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- It could have been me… he said quietly.
- … Wasn't it?
- …
She didn't answer but smiled wistfully, placing her hand on her already rounded belly beneath her dress. She couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze.
- I didn't know you wanted children. You never told me…
Hermione's gaze crossed the window and fell on her daughter playing in the yard.
The girl was happily poking at a pile of dead leaves with her stick, laughing and making them fly away. Hermione felt a bubble rise from her chest and lodge in her throat, almost painfully. The love she felt for her daughter was visceral, organic. Nothing she had ever experienced could match this grace.
- I know.
Another angel passed by. Hermione took the opportunity to sit down, but she got up just as quickly, overcome by a sudden, dull anger. She continued:
- …And how would you have made me a baby, Severus? she asked angrily. “Between two young men at the Inn of Mysteries? You would have ejaculated inside me while thinking of Draco or some other lively young man? Or maybe in a vial? “ …all that to prove to yourself that you are indeed a man, capable of procreating?” she stopped herself from saying. “And then?”.
It was Severus’s turn to remain silent, a little stunned, almost annoyed at having been caught out by the words she hadn’t spoken. But did she need to tell him? Did he need to know? For almost15 years, her fantasies often took on his form and his face. When she was alone, it was his body she rode in her dreams, and it was his face she saw twisting and convulsing in moments of ecstasy.
A baby, with him? She had dreamed of it; to be the wife of this brilliant wizard, to carry his child and watch him grow up, but at what cost? Who would get up at night when he was teething? Who would rock him for hours in his room instead of losing himself in Knockturn Alley, seeking intoxication in the arms of a handsome young man? But above all: who would make love to her while finding her desirable? Didn't she, too, have the right to a man who could love her even carnally?
Hermione was aware of Severus's limitations, perhaps more so than Severus himself. Yet this didn't lessen her feelings for him. This love defied all logic, even up to her marriage, but that was just the way it was. He would continue to occupy this special place in her life even if he never pushed her against a wall while lifting her skirt at the corner of a dark corridor. He would never slide his tongue between her breasts, nor his long fingers inside her, he would never grab her hair while coming inside her, but it was him she still thought of affectionately several times a day.
"A baby with you? Oh Severus, my love, what would we look like, you, me, the baby, and your lovers? And who will warm my bed when you're in yours with your final-year students?"
Deep down, she was relieved he had never made such an offer because she wouldn't have known how to refuse or accept without burning, either way. How could she accept, but above all, how could she refuse this to the man she had always loved and probably always would? As for her loved ones, it was simply unimaginable.
The young woman softened a little as she felt her unborn child stirring within her. He must have sensed her emotion. Hermione stroked him automatically; the sparkle of his wedding ring reflected against the wall of her living room and caught Severus's gaze. It was a mild autumn afternoon. She approached her former professor, still dressed in black, and hugged him to her chest. He was as stiff as a sword. Her stomach bumped against his, like a bubble that materialized the obviousness of the situation. This second child was already there, and he too would not be his.
- In another world, under another sky... she said, her voice a little choked with emotion.
But not this one.
Somewhat awkwardly, but tenderly, Severus returned her embrace. He kissed the top of her head and put a hand on her shoulder.
- Being a mummy suits you, he whispered. .