Chapter 28: The Encompassing Chains Of Grief

{A/N: This Chapter has been Re-Posted for those of you who have already read this story...I felt the need to clean it up a bit...so to speak...}

My Thanks To All My Readers And Reviewers...Enjoy-S.S.

Hogwarts Castle, Wizarding World...

With each passing week, Hermione Granger-Snape found herself sleeping alone more often than she had before she lost the child she shared with her less than warm Potions Professor Husband. The young grieving witch had not known the reason why her husband suddenly stopped caring, or maybe he had not cared at all and the pregnancy was her way of projecting, she could never be sure. He had come home, if at all and slept in his armchair in the front room most nights. On mandatory days where their rings would burn to indicate they were to share their marriage bed, he would still radiate coldness when he took her. The passion and kindness that she had known him to be capable of had been gone and replaced with a kind of dutiful distance.

Having already had her heart broken due to the loss of a baby, Severus taking to ignoring her outright was only making the pain worse. Sadly, his cold treatment had not just been a factor in their marriage bed, but in every other aspect of his life concerning her. When in class he hardly even looked her way when there was an answer to a question that she knew, The Potions Master would simply glance at her brewing. He did not seem bothered in the least by her slow withdrawal from participation and continued on as if nothing had ever happened. Hermione had gotten fed up with her husband's icy antics as of late and decided to reach out for a little attention wither it had been a good decision on her part remained to be seen. The thought of going through another night with Severus treating her as if she had not even been a person was just too much to endure.

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The Potions Classroom, Slytherin Dungeons, Hogwarts Castle, Wizarding World...

Enraged beyond his normal capacity, Severus Snape had barely been able to reign in his horrid temper as Hermione continuously launched numerous textbooks in his direction. With a flick of his wrists, The Potions Master cast a silencing charm on her before she uttered the first very stupid word that would have tipped off the other students to their very secret and ultimately humiliating "farce of a marriage". The other students, including Ron Weasley and Harry Potter had been caught off guard by her antics. Ginny was too stunned with what happened to have an opinion on the matter.

The seething Snape instructed all the other Slytherin-Gryffindor students to make their way out as the bell rang and turned his attention to his young still very much upset wife. Her face had been red with rage as she continued to pour what most likely had been her heart out in a bid to reach her stubborn husband. Her feelings for him had not waned despite what he might have believed. She still loved him a great deal. Though she had not been altogether sure why by this point.

"Severus Sebastian Snape... I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!" she continued though it had been futile.

Once the last of the students had gone Snape whirled around on his wife and canceled the silencing charm.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!?" he shouted irate.

Seeing The Potions Master in full rage took some of the wind out of Hermione's sails as she nearly shrank back with his swift movement. Summoning her Gryffindor courage she looked him in the eye still very much enraged at his antics as of late. She took that moment to decide that she was not to be ignored. He flicked his wrist and cast a silencing charm on the room and warded the door.

"I AM DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET YOUR ATTENTION!" She shouted the hurt and anguish clear in her voice as she did.

Snape arched an eyebrow at this. He had no idea that she would have become this emotional over his decision to distance himself from her, after all this marriage had simply been an arrangement to keep her out of the clutches of his far less accommodating dark brethren.

"And what pray tell, is the reason you desire my so called attention, Miss Granger?" he asked in his usual icy professor tone.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him.

"It's Mrs. Snape." she corrected him stubbornly.

Snape rolled his eyes. Clearly, the witch was showing no signs of backing down from this ridiculous notion that their marriage means something to her.

"My patience is thin as it is...Mrs. Snape." he said bitterly spitting out her corrected title. "Why have you decided to alert the whole damn school to our private affairs?"

"She was my daughter too." said Hermione getting right to it despite his icy comment. "Why can't we just get passed this?"

Snape sighed rather annoyed that she had decided to bring this up here of all places and now of all times. As pent up with emotion as she was the little witch would never understand that it was not a simple matter for her to discuss with him and treat it like a physical wound. He had been through this pain before and the effects have lasted far longer than any emotional mind like hers could comprehend.

"Mrs. Snape." he started not at all hiding his annoyance at her chosen topic. "I do not have time to sit here trapped in my classroom while you conjure a poor excuse to act like a fool in a bid to discuss a topic I have no interest in discussing...what's done is done...it's best you move on and stop holding on to foolish fantasies."

