Chapter 2

For Merlin's Sake

Charity opened her eyes and found herself looking up at Oliver Wood's broad chin. He was carrying her.

"Where are we going?" Charity murmured.

Oliver looked down at her, his eyes wild with worry, and quickened his already fast pace. "To see Madam Pomfrey. You need to be looked at by a professional."

For as graceful as Wood was on his broom out on the Quidditch pitch, he was something more akin to a cement mixer in his hurried state on foot. So Charity gripped him firmly around the neck and hoped that this trip to the nurse's office wasn't going to do more damage than whatever the fall may have done.

"Madam Pomfrey!" Oliver called once he'd shouldered the doors open to the infirmary. "I've got Professor Burbage. She fell from the top of a ladder in the Charms corridor. And when I caught her she was unconscious."

The school's nurse bustled over and peered into Charity's eyes, pulling up each of her lids with her thumb. "Looks lucid enough now." She lifted one of Charity's wrists and closed her eyes while apparently monitoring the young professor's pulse. Madam Pomfrey's forehead wrinkled for a moment as she continued her concentration, and then a soft smile crossed her face, and she opened her eyes. She regarded Charity with a curiously gentle expression and instructed, "Set her down on the bed over there, Mr. Wood. Thank you."

Oliver carefully set her down. "Is she going to be okay?"

"Physically—she's perfectly fine. But she'd better learn fast to take better care of herself. It's bad enough I have to watch the students continually subjecting themselves to foolhardy injuries, but a professor?"

"I'm perfectly capable of climbing a ladder," Charity said. "I think it was the fumes from Mr. Filch's turpentine and fermented…something that made me dizzy."

"True enough any concoction of Filch's isn't generally good for your health, but-" The nurse paused and fixed her eyes on Charity's before continuing. "Is there any other reason that you may have felt light headed? Anything altered in your physical state?"

Charity merely stared blankly at the woman, clueless as to what she was digging for.

"All she's eaten for the past week is chocolate," Oliver offered.

Charity whipped her head toward him. "Tattle tale!"

"Well it's true, isn't it?" he insisted.

Madam Pomfrey raised a disapproving eyebrow.

"I, uhm, what are you doing here, anyhow, Oliver?" Charity asked. "I thought you left."

"I did. That is, I started to, but I…I wanted to get a look at the Gryffindor Quidditch trophy from my seventh year."

"And you're darned lucky he did," Madam Pomfrey added. "Otherwise you would've had to rely on Filch's feeble body to break your fall. I could've healed your bones easily enough, but Heaven knows there would've been injuries to other parts that even I couldn't have saved." The nurse looked suddenly grave. "Mr. Wood, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave now. Professor Burbage needs her rest."

Wood looked crestfallen. "I have a train to catch in twenty minutes. Can't I stay just a little longer?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wood. You'll have to say your goodbyes now."

"Is she going to be all right?" he asked.

"I told you, she's perfectly fine. She simply needs to rest and to eat something with a bit of nutrition in it."

Charity scowled again at Oliver, but relented when she saw how truly sorry he was to have to leave her in that state. "I'm fine, Ollie. I'm in the best possible hands. You get along to your train and focus on Quidditch. I want Puddlemere to be in prime form when I come with my father to see you play in a few weeks."

Oliver's eyes brightened. "You'll come?"

Charity smiled. "I'll be there."

"Okay, then. You take care of yourself." He leaned down and gave Charity a delicate kiss on her forehead, and then turned and heartily shook Madam Pomfrey's hand. "Thanks, Madam Pomfrey. For everything. And I'm really sorry about the time me and my mates swiped your Pepperup Potion to get even with Slytherin for their cheating."

Pomfrey didn't so much as flinch at the confession. She merely told him to have a good trip. After the door shut behind him, she mused aloud, "He always was a very nice boy. A little intense at times, but genuine and good-hearted. And healthy as a Hungarian Horntail. Not a bad choice as far as genes go, I'd say."

"Um, I suppose," Charity said uncertainly, pushing herself up to sitting. "So do I really have to stay here? I think I could rest much better in my own quarters."

