February's Rebirth
“Goo’night, dad”
Hermione said with a final yawn before falling into a deep sleep. Severus’ heart was squeezed into an elated and guilty grip by tiny hands. It took months for Hermione to start calling her parents by their name, the memory of their importance slowly slipping from her mind, aided by the light dose of Memory Loss Serum Severus made her drink every Friday night. Hermione hated the Serum, it was bitter and herbaceous, but since she always managed to convince Severus to buy her a sweet treat afterwards, she always drank it diligently. Every Friday night for the past three months, they went on a walk by the shore, down to the ice-cream parlour in the village. Hermione ran under the vegetation as Severus cast minor severing spells on thorns and overgrown roots, once even at a menacing seagull, which thankfully was only scratched on its beck: Hermione would have been distraught at any being’s suffering, no matter how annoying, useless or threatening. She always made him promise to throw rocks gently in the sea, lest he scares the fish, and to give their leftovers to the robin family nested in the hawthorn tree behind their cottage.
Severus detested the small fish that lived by the shore, as they nibbled at his feet every time he went to collect Gillyweed in the Summer months, found the seagulls unbearable, as they never let him sleep past noon with their incessant calls, and would much rather keep his dinner’s leftover for breakfast. But above all, he soon found out that there was nothing he loathed more than seeing Hermione upset. And thus, upset her he did not.
He abstained from maiming useless animals, made sure to hide his potions’ non-vegetal ingredients, bought her nice new clothes and then went back to change them all into something resembling his robes, since she “wanted to look like a bat, too!”, whatever that meant, made her waffles every day and bribed the baker to hand out her pumpkin buns’ recipe, as Hermione wanted to make them from scratch. A soft Confundus might have been used there, to very little risk (as the DMLE was still running after Death Eater fugitives, and definitely uncaring of a little innocuous wizard-on-muggle manipulation), and even less reward, as the buns turned out both raw and burnt. Thankfully, Severus had the forethought of buying some of the previous evening’s walk and put them in a stasis charm in his potion lab, that’s to say the basement, and that’s to say the only room that Hermione hadn’t managed to break into with an extremely impressive and astonishingly inconvenient bout of accidental magic.
Severus had serious doubts on how “accidental” Hermione’s magic actually was. Sure, she had no wand, and she had never pronounced the word Alohomora, but her bouts of magic were eerily… controlled.
The girl was a true sweetheart, yet Severus pitied her future professors.
Nevertheless, her magic power was good news to Severus, he already planned to teach her defensive, and a good deal of offensive, magic before sending her off to Hogwarts, but he was sure he could start his teaching a few years earlier than anticipated.
If the amount of Death Eaters that were found not guilty of, well, being a Death Eater was any indication, she would need it. Acutely.
Severus sighed deeply as he tucked Hermione in, thinking of Death Eaters, who reintegrated in society a bit too quickly, who pleaded innocent under the ruse of being imperioused, who were never fully loyal to a psychotic half-blood, and yet were always too eager to use him to gain even more power for themselves. He thought of the excessively blond and excessively entitled wizard as he looked at his empty mailbox, the response letter he had been waiting for the whole month, nowhere to be seen. Apparently, Lucius Malfoy had yet to decide which world would be most fit for his son: the Voldemort-ruled one, or the non-Voldemort-ruled one.
Contrary to him, there was only one world fit for his daughter, therefore the choice had been of utmost simplicity. Severus had even considered staging a Death Eater attack on young Draco to force Lucius’ arm, but alas, as his godfather, Severus couldn’t endanger the toddler in any way, shape or form. (He had extensively looked into the binding contract for any loopholes). Severus was not only sure that Lucius knew more than him about the Hocruxes, but also that he was warding one.
As he visited Malfoy Manor Library back in November, he noticed a particularly well-warded shelf, which was very telling considering the whole manor was already extremely warded to begin with. Severus had the sneaking suspicion that under the wards wasn’t Narcissa’s racy romance collection. Unfortunately, ha had already had a hard time keeping Lucius uninformed as to the beneficiary of the volumes on pedagogy and memory loss he came to Wiltshire for, he couldn’t exactly afford to go traipsing around the man’s library.
