The snows of winter had melted and new growth was showing in the trees and flowerbeds. Professor Longbottom had overseen the replanting of certain herb beds as the Quidditch teams zoomed over the field in practice. The Easter Holidays were approaching and although the students knew they needed to study for finals, they often went outside to enjoy the sunshine on the last few days before their vacation started.

The Snape family was no different. They avoided too much contact with the students, but they enjoyed getting out to play. Brendon, who would start at the school the following fall, followed his brother-in-law around and asked questions about the healing properties of various plants. Young Severus snuck down to the Quidditch pitch to watch the teams practice. Felicity and Letty liked to follow Mama, sometimes running ahead of her, sometimes playing tag, and sometimes looking for flowers. The only one who had to be dragged outside was Albus, who spent far too much of his time reading his parents' books. Mum had worried about his desire to do nothing but read spell books until Dad had found a spell that would prevent him from reading the books on the Dark Arts.

On the night before the train would take the students back to London, Professor Severus Snape found his family sitting by the lake and watching the sun set. He helped his wife to stand and then couldn't resist sliding his hands around her face and kissing her. The four-year-old twins danced around their parents, enjoying the display, while the boys were less impressed. Brendon pointedly looked away while his youngest brother said, “Do you have to do that in front of us?” Albus looked up from the book he was reading and asked what he had missed.

The professor ruffled his middle son's hair and laughed. “It's time for you all to come inside and have your dinners and then your baths.” There was a certain amount of token moaning as they slowly moved toward the castle, but not much. No one wanted to be the recipient of Dad's stern discipline. Mum would smile and comfort one when it was over, but she wouldn't prevent Dad's punishments to start with.

Several hours later, Professor Snape met his disheveled wife in their bedroom and tugged her toward the bathroom. “You could use some relaxation time,” he said. She wanted to do a little more packing, but seeing the look in his eyes, she followed him instead.

He had filled the bathroom with candles and the tub was emitting a heady scent. “One of your concoctions?” she asked.

“I know a Healer who swears by some of the herbs I put into it,” he murmured as he nosed aside the open top of her robe and kissed her throat. “Let me show you how to get the best efficacy from the mixture.”

Before Emily knew exactly what was happening, he had unfastened her robe and dropped it to the floor. He was working at the buttons and fastenings of her blouse and skirt but she didn't notice as her own fingers were undressing him and her lips were kissing whatever part of him she could reach. As they finished undressing each other, he stepped into the tub and then lifted her into it with him. For the next several minutes relaxation was forgotten as they instead pursued marital bliss.

They found time to relax and bask in the glow of candlelight and love a little later. Severus sat against the back of the tub and held his wife against him. Occasionally he kissed the back of her neck or whispered something into her ear.

“This was just what I needed,” said Emily as she idly played with her husband's hands that were resting upon the edges of the tub around her.

“Just what was that shift you worked, anyway?” asked her husband.

She thought a minute. “I was supposed to work from midnight until eight a.m., but there was an accident at a Magical Creatures shop and I had to stay until three this afternoon. You were in with your fifth year class, so I gathered up the children and took them outside.”

“When do you go in again?”

“Monday, for a week of regular shifts, I hope.”

“Hmm...” Severus enjoyed the moment a little longer. “Our life is just about perfect, isn't it?”

“We're quite fortunate.”

“I have a wife whom I love and who loves me, children who delight us, a challenging but fulfilling job cramming magical knowledge into dunderheads... I can't imagine that any change could make it better.”

---

The first night of vacation was spent at Grandma's house. Margo Smith still had the terraced house in London and enjoyed having her now rather large family around her. The entire family, including big sister Hope and her husband Neville, had dinner together.

Emily watched her oldest daughter carefully. There was something different about her that she couldn't put her finger upon. One possibility came to mind, but the mother wouldn't embarrass the daughter by asking. She glanced at Severus, wondering if there were some way to mention it to him, to warn him without causing general upset.

The upset came, anyway. Dinner wrapped up and everyone was finishing their dessert. Severus had one arm around Emily's chair and the twins were starting to look dazed and sleepy. Margo asked her oldest granddaughter how things were going in her life. Hope looked at Neville and smirked. Emily wanted to laugh at how much she looked like her father at that moment. She also knew that she had guessed correctly.

