Part One: In Which Severus Snape Throws a Tizzy
Title:‘In Which Severus Snape Throws a Tizzy’
Author: tigersilver
Pairing(s)/character(s): Sirius Black/Severus Snape
Rating: NC-17
Prompt# Sirius and Severus have a casual affair (hate-sex if you like). None of them seems to be able to stop it-until Severus learns he is pregnant. However only wizards with a strong emotional connection (aka LOVE ♡) can conceive! Take this wherever you want: Does Severus change his behaviour towards Sirius? Does he tell him? Or not? Squicks: Bottom!Sirius and sad endings ;) for carolinelamb
Word Count: 13, 000
Summary: Severus Snape indulges in a brief fit of ‘mental’. What!? He’s a pregnant male war hero, up the duff by a damned Dog-he’s allowed!
Warnings: Highlight to read*Mpreg, blathering and Ballistic!Snape. *
Disclaimer: Own nothing but what is clearly not canon.
A/N: Too many words, too few sexy times, sorry. Much fussing. My thanks and apologies to the kindest of Mods, for allowing an extension.
Part One: [By Himself]
It was the best of times.
Dickens, that most verbose of Muggles, had had the right of it, Severus reflected, grimly eyeing his altered waistline in the mercifully (mostly) silent mirror.
It was the worst of times.
He gritted his teeth and resettled the elegantly sumptuous robes he’d purchased on impulse just that afternoon. As a bit of treat to himself and also as a-dire!- necessity.
Thankfully, Maulkin, that old tabby, was discreet if nothing else. One all-encompassing look at Severus and she’d shooed them all out, the mums shopping for bargain offers, the browsing old biddies with an eye out more for a good gossip than a fashionable robe or a stray length of ruche-ing. There’d been no others lingering when she finally approached him; no pokey, curious eyes to see what he’d been reduced to-oh, sod that! Not ‘reduced’. No! More like expanded!--and honestly, he’d been extra-ultra-cautious about that recently, going out only at twilight or after and only to dimly-lit places, not that he’d much need to go out by himself, as he was always in company with bloody Dog now.
Severus turned this way and that, admiring. Maulkin had rather shown her mettle this afternoon; she still had the touch. Even he didn’t come off as too terribly frumpy. Despite his…’condition’.
Speaking of…he’d venture to Muggle places, which the Dog seemed always to favour and he’d no objection, for where else might he pass as simply a middle-aged man with a middle-aged paunch? No, no. His secret was safe enough if no one peered too closely….excepting he himself was about to reveal it, in full. Make a clean breast-bare his all. Sod it. Sod it all.
His all? Well, he’d already bared it, hadn’t he? That being what had delivered him to this sorry lot.
…He’d bared more ‘all’ than he’d ever actually conceived of, evidently. Curses!
And…‘delivered’? For the sake of Merlin’s bloody bollocks, was his every thought, his every reference to revolve around his impending patrimony?
Sod bad puns. Sod the creeping sense of the utterly ridiculous, the unspeakably barmy the Dog had brought to him, like a dead rabbit presented upon his doorstep, right along with a suddenly rampant appetite and an unexpected passenger to leech it all up! It was all just…simply…
Grr!
Dog.
Dog’s fault. Indubitably.
That Black! What a fucking wanker!
Severus grimaced harder, meaner, nastier, more evilly than anything ever attempted before-giving it his everything. So nastily-viciously-horrid about it his long-suffering dressing-room mirror image winced and shivered in passing terror, the silvery surface shimmering into uneven ripples as it twitched.
“What?” Severus snapped at it, glowering. “What’s with you, Mirror?”
“/…Erm,/” it spoke up, hesitantly. “/D’you think you could, p’raps, possibly…ah? Go away now? Looked your fill, haven’t you?/”
“No!” Severus shouted, feeling exceptionally nasty. “Absolutely not!”
“/Oh!/” The frame twisted, skewing itself as it the mirror were attempting to fold up on itself, like an envelop. A sensitive envelop, with feelings borrowed freely from the original. /”Eek! Must you? Must you, really?/”
“”Yessss?” Severus hissed, tapping a toe impatiently at his reflection. “There’s a problem?”
/”Well…”/
His reflection cringed, just a bit, wringing its hands, protecting its spreading middle. And frowned fiercely, as if in challenge.
“/Oh, alright then. Be that way, see if I care./”
It rippled again, possibly from spite.
“Hah! Stop that instantly, you ancient piece of shite,” Severus snarled at his distorting image. “Stay still, can’t you? Cease this silly twisting about, ninny. No-coward. If I can look then so can you!”
“/Erp!/” The mirror balked once more, flinching.
“Be still! Buggering useless thing that you are.”
Severus snorted his disgust, doubling the effect in his wobbly reflection, perforce-it was a mirror, of course it reflected him. All of him, whether it willed it or no. But then Mirror-Snape visibly bridled, wall-eyed, both hands clutching at belly beneath new robes protectively, and set its jaw line to rigid, assuming the familiar expression Severus commonly employed to quell his rambunctious Thirdies.
/“I say! Uncalled for!”/ The mirror’s remaining surface and frame gradually returned to its smooth, bland original form, sobering itself up properly into utilitarian duty. Severus sighed, observing.
/”Well?” Only fulfilling my role here, aren’t I? Go on, do.”/
The po-faced Snape-mask his reflection had become raised its speaking black eyebrows at him. And not only the one but both eyebrows, the universal sign of ‘Professor Severus-Snape-is-more-than-mildly-appalled’. One long potions-stained hand patted Severus’s reflected looks-like-a-butterbeer-belly-but-isn’t quite, quite meaningfully.
/“You were saying?”/
There was an expectant silence. It dragged on far too long before the real Severus-the one who couldn’t hide in defective mirrors, the one who really was up the duff with Dog’s child-gulped, swallowed and sighed simultaneously, shoulders slumping.
“Bloody alright,” he muttered fretfully. “Yes, I know.”
/”…Yes?”/
“Yes, yes, alright, I know all of it; all I am afrai-concerned with, thank you ever so, but…. But. I have to do this; I must,” he informed himself grimly. “I simply must.” The patting ended in a vicious rub across his hidden navel. “I’ve no choice, have I? He deserves to know.” He scowled, glancing away to examine a crack in the plastered wall. His image did the same, naturally. “There’s no getting round it,” he informed the wall gloomily. “Think about it, you. He has to know. Dog does. I would, were I him.”
/”Mmm./”
Severus glanced away, uneasy. From the corner of his eye he could make out his image nodding slowly, solemnly-as if already disappointed. As if entirely unconvinced in advance Severus was really-finally-planning to clue in the other perpetrator .
/“…And so?”/
“No, really.”
Sucking in a deep calming breath, Severus attempted to meet his own mirrored eyes, to be excruciatingly calm and stonily unflinching and all that was proper for a Potions Master and an honoured survivor of the last Voldemort War. A veteran, for Merlin’s sake.
“Me, rather. I should think, really I should, but…D’you know, I don’t think I have been, much.”
He heaved another sigh, a grand waft of despair.
He was decorated, damn it. Order of Merlin, for gods-sake! He was accounted a bloody hero! (Stupid Potter! Landing in the midst of that silly ceremony and all because he’d the good sense and foresight not to expire of a simple snakebite-bah!)
He failed. Couldn’t meet his own eyes. How would ever meet Black’s, were he to try and tell him?
His image flushed guiltily and turned thin, pinched features away, scowling uncomfortably at any point in the room available other than the real Severus. It was…vastly uncomfortable, actually, not being able to stare himself down. Stare a simple reflecting device down, more like. Severus stomped a foot in reaction, frustrated.
