Emily sat down again and rubbed her hands. They had become so swollen and tingly the last couple of days. She knew that if she could see her ankles they would look the same. A headache was starting and she wanted her mother. She went to her mum's office and sat down. Healer Smith came in a few minutes later to see her daughter slumped in her desk chair. She was shivering and crying.

“Mama, I don't feel good.”

“Shush, dear let me look at you.” Margo looked her daughter over carefully and put her head outside the door, signaling a staff member. “We're going to put you into a room, dear, and see exactly what is going on, OK?”

---

Severus got home from work that evening to find his mother on a chair in the sitting room. She looked distressed and stood as soon as he came in.

“Severus, you must come.”

“Where's Emily?”

His mother took him by the arm and walked him back to the door. “She was admitted at the hospital today. Margo sent for me at lunch time.”

“Is she having the baby?”

“She is having complications. Her blood pressure rose to a level that is dangerous, and she has gone into labor. She and the baby are both in danger.”

Severus started walking faster. “Mother?”

Eileen looked at the worry in her son's face. “I will let Margo explain everything to you.”

They arrived at the hospital and made their way to the private room where Margo watched over her daughter. Eileen took Margo's place and Severus found himself in the hallway with his mother-in-law.

Margo explained the situation. “She was complaining of a bad headache this morning and then got so flushed that I knew that something was wrong. We're giving her fluids to help purge whatever impurities might be causing this and a potion that has slowed the progress of her labor and made the pain less intense. If we allow her to labor too fast, she could have a stroke and die, but if we slow it too much, the baby could die.”

“Can I see her?”

“She's sleeping right now, but it's possible that she will know you are here.”

Severus went into the room and looked at his wife. Emily looked feverish and fretful. The head of the bed had been raised and his mother sat near her, watching her carefully and occasionally touching her hands or face. “Can I touch her?” His mother nodded and he put his hand on her forehead and kissed it. He chanced touching her pregnant tummy and was rewarded by a good strong thump from the baby. He closed his eyes in gratitude.

A few minutes later, Severus stood in the hallway trying to pull his emotions together. It hurt him to see Emily suffering. Someone tapped his shoulder. For the first time in his life, he was not pleased to see Lily Potter.

“Oh, Severus, it's so awful! What will we do?”

Her use of the word “we” was a bit curious. “What do you mean?”

“I don't know why she's been acting this way toward me. She's always been so pleasant to me, but today it's like she hates me. She said I was never a very good friend.”

Severus turned an impassive stare upon her. He spoke quietly and with a trace of irony. “Are you so blind to things like this, Lily? We could lose our baby, and I could lose her, and you are here in the bloom of pregnant health. The sight of you is a bit hard to take right now.”

“Oh, I didn't realize.” Was she really so focused on herself that she didn't think about how other people might see such things?

He continued, his manner getting grimmer. “I cannot imagine what she was saying to you, unless it's that she is very loyal to me and has never entirely understood the way you treated me during sixth and seventh years.”

“Well, I expected you to become a Death Eater any minute.” Had Lily always had this waspish edge?

“Emily took steps to ensure it would never happen.” He said it as if it settled the matter, and found that somehow it did.

“Oh.” She deflated a bit. “Well, my shift will be over, soon, and I will ask to be assigned different cases tomorrow.”

“Or perhaps you can ponder how you might have better dealt with this situation and learn from it.” Severus didn't know who was speaking to Lily this way. It could never be him.

She looked at him uncertainly, trying to understand the lesson in front of her. Finally she seemed to get it.

“I see what you mean. Thanks, Sev—Severus.”

He found that he had to be near Emily again, even if he had to watch her suffer. “I need to be with my wife. Maybe I'll see you later.”

He went back in and saw that she hadn't moved. She was still far too pink and she looked uncomfortable. Her lips were moving as if she was saying something. “Emily,” he whispered, sliding next to her on the bed, “please get better. If you don't I will lose everything that makes my life worth living.” He gently slid his arm around her shoulders and put his other hand where he had felt the baby moving a few minutes earlier. “Emily, I love you.”

She made what sounded like a contented sigh and settled into his arms. He alternated between watching her sleep and dozing himself. Every few minutes her whole lower body tightened with a labor pain that was followed by a spurt of incensed kicking from the baby who didn't appreciate the encroachment. As the night wore on, it appeared that the angry flush of her face was fading.

The first hint of dawn was sneaking through a window when Emily's eyes opened wide. “I need to... I don't know what to call it.”

Eileen sat up and looked at Emily's face. “It sounds like she's ready to push. Margo, she's not as flushed and there's less swelling. I think she's better.”

Emily's mother came to the side of the bed from the easy chair the mothers had traded all night. “Let me see how she's doing. Perhaps you should check her progress?”

The midwife determined that she was ready to deliver the baby while the Healer determined that it was safe to do so. Together they guided the laboring mother and told the husband how to assist. After a while Severus saw his mother holding his daughter. The Healer took the baby to clean up and check while the midwife finished tending to the new mother.

Severus couldn't kiss his wife enough. “Emily, I love you so much.”

“I thought I was dreaming when you said that,” she said, removing her eyes from the little face across the room long enough to look into his eyes.

“I was dreaming when I didn't say it.” He kissed her again. “It's time for both of us to wake up.”

Margo cleared her throat. She was holding a quill and official looking parchment. “So, Mum and Dad, what is the baby's name?”

Severus looked at Emily and she nodded. “Margo Eileen Snape,” he told them, seeing the suddenly misty eyes of both the older women. “But I would like to call her Hope,” he murmured to his wife. She nodded again.

The proud grandmothers gave the baby to the new mother and helped her start to feed her. Eileen and Margo then stepped outside to allow the new family a chance to become acquainted. Severus watched as for the first time Emily looked at her baby. A completely different expression came over her face than any he had seen in the eight and a half years he had known her. Her eyes softened and took on a look he couldn't place and a soft smile stole over her lips as she looked the baby over. Right before his eyes this young woman he had known since childhood entered motherhood.

“Would you have rather had a son, Severus?” Emily asked timidly.

“Fancy calling a boy 'Hope',” he scoffed.

“So a daughter is all right?”

“Look at her,” he answered. The baby stopped nursing long enough to stare at them with indigo blue eyes. She had a full head of dark hair and a nose that looked suspiciously like her father's, just over a mouth that was shaped like Emily's. “She's perfect,” Severus declared.

---

Lily came later that morning while Severus was home for a shower and change of clothes. She cooed over the baby and said, “I feel like I should apologize, Emily. I'm so sorry for my lack of professionalism yesterday.” The baby fussed and Lily carried her from the bassinet to Emily on the bed. “Your little one is beautiful.”

“Thank you Lily. I was a bit of a bitch to you, wasn't I? I'm sorry, too. I hope we can still work together.” Emily shyly opened her nightgown and offered her breast to the baby. She'd done it a few times already but a new audience was disconcerting. The baby, not being troubled by such considerations, latched right on and started her meal.

“Severus set me straight on a few things.” Lily smiled again at the baby, sighed and looked at her own tummy, whispering to herself, “Four more months.”

She peeked outside the door and then came close to the bed. “Can you tell me something? How exactly did you keep Sev out of the Death Eaters? He didn't seem interested in anything I had to say about it.”

Emily smiled faintly. She looked down at the little face against her breast, so concentrated on eating, and then straight up at the questioning green eyes in front of her. “We gave each other Hope.”

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed. Thank you especially to beta reader Trickie Woo.