They say that 'time assuages,'-
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove to
There was no malady.
-Emily Dickinson
Chapter Three
He walks her back to her dismal apartment in the seedy side of town. They pass through the heart of Whitville, populated with strip malls, bars with buzzing fluorescent signs, and listing salt box houses with kennels full of barking dogs in the back. Compared to Hogsmeade with its shops and charming cottages, Whitville is depressing, and every step weighs Snape down.
"Why here?" he asks Jenny. "Of all places on earth, why here?"
"I was wondering when you'd ask that," she said, smiling. Her arm just brushes his as they walk down the pavement. "When I came here, there was no library. Who'd have thought to look for Hermione Granger in a place with no library?"
He laughs in spite of himself.
"And besides," she continues, "I know Whitville seems gray and sad, but there's beauty here, too. The Pocono Mountains are lovely in the fall, and they're riddled with hiking trails. Perdy and I love to pack a lunch and take the day to wander in the woods." Jenny tucks her hand into the crook of his arm. "And although like every town, it's a mix of good and bad, I have met some of the most lovely people here. Ethel Llewellyn, the woman who owns the house where I live, she took me in when I was pregnant and jobless. Wouldn't take a penny until I was working. She's a cranky and nosy woman with the loveliest, mushiest heart. You know, she lobbied tirelessly for the library. It's entirely thanks to her that Whitville finally joined the 21st century."
Snape snorts. "More like the 19th century." He's very aware of her warm palm on his bicep. He resists the urge to flex, but is unable to keep from covering the top of her hand with his free one. How long had he wanted this? To walk in public with a woman he loved, touching, talking.
"You'll have to take my word for it, Severus. It's not so bad here. I could have chosen a lot worse, I think."
He pats her hand. "You've done wonderfully."
They approach her apartment, and he's sad that he has to let her go so that they can ascend the steps in single file. When they reach the top, he pulls the paperwork out of his breast pocket and hands it to her. "I've already filled out most of it. You just need to sign it."
"Thank you." She looks down to put it in her purse and then tucks her long hair behind her ears. "Do you... where are you staying? When do you leave to go back?"
His heart leaps with hope. He slides his hands in his pocket to keep from grabbing her, and looks out over the misty gray town. "Just down the road at the Comfort Inn. My Portkey is scheduled for noon tomorrow."
She nods and then hesitates. Finally, she says, "What you said earlier... about loving me, I mean, I loved you, too." A tear spills down her face, and he has the most insane urge to touch the wet streak, drag it down her jaw to her neck and collarbone where he can kiss it away. He doesn't though. He just listens. "So much. Leaving you was... it nearly killed me. I couldn't, I couldn't be Hermione any longer, because she iwas/i yours. I had to become Jenny, because Jenny was Perdita's."
He strokes his fingers into her hair. "You know, it makes no difference to me. Hermione or Jenny, I still love you, even now." He pulls a strand over her shoulder and buries his nose in it, breathing deeply. "When I thought you were dead, I couldn't bear it, and I feel like I only woke up from a decade long nightmare when I saw Perdita's name on the Hogwart's incoming student roster."
"Do you... do you want to stay here? Just for tonight, I mean," she adds quickly. "You could meet my daughter, have dinner with us..." She trails off.
"Are you inviting me out of obligation? Since I've come all this way?" He holds his breath.
"No."
It's enough. Snape nods and leans forward, giving her ample time to object, and brushes his mouth against hers. He uses immense care as he sips from her lips, and then he pulls back and examines her face. Her cheeks are flushed, and her hands curl beneath his lapels. Her fingers flex and knead his chest like a cat's. He groans and leans into her once more, pressing his lips to hers. Her back hits her front door, and her fingers stroke through his hair.
Her mouth opens and their tongues touch and slide together, and when he runs his hand down her back, she arches, pressing her breasts into his chest. He's on fire, but he's with iher/iso it's okay, his Hermione, his Jenny, and she is hitching one of her legs up over his hip, and his hands are on her bum, supporting her as she rubs against him. It's heavenly, heavenly, Hermione, Jenny.
But then the door is opening, and they stumble back into the apartment, and her mouth pulls away from his. He's bereft without her, wants her back, but she's struggling to get away.
He's hurt until he hears a horrified voice shout, "Mom!" and the mirror in Jenny's entryway, a flat, frameless horror, shatters into a million pieces.
#
They face each other across the kitchen table like combatants, like he's interviewing for a job. Jenny fled to the bathroom to 'neaten up' after a quick peck on her daughter's cheek, and now he's being stared down by a severe-looking ten year old girl child with her blonde hair in braids with ridiculous daisy hair bands adorning the tips.
"I know who you are," she said, sticking the tip of her braid in her mouth.
He removes it. "Do you?"
"Professor Severus Snape." She regards him with not entirely friendly interest. "I never thought I'd meet you because I walked in on you making out with my mom." Her eyes narrow. Her hands twitch, and he thinks it's because she wants to wag a finger at him.
