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“Mum, when are we going home?” Severus asked her. She had arrived alone to pick him up at King’s Cross, and Severus did not remember the way from London to Cokeworth, as he had travelled that way only once and in the opposite direction. It took him a long time to understand something wasn’t right.
“We aren’t going home, love,” mom answered, and Severus was struck dumb. He hadn’t wanted to go home particularly badly - he knew he would miss magic, his favourite lessons, Lucius Malfoy, the library, the forest, and the lake.
“Where are we going?”
Eileen ran her hand through her hair and Severus noticed her ring was gone. “Sold it,” she explained as she caught him staring questioningly at her left hand. “I thought we might stay with my family for a bit. But tonight we’ll stay at an inn.”
“Has he been very cross?” Severus asked her.
Eileen didn’t speak. “Tell me about Hogwarts,” she asked, and stroked her son’s head. “Is it nice? What’s Slytherin like?”
He didn’t want to upset her, and really, it hadn’t been so bad; he told her about his favorite lessons and about Lucius, and left out the anecdotes involving James Potter. He had done well on his exams and Mum seemed very pleased. “I’ve never been much of an academic, me,” she laughed.
He fell asleep with his head on his mother’s lap. “Get up,” she said. “Breakfast.”
After a quiet breakfast, they returned to King’s Cross to take a train - but it wasn’t the train to Manchester. “Could we not go by Apparition?” He wondered aloud. Ever since he'd found out about it, he wanted to try it.
“Been too long since I’d Apparated. You don’t want to get Splinched.” She was right - he didn’t. He hoped someone in her family would be able to show him how to Apparate - no one in Cokeworth could, and at Hogwarts it was impossible.
Severus listened at the door as his mother and the grandparents he had never met talked. “You can stay,” his grandmother told his mother. “Your brat can go back to his father.”
“I can’t, mum. I can’t leave him. He’s a good boy, you don’t even know him. He’s not like his dad.”
“Looks like him, with that nose. Couldn’t even pick a better-looking Muggle, then? The answer is no. We have enough proper family to worry about.”
Eileen broke down in tears. “Please, please mum, he’s at Hogwarts for ten months out of the year anyway - hasn’t returned for Christmas either. Tobias beats us, and there’s hardly any work - you don’t know what it’s like.”
“You call yourself a witch?” Her father finally spoke. “I’m ashamed you named him after me, ‘Leen. He’s your child, your responsibility. Not ours. His father can take him, it’s only right.”
Severus did not remember what lie his mother had told him about why they couldn’t stay, but he appreciated it all the same, because he did not want to admit he had been listening. As he could not ask her about everything mum and her parents had talked about, he tried to forget it.
They found another inn and had a quiet meal of fish and chips at the pub. “Eat everything, love. You’re a growing boy.” She hadn’t eaten herself. He was the only child there, and he hadn’t had owt to eat in so long, he devoured his meal and stared down at his empty plate. Unlike the trays at Hogwarts that filled up just as fast as they’d emptied, his plate remained barren. “Have you made lots of friends in Slytherin?” Mum asked. Severus realized she was trying to take her mind off things - she had already asked him that yesterday.
“Some,” he answered. “But Lily’s my best friend. She’s in Gryffindor.”
Severus’s pain must have shown on his face: He would not see Lily for two months? And how would he explain to her where he’s gone? Both Severus and Eileen pretended to sleep at the inn, and both their stomachs growled. He was not, altogether, unhappy, when they took a train to Manchester, and then to Cokeworth, and then embarked on the long walk to Spinner’s End, to the very last house. Dad had been sleeping on the sofa with his belt in his hands, and when the door creaked, it startled him awake, and he could not have slept very deeply, for he smiled at his wife and son immediately, arching one eyebrow above his eye and baring his nicotine-stained teeth.
“Sent you back, have they? I knew they would,” he said, and Severus squeezed his mother’s hand, and she squeezed his back.
“How do you know I didn’t change my mind?” Eileen demanded, but her confidence was false, and Tobias could always tell.
“Not before you sold my grandmother’s ring.”