Severus downed a Wide-Eye potion as he checked off his to-do list for the month. He successfully kicked-off his Sleeping Draught addiction with a multitude of exciting and energetic concoctions since he adopted Hermione, having little to no time to waste in bed since that fateful day. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had trouble sleeping, these past months he felt like he could probably nod off while standing up, while eating, while bathing- that one had been a close call, he almost risked meeting Regulus’ end.
“Ugh, Regulus” Severus groaned, he still had to meet with him to talk strategy.
The only tolerable Black lived in a stupidly pretentious château near Bordeaux, who he couldn’t possibly bring Hermione into, since she risked being cursed for as much as breathing in its vicinity. Severus also wasn’t convinced of bringing Regulus in the secret of his new familiar situation. Sure, they defected together, and he still hadn’t forgiven that mutt of his brother, (Severus secretly hoped that he never would, and so he conveniently forgot to ever mention the fact that Regulus was very much alive to the gang of Gryffindors, still living at Meadows’ Castle) but hating his parents and Voldemort didn’t equal to hating blood supremacy. Severus had to work with Regulus to find the other Hocruxes, but he had no intention of risking Hermione for it. To be fair, there’s nothing he was willing to risk separating from Hermione for: not the downfall of the Dark Lord, not accepting his dream post as a research institute in Alexandria and not even having a full night of sleep.
Severus just finished catching up with his pedagogy books – he previously had to abandon them as he focused on the Memory Loss Serum – and he couldn’t figure out how to go about her pre-school education: Hermione was two and a half year-old (Severus managed to find her birth certificate, when he went back to her muggle house after his trial; he had edited the document, turning her into “Helen Granger”, in order to cut all of Hermione’s ties with the muggle world – the Grangers were yet to be pronounced dead, as the bodies were never found: either incinerated or safely hidden in Ireland) and would soon need to learn to socialise with children her age, at least that’s what the books said. Severus was sure the first peer he socialised with was Lily, and he was already nine of age- stopping with the tea cup halfway to his mouth he moved the voice “figuring out pre-school education” up to the second place of his never-ending to-do list. Hermione would get a much better childhood than him, and would consequently turn out a much better person – he’d make sure of it.
The question remained with whom she would spend this childhood. Severus wanted to give her the opportunity to grow up in the wizarding world, but he had no true friends there. Well, he had no true friends, period.
Rich wizarding families had elf nannies, tutors and weekly teas with families of similar standing where the children would spend time together. But Severus had no job, dwindling funds that could not be kept afloat only by potion selling, no connections one would deem child-friendly, a disinterest in the muggle world and very little trust in the wizarding one, which had already stolen so much from his Hermione already.
The truth was that Hermione had Severus, but Severus had no one.
He hadn’t realised how difficult it would have been for him, how demanding of his every waking minute this girl would become. He was just meant to take care of her for a while, keep her from breaking under the turmoil, keep her fed, clean and healthy. But now, he wanted this child happy, and thriving. He wanted her to have everything he never had. And every day he was more convinced he would fail in this endeavour, as he didn’t know how to give her what he never had to begin with.
Compared to this, being a soldier had been extremely easy: he messed up, he died.
No adorable ball of sunshine to disappoint, no tears to be cried, no small fragile body to lull into his arms after waking her from another nightmare. Everything was much simpler when it was only his life on the line, when happiness wasn't even a concept to be contemplated. When his survival was the most he could strive for.
Everything was simpler when he had nothing worth living for.
Looking at the first step on his dreaded list, Severus heaved the loudest sigh of the week: Hermione would need to meet her grandmother.
________________________________________________
Prince Palace was established on a tiny peninsula on the northern shore of Ireland, the ruins of its external walls were visible to muggles but the central body of the castle remained hidden. Young Severus had often wondered why the Princes, staunch muggle haters as they were, would ever allow muggles on their property. His mother obviously gave him no elucidations on the matter, as she hardly ever talked about her family, and the Prince grimoires and record books not once mentioned this peculiarity. Severus even asked Regulus why his ancestral home was in a similar predicament. The Blacks’ residence not only was visible to muggles, but was also situated in the middle of one of the biggest muggle hubs of the country. Regulus had, as per his usual, very little to say about it, but implied his ancestors didn’t exactly mind having the occasional muggle passerby at hand’s reach. In the Princes’ defence, they had settled there long before the tourists discovered the ruins.