Hermione had been near tears at his coldness. She had still been very angry, but it was difficult for her to keep a lid on her sorrow. He didn't seem to care at all what happened to their daughter. He didn't seem to care much about anything given his temperament. It was as if nothing significant had ever happened between them in the wake of her pregnancy, and she was at a loss for how to proceed.

"Severus, why are you doing this?" she asked in a sorrowful tone. "Why are you being so cruel?"

Snape arched an eyebrow at her. The better question on his mind at the time was why was she being so emotional? He had played husband for her given the circumstances and continued to do his various other jobs effectively when he placed personal issues that no one could do anything about past, present, or future in the back of his mind in a bid to function. This witch with her childish mind and emotional grandstanding was simply making all this more difficult.

"Have you not met me?" he asked almost genuinely surprised by her words. "Since when is picking up and going on with one's life cruelty...I am not some grunt Gryffindor who..."

"No...you're a Slytherin git who only thinks about himself." said Hermione angrily cutting him off. "You could careless that your daughter would never get to celebrate her first birthday...!"

It was Snape's turn to cut her off, although he did not use words.

Before the bushy haired witch could finish her sentence, Snape had strode up to her and pinned her against his desk. She felt her back against the hard wood surface and saw the now murderous glint behind his eerie obsidian eyes. For a brief moment, she felt genuine fear given that Snape's temper was worse than what she had known it to be given all the years of Harry and Ron getting on his bad side. It seemed she had pushed the enraged Slytherin over the edge with her last few comments.

"You have no idea what I care for!" he said in an icy tone. "I have lost far more than you could imagine in a single life time, little girl...and not one but two children! ONE OF WHICH, WAS MURDERED RIGHT BEFORE MY VERY EYES AND THERE WAS NOTHING THAT I COULD DO ABOUT IT!"

Hermione looked up at him in absolute shock, her amber eyes meeting his obsidian ones as the truth of his pain filled words hit her like a ton of bricks. She had no idea what he suffered over the course of his life and it appeared losing their baby was only the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Severus had carried all of that pain and suffering with him for so many years and it only seemed to reinforce her love for him. Hermione couldn't imagine going through this kind of agony more than once and for him it was like pouring salt into a gaping wound.

"Do you know what it's like to see your child born before your very eyes...and then have their life extinguished just moments after by blood thirsty savages who have little to no regard for you because of your blood status?" he asked his voice in an eerily quiet tone. "Do you know anything about holding their tiny little body and knowing that moments before there was life and promise behind their dead eyes...and you wish with every fiber of your being that you could take their place...but no matter how much you wish for it...it never happens...?"

Hermione saw the anger seem to dissipate behind his eyes as he continued leaving only a hollowed expression as he recounted one of the most devastating moments of his already pain filled life.

"I wanted this child...Hermione." he said meeting her gaze once more. "More than you would ever know...and once again I had to..."

He stepped away from her as the weight of his grief seemed to become too heavy for him in that moment.

Hermione had been speechless as she saw the raven haired wizard drop to his knees.

"Why must we speak of this?" he asked with his voice breaking from the torment. "Why must you Gryffindors always press until you push a man to his breaking point...is this better?...is overwhelming a man already soaked in sorrow worth your precious Gryffindor pride?"

"It's not about that." said Hermione making her way over toward him. "I-I just wanted to know that you cared about her...about us...and anything at all really."

Snape sighed once more feeling the strain of his emotions rather clearly.

"She was my daughter too." he said in an absent tone.

The bushy haired witch ran her fingers through her husband's slick hair as he leaned against her now childless belly. The knowledge that life had once been growing there made it difficult to recall happier times, when they each looked forward to meeting the unborn little witch or wizard growing there. Only at the end of her existence did they finally learn that their child was a girl, a daughter they would see or hold in their arms. The tears streamed down the young witch's cheeks as she too got to her knees from the weight of her grief.

"I miss her so much." she said in a broken tone.

Snape did the only sensible thing and gathered his sobbing wife into his ebony clad arms and she let her tears fall soaking his chest.

"It just isn't fair." said Hermione still sobbing. "We never even got to see her...or hold her...or watch her take her first breath."

