The Potions Master's Baby

Chapter 3: Watching













She hadn’t spoken to Severus since the day in Minerva’s office. It had been nearly a month now and still she avoided him like a plague. She refused to make eye contact when they met in the halls and she wouldn’t speak to him at meal time either. She had kept to herself, silently dealing with her situation as best she could.





She had broken down to Harry and Ginny about the incident and how her circumstances had changed. Poor Harry, he was upset for his friend but he couldn’t seem to help himself from laughing.





“You aren’t helping!” Ginny had snarled as she stroked Hermione’s head where it lay in her lap. Harry had been sitting on the end of the sofa, his face red with laughter as tears rolled down his cheeks.





“See, that’s another reason I didn’t want his sperm, he mocks my pain.” Hermione sniffed as she stared at him.





“I’m sorry, Luv, really I am, I just….Snape? Seriously? You are having Snape’s kid?” He once again burst into fits of hilarity at Hermione’s expense. “That is going to be one hell of a kid, a real force to be reckoned with.”





Hermione had smiled a little too when she thought about it. With her Gryffindor tendencies and his Slytherin, it WAS going to be quite a kid. She could feel Severus watching her in the halls and observing her through meals. She knew she was being ridiculous ignoring him the way she was, he was no more to blame than she was for the circumstance, but she couldn’t seem to help it.





In her mind he posed a threat to her child. He was the father and he didn’t want it, wanted her to get rid of it. She knew she couldn’t continue behaving as she was, they were colleagues and her behavior was unprofessional. She was grading papers and thinking about the situation when she realized that the right thing to do would be to simply talk to him. Treat him as if she didn’t know he had been the ‘donor’.







She smiled, proud of herself for being the bigger person as she tried to determine the best time to make her friendly overture. Just then her stomach chose to roll. She had thought she would get out of morning sickness, but it turned out that it just struck a bit later for her and never in the morning, never at any set time of the day actually. It would just come upon her at random and suddenly, like now.





She was in the dungeon, there was no loo in the dungeon corridor so she ran for the nearest bit of plumbing she knew of, the sink in the potions classroom. She was out of her classroom and down the hall in a flash, dry heaves making her stomach ache as she slammed through his classroom door and ran for the front behind the blackboard where the sink was situated near the storage cupboard.





She ignored his scowl and the shocked, curious stares of the students as she ran through their classroom and retched into the sink.





“Read chapter eight, quietly!” Severus barked at the class as he walked behind the blackboard to find the witch hunched over the sink. She was groaning as she held her hair back and splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth. “Are you alright?”





Hermione stood and glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes were watering and her face was pale as she gave him a trembling smile.





“I apologize for disrupting your class, Severus. It comes on so sudden that I couldn’t get to the upper floor to the loo and your class sink was closest to me.” She said softly. He didn’t look angry at her and that had her a little off balance.





“How long have you been feeling poorly?” He asked, stepping into the cupboard and rifling through bottles.







“A few weeks.” She said, standing in the doorway watching him. “It’s normal, or so the medi-witch tells me.”







“Here, this should help.” He said as he handed her two small vials of blue potion. “It is safe to take, it won’t hurt the child.”





“Thank you, Severus, I appreciate it.” She said softly, touched by his concern.





“You are welcome.” He said watching her swallow back the potions. “Better now?” She handed him the empty vials and smiled.





“Yes, very much.” She said.







“Well, perhaps now you will eat a decent meal at supper.” He said, dropping the empty bottles into a basket for sterilizing and reuse.





“You noticed I haven’t been eating?” She was surprised.







“Well you do sit right beside me, it is hard for me not to notice you shoving food around on your plate and pushing things away since they inevitably end up in my space.” He said.







“Oh, sorry about that. Some things just strike me poorly and I have to get them as far from me as possible before the scent or sight of it makes me ill.” She chewed her bottom lip sheepishly.





“It’s alright, I just push it to Hagrid and he eats it.” It was almost a grin that crossed his lips, almost, and she nearly swooned out of shock. Hermione smiled slightly and glanced back at his classroom. Half of the class was trying to look around the blackboard to see what they were doing.





“I think I should go now, your students are turning into voyeurs, no doubt they think we are up to something back here. Behind your blackboard is a favorite snogging spot for the adventurous.” She chuckled. Severus looked completely appalled.





“Please tell me that was a jest.” He said, his eyes narrowing.





