Eternal Mistakes On The Spotless Soul

A/N: Thank you to all who have read and reviewed thus far! I’ve been toiling away trying to see where this is going. And here it goes. I do apologize for the brevity of this chapter, but there will be another update soon. Please leave some more reviews!

Bright sunbeams masked in hues of blue, green, and red filtered into the church through the stained glass windows. All eyes had shifted from Hermione up to the man who was standing at the altar. Severus Snape, donned festively in formal blacks, was gaping like a cod, eyes directed down the aisle where the two young witches stood. He blinked twice as if thinking they might disappear like some faulty optical illusion, but they remained solid as stone in his sightline.

It was the young doe-eyed thing in the wedding dress that moved first. The bride-to-be turned around slowly. Until that moment she’d kept her back to the aisle, but as she turned to face them, both Ginny and Hermione gasped. She was young, pale in the face, and hardly looked of age, but the most shocking thing was not her youthful face, but rather her bulging belly, nearly as round as Hermione’s.

The young bride-to-be turned her eyes back to Severus, tears glistening in her pale blue orbs. “Who is she?” the girl whispered.

“What is all this nonsense?” hissed the voice of Lucius Malfoy as he stood from the front pew. The years had not been kind to the elder Malfoy, particularly after Narcissa had died. He’d put on a fair bit of weight and his complexion had not seen daylight for many a year. The black suit he wore pinched his frame in a most unflattering way as he came to stand beside his daughter. It was not a well kept secret after his wife had passed that Lucius had fathered a bastardized child, a daughter only a few years younger than Draco. Although Narcissa had known, for namesake purposes, she’d insisted they’d kept her husband’s debauchery hidden. Lucius had arranged for the marriage just after Narcissa’s passing, waiting until the girl came of age, in hopes of salvaging the girl’s reputation of bastard child.

Lucius tightened his grip on his daughter’s arm, and then narrowed his eyes at Severus. Draco, looking painfully thin in comparison to his father, stood alongside his godfather and half sister, brow creasing, sweat dripping down his forehead. The priest at the altar shook his head. “I’m sorry, but is their truth in that young lady’s claim?” he said, gesturing down the aisle to Ginny.

Once again all eyes were focused on Hermione. “This was a bad idea,” she muttered to Ginny. “Oh,” she moaned, feeling the baby kicking furiously inside of her. “I think I’m just going to go…” her voice trailed off and her eyes rolled back into her head. The room began to spin slightly and she began to sway.

“I think you should sit down,” Ginny said, and helped her into a pew.

“That filthy little—” Lucius held his tongue as Severus raised a hand to silence him.

Severus took two steps down off the altar, and Nalina Malfoy burst into quiet tears. His eyes gazed down the aisle to where Hermione was now seated, disbelieving, his footfalls uneven as the heat sweltered around him. Ginny reached into her pocket and withdrew a handkerchief, dipping it in the chalice of holy water mounted to the pew just behind her. She dabbed the wet rag against her friend’s forehead.

“Is this true?” He asked, his voice lowered, his eyes gazing at the very pregnant witch.

Hermione’s eyes rolled back into her head once more, sweat pouring down her face as Ginny tried to mop her brow. She moaned, seeing double and triple as both Severus and Ginny’s faces loomed over hers. “Huh?” she managed to mutter as the colors swirled before her eyes.

“Hermione…” she heard a voice in the distance, “Hermione!” and all went black.