"I apologize."
"For kissing Mom?" The hair goes back into her mouth.
"No, for meeting you for the first time in such a manner. I liked kissing your mother, and I don't think I'll apologize for that." Again he reaches out and hooks a finger around the braid, pulling it from between her teeth. "I haven't seen her in a very long time, and I'm afraid we lost track of the time. I don't think she realized you'd be home from school."
"You knew her from before me?"
"I did." He sits back and tries to look austere. Snape knows they are treading on dangerous territory.
Again, she sucks on the tip of her braid. When he moves to take it from her, she leans away and says, "Don't. Mom always says it's a bad habit, but I'm thinking very hard right now."
He crosses his fingers in front of him on the table and waits.
"We've got a copy of Hogwarts: A History. Mom's also got a copy of The Dark Lord: Slithering Terror. She keeps it hidden in her bedroom drawer. Like I said, I know who you are."
"Much of what you will have read in Slithering Terror is hyperbolic nonsense, particularly in regards to my role." He shifts uncomfortably. "I promised your mother I wouldn't discuss this with you. I will respect that promise."
She thinks about this and nods. "That's okay, I guess. You're supposed to keep promises."
They lapse into silence and study each other. She's wearing a pink t-shirt with a rearing unicorn on it. The mane is silver foil that winks as she shifts in her seat. "Do you like unicorns?"
"Yes, very much." She pauses and then asks, "Are you my dad?"
Snape sits back, stunned. "What? Whatever gave you that idea?"
"You knew my mom before I was born, and from what I saw, you like like each other. I'm guessing." Her pale, thin face is serious as she watches him across the table. He feels very much like a man at a mark.
"I am not," he finally says stiffly. "You have the look of your father. As you see, I have black hair, and you have blonde. I have black eyes, and you have grey." I am ugly, and you are beautiful, he thinks. "I am afraid that I am not your father."
"Maybe you were taking Polyjuice Potion when you made me," she says.
Snape is not sure whether she's pushing because she wants him as her father, or more likely, wants to rule him out. He says, "If you were my child, I would not hesitate to claim you." He wishes things were different, but from the tip of her slender nose to the ends of her corn silk hair, Lucius's stamp on her features is unmistakable. "I promise."
Perdita bites her lip and looks away, blinking rapidly.
Snape looks up, away from the child's obvious grief, and notices Hermione standing in the doorway, watching him. Their eyes meet in communion and sorrow. All the things that might have been hang heavy between them. He looks away first.
Perdita leans forward to touch his hand, drawing his attention back to her. "You said that I look like him... my dad. Did you know him? Who is he?"
"Perdy," Jenny says very softly. "I've told you that when you're older, I'll tell you about your father."
The girl starts and swivels around to look at her mother. "Why? Why do I have to wait?" Her slender shoulders creep up to her ears, and she crosses her arms over her chest. "There are lots of other girls in my class who don't have a father that lives with them, but I am the only one who has no idea who my father is." She cries silently. "Some of the other kids say really mean things about us. I thought, since Professor Snape is a hero, maybe if he was my dad, nobody would pick on me any more."
Jenny sighs and moves to sit next to her daughter, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Perdita fights her at first and then gives up, scooting closer and putting her head on her mother's shoulder. "You know," Jenny begins, "we can't control what other people say and think about us. All we can do is control ourselves." She presses a kiss to the part in Perdita's hair.
"B-but, I just d-don't understand why you c-can't tell me. Where is he?" Her words are interrupted by deep hiccuping tears that shake her body. "Is he so tuh-terrible?"
Above her daughter's head, Jenny frowns and looks at Snape. Gently, she says, "Now how could anything be terrible that brought me you?" Caught in her gaze, he sees her eyes cloud and darken. Small lines, the first he's noticed, bracket the sides of her mouth.
Hermione is lying. Jenny is telling the truth. He looks away and rubs his eyes. He is unsure what to do or say in this situation. The moment between mother and daughter is private. He is not part of their little family. He has never really been part of a family.
He watches from the outside.
#
Later, Jenny prepares dinner and Snape helps Perdy with her homework. Not that she needs it. She does her maths in pen while twining a braid around her finger and chattering away at him.
"And last year, Mom and I saw a horned grebe, which are quite rare in these parts, you know. And she said he had his breeding plumage on, and I giggled because people do that to, put on nice clothes when they want to have a date." She flips a page in her notebook and continues her computations on the back side. "The horned grebe had funny white feathers by his eyes, and it looked like an old man with bushy eyebrows. For dates, Mom puts on a blue dress and some pearls—which you can tell they're real if you rub your teeth on them, because real pearls are gritty. Then I pictured Mom putting on bushy eyebrows too, and I just could not stop laughing."
