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The Heir by Sarablade [Reviews - 5]

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A/N: Not mine.
I wish to sincerely thank all the reviewers, you make this a lively, inspiring adventure.
For those who remember H in the last sentence of last chapter, this sentence has been deleted... sorry for those who rejoiced early.

Hope you enjoy the transition into H's story.



His laugh is that of my dream husband. Rich and grave and boyish and hearty. A perfectly harmonic counterpoint to Emery's crystalline peals. Too bad I can't open my eyes or move my head and look at them. They sound happy.

Wait a sec… Happy? Both of them? Yes, definitely. I so wish I could look at them, but I can't move. Even breathing is difficult. Thinking, too…Too fuzzy.

I must be dying. I'm feeling, but my thoughts are… unorganized. So unlike me. Dying, then. Somehow I don't care so much, it's obvious Emery is in good hands, and loved. Loved by Severus Snape. Most people would dart screaming to the hills, but it makes me feel so warm… Like mother like son, except for me it was only a dream, back then… never happened. Never will, either, though these last days… Can't think.

Oh well, if he loves Em, and laughs as he does now, and protects him as he promised, I guess I don't mind dying; I feel I've outlived myself anyway. Too tiring.

I'm tired… but I'm unconscious, how can I rest from doing nothing? There's that weight in my head and on my chest, pulling me under, making it hard to breathe.

Sometimes he eases it, but how? Ah yes, the cream. Sometimes he gives me that arnica and ginseng-based thing, and I feel better. Or maybe it's only the way he smears it on my lips and puts a dab on my tongue… always a caress in his touch, something I never knew he was capable of… I must look a fright, and yet he cups my face, traces its wrinkles with such… gentleness (I must be going gaga, as a preparation for dying. As if he'd be gentle to me…) I know it's the wrinkles, I feel his three fingers following them on my forehead, dipping at the middle between the eyebrows, continuing until that soft place where temple meets hair, and feeling it as some feel a fabric… sometimes he just strokes my neck, around the carotid, after he checks the pulse. So softly it's almost a prayer. So softly I'd cry.

I think… I think once, or maybe twice, he put his lips there, not kissed or anything, just his lips, and a deep breath through the nose… as I used to do to check Emery's temperature… and then… was it a sob I felt? But usually only his hand. It's dry and rough, but he touches me so…lovingly… it can't be him… I know it is, though, I can smell. Whisky and coffee and leather and his very own very male fresh sweat I remember from when I was a child and something… something like an open belly wound, but different…His smell makes me salivate when he's so close, sometimes it makes me moan. When he does that I never try to wake up. Although it's a long time since I last succeeded. Maybe I'll just fade away without opening my eyes again…

I always feel better when they're in the room, more alive. Especially when Emery's on me, I almost feel I can move, although it's harder from day to day. When they're away it's harder… My eyes almost opened once under his hands, I felt them flutter. I think he did too, for he took his hand away as if he'd been burned, like he did when he twisted my arm. He never touched me again that day, although I felt his eyes bearing into me for the longest time, and although he kept feeding me potion after potion. Without his hands it won't work, I think.

I hear the rain on the window, and the fire crackling, and his laugh mingling with Em's… he's teasing him now, calling him a dunderhead cadet. It's his voice and his words, but they sound… kind, and loving, and funny (apparently I'm dead already, but no, I must fight to breathe and it hurts)… and Em… Emery is talking? How long have I been unconscious? And my job? Somehow I don’t… I can't care. It feels safe here, cozy and safe, lying under a silky comforter which his rough hands have tucked around me only minutes ago… (I think it's what woke me, his hands on me, if I can be called awake…anyway I felt it, so I'm not dead), with the fire warming half my face, and the smell of the burning birch, of the cocoa and of the toasted crumpets they're sharing, and the sounds of Emery and…him, playing. Playing? Laughing? Drinking hot cocoa? I don't know for the rest of me, but I'm brain dead for sure. Or crazy. O my God. I went crazy, like Neville's parents. But it's nice. Better than dead, for sure. I think I should be happy for Neville's parents, if that's what being crazy feels like. Too bad I won't get to tell him.

