Disclaimer: I own nothing, and only borrowed the characters for a little while.

The door creaked open and a figure slipped into the room, his knuckles knocking softly on the wood as he spoke quietly.

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?"

A body on the bed shifted as his eyes adjusted to the gloom in the wee hours of the morning. As his best friend struggled awake and brought herself upright on the bed, Harry realised that Hermione wasn't alone.

"Oh," he apologised softly. "I didn't realise Snape was back."

"Mm," was all he heard in response. He watched as Hermione's hand covered where her husband's rested on her swollen abdomen, even in slumber. "It's time?"

"Yeah."

She didn't rouse Snape – though Harry didn't think anything could at this time, the Potions Master coming off a marathon potions session – as she eased her sheets back and slipped from the bed.

Snape didn't budge.

Potter momentarily saw his best friend in profile, her singlet a second skin, before she wrapped a loose cardigan around her form, paused at the side of the room and then came toward him.

"Lead the way."

They were the last to arrive in the kitchen, all but one of the members of the target team present.

"What do we know?"

It may have been 3:00am in the morning, but prisoners did not wait for daylight. Debate had been raging a full half hour before a cry was heard from upstairs.

Kingsley had been arguing a point of law with Hermione and was startled when the young woman turned away from him, looking upward. It took him a moment to figure her reasoning.

He always forgot Granger had a kid.

When the cried petered off moments later, Hermione listened a second longer and then, apparently satisfied, turned back, a gleam in her eye. "Now listen..."

Debate was in full swing once again when the newest arrival stepped into the doorway.

Severus Snape looked exhausted, bags rimming his eyes, a slight improvement on his death-warmed-over appearance of the day before, and in his arms was the baby Helena.

Eyeing the ten month old that was refusing to make eye contact, burrowing her head into the neck of her father, Harry Potter mused that there was in fact something that could awaken the fearsome bat of the dungeons.

His daughter.

Finito.