The Mating Game

Chapter Eighteen

A Day in the Life

Hermione awoke at six in the morning and sat up quietly. Theo, now seven months old, was still asleep in the cot next to the bed. Severus snored peacefully; his hand draped over the side of the bed and rested on Theo’s head.

She slipped out of the room and into the bathroom. The warm water of the shower drizzled over her, washing the vestiges of sleep from her mind. It was late May, but there was still a decided chill in the air at this time of day. Mornings were always overcast at this time of year; the clouds hung low at sunrise but would be gone by eleven. In any case, it seemed too cold to be out of bed. Hermione stayed in the warm shower far too long.

It was only when she felt the tingling in her breasts–clear evidence that Theo would be wanting to feed soon–that she grudgingly turned off the water and toweled herself dry. She hurried back into the bedroom, hoping to be able to dress before feeding her baby. No such luck.

She managed to snatch up her son before he wailed loud enough to wake his father. Severus had had several students in detention the night before; since he didn’t have a class until ten, she figured he deserved a bit of a lie-in.

Hermione breakfasted in the Great Hall with Theo on her lap, as usual. Unlike their counterparts in the Muggle world (for whom jars of baby food were everyday fare), Hogwarts babies were expected to feed on mashed food from their parents’ plates. Theo gnawed eagerly on a slice of plain toast while Hermione consumed her own breakfast.

Next to them, Minerva was attempting to eat a hard-boiled egg without having it confiscated by her own son. "Ready for exams yet?" she said, holding the egg out of reach in hopes that Leo would forget about it.

"Mostly," said Hermione. "I just need to finish the first years’ tests and…Theo!" Her son had managed to grab hold of a whole sausage and was trying to stuff it in his mouth. After she managed to extract it from his grasp, he burst out wailing.

"I’d better leave," she said, eyeing her unfinished plate of scones and fried eggs disappointedly.

"That’s right, you have Hufflepuffs at eight, don’t you?"

Hermione fled the hall while patting her son on the back in a vain effort to calm him down.

***

For the first five months of Theodore Snape’s life, Transfiguration lectures had been viewed from the comfort of a baby sling. Now, however, he found such confinement to be an insult to his independence. He only enjoyed the sling as long as it was accompanied by a change of scenery. Sitting in the tight pouch in a boring classroom was not his cup of tea.

Hermione had set up a playpen in the corner of the classroom and kept it full of toys for his amusement. When he got tired of the toys that were there, she transfigured them into new ones. A good practical lesson for my students, she thought as she changed the stuffed Kneazle into a toy Puffskein. She imagined that, at some point, Theo would not be content to be confined to a small area; she wondered what she’d do then.

After the relatively uneventful lesson with the Hufflepuffs, Hermione took Theo outside for a walk. She met Albus Dumbledore near the greenhouses with his son, which was a good excuse to give her arms a rest. Albus conjured a blanket and they set their two boys down to play together.

"He really loves Leo," mused Hermione.

"Leo really loves him," said Albus fondly.

The boys were staring at each other, enthralled.

"I hate to see what they’ll get up to together once they start walking," said Hermione thoughtfully.

"Indeed," grinned the Headmaster. "Especially if Mr. Weasley decides to join them."

Hermione doubted that would ever happen. Theo was interested in all babies, but he was only truly fascinated by Leo. "Well, it’s good to know that he’ll have a best friend," she said, wishing that she’d had a friend she’d known from birth.

Eventually, of course, she had to go back to the castle. Albus wished her luck in her upcoming lesson (that year’s batch of Gryffindors was especially boisterous) and started a one-sided conversation with his son.

Hermione, having managed to muddle through her eleven o’clock lecture, went eagerly to the Great Hall for lunch. She hadn’t had much for breakfast, so she handed her son over to his father and devoured her soup and bread with relish.

Afterwards she took Theo back to their rooms, set him on the carpet so he could crawl around, and began marking essays. During the next two hours he was fed once, changed twice, and retrieved from the bathroom three times by Peggy. Finally he was settled down for a nap, leaving Hermione free to go to her three o’clock class.

She was glad that he usually slept during this lecture. She had the third-year Slytherins, who seemed to enjoy using magic surreptitiously to disrupt the lesson. Once, when her back was turned, someone had charmed the words on the blackboard to rearrange themselves into "Bite me!" Another time they enspelled the desks to waltz around the room in pairs. Hermione assumed that they got good marks in Charms; they certainly needed work on their Transfiguration skills.

When she returned from class, Theo was not in his cot. "He is waking up, so Master Severus is taking him for a walk," explained Peggy.

"Oh, all right," said Hermione grumpily. She’d been hoping to nurse him; her breasts were achingly full, needing relief.

After searching the grounds for a while, she found them in the herb garden. Severus had just plucked a sprig of lavender and was showing it to his son. "Lavender. This is lavender. Doesn’t it smell lovely?"

