I surrender who I've been for who you are
For nothing makes me stronger than your fragile heart
-Sleeping At Last
He had been brewing this potion for almost four months, but the very moment it was finished he strongly considered vanishing the lot. They’d been trying for two years and while failing was difficult, the few times they had been successful proved worse. Watching his wife throw things and shatter cups and plates when she woke up to sheets stained red was painful, but seeing her laying in a bed at St. Mungos hospital waiting for the worst of the pain from her D&C to pass was an unmatched hell. It had been over a year since her last miscarriage, and while he desperately wanted to make her happy he didn’t know if he had the strength to arm her with supplies to potentially put them through that again. Twisting the glass vile between his fingers he cursed Molly Weasley, not for the first time, and wished she knew how to keep her reckless ideas to herself.
*
“Severus, what am I missing here? If you knew about this surly we would have tried before now?” They’d been at Grimmauld Place all evening and his patience was already wearing thin. He’d sung the blasted song and watched a four-year-old redhead tear paper off gifts, he’d even eaten the cake forced upon him. However, listening to others discuss his sex life like it were a problem to be solved was the final straw.
“I haven’t said anything because we decided we weren’t going to take extraordinary measures also, I”
“I don’t think you could call a simple potion extraordinary,” Molly had no idea the thin ice she was skating upon. It had been almost a decade since Severus Snape had verbally eviscerated someone in his wife's chosen family but there was a line that she was about to cross and if she did he would not be responsible for his actions.
“I would hardly call an 82-ingredient potion that requires three separate moon cycles simple, but regardless. As I was trying to inform my wife, it is not always successful and the side effects can be rather nasty.” He made eye contact with her, praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in to let her drop the subject.
“But we could look into it, right?” Her voice was laced with false hope as she was cut off by the redhead in the room
“I certainly think,”
“This,” his words were full of venom as he spit them towards her with no hesitation, “does NOT concern you. Don’t speak on matters you do not understand Mrs. Weasley.” He turned to his wife desperately trying to soften his tone but knowing instantly that he failed. “Hermione, we’re leaving. You can send word to Potter this evening.” He took her cup out of her hand and holding her elbow guided her towards the fireplace. She knew she should argue or explain what feminist ideals he was betraying but she didn’t care. There was hope and she just needed to convince him of that.
*
It had been six months since “the kitchen showdown” had broke out that night. It wasn’t the first time they argued about having a child, but it had been the last. Despite his best efforts all those years ago, he’d fallen for her in a manner he never could have anticipated. He had scoffed when she showed up weekly to the hospital to look in on his health after the final battle. He’d resisted when she came monthly to invite him to therapy sessions disguised as Order Meetings. As she showed up over and over again, asking for his advice on potions or trying to understand a particularly wordy bit of Ministry Legislation, he knew she was being to feel something for him more than friendship.
She may have fallen for him first, asking him to escort her to Ministry Balls and inviting him to dinner at her favorite cafe. However, by the time they’d gone on their first official date, he was thoroughly in love with her. There was nothing she could ask for that he wouldn’t give. He sat at the kitchen table, twisting his fate between his fingers, waiting for her to come home from work. Still undecided about handing it to her when she walked through the door.
*
“, and then they said that they’d lost it. Lost it. Can you even imagine that being an acceptable answer in any other profession?” He tried to remember what the start of that sentence had been but he just couldn’t. She’d come home, an hour ago? No, the sun wasn’t sitting in the sky right for that. Less than an hour. She hadn’t noticed his inattention because she was still ranting about her work at the ministry that day. He looked at his wife, ranting about the lack of attention the ministry was giving to non-human magical beings, and knew that even though continuing to try would break his heart, he couldn’t deny her.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t trust himself to. Standing up he took the vial from his pocket and placed it gently on the kitchen island where she was pacing back and forth preparing items for dinner. It took a whole minute before she saw and understood, and in that minute he wanted nothing more than to smash the small glass tube of Perthro Potion against the floor and pretend he never completed it. But her face when she noticed, the hope and joy she felt, made all the pain this could bring them worth it.
“It’s finished?!” She held it like it was the most precious substance on earth
“Hermione. It isn’t guaranteed. There is only a 73% chance this will even change your fertility, and we don’t know if your body is the reason we’re struggling.” He wished he could make her see this was not a good plan, “It’s going to make you violently ill, regardless of the outcome. You’ll probably need to take a week off from work and the effects will linger for a couple of months.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t want me to do this Sev, you said you wanted to have a baby. But now there’s a chance we could make that happen and you’re fighting it.” Her eyes filled with tears that refused to fall and he saw her lip quiver. “Do you not want to have children with me anymore?”
“Of course, I want children with you, love, but watching your heartbreak each month is killing me, and,” there was a long pause, for all the arguing they did about the subject he rarely brought up the children they’d lost. He always focused on his age and what an awful father he would be. He didn’t want to make her relive the worst moments of her life. But it had to be said, “and I don’t know how many more times I can watch you mourn a child you will never get to hold.”
He rarely cried, he hadn’t cried when either of his parents passed or when he realized what a mistake he’d made taking the Dark Mark. He could count the number of times he had truly been vulnerable enough to drop the strongest of his emotional walls but now was one of those times. He discreetly wiped the tear from the corner of his eye and developed a sudden interest in a speck of dirt to the right of his foot. But before he knew it she was standing next to him.
“I know it isn’t guaranteed. But it’s our best shot, the side effects are worth being able to do something, I’ve felt so helpless. I’ve felt… I’ve felt like I’m failing you.” Suddenly the speck of dirt lost its appeal as he stood up to wrap his arms around her.
“Do not ever feel that you are failing me. You’ve given me more than I ever knew to ask for.”
Her muffled voice thick with pain and fear came from her spot on his chest. “I don’t know how if I can survive another loss either. But I have to try because otherwise, the ones before were for nothing. If we have a baby the pain will have been worth it.”
“Okay.” Their last fight about the subject had been months ago, but for the first time, he was truly emotionally resigned to following wherever this path took them. “Okay, we can keep trying. But you need to understand that you are my everything. Yes, I want a child with you, but I won’t risk your health or well-being to achieve that goal. You’re everything to me, love”
He felt her hold him a bit tighter and some of the tension in her body disappear. He hoped with all his might that this took and he was able to give her what she so desperately dissevered.