appear quite grown up. The hair she perpetually complained was unmanageable and wild, had been coaxed into a chic updo with tidy ringlets that framed her face. She had applied makeup with restraint, opting to refine her already attractive features rather than paint on the features she wished she had. Her eyes were light and inviting, while her lips were pert and pink. Everything about Hermione in this dress screamed softness, safety, and hitherto untapped beauty.

"Do you think it'll do?" Hermione asked her daughter, her apparent nerves obvious in her hesitancy.

"Yes, mama. I think you'll be the belle of the ball. Everyone will be looking at you. Papa won't know what to do with himself."

Hermione crossed the room and sat beside her daughter, moving the book out of the way, and pulling her into her arms. "I know. Poor papa. I don't know why I agreed to go with Krum to this thing. I should have just gone by myself. I thought if I said yes to Krum, I'd get away with being closer to Harry without attracting undue attention. I didn't realise it would be so vexing to your papa and so inconvenient for me."

"Papa will forgive you. He always does. Besides, at least you get to go to the stupid party with someone."

The young mother sighed, "Morgana love, I know you want to go and that you'd like nothing more than for a certain green-eyed young man to ask you to the ball and to dance. But we've talked about this. It's too risky. After everything we've gone through – your father, you, and me – these past three years, we can't let it be for nothing. Besides, even though you can't go with Harry, I happen to know that Hammer and your papa have worked very hard to make it up to you. So, my sweet, why don't you turn that frown upside down, let Minizer's Law of Reparifarge be for one night, and go into your room and put on what I've put on your bed. Get ready while I'm at the ball and when I get back, you'll forget all about not being able to go."

The longing in Hermione's adolescent eyes to return some of her daughter's entitled youth to her was sparkling. She knew as she stroked her daughter's arm affectionately that Morgana was missing out and her being in appearance the same age was adding years of therapy to her life. All she could do for her only child was help Severus give something back and make her know how much they adored her and how special she was.

"I have to go now, my love," Hermione said sadly, "but I can't wait, truly, to come back and spend the rest of the night with you in the beautiful gown that's in your room that makes this one look like a mop."

Morgana scoffed and threw her mama a remonstrative glance, "As if that gown on you could ever look like a cleaning implement! You know you look absolutely glowing and it's pointless trying to deny it to make me feel better! I am…curious and ever so slightly frightened about what you and papa have up your sleeves though."

Hermione planted a chaste kiss on her daughter's brow as she rose and slimmed down the creases in her gown. "Well, you'll just have to get dressed and wait for me to get back so we can have our own fun."

With that, Hermione flew out the door like a will-o'-the-wisp in a flurry of pink satin, leaving Morgana to her present in the bedroom that awaited her.

"Where was your father?" Harry asked the adult Morgana as they watched her younger self glance hesitantly at her bedroom door before rising to walk toward it.

"At the ball already. No doubt prising apart hormone-driven teenagers making out behind gorse bushes and in broomstick cupboards."

Harry smirked, "No doubt. But they left you completely alone, unsupervised? How much of your childhood did you spend by yourself?"

Morgana winced, "A great deal, if I'm being honest, Harry. But, I read like a fiend and could out-witch mama by the time I was sixteen. You probably have no idea what Minizer's Law is still to this day but it is sixth year magic. Anyway, this night isn't about me being alone. It's about the people who I had making the most of our unique situation and finding happiness even in the darkness. Now, watch."

Morgana shushed him with a nod that they now stood in her bedroom as it was when she was a fourteen-year-old girl. Harry could not help but examine the room in detail, showing as it did the many interests of his young witch.

Her bed was – predictably – a combination of green and silver, evidently selected by her father, while the walls were a homely kind of sage green that complemented the stark bed linen. Two of the three walls were taken up by jam-packed bookshelves, weighed down by tome after tome of textbooks and non-fiction that she and her mother had pored over evening after evening. There were sparse interspersions of Muggle fiction however but hardbacks and beautifully bound copies. The love of literature that the room's inhabitant bore was unquestionable. The small wardrobe was all that was necessary to contain the clothes of the witch who rarely left the dungeons and when she did was never seen. On a charming wooden desk by the bed sat an open journal with a quill by it for said concealed witch to unburden her mind and set down her thoughts and feelings. Harry wondered if she ever wrote about her blossoming feelings for him and what she believed at this tender age her future held for her. On a desk shelf were three magical photos that spoke of her strong relationships with the few people lucky enough to be in her life. One was of her parents with her as a baby, her in her mother's arms as her father held them both. All members of the Snape household were smiling and happy, in spite of the danger the parents knew they all must have been in at the time. It was a family photo the like of which Harry wished he could have had with his parents or been an addition to in the Snape one, if Hermione had not vetoed the plan of his adoption into her family. The second photo could only have been taken in the headmaster's study in the school, as Morgana at four or five years old sat upon his desk, Fawkes in the background, as Albus was writing behind the desk twirling his hand making sweets fly at the girl. The third – and largest – photo sat in the middle of the shelf and was of Severus and Hermione in each other's arms looking very much in love with each other and oblivious to whoever was taking the photograph. It reminded Harry of the photo of his own parents as they danced in the autumn wind and kissed as they spun. So many similarities between his and Morgana's childhood but such vast differences too. He didn't know quite how to reconcile the former with the latter either in his heart or his mind.