“Actually, there's something big going on with us right now. We're going to have a baby!”

Margo jumped up to kiss her granddaughter and Emily would have followed except that the arm behind her back went rock-hard with tension. She turned her smiling face toward her husband's stony one and caught his eye. Hoping he would get the message, she willed him to smile and be happy for the younger couple. After a minute, Severus's posture eased and a sort of non-smile crossed his face. It was the way he looked when he was forced to award points for merit to a Gryffindor student. Emily then felt it was safe to get up and embrace her daughter as the younger siblings crowded around and argued over whether the baby would be a girl or boy and which names they wanted for this niece or nephew.

The children were eventually sent upstairs to bath and bed while the two Healers wanted all the particulars of Hope's prenatal care to date. Emily laughingly told Hope about how, when she discovered her first pregnancy, she had to undergo an exam at the hospital as well as one each from the two grandmothers, all within two days. Margo approved the choices of midwife and Healer to oversee her case, noting that the one had delivered Albus while the other had delivered the twins.

Emily kept glancing at her husband. He unbent a little, but still looked a bit stunned by the news. She wasn't sure whether she should go to him or let things lie still until they went to bed themselves. Something in the way his free hand slowly opened and closed around his teaspoon made her choose the latter option.

At last they were alone in their bedroom, the door sealed against unexpected company. He didn't give her a chance to ask his thoughts but rather pulled her into his arms and kissed her fiercely. It didn't stop there but continued as he quickly undressed first her and then himself with a desperate need he rarely showed. It was not a time of soft caresses but of unfettered passion. Somewhere in that wild lovemaking, Emily saw stars. When her husband collapsed upon her, spent, she hugged him close, tracing her fingertips along his back, and kissing his chin and jawline.

“I hate to be so unrestrained with you,” he finally whispered.

She shifted underneath him to see his face more clearly. “You know I find it exhilarating when it happens.”

He shifted away from her so that he could rest his head in her bosom and put his arms around her waist, finding comfort in her embrace. For a few minutes, she simply stroked one hand through his hair as she rubbed his neck with her other hand.

“Severus, what is it?”

“I don't want to be old.”

“Eventually we will have to be.”

“I'm old now.”

“Severus, you're just reaching the height of your powers. Your research is beyond the hopes of your peers, you have the respect of the entire wizarding world.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And you make love like a mythical god. How can you say you're old?”

“I'm going to be a grandfather. I'll be Grandpa Sev, sitting on a porch and telling stories of the old times to grandchildren.”

“Is that how you plan to interact with our grandchildren? I pictured you teaching them Defense and dueling with them.”

“I blame you, Emily. We should have put a stop to this when she first started writing notes to the dunderhead. No, you said. Let's see what actually happens, you said. I'm glad she has a friend, you said. Now look at what's happened. I'm going to be old.”

“Severus Snape.” Something in her tone of voice made him lift his head to look into his wife's eyes. “Do you remember our age when our first child was born?”

“I was twenty.”

“I hadn't even turned twenty, yet. Do you recall how old she is?” He buried his head in her chest and she continued. “She will be twenty-six next week. Severus, would you have her wait so much longer than we did to experience the sort of joy she brought to us?”

His murmured “no” tickled against her bare skin, but she struggled to stay still. “I love you, Severus Snape. You're not any older than you were last night when you seduced me in the bath and told me how wonderful our life together is. Today we simply have another aspect of wonder to add. Please be happy for them if not for yourself.”

“Hmphf.” This murmur against her skin tickled, but it did something else, too. Without her realizing it, Emily's caresses changed from soothing to stimulating. Severus allowed himself to be drawn along by her hands and lips and found that he wanted to touch her everywhere. Even after having the twins she had managed to recover something of her youthful figure, taking a couple of years to do so. Her tummy would never be as flat as it was the night he first made love to her, but the changes were due to their children and reminded him of the love they had shared for many years, now. He kissed and caressed, taking his time. Her passion erupted in whispers of his name, over and over, finally subsiding in hiccupping sighs as his own world dissolved around him. His last waking thought was that if they could make love as they had this night, they would never be old, whether they were forty-six or a hundred and six.

