Lord Snape\'s Dilemma

Epilogue

It all belongs to Rowling, except what you don’t recognize.

I wake up from the dream and caress my belly. It was such a strange dream and yet so enjoyable. It was heavenly to escape my physical limitations, to float among so many events like an angel, watching the scenes unfold. I marvel yet again at what the subconscious can produce. Hagrid as a butcher, a complete opposite of his real self, is as amusing to me as the idea of a suddenly human Winky in love with a tamed Peeves.

I have an inkling of why I dreamt this and why I now feel so confident and reassured. And then the pain hits again with another powerful contraction, which leaves me shaking all over. I reach behind me to where my love has spooned himself protectively over my so very changed body.

“Severus?” I call gently and then much louder with a little prod of the shoulder, “Severus!”

“What! What is the baby here?” It hurts me that he’s so groggy. Neither one of us has had much sleep over the past week. I can’t find a comfortable position to sleep in and he’s normally a very light sleeper, except when exhausted as he is now.

“I had a dream.”

“Oh.” There is a long pause and I wonder if he has gone back to sleep. And then, “well, are you going to tell me or just announce it?” He’s irritable, well, as bas born irritable-- it’s his nerves. Always his nerves, which after a bad childhood and a worse adulthood don’t seem to ever become normal. He’s always sitting on a hair trigger of anxiety.

“Rub my back, please.” This, I know, makes him happy. It validates him being awake, much more than listening to a dream. “Well, we were all in the Regency period—“

“What’s a ‘Regency period’ mean?” Even at 4:30 a.m., he’s on the mark and still absolutely clueless about all things Muggle. At least he asks now. It used to be he’d just let it all pile up and explode, then again, with my hormones it’s been me exploding and he’s the one on eggshells now.

“It was during the time of Wilber the Willful.” I answer.

“Around the early 1800s,” he replies.

“Right-- the Napoleonic wars.” He must have heard of that.

“Napoleonic whosit?” Never underestimate the ignorance of the pureblooded wizard.

“Never mind. Anyway we were all Muggles…” I try to continue. “Rub harder and lower, love.”

“Muggles! I was in this dream?” The outrage creeps in.

“Yes. You were a Muggle, too.” Oh, that rubbing feels so good. He’s doing it much harder now.

“Well, that tears it. I am absolutely not Apparating to Dundee again for that bloody Muggle food, what did you call it?”

“Pizza. Domino’s Pizza.” I don’t care, I really don’t.

“Right. With the little fishies and the tropical fruit on top.”

“Anchovies and pineapple. Rub lower.”

“If I rub any lower, I’ll be massaging your bum.” He sounds quite frantic now, but it does feel so good. “Anyway, that can’t be good for you,” he continues snidely.

“It was delicious.” I go into another contraction, my whole body tenses up and I whimper. He stops rubbing and I know he’s getting upset again.

“Let’s go to Poppy now. She can check if the baby’s ready,” he hisses. I briefly wonder if he thinks his child is a Christmas goose and needs basting as well. Then again it’s large enough.

The contraction ends and I can speak again. “Keep rubbing, hmm, and, yes, do rub my bum. Poppy already said the baby was ready: head down, 90% effaced and 8 centimeters, for three days now. Wdo ydo you want? To wake up the whole castle?”

He grunts. I realize this is spiraling downwards for him. I reach behind me and find my favorite wand. I touch him and his whole body stiffens.

“Not again. How many times—“ His voice is low and wavering.

“I’m randy, please, Severus? Poppy says it doesn’t hurt the baby, it might even speed things up a bit.”

I have a theory. It’s all his nervous energy that makes him such a great lover. Not that he was particularly experienced-- he wasn’t. He’s just very intense. He needs the release; he’s always so much calmer and happier afterwards. I inch further back against him and get a really good grip on him. I know just what he likes after all these years. My fingers tease and touch, then pull with practiced ease. He hardens under my fondling. With a couple of pillows, he props up my top leg. I feel him enter me from behind and I cannot help but release a long moan of pleasure. I’ve never been so excited in my life. The baby is pressing on all the right parts to make me feel incredibly turned on. And all the extra blood supply down there just makes me feel so aroused. Slowly he withdraws a little and then goes deeper.

