Summary: See Chapter One

A/N: This is rated R for a reason, the pairing is Harry & Hermione. It’s slightly AU.

Big thanks go out to ParticleAccelerator for the fabulous beta reading.

Reviews are coveted (in case you were wondering).

Disclaimer: I own nothing, but the storyline.

xoxox

“Harry?” Hermione asked quietly.

“Hmm?”

They were lying in her bed later on in the morning, enjoying the silent calm of a lazy Saturday. He had not asked her again about the nightmares, but he was still worried. Instead, he twined his fingers with hers and snuggled so close that they were sharing a pillow, his chin rubbing against her forehead every once in a while.

“Tell me about Ron and Luna’s baby.”

“The baby?” Harry asked, more than a little confused. He was thinking of the unborn baby Luna was carrying, and he couldn’t think what to tell her about it except what he’d already told her - that it would be arriving in about seven months.

“Yes. You said they have a baby,” she reminded him

With a nod of realization Harry recalled his words and said, “Right, yes. The baby is named Arthur, for Ron’s dad, and he looks just like a Weasley, freckles and bright red hair, except for his eyes, which are all Luna.”

Hermione smiled into the pillow, enjoying the picture he’d painted, as he absently twisted a lock of her hair in his fingers.

“And how is everyone else?”

“To be honest, Ron is barely speaking to me right now,” he told her with a bit of a sigh.

“Barely speaking to you? What happened?”

“This happened,” he said quietly. He hoped she wouldn’t hear the frustration in his voice.

“Oh,” she replied.

“Yeah.”

They were silent for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts.

“What does everyone else say?”

“Ginny and Luna are the only other ones who know and they just want you to be safe and happy.”

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by a tap-tap-tapping against the window. They both looked up, startled, and saw an owl, black as night, perched on a tree branch tapping its beak against the window. There was something attached to its ankle. It was unmistakably a letter.

Hermione rose and opened the window to let the owl in before removing the letter and frowning at Harry. “It’s addressed to me. Who could have sent it?”

Harry did not reply but he had a deep sense of foreboding. The owl, seeing that it would not be given any treats, flew off back through the open window.

Still frowning, Hermione opened the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

It read-

Dear Granger,

I would have written before now, but I took your silence as indication that you wanted no contact. While I can completely understand your need for silence from me, I felt that I could no longer hold my tongue on this issue, and I hope you’ll understand.

I have reason to believe that a counter-curse exists for the condition in which you now find yourself. Forgive me, but I could not help asking after your health in the months after you removed yourself from Grimmauld Place.

After many hours of study and research I came across an ancient and ruined text with the necessary information therein. I gave it to the healers at St. Mungo’s and they had never heard of it, but cautiously believe it may work.

I wanted you to be the first to have this information, if you wanted it. The St. Mungo’s admission department is awaiting you, should you choose to investigate the matter further.

I would have given this information to Potter yesterday when he was here, but I was taken aback by his sudden appearance. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Yours ever,

Severus Snape

The formality of the words made her feel brittle and shaky inside and she read the letter through twice, her face white as the paper she was holding, before looking up at Harry and asking in a voice shot through with anger, “You’ve seen Snape?”

Harry paled a little, too, realizing too late that he should have immediately given her this information. He’d meant to bring it up slowly, easing her into the idea of his being in contact with Snape, and explaining the incident fully.

“Answer me!” she said, sharply.

Harry stood, feeling both defensive and guilty. “Yes. I saw Snape yesterday.”

“How dare you?”

“I…” Harry fumbled, wishing the conversation were happening at any point before the letter had come. Now it looked liked he’d been caught out in something. “I’m sorry. I got angry and went to see him. Nothing happened, though. We talked, that was it. At first I wanted to rip his face to shreds but you were right, as usual. He’s a wreck of a man and all I had was pity.”

Hermione relaxed fractionally and said, “A wreck?”

Harry nodded.

There was more silence then as Hermione’s emotions and thoughts ran wild and in different directions.

Finally, she said in a calmer voice, “I have loved you for as long as I can remember. But if this is going to work - if you want this to work - we have to be honest with each other. I don’t ever want to be surprised like that again.”

Harry nodded, afraid to say anything that might set her off again. What an idiot he’d been not to tell her right away. At his assent, Hermione stepped closer to him and handed him the letter.

“The condition you now find yourself in?” he repeated. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

Hermione was re-reading it again, over his shoulder, her face a picture of concentration. “I don’t know. But I think it’s worth a trip to St. Mungo’s to find out.”

With a snap of his head he was staring at her, astonished. “Really? You’ll come back to London?”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to live there again,” she answered, her words tentative, “but this…might be worth looking in to.”

xoxox

Harry didn’t press the issue with her, but remained supportive. He had no idea what Snape was playing at, had no reason to trust his old enemy, and meant to protect Hermione from anything that might happen in the foreseeable future. After struggling for so long to find her, he had no intention of letting her go again. Her straightforward declaration of love was not lost on him, either.

They didn’t rush off to St. Mungo’s right away. For one thing, it was the weekend and they knew from experience that hospitals on the weekend were filled with emergency cases and Monday would be a better time to drop in and see the healer on staff.