He was…he was succumbing to his own chemistry, he was. Just as Poppy said he might.
How he hated hormones.
Severus inhaled great bracing gulp of clean air, faintly scented still with the silly Elven shower gel his usual caretakers had left him.
“Oh, please!” It was a cry for help-from himself, bugger all. “Man up, Severus, old chap. Belt up. Grow some bollocks, will you? Just…just do. Please. Do this for me.” Those reflected eyelids flickered softly; the reverse-image hand on his reverse-image belly curled and tensed, perversely.
“For…it.”
He couldn’t face himself, couldn’t even manage to gaze his fill at his own bloody image. He was but a bloody child, Severus thought balefully, pretending that if he couldn’t see it, then it wasn’t there.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger.”
Failed again. But he would do.
“I hate me.”
Would do, would do, would do-what he had to accomplish, what he must, what all that bloody honour a hero came freighted with called him to do.
“Bugger.”
Through his teeth, Severus sighed again, blinking hard and mentally forcing his own chin up, even as his spine curled in, both forearms moving to curve protectively about the excess poundage visible at his waist. It instantly altered his reflection: he sagged where he stood and the bulge in his midriff was visibly larger, framed as it was by brand-new sleeving. More obvious.
Fail, fail, fail. Never in his life had he failed so. So.
“Bear it,” he gritted, squaring his shoulders, staring at his own toes. “Bear down.”
Posture was all important; good posture was a must, Poppy had said. He attempted to wrench himself upright, but his own body was fighting him. It wanted only to curl up and perhaps die of shame.
“You can, you idiot Wizard,” he kept on grimly, shuddering as he straightened, spine creaking and popping as he did. It was only himself before his furtive eyes, the Dog wasn’t even in the picture yet! If he couldn’t control himself, that what bloody hope had he? And yet-and yet!
“You can bear anything; old chap; haven’t you proved that?”
For all that was holy and all that was not, he could no longer run.
He could no longer hide, ignore, obfusticate, shrug off or delay. The Dog simply must know-must be told. Daddy Dog…sire…sodding father-to-be!
“/Nh…/”
Hesitating, his wide-eyed, pale-as-death-warmed-over image nodded at him, just the barest bob of chin.
No. Fathers-to-be. He was one. And Madame Maulkin-the knowing old puss-had unerringly kitted him out in paternity robes. Without even asking his pleasure or preference. Final blow, wasn’t it? That a little old Witch could take one look at him and simply just know?
“Bear it, you fool!”
He gulped. His own words caught up to him, with all the grace of a herd of erumphant. Flushed scarlet. Posture might be everything, nuance was more than.
“Must, must, must simply--oh, gods. I did not just say that!”
It was beyond rude to jest, even at his own tortured reflection, even in the privacy of his own rooms. Jocularity: the root of all evil. Curse the bloody fatuous doggy-brain who’d started this hare, then!
“Oh, gods, oh-gods, oh-gods, not ‘bear it’, then-anything but that!” The mirror of him was making startled blowfish motions, opening and closing its mouth in pantomime: ‘How you could?’ Severus scowled at it; growled at it, wanted to rend his own bloody dressing room mirror from corner to corner and toss the wrecked kindling out the door for the elves to deal with. And in the interim, his own damned mouth ran on, unhelpfully. Burbling nonsense, when this was no laughing matter-far from it!
“Be serious, Severus!”
Before him his reflected eyes widened like the black holes of Hell itself. He brought both hands up slowly, clutching at his own head, shaking it, his mouth a rounded ‘O’ of flabbergasted shock. Some wee part of his functioning brain pinged cheerily-was this not just like another Muggle’s work, a painting he’d seen once?
…Munsch, was it?
“Fuckity-fuck!”
He halted, wide-eyed and gawping, and stared at his belly with glazed eyes. Parted his lips once or twice before he dug up the gumption to continue.
“…What am I even saying-there has to be a better way to say-to approach-to produce-oh, Merlin-I cannot believe?” They both shook dark heads, horrified, he and himself. How…gauche! How juvenile! Making a joke of it was not a solution. “Was that another frigging pun?” he demanded of himself, poking the mirror. “It was! It bloody well was! He’s affecting me, the git! It’s all the damned Dog’s fault! He’s fucked me up!”
“…oh-gods. No!
“No, I won’t. Shan’t, no-uh-uh! No more, do you hear me? No more of this foolishness. Stop right now.”
He nodded. Twice. Both of him. Matter settled; he’d resist, then. No more stabs at black (oh-gawds!) humour, no more fall-flat puns. All there was to it.
“Blast and damn.”
Still nodding, his other self. Carefully, deliberately, but not at all as if his other self believed a word he was muttering, either. Not helpful. Wasn’t.
Asinine Dog.
Severus went on with his own private pep talk. It was for the best, really. He didn’t like talking to himself, but in lieu of the Dog-his real and intended audience, later-his reflection would have to make do.
“….face it then. That’s it.”
Well. He was facing it, yes? He stared, eyes on that one particular bit of him that required facing. It-him-Them. It!
“Be a man, not a fecund mooncalf.”
Oh, but….all the round softness of it, all the taut feel of it, all the weight of it, nestled right below his heart. New clothes did not make the man…any different. Not substantially, no.
“I’m a Wizard, a perfectly respectable Wizard. And this was a perfectly respectable mistake, alright? I didn’t know! I didn’t…know.”
He looked a right sight, despite it: all teeth, actually, and flashing wide dark eyes, fringed lushly. Habitual scowl and equally normal sallowness, hollow-eyed, bags under them like luggage and twitchy as the damned Dog was on his caffeine habit. He was under stress and it showed itself. Much like the old days. Excepting….excepting, he wasn’t creeping about for fear of his fellow Death Eater’s ratting him out to Voldemort. No. No…it was far worse than that.
“Merlin help me.”
Dire.
“Merlin help him, the shaggy-bottomed sod! Just you wait till I get my hands round that throat of his!”
It was what Black would say to him. When they met, as they’d fallen into the habit of meeting up come a Friday evening, every Friday evening, bar none. Or-and this was misery to contemplate-what he would not say, because Black was notoriously inarticulate under any sort of real pressure. Hadn’t been able to talk his way out of Azkaban on a murder rap, had he? Hadn’t been able to civilly take his own beloved godson aside in a casual, non-threatening manner and explain that he never meant to harm him and really, what was all the fuss about? Hadn’t managed to say much about a lot of things-ever. His tongue seemed all but useless to him, the idiot, excepting for certain…physical…things.
Like licking. And (um) sucking. And…er. Well.
“That tongue of his!” Severus glared at his betraying flush, reflected. “Those fingers! That cock!”
Lupin. Whomping Willows. Betrayal. Humiliation. Lily….and Lily’s bloody damned spawn Harry Potter, who’d snuck up on an unwilling Severus when he wasn’t looking behind himself for once and then daringly been actively decent at him, after, the little git. Urged him to make peace, have a drink with his old enemy, Black-lay old bones to rest, as it were. Since old bones were back, in the form of Black.
“Bloody-stupid-Potter!”
Black had fussed, inevitably. Didn’t he always? Trademark trait, that.
“Dog’s damned godson, isn’t he?” Severus demanded of himself, reflected. “Must be his fault, then-all his fault! Silly cur must’ve taught him. Bloody Potter. Urgh!”
