“Evans throws the Quaffle to Potter who…Did Potter just lose his head to a Bludger? Aw, what a shame. It appears McElderry leaped in front of the Bludger to bat it toward the Slytherin Seeker, Crabbe.”

As he watched the Quidditch game, Severus Snape leaned back in the announcer box, stretching his sore muscles until his bones popped.

“Snape,” Professor McGonagall hissed from above him.

Oh, the game. “Potter just made a ridiculously easy shot but…missed! Lucky Evans was there to grab the Quaffle as it appears Potter can’t manage to put…” He kept talking but his magically magnified voice stilled across the playing field. As the students spun around to stare at the box, Snape whirled viciously on Professor McGonagall.

“What--?” He froze.

She had her wand pointed at the magical microphone and her eyebrows were so drawn, they looked like one long line. Slowly, her pinched face unraveled. “You may keep your opinions about Potter to yourself, Snape.”

“I was--”

His magnified voice exploded through the microphone and there was scattered laughter from the stands. Some of the students turned again to stare at Snape.

“It looks like Longbum—Excuse me, Longbottom—is on the trail of the Snitch.” There was more laughter, but this time it was directed at Frank Longbottom, a nerdy Gryffindor who even Snape felt superior to.

Thud!

Something slammed into the side of Snape’s head. Stars burst in front of his eyes and someone screamed.

“Severus!” someone else called frantically. It sounded like Lily Evans but her voice was growing further and further away.

He heard sounds: a creaky wheel, the rustle of clothes, clanking jars… On a Quidditch field? Forcing his eyes open, he saw Madam Pomfrey leaning over him. She smelled like peppermint and Blood-Replinishing Potion.

“Dear Severus.”

No one ever called him ‘dear.’ Something horrible must have happened. Or maybe she had found out about his parents. It was easy to hide news about his parents’ death from his teachers. Though his mum was a witch, she and Tobias had both lived and died in a Muggle town. Severus doubted Pomfrey cared enough to page through last year’s obituaries, but if she was calling him ‘dear’, she must have found out he was orphaned.

“Dear, dear, boy, it was an accident.”

Severus’s lip curled. Of course his father had accidentally slammed the car into the tree.

She was still talking. What was she on about? “…then Crabbe threw the Bludger and it hit you in the head. Do you remember?”

Then Severus flushed, realizing why she was calling him a dear boy. He was in the hospital wing because he’d been hit in the head during a Quidditch game.

“Yes, I remember,” he said stiffly in a vain attempt to mask his embarrassment at following the wrong train of conversation.

Pomfrey had already fluttered off to snag some potions off the shelf. From this distance, Snape had a hard time seeing her and watching her blurry shape wobble around made him queasy.

He closed his eyes.

“Here you go, dear. Swallow this.”

Severus took the potion she shoved into his mouth. It stung and seemed to swell up when it reached his throat. He gagged but managed to swallow the potion.

“Very good. That will help more than you think.” Poppy patted his hand. “Now go to sleep.”

He awoke to someone pulling down his pants. He lifted a limp hand and tried to swat the intruder away.

“Wha-y’doin’?” he mumbled groggily.

“Shh.”

He moved to grab his pants when a warm cloth swiped over his bare stomach.

“WHA-Y’DOING’?”

Now the person was coming into focus: Pomfrey, of course. She rubbed another cloth over his face. “You have a fever.”

“But--”

She folded his pants and put a sheet over his bare skin. “You’re sweating and you soaked through your clothes. Here’s a clean robe. Sit up and put your arms out, dear.”

Struggling to sit, he complied. His eyes felt heavy and he wanted to do nothing more than sleep.

“Madam Pomfrey?”

Lily! Severus tugged the robe over his head and stuffed his arms through the sleeves.

“Just a moment, Evans,” Pomfrey said. “Snape is changing.”

There was a pause on the other side of the curtain. “Into what?” she finally said. “A werewolf?”

Severus grinned as much as he didn’t want to. He pretended to hate Lily’s humor but her scribbled notes when the teachers’ backs were turned made him happy through his most boring classes.

When Pomfrey had helped him into a new pair of underwear—he noticed her slip his gray, ripped underwear into the trash bin—she opened the curtain. “Be quick, dear. He needs his rest.”

The stars that exploded in Snape’s head were still there, but they were slower and happier, and he couldn’t feel any pain. Wait a minute…didn’t that mean…?

Snape almost cursed aloud. He hadn’t meant to fall in love with his best friend. That was only supposed to happen to gits like James Potter.

She perched on the edge of his bed. “I’m not going to play Quidditch anymore.”

The stars exploded behind his eyes again and this time it hurt like a polyjuice change. “You’re the only reason I run commentary. You’re going to quit?”

Lily smiled softly. “Maybe your Slytherin team might win if I stop playing against them.”

Severus couldn’t argue with that. “But you love it.”

She hesitated. Severus had known her long enough to recognize she had something deeper on her mind. Something important.

“Does your quitting the team have to do with bloody James Potter?” he snapped.

Her cheeks bloomed like two roses and her voice was strained when she said, “What makes you think that?”

“You don’t deny it.”

She blew her hair off her forehead with a huff. “I don’t like it when you’re angry, Sev.”

He flopped back onto his pillows, suddenly wearied. If he hadn’t been nearly killed with a Bludger, he’d kick Potter’s bum. “Then stop talking about that git like he’s worth something. He hates both of us.”

She turned redder.

“Lily, it’s time for you to go,” Pomfrey said, emerging from a back storage closet. “Severus has a fever and he’s getting too worked up.”

Lily extended her hand and let out a sigh. “I’ll see you later, Sev. Maybe you’ll see reason next time. I’m sorry you’re hurt all the same.”