Harry used his wand to replenish her cupboards and they ate sandwiches for lunch with chocolate frogs afterwards, enjoying the memories evoked by the childish dessert. Hermione continued to quiz him on Ron and Luna and Ginny. She asked about the twins, Fred and George, and Bill and Fleur and the rest of the Weasleys. She even asked about Neville, which told Harry that she really must be missing them all.

He filled her as well as he could, but once the war had ended, people had gone back to their normal little lives, relishing the monotony of daily life. Bill and Fleur were summering in the south of France, visiting her family and introducing their twin girls, aged two, to the sunny beaches of Nice.

“You should see them,” he told her. “Their hair is almost white it’s so blonde, just like Fleur’s, and Ron suspects that she was delighted not to have more red hair and freckles.”

“What are their names?” Hermione pressed.

Harry struggled to remember – it had been six months since he’d seen them at Christmas-time. “Violet and Daisy, if I recall…flowers like their mother was the thinking, I suspect.”

“Lovely,” she murmured, looking quickly out the window.

“You know,” Harry began carefully, “while you’re at St. Mungo’s you’ll be awfully close to Grimmauld Place.” Hermione’s expression was unreadable, neither good nor bad as she turned back to look at him, so Harry continued, “And after all, everyone misses you as much as you miss them…couldn’t they come see you?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “All the questions. I don’t want to answer all their questions. It’s too much.”

Harry understood. She had not talked about it with him since her initial explanation, not even when she’d woken up shaking like a leaf from nightmares. “What if they didn’t ask any questions? I could talk to them beforehand; prepare them.”

“What would you say?”

“As much or as little as you want.”

“I don’t want Snape’s name involved.”

Harry’s lips thinned, but he nodded and said nothing.

“Let’s see what the healers have to say first,” Hermione finally said. “If I’m there long enough to even have visitors, then okay. If not, I don’t know.”

Harry nodded and reached across the table, taking her hands in his. At least it was a step in the right direction.

xoxox

Sunday was stormy and they spent the day in bed. Harry had been through the initial thrill of discovering one person before, but never like this. Hermione devoted herself to the study of his body the way she devoted herself to the study of anything. She was methodical, but exquisitely tender and a quick learner.

He told her about the final battle and she took his hand when his voice broke over the losses of friends. Harry looked at her then, unwilling to break the stare and said firmly, “You have no idea how happy I was to finally find you.”

Hermione tried to look away, but he caught her chin and said again, “No idea. When you were captured I thought I would die, and when you came back but then disappeared I wanted to. I love you. I always have.”

She kissed him then to keep him from saying any more. It made her regretful and sad, the time she’d spent here, away from him. The kissed deepened and she made a sound at the back of her throat that made Harry’s pulse race.

Threading his fingers through her long mass of hair, Harry pulled her closer and let his mouth drift down her neck to her delicate collarbone and lower. She shivered and smiled with her eyes closed, pulling her camisole up.

Harry meanwhile was pushing it down, the lacy trim revealing a creamy expanse of skin that he trailed hot kisses over. With a growl, she pushed him over so that she was in control. “Gods…” he moaned when she sucked first one flat, male nipple and then the other. His mind raced with the sensations as she nipped at the skin of his ribs and lower. He was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts and she soon made short work of those.

His brain turned off completely when he felt her mouth demanding his full attention. What she lacked in experience, she made up for in enthusiasm, he had to admit. When he could take it no longer, when he knew that it would be soon, he roughly pulled her up and doffed her panties, driving his tongue into her mouth and thrusting into her body. She came almost at once. It still surprised him, the force of her uninhibited sexuality. She threw back her head and shouted his name and he savored the moment.

Later, when they lay spent and languid, sleepy and pleased with themselves, Harry tried to picture Hermione, resplendently pregnant, with belly swollen and breasts heavy like ripened fruit, growing and glowing a little more with each passing day.

But all he could see was this Hermione, who lay curled against him, skin pale, stomach flat, almost girlish. For the first time in his life he found himself wanting, really wanting, what a man wants from a woman – a home and a family.

He said a quick prayer as he drifted to sleep. This could be it, this trip to St. Mungo’s. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but he suspected that if all went well he would owe Snape much more than just an apology.

xoxox

They arrived at St. Mungo’s early Monday morning. Hermione felt edgy and unsettled. She knew that it wouldn’t be wise to grasp at straws that might not be there, but she was also not able to help the tiny swell of hope that flared in her chest every few minutes.

Harry was going through a similar set of emotions. He waited, impatiently, as Hermione filled out the necessary paperwork and was led into an office. He was to wait outside in the empty waiting room. Time ticked by relentlessly slow. He flipped through a few outdated magazines, paced the floor, and checked his watch a dozen times or more.

Finally, thirty minutes later, when Hermione emerged from the inner office and shook the healer’s hand, Harry jumped to his feet and crossed the room in two strides, eager to hear what she had to say.

She smiled and led him back to the chairs as the healer disappeared again behind the door.

“Well?” he demanded. “What did he say?”