Fussed, instead, did Black-the-Dog, and threw himself into the whole debacle, just like a Gryffindor. Played the martyr; dove in-rolled in it. Black bloody thrived on fuss. Ever the dramatic sod, was he. And ever the complicated and unnecessarily-so sod, as well.
“’Go out, Snape’, he said,” Severus mimicked grotesquely, “’and have some bloody fun for yourself. Live a little. You’ve earned it, haven’t you?’”
Nothing ever bloody simple. Drinks, awkward, more than awkward: tense-then drunk, naturally, both of them, soonest. Falling over furniture drunk, falling into one another drunk. Then cock, smiles, mumbles, sperm-all of those easy enough, once begun, yes, but not simple. Not straightforward.
“Ah, bah!”
Far-frigging-from it!
Which went nowhere at all in explaining why Severus found him inexplicably attractive enough to then fall into bed with. It, in fact, said a great deal about the state of Severus-what he wanted; where he was going-much of which he’d no interest in hearing discussed, not even as recited to him by his own mental voice. Or Potter’s mental voice, either, for that matter.
Interfering little git, Potter. Always had been. Look where Potter’s good-intentioned advice had led him, eh? SWMW w/BB*, is what!
Maybe he’ll take it properly, like a real man, his mental voice had advised Severus. Black, that was, not Potter.
Hopefully, he’d thought that, very hopefully, though it was monumentally foolish to hope for any single thing where Black was concerned, because the git was contrary and willful like the wind. Maybe... (and this was his own hind-brain talking at him, jabbering on like a bloody jarvey), he’d thought, it’ll be as nothing to Black. An aberration easily gotten over. A bump in the road but not a huge one-not life-altering.
(A bump…a bump…a bump! Curse his own eyes for conjuring up a bloody Bump!)
They could…still ignore it? Mayhap…it would…go away?
Blinking abstractedly, Severus settled into a think. By all means he needed one, didn’t he?
His voice had ventured that possibility as possible, just before he’d bowed bitterly to the inevitable and gone out shopping…again. He, for one, couldn’t afford to ignore it. Not in the broad daylight of a late May Friday afternoon, which he’d been avoiding with the assiduousness of a damned vampire lately. Sunny-fair-miserable weather, really-bah! And for good reason.
Wizards who went travelling abroad, leaving the relative safety of their familiar dungeons and carrying about the innocent unborn in their mid-life paunches were not exactly the norm just yet, were they? The streets hardly abounded with such as he. He’d be laughingstock, especially if he ran across any of his old students. Potter, for example. Young Malfoy.
Gods forbid, not Granger!
Bloody Potter, though. It was his damned godfather was the cause of this!
“Have drinks,” Potter had said to him. “Just…you know….drinks. Talk. Er…? Make peace?”
And Severus himself. He’d been to blame.
Make love, more like!
Never doubt it, it had been Severus himself who was the real cause. It couldn’t be denied; he’d not dream of it. If Albus had taught him anything, it wasn’t to lie to himself. It was his own sodding bed he’d made-with much nicer sheeting now, granted, now the Dog was snoring there on a regular basis-and now he must lay in it….or rather, not lay, nor lie. Tell the truth and nothing but. To the idiot Dog. (But not Potter-never Potter!)
The…er. Sire. As he-apparently-was to be the damned dam! Blast and damn and bugger!
“Puppy!”
Severus chuckled aloud, darkly. He could see his bed, behind him, and likely the site of the massacre of his peace, fancy sheets and all. Could’ve been Black’s bed, but likely it was here, in Hogwarts. All those teenaged pheromones, running about, influencing mid-life interrupted idiots like himself and the Dog
“I’m having a bloody puppy, I am!” The note of hysteria he heard issuing from his own mouth didn’t escape Severus for a second.
Bloody bed, bloody Dog, bloody Voice!
“Thank frigging Brede it’s not a litter of them, eh, Mirror?”
Severus hated it when his mental Voice-who, come to think, came across as a mix of old Albus on his very worst days of lemon-drop barmy and Poppy, at her most giggly-bint-post-Battle-Staff-party-self-butted into his head proper and proceeded to sway the rest of him in some direction he’d absolutely no wish to go. His mental Voice had no compunction about twisting the facts to suit; his mental Voice was a fucking twat, that’s what. Mental!
It had said blithely, upon coming across a willing Black-and he recalled this part clearly-‘Oh, why ever not, Severus? Have a little fun, why don’t you?’
And when Severus had stumbled into the man in the way-back, dart’s-end dim corner of the Leaky, by chance or mayhap due Potter’s puerile schoolboy machinations, it had led him to downing shots of fiery liquids with great and unnatural abandon and then all but shoved him into bed (up against the wall, in the loo, actually, but no matter) with the exasperating, canine-minded, do-gooding, Unspeakable git after. And it had claimed, weeks ago now-and soppily, and taking a dip into the utter perverse-that the whole stupid situation of a pregnant Wizard was alright, really. Was. Alright! To be going on with! As was the sex and the drinking, the laughing at nothing-the company and all that came along with.
Fuss, was it. It was!
Lately, it had whispered seductively in his inner ear that he’d always really rather wished after a sprog of his own to care for-(“Hah!” Severus snorted aloud again, despising it heartily, the Voice)-and that it wouldn’t be such an awful thing, the sprog being half the fussy git’s get.
Good blood there. Not like Snape’s own, at least.
Git was a fine looking man-crazy as a loon, yes--and a quite decent Wizard, wasn’t he? Git was charming, where Severus decidedly wasn’t. Git even had a Position of Importance in the Ministry-something research-based in DOM, which made sense really, as he’d been ‘something in DOM’ whilst trapped in the Veil. Unspeakable Black, indeed!
Karmic, really. It figured.
Severus sighed; he did that often, lately. Rubbed his blasted belly, which thankfully didn’t shift or even burble. That hadn’t yet started but he knew it was coming. He’d always had a sneaking suspicious he’d come a’scupper over bloody Black…
Git was beloved by all, even crazy as a loon. Which Severus definitely wasn’t. Make a good parent, which Severus might also. Just might.
“I’m fat.”
Crazy, though. Maybe he was too, at that.
“Oh, god, I am. One look at me and he’ll know, I just know it!”
What had he been thinking? Had he been thinking at all, actually? Clearly not. He’d been bedded by Black and that was absolutely the side-effect of not-thinking.
“These bloody robes! What was that old pussy thinking, stuffing me into these? They’re two sizes too small!”
Or thinking in circles or loops.
“I’ve never, ever, in my whole life, been fat.”
Or feeling instead…which was dangerous.
“No. I am not fat-I am pregnant, blast me. I’m also too old for this,” Severus sighed. “I’m old. I’m not…pretty.”
He was all sighed out-he felt flat, which he wasn’t. Though, granted, only in one place was he fat. “Not pretty like him, the arse bandit.”
His reflection winked merrily at him-which was really rather unconscionable of it, but so. Always did have an eyes for a pretty face, hadn’t he? Just look to Lily…dear Lily. She’d never had done this to him!
“Bother. Too old to go through with this and it doesn’t suit me. I look…fat. I do. Maybe he’ll not notice?” The mirror shrugged its gilded corners, wisely keeping mum. He blinked. “And tired. I’m bloody well exhausted; of course I look tired! Wait! Did I say that already? I did, yes. Mind’s going, too. Stupid sodding hormones. And I never should’ve…what in the name of sweet Circe was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking, that’s what!”
He could say this ad nauseum-and yes, he’d been a bitty squiffy about the gills lately, thanks ever so, Mother Nature, Father Black-but it made not a whit of difference. Not a whit.
