"Let me go! Let me go!" she screamed as she tossed violently on their bed, waking her husband who was sleeping soundly beside her.
"Darling, wake up!" Snape shook his wife's body, trying to wake her up. Meredith's eyes were close but her hands were moving frantically as if trying to let herself loose from somebody's grip in her dream. "Meredith, wake up!" he shouted as he cupped her tear-stained face.
Meredith let out a terrified scream as she sat up, breathing heavily. Snape pulled her tightly into his arms, her head resting on his chest, murmuring words of comfort. He tucked some hair behind her ear and his fingers traced her wet face. Cold sweats ran down her face, mixing with her tears. She continued crying as if she had experienced something horribly terrifying.
"It's alright. It was only a nightmare, love," Snape assured her as he planted a kiss on her temple. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I can't remember what it was," Meredith replied, as she pulled her face from her husband's chest to face him, a tinge of honest confusion spread on her face. "I... I only remember it was terrifying, like I was physically there. But I really cannot remember what it was I saw, I can only feel the fear I felt," she added with her soft voice.
Holding her close, Snape could hear the fast beating of her heart, her breathing short and fast too. He had married this woman for almost a year now, and for all the times they had shared the bed together, never once had she had such a frightening nightmare as she had just experienced. That woman was a sound sleeper, for goodness' sake! A bomb could just explode right by her side and she would not even stir and move an inch. He held her close as she drifted back to sleep, her face buried in his chest one again, only now it was in the lying position. His arms snaked around her waist protectively. He murmured a 'goodnight' with a lingering kiss on top of her head as he heard her breathing steadily, which meant that she was now in a deep sleep. He lay awake, for the wizard in him felt something bad was coming his way. He sensed danger, but unsure of what it was. It couldn't be the Dark Lord, for he had been defeated once and for all. If only he could use magic to see what her dream was. He was, after all, one the most renowned legilimens in the wizarding world. Wait... perhaps he could... Perhaps he could break that promise he made to himself that he would leave magic for good. No, that would be a breach of privacy. He wished he could delve into the mind of this young woman he loved so dearly, and see what it was in her dream a while ago. Not that Meredith would mind considering they were now married. No, he decided against it. Magic was a life he had decided to leave for good. Magic reminded him so much of all the pain he had to suffer for what he thought was his one true love. Magic was the sore reminder of his bitter life of serving two masters, a life which had thrown him into the hatred pit in every witch and wizard's heart, except of course for Dumbledore who never, even for a fraction of a second, doubted his loyalty to him.
As the faint sound of the clock tick-tocked on their bedroom wall, Snape's mind drifted back to how he first met this woman who warmed his bed every night in his embrace.
Shortly after the battle, he left the hospital in which he was asked to recuperate, and wandered aimlessly in the street of an unfamiliar alley in a small Muggle town. For the first time in his life, he had no plan. He always had a plan before, for anything, from the simplest of things of his day to the most complicated in his life. He always had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve. Now, he was just a pathetic wizard with no direction in life. Why would you be so stupid as to leave Hogwarts where you're always offered security, Severus? He continued moving forward, limping. The alley was vacant. Only his breathing and painful whimper could be heard as he limped forward, his hand fumbling along the wall for support. A sharp pain surged through his lower body as he noticed the wounds in his limping right leg flowing blood onto the pavement on which he trod. He wanted to cast some spell to take the pain away but he had made a solemn vow to himself before he left Hogwarts, that he would start anew without magic. He would try to live, magic-less, in the world of the Muggles he once detested. He leaned against the wall in the narrow alley, clutching his leg which was throbbing with pain. He cursed under his breath. His head bowed, his body bent. His eyes looked at the bloody pavement. He bent lower as if the pain was eased a bit that way. For the first time in his life, he felt helpless. He had no one. No one cared about him. He had no one to love and to love him back. The love he once felt in his teenage years was left unrequited. The love he once pined for had chosen another man. Why didn't you just die, Severus? Lily's long gone and you've secured the safety of her son, the son she had with the man she chose over you. For whom are you still living this pitiful life? As the internal monologue played in his head, a tear escaped his eye and fell onto... an arm.
"Are you alright, sir?" the voice which belonged to the pair of arms gripping his arms, inquired, with honest concern in her voice. Snape looked up. In his effort to stand up straight to face the owner of the soft voice, he muffled a groan. The arms grabbed him, lending him support so that he would not fall to the ground.