Eileen gulped. “You shouldn’t have returned without it, ‘Leen,” Severus’s father warned his mother, and though his voice was almost warm, his eyes were cold. In an instant, he transformed into a forgiving man, as he put his hands on his wife’s shoulder and pulled her into the house, as he lowered himself to meet his son at eye level to ask him how he liked that school of his. “You must be tired, such a long trip,” he said. Severus expected punishment, had even had the words on the tip of tongue – I only did what mum told me to, I didn’t know where we were going – but nothing happened.
As Severus began to fall asleep, he felt love for his father, a rush of gratitude for what he’d been spared, for how his father didn’t send him and his mom away. He felt a twinge of shame for how fast he would have pinned the blame for everything on his mother. Above all, though, he felt relief. This, at least, was familiar. He knew the Moors, he knew the town, he knew Lily, and he didn’t want to think of what his summer would have been like if they’d gone to live with the Princes.
“I assume you have a plan for buying back your wedding ring,” Tobias said over an English breakfast the following morning. “It was my grandmother’s , and I’d hoped to pass it on to this one if he ever has children.”
Everything was his, paid for with his wages, or from his side of the family. Everything, except the old magic textbooks. Eileen’s eyes were red. “I’m sorry, Toby, it’s –“
“So. You can’t even witch it out of the pawn shop, then, you useless cow?” The words reverberated in the small kitchen. “What good is all this magic business for, then? We sent him to this poofter school instead of a proper one so he can learn how to go soft and useless like his cow of a mum?”
You could hear a pin drop. “The Ministry will come,” Eileen pleaded. “I could get the ring back - I could - but they’ll ask questions”
“Give me your wand,” Tobias ordered. Eileen obeyed with shaking hands, and Severus wondered what his Muggle father could possibly do with her wand. His first guess was that he would hit her with it in the hope that the symbolism would drive home some obscure point, but Tobias only studied it. “How much would it sell for?” He asked her.
Her voice quivered as she explained that her wand had chosen her, that second-hand wands didn’t go for much because it’s so individual. Again, Tobias nodded and seemed every bit the reasonable man as he took his wife’s words in, and then he snapped the wand in two with the full strength of his working man’s hands, extracted the magical core within the wood and let it fall to the ground. “Oi, you lad,” he said, and Severus only realized what had happened when he was already mid-run toward the Evans house. He had always been fast, and his feet must have realized what his father wanted to do before his brain did.
His father’s shouts followed him: “Where do you think yer going, scrawny shite,” but he did not listen, he heard only the wind, and only stopped to breathe when he saw Lily. He inhaled violently and tried to tell her, “your wand, I need your wand,” but she only stared at him, perplexed. Finally, when his heart and breathing slowed down enough to explain what he needed, they walked up to her room and she pulled it out of her wardrobe. “Unbreakable charm,” he heaved.
“What?!”
“Just, please, Lily.”
He did not want to tell her that his father would break it, would force him to leave Hogwarts, would take away even that which did not belong to him. Would make sure I’m trapped here forever like him, working at the mill.
“But I don’t know how!” Lily cried.
Severus had read his mum’s old books, and he was confident enough of Lily’s magic that she would get it right. She was the best in the year at charms, after all. He told her the spell, explained the theory behind it, and hoped. She never thought to wonder about the Ministry as she attempted the incantation, and Severus did not have the courage to make sure her spell had worked. He would find out soon enough, he reckoned.
“Thanks, Lil. I’ll see you,” he said, and rushed out before she could ask any more questions.
His mother couldn’t recover the ring without breaking the Statute of Secrecy, Severus realized as he ran from Lily’s house to his, because her only idea had been to charm the ring out of the shop or Confund the proprietor into selling it back to her for whatever she had left of what she got for it. But the proprietor kept books, and the books would prove that he’d somehow been cheated, and the whole town would know that the Snapes are thieves. If that happened, the Ministry would be the least of her concerns. But that did not mean, Severus realized, that he could not confund (or just persuade) the pawn shop owner into giving him a summer job, even if he was a scrawny lad from the last house on Spinner’s End who wore dreadful clothes.
That’s why you’re in Slytherin, he told himself, not without a hint of pride, as he walked back into the house with a promise that he would recover the ring.
Lily’s first week of summer
The owls came after Sev had gone: She had performed an unbreakable charm on his wand. Naturally, they had not attempted to check if it had worked, but it must have worked well-enough to get her in trouble on the very first week of summer.