“Right, here goes.” He raised an arm in a brand new sleeve dramatically, gesturing towards the waiting hearth. “Dog, in ten. Must-belt-up, Severus. Must!”
Dropped the hand abruptly and tightened his belt gingerly-a brown leather one he’d purchased at the Muggle emporium Harrod’s, in Men’s, in order to sustain the equally Muggle denims he wore close-tight about his thin hips. At least that section of his anatomy was still trim and happily the same as ever-boney and jutting out, yes, but then he’d never been fat.
He was now.
“Can’t avoid it, can’t do anything other than this,” he muttered darkly. “Simply. Must. Go!”
….Not scrawny either, precisely, but not anything near the annoying bursting-of-health look his old enemies the Marauders had practically beamed of, back in the day. No, even then, in the first fine flush of youth, he’d been a scraggly sort of soul. Angular and all elbows. Painfully tall and painfully sharp-edged. Thin-skinned, picky and pale as a proper dungeon-resident should be. Black admitted to having been…interested, then.
“Wiil. Go.”
Severus had been appalled. How dared he, randy cur?
“Was. Not. Thinking. Shame!”
He’d had another shot, just to bear the concept of Black finding his younger self attractive.
“You’re the one had your pants down in a trice, didn’t you?” Severus looked up sharply, grimacing at his reflection. “Randy sod. Desperate.”
Black had shrugged, had winked. Had drank-er, drunk. His pale throat had moved sinuously as he quaffed and Severus clearly recalled his own mouth going dry as dust and his cock revivifying with a vengeance. All those years walking about with nil sex drive and then that? That bloody blast of hormones, practically swamping him where he sat, staring with slobbering hunger at Dog’s throat? Aching for him. Wanting his cock down it more fervently than ever he’d wanted anything ever before?
Severus, all at once suddenly prone to hormonal attacks, flushed scarlet…with remembered humiliation.
“What was I-blind? I don’t think.”
Oh-god-no! He’d been doomed from the start! He wasn’t Black’s usual sort-no, not at all. Milk-white skin, with never a blemish, yes, check. Large dark eyes, given to being veiled by equally long dark lashes-okay, right. So? His mother had always claimed he’d the finest set of eyes-the most speaking-in either side of his mucked-up family tree. Much good they’d done him, though, when it came down to making a case for himself. No one had ever believed him. They’d not looked past the way his too-thin lips twisted into an absentminded scowl; they’d not been effective at all in swaying the love of his life when he was pleading, nor ever useful on that old sodding wily git Albus, when he was pleading again. Later.
“Botheration.”
He’d not been aware they even still spoke at all till Black remarked upon it, a month later. He’d already been up the damned duff by then and hadn’t even known it, so lost was he in sensation.
“Shame on you, Severus, for being a fool.”
It was only a fool that couldn’t face himself in a common-garden household mirror, wasn’t it?
Only Black had ever mentioned them favourably, after Severus’s mother departed. Had said he thought they were…thought they were….
Attractive.
Severus swallowed; watched himself swallow, his Adam’s apple moving painfully against the starchiness of his new collar-buttons. He never recalled being considered particularly attractive. Before Black.
“An easily swayed fool and a too-old-for it one. Frigging idiot!”
It was a mystery to him, that chaos which inexplicable passion wrought. In bed with a Dog, one that nuzzled and didn’t nip-he was done for.
“Idiot Dog, more like. Blind, blind, blind. Ruined for life, I don’t doubt. Azkaban, of all things! No wonder!”
He simply couldn’t bring himself to muster any self-sympathy; he rubbed at his belly instead. Sighing.
“Shite . I’m tardy. Blast.”
With an impatient gesture and his teeth clamped together hard, sucking it in, he tucked in the button-down he’d bought to go with the fashionable denim trousers. All was stiff and starchy, brand new---all was hampering and odd.
Strange way of fastening up; weird how it clung to him, his garb. He was used to robes and capacious ones at that. Ones that billowed nicely; made a statement. But Black aped the Muggle look constantly, with his worn-out old blue jeans and his slovenly t-shirts, his long black beaten-up leather duster and that silly damned fedora. Went along perfectly with the look of the loud petrol-smelling monster; went with the fact Black was a dog on the loose of its leash.
“…Time to face the music, I s’pose…”
‘Course, Black in his elegant Unspeakable robes was an entirely different matter. Buttons! Shiny…and then the trim, all black velvet piping on gunmetal grey-ah…yes. Well. Striking.
It wouldn’t hurt, Severus had thought-the Voice said-to take a step or two in the direction of middle-arena and maybe wear something other than his old fusty black robes for once when he was meeting up with Black. As the trousers-stiff though they-clung to his bum, attractively. The salesgirl had said. And the shirt was properly fitted-had cost the earth in those newfangled Muggle Euros, too, so it should, being very dear-and the finely worked Italian-made belt showcased a waist that wasn’t quite-wasn’t quite entirely stretched out of shape. Only a little fat---just there.
The salesgirl hadn’t noticed he was up the duff. Fortunately.
“I despise music. I despise talking.”
Severus regarded himself one last time, turning this way and that, peering hard.
“I despise music while I’m talking.”
That aside-fancy. It seemed Muggle clothes rather suited him. He was hardly a clothes horse-had never been-but…attractive, Black had said, hadn’t he?
“I hope I look-no, I don’t!” He ground his heel into the carpet, scowling thunder. Even his boots were new; matched his belt-exact same shade. They would likely begin to hurt soon; his feet had a nasty tendency to swell. Poppy had said it would get better; Severus had no faith in that. “I don’t bloody well care, alright? I don’t care!” he snapped his teeth on each syllable. “So what if I’m-if he’s-I. Don’t. Care!”
You’re late! He’ll be waiting on you! sang the Voice. Bloody Voice.
“Don’t care.”
It was most definitely the worst of times. Severus nodded grim at his reflection, cursing them all-all times, but especially this one. Because now, without fail (he’d already pushed it way too long, really) he would be called upon to explain to Black the whole silly-horrid situation and Black would then be called up to-called up to-
To act. Fuss. Act fussily. At him.
“Blast,” Severus eyed himself one last time. “No, this is unbearable. I don’t want to.” He would do, he supposed, as well as any man would do when in his forties, three months gone, and worse for the wear of it. “At least it’s not as visible as before; there’s that.”
When three months gone with an unlooked-for and really very much unwanted pregnancy.
“My robe’s alright. I guess.”
When faced with explaining the above to an unnecessarily over-dramatic, fussy-by-nature, not-quite-boyfriend Dog-man.
Er…lover. No…male acquaintance with side benefits. Who barked. How humiliating! How…unwanted.
Charming arse. Loud mouth, said nothing worth noting.
“Blast.”
Alright…not unwanted, either. More like…shocking. Woof!
Severus swallowed hard; he was in shock. He’d worked his way up to it, which was very unlike him, but he wasn’t like him anymore. He was now like Them.
All the Dog’s doing.
“Blast, I said!”
The mirror flinched back. Stared at him with great concern. Very unSlytherin-very much unSnape.
“No. Really. I can’t be doing this; I can’t.”
He needed a cuppa more than a pint. He needed it something awful and it was starting to look like it would be a bloody miracle if he could sort what he needed from what was. He could only imagine how difficult his life would be for the next few hours-maybe only minutes, if Black panicked right off, which he could do-being horribly, evilly, terribly difficult and nasty. Fussing; making more of a mess.
“Double blast,” Severus remarked bitterly, damning the universe, and spun to DisApparate. “I hate this. Triple-!”
Now he was in for it.
