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Hermione’s back arches off the bed as another contraction wracks through her. She visualizes blowing away the pain as she’d been taught to do, but her sputtering breath lacks much conviction. Sweat beads across her forehead.
“Make it stop,” she moans, “You have to make it stop. It’s too early.”
“We talked about this, love,” Angela, her midwife turned dear friend, says as she wipes her face with a cool cloth. “This baby is coming. He is coming now. And you’re both doing just fine. We’ve got you.”
“Severus!” Her plea for her husband morphs into a shriek of agony.
“We called him an hour ago. International portkeys take time to arrange.”
She opens her mouth to argue only to bite down on another cry of pain.
“Mrs. Snape are you certain that you don’t want—”
“Can’t have your potions,” Hermione manages through gritted teeth. “Severus has the potions. Need Severus.”
“We’re sure he’s on his way,” Angela says soothingly. “Remember the breathing I taught you? Let’s do that now.”
In any other circumstance, she might have laughed at the contrast between the husband she practiced with and the midwife now. Instead she just wants to cry. The petite witch’s hands are too soft, too small. Her voice is pleasant but lacks his soothing cadence. Hermione releases another slow breath and then another sob escapes her. She wants Severus’ arms and Severus’ voice and Sev—
“You know damn well who I am,” her husband snarls from the hallway. “Now where is my wife?”
“Severus!”
The door bursts open and he’s there. His furious expression softens at the sight of her, a spark of fear lights in his eyes before he masks it. Angela moves out of the way at once and Severus takes her place. The moment his hands take hers, something in her chest releases.
“You’re here,” Hermione whimpers, gripping his hand as another contraction goes through her.
“Death himself could not have stopped me,” he reassures her, brushing her hair back from her face. He turns to her team of healers. “She’s only thirty weeks. Why is this happening now?”
“A placental abruption,” the head healer explains. “We were not able to stop the labor itself, but we were able to stabilize her enough to labor as normal. Everything is progressing fine. But—” Another groan of pain. “—she has refused all potions.”
“I have the ones she takes.”
“Sir, she is under our care. We can’t have you give her—”
“Severus,” Hermione says warningly. He stops glaring at the healer to look at her. “Don’t get yourself removed.”
He scoffs. “As if they could.”
“Don’t get yourself charged,” she tries again, wincing through a milder contraction. He reaches into his bag and withdraws several vials.
“These are effectively the same as your potions, just with a different formula,” he informs the healers. “Pregnancy safe and nonaddictive.”
There’s a shuffling of paper. “There’s nothing about a history of addiction in her notes.”
“She doesn’t have one.” Severus’ lips turn up slightly as he shakes his head at her. “You should have taken theirs.”
“Didn’t want them here when you got here,” she mumbles as she drinks the vials.
The relief is immediate but he frowns at the change. “You could have been enduring this for hours.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be long.”
“How are you here so quickly,” Angela asks.
“I apparated.”
“Weren’t you in Peru?”
“Chile.”
“You… You can’t have apparated from Chile to here?”
“Not directly.” He rolls his eyes. “Made a few hops.”
Hermione’s grip on his hand tightens. “Did you splinch?”
“Lost a bit of my forearm from Brazil to Sierra Leone, but I’ll deal with it later.”
“Deal with it—Ang, fix him.”
“You heard your wife, Severus,” Angela says when he resists her. “No stressing out the laboring woman.”
Severus grumbles but relents, rolling his sleeve up to reveal a mangled mess where his dark mark once was. A newer healer in the back retches. Angela studies it carefully.
“How many jumps after this one?”
“Four or five, I think.”
“How did you manage not to splinch again?”
“I have a good mantra,” he mutters before tensing.
He looks at Hermione apologetically. My purpose is greater than my pain had been a mantra he used during the war. An overwhelming mixture of love and devastation sweeps through her as she thinks of the desperation he must have felt to use it again today. She strokes his face.
“I’m so sorry I scared you.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he says easily.
Severus winces just slightly as Angela spells the wound clean and adds a few drops of dittany. The skin heals over instantly. Shiny. Pink. Clean. He meets Hermione’s gaze again, quickly blinking away his own tears while hers fall freely.
“I suppose that was one option we hadn’t tried,” he says drily.
Her watery laugh turns into a groan. The contractions become stronger. Closer. Severus’ potions ease the pain, but they don’t erase it completely. She grits her teeth against a particularly harsh contraction.
“Breathe,” he orders her. “You’ve got to breathe through them. Just like we practiced.” He moves beside her on the bed, wrapping an arm around her. She breathes. “There you go.”
“I can’t do this,” she cries, pressing her face into his neck. “Severus, I can’t—”
He pulls back to look at her, cupping her face in his hands. “Of course you can.”
“No,” she whines. “There was supposed to be more time. I’m not prepared. I’m going to—”
“Labor is not pass/fail, Hermione,” he says with fond exasperation.
The feeling shifts slightly. There’s a building pressure in her lower abdomen. Her eyes widen at the sensation. Not now. Surely her body could read that this was not the time for that? If she… Severus will have to obliviate her. Everyone in the room preferably. Himself if he can manage it.
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel like… I think I’m going to—”
“Hermione,” Angerla says sharply. “Do you feel like you need to go to the bathroom?”
She nods. The atmosphere in the room changes at once. “What’s wrong? What does that mean?”
The team of healers draw closer. “I don’t know what extra kick he put in those potions, but it’s baby time.”
___________________
One second, she’s pushing through the worst pain of her life, and the next second she’s holding an impossibly tiny bundle. There’s a slight glow emanating from the baby as the magic to temporarily sustain him takes effect. In a few minutes, he’ll need to be placed in a specialized chamber with a regime of potions she has no doubt Severus is going to find a way to brew.
“I’m glad you talked me into a magical birthing room,” she murmurs, still unable to pull her eyes away from their son. The thought of how badly it all could have gone weighs on her briefly, but she puts it aside. They are here. They are well.
“You were incredible, duck,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “How do you feel? What do you need?”
“Ang is going to take care of me,” she tells him firmly. “You meet our son. Sebastian, here’s daddy.”
Severus accepts the small bundle from her. He adjusts the blanket to look at his face. Hermione’s breath hitches. The last time she’d seen that look on his face had been their wedding day. He hadn’t allowed himself to cry until that evening, in the afterglow of their consummation when he told her he’d been half-convinced it was all an illusion until that moment.
Back then he’d been self-conscious, employing occlumency almost as soon as he’d realized just how vulnerable he’d let himself become. Now the tears run down his face unchecked. His dark eyes that soften only for her are blown wide. His mouth is parted as if words have failed him. Her unflappable fierce husband, utterly wrecked by this small baby. Their small baby.
He looks at her. “We made him.”
“We did,” she agrees, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing at his wonderstruck face.
“He’s perfect,” he breathes.
“Of course he is. He’s ours.”