Hermione was enamored with Iris and Aries. They were lovely women who came from other equally as lovely women. It left her mind a little saddened over Ginny, but she'd cried enough that week whether from that or the pregnancy, it didn't matter, she was just tired of crying.

Severus picked up on it regardless, warily inquiring into her evening as he did what looked like lesson plans at the dining table.

"How was your little gathering?"

"Wonderful," she said, hoping to smile brightly enough to distract him from the suspicion in his mind.

He stood from his work and joined her in the middle of the room, his hands warm on her face as he leaned in for a kiss. She granted it, falling into the normalcy of it. After only a week of pretending to be his wife... and actually getting away with it, she enjoyed this, enjoyed him, magic and baby and acting it or not. Hermione had a crush on her husband, and a footing in this world that made her optimistic for its future and for her having to be stuck there.

It seemed like Harry might finally be getting on well, too.

"I'm glad."

He sat them down on the couch and prodded into her evening, asking if Draco had attempted to help Kreacher again and burnt the potatoes, or how Iris's career was going and if she was still dating Neville Longbottom.

There were a few kisses along the way. The pressure always surprised her, his hands all over her body with a purpose, lingering over her stomach where their child was.

It wasn't something Hermione had wanted so soon. The idea was nice, sure, but her timeline had stated presently single until they'd popped in for a visit last Friday and learned they needed to stay for the rest of their natural lives.

But being confronted with it, unable to change it in hopes to spare Severus' feelings and to keep the rest of the world from being quite bloody upset with them, she had grown attached.

Her hand rested over his. This felt right, no matter how crazy she sounded. She was excited to become a mother.
He kissed her tenderly and moved his hand downwards, where she expertly deflected, not crazy enough to sleep with him yet... well, that kind of not-sleeping.

There was no disappointment, but grudging respect, as he went back up to her neck with his hands, pushing back into her hair and kissing her gently.

"Would you care to retire for the evening?"

Hermione nodded, recognizing the look he was trying to hide in his question with the same one's Harry's parents gave one-another. Her own parents came to mind with great sadness. The obliviation still hadn't come off of them, and the healers didn't look too optimistic.

With sudden clarity, she stopped halfway up the stairs and realized that she could contact her parents, what was stopping her here? They would know her, remember her, would have brought her to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters thirteen years prior with no war looming in the distance.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine, Sev, I've... I've got to do something."

"That isn't me, is it?"

She giggled at him, going back down the stairs with him in tow.

"What is it that you must do, then?"

Part of the professor in him was showing.

"I have to phone my parents, it feels like it's been ages."

"That's because it has."

His voice was no longer kind, no longer the man who had her melting in his arms with his hand on her stomach. It was dark and accusatory, and when she turned around, she was met with a stern wand to her face, mere inches from her nose.

"You haven't talked to your parents in three years."

"What did I-" She stopped when he took another step, his wand tilting her chin up. This wasn't Draco, she couldn't just ask him what it was that had driven her parents and her to three years of silence.

This was Severus Snape, black eyes emotive and his frown just about killing her.

"Who are you?" His voice cut through her like someone pouring molasses through hair with a shaky hand.

"I'm Hermione, Severus, truly."

"When is our child due?"

"First week of March."

He narrowed his eyes, breath short and stance offensive.

"My birthday?"

"January ninth."

"Anniversary?"

Shit... she'd looked through all the way up to March and gotten distracted by her due date that their anniversary had not crossed her mind. Merlin, she was dense, she needed to read the whole way through the bloody year.

"I-" she choked on the answer, and it unfortunately didn't come up at all. How was she supposed to know about her parents, she rarely thought about them because it hurt too much, but this hurt even worse.

"You're not her." Part of him was... beaten, could see it as though he'd just seen the war she lived through what felt like a lifetime ago.

"I am her, Severus-"

"Don't-" He argued with himself, Hermione only able to see it in his trembling wand hand. "What did you do with my wife?"

She expected more Professor Snape to face her then, but this was all the family-man he'd been the past week. It shouldn't have confused her so much, shouldn't have thrown her off her guard. Hermione knew her fancy was confounding her.