As soon as Petunia realized that wizards were coming, she ran into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. I feel so welcome, Lily thought.
"What's an unbreakable charm, love?” Mum asked her. “It sounds very serious”.
“No - no, mam, not the charm itself. The thing you charm. It can't break. Well I can't show you!” She stomped in frustration. Sev better apologize for this, she thought.
But Da’ was much more light-hearted. “Relax, I'm sure our Lily would not have done anything wrong!”
“It was bad enough to get this letter, Wasn’t it? You take the girls’ side on everything! And she’s not even denying it!” Mum said, over Lily’s head.
Clearly attempting to humour his wife, Dad made a stern face. “Well, did you do what the letter says?"
“Yes daddy.” She didn’t want to lie.
“Why did you do it?"
Lily blushed scarlet. “For Sev,” she mumbled. "My magic friend from by the river.”
Her parents frowned.
"Why did he try to get you in trouble, then?”
"He didn't try to get me in trouble,” Lily shouted, but then she remembered that he did run away as soon as she did as he had asked, and that he knew you’re not supposed to do magic in the summer… The knock on the door came and Lily felt a jolt of fear in upper back.
A witch in Muggle clothing entered the living room. She looked understanding enough. “Are you little Lily Evans?” She bent down to ask her. Lily nodded. “I’m Mrs. Edgecomb. Let me have a look around.”
After taking herself on a tour of the house and refusing a drink, the puzzled adult witch said, “I’m not sensing any traces of magic in this house.”
"Lily was only trying to show us a spell,” Dad pretended to explain. “We asked her to. We are so excited to see some magic, you know." Lily could not believe her luck.
"What did you try to charm, sweetheart?” The witch asked her.
Lily pointed at a vase. With a flick, the vase flew off the dresser and smashed into the floor so spectacularly it left no room for doubt.
“It mustn’t’ve been very good, was it, the famous unbreakable charm,” the witch told herself. “Good enough to waste my time, of course. What can you do with Muggles," she added. As an afterthought, she repaired the vase and put it back on the spotless dresser. Lily forced a sheepish smile onto her face. “Well, we can’t have you expelled for that, I suppose. But don't be so enthusiastic with your wand next time, Lily. Do you understand?”
Lily nodded, humiliated.
After the witch had left, Mum took Lily’s wand and stowed it where Lily could not find it.
“You’re grounded,” she declared. “You can come out now, Petunia. And you can forget about your welcome back ice-cream, Lily.”
Lily’s eyes stung. She could not believe Severus would do this to her.
***
The next night, Lily woke up to the sound of pebbles hitting her window. She and Severus had arranged to meet at their usual spot and Lily never showed. She tried to ignore it, but it was impossible - she was just too mad.
“Where have you been?” Severus stage-whispered to her from the lawn. “Why didn’t you come today?”
“I don’t want to speak with you. You nearly got me expelled!”
His face froze in a silly expression, mouth gaping. "The unbreakable charm," he realized.
Before she could say anything more, he ran away. Again. Coward.
***
Shit shit shit shit, he thought to himself with every stroke of his foot as he ran, shit, shit, shit, SHIT.
Breathless, with the chimneys in the distance, he could not run anymore.
The reality of everything that had happened hit him: The Princes sent him and his mother away, and before the sting of rejection could fade, he had witnessed his da’ snapping his mother's wand, and in his fear, he went to the only other magic person he knew and did not even stop to think of what would happen to her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He only worried about whether it would work, but of course it worked, Lily was top of the year in Charms, he wanted to tell her it had worked, but after da’ tried everything, even jumped on the wand, to no avail, he- but that didn't matter.
He screamed, he slammed himself against a tree, against a dark gas lamp post, and he could not stop.
Why had they rejected him because of a Muggle he hated, and who hated him? Why did the Ministry come for Lily, who had only tried to help? Would she speak with him again? Would she be allowed to? Everything crashed around him and he knew who to blame: Mum. She had decided to try and leave the Muggle, and she didn't stick up for herself and she lost her magic, and she-
Somehow, Severus made it home, and crawled into his bed and collapsed, exhausted with dull pain. The most important thing was that he did not cry. Dad hates crying.
