VIII.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, June 2012
They were in their rooms, where was Ginny pacing a circle in the sitting room rug while rubbing her stomach.
"Two weeks late, Severus."
"It's given your Apprentice more time to prepare for –"
"Two weeks late."
Ginny patrolled around the dungeons now every night, just as he had done months previously. Except that she was not worried about the birth of their child and motherhood. She was trying to get the process started.
Now.
Severus had to run after her as her petite legs moved her just as quickly as his much longer ones did when she was in the right frame of mind. When Renee's due date came and went with no sign of labor coming, they'd tried every tale they heard from Poppy, Pomona, and Aurora to get the process started. She walked so much around the castle he told her to triple her portions of food so that she wouldn't lose any weight. The food she ate was as spicy as the house elves dared to make, and one night one of the older elves had even given her beet soup, telling her she remembered the school's MediWitch before Poppy had once claimed that it could help.
Nothing happened.
They'd started making love so frequently that Severus had almost thrown out his back, twice, and Ginny had mentioned she was having trouble walking. Not that she was complaining, she'd told him brazenly before shoving him back down to the bed so that she could have her way with him yet again.
Still nothing, other than the two of them walking around the castle with sore muscles and very pleased expressions of their faces.
"Renee Snape," she said sharply, poking her abdomen with the heel of her hand. "It's time for you to make an appearance. Today," she commanded, using the voice Severus had coached her into using her first day of proctoring classes.
"Renee," he said, bringing his hands to Ginny's stomach and lowering his lips as closely to it as he could. "Your mother is ready to meet you, my dear. As am I. Why don't you come and meet us." She squirmed underneath his hands, too out of room to even kick properly now.
Ginny put both of her hands to her back and started to rub the muscles there.
"What's wrong?" he asked, moving his hands along hers and feeling the constricted muscles there.
"I think I overdid the walking today. My back is killing me."
He motioned for her to sit, and he took over the task of trying to work out the knots.
"That's nice," she said, biting her lip suggestively.
"Are you in the mood for more?" he asked.
She shook her head and laughed. "I think I may actually be too tired, although I hate to admit it. I probably need to cut back on the walking so we can up the sex."
"You don't necessarily have to do too much," he said, bringing his hands to her neck and softly caressing her skin.
"It's not going to be much fun if I just lay there," she moaned as his lips met her neck.
"I could make it fun, Mrs. Snape," he whispered in her ear, nipping the lobe softly.
She pretended to consider her answer.
"You win, Sir."
He stood and held a hand out to her to lead her to their bedroom. When she slowly stood and grabbed his hand, he watched a puddle of water appear on the floor beneath her.
He met her eyes, and felt her hand tremble in his.
Two days later, Severus Snape was sitting in the rocking chair in the library turned nursery next to their bedroom, rocking the sweet baby in his arms.
Her birth had been quick and easy, according to the Healer who had Floo'd in from St. Mungo's to assist in the delivery. Ginny had been amazing. They'd coached each other through the process, in the end. He helped to remind her to breathe and offered her his strength, and she gave him the calm reminder of the new life that lay ahead for both of them. He'd watched in amazement as the little, black haired head emerged from Ginny's body, followed by a tiny, pale body that flailed as soon as she took her first breath. She hadn't cried, that accounted for the only marks taken off the scores they took to measure how well she was doing. It made him scowl. He wanted her to be the best at everything, even as a newborn baby. The Healer only laughed as she placed her at Ginny's breast to suckle her first meal.
He'd watched his wife and child together and felt the burn the back of his eyes as he thanked Merlin that she had her mother's tiny nose.
He looked at his daughter now, seeing her stare back at him with an expression of seeming comprehension far beyond what a two day old baby should possess. Whenever he was in the room, she even sought out his voice as much as she did Ginny's. It made Poppy and Molly shake their heads in amazement, though Ginny understood completely. "She's just been wanting to meet him for a long time," she'd tell her mother whenever Renee's sea blue eyes would search out her father's voice.