I'm so tired. Breathing is such an effort. Snape's calling to Emery in a tone both decided and inviting... It must be time for something. Such a beautiful voice... He's taking the blanket away… Oh, and that's Em, burrowing and opening my shirt. Is Snape looking? Oh no… I can't move… here, Em's latched. This boy drinks like an oil pump. Way to go, boy... how I want to look at you… I'm sounding American again, how funny…And he's heavy… I…I can't control my arm, but somehow it's gone and hugged him. There may be something good in me left. His small pudgy hands on my breast... have they grown? I think so. My head is empty… The other side now… my shirt is still open… Is he looking? Am I blushing? Both my cheeks feel hot, now.

He's never touched me there. Only to help Em nurse. I think. He's doing it again… Em's gone, and those big rough hands of him are covering me with the blanket, but they're still under the shirt. Not groping, just moving upwards, caressing that bony expanse of skin between the breasts and the collarbones… the neck… He's saying something, but so low I can't make it… His voice is pulling strings in my belly that never were there, all the way to his hands on my neck. Can he sense my pulse quickening? I feel my breath hitch and my lips part, and I can feel his eyes on them. I just can. Could I please open my eyes? Somebody?

Emery's whining somewhere near me on the floor. He's just thrown something. The velvet voice has changed back into the cold commanding annoyed jeer I knew the Professor by. Em's crying now. I hope Snape's not going to hiss and go away with a bang at the door and send in this horrid elf like last time (I wasn't aware there was a last time, much less that I remembered it).

The door. He's gone… He's taken Em, too. I hear his wails growing weaker as they're going down the stairs... I'm cold. I must open my eyes. I… must… open my eyes. Breathe. I… must…. Breathe. I… must….





He'd met Ginny at the door of his house, thrust the small bundle of clothes and gloves and diminutive boots in her arms, like every morning since they'd decided together she'd deal with the kindergarten teachers. He knew the main reason she waited for Her to wake up was to tell her about his debacle with kindergarten teachers. He snorted, shaking his head under his hood as his boots propelled him at high speed towards London wizarding banking district, threading the wet cobblestones.

Something should be done, to ensure the next generation of wizards was not abandoned into the irresponsible hands of those half-wit witches with long painted nails and inane sing-song saccharine-y voices… at least the ones he'd taught were decently cowed by his appearance, but even that was not devoid of inconvenients.

He'd even overheard one, so stupid she'd never been able to brew even the simplest first-year formula correctly, murmuring to her friend that they'd have to pay special attention to the boy, see he wasn't abused. He'd given them abuse all right. But then he'd had to ask Ginny to find a new place for the boy. An at-home nanny was not an option. Not on top of the one he already had, and who was giving him nothing but headaches and hard-ons, each as undesirable as the other. (One big heartache, too, if he'd be totally sincere with himself. But that hadn't happened since the First War, so the heartache he didn't catalogue).

He didn’t want another prying female poking her nose in his personal affairs either, and the elf… couldn’t give the boy the intellectual stimulation he needed. Not because he was his son, really (the genetic part he somehow brushed over), but the lad was exceptionally gifted, if still young. He'd seen enough children to recognize intelligence from the abysmal stupidity of the mass. On the other hand, now he knew who'd taken care of them during their formative years, maybe the children had not been totally responsible for their idiocy.

Lost in his thoughts about kindergarten teachers he almost missed the tarnished copper shield on a rusty chain signaling the entrance to Alexei Dimitrovich Rabunow's exchange counter.

It had not changed much since Rabunov's grandfather had opened it in 1918, haphazardly washed ashore in London by the wave of émigrés from the Russian 1917 Revolution. He'd done what a noblewizard with a good cosmopolitan schooling, a sensible mind and not enough diamonds or moral sense could to maintain his family's spending standards.

The counter laundered everything but clothes: money Muggle and Wizarding, diamonds fake and real, furs and ivory, slaves of all colors, fugitives from every kind of possible regimes, and lately drugs and mass destruction weapons. It had slowly branched into identity papers, false affidavits, and the manipulation of stock exchanges the world over, in a small furtive way.

Snape passed the threshold.

