Fighting for love - Severus Snape fanfiction (BOOK TWO of A Magical Muggle)

Chapter 4

Almost three weeks had passed since Malik's condition started. Ana has been following his evolution every day, and it did not seem good to anyone. And all of them knew it was a matter of days until he succumbed to that strange disease. That was reason enough for Ana to feel gloomy after visiting the boy at the hospital and talking to his parents. She could not begin to imagine the pain his parents were going through.

And those thoughts had led her to have thoughts about her parents. Her foster parents. The couple that she met as her parents her whole life and that seemed to have vanished from the earth. The truth is that she had decided to stop looking. If they did not come for her, she decided it was better to respect their decision, whatever their motives were.

"You're oddly quiet today," Alba snapped Ana from her thoughts. "Is it about the kid?"

"Yeah... I don't think he's gonna make it," Ana replied but her mind was significantly absent. "Another person appeared with the same symptoms as Malik's."

"Are the doctors aware that it might be something new?"

"I think so... it's not going to be pretty if this is something new and starts spreading. What bothers me the most is the fact that the first case that we are aware of started in Hogwarts... I mean, is it contagious? Is it a virus? A new potion? A curse? It's making me insane because I can't point out what it is exactly."

Johnny showed up just in time to hear Ana's worries.

"Honey, one person is infected. The other still doesn't have the test results. We might be worrying over nothing," Alba said.

"Over nothing? A kid is dying and no one can do a thing because no one knows what it is!"

Johnny who was quiet the whole time finally spoke up.

"Alba is right, Ana. This might be something small. Maybe it's just a rare disease. It's sad that the kid is dying but I don't think there's a reason to worry about a major outbreak. At least, not for now."

Ana sighed in defeat and the matter died there, luckily. At the end of the day,  she returned to Hogwarts, directly going to the hospital wing to check how things were going. It has been a quiet year though. The only thing she had to take care of were some broken bones after quidditch games or during some flying lessons, otherwise, there were barely any injuries or diseases to take care of. After the war, the students seemed to have grown up and been more well behaved. Fortunately. The fact that the three trouble makers (aka Hermione, Harry, and Ron) were no longer studying in the school was also a key reason for that quietness.

Since everything was peaceful, Ana decided to go quickly to the town to grab her dress for Harry and Ginny's wedding which was happening the next weekend. The dress was ready and she was excited to show it to Severus since she opted for a shiny dark green dress - matching Slytherin's colors. As promised, she selected the dress all by herself - in other words, without Minerva, even though she had insisted on going with her. Ana chose something humble and not too provocative, but, obviously,  she didn't want to seem too conservative, hence the slit it had from the middle of her thigh to the floor.

After putting the dress away into her wardrobe, Ana grabbed her stuff and decided it was time to meet Severus at their meeting point. They were going to have dinner in Hogsmeade that night. It was like a celebrating for them - many years ago, on that same night, Severus and Ana had dinner with Albus and Minerva, celebrating the fact that Albus had adopted Ana. It is also the same night that Ana had kissed Severus for the first time. She had crushed her lips against his and, as soon as she realized what she had done, she simply ran away. Still to this day, Severus mock her for chickening out, which often ends up with Ana remembering when he waited for her (for hours) in front of her chambers' door because she had dinner with Liam and her friends from the university.