"Lie down," Madam Pomfrey ordered as she pulled up a chair to the bed and sat down. Charity did as she was told and looked up at the nurse, who watched her steadily. "What you do on your own time is none of my business, but your physical well-being is literally my business, and it appears that you are unaware of your current condition."

"Condition?"

"Professor Burbage, when was your last menstrual period?"

"Menstrual…I, I'm not sure." Charity was flustered by the abrupt interrogation. Pomfrey's hallmark was her don't-ask-don't-tell policy, so if she was digging further, something must really be wrong.

The nurse locked an intense gaze on Charity and pursed her lips, furthering the young professor's uneasiness.

"I haven't really paid attention with everything else going on," Charity explained. "It's been a while, but I know stress can change physical cycles, and I was never that regular to begin with," she offered hopefully.

Pomfrey still didn't say a word, but continued to watch Charity closely.

The perplexed patient's eyes darted around the room in thought. "I know for sure I haven't had it since returning to Hogwarts in the spring, beginning of last month. And before that…I'm sorry, but I just can't remember. Please Madam Pomfrey, tell me what you're thinking. What's wrong with me?"

The nurse let out a slightly exasperated sigh, and then explained very slowly, "Professor Burbage, when I felt your pulse, yours wasn't the only heartbeat I sensed."

"What?" Charity panicked and her hands flew to her chest, feeling for a second heart.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Burbage! You're with child!"

"What?" Charity repeated, looking with utter confusion on the nurse. Then she thought back…back to London…back to her flat and an unexpected visit from Snape. Of course. Why had she never even considered the possibility before? She suddenly felt foolish; all the symptoms had been there—fatigue, change in appetite, mood swings—but she'd chalked it all up to stress and the possible onset of depression.

She absently let her hands trail down to her abdomen and spread across her belly. It was slightly rounded, not different than usual, but soon, very soon…

A soft smile played at the corners of Pomfrey's lips. "Congratulations, Professor."

. . . . .

Once Madame Pomfrey had firmly expounded upon the extra precautions and nutritional guidelines Charity would need to abide by in the coming months, she ceased asking any more questions, and Charity had never been more grateful for the woman's lack of curiosity about things that were not her business. But others would not exercise such discretion, and Charity would have to give them some sort of explanation. But with the loose-fitting robes everyone wore around Hogwarts, she could keep her secret for a bit longer, and so she pushed aside that worry—along with the goblet full of other concerns that came along with having a baby—and simply basked in the miracle of having a piece of Snape alive and growing inside of her.

The only one she confided in was Bnickel, her loyal and mute pet rabbit. "Hey, sugar," she cooed to him as she held his furry form across her chest. "You're going to have a baby brother…or a sister. Won't that be fun?"

He'd responded with a nuzzle to her ear and then started squirming to be let down so he could hop around.

Charity felt a new peace settle on her. A peace she had been searching for, but one that had eluded her until now. Getting confirmation of Snape's love for her in the Pensieve had given her a temporary reprieve from the pain, but without Severus there, she found herself longing for some tangible proof of their love, something to hold on to. Until now, his picture in the frame he had given her on her last birthday was all that she had, and she'd spent hours put together staring into it. She reached for it again and pressed it to her abdomen, as if to tell him what was there.

Through the many articles about Snape that had been splattered over newspapers after his funeral, she'd learned that his mother was a witch called Eileen Prince, while his father was a Muggle, Tobias Snape. Charity had been amazed to find out that Snape was what some wizards crudely referred to as a half-blood. The revelation had only fed her regret that Snape had been taken from her too soon. They would have had so much to discuss once he'd gotten around to telling her this piece of his history.

Although, based on the hints in the articles about his father's general disposition, she was certain that not all of these conversations would have been pleasant. It sounded as if Snape senior had not been entirely accepting of his wife's magical abilities and kept the family separated from the community in a run down house on Spinner's End. Charity remembered that Snape had been reluctant to speak of his childhood whenever she'd pressed him on it and realized that he'd never once mentioned his father to her. The one time he'd spoken of his mother, it hadn't been in a flattering light, so it didn't appear his relationship with her had been much better.

Charity pulled the picture away and tilted it toward her, her heart breaking for the little boy who had grown into the man she now stared at through the blur of her tears. She whispered to his picture that she would give his offspring the happiest childhood imaginable. As she fingered the silver details of the frame and it radiated its now familiar glow, a thought struck her and she flipped the frame over to read the inscription on the back:

To my darling Amalga, from your Prince.

