Vector's Challenge

Chapter 24--Midnight Honey Vanilla Tea for Two

Back at Hogwarts that evening, Snape and Vector were having a pot of herbal honey vanilla tea together in her sitting room. The fire flickered on the hearth, and it gave the only light in the room. Snape was still puzzled at Emmy's reaction to Laurence. He asked, "Emmy, why did you use such foul language when your cousin said I'd woken you up quickly?"

Emmy paused with the teapot in her hand, and replied, "What are you talking about, Severus?"

"He said something like, 'Knocked her up already, Snape? Quick work, that.'"

Emmy set the teapot down, and frowned at the memory. "Ah, I'd forgotten. Laurence and I have both spent too much time in America, and over there, 'to knock someone up' means getting them pregnant, not 'waking them in the morning.'"

"So Laurence was accusing me of getting you pregnant? And your whole family now believes that I've impregnated you out of wedlock? Absolutely wonderful," Snape muttered sarcastically. "I'd better make out a new will before your father or your brother decide to kill me."

"Well, if I was pregnant, they'd have to wait to kill you until after the wedding," Emmy said. "Our child would need your name, after all." She took a sip of tea.

Snape looked at her. "Our child. My child. Oh dear gods," he muttered, and buried his face in his hands.

"You don't wish to have children?" Emmy asked, in a too-level tone.

Snape sighed. "I never really thought about it." He leaned back in his chair, and looked at the ceiling. "I had always assumed that I would live and die a bachelor."

"Well, that doesn't exempt you from having children," Emmy muttered.

"And why do you say that?" Snape asked.

Emmy smiled faintly. "Uncle Desmond Finnigan was a bit wild in his youth. And some of his children tracked him down a few years ago."

Snape brought his chair down to all fours, and he stared at Emmy. "Are you saying that an uncle of yours has illegitimate children?"

"Four of them, by four different women, all within about a year of each other," Emmy replied. "And he's still single."

"Small wonder," Snape said.

Emmy coughed and cleared her throat. "Let us set the matter of my wayward Uncle Desmond aside." She leaned forward, her face lit by the firelight. "Are you interested in having children, Severus?"

He looked back at her. "I haven't really thought about it one way or the other."

Emmy leaned back and raised her eyebrows. "Really." She took another sip of tea. "And here I thought that all the old pure-blood families cared about was reproducing, when they weren't ranting about purity."

Snape sighed. "Emmy." He paused, then went on, "I don't understand your religious beliefs or your family at all, but the one thing I saw today was that your family cares about each other. All of them care about each other."

Emmy said, "Even my cousin Laurence?"

Severus said, "Let me correct my statement. Everyone except your cousin Laurence."

Emmy threw back her head and laughed.

Severus went on, "In many pure-blood families, it's very different. The children are viewed almost solely as extensions of the parents, and there is constant pressure to conform to the parental idea."

Emmy nodded. "So you have families like the Weasleys who are all-Gryffindor, and families like the Malfoys and Bulstrodes who are all-Slytherin. And they all fall into the same trap of viewing their children as things rather than persons in their own right." She sighed. "I was very lucky, then. Aunts and uncles scattered throughout all four Houses, and grandparents who didn't follow that mentality of insisting the children all fit into a particular mold."

"Don't all the Vectors do mathematics or Arithmancy?" Snape asked.

Emmy laughed and shook her head. "Most of them have the basic talent, but there are those like Mike who want to go out and do, and mathematical ability is useful in so many fields that it opens more doors than it closes. My aunts and uncles did a wide variety of things." She looked into the fire and went on, "My Vector grandparents always said that their job was to be a rose trellis, not a straightjacket or a doormat."

"Eh?" Severus said. "Come again?"

Emmy smiled wryly. "A good parent provides both structure and freedom. Enough structure to support their children, and enough freedom to let them grow."

"A radical idea for the pure-bloods," Severus muttered.

"Oh, not just for wizards," Emmy replied evenly. "My great-grandfather Finnigan was a Muggle, and was quite as bad as any parent I've dealt with here at Hogwarts. He disowned one son of his for marrying a Protestant girl, and another for reading history instead of chemistry at university. Completely disowned them, wouldn't even acknowledge that they were still alive. My grandfather remembered it vividly. And I run into it in the Muggle world all the time as well. Parents expecting their children to be doctors when the child can't stand science, or pressuring them to break up with the person who's absolutely perfect for them, or expecting them to date someone who's absolutely horrid just because the mothers are friends."

"How were your Muggle in-laws?" Severus asked.

Emmy grimaced. "Control freaks and a half, as one of my brothers-in-law's girlfriends put it." She sighed. "I still remember the pre-marital conferences where the priest tried to talk to Brendon and me about parenthood. He told us that it was an enormous responsibility, that it was a position of great power, and that if we weren't a bit frightened at the prospect, we were bloody idiots."