She had to say something.

"I didn't do anything. I'm her!"

He laughed at her and pushed her against a wall... now he looked ready to kill, more like the man who'd been a death eater.

"Something happened," she tried again, "Something happened to time."

The struggled statement got his wand lowered, but his knuckles were still white against it's black color.

"Cast the spell first, check to see if I'm me. If I'm pregnant."

"Finite Incantatem." It was no less than a hiss. Nothing changed on her person, and he cast the test spell, immediate results in the positive due to her being just at the beginning of her third month.

Dropping his wand Severus used his body to pin her to the wall this time, looking at her in a mournful way. His hands were just under her ears, stroking her cheeks as he cried, "What happened to you?"

Unable to imagine what he was thinking, she feared what the truth might do to him. A million options, he probably thought she lost her memory, this tenderness wasn't going to last very long, and neither was she. How could she possibly break his heart so splendidly? There was so much to tell him, so many bad things.

"I don't... recall any of this. Last I remember I was five years removed from a war, Harry and I editing a book to clear up the truth for those not as... directly involved as we were."

Part of her felt threatened as his hands stopped wiping at her tears and floated down to her neck. Then moved back, putting space between them again... so much bloody space. Severus looked wounded at best, sitting down at the table with his head in his hands.
Hermione elaborated from her spot.

"In what I recall from this alternate reality, Harry and I were at the café having tea when we were attacked by a hooded figure. After a war, one would think we could have defended ourselves better, but we fell and the book went missing. You see, at seventeen Harry defeated the world's most dangerous wizard yet: Tom Riddle."

This seemed to catch his attention, and Hermione knew that she would give this man nothing but the truth. He swiped the table of everything on it with a growl and shook his head, leaning back in disbelief.

"He killed the Potter's, Prewett's, and countless others over Blood Purity." She wasn't defending Dumbledore right now, only Harry and herself for coming from where they did. "He rallied and turned many good people into awful wizards... dark wizards. Draco and yourself included."

Looking ashamed, but still flamed, he flicked his wand towards the mess he made and everything went back into neat piles. Motioning to the chair across from him, he commanded not-so-politely, "Sit."

She obeyed.

"How long?"

"Last Friday."

He huffed. "Before or after dinner."

"Before."

"Harry too?" He confirmed.

Hermione nodded. This was worse than any detention she might have served in her lifetime, gods, she would have rather been tortured.

"Tell me the rest."

She told him every little detail she remembered, things not even in Harry's book including her relationships with Viktor and Ron, and... him. Severus disliked these parts most, although he was stoic for a good portion of her tales, even the part where she lit his robes on fire first year.

When she was finished telling him he'd murdered Professor Dumbledore and worked for Lord Voldemort, and treated them all like rats under his shoe, he was silent for a long time.

It was late, the clock somewhere in his home chimed twelve times.

He spoke when it finished.

"I can see why you wouldn't bring this to me, and yet I also do not."

"We meant to leave Friday evening, get through dinner and be out of your hair, but we can't, we're not even us anymore. I mean... I'm still Hermione, my body is hers, this child is ours, but my mind is... mine. And after that night I couldn't tell you. I saw how heartbroken Draco was over Harry, how it punched him in the gut. I couldn't do that to you."

"Who else knows?" Severus seemed to avoid the hurt, only caring for the cold facts of the situation. Facts Hermione very well knew he wasn't going to enjoy.

"We only told Draco."

"Did you ever plan to tell me?"

"No."

Why would she when she wanted to avoid this whole situation altogether? This was miserable, sitting across from someone who in only a week, she'd grown to care for immensely.

"Why would you?" He let loose a tortured laugh and stood, finally expressing some of his discomfort for her to see. "The man you know is a pitiable creature, my worst nightmare come true, that I'll fall prey to all the terrible thoughts inside my head. My wife, the woman I love, suffered because of me, but not really her. A pantomime of her, and now I'm left without you, her! Fucking bloody hell, Hermione."

