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

Chapter 29

For the following three days, no one was resting for even a minute. 

Severus, Alba, and the elected team were working tirelessly through every hour of the day and night while endeavoring to produce something that they could call an antidote. Hope in their eyes was growing each minute, as their experiments were being prosperous, but it would fade away completely as Ana's symptoms were worsening every second that passed. 

Only Ana herself was truly conscious of the seriousness of her unhealthy days. She tried to conceal her pain from the ones surrounding her, but every time she became nauseous and threw up, no one was indifferent - they knew she was struggling to keep her posture, to keep a smile on her face as a way to motivate everyone around her. However, as the hours passed by, the light on her face faded gradually every morning she believed she was waking up just to face another pointless workday.

Day by day, hour by hour, Ana was losing the never-ending hope she seemed to have.

The once joyful and happy woman was now helpless, desperate, as she watched her beloved, Severus, working on a fake sense of hope.

Then, she started giving up, and her dearest friends noticed.

***

A week after starting the investigation, the team was preparing another experiment that could tell them more about the efficiency of their healing potion. It was based on Angel's Trumpet too, but, Ana was convinced that Dirk must have used the red flower blooming from the rare herb.

However, after so many experiments, the rest of the team believed the antidote could be made by using the yellow flower - with which, obviously, Ana disagreed. After a heated discussion - when everyone realized Ana's hope was decaying as her health - she argued that the red flower was indeed the answer to her condition. No one listened to her, knowing that particular flower was the most lethal one, until Alba got on her foot and walked out of the meeting to start working with the red flower.

The truth behind the team's hesitation was fear. They were afraid that, if one of them made a single wrong move, they could all die painfully. That's how dangerous the red flower could be.

However, after a few days, Severus Snape had enough: he dismissed the rest of the team and only he and Alba were working on concluding the experiments, trying their best to focus on the work and not on Ana's worsening symptoms.

***

That morning, Ana woke up in a jolt after a dreading nightmare. Severus was still sound asleep and she intended to keep it that way as she quietly walked out of their bedroom and sat on the front porch with a mug of hot coffee in her hand.

Her eyes wandered the landscape before closing and then she inhaled deeply and slowly. Several times.

She could feel it in the air.

Her end. It was coming. Fast.

Her main worry was Severus. How would he handle it after she's gone? She wanted him to be happy, but she was also well aware of how strong-headed he is. He spent decades in love with someone who married another man and had a baby with him. She died and his feelings were the same for years until Ana appeared in his life. Was someone else able to melt his cold heart when she is no longer in that world? Her biggest desire was for him to be happy, and that was the only thing worrying her more than her condition.

"I could practically hear you thinking from the bed," Severus' rough voice startled Ana who stared at him with tears in her eyes. "What is it?"

Severus kneeled in front of Ana as she sobbed.