Severus took her hand and squeezed it. Minutes later, when he fell asleep again, he could still feel the warmth of her hand tingling inside his.

Severus returned to classes a few days later. For a while, he was hailed as a hero, the fascinating Slytherin who took a Bludger to the head. When James Potter heard of Severus’s celebrity status, he started poking fun.

“When Pomfrey prodded your head, did she find an empty skull?”

After Christmas break (where Snape spent a lonely month at Spinner’s End), Potter’s stupid friends joined in. “I’m surprised the Bludger didn’t simply slide off your head with all that grease in your hair.”

By the time O.W.L.s exams rolled around in May, the entire school seemed to have turned against him. Some even blamed Severus for throwing a Bludger at Crabbe. For his part, Crabbe defended Severus. That’s why Severus didn’t understand why Lily was so adamant against him befriending what she labeled the “evil” students.

Sure, they dabbled in Dark Magic but who was Severus to be choosy with his friends? It’s not like he had many besides Lily.

And after the Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, Severus had to question whether Lily was even his friend. Sure, he’d called her Mudblood, the foulest name a wizard could call a witch of Muggle parentage. But what would she have said if James Potter was threatening to take off her underpants?

Actually, he shuddered at the thought of that.

But if Potter had embarrassed her in front of the entire school and someone had come to her rescue, she might have lashed out at the rescuer. It wasn’t Severus’s fault he’d called her a Mudblood. It had slipped out in misdirected anger.

Two days after the incident, when he was sitting in the Great Hall for breakfast, he felt her warm arms wrap around him.

“Severus, I need to talk to you.”

He forked his scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Now?”

Tears welled in her eyes and threatened to spill over her eyelashes. Was she ever gorgeous.

Severus ducked out of the Great Hall. Goyle, one of his Slytherin friends, whooped behind him but Severus chose to ignore it. Lily spun and gave him a dirty look.

Their footsteps, pounding against the stone floor, were the only sound that broke the silence. When they sank onto the steps that led to Slytherin’s dungeons, Lily finally spoke.

“Sev, I’m pregnant.”

The words hit him like the Hogwarts Express at full tilt. He let out a gasp that sounded more like a wheeze. Since he had never touched her—or any girl, come to think of it—it had to have been Potter.

She blinked at him, expecting him to say something.

“You’re not serious,” he finally managed to stammer. “You said you were a…I…I want to marry you.”

The cold air rising from the dungeons suddenly seemed darker and chillier.

“But you can. I’m still a virgin.”

“Virgins don’t get pregnant,” he said with a snort of derision. He was angry, angry that he had, not two weeks ago, defended Lily’s honor against the idiot Potter who said he’d already had ten Gryffindor girls.

She sniffed. “You did know you’re the father, didn’t you? Pomfrey said so when she put the hiding charm over my belly.”

“WHAT?” Snape nearly tumbled down the stairs. “Then why didn’t I get to have any fun?”

Lily flushed. “Severus, stop it.”

“I was waiting for you.” He sounded pleading but he couldn’t make himself tone it down. “I was going to marry you, Lily. I would kill anyone who touched you, so don’t tell me I got you pregnant because--”

Her eyes softened. “You would?”

He wasn’t sure what she was referring to so he chose one. “I want to marry you,” he repeated. Then a rush of anger surged up and he snapped, “So can you stop lying that I impregnated you, because I would certainly remember if I’d ever been with a girl, especially you.”

She flushed again. Snape had to thump the back of his head against the wall to rid it of an inappropriate image of her.

“It didn’t happen like normal, you see? It’s a magical pregnancy. Do you remember when you were in the hospital when you were knocked out by a Bludger?”

He bit his lip without answering.

“When you were in the hospital wing, Pomfrey somehow got your…” She flushed again. “Sperm and--”

“I did NOT--”

“I’m just saying it happened. She was taking care of you, she touched me afterward and I got pregnant.”

Snape felt his lip curl. “Sperm die when they’re exposed to air, any third year would know that. And you need thousands of them to fertilize an egg. And ninety-year-old Madam Pomfrey does not have access to my…” He fell silent, realizing too late that he should probably be just as embarrassed by the subject as Lily.

He started counting swirls on the stairs. When his ears started to cool, he looked up. There were tears in Lily’s eyes and Snape felt himself weakening.

“My parents aren’t going to understand. They’ll think I’ve been fooling around with some boy and then I won’t get to come back to Hogwarts.”

“Tell them--” Snape began fiercely but Lily interrupted.

“I can’t. I’ve already decided to stay at Hogwarts until the birth which will be sometime next month. I’ll just tell my parents classes got out late, they’ll never know.”

Snape felt his lip curling. “And they’re not going to notice a baby how?”

“Please just take off one year, Sev and take care of our baby. I could drop out of school after he turns one and live at Spinner’s End. My parents would think I was at school. They would never have to know. And then after we both finish our sixth and seventh years, we’ll be a real family. At Spinner’s End.”

There was too much to think about. Severus focused on the most important part. “The baby is a boy?”

Lily nodded. She still looked teary-eyed. “He’s going to look like you. Pomfrey saw black hair.”

“What are you going to name him?” Snape snorted. “Hairy?”

Clearly she didn’t get his joke. Her green eyes had gone irritatingly dreamy. “Harry. But not Harold. I don’t like that. Harry Severus Evans.”

“NO! Harry Evans, but NOT Severus. What if Potter has a son? I won’t have Potter’s brat taunting Harry because of his middle name and…” He felt his face turning red with frustration. “…And pantsing him for all of Hogwarts to see.”

Lily laid a hand on his arm. Severus jerked away and leaned instead against the cold stone of the dungeon wall. “I saw Albus Dumbledore looking out the window. He was laughing, too.”