A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 45 – Fathers

Sabine walked into her grandson's parlor with as much briskness as she was capable of these days. She was only two months along, but already she was regretting her hasty decision to step back into matrimony and motherhood again.

She was too bloody old for this.

Severus was watching her with suspicion from his seat by the fire. The very pregnant Mrs. Snape was also eyeing her, with none too friendly an eye. Nearby, Trajan, who was the spitting image of Taliesin, was glaring at her, and a young woman she assumed was Helena, was giving her a cool, assessing look that made Sabine feel even older.

The parlor was just the way she remembered it from her own school days, when she used to help the old Head of House mark papers. Nero Malfoy hadn't been as crazy as his namesake, but he had run a close second. Something about that family just seemed to breed megalomaniacs in abundance.

She wasn't offered a seat, though Hermione seemed about to offer at one point. Glancing about the room, she found a likely looking chair, and settled into it without a word.

“You wanted to see us?” Trajan's voice was very much like his father's as well, though his eyes were more open and his manner less guarded. His hostility was only thinly masked.

“Well, except for Taliesin, you are my only living family,” she sighed in answer to him. Looking about at the closed and angry faces, she wondered again how things could have gone so very badly wrong.

“So it would seem,” Severus answered, with a grim tone. He looked implacable and icy, but she knew there was as much hurt and betrayal under that coldness as there was anger.

“You have to understand,” Helena broke in, her face pained-looking from the effort to be open-minded. “We haven't heard anything good about you from our father, but we have heard a lot of bad things.” She was trying to be honest, but it just made Sabine feel annoyed.

“Oh yes, Taliesin Snape, the finest judge of character ever born,” she snapped back in irritation. “My son is well known throughout the Wizarding World as a thoughtful, even-tempered fellow, with excellent judgment, of course.”

Watching a whole roomful of people wince was not a new experience for Sabine, but it didn't improve her temper any at all.

“Father is a paranoid egomaniac, that's true, but you raised him,” Trajan pointed out, with a woeful display of poor manners.

“He left home to marry Severus' mother when he was merely twenty and I haven't spoken to him since. Anything he did after that point is entirely his own responsibility. Prior to that, well, I will take at least half the blame for his bad temper and willfulness.” She glared around at her grandchildren. “I am hardly an inspiring example of gentle sweetness, I admit.”

There was a long pause, and then Helena burst out laughing.

“Oh, I like you!” she chortled, sounding as surprised to be saying it as Sabine was to be hearing it.

“Yes, well...” Sabine murmured, suddenly at a loss for words. She looked into three sets of eyes gone hungry for family and home, and wondered what the hell she was getting herself into.

She was just too bloody old for this.

Hermione propped her feet up on the pillows and prepared for another day of “bed rest”. She pulled a large musty tome towards her, and fingered its bindings reverently.

Professor McGonagall had brought it to her to keep her occupied. Hermione smiled at the older woman's thoughtfulness.

The ‘Transfiguration Arcana’ was a volume of collected writing by the greatest minds of the Wizarding world. It spanned over a thousand years of thought on the subject, and only twelve volumes had ever been published. It was, no doubt, a treasure and Hermione was warmed through by the trust being displayed to her.

She sighed happily, and opened it up.

Hours later, she became aware of the eyes.

Looking over towards the grotto revealed a curious mer child staring at her. Flat, black, glassy eyes and a pallid gray complexion didn't usually combine in her mind with cute, but somehow the mer child was managing it. The eyes were large, the face small, and the slitted nose somehow gave the impression of turning up slightly.

“Hi,” she ventured.

The child gurgled back something unintelligible.

Hermione blinked, and then pointed her wand at her throat.

“Communicado,” she commanded, and her mind opened up to the mer child's language.

“Hello,” she gurgled.

“Hi,” came the shy reply. “Whatcha doin?” the child continued.

“I'm reading a book on Transfiguration,” she answered patiently, though if the next question was “Why?” she was going to be turning off the translation spell immediately.

“Oh, what's that?”

The answer to that could lead to a long lecture, which suited Hermione just fine, so she left the spell in place.

Severus heard noises of surpassing strangeness coming from the bedroom. It sounded like the drains were backing up, while someone was trying frantically to flush the toilet.

He opened the door a crack, unsure of whether it was a Death Eater trap or not, and peered through the opening.

Hermione was sitting in bed, making horrific noises at a small mer child, who was splashing and wriggling with great enthusiasm in the grotto pool. The child, bald and ugly, as all of its kind, was flopping around like it had been caught on a line and Hermione was chattering on to it, quite oblivious of the mess it was making on the floor.

“What the devil?” he shouted, irritated at both the mess and the fact that she was patently not resting, and pushed the door open wide. The child let out a high-pitched whistle, like a dolphin on overdrive, and vanished under the water. Hermione jumped, and the book she was holding flew up into the air.

He caught it without thinking and tossed it back on the bed, then watched patiently, arms crossed and brows lowered, as she caught her breath and checked the book over for any damage.

“Blurp-glump just wanted to know what Transfiguration was, you didn't have to roar like that and scare him off!” she accused, as soon as she could breathe again.

“Blurp-glump?” he asked, with a feeling of ill-usage growing in his heart. Roar? Indeed! He certainly hadn't roared.

“The mer child; his name isn't going to be Fred, you know,” she shot back.

“I don't care what his name is. I care that you haven't had a wink of rest this whole afternoon, because you have been too busy schooling a fish!” he shouted, starting to get really irritated now.

“Schooling a fish?” she replied, her face going from angry to amused in a moment.
He paused, and rubbed his face with his hands.

“You see what you have done to me, Madam. I can't even scold you properly anymore,” he mourned, and her peals of laughter didn't help one bit.

