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Angst

The Heir by Sarablade [Reviews - 1]

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Thanks for your patience (but you must enjoy the ride, too.) We're almost there!

But he's in for such a surprise... it may well shake him off many things.

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They lingered for a moment, much more interested in feasting their eyes on one another than in actual food.

For the difference in their features, they’d grown quite alike in expression. Now two snarky, worn faces suddenly shimmered in timid hope, looking at one another intently, and in each pair of eyes a little light danced, made of an intractable humor that refused to die, and of a hopeful smile their lips were not daring enough to form.

Mutely their hands went up in the rain, hovered over one another's faces… She’d carefully avoided his Glamoured side, but still his features contracted as in anguish as her hand ghosted over his cheek. For the first time in half a century, bar the kiss by the Thames, Severus Snape's skin met another’s, in a touch that was neither a blow nor a showdown for dominance. Inside him a trapped animal hurled itself against his ribs, trying to flee the pain that would surely come after the pleasure... a small overwhelmed child began to weep, sending a dangerous message to his physical lachrymal glands. His throat contracted desperately.

Hermione’s eyes widened in understanding. She inclined her own cheek so it was nuzzling his hand, and opened her lower hand in a gesture of surrender and offering. He took it in his, and held on.

The taller of the two figures stalking them from behind hissed, “Do it! Now!”

“I can’t,” the smalller answered in the same tones. “They’ve got wards all over them.”

Snape was concentrating on the warm brown eyes, honing on them to come back from this place he was so deliciously drowning in. “I’ve known this place for a long time, Her… Hermione. I won’t be surprised by the menu.” I want to spend money on you. That was a first in his life, too, this desire to pamper. His voice was gorged and rough, but she'd never heard him talk so softly. Not even to her-his- the child.

She desperately wished for a place that wouldn’t remind her so much of Lucius, but if it would please Snape to eat there, eat there she would, and enjoy it. By any means necessary. The warning bells in her belly, she told herself sternly, they were just a physical response to the former stress Lucius had wreaked on her here. She wouldn’t let it spoil this for the both of them.


They went through the newly installed weapon detector gates Paris was just beginning to get used to into the large bay windows. The coat-tailed host greeting them was too professional to let his surprise show. He’d served Hermione with Lucius many a time, in many capacities. As to Severus… he remembered Severus as a sulking small boy in the frightful wake of his grandfather, then as a somber adolescent quietly fuming in the shade of the elder Malfoy, then as a dark man always on the verge of-

A green flash from behind the entrance crashed Hermione’s wards, strong enough for Severus to fall as he was hit in the back. It was echoed, almost immediately, by another hex from the other open side of the restaurant, which broke a bay window and sliced through tables and patrons but rebounded on the wards.

Hermione staggered, but she had her wand out and flashing before she’d really understood the situation. The maître d’, for all his Muggle tails and distinguished greying baldness and jowls, was suddenly crouching behind a table, teeth bared in an animal growl. Nasty yellow flashes erupted from his black wand. The new Muggle antiterrorist alarms installed on the Place de l’Opera started howling in the night.

A rain of hexes, from at least two different sources, fell on the protection dome of Hermione’s charms. A vague halo of energy emerged from Severus’ fallen form and enveloped them both.

The battle raged for at least four or five minutes, wrecking the luxurious gilded wood furniture and tapestries, sending exquisitely dressed patrons to crawl towards the kitchen, or writhe and shout in pain as they were hit by the hexes’ ricochets. Another stout man in a white toque had come running in from the kitchens and was hexing all his might with what resembled a ladle, back to back with the maitre d’. With a shout he whipped his ladle in the direction of the broken window on the left, and the human form of a man suddenly materialized as it fell still to the ground.



One of Hermione’s hexes landed on another of their assailants, the taller of the two who’d spoken before. The smaller one, a woman, hissed and hexed her back viciously. Hermione’s wand snapped in two and she quickly ducked to retrieve Severus’.

“Leave the bitch,” growled the man attacker. “It’s him we must eliminate… On my signal as we rehearsed! One, two…” On three they shouted together “Exterminor”!

Two grey-blue flashes lashed from their wands, met with a dark light sickening spark, and the jagged rays of light converged towards Severus in a show akin to a slow-downed blue-grey lightning.

“Behind you!” shouted the cook with the fighting ladle. His protection charm added itself to the magic shield around Hermione and Severus, but it shimmered, then exploded on contact with the blue-grey stream of malevolent energy.

