Leaving a Mark

Description: Severus Snape decides after the end of the war that he is in need of an heir and goes on to find a woman willing to bear his child for him. Surrogate Mother Challenge from WIKTT HG/SS


Thanks: to my new beta Seabolt Carinn


Disclaimer: The characters aren’t mine they belong to one JKR, the general plot doesn’t belong to me either its part of the Surrogate Mother Challenge from the great WIKTT but everything else is indeed mine, all mine.

Chapter Two: Appointments


Looking nervously at the letter on her desk and at the name at the bottom of it, Hermione wondered why life was intent on making this more complicated than it had to be. She didn’t need a signature to recognize the hand to which the crowded, cramped scribbling on the parchment belonged to. After all, he had strewn it liberally throughout her childhood on his classroom board and on her friends’ papers. What would he think when he saw her? Would he smirk and shoot off one of his snide insults at her or just burst into helpless snorts through his overgrown nose? She couldn’t make up her mind. The bloody letter was the first thing she got from him in all her life that couldn’t be construed as an insult on some level, if you forgot for a moment what it was all about.


Surely it would be better to call off the whole thing and just forget she ever answered that insulting ad in the paper? Her eyes sneaked back to the letter on her desk and the deadly line: “Two thirty, Antica Roma”. It was already a quarter to two and she had to make up her mind. Would he really laugh at her? After all, he had to be pretty desperate to write such an ad in the paper if she knew anything about him. Surely he wouldn’t chase off any possible candidate for his little project.


Hermione recalled the big row she had with Ron and Ginny earlier this week. Why couldn’t they understand her? Ron’s words still stung. Was he right? Was she really some sort of freak belonging in the loon house to even consider such a thing? It seemed so simple when the idea, like Athens, sprouted fully grown in her mind. It was the perfect win-win situation all around she thought. It was still a good idea, even if it was Snape. When she first recognized who wrote the letter her mind was filled with the legendary pickled collection in his office, building a special golden jar for the latest exotic acquisition: a human babe. But really, just because he abused her and her friends at school didn’t mean he couldn’t care for anyone. His Slytherin students all seemed to love and respect him when they were in school and he wasn’t too harsh with the Ravenclaws as far as she recalled.


She wasn’t surprised at Ron’s loudmouthed attempts to deafen her into submission when he heard her plan but she thought Ginny at least would support her. She was her only female friend in the world, closer to her than even Ron or Harry. Hermione always thought Ginny had matured beyond her years after what happened to her in her first year at Hogwarts. She seemed to understand Hermione\'s problems and relate to them instead of just ignoring and deriding her like the rest, even her friends Ron and Harry. The insight Ginny gave her into the magical world she was thrust into, unprepared, was something she could never repay.


None of that changed the blank eyed stare Ginny gave her as she tried to explain the notions the book conjured in her. The younger witch looked at her like she was a stark raving lunatic when Hermione asked her what she thought about it. Why did she have to blab it all to Ron at the first available opportunity? Even if she couldn’t understand her ambitions, she was still her confidante. No doubt Ron was, by now, already regaling Harry and anyone else he could find with stories of the barmy know-it-all’s latest episode of wackiness. Maybe if she had talked more clearly, explained all the possible advantages logically instead of blurting it all out without thinking, Ginny would have supported her. She always told Ron and Harry that you were headed for trouble when you acted before you thought things through. She should have taken her own advice. Still, they had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t do. It was her right, damn it, her body and her future to do with as she pleased.


Ron always saw any hint of male interaction with her as a personal insult to the great Ronald Weasley. It was like he believed he owned her and always seemed offended that she hadn’t grasped this basic fact of life already. She could still remember how mean he was to her in their fourth year when surprise, surprise, someone else asked her to the ball and she didn’t crawl begging him to take her himself like he expected. He never seemed to actually make the effort of doing anything himself to win her over beyond the few lurid suggestions to hop on his broom and be his ‘good-luck charm’ in the next Chudley Cannons match. He even had the nerve to accuse her of not helping the team enough after he had a particularly bad game.