---

The family separated the next morning to their different homes. Severus was able to hug his daughter good-bye and tell her, with some sincerity, that he was happy with her news. He was rewarded by a bright smile that almost made it worthwhile. It enabled him to shake hands cordially with the son-in-law who had caused this change to his life. Watching the two leave with a sigh of relief, he looked forward to transporting the children to Spinner's End. Perhaps if he didn't have to see Longbottom or his daughter too much, he wouldn't have to think about it until he had gotten used to the idea.

Not seeing the Longbottoms very often turned out to be a good idea. The less Severus had to face them, the easier it was to deal with the thought of his daughter's pregnancy. The Easter Holidays ended and the end of the school term soon followed. The time they got together in late July and Hope's robes were bulging out a bit over her middle was a bit hard to take. After being cordial through dinner and conversation later, and after hugging his daughter good-bye, Severus paced through his house and eventually came to rest in the kitchen where Emily was nursing a cup of tea. Something in her face stopped the diatribe that was on his lips.

“What is it?” He sat across from her.

She smiled and shook her head. “It's completely stupid, really.”

“Did one of the children misbehave?”

“Oh, no!” she hastened to respond. “It's just a silly thing.”

He moved closer and pulled her into his lap. He kissed her face, all along her hairline. “Tell me.”

Emily looked sheepish and looked down. “She's not enjoying it at all. Two or three times a week she comes to my office to complain about the queasiness, the weight gain, the way people treat her differently at work. It's as though she doesn't appreciate it. I can't help wishing it was me. I would appreciate it.”

“Would you really want—“

She waved her hand. “No, I don't really want any more children and things are wonderful just as they are. I've never regretted what happened when the twins were born, truly, Severus. I just get these feelings, sometimes. I always loved to feel your child growing within me... Some people call it baby lust. That part of my life is over, but once in a while I miss it.”

He held her there for a long while, not saying anything. His arms were snug around her and his lips were pressed just over her ear. After a while he felt her sigh with contentment and settle into his embrace. “Of course,” she whispered, “under the right circumstances it could become a different sort of lust...”

“Your wish is my deepest desire.”

Severus took his wife up to their bedroom and made love to her with a tenderness he would not have expected earlier in the evening. Before he had felt annoyed at the change his daughter was forcing upon him. Now he knew that Emily was experiencing the same change in her own way. It united them once again where they had been different. He was no longer all alone in his worries and fears any more than she was alone in enjoying the idea of a grandchild. Knowing that she had concerns mixed with her joyful feelings allowed him to mix happiness with his vexation.

---

The next week Professor Snape was summoned to Hogwarts for a meeting with the Board of Governors and the Headmistress. The Staff Room was full when he arrived and, based upon the looks of the faces, some decision had been made of which they would now inform him. He took the seat indicated and glanced around the room, expectantly.

“Severus,” started Minerva McGonagall, “we wanted you to come here, quite simply, because I've decided to retire, effective immediately.”

“You're joking,” he responded.

“I assure you I am not. I suddenly find that the pressures of the school are too much for me.”

“You thrive on it.”

“That may be, but I shall have to find other sustenance, now.”

Severus looked around the room suspiciously. “Why am I the only professor summoned here, today?”

The chair of the Board of Governors looked at the professor over his glasses. “You have been recommended to assume the position of Headmaster. The job is yours if you want it.”

“How can that be? I should have thought causing the death of a previous occupant of that position, combined with the odd way I assumed the post in the past, would have rendered me unacceptable.”

Another governor, the publisher of the Daily Prophet, spoke up. “Times and opinions change, Snape. You're the man. We expect you to take the job.”

He looked around the room, expecting to find some reason not to accept in several of the faces turned toward him. He found nothing of the sort and actually found something completely different in some faces. Snape sighed and waved a hand expressively. “Very well. I shall have to scramble to replace some positions.”

Minerva broke in. “The final decisions will be yours, of course, but I have some recommendations...”

---

Severus arrived home after a long working lunch in the Headmaster's office. Emily took one look at him and shooed the children out to de-gnome the garden. She led her husband to their bedroom, where she stripped his robe, coat, and shirt off and laid him on the bed. Emily started by working at the knots in his shoulder. After a while he started talking.

“She had already given my job away...to the mutt, no less.”

“Is that the beginning of the story?”