If she flinched it wasn't because she was scared of him, it was just the war reflexes from five years ago, but a new addition was the arms she wrapped around her abdomen. He noticed, too, and softened.

"I'll always be the betrayer to you, won't I? The crude, draconian, dungeon bat."

"You'd never be that, Severus," she'd never said something so quickly.

"But I could have been. You saw me become that, under the right circumstances I could evolve into Voldemort himself. But no matter what I do here, you'll always see him. Someone that terrible doesn't simply slip your mind."

They were confined to the small shoebox that was Spinner's End in Cokeworth, but Hermione wouldn't doubt that he'd bolt in some way if she said the wrong thing.

Severus was right. Hermione didn't know him, knew some things, but she wasn't the woman who had fallen in love with him.

"I don't know what you'd like me to say."

"Have you done anything to alter yourself, something that... my Hermione wouldn't have done?"

The deliberate disclaiming of her as his Hermione was a proper stab in her gut, but she ignored it in favor of doing her best to answer him.

She searched and found only one thing, "I found out that our baby-"

"I don't want to know."

It might have been possible that she had truly only broken his heart then. It had been his one wish, she recalled from dinner the week before, to not know if they were having a boy or girl. She wanted to scream to the little girl in her womb, the girl who wasn't hers but was... what would happen to them? To her?

"Is there anything else?" She took out her wand from it's hiding place, wondering if she would need to use it... if he would ask her to leave or if he would suddenly become upset again.

"Will you be alright on your own for a little while?"
There it was. Her pulse hammered against her chest.

"How long?"

"I don't know," Severus managed to keep his voice straight, but Hermione could not be held to the same strength this wizard was exemplifying.

"All right." The words were hoarse, her throat clenching in what felt like this new mix between anger and hurt at her own stupidity. She should have asked Draco about her parents first, hell, he should have mentioned them.

The blame was cast away quickly, her heart heavy at the fact she even thought of blaming he who'd been very helpful to her and had to deal with his own tragedies. Draco wasn't to blame, he was as much a victim as Severus was.

She hoped, prayed, Harry and him were doing better than she currently was in Spinner's End.

"May I ask you something, first? Before I go?"

"I don't see why not," he replied.

He was uncomfortable. He wanted her to leave. His hands rubbed his thighs, and his jaw seemed tighter, teeth probably clenched, and she thought again about her parents, how they'd gotten her into this mess.

"Why am I estranged from my parents? What did I do?"
It seemed her question was amusing, honeyed laughter coming from him as if the past little bit had been all but a really horrible dream.

"You always assume it is your fault, don't you, Hermione?

"I don't know you, but I am intimately acquainted with my wife. After a short while of courting you, I went to your father to ask his permission to marry you. He denied, and I informed you, devastated, but, you were more upset I'd even asked. You are not property to be sold or bartered or given permission to have, I remember that tongue-lashing vividly. Somehow though, you chose me instead of them. You were content in your decision, this liberation... until the wedding. Iris walked with you down the aisle, and we were married. But we didn't have a wedding night, you cried about how they'd refused your invitation after every letter and note, every promise you made to visit and do spellwork for them. A life with you forever made me selfish, willing to deal with their rejection and yours of them even if it tore you up inside. Alas, if I knew this would welcome me in our future... I would have done the proper thing and left you to them."

Severus Snape said no more, his verbal attack punctuated by the crisp movements as he stood and left the room.

She'd been told to leave, but she couldn't bring herself to do it just yet. It took her several minutes to even wipe the tears away.

Having no idea where he was as she slinked to their bedroom to collect some of her things -holding out hope she'd be back- she was surprised to not find him in their bedroom.

Her entire body was raw despite the fact he hadn't physically hurt her. His final words had cut, had been unnecessarily cruel, and she resented it, but not enough to be angry. He had his right to be angry with her, she'd lied to him for an entire week pretending to be his wife and thought she could just... get away with it?

Merlin she'd made a mess of things, and now he was going through twice the hurt Draco was.

Apparating off the property, not bothering the floo, Hermione landed in Harry's living room already a pile of tears.