Potions was going surprisingly well until the soft, helpless crying of a newborn broke the silence. The whole classroom fell silent, and Severus Snape stood sharply from his desk, a glint of worry in his eye.

As he drew up, the cat that had been curled up on his lap stumbled to the ground and turned into an exhausted, messy-haired Hermione Snape.

Both parents picked up a handheld mirror that had been sitting on the desk, their brows creasing.

"I can't see her," Hermione fretted.

Snape growled and looked glanced over their students. "No one leaves this room!"

They both hurried from the classroom, vanishing into their rooms through a shadowy door in the corner.

The students concerned whispering (Scorpius and Albus seemed to be the most worried) was soon interrupted by a high pitched, furious scream of, "why is there an owl on my baby's head?"

"Which one of them was that?" Albus whispered, and Scorpius shrugged, shaking his head slowly.

The next day, the students walked into Potions class like normal. It was the first years again, and they were all stiff with anticipation. Other than the normal fear of Severus Snape (which had admittedly lessened after they found out it had been him who had screamed yesterday) there had been rumors circulating, rumors too strange to be true...right?

Snape was standing up front, his back facing the class as he wrote on the blackboard. The other Potions professor Hermione was nowhere to be seen, but the door to her and Snape's rooms was cracked, so the students figured she must have been in there.

"I hope she's sleeping, she looked bloody tired yesterday," Albus murmured.

Scorpius nodded, absentmindedly rubbing Albus' hand. "Well, she must be, right? Severus always leaves the door open when she's in there, in case someone attacks her or something."

Both boys fell silent when Snape irritably cleared his throat.

"Today we will be studying healing potions. Mr. Potter, why is it that you believe you may speak in my class? And Mr. Malfoy, I certainly expected better of you!" Professor Snape turned around suddenly, revealing the baby carrier strapped to his chest and the infant sleeping soundly within.

There was an audible reaction from the students, which woke the baby: so the rumors had been true!

"Silence!" Snape ordered harshly, sending his daughter into fits of giggles. The whole class let out a long, drawn out "awwwww!"

The little baby smiled sweetly and began to suck on her father's finger.

"Open your books to page 21," Snape said wearily, and went to sit down at his desk so he could feed his daughter.

"- and it was all lost when she turned my quill into a duckling. I told you Eileen would make them think me soft!"

Hermione looked up from her up from her book and smiled at the man sitting beside her in bed.

"Did my baby really do all that?" she cooed.

Eileen blinked slowly at her from Severus' arms. He sighed. "All their respect for me is surely gone now. The image I spent years trying to craft has been burned to ashes in an instant."

"Well, I think it's about time it burned." Because Hermione remembered…remembered all those sleepless nights...

Hermione wrapped her arms around her weepy husband, who had woken them both up with his own scream. "What's wrong? Is it Voldemort? Is it Lilly?"

"She'll be frightened of me," Severus whispered as he pressed his hand to his wife's stomach, his voice tremulous. "Just like all my students. She'll see the mark and know her father is a murderer."

Hermione shook her head, again and again. "No, no."

But he still wept.

"You should put Eileen in her cot, Severus," Hermione said, snapping back into reality and looking over at Severus. But he had fallen asleep, his hair falling over his face, his lips slightly parted. It seemed he had found some rare peace.

Little Eileen was also sound asleep, her smiling mouth pressed to the Dark Mark on her father's arm.

So Hermione wiped at her eyes and cuddled Crookshanks close.

They would all have peaceful dreams tonight.

And while they slept, their students would all quietly chip in to buy their Potions professors a brand new playpen for the classroom.