A/N: I hope this caters for all your tastes. Thank you to every single one of you, everyone who read this story has played a part. Thank you for all your reviews, whether supportive, helpful, critical or just flames, they've all really helped this story to progress. So without further ado I present to you:

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Ending With Beginning

"Hermione? Well? What do you want to do?" it was the Easter holidays; Hermione was in Snape's private quarters and was sitting in an arm chair. He was bent down beside her, holding her hand whilst she sobbed into his shoulder. Four people had commented that she was getting fat this week. She was three months pregnant and it was really starting to show it. It had all seemed so simple when he'd stood there and told her he would never leave her and that their child would have just as good a life as any other. He'd even offered to let it live in his quarters when it was born, how could she not resist him?

"Severus! It's so hard! People look at you when you walk down corridors, they point and stare and whisper."

"Come on Hermione, it'll be worth it all in the end, you know it will, when we've got that little child in our arms." He put his arms around her and whispered into her ear, "Have you told your parents yet?"

"No! What am I supposed to say? Oh by the way, Mum, Dad, my teacher got me pregnant. I don't think so. They'd kill me."

"Look I told you, you could move in here, or into my flat in London, you're old enough. You don't even have to go home in the summer, you can stay with me. But they ought to know, they'll be grandparents."

"I'll live with you Severus but people will notice –"

"That's all you care about isn't it? What other people think? Well I'm telling you Hermione, one breath of the real world and it won't matter to you what people think, there are so many things that are more important than that." He kissed her gently on the cheek, then on the lips. He swooped down over her chair and pressed his hands against the back of it, just above her shoulders. He kissed her lips again, and she pulled him tighter into her, grabbed hold of his arms, his shoulders, his face. Pulling more desperately for his warmth against he own cold body. He looked down at her and gently unbuttoned her blouse, he bent down and tenderly kissed the rising bump on her belly, she wriggled a little but smiled at him.

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Hermione sat on her bed; she had her wand pointed to her belly and was speaking spell. A concealing spell, she had found it in one of her advanced spellbooks. It distracted the eye away from an object, so if someone looked at it they would immediately find something more interesting and look away, never seeing the object long enough to process it. It was used all around the world for things that Wizards didn't want Muggles to see, why shouldn't she try it on her bump? And it worked; it worked very well, despite needing to be refreshed about once a week. No-one would ever notice that she was five months pregnant.

She went back down to the common room where Harry and Ron were sitting finishing the weekend's homework, they looked up and waved. The atmosphere was so much better now, of course Voldemort was still a threat, but most of his Death Eaters had been captured again thanks to them, only him and few had managed to escape the Order's contingent. But there had not been much action for the last three months. Now all they cared about were the end of year exams.

They were mock NEWTs, so exactly the same as NEWTs but not as serious. They would help predict what grades they might eventually get next year when the pressure was really on. Hermione was working herself to the bone, frantically trying to get every bit of revision done; it was rare to see her not seated in her normal chair pouring over all her text books. She had been thinking about becoming a teacher (not that she would dare tell anyone, especially Ron), perhaps Transfiguration or Charms, but she knew she would need the highest grades to succeed.

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June came and went. Long hours spent toiling over exam papers were soon forgotten by the promise of a good summer. They thought themselves extremely lucky that they weren't taking their real NEWTs until another year, Harry and Ron were close to collapsing by the end, and Hermione was becoming more and more stressed out.

Soon it was the last day of term and all the students and teachers were in the Great Hall, tucking into a delicious feast. Hermione glanced up to the staff table and smiled at Snape, knowing that soon she would be living with him day in day out. She would spend a week with her parents, explaining that she had a boyfriend and they were buying a flat together. She would wait to tell them about the baby, but for how long? It would be so easy just to not tell them, but then what would she do a year from now, it would be almost one year old and she would have left school forever.

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She had packed her trunk and was waiting in the Entrance Hall with Harry and Ron for a Threstral carriage to take them down the station. Snape swooped past, swishing his black robes majestically, he gestured for her to follow him and she obeyed as he led her to an empty classroom.

"Goodbye Hermione, I'll see you soon. I'll meet you at the Order the week after next and we'll go to my flat. It'll be OK, I promise. This is where we belong," he kissed her belly, "here. Here forevermore."

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A loud hiss of steam erupted from the mouth of a scarlet train engine. The Hogwarts Express puffed into Platform 9 ¾ where an expectant crowd of students emerged from the carriages, eager for the long summer holiday. But a few students didn't look so pleased to be back in the Muggle world; Harry Potter prepared himself again for the utter awfulness that was the Dursley family. But his friend Hermione Granger wasn't unhappy because of the lack of homework or exams – normally something she missed during the summer; but for something quite different, something she would never dare let her parents find out about, something she would have to wait weeks for until she regained it.

The End

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A/N: so there you go. Wrapped up, but open enough for a sequel, which there will be probably next week. I just hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Wacko