“No,” he said with a long, heaving sigh. “The beginning of the story is that Minerva has decided, within the last few weeks, to retire, and the Board wants me.”

“As Headmaster?”

“You don't believe it, either.”

“You are a brilliant choice for the job... and they've already hired Sirius to teach Defense?”

“No, they've just recommended him strongly to me, as well as suggesting that Cho Chang take over as Deputy Headmistress.”

“Two people are needed to replace you,” she observed.

“There's something at the back of it, I'm sure.”

“Are you going with their recommendations?”

“Given the time I have, it might be best for the coming school year. If it doesn't work, I can always change it.”

Emily rubbed as she listened to him describe the meeting. As he finished, she kissed her husband's back. When he moved as though to roll over, she firmly pressed him down. “Why don't you rest a while longer and then put your shirt and robe back on and join us in the garden? I can't decide which vegetables we should have with dinner tonight. Several are ready at once.” So saying, she rose from the bed and walked out of the room, pausing just long enough to give her husband a flirtatious look over her shoulder. Her face was full of promises for the evening, which he intended to collect.

---

It was a bit of a struggle to adequately prepare, but eventually September First came and the Hogwarts Express arrived at Hogsmeade Station. The younger members of the Snape family had their dinner, took their baths, and gathered around their mother, who read to them while they waited for Dad to come up from the Feast. They were halfway through the story of the Hopping Pot when the father of the family arrived.

Emily was the only one who noticed that the Headmaster's hands were shaking with rage as he came in. His eyes were set like empty black pools as he smiled gently and informed them that Brendon was in Ravenclaw. He embraced his younger children and sent them to bed. Glancing at his wife in agony, he then swept into the office, his robes billowing behind him. Emily followed silently.

The portrait over the desk looked at him expectantly, eyes twinkling over the glasses. “Someone might have warned me,” stated the new Headmaster in a voice Emily knew was quiet but dangerous.

“We weren't sure if you would notice, or even if the problem would manifest itself this year.”

“How could I not notice? A Slytherin and a Hufflepuff,” responded Severus. “How am I to handle this? They think they're fully Muggle-born, but they're obviously the children of Yaxley and Mulciber.”

“So it begins again.”

“AGAIN?” This was a surprise.

“Surely you don't think it just started now, Severus? They came, in ones and twos, starting with your generation and up until the time young Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy were students. Voldemort's little soirées tended to end with young women being assaulted. Not all of the young women were killed and some conceived children.”

“There weren't any in Slytherin...”

“Horace was difficult about this and we had a word with the Sorting hat to keep the Death Eater children out of Slytherin. By the time you were Head of that house, it was dangerous for a non pure-blood to be sorted there. Now it doesn't matter. Minerva, Pomona, Filius, and I kept an eye on things. To date, no one has married a sibling yet, but it takes a great deal of tact and discretion to break up some of the romances that come along. We had a few years off but calculated that we might see one last generation starting this year. Minerva didn't feel up to it any more.”

Severus was speechless as he digested this information. He turned and looked at his wife, who had sat down, her face very white. He conjured a chair and sat next to her. “Do the Heads of Houses know about this?”

“I don't believe so. When Minerva realized this class could have some of those children in it, she told me she couldn't do this any more and started making plans to leave. Perhaps the Deputy Headmistress knows... I'm sorry to drop this on you, Severus, but you are the best equipped to handle this. Hopefully within a few years we will see the end of it.”

“It's as if it will never end,” responded the new Headmaster. He turned to his wife, who had wandered into her own train of thought with a worried look on her face. He sighed and waved a hand. “If it must be handled, we will handle it. Thank you, Albus.”

As they prepared for bed that night, Severus looked seriously at his wife. “What made you look so worried when we were talking to the portrait?”

She smiled weakly, “It was something about the way you said it will never end.”

“Are you worried?”

“I was going to talk to you about this during the weekend, but Albus has been trying to get into your books on the Dark Arts, again. It was like a compulsion, as though the books were calling to him. When I stopped him, he almost came out of a trance, Severus, and the thought crossed my mind that some things will never end. We must always be vigilant.”

The father of the boy in question sat down on the bed. “Perhaps it is a compulsion. I could never really answer for what drew me to those books, myself. Power, I suppose.”