***
With Lily being grounded and Severus working, it took days before they could meet and clear the air.
Lily pretended to still be angry, but since she bothered to show up at the usual place, Severus didn't take it to heart. He was in an elated mood. "He is finally proud of me," he told Lily, stars in his eyes. "Working is great. He says it will make a real man out of me."
Lily stuck her chin out. "Why does working make you a man, loads of women work."
“You don't, and I do, so here we are. What have you been doing all summer so far?”
“So you're not going to tell me?” She asked, and Severus’s mood sank. “I got in so much trouble over this - it’s the least you could do to tell me why.”
He exhaled, and like always, picked at dry leaves until they crumbled. “Mum tried to take me to her family, to live with them. Magic,” he added. "They - er - they didn't want us." Didn’t want you, to be exact.
"What? Why not? And why did she try to leave? And what's it got to do with the blooming wand?”
“Dad broke mam’s when we came back here, and I thought he would try to break mine.”
Lily put her hand over her mouth. “What? He can do that?!”
Relieved that she had forgotten to follow up on the small matter of having been rejected, he humoured her. "Who is going to stop him? The Ministry doesn't concern itself with Muggles, and their bobbies - well, they can’t lock him up for breaking a piece of wood, can they?”
"But what’s your mum going to do now?”
"Should 'ave thought of that before trying to give him the slip, 'aven’t she?”
“And she's not going to get another one?”
“At eleven galleons a piece?”
That settled the matter for Lily. If her parents could do without magic, so could Sev’s mum. Severus, however, knew it was not so simple - only magic made life in the last house on Spinner's End tolerable. Dad hated it, yes, but when he was out, mum used it anyway - Severus could tell that their milk lasted a little too long, that broken and worn things got mended without incurring a debt to the cobbler, seamstress, or carpenter; small things that his Muggle dad would not notice, that didn’t feel magical but definitely were. Lily had never been to his house, but he had been to hers: Her parents prohibited her to go to that side of town, but he was allowed to do whatever he pleased if he didn’t get in anyone’s way.
Lily's house was bigger, the Evanses even had a car and settee; the street wasn’t strewn with litter and the windows weren’t boarded up.
Severus's mind wandered to the Prince House. It was not very big, but it was in a place where you could not see chimneys or mills, even in the distance, and Severus just knew a proper magic household would always be warm and clean and safe. Mum had never told him anything about the Princes.
"I’ve got to get home, they'll be mad at me", Lily said suddenly, and rushed to leave. "I’ll tell you what a cow Petunia has been tomorrow."
***
“A hard-worker, your lad,” Mr. Gibbons, the pawn shop owner, told Tobias, who had to struggle to not look shocked that the boy was good for anything. “He got through his chores before noon, I let him get a head start on tomorrow's work. A good head, too - he spotted an error in my books, almost cost me ten quid. I always double check, mind, but I gave him ten quid anyway - toward your ring. Wish your wife had pawned it at my shop months ago!”
“They're never too young to start, y’know - to learn the value of a pound, a good day’s work,” Gibbons added. Tobias agreed whole-heartedly, though he wondered in secret when was the last time Gibbons had worked a real job, of the kind that stings the eye with sweat. He also wondered when would be next time he would work himself, if the rumours of layoffs prove true. If it would be too humiliating to take over his son’s job when summer ended, or why had fate been so twisted that he had to thank Mr. Gibbons for giving Severus ten quid toward the ring that belonged to Tobias by birthright. There were times he had told himself he ought to pull the boy out of that school: Severus returned home talking like he was on the BBC, and only remembered from whence he came after being threatened with a good reminder. The food was not good enough for Severus anymore, and he seemed visibly ashamed of Cokeworth. But the thought of having to feed and clothe him for the entire year tipped the scale, especially with the talk of cuts and the talk of strike that inevitably followed.
Tobias was very pleased with his lad, possibly for the first time since he’d been born. The worst thing you could be was a thief, and the boy was no thief. One of those days, he will thank me for making a man out of him, Tobias thought. A hitherto unprecedented alliance had formed between Tobias and Severus, who had proven capable at many tasks, so much so that Gibbons had lent him to other shops, to clean, run errands, pull out weeds, sort the till… Severus even turned out to have a brain - Tobias was certain that even if the boy got the magic from Eileen, it was he who had given Severus his head, and it pleased him immensely. The second worst thing you could be was a fool.