I touch my ever so swollen breasts, very lightly, and am rewarded with an inkling of what is to come. He reaches his hand over my top thigh and finds my nub. “Oh Gods, Severus,” I manage not to scream, but the first orgasm hits with little effort, and I feel him speed up. So good, it feels so very good and my whole body again shivers with delight. This pregnancy that I’ve waited so long for has been full of surprises, like wanting sex, desperately needing sex so often this way right at the very end.

It has taken years of my begging to get him to agree to have a child. He has more layers of fears and terror about having children than an onion. First was the fear of Death Eaters who hadn’t been captured after the Dark Lord’s fall. Then was the belief that children would ruin our relationship. Then he was scared that any child of a Muggle born and pureblood would be faced with discrimination. And finally, there was his anxiety that after his own childhood hell-- he couldn’t help but be as abusive as his father had been to him and his mother.

Suddenly I remember why I felt so comforted by that dream. Whereas in real life he still despises Harry, in the dream it seemed like he was a pretty good father figure. Yes, he snarls, but underneath it all he’s very responsible. If it hadn’t been for the Occlumency classes and Black’s death, I think things might eventually have normalized between Severus and Harry in real life. Instead Severus still hates Harry for having seen a past humiliation that Severus found more painful than the werewolf attack or anything that had happened when he was a Death Eater. Being bested by Harry’s father has always grated on Severus. My love just doesn’t let go of slights, not ever. But in the dream, he was a good father to Harry, and I realize that I’d been having my own doubts about what I’m putting Severus through and what will happen to us after the baby arrives.

I come a second and third time right on top of each other and then Severus’ breath gets short and labored. He never makes a sound during lovemaking, keeping it all in as he keeps so many other things tied up inside of him. I feel his hot semen spill inside of me and I feel flooded at the same time by my love for him. Still panting, he kisses my neck.

“I love you.” I say and I hear him mutter something, hopefully it’s ‘love you too’, and he falls back asleep.

I get up, needing to pee yet again and kick the book I’d been reading last night. I pick it up-- no mean feat when you are as big as a Hippogriff. I look at the book, Faro’s Daughter, by Georgette Heyer and I put it on the nightstand.

“No, Severus, it wasn’t the pizza that caused the dream.” I laugh and then double over with another contraction. This time my water breaks, leaving a huge puddle on the stone floor, and I wonder if I should wake Severus. No, let him sleep as much as possible, he’ll need it. Instead I grab some floo powder and go wake Poppy.

It’s going e a e a long night.

Finis

A/N: Of course the main story is meant to stand alone, but I knew by the second ter ter that I was going to use an end frame device and it would probably be a dream. Soon I decided that it would be Hermione’s dream and that it would be triggered by her own anxieties as a first time mom about to give birth.

The device isn’t so much for the reader, but was a way for me to keep a handle on the characters while walking through the alternative universe. So in some cases, using dream logic, events paralleled what had happened in canon and fanon, i.e., Hermione and Severus falling in love after Severus is hurt which is typical fanon, while in other cases, like with Hagrid, there is a complete opposite with Hagrid being a good cook and a butcher of animals. I hope it doesn’t bother anyone too much—I just wanted to share. As ever, I had a lot of fun writing it.

I don’t know if you will think me rather stuck on my own ideas, but I especially enjoyed using this frame because Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, had once reported that the story of Frankenstein’s Monster had come to her in a dream. Furthermore, the story might have its basis in her own horrendous experiences of the horrors of parenthood after she had miscarried yet another baby. Contrary to Shelley’s experience, I like to believe that for Hermione this will be a very happy event with a healthy, full term baby and with a loving, though nervous, father for their child.

By the way, there is a Domino’s Pizza in Dundee, Scotland. I wasn’t surprised, when I was in Aachen, Germany, there was a Domino’s Pizza there as well.

Many thanks to my reviewers: Amethyst, Lola, Andrian, ShagstheDustMop, and Lacy.

And yes, sperm contains proglastin, a hormone that is supposed to ‘ripen’ the cervix and help with the onset of labor.