Part Two: In Which Severus Snape Throws a Tizzy
Author: tigersilver
Pairing(s)/character(s): Sirius Black/Severus Snape
Rating: NC-17
Prompt# Sirius and Severus have a casual affair (hate-sex if you like). None of them seems to be able to stop it-until Severus learns he is pregnant. However only wizards with a strong emotional connection (aka LOVE ♡) can conceive! Take this wherever you want: Does Severus change his behaviour towards Sirius? Does he tell him? Or not? Squicks: Bottom!Sirius and sad endings ;) for carolinelamb
Word Count: 13, 000
Summary: Severus Snape indulges in a brief fit of ‘mental’. What!? He’s a pregnant male war hero, up the duff by a damned Dog-he’s allowed!
Warnings: Highlight to read*Mpreg, blathering and Ballistic!Snape. *
Disclaimer: Own nothing but what is clearly not canon.
A/N: Too many words, too few sexy times, sorry. Much fussing. My thanks and apologies to the kindest of Mods, for allowing an extension.
Part One: [By Himself]
It was the best of times.
Dickens, that most verbose of Muggles, had had the right of it, Severus reflected, grimly eyeing his altered waistline in the mercifully (mostly) silent mirror.
It was the worst of times.
He gritted his teeth and resettled the elegantly sumptuous robes he’d purchased on impulse just that afternoon. As a bit of treat to himself and also as a-dire!- necessity.
Thankfully, Maulkin, that old tabby, was discreet if nothing else. One all-encompassing look at Severus and she’d shooed them all out, the mums shopping for bargain offers, the browsing old biddies with an eye out more for a good gossip than a fashionable robe or a stray length of ruche-ing. There’d been no others lingering when she finally approached him; no pokey, curious eyes to see what he’d been reduced to-oh, sod that! Not ‘reduced’. No! More like expanded!--and honestly, he’d been extra-ultra-cautious about that recently, going out only at twilight or after and only to dimly-lit places, not that he’d much need to go out by himself, as he was always in company with bloody Dog now.
Severus turned this way and that, admiring. Maulkin had rather shown her mettle this afternoon; she still had the touch. Even he didn’t come off as too terribly frumpy. Despite his…’condition’.
Speaking of…he’d venture to Muggle places, which the Dog seemed always to favour and he’d no objection, for where else might he pass as simply a middle-aged man with a middle-aged paunch? No, no. His secret was safe enough if no one peered too closely….excepting he himself was about to reveal it, in full. Make a clean breast-bare his all. Sod it. Sod it all.
His all? Well, he’d already bared it, hadn’t he? That being what had delivered him to this sorry lot.
…He’d bared more ‘all’ than he’d ever actually conceived of, evidently. Curses!
And…‘delivered’? For the sake of Merlin’s bloody bollocks, was his every thought, his every reference to revolve around his impending patrimony?
Sod bad puns. Sod the creeping sense of the utterly ridiculous, the unspeakably barmy the Dog had brought to him, like a dead rabbit presented upon his doorstep, right along with a suddenly rampant appetite and an unexpected passenger to leech it all up! It was all just…simply…
Grr!
Dog.
Dog’s fault. Indubitably.
That Black! What a fucking wanker!
Severus grimaced harder, meaner, nastier, more evilly than anything ever attempted before-giving it his everything. So nastily-viciously-horrid about it his long-suffering dressing-room mirror image winced and shivered in passing terror, the silvery surface shimmering into uneven ripples as it twitched.
“What?” Severus snapped at it, glowering. “What’s with you, Mirror?”
“/…Erm,/” it spoke up, hesitantly. “/D’you think you could, p’raps, possibly…ah? Go away now? Looked your fill, haven’t you?/”
“No!” Severus shouted, feeling exceptionally nasty. “Absolutely not!”
“/Oh!/” The frame twisted, skewing itself as it the mirror were attempting to fold up on itself, like an envelop. A sensitive envelop, with feelings borrowed freely from the original. /”Eek! Must you? Must you, really?/”
“”Yessss?” Severus hissed, tapping a toe impatiently at his reflection. “There’s a problem?”
/”Well…”/
His reflection cringed, just a bit, wringing its hands, protecting its spreading middle. And frowned fiercely, as if in challenge.
“/Oh, alright then. Be that way, see if I care./”
It rippled again, possibly from spite.
“Hah! Stop that instantly, you ancient piece of shite,” Severus snarled at his distorting image. “Stay still, can’t you? Cease this silly twisting about, ninny. No-coward. If I can look then so can you!”
“/Erp!/” The mirror balked once more, flinching.
“Be still! Buggering useless thing that you are.”
Severus snorted his disgust, doubling the effect in his wobbly reflection, perforce-it was a mirror, of course it reflected him. All of him, whether it willed it or no. But then Mirror-Snape visibly bridled, wall-eyed, both hands clutching at belly beneath new robes protectively, and set its jaw line to rigid, assuming the familiar expression Severus commonly employed to quell his rambunctious Thirdies.
/“I say! Uncalled for!”/ The mirror’s remaining surface and frame gradually returned to its smooth, bland original form, sobering itself up properly into utilitarian duty. Severus sighed, observing.
/”Well?” Only fulfilling my role here, aren’t I? Go on, do.”/
The po-faced Snape-mask his reflection had become raised its speaking black eyebrows at him. And not only the one but both eyebrows, the universal sign of ‘Professor Severus-Snape-is-more-than-mildly-appalled’. One long potions-stained hand patted Severus’s reflected looks-like-a-butterbeer-belly-but-isn’t quite, quite meaningfully.
/“You were saying?”/
There was an expectant silence. It dragged on far too long before the real Severus-the one who couldn’t hide in defective mirrors, the one who really was up the duff with Dog’s child-gulped, swallowed and sighed simultaneously, shoulders slumping.
“Bloody alright,” he muttered fretfully. “Yes, I know.”
/”…Yes?”/
“Yes, yes, alright, I know all of it; all I am afrai-concerned with, thank you ever so, but…. But. I have to do this; I must,” he informed himself grimly. “I simply must.” The patting ended in a vicious rub across his hidden navel. “I’ve no choice, have I? He deserves to know.” He scowled, glancing away to examine a crack in the plastered wall. His image did the same, naturally. “There’s no getting round it,” he informed the wall gloomily. “Think about it, you. He has to know. Dog does. I would, were I him.”
/”Mmm./”
Severus glanced away, uneasy. From the corner of his eye he could make out his image nodding slowly, solemnly-as if already disappointed. As if entirely unconvinced in advance Severus was really-finally-planning to clue in the other perpetrator .
/“…And so?”/
“No, really.”
Sucking in a deep calming breath, Severus attempted to meet his own mirrored eyes, to be excruciatingly calm and stonily unflinching and all that was proper for a Potions Master and an honoured survivor of the last Voldemort War. A veteran, for Merlin’s sake.
“Me, rather. I should think, really I should, but…D’you know, I don’t think I have been, much.”
He heaved another sigh, a grand waft of despair.
He was decorated, damn it. Order of Merlin, for gods-sake! He was accounted a bloody hero! (Stupid Potter! Landing in the midst of that silly ceremony and all because he’d the good sense and foresight not to expire of a simple snakebite-bah!)
He failed. Couldn’t meet his own eyes. How would ever meet Black’s, were he to try and tell him?
His image flushed guiltily and turned thin, pinched features away, scowling uncomfortably at any point in the room available other than the real Severus. It was…vastly uncomfortable, actually, not being able to stare himself down. Stare a simple reflecting device down, more like. Severus stomped a foot in reaction, frustrated.