Hermione growled deep in her throat, feeling her rage seething off of her in hot angry waves. Flexing her fingers out of the fists they had curled into during her ruminations, she picked up her coat, book and letter and marched out of the apartment. Ron bloody Weasley could just stuff it. She wouldn’t listen to what he had to say if her life depended on it at the moment. The nerve, the bloody nerve! He never listened to anything she said. He didn\'t even try. He just rolled his eyes and soundlessly mouthed the word mental to anyone in the neighbourhood and went on to say whatever it was that popped in his head at the time. Did he really think she wouldn’t notice what he said about her? Well she made up her mind. She couldn’t wait to see the expression on his face the moment he heard whose child she would bear.


Going down to the Underground, Hermione wondered why on earth professor Snape would pick a Muggle restaurant to meet at with a witch. Maybe he didn’t want to be recognized. Everybody saw his picture, after the last battle, in the papers and professor Snape was a very private person and wouldn\'t appreciate having rumours and gossip circulating about his private life.


Sitting down in the train seat, Hermione opened her book and forgot where she was going and concentrated on the wonderful promises crammed into the pages before her. She wouldn’t pass up this opportunity just because her friends couldn’t look beyond the immediate future. In nine months’ time she would be rid of this little encumbrance and free to pursue her goals at last. They’d come around soon afterwards. She could use the nine month paid vacation to catch up on all the books she had put off till now.


Looking up from her book, she saw they were already at Olympia station and got up to head for the address in the letter. She was feeling nervous again, but buried the feeling by thinking only of her book as she opened the door to the little restaurant. Looking around, she spotted professor Snape sitting in a corner by himself. He looked particularly grumpy.


As his eyes met hers, a momentary look of bewilderment and disbelief flashed across his face before it was replaced by one of deep resentment as he took in her wild eyed stare at his Muggle clothing. She tried to speak but couldn\'t take her eyes off the open V of his shirt, which revealed for the first time in known history, as far as she knew, a patch of his bare skin. Taking a step back mentally, she noticed that he wore elegant black trousers, shiny black boots and a buttoned black shirt under an expensive looking suit jacket with a shiny silver pin on the dash. What she first took for a teaching robe discarded on the chair beside him turned out to be a long black overcoat of definite Muggle origins. Looking at him again, she decided he hadn\'t changed all that much if you ignored the minor detail of the open topmost button of his shirt and concentrated only on the volumes of black on ebony black decorated with artful unrelieved black.


\"Well, well, Miss Granger. What a pleasant surprise to see you once more,\" Professor Snape drawled in heavy sarcasm. \"I hope you will forgive my humble appeal to you – the friend of the great Harry James Potter - to leave me to my paltry meal alone in peace. Surely you have much more pressing and profound quests to pursue than to pester your onetime Potions professor. I am sure you would prefer to dine at the famous Potter-Hall in the company of your friends than be bothered with my presence.\"


Hermione tried to close her mouth and regain her footing. He thought she was there by accident. What should she say? Should she smile apologize and leave, knowing that she had done what she said she would, unintimidated by her friends\' bullying? She didn\'t feel up to going to him and announcing that she was the one who answered his ad. Opening her mouth, she remembered the book in the bag weighing down her hand, and, stepping to his table, tried to smile and muttered \"Hello Professor Snape. Good to meet you again. I haven\'t seen you at the annual victory celebrations in the Ministry. I hope you are well and things at Hogwarts are as usual?\" Leaning on the chair across from him, she mustered her courage in the face of his blank hostility and continued, \"I\'m sorry if I have disturbed you. I didn\'t mean to offend you with my presence. Are you expecting to meet with anyone? I know how annoying it can be to wait for someone who tarries and leave you by yourself for his pleasure.\"


