A Dish Served Cold

A/N - So terribly sorry that it has taken me so darn long to get this chapter out, I have been really ill and it has been an effort just to haul my arse out of bed, let alone type a chapter. : P Anyway, thank you for your patience. Thanks also to Kate for keeping me on the straight and narrow.


Chapter 6 – Regrets

She sat in Headmistress Maxime’s office with the feeling that she had missed something important. Helena clutched the rolled parchment and looked at the large, elegant woman before her in shock. The lush lavenders and pale greens of the room faded away and all she could hear was the rushing of the blood in her ears. The Louis XVI chair she was perched upon had seemed so comfortable a moment ago and yet, suddenly, it was unsteady beneath her.

Helena looked down at the letter in her hand in horror. She had had no idea the Marriage Law had been adjusted to include everyone above sixteen. She looked at Madame Maxime with tear-filled eyes and the huge woman’s expression of sympathy nearly undid her.

“My brother, will he also be placed under this law?” Helena asked in rapid-fire French. Her mind was whirling as she tried to comprehend the sudden changes in her life.

“All of the English half bloods and Muggleborns are under this law, so yes,” the Headmistress told her gently, her French far more lilting than the younger woman’s. Helena could not imagine her brother submitting tamely to this decree. She herself was tempted to flee the Wizarding world and hide, except for one thing: her father.

He would never tolerate such a disgrace to the family. He had told her often enough that duty was more important than personal desires, that when he arranged a marriage for her she was to be obedient or he would make her sorry and Taliesin Snape was capable of making someone very sorry indeed.

She opened the letter with a resigned air. It wasn’t as though she had any choice in the matter; the Ministry of Magic had taken that from her this time, but her father had never really given it to her in the first place.

“On behalf on my son, Draco Malfoy, I, Lucius Malfoy, make my offer for Helena Therese Snape, half blood daughter of Taliesin Snape and Therese Frewer Snape, on this day the twelfth of September.” Helena was cold inside. She had never met the Malfoys but one knew of them of course. They were rumored to be loyal to He-who-must-not-be-named. She shivered and met Madame Maxine’s eyes with grief and sorrow.

“You have a week, Mademoiselle Snape. If you receive another offer in that time, you may refuse the first one.” It was a slim hope; there were always more half bloods and Muggleborns than purebloods and she had been surprised to get even one offer.

“Thank you, Madame.” She rose and curtsied to the Headmistress before departing. So lost in misery was she that she never saw the look of calculation and determination in Madame Maxime’s eyes.

Sabine Snape opened the paper with an irritable flick. She hated ”The Daily Prophet” with its sensational and biased reporting, but as her other choices were “The Tattler”, “The Quibbler” or ”The Modern Herbalist Journal,” she had little other recourse. She adjusted the reading glasses that perched at the end of her aquiline nose with impatience. The headline made her snort in contempt. “Age Requirements for Marriage Law Dropped to Sixteen” she read with a mounting anger. Forcing children to wed was barbaric; what was the Wizarding World coming to?

The back page was covered with wedding announcements; those occasioned by the new law had red borders around them. There was an appalling amount of red on the page, as though blood had been spattered liberally across it. Her eyes flicked over the names and then came to a heart-pounding stop as a name leapt out at her. “Severus Snape to Hermione Granger” she read in horror. She had no idea who the girl was, but she doubted Taliesin had chosen a willing bride for his son.

Sabine leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in a sudden welling of grief. How had she failed so spectacularly in raising her son, Taliesin? What had driven him to become the bitter anti-social being he had become, how had he married that …creature?

Her mind replayed the final fight with the sharp jagged images that had haunted her for years; Taliesin wild–eyed and screaming his defiance at both her and his father. Thrace, his sandy hair disarrayed, his own eyes just as furious as his son’s. The two of them were going at each other hammer and tong, while Sabine stood there in utter shock unable to believe that her baby boy had turned into the vindictive, cruel-tongued man before her. He had flayed his father with his tongue and Sabine had been too appalled to even respond.

Thrace had banished him from his sight and while he could not cut him off as his heir, he never spoke to his son again. Neither of them had attended the boy’s wedding to That Woman’s daughter. They had not gone to the Welcoming of their grandson nor had they attended the funeral of their daughter-in-law. Taliesin’s second marriage had been ignored as well.

To be honest, they had been invited to none of those events, but Sabine wondered now as she stared at the black letters with their red border if perhaps she had compounded her earlier immobility with neglect. Severus Snape, the grandson she had never met, was as much a victim as Sabine herself was.

She should have at least tried to see the boy at some point in the last forty years. A sense of shame washed over her and she turned to the attentive house elf beside her.

“Rochester, pack my things and book me a room in Hogsmeade,” she ordered. The huge brown eyes goggled at her in shock and then the diminutive being popped from existence.

She had forty years of neglect to address, she had best be about it.

Sarit Yidoni glanced over her suitably cowed servants and descendants with a gratified expression. Her son and his wife were seated beside her on the right and her daughter and her husband were placed on her left, the grandchildren were arrayed down the table by order of age; Sarit glared at Yonaton, who quickly whipped his elbows off the table with a look of abject terror at his formidable grandmother.