She watched in silence as they continued down the path. "This is oregano. See how round the leaves are? Such a nice gray-green. Let me crush a leaf for you so that you can take a whiff of the fragrance."

Hermione unwittingly snapped a twig as she followed behind them. Her husband looked up and nodded in greeting. "Slytherins give you much trouble, love?"

"Perkins tried to get away with using the tickling charm on me, but I managed to deflect it."

He smirked. "I’m sure I could make his life interesting tomorrow in Potions. Shall we go to dinner?"

"We have an hour still. I need to nurse Theo, anyway." Her milk was already leaking from her breasts; just the sight of her baby was enough to get the flow started when she was so bursting full.

Severus looked down at the wet spots on her robe and gave her an evil grin. "Go ahead, my sweet little dairy cow."

She elbowed him in the ribs and they both burst out laughing. She sat down on a nearby bench, still chuckling, and latched her baby onto her breast. It had taken her almost a year, but she’d finally become accustomed to her husband’s biting humor. At first he’d been surprised when she laughed at his comments–no one had ever done that before–but after a while, he’d started laughing along with her. Assuming that no students were present, of course. He did have a reputation to keep up.

He joined her on the bench and they began chatting about the students’ terrible essay writing skills. Hermione liked talking with her husband. It happened far too little during the school year; it seemed that they were both so busy all the time. She looked forward to the summer, when they would finally be able to talk on a regular basis.

Eventually, of course, the conversation ended. Theo needed his nappy changed, and both of his parents needed to get to the Great Hall for dinner.

After the meal, Severus shut himself in his study to mark essays. Hermione played with Theo halfheartedly for a while, then pulled out the books for her correspondence course. She tried to remain focused but nearly dozed off a couple of times. Once she actually did fall asleep, and was only awoken by a loud bang–Theo had pulled several books off one of the shelves.

Let me just finish this essay,

Hermione thought as she replaced the volumes in their rightful positions, and then I’ll go to bed. Well, maybe I’ll read before falling asleep, but I do have to teach at eight o’clock again tomorrow. She sat down at the table with a roll of parchment and a quill and kept Theo out of trouble the best way she could: she nursed him.

Eventually Severus poked his head into the room. "Is His Majesty all fed and changed? I need to get out and patrol soon."

"Fed, but not changed," she replied, as she managed to unlatch her son from her breast without putting down her quill. "I’ll take care of that right now."

Reluctantly she put aside her essay and carried Theo to the nursery, where she changed his nappy. No one had, as yet, developed a spell to change nappies. Pins were devilishly tricky to do by hand; Hermione could only imagine what it would be like trying to guide them by spell. Someday, she thought, I’ll introduce the wizarding world to disposables.

Luckily, spells were available for cleaning messy bottoms. And with a house elf to do laundry, there was less annoyance associated with cloth diapers than she’d thought there would be.

"Done," she said, handing her son to her husband. Theo cried as he left his mother’s arms, but calmed as soon as Severus settled him into the sling. Ah yes, the sling–magic of a different variety. Hermione had bought hers during pregnancy, and Severus–impressed with the results he’d seen when she used it to carry the newborn Theo–had insisted that she buy him one, too. In black. He had to have one for himself.

Hermione smiled, remembering the look on her husband’s face when he’d been told that slings only came in pastels or bright colors. She’d tried using a color-changing charm on hers, but it would wear off at all the wrong times–usually when Severus was in the middle of bawling out students who had broken rules. They’d always giggle when they saw the sling morph from black to pink with white hearts.

In the end, she’d gone to her parents’ house and hunted around the Internet for a pattern. Peggy had helped her to custom-make the black sling that Severus now used for carrying his son on his rounds.

"You’re tired. Go to sleep. Leave the essay until tomorrow," her husband was admonishing.

"Umm…yes, dear," she replied meekly, heading for the bedroom. "Good night, you two handsome men." Of course, she fully intended to wait in the bedroom for a mere five minutes–by which time Severus would be up in the Entrance Hall–before coming out to work on her essay again. Being around Slytherins had taught her quite a bit.

The door closed. Severus was off to make his nightly rounds, which he would continue until Theo decided to drift off to sleep.

When they’d first started this, Hermione had assumed that Theo would make enough noise to alert out-of-bounds students to Severus’s approach. After all, he was never particularly quiet when he was with her. Not so. When Severus had first told her how absolutely silent he was the whole time, she hadn’t believed him; she’d had to accompany them on patrol a few times before she realized that her son, like her husband, relished The Hunt.

Just a couple more sentences and then I can start the conclusion,

she thought as she glanced over her essay. Ah, yes…I know exactly what to say…Done! She tossed her quill aside, picked up Arcane Theories of Transfiguration, and headed off to bed. It had been a long day.