He was…he was succumbing to his own chemistry, he was. Just as Poppy said he might.
How he hated hormones.
Severus inhaled great bracing gulp of clean air, faintly scented still with the silly Elven shower gel his usual caretakers had left him.
“Oh, please!” It was a cry for help-from himself, bugger all. “Man up, Severus, old chap. Belt up. Grow some bollocks, will you? Just…just do. Please. Do this for me.” Those reflected eyelids flickered softly; the reverse-image hand on his reverse-image belly curled and tensed, perversely.
“For…it.”
He couldn’t face himself, couldn’t even manage to gaze his fill at his own bloody image. He was but a bloody child, Severus thought balefully, pretending that if he couldn’t see it, then it wasn’t there.
“Bugger, bugger, bugger.”
Failed again. But he would do.
“I hate me.”
Would do, would do, would do-what he had to accomplish, what he must, what all that bloody honour a hero came freighted with called him to do.
“Bugger.”
Through his teeth, Severus sighed again, blinking hard and mentally forcing his own chin up, even as his spine curled in, both forearms moving to curve protectively about the excess poundage visible at his waist. It instantly altered his reflection: he sagged where he stood and the bulge in his midriff was visibly larger, framed as it was by brand-new sleeving. More obvious.
Fail, fail, fail. Never in his life had he failed so. So.
“Bear it,” he gritted, squaring his shoulders, staring at his own toes. “Bear down.”
Posture was all important; good posture was a must, Poppy had said. He attempted to wrench himself upright, but his own body was fighting him. It wanted only to curl up and perhaps die of shame.
“You can, you idiot Wizard,” he kept on grimly, shuddering as he straightened, spine creaking and popping as he did. It was only himself before his furtive eyes, the Dog wasn’t even in the picture yet! If he couldn’t control himself, that what bloody hope had he? And yet-and yet!
“You can bear anything; old chap; haven’t you proved that?”
For all that was holy and all that was not, he could no longer run.
He could no longer hide, ignore, obfusticate, shrug off or delay. The Dog simply must know-must be told. Daddy Dog…sire…sodding father-to-be!
“/Nh…/”
Hesitating, his wide-eyed, pale-as-death-warmed-over image nodded at him, just the barest bob of chin.
No. Fathers-to-be. He was one. And Madame Maulkin-the knowing old puss-had unerringly kitted him out in paternity robes. Without even asking his pleasure or preference. Final blow, wasn’t it? That a little old Witch could take one look at him and simply just know?
“Bear it, you fool!”
He gulped. His own words caught up to him, with all the grace of a herd of erumphant. Flushed scarlet. Posture might be everything, nuance was more than.
“Must, must, must simply--oh, gods. I did not just say that!”
It was beyond rude to jest, even at his own tortured reflection, even in the privacy of his own rooms. Jocularity: the root of all evil. Curse the bloody fatuous doggy-brain who’d started this hare, then!
“Oh, gods, oh-gods, oh-gods, not ‘bear it’, then-anything but that!” The mirror of him was making startled blowfish motions, opening and closing its mouth in pantomime: ‘How you could?’ Severus scowled at it; growled at it, wanted to rend his own bloody dressing room mirror from corner to corner and toss the wrecked kindling out the door for the elves to deal with. And in the interim, his own damned mouth ran on, unhelpfully. Burbling nonsense, when this was no laughing matter-far from it!
“Be serious, Severus!”
Before him his reflected eyes widened like the black holes of Hell itself. He brought both hands up slowly, clutching at his own head, shaking it, his mouth a rounded ‘O’ of flabbergasted shock. Some wee part of his functioning brain pinged cheerily-was this not just like another Muggle’s work, a painting he’d seen once?
…Munsch, was it?
“Fuckity-fuck!”
He halted, wide-eyed and gawping, and stared at his belly with glazed eyes. Parted his lips once or twice before he dug up the gumption to continue.
“…What am I even saying-there has to be a better way to say-to approach-to produce-oh, Merlin-I cannot believe?” They both shook dark heads, horrified, he and himself. How…gauche! How juvenile! Making a joke of it was not a solution. “Was that another frigging pun?” he demanded of himself, poking the mirror. “It was! It bloody well was! He’s affecting me, the git! It’s all the damned Dog’s fault! He’s fucked me up!”
“…oh-gods. No!
“No, I won’t. Shan’t, no-uh-uh! No more, do you hear me? No more of this foolishness. Stop right now.”
He nodded. Twice. Both of him. Matter settled; he’d resist, then. No more stabs at black (oh-gawds!) humour, no more fall-flat puns. All there was to it.
“Blast and damn.”
Still nodding, his other self. Carefully, deliberately, but not at all as if his other self believed a word he was muttering, either. Not helpful. Wasn’t.
Asinine Dog.
Severus went on with his own private pep talk. It was for the best, really. He didn’t like talking to himself, but in lieu of the Dog-his real and intended audience, later-his reflection would have to make do.
“….face it then. That’s it.”
Well. He was facing it, yes? He stared, eyes on that one particular bit of him that required facing. It-him-Them. It!
“Be a man, not a fecund mooncalf.”
Oh, but….all the round softness of it, all the taut feel of it, all the weight of it, nestled right below his heart. New clothes did not make the man…any different. Not substantially, no.
“I’m a Wizard, a perfectly respectable Wizard. And this was a perfectly respectable mistake, alright? I didn’t know! I didn’t…know.”
He looked a right sight, despite it: all teeth, actually, and flashing wide dark eyes, fringed lushly. Habitual scowl and equally normal sallowness, hollow-eyed, bags under them like luggage and twitchy as the damned Dog was on his caffeine habit. He was under stress and it showed itself. Much like the old days. Excepting….excepting, he wasn’t creeping about for fear of his fellow Death Eater’s ratting him out to Voldemort. No. No…it was far worse than that.
“Merlin help me.”
Dire.
“Merlin help him, the shaggy-bottomed sod! Just you wait till I get my hands round that throat of his!”
It was what Black would say to him. When they met, as they’d fallen into the habit of meeting up come a Friday evening, every Friday evening, bar none. Or-and this was misery to contemplate-what he would not say, because Black was notoriously inarticulate under any sort of real pressure. Hadn’t been able to talk his way out of Azkaban on a murder rap, had he? Hadn’t been able to civilly take his own beloved godson aside in a casual, non-threatening manner and explain that he never meant to harm him and really, what was all the fuss about? Hadn’t managed to say much about a lot of things-ever. His tongue seemed all but useless to him, the idiot, excepting for certain…physical…things.
Like licking. And (um) sucking. And…er. Well.
“That tongue of his!” Severus glared at his betraying flush, reflected. “Those fingers! That cock!”
Lupin. Whomping Willows. Betrayal. Humiliation. Lily….and Lily’s bloody damned spawn Harry Potter, who’d snuck up on an unwilling Severus when he wasn’t looking behind himself for once and then daringly been actively decent at him, after, the little git. Urged him to make peace, have a drink with his old enemy, Black-lay old bones to rest, as it were. Since old bones were back, in the form of Black.
“Bloody-stupid-Potter!”
Black had fussed, inevitably. Didn’t he always? Trademark trait, that.
“Dog’s damned godson, isn’t he?” Severus demanded of himself, reflected. “Must be his fault, then-all his fault! Silly cur must’ve taught him. Bloody Potter. Urgh!”
Fussed, instead, did Black-the-Dog, and threw himself into the whole debacle, just like a Gryffindor. Played the martyr; dove in-rolled in it. Black bloody thrived on fuss. Ever the dramatic sod, was he. And ever the complicated and unnecessarily-so sod, as well.