She had ruled this family with an iron fist for eighty years and she was not about to allow any laxness of discipline to set in now. Baca, an elderly House Elf with emerald green eyes bulging from his head, placed the bottle of wine at Sarit’s elbow along with copies of ”The Nazarene News” and ”The Daily Prophet.”

With calm disdain for the hunger of her dependants, she picked up the papers and began to skim them. The others knew better than to eat before she did and so they sat with the stillness of hunted animals in the underbrush, hoping the lion will pass them by. “Age Requirements for Marriage Law Dropped to Sixteen” she scanned with little interest as she flipped through the pages. The idea that those British idiots were reduced to marrying mud-bloods to save themselves from their own shortsightedness was amusing, but of little importance to Sarit.

The lists of engagements provided her with still more amusement as she saw prominent names paired with non-entities until she read “Severus Snape to Hermione Granger”. She stared at the words on the page with mounting fury. When her thrice-cursed-to-hell youngest daughter had defied her and married that bitch Sabine’s son, Sarit had cut her off and been grimly pleased by her early death.

The child had born with the black hair and eyes of a Yidoni, but the nose and face had been too Snape for any doubt of his parentage. Still, he was blood despite his bastard of a father and there were binding traditions that must be obeyed.

“We are going to England tomorrow; there is a wedding we must attend,” Sarit announced to the table. Not one voice was raised in protest or enquiry; they all remained utterly silent.

Severus leaned back in his chair and tried to pretend he was at ease. It wasn’t easy while Madame Hooch glared at him and Sibyl Trelawney kept muttering about “doomed marriages and pedophilia.” The staff room seemed decidedly chilly despite the blazing fire. Minerva was the only teacher besides Albus who wasn’t shooting him angry or disgusted looks.

Hagrid looked torn; on the one hand, he had nothing but respect for the teachers at Hogwarts, on the other hand, Hermione was one of his favorites, practically a daughter to him. The worst part is that Snape felt exactly the same as the rest of the teachers. He hated the entire situation and was disgusted by what he would be legally required to do to and with a student of his. Lie back and think of the Order, he thought ruefully, unknowingly echoing Hermione’s thoughts of earlier.

“Sibyll, if you wouldn’t mind,” Albus interrupted her flow of muttered imprecations with a gentle remonstrance. She subsided but her verbal assault was replaced with reproachful glances. “You are all no doubt aware of the law and you all know that neither Severus nor Miss Granger had any choice in the matter. Severus’ father made the arrangements without even informing him of his intentions.” There was a stir and a few people relaxed, though Sibyll’s expression thawed not one bit.

“But what are we to do, Albus? I mean, we can’t call her Mrs. Snape!” Poppy burst out in dismay and Severus’ face went utterly mask-like.

“Why ever not?” he demanded quietly, his tone fierce and Poppy blanched. “Whatever the circumstances, she will be my wife and she will be treated with due respect.” His tone was far more dangerous than the circumstances warranted he knew, but the events of the last twelve hours had driven him into a deep rage. Add in his embarrassment over the situation and he was very close to hexing the whole staff room and hoping it got him sent to Azkaban where he could get some peace and quiet.

“’Due respect?’ Severus, she is still a student here! How do we address a student married to one of our own staff?” Hooch demanded with incredulity. “She should not be in classes here!” Her yellow eyes were fierce and angry.

“So you would deny her an education because Taliesin Snape is a vindictive arse?” Georgian Tamarind interjected, reminding Severus that the newest teacher was quite well acquainted with his father. The DADA professor rolled his eyes at Madame Hooch as he spoke. Hooch glared back at Tamarind with fierce anger, but he met her yellow-eyed gaze with his own mild brown ones and she broke off.

“It’s not just us that will have a problem. You saw how the students reacted to the news!” Poppy broke into the conversation again.

“They will have to grow used to the idea of married students; after all, we were hardly the only ‘couple’ announced tonight.” Severus’ bitterness was readily apparent and that stopped some of the other suspicions in the teachers’ eyes. “I cannot imagine how any of you could have the unmitigated idiocy to imagine I would want to marry a seventeen-year-old Gryffindor girl who also happens to be Potter’s best friend,” he spat out, his fury threatening to break free of the monumental self-control that he presently had it under.

There were a few blushes and quite a few averted eyes as he swept them with his angry glare.

“No one thinks you wanted this, Severus,” Albus soothed and the other teachers nodded slowly.

“We were just taken by surprise like, Pr’fessor Snape,” Hagrid added with a gentle sigh. He looked heart-broken and Severus rolled his eyes and tried not to snark at the man.

“Yes, well imagine how I must have felt,” he growled at Poppy and she turned pink with embarrassment.

“The point of this meeting is to determine how we will address these issues; after all, Severus is quite correct, we will soon have a large majority of our sixth and seventh year students married off.” Minerva brought the conversation back around to a subject less likely to get up Severus’ robes and the others nodded, unaware of how close they had come to annihilation.

