Happy Bloody Christmas, Severus Snape!

Four months after that particularly hectic Christmas, Hermione Granger was set to return from Coventry Institute. This time Severus had no intentions of spoiling her week of freedom with spiky words, or resentfulness. Christmas had ended, and though it hurt him, he’d sent Miss Granger…no, Hermione, on her way. She’d not liked it in the least of course, the foolish girl had wanted to throw away her future yet again at the promise of happily ever after. But nothing involving Severus Snape was ‘happily ever after’, and life after she’d gone had continued slowly, painfully. The fact that he had ensured Hermione’s future happiness did little to quell the pain of losing her, but now here was a second chance. Rash decisions never turned out well for Severus, he of all people knew that, and yet there he was standing in the doorway, the ring burning a hole in his pocket. He felt as if he had run a mile, his chest felt tight, his breathing labored.

So when Miss Granger appeared, her stomach hard and rounded, accompanied by a Mr. Ronald Weasley, Severus laughed darkly. This would of course happen to him, only him. He shook his head, hoping he hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen. No, that insolent girl was with child. He’d sent that blasted woman away so that she could get an education and yet here she was knocked up, with that abusive bastard at her side. Hadn’t she been the brightest girl in her class? What the hell had happened to all that?

“Miss Granger” he said, his teeth grinding themselves together involuntarily. That idiot Weasley was smirking at him, as if this had been his evil plan all along. Well, that wouldn’t have surprised Severus in the least, except Hermione wasn’t the type of person to do such a thing.

“H..Hello Severus” she whispered, her hand immediately going to her stomach protectively. To be fair he was eyeing the bump intently.

“Hello Snape” the idiot beside her decied to chime in, not wanting to be left out. “Did you do something to your hair? Looks less greasy than usual.”

The idiot laughed at his own observation, but Hermione and Severus both cringed. Hermione because she knew when Ronald drank he was prone to saying stupid things, but Severus because his hair actually WAS less greasy than usual. In his desperate attempt to not screw up his hasty proposal, or get denied, he’d brewed a strong potion that left his hair without that greasy look to it. Now, faced with her pregnancy and her reinstated relationship, he felt like a teenager all over again.

“Severus I need to speak with you, privately” Hermione said.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Ronald stood up straighter, his grip around her arm tightning minutely. Severus raised an eyebrow in his usual fashion, but inwardly he was seething. Things between them had not appeared to genuinely change.

“No you don’t. What you need to do is go sit down in the Great Hall, and fix me a plate. Fix yourself one too while you’re at it, you’re too skinny.”

Hermione opened her mouth to argue back, but thought better of it and nodded stiffly, wrenching her arm out of his grip and fleeing toward the Great Hall as fast as her waddled steps could carry her. Severus had been angry when he’d first laid eyes on her, but how could he remain so given the terrible turn her life had taken. For whatever reason she’d ended back up with that controlling buffoon, and now early pregnancy, her biggest fear, had occurred. She was up the creek without a paddle. And Weasley didn’t seem too concerned about her pregnancy either.

“Funny thing, Hermione and me, we always end up together in the end. That baby is the luckiest thing that ever happened to us. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she’d spread those icy gates for me long enough to get her pregnant.” Ronald continued to prattle behind Severus as he strode toward the Great Hall,

“Mum’s delighted as can be though. She’s working on getting Hermione to marry me. After all, what is she going to do, raise it alone? No one would want her now that she’s in the family way.”

Severus had bitten his tongue long enough. He didn’t want to cause trouble for Hermione, especially as Mr. Weasley appeared to be completely unaware that Hermione and Severus had laid together far more recently than she and he had. Far more recently…Severus’ heart skipped a beat.

“’No one’ is a very strong sentiment. Miss Granger is the bearer of considerable charm and skill. There are quite a few men I’m sure that would be happy to have her at their side.”

“Oh come off it” Ron interjected, throwing the doors to the Great Hall open, “No man would want to raise someone else’s bastard child. Certainly not the child of some know-it-all hussy.”

The entire hall, filled with students and professors alike, fell silent. Hermione, who had hidden herself in a nook by Harry and Ginny stopped mid sentence, her eyes beginning to water. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind who and what they had been talking about: children at the Slytherin table begin to gossip back and forth, other students looked to her for a response. Rising shakily from her seat, her cheeks red and her eyes filled with furious tears, Hermione left the hall, as gracefully as she could, through the teacher’s exit. Moments later the hall came alive, but this time all talk centered on Hermione and her unborn baby.

Severus wanted nothing more than to strangle his former student, but that would be for another time. His primary concern was finding Hermione.
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After searching what seemed like the entire castle, including their old haunts, Severus was forced to give up and retire to his rooms. He had no idea where she disappeared to, but he had every intention of finding out in the morning. Ronald Weasley and the rest of the wizarding world be damned, he didn’t care if Hermione carried another man’s child, she didn’t deserve to be called a hussy in front of all those people. He just hoped she didn’t do something stupid like marry the git.

“Severus?”

Severus went still. Her voice, that soft sleepy whisper he’d dreamed of for the last four months, floated out from his bedroom. He barely had a moment to turn before she threw herself into his arms, tears staining the front of his robes. She’d grown softer, rounder, since her pregnancy, she looked beautiful. As if sensing his feelings, he felt the ring in his pocket calling to him. He had planned to bring her to these chambers tonight as his fiancé, the future mother of his children, his lovely wife-to-be. ‘Well’ he thought sarcastically, ‘she’s going to be the mother of someone’s child.” Severus had no intentions of letting her pregnancy stop him from having her, but he certainly was curious. Mr. Weasel had seemed almost resentful of the baby, and he had to know why.

“Hermione…Hermione I need to know” he said softly.

She cried harder, gripping the front of his robes in her tiny fists. She hadn’t meant for it to happen this way.

“A boy at my school” she whispered, “but he doesn’t want her, and he doesn’t want me.”

She gazed up at Severus, her pathetic tear-filled eyes daring him to throw her out of his rooms. He would’t lie and say that the moment she’d said the words it hadn’t occurred to him, she might as well have plunged a dagger into his heart. Still, he reminded himself, he had made the decision that even if the child was not his, he would look past that. He wanted this woman, more than anything, and if their little family came sooner rather than later, well that was something he would have to live with.

“Shhh,” he whispered comfortingly into her curly hair, pulling her tightly against him. He didn’t want her to see the single tear that escaped him. Severus Snape was not a man who cried, not since he was a child. He wanted to be the better man, to be able to move past this, he hoped desperately that he could.

“Hermione, I am not an easily forgiving man, I make no claim to be, but over the past four months I have thought of no one else but you. You…you drive me mad. I love you Hermione.” He brushed back her tears with the pad of his thumb. “Be my wife. I may not be that young lad you took up with, but I will give you and your child a good life and love you both unconditionally.”

Hermione began to sob harder; it wasn’t exactly the reaction he’d intended, nor the one he’d envisioned when he’d picked out the ring. Severus quietly led her back to bed,and tucked her in with all the gentleness he could muster. Returning to his couch with a glass of firewhiskey Severus glared at it for a moment, before chucking the tumbler into the fire, his entire bodly trembling. Love just wasn’t in the cards.