Unable to remove the grin she wore, Hermione began to talk, smile still plastered to her face. “The counter-curse is complicated, and they want to me to stay overnight for observation afterward, but it looks like there might be a way.”

“Really?” Harry could not quite believe it.

“Really.”

They stared at each other a moment, allowing the news to sink in. Hermione ducked her head, suddenly feeling shy. Harry took her hand and squeezed.

“So what next?” he asked.

“He’s going to arrange for a nurse to admit me, get me a room and they’ll take it from there. The procedure has to be scheduled but everyone is pretty keen to find out if it’ll work so…I think it’ll be sooner rather than later.”

They sat for a moment, tense with anxiety and anticipation at what this could mean.

Feeling that his heart was almost too big for his chest, Harry took a breath and tried not to be too excited. Instead, he changed the subject and said, “What about Ginny and Ron and Luna?”

xoxox

The counter curse involved seven senior healers and took over an hour, but in the end everything went as expected. “You’ll need to come back for a follow up visit, but as of this moment everything should be…as it always was,” the healer said as a nurse stood nearby scribbling onto a clipboard.

“How will I know for sure?” Hermione asked, frowning. She hated anything that couldn’t be measured and examined. “As it always was” sounded far too vague for her liking.

“Well, as to that, Miss Granger, if you are sexually active you should use precautions or risk finding out,” he joked.

Hermione quickly glanced at Harry, who was still looking at the doctor, lapping up the information and a thought occurred to her. She’d read it somewhere. When you’ve read as many books as Hermione had read you couldn’t always remember where you got something. The thing she remembered was this: sperm, providing it did not come into contact with oxygen could live for 2-3 days. The doctor was talking again but she’d stopped listening. She and Harry had never used precautions – there’d been no need to prevent pregnancy and neither of them had any diseases. Just yesterday they’d…several times…which meant that she could already be…. But no, she thought. It would be too soon. Impossible!

Harry left her that evening with along goodbye kiss. He was going back to Grimmauld Place to stay the night and she’d agreed that he could bring Ron and Luna and Ginny with him when he returned the next morning.

He held her tight and said, “No matter what the end result is, Hermione, I want to marry you. I love you and I don’t want to be apart any more.”

“Such a romantic.” she teased.

“I mean it,” he told her. “If you want me to write it in letters in the sky I will.”

“I know. And yes, let’s.”

Harry kissed her again and hated to go, but was eventually kicked out by the night nurse.

Hours later, when it was dark and halls were quiet, Hermione looked up from her book on new transfiguration techniques to see a dark figure near the door. She’d been given a private room and she was startled to see that she was no longer alone. The figure stepped forward and she saw that she knew who it was. Harry was right, she thought, he is a wreck of a man. All my thoughts and fears over what had become of him, they all came true.

Snape smiled, a little apologetically. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“You’re not.” she told him kindly

“They told me you’d come.”

“Yes. Thanks to you.”

He nodded. His skin, normally pale, was almost translucent, except for the deep lines and dark smudges under his eyes.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“I’ve been better,” he admitted.

Her heart ached. She was getting everything she’d ever wanted: Harry, her friends back, the chance for a family, a normal life. And he was still locked in that misery. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she told him, meaning it with all her heart.

“You and Potter, then?” he asked ignoring her sympathy.

She smiled. His voice betrayed only the slightest hint that he did not approve of her choice. “Yes. I’ve loved him since I was eleven.”

“I suppose you could do worse,” he said grudgingly.

“Thank you.”

“I hope he makes you happy.”

“If he doesn’t, he’ll hear about it,” she promised with a smile. Snape smiled, too, though it was a little stiff, as if he’d gotten out of practice.

“Good. Because you deserve…” here his voice caught a little.

“I know,” she said. “And so do you. Take care of yourself.”

He nodded again. “Do the same,” he said gently. And then he was gone.

That night, Hermione slept better than she had in months.

xoxox

On Tuesday morning, Hermione awoke feeling refreshed and especially alive. She ate everything on her breakfast tray and waited with much eagerness for Harry to arrive with Ron and Luna and Ginny. She could not believe that it had only been one week since Harry had unexpectedly knocked on her door.

So much had happened. She’d taken the first step toward rejoining society, she and Harry would be married, they could possibly have a baby some day and most importantly, she’d finally made her peace with Snape. She felt in her heart that all would be well, if not tomorrow, perhaps one day soon.

She thought about her parents, whom she’d had no contact with for so long. She’d been selfish, she could see that now. Retreating into herself, neglecting her loved ones…Her parents probably thought she was dead after all this time, lost in the Great War against Voldemort. She needed to go visit them. As soon as I’m release, she decided. I’ll take Harry with me. The thought of re-introducing Harry to her parent, this time as her intended, made her smile.

She touched her flat belly and for the first time in more than a year allowed herself to daydream. She closed her eyes and pictured a baby with silky dark hair and sharp green eyes. Before she could go much further, there was a knock on her door.

“Come in!” she called, eagerly.

Harry’s face appeared first and behind him were Ron, Ginny and Luna. Yes, she decided. Things were definitely going to be okay.

End.