Chapter Text
Augustus Prince was not a pleasant man. On the contrary, he was ill-tempered and boorish. His late wife, Octavia, was no better. Her razor-sharp tongue could cut you to ribbons before you’d scarcely gotten a word in edgewise. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, as was proper for families of their stations. She had borne him a single child before passing the sickly whelp off to a house-elf and moving into the guest wing of the Prince manor.
The frail wizard scoffed at the sudden turn of his thoughts. “The frigid old hag,” he muttered as he swirled his tumbler of brandy before taking a slow quaff. A wet, hacking cough wracked his lungs as it burned his throat. The crystal glass was subsequently thrown into the fire in a fit of pique. The flames roared to life for a split-second before settling back down into a steady crackle, their light glittering eerily off the coal-black, unfocused eyes of one Augustus Prince.
Eileen. He had not given a thought to that pitiful excuse for a daughter of his in nearly a decade. Ever since he had banished her for allowing herself to be defiled by that scum of a muggle, he and his wife had refused to even speak her name. The house-elves were forbidden from ever mentioning their former “little miss Eileen” again on threat of a severe beating and being given clothes.
Ungrateful wench should have listened to him when he had so generously offered to send her and her mother away until the bastard child was born. Octavia had despised him even then however she would have nonetheless respected his wishes that she raise her illegitimate grandson as his heir (if only to spare herself from having to lie with her husband once more in an effort to produce again). People would have whispered, undoubtedly, but none would have dared question the Prince family’s honor publicly.
“But she just couldn’t bear to part with her muggle lover, could she? CURSE THAT WRETCHED, FOUL CREATURE!” he raged to an empty room.
His wrinkled hands trembled in fury at the memory of a willful child who had continued to disobey him. Catching her cavorting with that muggle even while 7 months swollen with child had been the final straw. Her name had been stricken that very night, and it was only the Statute of Secrecy that did not see the death of that muggle freak on the same day.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Augustus was without heir, without health, and without a wife with which to try again. Severus Snape, Eileen’s half-breed spawn, had amounted to no more than a sniveling thug unworthy of being welcomed back into the fold. Augustus was, for all intents and purposes, the last of the Prince line, destined to live out his days alone in abject misery until he shuffled off this mortal coil forevermore. The disgrace was almost too much to bear.
“No, I refuse. The Prince name MUST be saved, by any means necessary,” he murmured feverishly. “Moppet!” A decrepit house elf with over-large ears appeared with a pop.
“M-master Prince calls? What is Sir requiring?” Moppet asked, unable to meet their master’s maniacal gaze.
“Take me to Gringotts, and be quick about it or it’ll be clothes for you,” He snapped at the now distressed servant and stamped his cane on the floor, not feeling a whit of remorse even as the piteous thing wailed and pleaded with its master not to say such horrible things. In its haste, the aging elf nearly fell on its face, but it righted itself long enough to pop Augustus to the front of Gringotts bank and pop away with a watery squeak.
Once inside his modestly large vault, he hobbled through the rows of shelves and stacks of galleons on a single-minded search. At last, he found it. Tucked away in the back lining of a portrait (some long-dead relative who protested quite vigorously at its home being violated in such an uncouth manner), Lord Prince pulled gently on a delicate gold chain until it came free. The gold hourglass suspended at the end of the chain glinted dangerously in the dim torchlight of the vault, and Augustus could not resist stroking the object of his salvation with a leathery finger.
A time-turner. And not just any ordinary one, but one that would travel in either direction, past or future. Oh, what the Department of Mysteries would do if they only knew that the very technology they sought to regulate and recreate had already been in existence for nearly a century, passed down from generation to generation of Princes.
The old man cackled with glee before another cough wracked his thin body. He was running out of time to fix the mistakes of the past. He could not afford to wait any longer. He would use the family’s time-turner to do what he should have done so many years ago: obtain an heir by any means necessary.