The door snapped shut behind him, and a vigil taller and wider than it blocked Snape's way in. Cornered. "Mister Snape. Have you forgotten you're not welcome here?"

The cashier was already hovering behind the counter, hands crossed before him in a stance both submissive and self-protective. Efortlessly, Snape Stunned and bound the vigil, the cashier, and the other three heavies around the small dusty counter, making a production of wand-waving for the interest of whoever was certainly watching.
Alexei Apparated out of his office within seconds, defensive shields shimmering around him.

Alexei Dimitrovich Rabunow was tall, fat, grey-haired and gold-toothed. His smell wafted expensive cloyingly sweet aftershave, boiled pork-and-cabbage and raw onions on a solid whisky basis. No vodka for the third generation, but an Russian-made intricately carved black alder wand at the end of a meaty, diamond-bedecked left hand which knew how to use it to inflict maximum damage.

He looked at Snape coldly and two sets of lips stretched in the same feral rictus, two animals of the same pelt recognizing each other and posturing before battle.

The cashier raised his head, opened a panicked mouth and began softly whining to himself as he slid down on his haunches.

Snape murmured an incantation, and his face blurred. For a fraction of a second his Glamour inversed, and instead of the disfigured side of his face matching the other one, the right side mimicked the left. A mask of indescribable horror grinned at Rabunow in a nightmarish flash. Then the Glamour inversed again. And again. One of the bound guards, gifted with the Total View, soiled himself. The others, having only received the subliminal impression of the metamorphosis, couldn't explain to themselves the terror and the nausea twisting their entrails. They only knew the primal fear which the dark man evoked in them, and the instinctive urge to give this monster what it wanted to have it out of their lives.

A hissing sound filled their ears although Snape's lips were sealed, the torches on the walls flared red, and the wave of dark Magic shook the shop, waking the echoes of all the evil spells – and numerous they were – which had filled it in the past.

"You have," Snape dropped, "something that is mine. I want it back."

"What are you talking about? I have nothing that belongs to you. The Rabunows know what honor is. The Rabunows do not betray it, nor their masters."

Rabunow the grandfather and Snape's own had crossed wands in 1923, when Rabunow's new exchange counter had tried to steal some of the old and venerable Prince & Jones' counting house's most profitable clients. After some deaths on each side and a considerable loss of profit for both, as patrons fled to shops less prone to murderous attacks during business hours, an uneasy truce had been reached, to be tested again during Voldemort's reigns.

Even as the words left his meaty mouth Rabunow regretted them. There was no Dark Lord to restrain Snape any more, and the Wizengamot police wasn't likely to come to his help. Even bought Aurors wouldn't cross Snape, especially now his relations with the Black sisters had taken this surprising new turn…

Rabunow had expected the girl to be a point of contention between Snape and Narcissa. In fact, it was exactly the reason he'd hired her, thinking he would find a way to win back some favor with Narcissa through the girl, maybe simply by delivering the Mudblood to Her Highness… Better to gracefully accede to Narcissa's request than just turn the girl down, as the other trade houses had. He'd always taken pride in his exceptional business acumen.

Granger's miraculous economic- Arithmantic gifts had been an unexpected boon. Also, the work he made her do would place her directly in the line of fire, should he need a scapegoat to present to the Minister. It had been a stroke of genius to hire her off the street… or so it had seemed at the time.

Snape drew himself to his full-height dueling stance. "The Rabunows are thieving dogs. Have been for three generations, that I know of. Probably more. The Granger girl pledged her work to me. Any indenture to you is therefore unlawful. I am calling on you once to desist from any claim on her."

Rabunows did not cow that easily, although fear was gnawing at Alexei's gut. "You have no right upon the girl. She came to me begging for work out of the streets, and I gave her fair compensation. She has pledged her work to me as an apprentice, for twelve months. Of which she must already compensate one, which she has missed. If I discover you have forcibly prevented her from coming here…"

The wording of the indentures had not changed since 1321, and gave Rabunow the right to enter his apprentice's home and demand she come to work. Half the wizarding world knew the scandalous adoption story, and Hermione's new address, even if she'd declared herself a wandering apprentice. Therefore, she must have protected her right to privacy in the contract, and Rabunow had balked at coming to the Snape mansion without written authority.