"I'll take you to the hospital," she said. He was in too much pain to mutter an intelligible word as a response, but he managed to shake his head. "Alright, let me take you to my house then. Just a few more steps, hold on to me," she bravely said.
Even in his pain, Snape almost chuckled at her words, for he thought, if he were to pass out there and then, he was not sure if the girl would be able to bear his body weight on her.
She took him to her house, after leading and supporting him with difficulty to go up the stairs to her door on the first floor in one of the buildings in the alley where she had found the wounded stranger. It was a small house. She took him to her bedroom and led him to her queen-size bed. She sat him down at the edge of her bed and removed what she then thought was ridiculous clothing with a long cloak, and so many layers. He groaned a little as his legs moved when she was removing his boots. She left him only in his white undershirt and his boxers. Her cheeked blushed in hot pink as she removed his blood-stained pair of trousers. She did not want to but she had to because she would need to nurse his wounds to avoid infections. Snape had never, for a long time, had a woman undress him but he could not protest. She positioned the pillow comfortably under his head and covered him with her sweet-smelling duvet to give him some warmth. There, he lay still, his eyes closed but he looked in much less pain than he had been in. Before he drifted to sleep, he remembered the girl giving him some kind of a pill with a glass of water which quenched his thirst. She would later reveal to him that it was a painkiller she gave him to help ease the pain.
He remembered he had slept like a baby. He only woke up when the rays of sunlight peeked through the pink curtain of the kind lady's bedroom. He felt... clean. The woman must have washed him when he was asleep. He removed his duvet from his body and looked at the wounds she had neatly dressed. His leg felt much better now. Still painful, but much, much more bearable. He looked around the room, there was no one. He reckoned she was outside the room. He glanced at the bedside table on his left. There was a glass of milk and a bowl of soup, with a note written in a very neat cursive handwriting which read: GONE TO WORK. BE BACK AT NOON WITH YOUR LUNCH. ENJOY YOUR BREAKFAST. SORRY IT WASN'T MUCH BUT THAT WAS ALL I HAD. MEREDITH.
Meredith did come home that noon with his meal and hers. They had lunch together that day in her tiny kitchen. When she absent-mindedly wiped the sauce from his mouth as she chuckled, there was a stir in his heart which told him that this was the reason he might still be alive – to have another chance at being loved. Of course he was not hoping to sweep her off her feet right there and then, but he swore that if she allowed him to, he would do right by her.
Having been a great intellectual in the wizarding world, and half-Muggle, Snape knew about the Muggle world and its cultures through his readings and his occasional visits during his holidays. So, when Meredith asked about his background, he just told her that he had lived his life like James Bond, an orphan, a spy, living his life to protect others. This was the truth, literally for Snape, but in Meredith's mind, he was literally an assassin working for an intelligence agency just like James Bond, not a wizard, because he left all the magic-related details of his life out. Meredith's story was not very much different from his own, only that she was not a spy, and that she was almost half his age. She was an orphan too, raised by the nuns at a convent. A bright girl she was but she did not further her education after her A-Levels because she knew she would not be able to afford it. She had worked as a waitress at a tea-and-scones café since to support herself. She told him that besides the loving nuns who had brought her up, her co-workers were the closest she had to a family. When Snape got better, she got him a job at the café. Everyone marveled at his ability to create new teas for the menus, thanks to his vast previous knowledge in potions, only now without magic, bringing in more customers and profit to the small establishment. They had started dating after two years of friendship and married a year after that. A few months after their wedding, their employer died of old age and because the employer's heir refused to come back to England for good to continue running the business, he told all the employees he would sell the shop to a development company, which would mean that everybody would be retrenched. Meredith was the most senior of all the employees who were mostly university students and she could not stand to see the café she cared about be destroyed or replaced by whatever development. Besides, she and Sev would be out of employment too. She also had all the other employees' interests in her heart. She voiced her intention to buy the café to her husband. Meredith was always a timid and reserved girl, one who always gave more and asked for much less, or nothing at all to be given her. However, if she really wanted something, she would make sure to intimate her intention to the people concerned, in this case, her husband. Being a man who paid attention to the details of her wants and desires, Snape would do anything to make her happy.
And so, for a few months now, they had been running the tea-and-scones café as the owners. Muggles had always dreamed of magical life, but as a former wizard, Snape could not disagree more with that foolish Muggle mindset. He was a living proof that life could be successful without magic. He smiled as he thought of how great life had been for him and for the woman whom he loved and loved him back. He planted another kiss on her head before drifting back to sleep.