“How do we protect him?”

“The problem with the Dark Arts is that he won't need protection. If they are drawing him, it's the rest of us who will need the protection.”

“Then how—“

“I'll work with him. He's still just a child, Emily.” Severus opened his arms and Emily stepped into them.

---

It was a dark and stormy November day when Severus looked up at lunch to see his wife's Patronus loping through the great hall toward him.

“Hope is at the hospital. Come when you can.”

The Headmaster looked along the Staff Table and realized he was short one Herbology professor. He spoke quietly to the Deputy Headmistress and then tried not to make a stir as he rose from his table and made his way to the Ravenclaw table to alert his son to the situation. After making sure the younger children had adequate oversight, he grabbed some Floo powder and stepped toward the fireplace in his office.

The obstetric ward of St. Mungo's was quiet except for one room at the end of the hall. When he poked his head in the door, Emily smiled and walked into the hall with him. “She's fighting it, but she'll do fine in the end. Would you rather be in there or in the waiting room?”

Snape swallowed hard. “I think I'll stay in the waiting room. I've had my share of being in the birth room.”

Emily's eyes started to twinkle. “That's fine. Augusta is already there. Mum and I are taking turns being in the room to help and coming out here. We have other patients, too, of course.” She walked with him into the waiting room and sat down with him. She looked at the older witch, who was trying to find something to concentrate upon in an old issue of Transfiguration Today. “No change, Augusta. It will be sometime this evening, I think.”

The afternoon dragged on. Emily looked in and gave reports before going back to her patients or back to the birthing room. Occasionally Margo Smith did the same. Just before dinner time, Neville wandered into the waiting room and sat down, looking sheepish as he did so.

“She was yelling at me, so Emily suggested that I come here.”

Snape's eyebrow went up as he scowled at his son-in-law. “Was there a problem?”

Emily peeked in the door, herself. “There's no problem. Things are progressing and this part is just very difficult for her. I'll come back for Neville when it's time.”

Another hour passed. Snape glared at his son-in-law, while Augusta Longbottom gave her grandson expectant looks. Neville tried very hard not to catch the eye of either. He was relieved to see his wife's grandmother in the doorway, summoning him. “Come quickly,” she said. “It won't be long, now, and Hope is asking for you.”

The clock showed the passage of another half hour when Emily came into the waiting room and sat down in exhaustion with a beatific smile upon her face. “A boy!” she said as her husband took her hand. Augusta stood and clapped her hands. Emily continued. “He's a bright and healthy boy. He looked so surprised by the world after we got him cleaned up. It reminded me of nothing so much as the moment the Sorting hat dropped on Frank's head. Do you remember?”

Emily looked at her husband but he was miles away. Although he had known it was happening since last spring, suddenly his life had changed. It came to him that this is what it meant to win the war and survive all of those sessions with the Dark Lord. He was living a long ago dream to watch his children grow up and to see his grandchildren come into the world and perhaps grow up, too.

Augusta couldn't wait to go meet her great-grandson, but the Snapes sat for a little while, basking in the moment. Severus thought Emily looked almost as tired as if she had given birth to the baby, herself, while Emily thought that being in the waiting room must have been more exhausting than her part had been. They sat with hands clasped together and not speaking. Finally, Severus leaned over and spoke.

“Is this what you had in mind that night when you first seduced me?” She could feel him smiling as he kissed her ear.

“In what revisionist version of events did I seduce you?” she responded, playfully, turning her head so that her lips were close to his. “I can't admit to thinking about more than having your hands on my bare skin and where that would lead.”

“That's what I mean. Did you expect it to lead to grandchildren?” He was pulling her closer.

She settled into his arms. “Grandchildren would have been a stretch given the fact that I didn't consider that it would to lead to Hope. I'm terribly short-sighted when you're touching me.”

“Hmm...” He pondered the thought of touching bare skin and wondered if his wife would be interested in being his snake charmer that night. Pulling his thoughts together, he came back to the occasion at hand. “And yet it did lead to a grandchild. Do you suppose we could go see him?”

“Where are my manners? Introductions are definitely in order.” Emily jumped up and took her husband's hand, leading him to his daughter's room.

A/N: Thank you to beta reader Trickie Woo.