“Sorry to disappoint you, but when your classroom is empty….” She shrugged her shoulders and watched his frown deepen.





“Horny little bastards.” He muttered beneath his breath.





“Well, you can imagine what they are thinking given you and I have been back here so long.” She laughed.







“Well you are carrying my child…” He stopped halfway through the jesting comment and stared at her. She looked stunned and he couldn’t blame her, that little slip of the tongue was shocking to him as well.







“Severus, this isn’t…”







“Whatever you wantit to be, Hermione, it doesn’t change what it is.” He said quietly. He didn’t want to be concerned. He wanted to be indifferent, to look at her and not think she is carrying my child. But it wasn’t that simple, it never was. No matter how he tried to steel himself against it, to push it out of his mind, it was there, the knowledge that a part of him was growing inside her.







“This is more complicated than it should have been. If Poppy had just looked more carefully at what she was doing this could have all been avoided.” Hermione said sadly.







“Nothing can ever be that easy. Not here at any rate, and certainly not for me.” He grumbled.







“I think I can commiserate on that front, the fates seem to have it in for me.” She said. “I don’t want things to be awkward, Severus, we have to work together, and we both live in this castle.”







“I don’t want that either, but I am not sure we can avoid it given where we stand on this…issue.” He said.







“Well, we have seven months yet to figure it all out. Right now though I have a class to prepare for.” She said, taking a deep breath and straightening her robes. “Thank you again for the potion, I feel worlds better. I am really sorry about disrupting class.”







“It is fine. I will see you at supper.” He watched her smile and walk away and his brow furrowed as he stepped out from behind the blackboard and watched her exit his classroom. Things were going to get messy. He hated messy.







Several sets of curious eyes were on him as he stood with one hand against the blackboard’s wooden frame. He could see the blushing cheeks and grins on a few of the student’s faces and he realized the truth of what Hermione had said. They thought he had been behind the blackboard kissing her.





“Eyes. On. Your. Work.” He said firmly before pulling his robes tightly around him and heading to his desk to mark papers, all the while muttering about the imbeciles he was forced to teach year after year. He found himself praying that his child didn’t turn out like most of his students. He cursed, wishing he could stop thinking of the child as his, but it was just as he told her, no matter what he wanted, it didn’t change what was. The child she carried was his and nothing was going to change that.









~@~







Hermione felt good the rest of the day, physically at least. Her stomach had remained calm all throughout her remaining classes. It was her head and her heart that was giving her trouble. He had seemed genuinely concerned about her being ill and he had been quite civil when she expected him to berate her, call her weak or even tell her she deserved it for what she had done. But he hadn’t, he had been quite caring and generous by giving her the potion.







And in the moment when he said that she was carrying his child all breath had left her body. Whether he intended to or not he had laid claim to the baby he insisted that he did not want. It unnerved her. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of a present father in her child’s life, there was no way she could have anticipated such a massive turn of events. Yet there she was, ten weeks pregnant by Severus Snape.





Maybe she shouldn’t think of it as being pregnant by him, after all the man had touched her only a handful of times in her entire life and not one of them had been intimate. That was the point that her mental meanderings had taken an odd turn for her. Would things have been different if they had been intimate? If she had gotten pregnant during a moment of mindless passion?





Was he capable of a moment of mindless passion? What would he be like as a lover? Would he be cold and aloof? Calculated? Every touch, every kiss a planned and practiced move? Or would he completely throw her for a loop and be tender, passionate and sensual?





She caught her wayward thoughts and mentally chided herself for letting her imaginings go as far as they did. What was wrong with her? She never thought about sex that way, especially not sex with Snape! It wasn’t like she was an overly sexual person, she had only been with Ron and that had been sweet and loving, nothing like the rather animalistic thoughts rolling through her mind in that moment.





She put her things away and readied herself for bed. She stood in front of the full length mirror in her bedchamber, her pajama bottoms pushed down on her hips, her cotton tank lifted to just below her breasts. No change. She still looked the same as she did before becoming pregnant. The only real change was her breasts; they were just a little plumper and a lot more sensitive. With an exasperated sigh she shoved her clothing back to rights and crawled into her bed.







Finding sleep was easy enough in recent weeks, she was exhausted almost all the time. As slumber claimed her, so did the random imagery of her subconscious where Severus Snape was kissing her passionately in the middle of a crowded room, his hand resting on her tummy as he whispered one word. “Mine.”