Professor Snape forced himself to answer \"Indeed. I am waiting to meet someone here shortly, so I would prefer it if you left me be to await him, tardy as he may be, and stop bothering me.\"


Hermione licked her lips, but couldn\'t get the confession out of her throat and instead said quickly \"If you\'re waiting for your companion, you wouldn\'t mind if I kept you company till he came? I would leave as soon as he came. After all, we are both here by ourselves and this way we wouldn\'t become bored waiting.\"


Professor Snape looked around seeming to seek some means to get rid of her before sighing and gesturing to the chair she leaned on. \"You might as well sit on it since I can\'t get rid of you. Will you order lunch?\"


Hermione sat on the chair, trying to get comfortable and find something to talk about while she waited for the food to arrive. She already asked him how he felt and on his job at school. She would sound stupid if she got back to that. Should she remark on the lack of rain today or maybe on the likelihood of some sun? She always thought Professor Snape detested small talk, but what serious topic would be appropriate now? He was already growing sourer, his eyes narrowing in preparation for one of his famous insults, in all likelihood about her lack of social skills, ironic as that may sound coming from him. Taking a breath she forestalled him with the first thing that came to her mind. \"I didn\'t know you frequent the Muggle world. I always imagined you wouldn\'t be acquainted with the customs and prefer to stay in magical environs. Do you come here often?\" she hoped he wouldn\'t be insulted, but the shock of seeing him there sitting just like any other muggle in the restaurant still held her in its grasp. He seemed such an aristocratic pure-blood back at school, keeping company with the likes of Mr. Malfoy the elder when he visited. She even imagined when she first read his letter that the address belonged to a magical restaurant like the Leaky Cauldron that she hadn\'t heard of before.


Snape looked phased for a moment before he answered quietly \"Yes, I do frequent the Muggle world in recent years, since the dark lord was vanquished. It is a world that owes its continued existence to that fact and therefore should be known in greater detail, especially when so many of my students come from this world. It is the fruit of our victory so to speak. Besides, in the muggle world my name doesn\'t go before me.\" His face twisted into an ugly grimace before he could control it. \"And do you still keep in touch with your muggle origins? I understand your parents were dentists.\"


Hermione smiled. She never thought he would see her birth-world in such a way. If only more people were so open minded to it. Was this why he chose to follow Albus in the war and abandon the dark side? \"Yes. I live in my parents\' house and spend most of my free time in the muggle world. I went to university after I finished school and studied ancient history there. I work at the magical scripts and tomes office in the Ministry now, cataloguing imported books. We are also supposed to supervise what kind of trash will be put in the papers, but they took me off that part of the job pretty quickly. I suppose they wanted something in the Daily Prophet to actually see the light of day even if it is all just filthy lies and trash.\"


Snape didn’t appear to care about her attempt at humor and instead asked intently: \"The magical scripts and tomes office? Do you approve or sensor books for publication by any chance?\"


\"Well, Fudge still has the final say but we can recommend books to be published more expediently or send them back to the authors with requests for amendments if there are errors in the text or dangerous magic in the binding.\"


\"I see. Do you come across any interesting or exotic texts during your work?\" he asked her leaning back in his chair. He probably didn’t have a sense of humor, Hermione decided. She was just so dazed from having an actual pleasant conversation with the man that she didn’t know what to expect.


\"Well, usually its just new school books like that \'Monster Book of Monsters\' that Hagrid gave us, or cooking books with accidental poisonous recipes, or banal dark tomes from Knockturn alley. The really valuable manuscripts are always transferred privately outside the Ministry\'s jurisdiction, so we just see the everyday mundane stuff. It gets really boring most of the time. But, a few weeks ago when I visited a used bookstore in Charing Cross here in muggle London I found an old tome in Greek that I knew right away was magical. It seemed to call me from under all the dust it had gathered there, lying forgotten and unwanted by anyone. It was probably thrown out by wizards who didn\'t know what it held and couldn\'t be bothered to find out since the schools stopped giving mandatory lessons in Greek and Latin and nobody bothers to learn ancient Greek nowadays.\"


Hermione held her fork in a painful grip. She could picture Ron and Harry doing just such a thing without the least bit of effort. She still remembered the horrible night after graduation day when Ron helped Harry throw most of his school books to the flames in a petty gesture of ungrateful rebelliousness ignoring her ineffective shouts and protests. Ron would have joined right along with his own books if he didn’t have to give them over to Ginny for her last year.


