Outside the Potions Classroom

Outside The Potions Classroom






Chapter Eleven

Upon their return to Hogwarts, Severus found Hadrian staring at him skeptically.

“What?” He asked exasperatedly, turning his gaze down upon the boy.

“What happened at Mum’s?” Hadrian asked, his voice marked with bitterness.

“Nothing. You mean - you didn’t have a good time?” Severus asked.

It really took no time for the boy to perfect the Snape glare. “Dad, I don’t think you are being honest with me.”

“Hadrian, I don’t like that tone of voice.”

“Fine.” Taken straight from his mother’s vocabulary and used with the same force. “I’m going to bed then.” He didn’t wait for Severus to escort him – Hadrian scattered down the hall towards his dormitory.

Severus was mildly irritated that his son would resort to such childish antics when he didn’t get his way.

Not that he could really blame him, he and Granger were being the biggest children that ever lived. They had spent the rest of the evening placating their poor son so they could avoid talking about a sensitive subject. Any fool could have felt the tension, and Hadrian was no fool. No, he could not blame Hadrian for being upset with him and his mother – but he could definitely blame her.

What was her problem anyway, he wondered as he found himself back in his chambers, preparing to brood for the remaining portion of the evening about the recent events. Nothing seemed to make much sense anymore. He felt as if he was falling deeper and deeper into an ever-growing web of tension – and Granger seemed to mastermind it all. Everything in his life was almost entirely focused on her and her actions as of late – and he didn’t like it.

When he had parted ways with her so many years ago, he never would have thought there would be so many unresolved issues. Had she just told him she was pregnant, things would have been so different.

He wouldn’t have let her go. He knew this. But not simply to keep his child close – but because he loved her.

He had loved her.

Shite. That is what made everything so confusing.

Remembering such painful emotions weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

He would have insisted they marry, and then he would have brought her to Snape Manor and finally restored the place. He would have probably quit Hogwarts and started independent Potions research while she had studied so he could help take care of the baby. It was a path he had thought about years ago and pushed out of his mind, a picture of what he had thought was a happy family that he wished to be apart of. His dream was squished when Hermione left him.

Hermione. It never felt right thinking of her as anything else. Soft lips, a quick laugh, eyes that forever held hope…

He had forgotten what it had been like. It was wrong to have bedded a student – but he had never wanted any other student in his thirty years of teaching. Hell, he had not wanted any woman as much as he had wanted her. She had sparked something in him so strong that he had been a fool to ignore. He wished it could be just sex, as it had started as simply, but there was always something that ran even deeper than the attraction.

He loved her. He thought maybe she loved him in return, but obviously this was not the case. She wouldn’t have taken his son away from him if she had. She never would have been so…heartless.

The Hermione Granger he had seen lately wasn’t heartless; she was being protective of her son. But protecting him from what? Did she think he was going to hurt the child?

Did she think he was going to hurt Hadrian…the way he hurt her?

That didn’t make any sense. He never hurt Hermione. He loved her. They appeared to have no future together, so it seemed to be only fitting that once she graduated they go their separate ways…

Maybe it had only seemed fitting to him.

Oh bugger.

Somehow the web seemed to loosen its hold over him, and for the first time since he discovered he was a father, he could breathe normally. He had been asking the wrong questions from the start. He didn’t need revenge on Hermione… but she had needed it on him, and now he could see why.

This would explain why Potter threatened him, and gave her great reason not to inform him that she was in fact with child. Had the circumstances been reversed, he would have felt the exact same way. But even with this new understanding, it left so many unanswered questions. Like how she could tell their son such good things about his father and expect the boy not to come looking for him. How she could let their son come to Hogwarts with his father’s name and not expect him to get such attention. It didn’t make sense that if she truly hated him and felt rejected by him, that she would put herself and their son into a situation where they had no choice but to acknowledge each other.

Unless…she still cared for him, too.

It seemed selfish to use Hadrian as a catalyst to bring herself back into his life, but she wasn’t taking anything further than that. Perhaps she felt guilty for having kept the child away from him to sate her own bruised ego. Nevertheless, Hermione Granger was forever going to be a part of his life – she was the mother of his son.

Of all the witches who could have raised his child, she was the only one he could envision doing so. She was after all, the only witch he had truly loved. That, in and of itself, said something.

He recalled wondering what it would be like all those years ago, if the situation had been different, if he had married her. He could almost imagine the story of their lives, from its heated first encounters under the influence of the aphrodisiac to its softer times spent together reading in his study by the fire. He could picture the turbulent times during arguments that neither party won, and to the saddest of all times, like watching her get sick, or dare he say it, she die before him. As the story unfolded in his mind, he smiled softly, liking the view through the frosted window.

Because that was all it would ever be, moments frozen in time, locked in his memory. He was never going to write such a story with his fate, and most likely neither would she. Even if he did have any feelings for her, what could ever happen between them? She had hurt him as he had hurt her. They were just two lost souls who seemed doomed to intersect each other in the vastness of destiny, long enough to cause a ripple, only to be driven away before any connection to be made.

Hopelessness seemed to fall upon him like night, and under its weight he slumped down into his favorite chair by the fire. He managed to consume nearly half a bottle of Firewhisky when he finally passed out – his cheeks wet and swollen from his tears.

But before the void of sleep drew him in, the same question repeated itself in his mind:

‘Why did I ruin my one chance at happiness?’


Tbc…