Severus never learnt the reason behind the setting of his ancestral house, but he learnt that his grandparents probably weren’t as much of muggle haters, as Tobias Snape’s haters – and Severus, of all people, couldn’t fault them for it.
His mother, Eileen, conveniently forgot to ever name the actual reason for her almost disownment: one dastardly husband.
Despite marrying the man, Eileen wasn’t cast out of the family as threatened, but she still had to move out of the palace, as Tobias didn’t want to live with her parents – probably aware he would have been murdered before taking the vows.
The Princes tried time and time again to make their daughter leave the bastard that sired him, but she never relented. According to Eileen Snape, née Prince, Tobias had always been a good man and a good husband, but after Severus’ birth his attitude had taken a turn for the worse. It was because Severus looked nothing as his father, she said. It upset him. And when Tobias Snape was upset he had to take it out on someone else.
It was mostly his mother at first, then it became mostly Severus the older he became. Sometimes he would take it out on the scantily-dressed women that worked in the house down the road, even though his mother swore her darling husband would never ever sully himself so.
Severus never minded the beatings so much – not as much as the screaming, the insults and his mother bleeding, anyway – he deserved it after all. His birth had ruined Eileen’s husband, and the Snapes happy family.
It took reuniting with his grandparents after his father’s too-painless passing to find communality in his hate for the man, and to snuff out the past twenty years of underlying guilt, when his grandfather reassured him that Tobias Snape was an “utter piece of dragon dung, pardon my French, son” long before Severus had even been conceived.
This left him with very little love left for his mother, who still preached of his father’s benevolence and yet looked better and better any day spent away from the man, and a tentative relationship with his grandparents.
Despite never taking part in Severus’ upbringing, Laurel and Alazar Prince seemed set in being part of Hermione’s one, if the way they kept cooing at her was any indication. His grandmother kept pinching her chubby cheeks, but Hermione didn’t seem to mind. Severus spun a believable story on how Hermione’s mother didn’t want to be involved with the child, and thus left her to Severus before setting off toward the continent. He didn’t provide any details on the supposed mother’s bloodline, and they didn’t ask for them.
Eileen didn’t stand together with them, content with observing from her settee. She looked less gaunt than he remembered her. Severus wasn’t eager to introduce her to his daughter, but he needed his mother to link Hermione to the blood wards and the family line. The Prince were a matriarchy after all, and had Eileen Prince married a more civilised man, Severus would have taken the Prince surname.
Hermione was running in the puddles, giving delighted little squeals every time the water reached her socks, as Laurel and Alazar kept a close eye on her and awed at every toothy smile. Severus took a seat near his mother, watching his daughter from inside the sunroom.
“I want her to be a Prince.”
“I figured as much.”
“You’ll have to had her to the line.”
“I figured that too.”
He sighed.
“She doesn’t look like you,”
“To me, it doesn’t matter,” the hint to his father less than subtle.
She sighed.
“I told him many times, you know,” she said after a silent beat, “that you were his.”
“And I told him many times, how I wish I weren’t.”
His mother was silent for a while then, looking at the happy toddler as she picked up flowers to gift her great-grandparents.
“The ritual is to be completed under the moonlight, you can set in one of the guest rooms on the second floor.
Guest rooms. Plural. What a wild thought that was for him, who was brought up in scarcity and neglect, to have grandparents and a veritable palace in his name.
“Mother,” he prepared himself for her goodwill to run out, as it usually did as soon as he needed something.
“Tell me, Severus,”
“I wish to be a Prince too.”
Eileen sighed again and took her time answering, gaze lost in the sunlit grass of the gardens.
“You were never really a Snape, were you, son?”