Looking back at Professor Snape, she sought the understanding she never got from her friends. She would tell him about the book and he would understand why she came here. Surely it would appeal to his Slytherin ethics and temperament. If he couldn\'t understand why she wanted to do this, would anyone? Peering into his deep black eyes, she started talking, losing herself in her explanations. It felt so good to talk to someone who actually gave the impression of listening to her, of understanding what she was talking about.


\"The book is in ancient Greek as I said and called: \'Hai euchai te metri chlora \' – or \'Devotions to the Green Mother\', but I’m certain that it’s a translation of a much older Minoan manuscript expanded and explained in the later version. It’s written as a religious text detailing the devotions priestesses of Gaea should follow. That part comes from the translation as far as I can tell; the original was simply about natural magic, of the feminine aspects of it.


“I don\'t think I ever saw anything like it in all my life. It might be the only copy left in the whole wide world.\" Trying to stay calm she took a long gulp of the water on the table. \"The book deals with the old magic, the one you do without spells or wands, but through rituals and life altering acts, acts and rituals that carry you through the major phases of your life and symbolize them. It’s a little like the Care for Magical Creatures or Herbology classes back in school but there’s so much more in it. According to it, following the proper rituals you can get a real connection to the magic in the natural world and know on an instinctual level how to respond to it.” Hermione looked into those deep ebony black eyes seeking understanding. “It was no trouble for someone like Neville to outshine us all in Herbology, he probably had a legion of wizards and witches in his ancestry infusing his blood with the natural touch and it wasn’t just Neville. Even Ron was better at it than me and he never bothered to study anything. I never really knew why I was only mediocre in all those subjects. I tried so hard to explain it to myself countless times, saying I wasn’t patient enough or not positive enough or didn’t have the right muscles. No one told me there was a way to change it. It was too late to have an initiation after my birth or weaning I know but they could still give it to me, as they should have, when I started using magic, when Mr. Ollivander gave me my wand. All he told me was ‘Now give it a flick. Thirteen inches, vine wood, dragon heartstring core. Now don’t be shy, it\'s all in the wand’. That wasn’t the proper initiation. He stole my chance that day and I never knew what I was missing for all these years.”


Snape scrutinized her through narrowed eyes letting his eyes wonder momentarily to her wristwatch before locking back on her mouth. “You wish to bolster your strength in the natural magics, do you? And what ritual did you find in that little book of yours to accomplish your trifling goal? Do you plan on sacrificing a bull perchance?” His lips were twitching a little and there was a strange glitter in his eyes. It almost looked like he was trying to suppress a grin from blossoming on his usually stern visage, impossible as it surely was.


Hermione cleared her throat “No. Not that, although there are quite a few rituals of that vein in there. A ritual like this has to be a life-giving ritual, not a sacrifice of it. Besides I’m not certain I would have been up to doing something like that. No. There are only two possible rituals left in the book that would allow me to have the ‘green touch’. The first is on my death – bed, allowing my spirit to be one with the world. I’m not sure what use that would be. The second,” she licked her lips nervously. It was now or never. “The second is to be performed during the first pregnancy a woman has. It must be performed at various stages throughout the term ending at the moment of birth giving a gradual strengthening of the link until it is complete and in full force on the cutting of the umbilical cord from mother and son.”


Hermione looked back at him. He didn’t look overly surprised, just thoughtful, nodding and shaking his head alternatively appearing to be arguing about something with himself. “Will these rituals affect the fetus in any way? His life, his magic, his destiny?” he finally asked her.


