New Beginning

Chapter 8


Hermione stared at the potion bottle in her hand.

“Why does everything have to be so hard?” This was the one question that had always plagued her about Harry Potter. His life had always been to hard, nothing came easy for Harry, even now, and nothing was coming easy for Darien.

She looked back over at her son, he was at least still her son for now. Walking over she knelt down beside him. Darien picked up one of the blocks he had and held it up to her.

“Can you say block?” Hermione asked him.

Darien stacked it on top of another and picked up a different colored one and showed this one to her too.

“What are you going to do with that one?”

She watched as a little mischief came into his brown eyes, her brown eyes. Darien stacked this one on top of the other two then he knocked all three over squilling in delight at what he had done.

“Oh, you made it go boom huh?”

Hermione sat down on the floor beside Darien and played with him for a while. They ended up making a castle out of the blocks and the potion bottle sat in the middle of the castle. Darien moved the blocks so he could get to the potion bottle. The whole time the bottle had captivated him, he would stack the blocks up until it was gone from his sight and he would frown, but when he knocked them down he was ecstatic with himself for finding it again.

“Do you want a Daddy, Darien?”

Darien looked up at her.

“Who am I? Can you say Mommy?”

Darien gave her smile and cocked his head to the side. “Da…da…”

Hermione smiled at him. “No…mama.”

“Dada,” he said firmly.

Hermione picked up the bottle. “You drink this you’ll have a Dada.”

Darien grabbed for the bottle. “Dada, dada.” Chanting over and over again.

“Do you want Severus as your Dada?”

The bottle was still there in her hands, she hadn’t let him have the bottle. Harry had said if she was married her husband could adopt him and do the potion then. But they hadn’t foreseen what could happen when Harry Potter had vanished. She knew Harry wanted a family, she wanted that too. Neither one of them were real fond of Severus Snape, yet here he was offering to do this. At least the father part. Darien had stood up on his own and was trying to get the bottle out of her hand as she had been thinking to herself.

“Is this what you want?” She smiled at him as he finally had the bottle in his hand. Darien sat down in her lap with the bottle, turning it over and over in his small hands. Hermione watched as the bottle mystified him.

“I don’t know little man, I don’t think you wanted Severus Snape as your father. I never thought that would happen. Truthfully I wanted you all to myself.” She pulled him close and hugged him. “But I am scared. I don’t know what to do if Ron comes here. Harry had saved me on that night when things got real bad, I don’t know how he knew to come, but he did.”

She rocked back and forth with Darien, Darien meanwhile had been working on trying to get the cork out of the top of the bottle he had it in his mouth. Hermione was oblivious to what the little boy was doing while she was talking on and on to him. She talked and worked things out in her head, knowing that if Ron came around again, she would be terrified of him. The last time she saw Ron, Harry had been with her. She had stopped moving, Harry had to escort her out of the room just to get her to move. Hermione went back into that memory, as it flashed before her eyes.

Darien oblivious to what his mother was going through had worked the cork out of the bottle. He was grinning at what he had accomplished, and turned the bottle up and into his mouth. Darien was drinking the potion and was asleep in his mother’s arms very shortly after he had finished.

Hermione didn’t move again until she heard the thunk on the floor and looked and saw the potion bottle with no cork in it. It was empty. She reached out and picked up the bottle.

“Oh no! This was supposed to be my choice.” Hermione looked down at Darien.

He was sleeping peacefully in an induced magical sleep. His face like that of agel.gel.

“What am I going to do with you? You just complicatur lur life further.”


********


Severus sat in his office going over the next term class schedules, he had to get his mind working on something other than thinking about what the young witch down the hall was doing. Her chambers had been located in the dungeons because of safety issues. The dungeon was better warder than any other part of the castle. Also it made a better place for Darien to crawl and walk about he had no stairs to over come down here. He wasn’t about to go falling down a flight of stairs if he had gotten away from his mother. This was the other reason Albus and everyone agreed on having Hermione and Darien in the dungeon.

Lunch had come and gone, Hermione and Darien hadn’t appeared. He was getting worried, he wanted to know if she had reached a decision on what he had offered. But he kept telling himself that it was her decision to make, not his. He had made his mind up he brewed the potion.

The rest of the afternoon Severus tried to get through one oe poe potions he had been working on. He was studying the potion Potter had brewed. Each element had been sorted out, and he had writings on each one that had been added. The potion in itself was brilliant, but was made several centuries back when test subjects were still allowed. The wizarding community had put a stop to all the test subjects. One of the reasons for the de-aging, innocence potion having the effects that it had. The creator of the potion couldn’t find a cure to the memory retention for shelf life. The shelf life was amazing in of itself. Most potions didn’t have that long of a shelf life, this one only had so because of unicorn blood in it. Though it was illegal to use the blood, it could be extracted in a rare form from the horn of a unicorn. Why some of the animal was allowed and other parts weren’t made Severus furious. Because were there was a will there was a way of obtaining anything illegal, through the legal channels.

He had to admit, Potter had done his homework when it came to brewing this potion. Getting the blood out of the horn was no easy feat. Potter was determined to make this potion. He wondered how long it took him to work everything out. The unicorn blood was the hardest item to obtain, yet he found it. No unicorn had been slain on the grounds, so he knew Potter didn’t get it that wayey wey would have been alerted to any slaying of magical creatures. Harry had to have gotten the blood from the horn, this was the most important part, and it held the innocence in it, thus the reason why a person would get their innocence back.

Severus worked but was no closer to the answer for the memories. Looking at the clock on the wall he realized he missed dinner. Missed seeing whether or not Hermione and Darien had eaten. Getting away from the lab Severus walked to her chambers and said the password, chiding himself along the way of not having any patients to find out in the morning. He called out but received no answer. He looked all over, neither Darien nor Hermione were there. Severus headed to the kitchens, thinking this was foolish, if Hermione wanted anything all she had to do was call a house-elf. But then he remembered the house-elf liberation front, Severus snorted at this. Foolish Gryffindor thinking that she would change the way of wizarding kind.

The fruit portrait opened up and Severus stepped into the kitchen. Darien was sitting on the table working on a banana, he had three house-elves around him all talking a mile a minute to him and him not noticing. His full attention was on the sole purpose of eating. Severus noticed his hair was straight now, the red tint still there, but not messy Potter black like it had been. He grinned. She had given him the potion. This wasn’t a Potter; he was definitely Snape, with Granger thrown in. It wasn’t a bad combination at that, Darien had the Snape brow, the Potter nose was gone, and he was thankful he had Granger’s now. Severus always hated his nose. Darien had his chin, but he still had Granger’s eyes.

Darien looked up at him. “Dada.”

Severus’s heart stopped as Hermione whipped around in her chair to face him.

“I…uh…I.”

Severus held his hand up. “Not now.”

He walked over to Darien and sat down in a chair that was beside him. Darien turned towards him.

“Dada. “Wh “When did he start talking?” Severus asked.

“This morning.”

“I misse.” .” Severus shook his head.

“If it’s any consolation, he won’t say Mama.”

Severus laughed, the first time in years. He couldn’t help it.

Hermione heard that laugh and it surprised her. She sat back and studied the man who was so multifaceted. She never had dreamed that she would see the day Proor Sor Snape was actually laughing, but here it was. It enthralled her, yet, at the same time it was so unlike him, but it seemed natural in a way for him to be doing this. And not only was he laughing at what she had said, he was laughing at the fact that Darien hadn’t said Mama. Hermione crossed her arms across her chest and glared at him. When Severus looked over at her, he only laughed harder.