Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!
—
Harriet did her best to hide her breast tenderness from Severus.
There was no need to inconvenience her alpha over a trivial matter, her menstrual cycle would come at any second and her suffering would be alleviated.
Although, after two weeks had passed since Harriet's heat and she still hadn't bled, she was becoming agitated.
Severus had noticed the constant frown that stayed on her lips.
It troubled him that her usual, soft smile had disappeared.
Classes were going well and Harriet continued to prove helpful as Severus's assistant.
Her secret was safe until one unfortunate night.
Severus and Harriet's lips met over and over again as he slowly guided her towards the bed, his strong, elegant hands on her slender waist and her arms draped over his firm shoulders.
Severus couldn't wait to strip Harriet's robes from her body and lay her down underneath him…...
It thrilled him to fantasize about watching her writhe while he pleasured her.
As gentle as ever, his hands gradually wandered from her waist and very delicately roamed up her torso to cup the outlines of her swollen, sore breasts through her robes.
For Harriet, the feeling was anything but pleasant.
Severus's dark eyes narrowed when his mate made a noise of pain and instantly pulled away from him, holding one arm protectively over her chest like she was trying to guard her breasts from his roving fingers.
"What on earth's the matter?" Severus asked with a scowl as he looked at Harriet while she stood across from him, "You've seemed to enjoy similar attention before."
"Sorry." Harriet replied, slowly letting her hand fall away, "I-I'd prefer it if you could leave that area alone tonight."
"Why?" Severus questioned suspiciously.
It would be foolish to lie, Harriet knew that Severus could read her mind if he wished.
What fib could she produce that he would find plausible anyway?
"...Because I'm…...I'm sore there." Harriet answered in an honest whisper, "It hurts. I have to be careful not to sleep on my chest or wear clothes that are too tight."
Severus gave her an unreadable look as he questioned, "And why might that be, Potter?"
"I'm waiting on my menses." Harriet said nonchalantly, "It followed my first heat. I haven't had one in a long time, but thanks to Elion's potion, I suppose I will now. My breasts always ache right before."
Severus was clearly not convinced.
Harriet watched as he glided over to her with a solemn look on his pale face.
Painfully slowly, he walked around her, circling her while he scrutinized her closely, as if his black eyes could see all the way into her soul.
When he stopped and stood behind her, he leaned down next to her ear.
Harriet's heart beat with excitement, but she frowned when he pulled away, giving her no kisses or touches.
"Your scent…..has changed." Severus stoically announced.
"What do you mean my scent has changed?" Harriet asked incredulously as she turned around to face her alpha.
"You smell sweeter, more innocent. The aroma is delicious….but it's telltale quality is unmistakable." Severus answered.
Harriet furrowed her brow at him.
"You're with child." Severus concluded in a whisper, barely moving his lips.
It wasn't a question.
It was a statement, a serious statement, the weight of which Severus fully felt and realized.
His dark eyes were intent as they bore into Harriet's, who looked shocked and offended at his declaration.
"I am not! Are you mental?!" Harriet demanded angrily as if Severus had just hurled a great insult at her.
"Your cycle is delayed...your breasts are tender…...your smell is too sweet….." Severus mused out loud as he listed the symptoms Harriet had already experienced.
"That doesn't mean anything! I've never been entirely regular when it came to that matter….You're….You're being ridiculous!" Harriet insisted.
Severus said nothing in reply, he just stared at Harriet with that same, mysterious look that was filled with awe, horror, and pondering.
Harriet walked back up to Severus and promptly caught his lips again in a deep kiss.
She clutched onto his robes with her hands in a renewed neediness, hoping that her alpha would devour her and make her forget, as if coupling with him would take the startling possibility away.
Severus returned Harriet's affection, but he was not nearly as unyielding as before.
No matter how ferociously Harriet attacked his lips, Severus kept his posture stiff and his kiss simple, as if he were trying to calm her down.
"Stop teasing me….." Harriet whispered to him, letting her lips brush his as she spoke.
She was quite surprised when Severus pulled away from her completely, scooped her swiftly into his arms, and laid her down gently on her nest that remained on top of his bed.
Severus had wondered during the last two weeks why his new omega hadn't dismantled her constructed soft place of comfort since her heat was over…...