"Do you want me to tell you a story?" he asked her, seeing that her eyes were beginning to get a little heavy. No answer of course, at least not yet. But he knew she did, just by the way she moved her legs against him now that there were no boundaries separating them.
"Once upon a time, there was a debatably attractive wizard who met a young witch who thought him to be very handsome," he said, laughing at himself. "The pair were bound and married. That much you already know. Several years after their union, they decided to stop using means to avoid getting pregnant. And they waited. And waited. And waited. And nothing happened. So they went through life, knowing that their lives would be still be complete, because they had each other. Then, one day, years later, they found out that a …" he looked at the baby in his arms and cleared his throat, "They found out a miracle happened, and they were very happy. But the wizard was afraid. He'd been keeping secrets from the witch, about how sad his life had really been when he was very young. They went to an island and found each other out all over again. When he told the witch his secrets, she still loved him just as much as she did when she first said the words to him when they were first joined. And the wizard was no longer as afraid as he had been before, because he finally realized that his secrets did not define who he was. Not anymore. Not long after they returned, their beautiful, smart daughter was born, and her first word was Daddy." He looked down at the eyes that had grown very serious. "Daddy. Do you understand?"
Her face, so much like her mother's though framed with his raven black hair, looked up at him with an expression that he decided he would call "adoration", if anyone ever asked him about it.
"You used to go to sleep with a story, sweet one," he said, seeing his words had not worked. "You just ate, and your grandmother changed your nappy," he said, smirking. "What would you like? Do you want me to sing like your mother does? It won't be as pretty, but I'll try."
He thought of a song to sing to her, but couldn't pull up anything other than the Muggle songs from his childhood and teenage years that would be wholly inappropriate. Then he remembered a song he heard while he and Ginny were at a potions conference at the Magical Congress several years back. The center of the American's magical world was in a hot little state called "Louisiana", in a port city filled both Dark and Light Magic. He and Ginny had loved it, taking an interest in the voodoo shops there in order to find rare ingredients for potions and new topics for his Dark Arts classes.
He'd heard the song while waiting in the lobby of Muggle hotel they'd stayed in, waiting for her to dress for dinner. It had been sung by a woman, and the lyrics hadn't meant very much to him at the time. Now, he felt he understood them quite completely.
Severus sang to his beloved little girl in the deep, slightly imperfect voice that his mother had adored and that made his wife swoon whenever she caught him singing while in the shower or shaving.
"In my daughter's eyes,
I am a hero,
I am strong and wise,
And I know no fear,
But the truth is plain to see,
She was sent to rescue me,
I see who I want to be,
In my daughter's eyes
In my daughter's eyes,
Everyone is equal,
Darkness turns to light,
And the world is at peace,
This miracle God gave to me,
Gives me strength when I am weak,
I find reason to believe,
In my daughter's eyes ..." ***
He sensed Ginny at the door, but he kept watching their daughter until she closed her eyes and fell asleep, and even then he continued singing until he couldn't remember any more of the words.
He finally looked up at his wife when he felt her at his side, her hand very gentle and calm on his shoulder. She bent down and kissed his lips, then kissed the forehead of the sleeping baby before she carefully extended the rocking chair to give her room to sit with them. She put her head on his shoulder and sighed happily.
As did he.
Severus was completely at peace.
The End
A/N:
*** Song sung by Martina McBride, music and lyrics by James T. Slater. If you only knew how much country music, which I don't normally listen to despite being in the center of Southern life, went into writing this, you'd pass out if you knew me well. Most of it was the romantic songs of Tim McGraw, especially "It's Your Love" and "When the Stars Go Blue". He just gives me the right feels.
I think Healing Waters could be a love song to my children, though I know I'll never let them read it. I wish their father and I could have had that island, and that everything would have been out in the open long ago. It's what made this so hard to write. It hadn't started out being a story about the pain of secrets in a relationship, though that's of course how it ended up. "Write what you know," once said a very foolish writer indeed.
It is dedicated to the first three fanfiction authors I ever read, late at night with my own terrible insomnia causing me to google at all hours of the morning.
So, Theolyn, Ramos, and Loten, I thank you, so much, for inspiring me to write again.