Snape took a deep breath and held his young wife tighter.

"Life isn't fair." he said in a now emotionless tone.

A painful lesson he had known all too well given all that he had endured while other's had it easy and even managed to obtain their heart's desire in the wake of his seemingly unyielding misfortune.

Hermione was more inclined to agree with him at that moment. She never knew that he had a child before their marriage, she didn't think anyone knew with his tendency to be so annoyingly private about even the most trivial of things like his feelings. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for him but knew better than to ask. This pushing him into revealing things he did not want to discuss would only widen the rift between then. No. She would leave him be, she had gotten what she wanted more or less, he did at least feel the loss of their daughter more so than she did. He would speak of it on his own time and then she would have all the answers to her questions. For now she decided to keep quiet about it.

"I love you." she said changing the subject.

He looked at her confused for a moment. He would have thought for sure that she would have bombarded him with a million questions but was relieved to find that she didn't. The Potions Master had expected her innate curiosity to kick in when he let slip the story of his young son's death. She didn't appear to have anything to say, possibly content to just be in his ebony clad arms given all the weeks he had ignored her. Truthfully, her timely changing of the subject had been well appreciated.

"You don't have to say it back...I know how you are." she said with a small smile despite the situation.

"Do you?" he asked with his eyebrow raised in question once more.

She nodded so very sure of herself at the moment.

"Well then, it shouldn't come as a surprise that you have three weeks detention." he said still holding her in his arms as a small smirk filed across his sallow pale face. "And that's fifteen points from Gryffindor for your little outburst, Mrs. Snape."

The bushy haired witch continued to rest her head against her husband's ebony clad chest. Despite their apparent emotional progress Severus Snape was still very much a git.

"It was worth it." she said trying to salvage the remainder of her dignity in the wake of such a foolish act.

"We'll see how your fellow Gryffindors feel about it if you cost them the house cup." he said in a very smug tone.

Hermione smiled at him despite the formerly shed tears and his capacity to be a git.

Snape wiped the remainder of them away with his thumb and kissed her soft pink lips.

"In the future Mrs. Snape, I suggest you speak with me in my office." he said very serious in his tone. "One mustn't forget that this marriage is to be kept secret from those that are not already aware of it."

The bushy haired witch nodded noting her very costly mistake today and vowed mentally not to repeat it as she agreed with her husband.

Snape kissed her again and before he knew it she returned his kiss with passion he had not seen from her in days. Overwhelmed by the intensity of it, both Snape and Hermione found themselves on the floor exchanging even more heated kisses.

"Severus." moaned the young witch at the feel of her husband's touch against her belly.

She stroked his sallow pale cheek and kissed him once more. He looked at her for what seemed like the longest time before continuing to return her kiss.

"I apologize for ignoring you...witch." he said honestly. "This...I...I should have been here when you needed me...then maybe..."

Hermione touched his sallow pale face and shook her head. She had known full well that given what he told her about his first child, this was a well planned assassination and it meant no matter if Severus had been at her side or where he was at the time their child would have been killed.

"You're here now so that's all that matters." she said sweetly.

"I'll never understand you." said Snape confused by her sweetness.

"Good." replied Hermione. "Then we'll never get bored with each other."

After a few more kisses, Snape and Hermione got to their feet and made themselves presentable. He had another class and she was due to join her friends on the grounds.

"I really do love you, Severus." she said as she neared the door.

"I can't imagine why." he replied bitterly.

She gave him a sweet smile and sighed.

"Neither can I." she admitted honestly. "But despite an accurate explanation, I do."

With one last kiss, Snape un-warded the door and took off the silencing charm. He stalked back over toward his desk and proceeded to "put on a show" for the next students to file in. Hermione made her way out into the corridors "putting on a show" of her own. She would see her husband later that night, and their time together promised to be as engaging as before when they shared a bed. The bushy haired witch could hardly wait. Snape for his part had not understood in the slightest why she bothered but, he supposed he could have done worse. As he finished his last class and attempted to make his way to the dungeons, he felt the familiar burning sensation in his right forearm. The Dark Lord was calling him and already he knew that the promise of the evening would be shattered by a most unwelcome but inevitable pain and agony.