At the mention of Jenny dating, Snape's gaze jerks to where she putters in the kitchen. Her face burns scarlet, and she shrugs at him as she puts oil in a pan and swishes it around to coat the bottom. When he looks away, back to Perdita, he sees her watching him with a canny glint in her eye.
"At Hogwarts," he says, "there was a phoenix named Fawkes. His breeding plumage was fire."
"Really?" Her mouth is a small 'o.' "I've read about phoenixes, but I've never seen one in real life."
"They are rare, and moreover, they are magical creatures. You and your mother are living in a Muggle community. Magical creatures that cannot pass as human tend to stay with the Wizarding community so they do not have to hide." He glances down at her figures, all of which are correct. "Perhaps one day, the three of us can go to Old Hope, near Philadelphia. I've heard there is a thriving Veela community there."
"That would be so cool! When can we go?" A huge smile wreathes Perdita's face, and Snape feels an answering, pleased smile curl on his lips.
"We will see," he says, not wanting to commit Jenny. He has caught her eye, and she has a troubled expression on her face. His stomach tightens.
"Did you hear, Mom?"
"I did! How very exciting!" But her voice is flat, and she does not look up.
He has done something wrong, but he does not know what.
#
Snape lies naked in Jenny's bed. It is midnight. He is alone.
Perdita sleeps snug in a room rampant with unicorns and glitter. Jenny is on the couch. He is restless and lonely and surrounded by her smell. Her perfume is on the sheets, and he buries his face in the tee shirt which she had forgotten and left tucked under her pillow. He aches for her.
He thinks he is imagining it at first when the door to the bedroom opens, and she sneaks inside. She closes it, leaning back with her hands against the knob. She is wearing a vest and knitted-cotton shorts. "Am I welcome?" she asks.
He sits upright, the strands of his hair tickling his bare shoulders. "Of course. You are always welcome. I want you near."
Jenny's eyes trace the line of his chest down his torso to where the white down comforter puddles around his hips. "Oh, Severus."
Snape bends his leg, propping his foot on the mattress, and resting his marked forearm on his knee. He is suddenly painfully aware of the erection she caused with her breathy words. He clears his throat. "Would you like to come to bed with me, Jenny?"
"Will you call me Hermione?" She blushes, her cheeks a darker shade of grey in the night. "Just for tonight?"
"Hermione, come here." He holds his hand out to her, and she walks to the bed as if she's pulled to it, shedding clothes all the while. He casts a Silencing Charm on the room.
She sinks next to him, and he wraps his hands in her hair and pulls her to him roughly. He can't be gentle with her because he knows what this is. She thinks she needs to say goodbye, and he's damned if he'll make it easy for her to leave him again. Their teeth click together as he rolls her beneath him, pinning her with his bigger, heavier body. She moans and bites his lip, her fingers clutching at the taut muscles in his back and arse. He touches her, stroking at the apex of her thighs, and she's so wet that he knows she must have been lying on her couch thinking about him, maybe cupping her breasts and imagining they are his hands.
He's on fire and feels vicious. He reaches down and pulls her legs around his hips, and then he's riding her hard, wanting to mark her, spill in her, chain him to her like the primitive animal he is. Her breasts bounce under the force of his thrusts, and she's got her hands braced on the backboard behind her head.
She mewls, cries out with every lunge of his hips, and it's getting more urgent until she's grinding against him and they are both cumming, falling, spilling, tearing.
When it's over, with his face still pressed between her breasts, he smoothes a hand over her sweaty tummy and whispers a Contraceptus Charm, because he'd never take her choices away from her. He'd die first. He feels like he iis/i dying, actually.
"Severus," she whispers.
"Hmm," he says, resenting that she won't give him just this moment of peace and accord.
"You know what this is, don't you?"
He rolls away from her, disentangling them with a sticky noise. "Of course. You are going to send me away."
"You can't think I want to."
"But still you are."
"You're high-profile. If we were seeing each other, eventually, someone would wonder where Severus Snape popped off to every weekend. They'd find me. They'd see my daughter was a Malfoy. The British Wizarding world is too scarred from the war. She'd be spat upon, beaten down, twisted. I can't do that to her." She clears her throat, and it's a tight noise. "But don't think this is easy. You can't believe that I don't want you, ilove/i you. It's been a decade if it's been a day, but I'd marry you tomorrow if I were free to do so."
She lays down, spooning up behind him, running a hand down his chest.
"I don't think I can do this again," he whispers. "Lose you."
"I'm so sorry. I'm hurting, too."
He sits up, shaking her off. "This is… I am… I have to go."
"All... all right." He can hear the tears in her voice. He can't look at her, because if he sees her crying, he'll crawl right back into bed with her and kiss her face and never leave again. He needs distance. He needs to think clearly, and he can't do it with her naked and smelling of him.
He dresses.
He leaves her crying in her bed.
He walks until dawn.
Snape leaves on his noon Portkey.
A/N: Don't hate me! That would make me sad.