It was a good start. "She had no right to engage herself to you after she did to me."

"Show me her engagement to you. I maintain precedence. That, or your whore is a liar."

Snape let his thin Glamored lips form a small satisfied ironic smirk. "If you show me yours."

Thanks to the girl's Unspeakable thinking, there were three codicils to their Unbreakable, executed and witnessed from the date of the main agreement, eminently show-able papers stating different parts of their engagement, each of them lacking some of the most salient details. One of them stated that the girl rented herself as indented household help for an undetermined period of time, with no mention of her right to work outside. It did mention she turned her money over to Snape.

"Well," said Rabunow. "You may have precedence. But I shall be suing her for my damages. Don't think you'll use her in the Prince counting House, after she knows our secrets."

Snape took a bag of Galleons out of his pocket, and a parchment. "I'll give you this, if you sign that. I'm sure your spies told you that she's not solvent; that she's very close to death." A Glamour inversion again. "Do it, Rabunow. She's not worth a feud between our Houses. Bad for business."

"Why don't you just patiently wait for her to die, then? Why's a dying Mudblood worth your coming here?"

Flashes in his brain. Because I won't have her bound to you, or Kissed for earning you unlawful Galleons. Because she's mine. Because I'm going to save her. And then another, with the taste of caution. For the child's sake.

Oh, stop it already,
hummed the sane corner in a long-suffering buzz. you know It's not for the child.

Aloud he said, "because Narcissa Malfoy has entrusted me with a task concerning the Mudblood and her offspring."

Snape sighed, mentally congratulating himself for reaching exactly the right note, and produced another parchment which he showed to the Russian, never releasing his hold on the letter. "For your eyes only," he warned.

Comprehension dawned on Rabunow's wide face as he read, together with a hint of smugness. His bet had paid off.

Snape continued. "Think, Rabunow. You can earn this bag of Galleons and Madam Malfoy's gratitude, which I shall see is expressed in a personal letter to you, or… I can go back to her with your refusal. She'll ask why, and I'm afraid your counter's involvement on the Muggle Stock Exchange will come up. Madam Malfoy's influence…"

Rabunow's hand came up in the air to halt him. "No need for another word, nor for this bag either. You could have avoided all this unpleasant business by simply showing me Madam Malfoy's letter before…"

Yes, thought Snape. But then you wouldn't have been so happy to have wrung it out of me, nor apt to spread the rumor… and maybe you'd have checked it, seen it for the fake it is.

Rabunow was still talking. "Please convey my most respectful sentiments to Madam Malfoy, and assure her of my utmost readiness to serve…" He waxed on for another minute, barely stopping to scratch the indentures with his signature and an "Contract cancelled - all obligations waived this day" in an exuberant quill movement.




As he strode to his next meeting, this time an appointment in the Muggle banking district, Snape told himself he'd have to find a way to wake the girl sometime soon, if he wanted his plan to succeed. Also, you miss her, said the small voice before he squashed it violently.

In the meantime he Transfigured his cloak into an anthracite Zegna suit and matching yellow tie, and his boots into Weston wingtips, only slightly scuffed. The Snape dilapidated playboy heir smoothed his short ponytail, modified the strength of the trendy aftershave to barely endurable, and entered the glass building of the family trust's new headquarters.

Looking at the small image of the man in the elevator given by the security cameras on the small screen embedded in the desk of his twenty-third floor corner office, Jason Gisbert, the all-powerful CFO of the SPNH-VCF, asked himself how and why he always did what this impoverished, pitiful excuse for a man who had drunk himself out of an imposing inheritance and ended up teaching chemistry in a provincial school asked him to. It's almost, thought Gisbert with a smirk, as if he wielded a magical power over me. But not this time.


He chortled at his own asinine humor and promised himself a long weekend with his wife after he'd explained to Snape why he couldn’t possibly employ one of his former students, Harvard graduate or not, without formally putting her on the payroll. And with a hole the size of Africa for the last three years of her resume.



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The Heir by Sarablade [Reviews - 5]

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