Custody Battle

A/N: This was also written on a train today.:)

The day after Christmas had been pleasantly spent as far as Caterina, her siblings, and Blake was concerned. They’d all spent the day playing in the blizzard that Severus and Hermione had conjured in the backyard, complete with snow slides, ice fortresses, and snowball launching cannons. The adults had seemed perfectly amicable, Severus had even joined Blake and the boys in a snowball battle against Hermione and her daughters.

But both witch and wizard were thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day. Fighting tension between them all day, when they would brush against each other, or catch the other looking their way, mounted on top of all the magic they’d had to perform, not to mention keeping cheery smiles, well as cheery a disposition one could have when being Severus Snape, all of those things were tiring activities.

It wasn’t long after hot cocoa and cookies that Severus departed the Davonshire household, with the promise to return for New Year’s on his lips. The green flames swallowed him up and took him back to his study at Hogwarts. And for twenty-four hours, the entire day and night of December 27, life returned to normal.

It was on December 28, while Severus was furiously scratching red lines through third year potions essays that normal decided to cease. Green flames roared in the hearth but he paid them no attention. I was often that both Albus and Minerva appeared in his floo without warning or invitation.

“Dad! We need to talk.”

His head snapped up, eyes flying to Caterina as she walked toward his desk, hands on her hips, scowl on her lips. “How did you get here?” he growled, half surprised, half angry.

“Floo.”

“Who opened the connection for you?”

“I did it myself. Stop trying to change the subject!” she spat, throwing both hands down on his desk.

“What subject?” he narrowed his eyes at her.

“You know what subject. The trip. Mum said that you—”

“I’m telling you the exact same thing I told your mother,” he boomed. “I don’t care how good of an idea Blake thinks it is, I don’t do Disney World.”

“You can’t no go!” she shouted a good deal louder than he realized her capable of shouting.

“Don’t you raise your voice at me, young lady!” he snapped and was on his feet in an instant, towering over the desk.

“Don’t bother with that I’m the teacher crap, Dad.” She spat. “It’s the holiday and I’m furious with you! You have to go! You can’t not go!”

“Caterina Novelle Snape!” he growled. “Do not back talk me. I’ve made a decision and you will abide by it.”

“Fine. Don’t go,” she said and then sat down and crossed her arms over her chest in a fashion that was all too similar to him. “I’m not going either.”

“Try again, Caterina,” he sneered. “It’s a family trip and you’re part of the family. You’re going.”

“You’re part of the family too!” she shouted. “Why do you have to be such a git?”

“Caterina! Ten points from Gryffindor!”

“Take 100! I don’t care! You’re being right ridiculous about this!”

“You will stop this instant or I have will have you serving detention with Filch every night for the rest of the school term!”

“Fine!” she shouted and stood up stomping toward the fireplace. “I was right about you from the beginning,” she sniffed.

“What?” he snarled and stalked around the desk.

“You don’t love me! You never have! You’re a big, greasy, overgrown bat, right bloody git bastard who knocked my mother up and then left us!” Caterina fell to her knees and buried her head in her hands, sobbing loudly.

“You ungrateful little unknowing— fifty points and detention for the first week back when term restarts!” he bellowed, but the girl continued to sob on the floor. “Caterina! Caterina Snape pick your arse off that floor this instant.” He stalked to where she sat crouched into her lap sobbing. “Caterina I’m not playing games, get up!” he shouted. But still she sobbed, even louder than before.

Severus Snape was not a man of concern or worry, but at the moment he began to ponder if perhaps something had snapped inside him. Stooping down he attempted to approach the situation in the way he thought that Hermione might solve it. “Caterina,” he said in a calmer voice, placing a hand on her back.

“You don’t love me!” she shrieked, and sobbed some more.

“Caterina that’s not true!” He found that his own voice was filled with panic. “I do love you, very much.” He tried to pull her up from her lap but found that she wouldn’t budge and was still whimpering. “Caterina…”

“If you loved me you’d want to be part of the family and you’d want to go and you would!”

Severus sighed. What on earth had he gotten himself into? “Caterina, I do love you…”

“Then go!” she wailed.

“Alright, I’ll go. But only because I love you.”

“You p-promise?” she sobbed.

“Yes, I promise I’ll go to Disney World.”

Pulling her head up from her lap with a big grin on her face and not a single tear in her eye she smirked. “Great. I’ll be off to tell mum I told you so.” She hopped to her feet, dashed into the floo, and disappeared into the green flames. Severus sat there, looking dumbfounded for the longest moment, gaping like a cod into the fireplace. It was several minutes before he shook himself to consciousness and several more before he stalked across the room and into the fireplace.

“Davonshire household!” he shouted and was absorbed into the fire. Just a few short seconds later he was tumbling out of Hermione’s fireplace, coughing and spluttering chimney dust.

“Severus!” Hermione cried in shock, packing a knapsack on the coffee table. “Goodness, are you alright?” she moved over to help him up but he swatted her away.

“Where is our daughter?” he growled.

“What? She was just here a moment ago. She told me the wonderful news! What on earth made you change your mind?”

He pulled himself to his feet and then collapsed onto the couch. “I’ve been had by an eleven-year-old.” He spat and blasted his wand at the chimney watching the soot explode into millions of even smaller soot particles.

“What?”

“Your daughter storms into my office demanding to know why I’m not going and then turns on the ‘you don’t love me, you never have, how dare you leave me and mummy, waterworks bullocks act, sobbing and wailing at the top of her lungs until I promised to go and then jumps up and says I told you so.” He spat.

Hermione’s face was aghast. “She didn’t.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you put her up to that?”

“Have you lost your mind, Severus? Of course not!” Hermione stood and zipped the knapsack. “I simply told her your decision and then she said she was sure she could make you change your mind, and I told her that I knew you better than that and that I didn’t think she could.”

He glared at her and then sighed, falling forward over his knees, head in his hands. “I’m Severus bloody Snape, most feared man in most of the wizarding world, but most definitely in all of Hogwarts, I am a force to be reckoned with, children run screaming in terror down the corridor when I sweep up the hall, and yet I’m wrapped around the pinky finger of an eleven-year-old spoiled brat,” he muttered.

“A brat that you love enough to promise to go to Disney World.”

“Don’t remind me, Hermione.” He growled. “I think I need a drink.”

“Why don’t you come to the park with the boys, Emma, and me?”

“What?”

“The fresh air would do you good, I’m sure and I could use the extra set of eyes on the kids,” she added and offered her hand to him. He was reluctant to take it, but stood with her assistance and then sighed. “I’ll talk to her, Severus.”

“You’re damn right you will. That little chit is grounded.” He spat.

Hermione couldn’t help but snort. “I hope you’re not thinking of giving her detention.

“Oh, that’s already been taken care of, she lost sixty house points and a week’s worth of detention just for mouthing off…” and then he sighed. “What on earth have I become? I’m giving my own daughter detention?”

“For doing what all the other kids do anyone,” Hermione shrugged her shoulders. “You can’t appease both sides of you at the same time. Just remember, you’re her father first, her teacher second.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Before Hermione could think of a clever response the boys came running down the stairs. “Mummy! Is Sevvie going to the park with us?” they asked.

“Sevvie?” he growled.

Hermione shot him an apologetic look and hefted both boys up into her arms. “Yes, I do believe so.” She turned her eyes to Severus. “Come on, it’ll be good practice for when we’re in—”

“Don’t say it.” He muttered and gathered up Emma, who had tottered into the room from the kitchen. They left for the park, Severus grumbling the entire time.