Severus earned the ring back before the summer was up. With time to spare, he did not stop working. Eileen said ambition was a trait of his house at Hogwarts. Tobias knew a thing or two about ambition, though, and he knew Cokeworth was no place for it. You could only be ambitious enough to not get the sack, and since Severus had proven that he could earn his keep, Tobias planned a surprise for him: Severus could leave that school and stay in Cokeworth with his family, away from the posh boys who thought themselves above him and the even posher lad who was Severus's only protection against them (and Tobias did not trust this older boy one bit).
Severus had to make sure he would get fired, fired publicly, sacked so dishonourably that he could never get hired anywhere in this town ever again, no matter how well he had done all summer.
He knew he would break his father's heart - he broke his own heart and he was not so sure it was worth it. But one year at Hogwarts had been enough to change him - limitless food, a library full of shelves that stretched as far as the eye could see, and magic - pure magic that pulsated in everything, that Cokeworth lacked so plainly it felt like living in a black and white film. Cokeworth had even made his mother dull and lifeless. And after all, he could not face Lily and tell her he wouldn’t be returning to Hogwarts after the Ministry had paid a visit to her house. Severus had survived without his father's love his entire life, and he resigned himself to surviving the rest of it thus bereft as well, and he put every bit of grey matter in his Slytherin skull to devising a plan: He would get caught stealing.
***
Severus’s plan worked better than he ever dreamed it would. With his hand in the till and his face stained with chocolate he hadn't paid for, rumours spread and everything was blamed on him from, from incidents that would have been forgotten to crimes he knew he had not committed, but for which someone had to pay nonetheless.
The predicate “the Snape boy is a thief” seemed to fit very neatly into the town's preconceived notions, and though Severus had surprised everyone with his quick wits and indefatigable industriousness, the evidence that he was a juvenile delinquent surprised no one.
The shame contaminated his father too, for Tobias was guilty by association, and needed to purge his reputation. Severus would blame himself for how he allowed tunnel vision to take over him. He saw only Hogwarts being ripped away from him and did not stop to think about side effects, unintended consequences, how you can control what you say or do, but never what others hear, see, or remember. But that would come later. Now, all that existed was the rage on dad’s face, that twisted them into something even scarier and more anguished than ever before. “You worthless fucking idiot,” dad shouted. "What were you thinking, huh? Thought you would steal now, so that you could never earn another pound again? Not even fit to be a thief, and you were doing so well, you bloody ponce, I was almost proud of you!"
“I'm sorry,” Severus cowered, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!"
But it was no good. He had been too careful to leave no room for doubt. "Sorry won't get you your job back, filthy hare-brained thieving dunce. Do you think you can do as you please because you’ll go off to that freak school of yours?”
Dad's eyes glinted: It was more than anger, than discipline. Severus had been punished before, but never like this. He had accepted the guilt for his so-called crime, but with it came liability for crimes committed in earnest by others and for everything that was wrong with the world, every note anyone had ever lost, every slow day at the shop; to merely punish would not do.
The belt seemed to take a life of its own. Tobias had never been so unhinged before. Perhaps dad didn’t want the neighbors to talk, before, but now it seemed as though he wanted the whole of Cokeworth to know that he did not raise the boy to be who the boy proved to be. Screaming only made it worse, begging only fanned the fire, and it did not stop until dad had exhausted himself, long after Severus had stopped fighting.
He had never got on with his father, but now that they have been getting for so well, the pain of heartbreak, shame and disappointment, of the sheer unfairness of life, his own life, his father's, and his mother’s, compounded into a mixture so toxic no bezoar could cure it, that could be expelled from them only by spilling his very blood.
He wondered it mom would have intervened rather than stayed frozen if she still had had her wand; he wondered it she would have been duly punished for this herself, and he wondered if her inaction had been borne not of paralysis but because she felt that Severus had rejected her in those short weeks he and his dad were family, or that thanks to Severus and his blood, the Princes had denied her entry to her rightful home.