“Poor fellow, you might almost become human some day, if you're not careful,” she teased. He glared at her, though to be honest, he was not displeased by her banter. He liked it better when they weren't fighting.

“I hope that I shall never sink so low,” he returned, but there was more humor in the statement than truth. “Now do please try to get some rest, Madam,” he entreated and she yawned and nodded.

He stepped back out of the room as she snuggled under the covers. He paused and listened to her sleepy sounds, and then the even breathing that told him she was asleep at last.

He was growing accustomed to her presence in his life, and finding it to be not as unpleasant as he had once imagined.

Perhaps this marriage thing wasn't quite as bad as all that.

Now, if he could just survive fatherhood...

Arthur Weasley sat beside his son and waited for the birth of his first grandchild. He had expected that Fleur would provide him with the first one, since Bill was his eldest, and that had seemed reasonable. However, they somehow hadn't produced any children at all yet.

Charlie had married one of his fellow researchers when the law was enacted, and they were apparently too busy researching to bother about procreation just yet. Besides, Arthur had long ago lost hope in that department anyway; Charlie was more likely to adopt a Horntail, than pause in his studies long enough to have children. He also highly doubted that the Minister of Magic was going to be sending someone to Romania just to find out why Charlie hadn’t sired any offspring as yet.

Fred and George were both too clever to get their long-suffering wives pregnant a minute before they wanted to, and had been taking bets on whether the Ministry would catch on to their games, or continue on obliviously.

Percy, well, Tonks hadn't 'caught' yet, and Molly was convinced that it was the girl's thinness, and the constant stress of her work that was to blame. So here he was, sitting beside his teenage youngest son, and waiting for his first grandchild from the incomprehensible Luna.

It wasn't that he didn't like Luna. She was too sweet and good-natured not to like. She was clever too, which Arthur admired, and she would listen with flattering attentiveness to his discourse on Muggle artifacts. It was that she would occasionally come out with some odd sort of statement, that could silence the whole room, without noticing her effect at all.
But, his son loved her.

Ron was pacing back and forth, wringing his hands and looking distraught. After the loss of Harry's daughter, the whole student body had become very shaken and Arthur could see that the fears had infected Ron as well.

“Your mother had all of you without even really stopping to lie down,” he ventured gently.

“I know, but Moira...” he trailed off, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms.

“Was sick throughout the pregnancy,” Arthur reminded him. “Luna has been the picture of health, hasn't she?”

Ron relaxed a bit and nodded.

“I just wish I could have stayed with her.” The comment was rueful, because Madam Tamarind had finally shooed him out when his hovering had made even the usually imperturbable Luna snap at him.

“Yes, well, you will be better at it the second time around, I assure you,” came the equally rueful reply. Arthur fully remembered Molly nearly hexing him when she was laboring with Bill, he had been such a wreck.

“She's early...” Ron muttered.

“Only by three weeks; that is nothing to a competent Mid-witch like Madam Tamarind.” Arthur continued his reassurances to the boy, who was pacing back and forth now in an excess of nervous energy.

Silence fell after that, leaving them to their own thoughts. Arthur remembering the births of each of his children, and the exultation mixed with the feeling of awful responsibility that had come each time a small, pink bundle was placed in his arms.

The door opened finally, and a smiling Molly came out, with a squirming mound of blankets.

“Everything went splendidly, and it’s a boy!” she chirped happily, and Ron rushed over to peer down at his son's face.

Arthur leaned over as well, and saw the perfect features, and the pale red fuzz of hair. The child was red and still slightly squashed from the birth canal, but he had rarely seen anything as beautiful in his life.

Ron stood still and stared at the child with softened eyes, and a look of pure wonderment. Very carefully he took the baby from his mother, and went back in to Luna.

Molly turned luminous eyes on her husband, and he kissed her soundly.

“We're grandparents,” she murmured, with laughing eyes.

“Nonsense, you are far too young and beautiful to be a grandmother,” he replied and she grinned up at him, her smile full of love and joy.

“Marrying you was the best decision I ever made,” she told him, hand caressing his cheek.

“I love you Molly,” was all he said in reply.

Severus was pacing. He had pondered Firenze's words for weeks now, but he couldn't find any clues to tell him for sure one way or another. Was Hermione being haunted? Was it the baby's emerging Seer powers? Was there something else entirely going on?

Why wasn't she sleeping well and what were the dreams that she was having? The problem was driving him mad.

He was also being eaten up with guilt.

He had noted Moira's sickliness for some time. He had seen how thin she was. Why hadn't he thought to brew something for her, before it had come to such a stage?

True, Madam Tamarind was her physician and if something had been required, it was her job to see to it. However, she didn't know Severus well, didn't know his capabilities at all. He should have spoken up long before he was required to go to such extreme measures.

Part of him wasn't entirely certain that his dislike for Potter hadn't made him less careful of the boy's wife. It made him uneasy to think that he might have been subconsciously cruel. It was one thing to be deliberately nasty, but another altogether to be merely thoughtless.

Another part of him wondered if his concern for Hermione had just become so all consuming that he hadn't spared a thought for anyone else.

He wasn't sure that the first explanation wasn't the more desirable one. He was used to thinking of himself as a cruel, heartless bastard.

He didn't like the idea that he was so concerned for his wife that all other considerations had faded from his mind. It implied an attachment beyond that which he was comfortable with. It hinted at a heart that he was quite sure he didn't have.

Damn Fudge and his stupid meddling anyway. Now Severus was going to have to go deduct House points and be an utter wanker to the entire student body, just to feel at all like himself again.

Sweeping out of the dungeons, he glared furiously at the students, who scattered before him with little cries of terror and distress.

Now, that was much better.