After dinner, Hermione chattered about Greatmama and Greatpapa at length, as Severus tried to make her have a nap before the night’s ritual. She could be more annoying than a doxy when she didn’t sleep enough.
Finally, she dozed off.
“You’ll wake me up, daddy?”
“Yes, sweetheart, I’m not doing the ritual without you.”
“Pimky p’omise?” she asked around an adorable little yawn, offering her pinky finger to him. She looked like a ruffled kitten, all big eyes and fluffy hair.
“Pinky promise.” he answered easily, taking her finger in his.
And it was easy, he would pinky-promised her the Moon if only she asked.
___________________________________________
The night fell, and Severus strode down the stairs as Hermione hopped down the tall steps. Severus had wished to forgo the traditional ritual garments, as they were musty, impractical and bound to be sullied in the nocturnal drizzle. Nevertheless, he’d promised Hermione an authentic magical childhood, thus he donned the heavy, white robes, and so did Hermione. She had snatched a thick golden necklace from one of the long-forgotten baubles left to collect dust in the attic, and placed it on her head as a crown, “Daddy, I’m P’ince John!”
Severus had no idea who that might be, but pretended she was right nonetheless.
“Oh, there you are, princess!” Laurel gushed at Hermione.
Never in his life could Severus have pictured that his mother had been born from such loving people. A new wave of resentment filled him thinking of all the time he could have spent with them, instead of with his sire.
“Hi, Great-mama!” Hermione hugged the old witch, her tiny arms barely reaching around the waist.
They moved outside, where Alazar and Eileen were waiting for them. Laurel and Hermione kept chatting, the tiredness having completely left the child.
Alazar was finishing touching up a salt hexagram, sulphur rocks had been positioned inside the six points, and a glimmering liquid filled a goblet set in the middle of the star: mercury.
“So,” Alazar announced, “who shall be first?”
At the words Hermione's eagerness seemed to fizzle out, the girl had probably supposed they would’ve completed the ritual together.
“I'll go,” Severus said, wanting to put Hermione at ease.
The child took his hand, hazel eyes blazing in the candlelight, her pudgy fingers holding on his thumb, “Safe?”
Severus smiled a bit at her concern and patted her head. “Safe.”
The ritual, more than difficult, was scenographic. Severus believed one could have completed it in the house, at every hour of the day, with no ritual gowns or candles. Even the hexagram was more a tradition than a necessity. Blood binding was one of the easiest and most natural of rituals. A child was usually bound to a House when born, so it really wasn't needed to encase body, spirit and soul with the Tria Prima. Alas, the Princes, as many old pureblooded families, loved their traditions.
Severus stepped in the centre of the star, and held the goblet in his right hand. As a child, he had studied extensively the Prince Grimoire his mother had stolen from her ancestral home. The next step would’ve been to slice his right hand, but not wanting to scare Hermione he simply punctured his index finger and let some scarlet drops fall into the cup. The red swirled in the mercury, becoming an uninspired shade of maroon, and he felt them. The ties. The magic of generation entering his body, connecting with his own magic, braiding themselves into his own soul.
One person, a thousand lives.
A thousand people, a single name.
At two-and-twenty years of age, Severus T. Prince, né Snape, finally belonged.
And at twenty years his junior, Hermione Granger, soon would too.
His daughter sat down in Severus' place, took the goblet in her small hand, paying attention not to make it wobble, and after Severus punctured her finger with a spell, smeared some blood in the goblet and with the rest she drew protection, pride, and loyalty runes, Severus hand accompanying hers in the writing.
The Princes were chanting together while Hermione's eyes lit up as if fire crackled behind them. Her hair ondulated with the force of magic, the electricity sizzling around her doubling it in size.
“Mother Earth calls Her children home.”
“Mother Earth calls Her children home.”
“MOTHER EARTH CALLS HER CHILDREN HOME.”
The tendrils of light slowly disappeared and Hermione rose from the star. Severus patiently waited for his grandmother to pronounce Hermione part of the family and to finally name her.
“Welcome home, Hermione Bríd Prince.”
Bríd, the Goddess of fire, healing, and patron saint of the House of Prince.