“’Go out, Snape’, he said,” Severus mimicked grotesquely, “’and have some bloody fun for yourself. Live a little. You’ve earned it, haven’t you?’”
Nothing ever bloody simple. Drinks, awkward, more than awkward: tense-then drunk, naturally, both of them, soonest. Falling over furniture drunk, falling into one another drunk. Then cock, smiles, mumbles, sperm-all of those easy enough, once begun, yes, but not simple. Not straightforward.
“Ah, bah!”
Far-frigging-from it!
Which went nowhere at all in explaining why Severus found him inexplicably attractive enough to then fall into bed with. It, in fact, said a great deal about the state of Severus-what he wanted; where he was going-much of which he’d no interest in hearing discussed, not even as recited to him by his own mental voice. Or Potter’s mental voice, either, for that matter.
Interfering little git, Potter. Always had been. Look where Potter’s good-intentioned advice had led him, eh? SWMW w/BB*, is what!
Maybe he’ll take it properly, like a real man, his mental voice had advised Severus. Black, that was, not Potter.
Hopefully, he’d thought that, very hopefully, though it was monumentally foolish to hope for any single thing where Black was concerned, because the git was contrary and willful like the wind. Maybe... (and this was his own hind-brain talking at him, jabbering on like a bloody jarvey), he’d thought, it’ll be as nothing to Black. An aberration easily gotten over. A bump in the road but not a huge one-not life-altering.
(A bump…a bump…a bump! Curse his own eyes for conjuring up a bloody Bump!)
They could…still ignore it? Mayhap…it would…go away?
Blinking abstractedly, Severus settled into a think. By all means he needed one, didn’t he?
His voice had ventured that possibility as possible, just before he’d bowed bitterly to the inevitable and gone out shopping…again. He, for one, couldn’t afford to ignore it. Not in the broad daylight of a late May Friday afternoon, which he’d been avoiding with the assiduousness of a damned vampire lately. Sunny-fair-miserable weather, really-bah! And for good reason.
Wizards who went travelling abroad, leaving the relative safety of their familiar dungeons and carrying about the innocent unborn in their mid-life paunches were not exactly the norm just yet, were they? The streets hardly abounded with such as he. He’d be laughingstock, especially if he ran across any of his old students. Potter, for example. Young Malfoy.
Gods forbid, not Granger!
Bloody Potter, though. It was his damned godfather was the cause of this!
“Have drinks,” Potter had said to him. “Just…you know….drinks. Talk. Er…? Make peace?”
And Severus himself. He’d been to blame.
Make love, more like!
Never doubt it, it had been Severus himself who was the real cause. It couldn’t be denied; he’d not dream of it. If Albus had taught him anything, it wasn’t to lie to himself. It was his own sodding bed he’d made-with much nicer sheeting now, granted, now the Dog was snoring there on a regular basis-and now he must lay in it….or rather, not lay, nor lie. Tell the truth and nothing but. To the idiot Dog. (But not Potter-never Potter!)
The…er. Sire. As he-apparently-was to be the damned dam! Blast and damn and bugger!
“Puppy!”
Severus chuckled aloud, darkly. He could see his bed, behind him, and likely the site of the massacre of his peace, fancy sheets and all. Could’ve been Black’s bed, but likely it was here, in Hogwarts. All those teenaged pheromones, running about, influencing mid-life interrupted idiots like himself and the Dog
“I’m having a bloody puppy, I am!” The note of hysteria he heard issuing from his own mouth didn’t escape Severus for a second.
Bloody bed, bloody Dog, bloody Voice!
“Thank frigging Brede it’s not a litter of them, eh, Mirror?”
Severus hated it when his mental Voice-who, come to think, came across as a mix of old Albus on his very worst days of lemon-drop barmy and Poppy, at her most giggly-bint-post-Battle-Staff-party-self-butted into his head proper and proceeded to sway the rest of him in some direction he’d absolutely no wish to go. His mental Voice had no compunction about twisting the facts to suit; his mental Voice was a fucking twat, that’s what. Mental!
It had said blithely, upon coming across a willing Black-and he recalled this part clearly-‘Oh, why ever not, Severus? Have a little fun, why don’t you?’
And when Severus had stumbled into the man in the way-back, dart’s-end dim corner of the Leaky, by chance or mayhap due Potter’s puerile schoolboy machinations, it had led him to downing shots of fiery liquids with great and unnatural abandon and then all but shoved him into bed (up against the wall, in the loo, actually, but no matter) with the exasperating, canine-minded, do-gooding, Unspeakable git after. And it had claimed, weeks ago now-and soppily, and taking a dip into the utter perverse-that the whole stupid situation of a pregnant Wizard was alright, really. Was. Alright! To be going on with! As was the sex and the drinking, the laughing at nothing-the company and all that came along with.
Fuss, was it. It was!
Lately, it had whispered seductively in his inner ear that he’d always really rather wished after a sprog of his own to care for-(“Hah!” Severus snorted aloud again, despising it heartily, the Voice)-and that it wouldn’t be such an awful thing, the sprog being half the fussy git’s get.
Good blood there. Not like Snape’s own, at least.
Git was a fine looking man-crazy as a loon, yes--and a quite decent Wizard, wasn’t he? Git was charming, where Severus decidedly wasn’t. Git even had a Position of Importance in the Ministry-something research-based in DOM, which made sense really, as he’d been ‘something in DOM’ whilst trapped in the Veil. Unspeakable Black, indeed!
Karmic, really. It figured.
Severus sighed; he did that often, lately. Rubbed his blasted belly, which thankfully didn’t shift or even burble. That hadn’t yet started but he knew it was coming. He’d always had a sneaking suspicious he’d come a’scupper over bloody Black…
Git was beloved by all, even crazy as a loon. Which Severus definitely wasn’t. Make a good parent, which Severus might also. Just might.
“I’m fat.”
Crazy, though. Maybe he was too, at that.
“Oh, god, I am. One look at me and he’ll know, I just know it!”
What had he been thinking? Had he been thinking at all, actually? Clearly not. He’d been bedded by Black and that was absolutely the side-effect of not-thinking.
“These bloody robes! What was that old pussy thinking, stuffing me into these? They’re two sizes too small!”
Or thinking in circles or loops.
“I’ve never, ever, in my whole life, been fat.”
Or feeling instead…which was dangerous.
“No. I am not fat-I am pregnant, blast me. I’m also too old for this,” Severus sighed. “I’m old. I’m not…pretty.”
He was all sighed out-he felt flat, which he wasn’t. Though, granted, only in one place was he fat. “Not pretty like him, the arse bandit.”
His reflection winked merrily at him-which was really rather unconscionable of it, but so. Always did have an eyes for a pretty face, hadn’t he? Just look to Lily…dear Lily. She’d never had done this to him!
“Bother. Too old to go through with this and it doesn’t suit me. I look…fat. I do. Maybe he’ll not notice?” The mirror shrugged its gilded corners, wisely keeping mum. He blinked. “And tired. I’m bloody well exhausted; of course I look tired! Wait! Did I say that already? I did, yes. Mind’s going, too. Stupid sodding hormones. And I never should’ve…what in the name of sweet Circe was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking, that’s what!”
He could say this ad nauseum-and yes, he’d been a bitty squiffy about the gills lately, thanks ever so, Mother Nature, Father Black-but it made not a whit of difference. Not a whit.