While Harry was in a world of his own, young Morgana had already removed her day-to-day attire and was stood before him in her underwear inspecting her mother's proposed eveningwear.

"What?!" Harry gasped, taking in the sight of the young girl suddenly in next to nothing.

"Took you a while," Morgana chuckled, "to notice that did it? I wondered why you hadn't turned some deep shade of red at the sight of me. But you really didn't notice anything at all, did you? What on earth were you thinking about so hard that my getting undressed escaped your notice?"

"I was thinking about the things that matter to you, to us both. And how similar we both are." Harry replied, turning away from the scantily clad teenager to look into her older self's inquisitive eyes.

"Mmmmm. I completely agree." Morgana agreed quietly, a serene smile turning up the edges of her lips. "The really important things we share. It's only the context and the small things that separate us. And if you want to, I would like to see that continue for as long as we are happy."

"For as long as we are happy, then, as long as that might be." Harry replied, the hope that it would be a long while beaming from his eyes.

"Sweetheart, are you here?" A growly voice interrupted from beyond the door.

"Coming, papa."

Morgana and Harry watched as the fourteen-year-old donned her garnet gown speedily and spelled the laces on the corseted bodice to lace as she applied a moderate coat of makeup before shucking on the heeled sandals her mother had chosen for her.

In a flurry of deep scarlet, the young lady flew out of the bedroom and back into the living room where her papa awaited her.

Severus looked utterly and completely in awe at the sight of his child as she rounded the door and came full into view in all of her splendour. He had just come from witnessing Hermione in the arms of Krum and found he could not remain in the Great Hall while another spun her in his arms and caressed her bare skin. Even though his wife has conveyed her dismay and apology wordlessly through legilimency and reminded him it was all to protect the boy they had sworn to, no danger to Potter's life was worth him stomaching the sight of Hermione dancing with Viktor sodding Krum.

"Morgana love, you look…" Severus stumbled for the right adjectives. "Indescribably beautiful. Who are you and what have you done with the baby girl I used to sit on my knee and read to?"

"Urgh, papa," Morgana huffed, "don't be such a sap. I'm still me and this is apparently – according to mama – some kind of special occasion I need to get dolled up for. I thought we weren't doing…whatever we're doing until mama came back from the actual ball anyway. Why are you here so soon?"

"Your mama had the situation under control so I may have slipped away. I decided the other professors could control the students for once and I…I wanted to come and keep you company, plus I can have some time with you before Hammer and mama join us."

Severus approached his daughter and pulled out a silk black cauldron cloth. "Indulge your old man. Let what is next door be a surprise."

Morgana nodded, permitting herself to be blindfolded with the cloth before her papa guided her by the hand through the usually warded door into his Potions classroom. When he let the piece of fabric fall to the floor, his daughter nearly choked in surprise at the tableau of beauty that was before her where cauldrons, potions ingredients, books and plain but practical wooden furniture usually sat.

All the furniture and evidence that the room in which the father and daughter stood was normally a classroom was gone. All the dampness and dinge that reminded occupants that they were in the deepest caverns of the old Scottish castle was missing. In its place was a fairy land that even Morgana's wildest dreams could not conjure up. The room was not lit by the Hogwarts standard issue tallow candles but by magical balls of light that were floating in the air above them in a multitude of colours. The walls and both doorways were festooned with Morgana's favourite flower: fresh white jasmine that made the room smell like the entry to a fairy castle. Rather than keep the flagstone floor, Severus had enchanted the stones to look and feel like freshly dewed mossy grass that added the heady scent of petrichor to the jasmine. The whole room was like an enchanted fairy realm and her father, with a flourish of his wand, changed from his dour teaching robes into dark green slacks and a crisp white shirt – her own Oberon who would protect her from everything beyond his walls that would seek to cause her and his Titania, her mama, harm.