Severus raised his eyebrows. "But I take it that you and Brendon never had any children."

Emmy shook her head. "No." She let out her breath between her teeth. "Sometimes I wonder if it was just as well, and sometimes I wonder if we should have started trying earlier."

Severus looked at her. "Do you want children, Emmy?"

She gave him a wry little smile, and nodded her head. "I would like to try to have children, at least. I know I'm a bit old for it, but I'd really like to try. And a bit sooner rather than later."

Snape snorted. "Most witches can have children until their middle fifties, at least. We're a bit longer lived than those Muggles are."

Emmy set her cup down. "You forget, Severus, that I am one-quarter Muggle, at least. And no one knows who my great-grandmother Vector's father was. I would really prefer not to run the risk of too many complications."

"Wasn't there a rumor that your great-grandmother Vector's father was a jinn?" he asked.

Vector frowned. "Where did you hear that? The family legend is that he was a ifrit. Although, mind you, I'm not entirely sure about that."

Snape said, "Well, if that's the case, that counts as magical, so you're only a quarter Muggle, and you should be as long-lived as any witch."

"Well, what about children, Severus?"

Severus leaned back in his chair, and thought. Children. A girl that looked like Emmy, maybe two little girls... Then he remembered his first sight of the Vector family on the King's Cross platform; two little girls (Emmy was the older of those little girls, he realized now) playing tag while their older brother attempted to order them around, a third pink-wrapped bundle of a baby with dark hair and wide-open brown eyes in a short, plump, blonde's arms, and a tall, thin, dark man with his arm sometimes around the blonde woman, watching the entire scene with a smile on his face. And another memory hit; the same dark man and plump blonde, with those children, the littlest girl no longer a bundle, another little boy, and a bundle of a baby in blue in the blonde woman's arms, in a picture on the cover of the Daily Prophet. The headline, Families Devastated by Attack on Diagon Alley.

More memories came back now: Michael Vector's rage during their sixth year, his disappearances from class, his hair-trigger temper inflamed to fever pitch, the shadows under his eyes, the tear tracks on his face. Dumbledore informing him that that hellish concoction he had made up on Lestrange's request was used in the August 1975 attack. All the things he had done as a Death Eater. His own parents, his mother flinching, his father screaming at her.

Snape clenched his jaw. "I'm not fit to be a father to any child," he spat out.

Emmy's face froze. "I see. Perhaps you should have thought of that before taking me to bed."

"Weren't you using a sterility potion?" Snape asked.

Emmy shook her head, and snorted. "In the first place, as I told you, I've been celibate for the last six years. What need would I have had of it? And in the second place, it's not exactly the sort of thing a good Catholic does."

"Well, how the bloody devil am I supposed to know what a good Catholic does?" Snape retorted.

"You're supposed to ask. And if you don't think that you're fit to be a father to any child, then you should have been the one using the sterility potion," Emmy shot back. She got up and threw open the door to the corridor. She bent down in an exaggerated curtsey, and swept her arm out. "Good night, Severus," she said.

Snape tried to loom over her. "Don't you dare try to throw me out yet, Emmy. This discussion isn't nearly over."

Emmy narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. "For me it is, Severus Snape." She pulled out her wand, and said, "Petrificus Totalus Una Horae." She strode over to the door to her bedroom, and threw it open, stalked through it, and banged it shut. Snape heard the bolt shoot home. "Good night, Snape," she shouted through the door.

Snape stood there in her sitting room, locked in place by the temporary Petrificus Charm. One hour. One hour, and then the spell expires. I'm going to blast That Woman's bedroom door off its hinges. How dare she do this to me? He thought about what he would tell That Woman once this spell wore off. Are you entirely insane, Emmy Vector? Do you realize what could happen if we became parents? We could wind up dead or insane and have a child like Longbottom or Potter, or our children could die before us, as your siblings did. I realize you want to reclaim your status as a good Catholic wife, and I'm prepared to cooperate to some extent, but this is too much! I don't even buy a yearly subscription to the Daily Prophet, and after what happened to your siblings and your husband, you of all people should know better. You have this crazy Catholic idea that marriage and children will make everything all right. You might ask Potter and Longbottom if their parents did them any favors by bringing them into the world.

The Ravenclaw and Slytherin House ghosts flittered about Snape. He stared at them, thinking, Go get me help. Get someone to lift the spell from me. The ghosts vanished, and Albus Dumbledore came running into the room. Dumbledore took one look at Snape's face, and muttered, "There's some acid distillation going on here!" Snape's eyes flashed. Dumbledore cleared his throat, waved his wand and said, "Finite Incantatem!"

Snape spun around as the Petrificus Charm lifted, and went straight toward the bedroom door. Dumbledore moved to block him, and said, "Severus, don't disturb her. I have an urgent errand for you," and led him out the door, as he tried frantically to think of an errand that would keep Snape occupied all the next day.

End of Chapter 24