With a devilish smirk, Augustus exited the vault and snapped at the toothy goblin that his business here had concluded. The foul beast glared back at him but remained silent, as he should. Once outside, he called for Moppet once more, only this time, he had his elf take him to a place he never thought he would see again: the dilapidated hovel his daughter called a house.
“Now see here elf,” the man ordered. “I will be back shortly. When I return, you are to find someone to care for the brat. They will be the heir to the Prince name, property, and fortune. YOU MUST NOT BE SEEN BY THE MUGGLES. Do I make myself clear?” Moppet nodded vigorously, too afraid to ask any questions of the master about where he was going or whose child he would be returning with.
“Good. Now, conceal yourself.” With a soft breeze, the elf shimmered into nothingness. Augustus pulled out the device from beneath his coat and began to fiddle with the dials. Without pausing to reconsider the wisdom or morality of his course of action, he upended the hourglass and vanished into thin air. Moppet wrung her hands in fear. Something terrible was going to happen. She could feel it.
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The sky seemed to rip itself open as Augustus plummeted to the ground in a heap outside Spinner’s End. Cursing the device and its capriciousness, the frail wizard pulled himself up by leaning heavily on his cane. He glanced around furtively to ensure that no nosy muggles had seen his less-than-graceful entrance. Fortunately, the only signs of life were the buzzards that circled forebodingly above the dingy neighborhood. At nearly 20 years in the past, the houses were slightly less moldy, but the general sense of despair still permeated the street.
With a murmured Alohomora , his former daughter’s home was pathetically easy to break into. Through the paper-thin walls, he could hear the booming yawp of Eileen’s muggle husband and the pathetically demure voice of the traitor herself coming from upstairs.
“Well, well, well,” he thought coldly, “it seems that my dear daughter was already experiencing trouble in paradise not even a year into her sham of a marriage.” He paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, curious to hear what they were arguing about.
“You mean to tell me that you’re some sort of FREAK??? And my son will be too?”
“Please Toby, don’t talk about your son like that,” Eileen whimpered.
“If he even IS my son, you slut. I saw how you were eyeing Ben Murrey in the grocery store. I’ll bet you’ve been fucking him behind my back this whole time,” he said crassly.
“How can you say that Toby???” she replied. “Just look at him, he is your son through and through!”
“Get that monster away from me, he’s no son of mine you conniving bitch.” A resounding slap echoed down the stairwell as Eileen cried out and the child’s soft cries of unease turned into full-blown wails of terror.
Augustus supposed that he should intervene soon. It wouldn’t do to have his heir be injured or accidentally murdered by a mere muggle. Then he would have to repeat the entire process to get here sooner, and it really was such a dreadful way to travel. He made his way up the steps with a silencing charm on his shoes so as to not alert the two adults about his presence.
Wand drawn, he opened the door and threw a Stupefy at the muggle’s back. The oaf crumpled to the floor in a heap and bumped his head rather viciously, much to the elder Prince’s pleasure.
“Hello Eileen,” he said calmly, not lowering his wand even as Eileen shrieked and ran for her husband, wailing child all but forgotten as she tossed him into his rickety crib. “ Incarcerous, ” he said lazily. Ropes shot out and tied her to the rocking chair in the corner. Her eyes bulged in fear like an abused crup, her cheek already darkening in the outline of a thick hand.
“What, not even a hello? Now is that any way to treat your dear, old Father?” he sneered cruelly.
“Y-you're n-not my father,” Eileen whispered in a shaky voice. “He’s not so o-old as you.”
“You mean you don’t recognize me? Daughter, you wound me!” he clutched his heart in a mockery of hurt feelings. “I did not travel nearly 20 years into the past to be greeted so cruelly by my own flesh and blood. Regardless,” he waved a hand dismissively, “I am not here for you. You may rot here in this shack for all of eternity as far as I care. I am here for the boy.”
“You’re from the future? But what do you want with Severus? What do you want with my son?!” She began struggling as he approached the crib slowly, his wand still trained on the corner she sat in.