Hermione felt light headed. There was no turning back now. He was agreeing to her proposal. “No, it doesn’t affect the child in any way, beyond ensuring his connection to the natural world. Like in a pure – blooded one” she added.


Nodding resolutely to himself Snape stood up offering her his hand to rise. “Very well, I see no point in wasting any more time waiting for other options.” He grimaced before laying a few crisp bills on the table. “Please come to my office at Hogwarts tomorrow morning to work out the final small details in our agreement. Bring an accurate translation of that ritual with you for me to review. I will reserve my opinion on its safety and practicability until I have read it myself. I expect to see you at ten o’clock sharp.” And picking up his overcoat from its chair, he left.



Author’s note –


1) ‘Antica Roma’ is a real Italian restaurant in London. It’s located near the Olympia Underground station (also known as the Kensington station) at 3 Hammersmith Road. Here’s a link with a photograph if you’re interested: http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/info_restaurant_maps_8559.html


2) I have no knowledge in the Greek language so as you might have seen or heard my own first attempt at flowery high Greek was a miserable incomprehensible failure. The book’s new name is: ‘Hai euchai te metri chlora.’ – and should be pronounced: ‘high tay maytree chlora’. After seeing all the gibberish rendering of Greek letters on various web pages I sojourned in the past few days I will leave that to your own imagination. The new name was commissioned by SusanPW and her lovely daughter Anastasia. A really big thank-you both for revealing the words out of their clear rock so to speak.


3) Minoan civilization – was the great civilization between 2800 – 1400 B.C. in Crete and the Aegean islands before the Dorian invasion that formed eventually the famous classical Greek eradicated it. Unlike modern Greeks they were not Indo-Europeans and their writings in the ‘Linear-a’ script are not understood. It must be noted that according to parallel clay tablets of Mycenaean origins the tablets only deal with accountancy of the stocks and stores in the palaces and the like. So you may say I took a literary freedom in the origins and contents of Hermione’s book. On the other hand it could be a late Greek transcription of word of mouth traditions that were passed all the way from Minoan traditions.


The Minoan center was at Crete where they built famous palaces, one of which is the basis of the legend on the dreaded Minotaur in the underground labyrinth. They were peaceful seafaring traders and their religion was centered on a female mother goddess of nature unlike the Greek religion in which the pantheon was dominated by powerful male warrior figures (although there are several important female characters in the Greek pantheon. There was an incorporation of the earlier traditions through these female figures, but the leadership roles were passed to the three central male gods. Of particular note is Zeus\' petty, jealous wife, the titular female leader of the Greek pantheon.) The Minoan goddess, Rhea, appears in the Greek mythology as Cronos\' Titan mate and mother to the gods. This female nature goddess is associated with snakes that she holds in her hands as can be seen from various figurines and paintings. The Minoan people worshipped their goddess in simple ways through the giving of fruits and flowers but also as Snape rightly allude to through the sacrifice of bulls.


The end of this great civilization occurred from a massive earthquake at the volcanic island Thera around 1500 B.C. and subsequent subjugation by an Achaean invasion. This gave rise to the famous legends of lost Atlantis.


Thanks to the wonderful reviewers: Canadianna, Bambu, Tiffany, ancientgirl, June W, lilly, azulkan2, cocoachristy, abbi cee, Rhiannon, southern_witch_69, Lady Jade and GinnyW.


1) Ancientgirl - I\'m going to get back to the age thing in the next chapter. As you might have guessed I plan to make this story an alternative POV story like ‘Needfire’ so the next chapter is back to Severus\' POV.


2) Lilly – well I couldn\'t imagine a money seeking Hermione either. I hope this chapter answers this question to your satisfaction.


3) Abbi cee – as I said more to come in the next chapter from Severus\' POV.


4) southern_witch_69 – thanks. Hope you\'ll enjoy it.


5) GinnyW – I would be interested to see what you did with it. Can you tell me where to find it?