Harriet made a noise of frustration as Severus walked over and began to change into his nightclothes.
With a scowl, she asked him, "Are you going to ignore me, then?"
"I'm not ignoring anyone." Severus replied while he climbed into Harriet's nest and joined her in bed, "My expectant mate needs adequate rest and ample amounts of sleep."
Harriet frowned as Severus elaborated, "Mothers carrying children need rest, not sexual intercourse."
"I need to be taken." Harriet murmured as Severus turned towards her and wrapped his arms around her.
"There won't be any taking until a midwife's given you a proper exam and declared such activities safe." Severus quipped.
"It may help me start my cycle!" Harriet insisted, "You could at least give me a massage! I've heard if you rub deep enough, it can bring on menses."
"I will partake in no actions that could possibly result in a miscarriage, Potter." Severus snapped in reply, "Now, close your eyes and sleep. If you need anything, I'm right beside you."
The unusual gentleness in his velvet voice quelled Harriet's anger and soothed her frustration.
Was that….was that loving concern that she heard?
When Harriet looked over at Severus and saw that he had closed his eyes, she rolled back over in bed and sighed deeply to herself.
Harriet knew her alpha was being silly and paranoid, it wasn't true.
However, she was grateful that he took great care not to let his hands accidentally touch her breasts for the rest of the night.
One of his arms rested underneath his head and the other…
Severus's other hand was splayed possessively over her flat belly and it's position brought a peaceful smile to Harriet's face.
—
Severus Snape was a shrewd, astute man and a calculating alpha who had survived decades by knowing facts and anticipating truths that others did not.
Severus was not wrong about his intuition concerning Harriet.
It was as if the child in her womb had heard its parents arguing and sought to prove its father right by revealing its existence.
The following day, during the next to last class, the students in Headmaster Snape's dungeon were busily brewing their happiness draughts.
Severus was at the front of the room, looking over the homework assignments that his loyal assistant had collected and brought to him for his review.
Harriet was slowly walking around the students' tables, eager to assist anyone who had a question.
Everything was fine.
Everything was going well.
….And then it wasn't.
In one horrible, terrifying second, the afternoon fell apart.
Harriet felt like someone had reached underneath her and turned the room on its side as she stumbled over, struggling to catch herself against the stone wall.
There was something about the dampness of the room and the heady scent of all those bubbling cauldrons that made the bile suddenly rise in her throat, threatening to spill vulgarly from her lips….
A sheen of cold sweat broke out across her flesh as her heart thudded in her ears.
"Miss Potter?!" One of the Ravenclaw students called out, watching as her moist hands slipped down the side of the dungeon as she fought to steady herself.
When he heard the student yell out, Severus looked up just in time to see Harriet lose her battle at maintaining consciousness and fall as her eyes rolled back into her head.
In that instant, Severus realized that he wouldn't be able to make it across the room in time to stop Harriet from colliding painfully and dangerously with the floor.
Headmaster Snape whipped out his wand and shouted, "LEVICORPUS!"
The entire class gasped as they watched Harriet hover over the ground, saved by Severus's spell from the impact of her collapse.
Between Harriet levitating in the air, unconscious, to Severus staring at her with an anguished grimace, the class didn't know what to make of the scene in front of them.
"Dismissed." Severus quickly hissed to his pupils.
The students weren't sure they had heard him correctly.
There were many things said about Professor, er, Headmaster Snape, some good, some bad, some true, some false, but it was a known fact by all that he never ended a class prematurely.
"...Sir?" A Hufflepuff student cautiously inquired.
"I said dismissed!" Severus snapped.
At the foreboding urgency in his voice, the students quickly began to pack their bags after they hastily removed their cauldrons from the flames.
"Leave your names by your work." Severus called out, his voice tense and rough, "We'll resume tomorrow."
The students scribbled their names down beside their cauldrons before they flooded out of the dungeon classroom's door.
Once the children were out of his care, Severus floated Harriet in front of him, not wanting to touch her, frightened that he may unintentionally cause her or his unborn more harm by doing so.
While Severus worriedly rushed his mate to the castle's infirmary, the last potions class of the day enjoyed a small victory when they learned that their strict professor had canceled their learning period for the afternoon.
—-
Severus came racing into the infirmary demanding that Madam Pomfrey tend to his ailing mate, er, assistant, immediately.