"Who's in their own world now, hm?" Harry interjected, observing how both Morganas were reacting to the otherworldly scene.

Present Morgana said, while her younger self was held spellbound and silent, "I had quite forgotten how much I loved this evening. Everything was like it came out of A Midsummer Night's Dream. That's my favourite play. And papa and Hammer worked so hard just to make the night perfect and just as I dreamed such a night would be. The day after I actually thought papa had used legilimency on me while I slept, but he just claimed that he knew me better than any and had done what any father would – made my dream come true to the best of his ability."

"What would you like to be your first dance, daughter?" Severus asked softly. "I trust you've been practicing your creative spells."

Morgana in her red dress looked at her father as he pointed with his eyes to a large gramophone in the corner. "I've been practicing. Let's see whether it's paid off."

Forcing herself to concentrate, Morgana brought out her wand and aimed it at the gramophone. Listening to the song she wanted in her mind, she projected it towards the inanimate object with two words: ibi sonus. Within a moment, Little Miss Magic by Jimmy Buffett began to serenade the pair.

"Ah, but of course. Your favourite lullaby." Severus murmured before extending his hand. "Miss Snape, may I have the honour of this dance?"

Morgana nodded before stepping into her papa's arms and enjoying his embrace as they moved slowly to the music.

Some time after the third or fourth song, Albus joined their party, having stayed at the one upstairs for an acceptable amount of time. Morgana was delighted to have another dance partner and Severus glad for the respite for his old bones and the opportunity simply to watch his daughter indulge herself.

"Don't get any ideas, old man," Severus warned Albus, with a jovial sneer, "she's much too young to actually want to dance with you. If she had any other choice, you and me both would be partnerless."

"M'boy, speak for yourself. I was and ever shall be a delight on the dancefloor that any young lady would be mighty proud to have led her a merry jig."

"Keep telling yourself that, Dumbledore." Severus huffed as he conjured an axed tree trunk for a seat. "One day some poor maid will believe you."

"Papa, hush! You're ruining my evening!" An imperious and impatient Morgana admonished as she started another tune to dance to with her Hammer.

"Apologies, dearest." Snape said, looking at the doorway to the Snape residence. "Dumbledore, did you have any indication of when Hermione would be able to steal herself away?"

"No, Severus. Last I saw her upstairs, she had just sat down with Potter and Weasley."

"Carry on then." Snape huffed, missing his wife.

While Dumbledore and Morgana indulged themselves in an Irish rock 'n' roll song that meant the headmaster pulled his robe up past his calves to demonstrate his fancy footwork, Snape felt a wave of calm and love sweep through his mind and knew his wife was fast-approaching. Soon enough, he felt her slip down and transfigure his own tree stump into an elegant wooden loveseat where they both could sit.

"She looks so grown up." Hermione whispered in a voice not quite her own.

"Wife, you've been weeping. Why?" Severus asked worriedly, bringing a hand up to caress her tear-washed cheek, unaware that his daughter was slyly listening.

"It doesn't matter now. It's nothing. Leave it. Please." Hermione begged, as she looked down, unable to recount the events of the evening where her renewed teenage hormones had got the better of her and she had let Weasley make her cry.

"As you wish, as long as you promise me you are alright."

Hermione smiled at her husband and held her own hand up to join his at her jaw, "I'm with you. Of course, I am alright. Now, shall we show those two how it's done?"

"I suppose we better," Severus harrumphed, "but not to this cacophonous din."

Now it was Hermione's turn to control the gramophone and with no announcement, the music changed to Hungry Eyes.

"Better." Severus pronounced as he swept his wife into his long-awaiting arms where she should have been all evening.

"Hammer, can we sit this one out?" Morgana asked as she smiled at her parents who had risen to the floor and had started to gently sway to the beat. "I want to watch."

"Of course. It is your night, poppet."

The headmaster and the young girl sat on their own tree stumps as they observed the married pair, though it looked an incongruous coupling.

As Dumbledore and young Morgana watched, so did Harry and the elder Morgana. They watched closely as Snape held his wife tenderly and swept away all the hurts both had inflicted on their hearts earlier in the evening: the professor at watching his wife in the arms of another and the wife at being bullied by her charge's best friend and feeling smaller than she had in years. When they were together they knew they had precious little time and it would end sooner rather than later, so they always made the most of it.

"I don't think we've ever danced like this, husband." Hermione said wistfully as the song drew to a close.