“Well you see, Eileen, your mother is dead,” he ignored her gasp of shock at that news. “And I have need of an heir since I no longer have a daughter.” Augustus scooped the struggling baby up, dosing it with a mild sedative potion when he began to cry once again in earnest. As he turned back to Eileen, he did not hear Tobias begin to stir from his stunned state. “After all, it simply wouldn’t do to have the Prince name fall into obscurity, now would it?” He smiled pleasantly as if they were merely discussing the weather instead of kidnapping and time-traveling.
Eileen’s eyes widened in horror at the realization that her father intended to steal her baby away into the future. A future where she might not even be alive to find and rescue her own son. All of the pent-up magic she’d been neglecting for months swirled around her as she desperately visualized her bonds loosening so she could reach her child. She was so intent on freeing herself that she almost missed her father tossing a sack of gold at her feet.
“Here, that should be enough to cover the cost. Perhaps you and your muggle toy can finally afford to bathe,” he sneered at her and turned his back on her.
Sensing her chance, the frightened woman lunged for his wand and struggled with the old man for dominance before he managed to knock her to the ground and cast a hasty petrificus totalis.
The body of Eileen Snape collapsed in a rigid heap, her eyes widened in fear and her mouth stuck in a permanent, noiseless scream.
“Eileeeeen!” the forgotten man howled with rage, having finally regained consciousness. Like a bull, he charged at the old freak, only to be cut down in a similar manner.
Augustus, winded from having cast so many spells back to back as he'd not had cause to do in years, clutched at his chest as he felt a strange pressure growing there. Shaking his head, he muttered, “really Augustus? Guilt for such a wretched pair? You’re growing sentimental in your old age.”
He staggered down the stairs and out the door, looking around before setting the place ablaze. It wouldn’t do for the muggles to come sniffing around and discover evidence of his misdeeds or for his disgraced daughter to show up in the wizarding world and cause a scene. If he felt any lingering hesitation or regret, he did not show even a hint of it. Satisfied that he had covered his tracks sufficiently, he set the dial on the time-turner back to the moment he had left Moppet. Just as he was turning the dial, he felt as if his chest were being squeezed by a giant’s hand.
This time, when Augustus Prince collapsed on the street of Spinner’s end, it caused a backlash of energy to burst out from the device, and it burst into green flames in his hands. He would have shrieked in pain, but the elderly Prince was already dead before he’d hit the ground. The muggle doctors who would later examine his body would eventually surmise that their John Doe must have died from a heart attack.
Unbeknownst to all but house-elves and other creatures who are immune to Time Magic, several changes swept through the world of Wizarding London in the blink of an eye. Loved ones vanished or met their untimely deaths. Enemies survived and some souls were dragged back through the veil. A certain name was scratched out from an ancient book only to be rewritten several pages after.
But Moppet, the good and faithful house-elf that she was, cared not a bit for any of those changes. In that moment, the only thought that consumed her head was fulfilling her late master’s wishes. She could not be seen, but she would watch over the little master until it was time for him to accept his responsibility as the Lord of the Prince estate. With a snap of her small fingers, she conjured a basket and blanket to swaddle the little Prince in. There was much work to be done.
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When Mary Davies went out to collect the paper as she did every morning, the last thing she expected to happen was that she nearly tripped on a basket left on the front porch. Muttering to herself about postmen who hadn’t the courtesy to ring the doorbell when delivering a package, Mary gasped to find a baby sleeping soundly on her porch.
As she took the baby inside to show her husband, the only clue she could find as to where the boy came from was a card with the name “Severus” on it and a plea to “please raise my son as your own.” The Davies were shocked but certain that this was an act of God, for they had just received the news last week that they would be unable to conceive. Father Muller had told them that God worked in mysterious ways and that they should go home and pray for clarity on the matter.
“Hello, Severus,” Mary cooed in wonder as she gently ran a finger over the infant’s tiny fist. His eyes opened, at last, to reveal deep black eyes beneath those thick lashes, and it was in that moment that the Davies family fell in love with their baby boy.