Hermione’s widened eyes caught it all, as if in slow motion. Her lips pursed themselves grimly, and she threw herself over Severus’ body. The deadly lightning hit her side full on. A shout and a jerk, then stunned silence fell upon the restaurant. Even the wounded patrons were still.

From their vantage point behind a corner the first couple of attackers turned to each other. “Did she wound you?”

“It’s nothing,” said the man with a closed face.

“Let me see your wand hand, it’s bleeding… But Anton! This is not your usual wand! Why? What are you doing?” The last question was a strangled shriek, as the unusual wand was pressed to her throat.

“Cardiomortis!”

The witch fell, surprise and pain etched on her face.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” said Anton Dolohov to her convulsing form on the wet pavement. “But now I’m rid of Snape, and what better than a common widowed sorrow to begin my courtship of Bellatrix? Her future husband is sure to get the Ministry. You see, she’ll get the boy now, and she’s the Malfoy next-of-kin, and I do so want to rub Narcissa’s face in it for her despicable treachery against us when I’m Minister. Why, she didn’t invite you to the last tea she gave, even. The gall!”

His wife gurgled on the pavement.

“Oh, my regular wand is at home. Don’t worry for it… Yes, dear. I was sure you’d understand. You will be remembered as another terror victim… and I shall mourn you most decorously. How lucky for me I hate music, and didn’t come with you tonight.”

The man Apparated his wife’s body nearer to the restaurant and the body of the second fallen attacker, and disappeared in a side street as Muggle RAID and police cars came flashing and howling towards the destroyed restaurant.



The elderly maître d’ stood and cast a stasis charm on the restaurant. He bent over the still forms of the English fallen wizards with a closed face, taking in Severus’ half-eaten face and Hermione’s wound. When he spoke, it was in the decisive, clipped sentences redolent of his past as a Resistance chief. Gone were the through-your-nose, slightly effeminate tones of the Haute Gastronomie priest. “Bernard. Levitate those two to the 504 ½ suite, near mine. Before the Muggle police arrive… or the wizarding one. And go bring Docteur Lagras. Discreetly.”

"But-"

"I know he's been retired for fifteen years. Just do it."

“Yes, Guillaume,” meekly answered the man with the magic ladle. “Should I bring my wife in to look after them while I’m gone? Her shift in the hotel is over soon.”

“If she will. Lucille has the Healing gift, even though she never studied. She should have been a nurse…”

“Mebbe,” mumbled the cook with a reluctant smile as he carefully levitated the two bodies. “But I would hardly see her. And with the quantity of mishaps the guests run into in this hotel, she makes more from tips tending their hangovers and boo-boos than she’d get as a full-time job nursing.”

Leaving Guillaume to spin tales for the benefit of the Muggle police, the French Aurors, and the press, Bernard carefully brought the unconscious couple to a suite in the Magical part of the hotel, and laid them side by side on the humongous bed. His face contracted as he recognized Severus. He then called his wife in, updated her and left.

The woman, dressed in the stark black-and-white suit of Head Chambermaid, glided silently in, her sharp heels barely marking the high-pile cream and gold carpeting. Her face closed, too, at the sight of the still wizard and the chaotic, uneven breathe-and-choke jerks of his chest.

She remembered his iron complexion, and the countless women she’d had to patch up after he and his blond, long-haired friend had had their ways with them. Muggles always got the worst, but witches weren’t spared, either. Their black-clothed lot had provided her with many a nightmare in their time, and she’d never understood by which mystery of British idiocy the man wasn’t in their prison island, if they absolutely had had to cure him from the wound he’d gotten... and serve him right, too.

She doubtfully took out a wand from her ruched sleeve and passed it over him, for self-protection as much as diagnostic. Some unknown energy was at work there, something greenish and slippery… terribly strong magic. Terribly dark, and it seemed to be flowing towards the places where the bodies of the two touched.

Muttering disapprovingly, she moved the unconscious woman’s bed to the other side of the spacious room and erected a screen around her, charming it with protective charms. She would have moved the witch to another room altogether, but for her husband’s stark directions.

The woman had seemed plunged in a deep coma, but she moaned as Lucille separated her hand from that of the wizard’s clutching it to move her. He also jerked around, as if trying to find the witch near him.

“Oh no,” hissed Lucille between clenched teeth. “You don’t use her magic to strengthen yourself at her expense. Not on my watch, Mister.”

Some noise at the door…

The bite magic at work in Severus’ body flared in his barely conscious mind… he had to keep on healing his witch. He had to wake up and find her, protect her.

He willed the magic to work faster, better, imagined himself drinking a tall glass of water on a clean hill near Hogwarts and letting its clean energy wash through him... Finally he pulled on the deepest reserves of energy he could find in his wasted body to wake up and find her.