"No, wife, I daresay we never have. But I'm glad to have you in my arms now, though I wish you were older in form, for your mind is still as familiar as it was before but my heart cannot tell the difference between you now and you then. I love you the same as I ever have if not more, my love."

Hermione could not cope with such words of such arduous feeling. She pulled him down to lay a firm kiss on his willing lips in full view of her audience. She felt so safe and so loved in Severus' arms and all present knew that she was not truly a teenaged girl. What did it matter, why should it matter that her body was so much younger than her adult, mature mind and heart? For them there, it did not, she decided and this night she would have her husband again.

"Will I be welcome in our bedroom this evening?"

"What? You are always welcome. You don't need permission to sleep beside me. You have that right since the day of our wedding." Severus replied, uncomprehending.

"No, Severus," Hermione almost pouted, "I do not want to sleep beside you – that is…I don't only want to sleep beside you. I want to be with you again. Properly. It's been too long. I need you."

"You always have me. Hermione, truly, I don't understand what you are asking here."

She growled, "I need you, Severus, I need you in my bed, in my arms, for Merlin's sake, I need you in me!"

Snape's aghast expression would be forever seared onto Harry's mind as he watched his prodigious mind compute what his wife was telling him.

"Hermione, I cannot make love to you while you're little more than a child! Have reason!" He snarled.

Hermione very nearly buckled at the rejection, but she glowered back at him with equal ire. "I am no child! I am your wife and we've already made a child together. I am a thirty-five-year-old woman stuck in a fourteen-year-old's body and I am older than you! Please, Severus, I will never ask you again if you wish, but just this once, please can we pretend I'm me as I was supposed to be?"

Severus looked deep into his wife's eyes as they swum with tears of hope, of fear and of love. He knew he would give in to her – it was inevitable – his love for her matching hers for him. But he could not push down that feeling thrumming inside him that it was wrong to take her while she appeared the same age as their daughter. He knew full well that the mind and heart that said body held was that of his adult wife, but he could not acknowledge that when she felt so small and young in his arms.

"You ask much of me." Severus sighed, still clinging to her as they danced out the final bars of the tune.

"I know, my love," Hermione conceded, kissing the delicate skin of his palm as she brough it to her lips, "but forgive me for asking it and for me needing to. You know, though, why I have to ask it. It is because I love you so much. I love you so much it hurts sometimes, Severus. Sometimes I fiddle with my finger because I miss the ring that used to adorn it because I can't wear a wedding ring as a teenager, so it sits in my jewellery box. I sometimes long to run my hands through your hair in class when those imbeciles struggle with the simplest potions, and it riles you so much. I stare at you through dinner after dinner wishing I was by your side, not Flitwick, so we could talk about Morgana and our day because we finish every day together rather than apart. So, for all those reasons and more I don't want to get into in company but want to show you later, I ask again: please will you have me tonight?"

"How could any man say no to that? This blasted body of yours be damned, woman, you'll be in my bed this evening. Because, the way you feel, the way you long for me, wife, I burn for you."

Hermione smashed her lips on to his in a swift, passionate kiss, grateful that Albus was occupying Morgana in some discussion about animagi. This was Morgana's night and they had commandeered their one song, but they both wanted to watch their daughter enjoy herself at her Yule Ball rather than become lost in their percolating sea of lust.

"Let me chat with Albus for a bit. I want to watch you dance with 'Ana." Hermione said as she restored herself.

Severus nodded and walked over to his daughter, pulling her up unceremoniously to join him in a gallant waltz as he changed the music to something a little more classical.

Harry and the more mature Morgana watched as Severus took his daughter to the floor once more and smiled as Hermione shot the occasional heated glance at him throughout with the promise of later that night seething behind her dark chocolate eyes.

"Did that never bother you as it did your father?" Harry enquired, more curious than queasy.

"No. I always knew what happened that night in their bedroom. Not the details obviously but I knew that it was the first and last time they were together as husband and wife. She never asked him for…intimacy again while she was under the effects of the potion and they never got the chance to undo that magic because papa died, so that night was the last time they were with each other, though neither knew it. The age difference didn't matter to me because to me they were never old and young, they were just my parents. I mean if papa had tried it on with an actual teenager I would have been horrified, not to mention mama would have blown his bollocks to smithereens but with them, they were the same age in all but appearance."

"Fair enough. Is this it or is there more? I can't imagine there's too much more to see, judging by the time." Harry asked.

"No. We can go. You've seen all I wanted to you see – the most magical moment of my childhood."