When the healer saw the poor, unconscious girl hanging in a listless suspension, she dashed over her towards her and directed Severus to gently lower Harriet onto a bed.
Harriet didn't hear the conversation between Severus and Madam Pomfrey.
Harriet didn't feel the examination that Madam Pomfrey gave her or the simple diagnostic charms that the healer performed.
No, the first thing that Harriet felt after her collapse was the crispness of the infirmary bed sheets as they brushed against her skin.
Slowly, Harriet cracked her green eyes open and blinked when she saw Severus gazing down at her.
"S-Sev…?" Harriet asked groggily.
"Potter?" Severus asked, his low voice uncharacteristically soft, "Can you hear me?"
An unwelcome rush of warmth and nausea overwhelmed Harriet and she sat up hurriedly as she gasped, "I'm sick!...I'm….!"
Severus reached over and handed her a bucket that was sitting next to her bed.
He watched with a frown as she leaned over it and swallowed thickly, waiting for the deluge that never came.
Severus took a damp cloth from a bowl of water on the table at Harriet's bedside, wrang the excess water out, and blotted her chest and forehead to cool her down while she resisted the urge to retch.
"I…..I must have a virus." Harriet gasped as her stomach dangerously flipped and flopped.
"Hardly…" Severus replied in his low drawl.
Headmaster Snape was glad that there were only a couple of other patients in a distant part of the infirmary that afternoon.
That meant that Madam Pomfrey was busy mending them, which allowed him and Harriet to speak privately,
"I was correct…...You're with child." Severus informed Harriet in a sincere whisper.
Harriet was so ill then that she didn't take the time to process the tone of his voice as he spoke those words.
Mortal terror, mixed with more than a hint of subtle pride and baffled wonder.
From her place over the bucket, Harriet looked up at Severus as if he had diagnosed her with a terminal illness.
He watched the color drain from her face as her green eyes widened and she gasped, "N-No! T-That can't be…..that….can't…-!"
Severus saw it coming.
As Harriet violently heaved into the bucket, gripping it with white knuckles, her thoughtful alpha held her hair back with his hands.
Once she finished, he vanished the evidence, cleaning her and the bucket with a simple flick of his wand.
"Better?" Severus asked.
Harriet laid back against the pillows with her chest heaving as she gasped for breath but she nodded bravely.
"That may happen for some time….." Severus mused, "Although I'll brew everything I can to minimize your discomfort."
Severus was contemplating having a mate and a child, setting up a life which he had never before had the luxury of enjoying, a life of simple, blissful domesticity.
Harriet however, was not enjoying such pleasant thoughts.
She stared up at the ceiling and as she considered the situation, she wondered if she would vomit again purely from stress.
"I suppose the first matter to sort out will be finding you a proper midwife." Severus whispered, growing concerned at the look on Harriet's face, "The next will be writing to your program superiors at the Ministry."
Harriet gaped at Severus.
Mockingly, he returned her stunned look.
"...Yes?" He asked after a pause.
"I have no intention of leaving the auror program. I'm months away from graduation!" Harriet exclaimed, keeping her voice low enough so that Madam Pomfrey and the other patients wouldn't be able to hear.
"You're months away from motherhood, Potter!" Severus snapped, "...And that's my pup in your belly!"
After their heated exchange, Severus glanced over at the other patients and hoped that they hadn't heard anything.
When he saw that no one was looking in his and Harriet's direction, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Potter," Severus purred in his low voice.
Harriet glanced over at him with another frown as he spoke, "We have to be…. reasonable…..about this."
"I've done too much work and gone through far too many trials to give up now." Harriet huffed.
Severus looked down at his stubborn mate with an irritated scowl.
He had prepared himself for the very real possibility that his coupling with Harriet may result in a pregnancy.
Severus wanted to go and find a place, a home, that could serve as their family dwelling.
He wanted Harriet to be resting there, in their home.
He wanted to join her at the end of each day, with her waiting for him, ready to greet him with a kiss.
Severus hadn't imagined that Harriet would want to continue in the auror training program under the circumstances.
Furthermore, what worried Severus was that the program didn't conclude until the summer and that was right around the time that Madam Pomfrey had estimated the baby would arrive…...