With terrible effort he opened his eyes, and found himself staring at the wrong end of a wand, held in the hands of an elderly man in traditional Healer robes.

“It’s been very long, young Snape.”

The white whiskers comically formed themselves in parenthesis to frame a sardonic smile as Severus vainly tried to move against the magical restraints binding him to the bed. "I used to be your grandfather's Healer, too, and I know exactly what kind of patients you lot can be. Let me help you Heal yourself, young Snape, and then we'll see about this beautiful lady who apparently loves you so much..."


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Two days had passed in a whirlwind of Stakhanovist self-healing and damage containment. Emery was playing with Polly in the suite next to theirs, far from any potential attackers in the London home.

Severus had met with Bellatrix and denied every single one of Dolohov’s “tales”, compounding his affirmations by vigorously pounding into her from every possible orifice until she was sated and languorous with hormone overload, his body aflame with the destructive lust he’d honed for Bellatrix since he was thirteen, and his soul with worry and guilt over Hermione.

“Do. You. Believe. Dolohov. Over. Me?” A word per thrust, as his fists pitilessly pulled her black hair backwards. “Do. I. Look. To you. Like a man. Who’d take. A Mudblood. To a romantic evening. In Paris?” A ringing slap. Bellatrix whimpered in shame, pain and delicious fear. And lust.

His animal rictus covered both his physical strain and his disgust for his betrothed and the bestiality of their coupling (since when had bestiality bothered him?)

In a turmoil of moans and delirious shouts she’d finally shuddered and fell apart under him, and then on his dry rejoinder padded to the cupboard, naked and meek in the cold room, to bring him a stiff drink and humbly lie by him on the soiled sheets.

He’d had a message to send, and an inquiry to make.

He’d slightly tugged at her hair again, signaling her to look up at him as he reclined on her red satin padded headboard. She was so eager to please when you’d fully mastered her… “You’re a real b.tch, Bella,” he’d said almost fondly. “And I’m going to keep taming you.”


The spark of anger in her eyes had been quick to die, replaced by the disjointed hunger that even Voldemort hadn’t resisted. A brilliant, vulnerable girl brought up by a reluctant adoptive mother, loathe to let the fruit of the rape of an imbecile by a sadist mix with their blond sweethearts…

He let his thoughts wander as he idly pinched and twisted a nipple until she moaned. Fleetingly wondered whether Voldemort had been her first, or if her one of her fathers had preceeded him. She’d been his first, on Riddle’s orders probably, and already back then he’d sensed she was desperate for a master, desperately flaunting her strength in the hope some man would vanquish it, and her. He would be careful to dominate her when they were married. For the benefit of them all.

“Dolohov’s wife getting killed was certainly a bad turn… for Dolohov. I’ve never liked the witch, himself, or her husband. Even Narcissa’s tiring of him, but you can still choose him over me, Bella. If you don’t mind bad breath...” She’d deferentially joined in his spiteful chuckle.

He’d plodded on. “But something definitely happened to my Mudblood… looks like she’s suffering from a relapse of the poisoning, like during her first winter. Maybe a renewed attack on her birthday,” he’d suggested as if thinking aloud.

“That’s impossible!” Bellatrix’ usually out blown eyes had viciously narrowed, confirming what he’d thought all along.

“Do you know anything about this, Bella?” His voice had been artificially tempered, contrasting with the iron hold of his fingers on her cheeks. She’d moaned in mixed pleasure and pain as his nails bit into her flesh. The bed was nearh her fireplace, and he lit it up with a flit of his hand and maneuvered her so both of them were very, very conscious how easy it would be for him to push her into the flames.

“I swear I had nothing to do about your little slut’s bout of… malady.”

“Really?”

She spread her red talons in a show of sincerity, her hysteric guts screaming at her to satisfy the alpha male who’d just possessed her so masterfully. “Really, Severuss… The boy will be ours now. What do I care about your little slut?” as long as you continue to f.ck me so beautifully? For all the whirlwind of sick feelings between them, they understood each other perfectly.

He hated her in the same way he’d hated Voldemort, a burning feeling made of natural repulsion and frustration at having (through his own fault) given this noxious creature so much control over his life. Some waylaid pity, too.

At the price of another bout of frantic copulation he’d extracted himself from his future wife’s clutches, and Apparated back to the 504 ½ suite.

He was Hellishly pale, skeleton-gaunt in spite of the plates of food hauled in every three hours from one of the best restaurants in the world, and even the petits choux sent by the dozen kept failing to wake his hidden sweet tooth.