Though a deadly silence settled over the Snape house in what was left of the summer, the shouts and cries echoed with every step, every suppressed gasp of pain whenever Severus or Eileen tried to change position, in how neither of them dared use magic to heal themselves. He did not go to see Lily, who either would have pried, or somehow missed the obvious, her two modes of addressing his home life. He doubted that her parents would mind or be surprised.
Everywhere he went, he felt like people were staring. Someone even volunteered his opinion that "it's not righ’, what he did to you,” and though Severus agreed, he also hated that man for talking when he had no clue what he was talking about.
Soon, he would be back among his kind and he could forget about the mill and the pub and the track and the church, the smell of the dirty river, the line of people waiting for the dole.
Tobias had not realized how much depended on magic, and the gloom grew gloomier still as the tea went paler, the milk even more watered down, the summer heat more stifling, the flies more numerous. Severus wondered if it wasn’t fear that made Mum avoid taking Severus’s wand, maybe Mum’s magic got even weaker. Severus had read that it can happen, as fear and heartbreak take hold of witches and wizards, and he made an internal vow to himself, never to let it happen to him. To lose his magic, when the whole mess he had on his hands had started because dad said he would pull him out of Hogwarts...
Severus’s Second Year, Day 1
"Prince, Fiona?” Prof. McGonagall called out, and Severus perked up. He remembered how they had sent him and his mother away not so long ago. So this is the one my presence was supposed to corrupt. She looked nervous, jumpy, but clearly better cared-for than he was, brown-haired and very small.
“Gryffindor!" The hat called out - Severus could not understand why, but that was the end of that. They would not be family, not even here.
Fiona skidded away to join her house-mates, and Severus knew better by now than to look too long in the direction of the Gryffindor table.
Lily knew everything she needed to know about this Fiona girl, and she felt no hint of sorority with the new Gryffindor: Sev had told her about being sent away from the Princes. He didn't want to tell her anything, but since he had nearly got her expelled, Lily had felt entitled to it.
Fiona Prince vaguely know that she and the Slytherin boy who followed her with his eyes were related, and while her parents usually boasted their relations, this one was a sore subject: “If only he had been a Squib,” she had heard her parents complain, “we never would have heard from them again.”
She avoided making eye contact with him and walked toward the long Gryffindor table, where one of the boys offered his commentary on the proceedings: "Look, Sirius, your brother is fitting right in already!”
“Yes, quite the perfect little prince, isn't he?”
Fiona's ears perked up at the sound of her name even though they clearly weren’t talking to her or about her. She continued listening. “I’m sure mum will be very happy. At least one of us is following the sacred traditions. Eurgh, look at Snivvy and Malfoy.”
"He looks like he's about to eat out of Malfoy’s hand!” A second year with glasses said, and in a high and trembling voice, added: “Shall I pour you some pumpkin juice, Sir? Keep the toilet seat warm for you, Sir?”
The group laughed. "Would you mind your own business for once?” A redheaded girl protested.
“Would you?” A plump little boy said, from his place behind the loudest one.
“Good one, Pete! Sir, I'll shine your shoes if you dock Potter points, Sir,” another boy added.
"My stupid brother,” the first boy who had spoken resumed his complaints. "I wonder if he’ll help us spy on him though. Catch him when he’s not with Malfoy.”
The others pondered the possibilities this presented.
Fiona resolved to never let slip that she and “Snivvy” were related (she wasn’t even sure how they were related, anyway) and got an early start on the letter to her parents in her head.
***
At Hogwarts, Severus finally felt like a proper wizard again. His stomach was full, and he knew he would crawl into a clean bed and wash with running water instead of a tin bath - shit.
"Look what you did to him," Mum had wailed, after he had been caught stealing. Through the thin walls, Severus had heard everything. "It'll leave scars, I know it will, he’ll look like a right freak."
“Good," dad had Said. "I hope he never forgets what happens to rotten sneak thieves."
Looking around the Great Hall, Severus panicked, and decided to skip dessert to wash alone. Lucius whispered the password in his ear: “Thestral”, and Severus nodded. Across the hall, Potter and his mates giggled as they speculated on where he was going, but he ignored them. As he came out of the shower, he wiped the steam off the mirror and looked at the damage for the first time.
Jesus fucking Christ, mum was right, he thought, and hurried to cover himself up. Proper wizards didn't look like that, not unless they had been victims of Dark magic.