“Calling a student ‘Mrs.’ is a rather difficult pill to swallow, but I don’t imagine that referring to them by their maiden names will cause anything but trouble,” Poppy sighed and looked unhappy.

“That is the least of our problems, Poppy,” Severus drawled and noted the surprised expressions on his colleagues’ faces with amused disgust. They really were horribly naïve some of them. “Where will they sleep? The law clearly states that they must produce children.” The quiet horror on Flitwick’s face was priceless but the prim folding of Poppy’s hands and the thinning of her lips was even better. “Once these children are born how do we balance childcare with studying?” He was enjoying pointing out the cruel realities to his peers.

“Pregnant students have always been dismissed.” Poppy was obviously unable to keep her Victorian prudery from showing as she tried to cope with this new thought.

“But this isn’t some silly girl forgetting her Contraceptus charm, Poppy. These will be married women with a legal responsibility to produce these children,” Minerva pointed out with a grim expression. “We cannot kick them out of school because they obeyed the law.”

A long silence fell over the table and Sprout finally looked up from where she had sat with her head bowed through the entire conversation.

“We will need a nursery and child care center,” she said quietly and the teachers looked extremely uncomfortable with the idea. “We will need to hire an assistant for Madame Pomfrey; someone with a great deal of pre-natal, midwife and early childhood experience.” Poppy looked outraged but Sprout continued on. “We will need to set up private quarters for the married students, regardless of their house affiliations, and possibly a counselor or two from St. Mungo’s to help them through any early problems they might have settling in.”

There was another long silence and then Albus nodded.

“Very well, any objections to that plan?” the Headmaster’s tired voice asked with a gentle resignation in it. No one replied, but Severus doubted that this would be the end of the discussion. People were shocked by the news, but the situation was like nothing they had ever experienced before and adjusting to these new realities would no doubt take time. Severus knew it would take him far more time than the mere week he had before the wedding for him to adjust, if he ever did.

Hermione sat with Harry, Ron, Ginny, Luna and Moira. The red-haired Ravenclaw was pacing the room with the restless energy that was her hallmark. Luna was sitting beside Ron with a look of quiet peace but it was always hard to tell what that meant, at least for Hermione.

Ginny was shell-shocked on the couch and the Room of Requirement had arranged itself to look rather like the kitchen in the Burrow, which seemed to be comforting to the younger girl.

“Fudge has to be the biggest arse-wipe in the entire Wizarding World,” the sharp-tongued Irish girl muttered as she paced. Harry shot her a look of adoration and Hermione rolled her eyes. Of course she wanted love, but she didn’t want the sort of soppy stuff that went on between Harry and Moira. Well, the soppy stuff Harry did, since Moira was more a modern-day Boudicca then a wilting flower.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Ron grimaced and put an arm around his sister. This year’s jumper from Molly was currently gracing Luna, but he had tossed his robes aside and lounged in jeans and a Chudley Canons shirt. Ginny was still in uniform, looking rather young and fragile. Luna had the drop crystal earrings on that Ron had bought for her and her wide blue eyes were fixed on some different plane of existence.

“I don’t know, I am sure there must be people worse than Minister Fudge,” she interjected with that dreamy air of hers. Moira tossed her head and the abruptness of her gesture was both disagreement and acknowledgement. Hermione could not figure out how Moira could be so eloquent with head and hand gestures alone, but between that and her vocabulary, which would put a White Chapel streetwalker to shame, she was quite the character.

“What about you Hermione, you going to be okay?” Moira asked with her usual brutal directness. Hermione suspected that Harry had fallen for the hot-tempered girl because she never bothered to lie or evade an issue; she told her full opinion on every subject. She had also been singularly unimpressed by the boy-who-lived and still thought that all the hoopla was nonsense. “After all, Snape’s going to be a real cross to bear.” Which was almost a tactful statement coming from Moira.

“He and I talked for a while in the Headmaster’s office and he has promised to leave me alone as much as possible.” She knew she was blushing, but couldn’t stop. Just knowing that in one week’s time she would be losing her virginity to Severus Snape was enough to make her dizzy and faint with apprehension, not to mention horribly embarrassed.

“Well, you will have to sleep with him at least twice which can’t be anything but disgusting,” Ginny put in with sympathy in her eyes. The boys winced and Luna twirled a lock of hair with vigor. Hermione felt a surge of fury at her words.

“Thanks, Ginny, would you like to point out anything else I hadn’t thought of?” Hermione snapped back and Ginny flushed. “May I also point out that what happens between my … husband and me is between the two of us and not for general discussion.” She added the last part in a tone of frozen ice, deciding to forestall any conversations on the subject before they got started. Ginny snapped her mouth shut and the others simply nodded, looking a little ill.

“’Husband’ ought to be a happy word,” Luna sighed and her expression was mournful. Hermione unfroze a little and sighed.

“I wish I could wake up from this nightmare,” Hermione admitted and leaned into Harry as he wrapped his arm around her. She wished she could just fly away from this whole mess. “I have to write a letter to my parents,” she sighed at last and headed out of the room.

They let her go and she could already feel the discomfort in them. She would be Mrs. Snape as of next week. How on Earth were they to cope with that?