Two days passed. His sleep was sparse, nightmares-ridden and sweat-drenched, and his waking hours spent promenading Emery in beautiful Paris gardens where the children’ slides themselves were work of arts, Apparating to his London home to brew new potions for Her, and kneeling by her bed as the potions failed to wake her and his sick stomach threatened to throw his heart on the floor where it belonged, together with the Firewhisky and coffee he indulged in far too largely, the coffee before the brewing and the spirit each time the potions failed.

It was now almost three in the morning and he was kneeling at her side, one of her lifeless hands held in both of his, his forehead abutted on the thin arm. An almost empty potion vial, and three equally empty whisky bottles lay on the carpet near him. “I don’t know whether you can hear me, Hermione. Whether you ever will wake up, you who deserve to live so much more than I. I have failed you.” A hard chortle. “I have killed you. I have been a- a Frollo to your Esmeralda, a-“

“You killed nobody, my son. At least not her… It was her choice.”

Despite the alcohol in his system he was up and standing between her bed and the door, wand out, and the intruder fell to the floor Paralysed even before he’d completely entered the room.

From his dubious vantage point on the carpet Healer Lagras reminded himself all he knew about both the patients in this room, and patiently waited.

“I’ve spent most of the time you were away standing watch over this young lady, in turns with Lucille,” he uttered as soon as Snape allowed him speech. “If I’d wanted to harm her…”

Reluctantly the younger wizard let him stand up, too. Neither man let out any sign of recognizance, and yet both internally trembled at the sight of each other.

“When will she wake? What happened to her?”


O just let me out already, Hermione prayed. She felt so weak physically, and yet her psyche was strong. Imprisoned in her own comatose body. I want to wake up!


The elder wizard weighed each word carefully. “You were told about the skirmish.”


“Very succinctly. By Guillaume.” The name rang foul and proud in Snape’s mouth, respect and enmity warring in his clipped tone. “What happened to her? Why won’t she wake up?”


“This young lady here…” This young lady there had been a very special patient of Healer Lagras. He, too, had patched up Death Eaters’ victims innumerable, quite in the same way he’d patched Resistance women and witches during WWII after Nazis and Grindelwald supporters had… had them. With a soft hand on their wounds, and a harsh burning hatred for their wounders, of which the dark man he’d just found sobbing was one. But this one he’d never been able to hate. He knew him from so long ago…


As to the witch, he’d only seen her before with the previous British Minister of Magic. Malfoy had been particularly vicious in his attempts to break her, but had never shared her with any other Death Eater – his personal bodyguards, painful though they could be, were little more than animated dildos, performing only as he’d instruct them. Malfoy had stood for the price of exorbitantly expensive medicines for her, where in other cases he’d just nixed the girl as “operating loss” if the treatment became too dear. And from the second he’d diagnosed her pregnancy, Lagras had seen Malfoy change towards the girl.


Change so much, that he’d been only mildly surprised at the news of the British Minister of Magic’s murder by his Breeder…


What she was doing with the Serape scion was a guess he didn’t want to get wrong.

“I didn’t tell Guillaume about my diagnosis. It’s… somewhat personal.”

“She’s my indentured servant. She’s got no secrets from me.” At least she shouldn’t, Snape thought acerbly. He produced for the Healer the proof of Hermione’s link to him.


“You were hit with an Avada Kadavera.” Snape heard an unspoken question in the statement.

“And an Exterminor.” Damn if he was going to tell this French charlatan about his bite magic. Even though the bite magic didn’t explain it all.

“Indeed.” The Healer took a parchment full of bloodwork results and Arithmantic equations from his robes and gave it to Snape. “The reason you didn’t die, young Master Snape, is because… You are an especially strong wizard, Sir. This,” the Healer gestured towards Snape’s half-eaten face and the wriggling horrors on it, “is probably part of your resilience. But still you should have died. The main reason you’re awake, Sir, is because at the time you were hexed you were protected by a shield erected by this young lady... a transfer of energy which sucked part of the AK to her.” The Healer took a deep breath. “And then, she threw herself between you and an Exterminor ray.”

“This is not possible. The Exterminor must be crafted for a specific victim.” Unless… Snape’s impassible exterior almost splintered. His heart was probably hammering cracks in his malnourished ribs as he talked. His ears rang. He wanted to scream.


O Merlin, she shrieked in silent, comatose, irrepressible glee. She would have laughed like a hyena and jumped all over the place, if she only had the strength to open an eyelid. I gone done a Lily Potter on him!
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Any guesses where it's going? (he he)


The Heir by Sarablade [Reviews - 1]

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