"Prince?" she said aloud to no one but her rabbit, who was chewing on a corner of her dresser.

The coincidence nagged at her all night long, so the next day she headed into the library and dug through the archives to discover that Snape's mother had been born into a pure blood family. She was an only child, and so by marrying a Muggle, she'd put an end to the Prince's pure blood status. The information Charity found seemed to indicate that Eileen had been disowned by her family after marriage, the most damning evidence being that the Prince family had been quite wealthy, yet they let their daughter and grandchild live in near poverty.

"She must have truly loved him," Charity murmured to herself.

The obituary of Eileen's father, who'd survived his wife by four years, said he'd bequeathed the entirety of his fortune to various charitable endowments, indicating that there had been no reconciliation with his daughter prior to his death. Eileen followed her parents to the afterlife a mere two years later. Charity found nothing more regarding Snape's father, even Eileen's obituary made no mention of him, so she could only assume that he'd died at some earlier point.

After finding Eileen's parents, Charity was stuck. She tapped her wand impatiently on the pages. She knew that the "Prince" engraved on her picture frame was not a mere coincidence and that somewhere in Snape's ancestry there had been an Amalga. She wanted proof that what she held in her hands every day was something more meaningful than a trinket; she wanted evidence that it was a piece of Snape's history. As her wand continuously tapped, she noticed that the words it struck quivered and slightly faded, with new letters seeming to want to form behind them.

"Aha," she murmured. This was no Muggle archive. As with everything magical, there was more than met the eye—this volume contained layers of information. But knowing the layers were there and getting to them were two entirely different matters. A low groan escaped Charity. She didn't' want to do what was coming next, but there was nothing for it—if she wanted to find Amalga, she was going to have to confer with Professor Binns. He was the history professor, after all.

Several hours later, Charity was back in a secluded corner of the library with her wand and the obituary of Snape's maternal grandfather, Bartholomew Prince. She'd gone to see Binns and asked him to teach her how to delve into the archives' magically bound information. She'd dozed off while Binns' ethereal form had sketched out the entire history of search spells, but she was fairly certain she'd picked up the pertinent bits of information.

She wrote the word "ancestry" on a piece of paper, and then tapped her wand lightly on that word and then "Bartholomew" and "Prince" while she murmured the incantation Binns had taught her: googlium serchosa.

The words on the page quivered as they had before, and then completely disappeared to be replaced by bits of information about the parents of Bartholomew, neither of which were named Amalga. Charity repeated her search eleven more times before she found it—Amalga Milstead, who'd been married to Aldrich Prince in 1738. The picture frame was nearly three hundred years old! While all other Prince family assets had been willed to charity, this one had found its way into Snape's hands and he'd given it to his own Charity. It made sense to her now that the frame would take on the shimmery glow when she held it close. I must've been leftover magic that had been imbued on the frame by someone in the pure blood family. The magic had apparently faded over the centuries to a dull glow.

Satisfying herself with this discovery, Charity continued about her duties at Hogwarts with her tiny secret tucked safely away. June turned to July and her belly swelled a bit more, but only so much that she would notice. Others had, however, noticed the serene smile that frequently overtook her features. As more staff commented on it, Charity found that she wanted to tell them; keeping her delight to herself was getting more and more difficult. But she wasn't ready to put herself back in the limelight quite yet, so she told them it was simply her reaction to the summer temperatures. She'd always spent her summers with her parents before, so they had nothing to compare her mood against. Even still, she didn't like to lie, and the urge to give in and share her joy with someone else was growing stronger, so she started spending more time alone.

. . . . .

One day at the end of July, she sat on the banks of Black Lake gazing out on its smooth, glassy surface. A thin arm of the giant squid occasionally sent a cascade of ripples at it flicked above the water to swat at a dragonfly. It was at this lake that she'd first begun to look at Snape as something other than a condescending colleague with attitude problems. She'd heard that Snape was a skilled wizard, but seeing his talent in action was another story, and she'd been deeply impressed by how effortlessly he'd saved her students before a Kelpie could drown them. And when he'd stalked off afterwards, neither wanting nor expecting praise, he'd touched a more tender side of Charity's heart. She smiled. She was now going to get to shower that soft, nurturing tendency of hers on Snape's child.