“Right, here goes.” He raised an arm in a brand new sleeve dramatically, gesturing towards the waiting hearth. “Dog, in ten. Must-belt-up, Severus. Must!”
Dropped the hand abruptly and tightened his belt gingerly-a brown leather one he’d purchased at the Muggle emporium Harrod’s, in Men’s, in order to sustain the equally Muggle denims he wore close-tight about his thin hips. At least that section of his anatomy was still trim and happily the same as ever-boney and jutting out, yes, but then he’d never been fat.
He was now.
“Can’t avoid it, can’t do anything other than this,” he muttered darkly. “Simply. Must. Go!”
….Not scrawny either, precisely, but not anything near the annoying bursting-of-health look his old enemies the Marauders had practically beamed of, back in the day. No, even then, in the first fine flush of youth, he’d been a scraggly sort of soul. Angular and all elbows. Painfully tall and painfully sharp-edged. Thin-skinned, picky and pale as a proper dungeon-resident should be. Black admitted to having been…interested, then.
“Wiil. Go.”
Severus had been appalled. How dared he, randy cur?
“Was. Not. Thinking. Shame!”
He’d had another shot, just to bear the concept of Black finding his younger self attractive.
“You’re the one had your pants down in a trice, didn’t you?” Severus looked up sharply, grimacing at his reflection. “Randy sod. Desperate.”
Black had shrugged, had winked. Had drank-er, drunk. His pale throat had moved sinuously as he quaffed and Severus clearly recalled his own mouth going dry as dust and his cock revivifying with a vengeance. All those years walking about with nil sex drive and then that? That bloody blast of hormones, practically swamping him where he sat, staring with slobbering hunger at Dog’s throat? Aching for him. Wanting his cock down it more fervently than ever he’d wanted anything ever before?
Severus, all at once suddenly prone to hormonal attacks, flushed scarlet…with remembered humiliation.
“What was I-blind? I don’t think.”
Oh-god-no! He’d been doomed from the start! He wasn’t Black’s usual sort-no, not at all. Milk-white skin, with never a blemish, yes, check. Large dark eyes, given to being veiled by equally long dark lashes-okay, right. So? His mother had always claimed he’d the finest set of eyes-the most speaking-in either side of his mucked-up family tree. Much good they’d done him, though, when it came down to making a case for himself. No one had ever believed him. They’d not looked past the way his too-thin lips twisted into an absentminded scowl; they’d not been effective at all in swaying the love of his life when he was pleading, nor ever useful on that old sodding wily git Albus, when he was pleading again. Later.
“Botheration.”
He’d not been aware they even still spoke at all till Black remarked upon it, a month later. He’d already been up the damned duff by then and hadn’t even known it, so lost was he in sensation.
“Shame on you, Severus, for being a fool.”
It was only a fool that couldn’t face himself in a common-garden household mirror, wasn’t it?
Only Black had ever mentioned them favourably, after Severus’s mother departed. Had said he thought they were…thought they were….
Attractive.
Severus swallowed; watched himself swallow, his Adam’s apple moving painfully against the starchiness of his new collar-buttons. He never recalled being considered particularly attractive. Before Black.
“An easily swayed fool and a too-old-for it one. Frigging idiot!”
It was a mystery to him, that chaos which inexplicable passion wrought. In bed with a Dog, one that nuzzled and didn’t nip-he was done for.
“Idiot Dog, more like. Blind, blind, blind. Ruined for life, I don’t doubt. Azkaban, of all things! No wonder!”
He simply couldn’t bring himself to muster any self-sympathy; he rubbed at his belly instead. Sighing.
“Shite . I’m tardy. Blast.”
With an impatient gesture and his teeth clamped together hard, sucking it in, he tucked in the button-down he’d bought to go with the fashionable denim trousers. All was stiff and starchy, brand new---all was hampering and odd.
Strange way of fastening up; weird how it clung to him, his garb. He was used to robes and capacious ones at that. Ones that billowed nicely; made a statement. But Black aped the Muggle look constantly, with his worn-out old blue jeans and his slovenly t-shirts, his long black beaten-up leather duster and that silly damned fedora. Went along perfectly with the look of the loud petrol-smelling monster; went with the fact Black was a dog on the loose of its leash.
“…Time to face the music, I s’pose…”
‘Course, Black in his elegant Unspeakable robes was an entirely different matter. Buttons! Shiny…and then the trim, all black velvet piping on gunmetal grey-ah…yes. Well. Striking.
It wouldn’t hurt, Severus had thought-the Voice said-to take a step or two in the direction of middle-arena and maybe wear something other than his old fusty black robes for once when he was meeting up with Black. As the trousers-stiff though they-clung to his bum, attractively. The salesgirl had said. And the shirt was properly fitted-had cost the earth in those newfangled Muggle Euros, too, so it should, being very dear-and the finely worked Italian-made belt showcased a waist that wasn’t quite-wasn’t quite entirely stretched out of shape. Only a little fat---just there.
The salesgirl hadn’t noticed he was up the duff. Fortunately.
“I despise music. I despise talking.”
Severus regarded himself one last time, turning this way and that, peering hard.
“I despise music while I’m talking.”
That aside-fancy. It seemed Muggle clothes rather suited him. He was hardly a clothes horse-had never been-but…attractive, Black had said, hadn’t he?
“I hope I look-no, I don’t!” He ground his heel into the carpet, scowling thunder. Even his boots were new; matched his belt-exact same shade. They would likely begin to hurt soon; his feet had a nasty tendency to swell. Poppy had said it would get better; Severus had no faith in that. “I don’t bloody well care, alright? I don’t care!” he snapped his teeth on each syllable. “So what if I’m-if he’s-I. Don’t. Care!”
You’re late! He’ll be waiting on you! sang the Voice. Bloody Voice.
“Don’t care.”
It was most definitely the worst of times. Severus nodded grim at his reflection, cursing them all-all times, but especially this one. Because now, without fail (he’d already pushed it way too long, really) he would be called upon to explain to Black the whole silly-horrid situation and Black would then be called up to-called up to-
To act. Fuss. Act fussily. At him.
“Blast,” Severus eyed himself one last time. “No, this is unbearable. I don’t want to.” He would do, he supposed, as well as any man would do when in his forties, three months gone, and worse for the wear of it. “At least it’s not as visible as before; there’s that.”
When three months gone with an unlooked-for and really very much unwanted pregnancy.
“My robe’s alright. I guess.”
When faced with explaining the above to an unnecessarily over-dramatic, fussy-by-nature, not-quite-boyfriend Dog-man.
Er…lover. No…male acquaintance with side benefits. Who barked. How humiliating! How…unwanted.
Charming arse. Loud mouth, said nothing worth noting.
“Blast.”
Alright…not unwanted, either. More like…shocking. Woof!
Severus swallowed hard; he was in shock. He’d worked his way up to it, which was very unlike him, but he wasn’t like him anymore. He was now like Them.
All the Dog’s doing.
“Blast, I said!”
The mirror flinched back. Stared at him with great concern. Very unSlytherin-very much unSnape.
“No. Really. I can’t be doing this; I can’t.”
He needed a cuppa more than a pint. He needed it something awful and it was starting to look like it would be a bloody miracle if he could sort what he needed from what was. He could only imagine how difficult his life would be for the next few hours-maybe only minutes, if Black panicked right off, which he could do-being horribly, evilly, terribly difficult and nasty. Fussing; making more of a mess.
“Double blast,” Severus remarked bitterly, damning the universe, and spun to DisApparate. “I hate this. Triple-!”
Now he was in for it.
Part Two: In Which Severus Snape Throws a Tizzy