His Muggle Wife (A Severus Snape Love Tale)

Chapter 3: His Past Enemy

Two hours later after an extended romance in their jacuzzi tub and an actual breakfast, the couple walked to their establishment just ten minutes away. Their little café was opened an hour earlier by their employees. There were already morning tea lovers chatting away happily inside and outside, many of them their regular customers. Meredith pecked her husband on the lips and walked away to run some errands.

"Morning, Severus!" echoed his employees and some of his customers as he entered the café. As he approached the counter, his chief employee, Bruce informed him that a customer, one he had never seen before, had asked for him and had been waiting for about half an hour. Bruce added that he did send Snape a text about it and Snape apologized for not checking his text message earlier. Bruce pointed to a man sitting at the conner, holding the day's newspaper which covered his upper body including his face. Snape made his way towards the mystery man, uneasiness clouding his being the nearer he approached, the same uneasiness he felt last night after Meredith's nightmare incident. Snape was indeed curious as to who this man could be. As if able to sense Snape's presence, the man put aside his newspapers and beckoned in an eerie I-have-finally-found-you manner, "Good morning, Severus."

Snape stopped dead in his track about half a metre from the man, upon hearing his greeting. Their eyes locked on each other, each maintaining a composed, unsurprised look, as if not allowing the other to sense another's flaws.

"Lionel Barlowkey," Snape broke the silence between them, in a cold monotonous tone he had not used with anyone since he left Hogwarts almost four years ago. "To what do I owe the honour of your surprise presence after..."

"Almost 3 decades?" Lionel interrupted, with a cunning gleam in his eyes. "Please sit down, Severus. Surely you have a lot of things you would like to share about your life with... an old friend."

"I would prefer, if you don't mind, to take this conversation somewhere private. In my office at the back," Severus subtly demanded, maintaining his cold tone.

"Ah, ever the demanding one, aren't you, Severus? Always wanting to be in control. Conversation at the back room, you said? I wish those decades ago, you would have settled our little misunderstanding at a back room somewhere face to face with me, rather than stabbing my back when I wasn't looking," Lionel retorted, still maintaining his icy gaze on Snape, with his voice raised a little at the word "back" at the end of his sentence. "I shall oblige."

Severus turned around and paced to the back room that was his office, with Lionel in tow. The room was quite a large one. There was a big oak table where Snape liked to do his work. In front of the table was a set of couches and a television. The room looked homey, not too masculine but not too feminine either. Hung on the wall above the 52-inch flat screen, was their wedding photo with "Congratulations Severus & Meredith Snape" inscribed on the golden wooden frame. It was a gift from their then employer and co-workers on the occasion of their holy matrimony.

"She looks lovely, your Muggle wife," Lionel said looking at the photo, "And if I might add, more lovely... and lively and certainly more alive... than Lily." Lionel's mouth twitched with a satisfied smile looking at the angry stare Snape directed at him at the mention of Lily's name. He knew he would find out soon enough if Snape was angry at just the mention of his dead love interest, or the comparison favouring his Muggle wife which he might have deemed insulting to his, apparently obviously not-forgotten long-dead love interest. Besides, the vase of fresh lilies on his desk had got to mean something.

"I have to be honest, Severus, I am pleased to be meeting you in such circumstance, in the Muggle world, although I was a little bit taken aback upon discovering that you have been... fornicating with a Muggle, a human being of the race you once loathed and called Mudbloods. I shouldn't have been surprised really, considering Muggle blood runs in your veins. I had always thought, all those years ago, when we were young students, in love with the same girl, that I would eventually lose Lily to you at some point. But ah, Severus, pity you, my dear friend, just when I thought I had lost Lily to you, you lost her to another man."