"Professor Burbage? Professor Burbage!" A young girl came running down the hill from the castle. "I thought that was you!"

"Jessica! What are you doing here? School doesn't start for another month." Jessica Morgan was a Ravenclaw student that had been in Charity's class the year before last.

"My mum and dad wanted to check the place out before they send me back, double-check security precautions and all that." Jessica rolled her eyes.

"That's understandable. I imagine lots of other parents will do the same." Charity sighed and took Jessica in. "Oh my, you look so much older."

"Well, I am a year older than last time you saw me." Jessica's smile faltered. "We really missed you around here last year, especially when we thought...that…you know."

Charity reached out and pulled Jessica into a hug. "I know. I know. I missed you all terribly too. It was so awful knowing what you all must've thought happened. What almost did happen."

Jessica pulled back and said, "Yeah, I heard Professor Snape saved you. Who would've guessed he was a good guy, after all." Then she added bitterly, "Sure wish he would've let us all in on that little fact."

"Oh, Jessica. Professor Snape was living a complicated life. He had to keep secrets and act certain ways…"

"Yeah, I know. I've read all about it. It's just hard to imagine it though. Did…did you spend a lot of time with him when you were in hiding? What's he like? I mean, when he's not pretending to be a meanie, is he, er, normal?"

Charity held back a laugh. "Mmm, I'm not sure 'normal' is quite the word for it. But he did have his pleasant side. He made me smile many times, and he could be surprisingly kind and gentle."

Jessica jerked her head back and scrunched her face into a sour expression. "Okay, you better stop now unless you want to see what happened to me last time I downed a handful of Puking Pastilles."

Before Charity could launch into a second attempt at defending Snape, a man and woman stepped out of the castle, led by Professor McGonagall.

"Come meet my parents," Jessica said, pulling her former professor's hand. She led her over to the front steps of the castle where she made introductions. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan recognized Charity's name immediately and expressed their sorrow for her ordeal and relief at her return.

"I suppose that after such a harrowing experience and seeing how short life is, it won't be long before you leave Hogwarts permanently," Jessica's mother said.

"Leave Hogwarts?" Charity questioned.

"Why, at your age, I imagine that you'll want to find a husband and have children of your own soon."

Minus the husband, Charity thought, but was much too flustered to formulate a proper response to make aloud. She couldn't get past the "Leave Hogwarts."

Fortunately, Professor McGonagall stepped in. "There are no rules against Hogwarts staff getting married and having families, Mrs. Morgan."

The woman's eyebrows shot up. "There aren't?"

"Not for the last hundred years," McGonagall answered crisply.

"But none of the staff are married…" Mrs. Morgan's defense trailed off under McGonagall's icy glare.

"Yes, well, social mores die hard," the elderly professor answered. "If you would like to see the official rules, I could have a copy dropped off by owl later this afternoon."

The conversation moved in the direction of school policy, and as the three other adults continued their discussion, Charity watched Jessica romp about the lawn chasing butterflies. The girl had to be going on fifteen, but she suddenly seemed so much younger.

Children in the magical world, while being exposed to so much that Muggle children were unaware of, were kept more sheltered when it came to social issues. Witches and wizards were a conservative lot when it came to marriage and pregnancy. If society had kept Hogwarts from having a married teacher on staff, what would the reaction be when one of those teachers turned out to be pregnant out of wedlock? The parents would be in an uproar.

Charity supposed that if she and Snape had been married before he'd died, there might have been a chance of her pregnancy being accepted at the school. And even though Charity knew with everything she was made of that she and Snape would have been married, that fact would hold no water with Hogwarts parents…or the school board…or probably even most of the staff. They simply wouldn't countenance having to explain such a thing to the young students.

Charity stayed silent as she watch Jessica's sweet, innocent face light up when a butterfly fluttered to land on her outstretched finger. The girl glanced over and smiled, and Charity's heart plummeted. She was going to have to leave Hogwarts.

.

.

.

Author's Notes

Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.

How many pieces do you wish?

One-two-three-four-five

and Metro Kid is it!

;P