Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Inside me. ❯ Catalyst and conflict. ( Chapter 6 )

Disclaimer - All characters depicted herein, with the exception of Koniggen, are the property of J K Rowling and her business associates, I am just using them for my own entertainment, not profit.

 

Note - Despite the huge gap between updates I am still alive, as is this story. I apologise again to any readers, and would like to thank you as getting a review made my day.

 

An additional note on accents - in this and future chapters I will occasionally depict the accent of Severus' home area, for the sake of this story we're assuming it is Derbyshire, although regional accents are kept to a minimum to avoid confusion.

 

 

Slytherin common room bustled with feverish activity as pupils of all ages bustled about, packing for the Christmas holidays at home with their families. Amidst this whirlpool of frenetic activity a little pool of calm was ensconced in an armchair. Koniggen paused in herding the little first years to Slughorn's office for their end of term pep talk and dropped another slip of paper onto the pile of similar scraps Snape was sifting through. He dropped a couple of sickles onto the scroll the younger pupil was industriously scribbling on. `The usual?'

 

Koniggen nodded, gaze flickering over the columns of cramped writing. He realised without too much of a shock that the order list was in code. `I'll owl over the more exotic ingredients in the new year.' With that he swept out grandly, stalking off to meet his head of house with an arrogant grace characteristic of all the boys and girls in Slytherin. Rosier smirked as the edge of Koniggen's cloak came dangerously close to a candle's flames.

 

A heavy hand on Snape's shoulder drew him out of whatever dark thoughts he had been entertaining and he glared up through his grease and potions matted swathe of black hair at whoever dared touch him. Lucius merely patted the bony shoulder with a tolerant expression of amusement at the tattered, scruffy little oik he'd taken under his wing. `You may visit with me after Christmas at the manor. The facilities will be available for your personal use.'

 

Severus raised an eyebrow, but bowed his head momentarily in a gesture of acknowledgement and gratitude. Apparently the Malfoy heir had come to some sort of decision, as Severus had never been invited to the manor for any but the most fleeting of visits. As Lucius strolled out in an exaggeratedly leisurely manner his thin lips quirked into the mild smirk that indicated something had amused him. Snape had been good at potions from the very first lesson, easily surpassing the efforts of his peers by the end of the first year he'd been brewing in secret, devouring potions texts from the library and analysing them keenly. It appeared that his precocity had switched from merely being advanced for his age to useful in Malfoy's eyes. It was a mutually advantageous situation - with a generous and understanding patron Snape could research and brew those potions he deemed to be important without cost worries. Meanwhile Malfoy got himself a pet brewer, one with few qualms about what he brewed and the assurance that the brews would not be defective. It was also one of the few ways he, as a half-blood Slytherin with little inclination to prostrate himself to the whims and desires of others or to fake social graces could get on in the wizarding world.

 

After term ended Severus walked into Hogsmeade and flooed from the pub to the public fireplace nearest to his familial home. He then trudged the grey three miles home through the grim town landscape.

 

Eileen Snape's careworn face lightened into a loving expression as she looked up from the hotpot she was preparing. She wiped her hands on a tea towel and embraced him. Severus leaned into the warmth of her hug, inhaling her distinctive scent of mother - the hand-cream she used, the smell of cooking food and soap overlaying a slightly careworn warmth of nurturing. She looked tired, frail and her glad expression could not entirely chase away the anxiety in her eyes. `You've grown, Severus.' She smiled up at him, caressing his cheek gently with roughened fingertips. `How long are you here for?'

 

`I have some extra potions work to do, so I shall leave to do it on the 28th. I should like to stay for Christmas, though.' He cautiously laid out his own wishes, knowing full well that as he'd aged and grown, both in body and magic his father's antipathy towards him had grown. His eyes grew wary. `How is Da?'

 

`Hide your wand and robes. Yes, I do know about that tatty old black set you somehow managed to get hold of for weekend wear.' She teased him gently, apparently not noticing the sudden flare of panic in Severus' eyes. `He finds this time of year difficult, and there are so many social get-togethers he feels obligated to go on.' Get-togethers where alcohol was freely served, they both knew. `We should just be glad of the fact he managed to get a job down at Accomb's.' Both silently added the sentiment that holding onto the job was important now. `Now hurry and change before he gets home.'

 

The first few days were filled with nervousness and the desire not to set Tobias off, as was usual for the beginning of a school holiday. Severus burned with indignant rage at the way in which a fully-grown witch and a competent wizarding duellist in his own right cowered in fear of one feeble, unpredictable muggle. As a Dark wizard Severus had to hide his very nature even in the magical world thanks to misinterpretation and vicious persecution. The tension and resentment fermented in the pit of his belly over the days, but Severus kept control, all too aware of the consequences of loss of control in this situation.

 

The tense standoff between the three family members was broken on the 23rd of December. A sardonic part of Severus' consciousness registered ironical surprise that is had taken a whole week of Severus' presence in the family home to force the underlying tensions to a head. Tobias had arrived home from his work Christmas party roaring drunk and in a foul temper over an imagined slight by the line foreman over the Christmas pudding. Apparently the man's jocular ribbing about his getting the sixpence had not been accepted in the same spirit as the sentiments had been uttered. Eileen had tried to excuse the other man's apparent rudeness, but had only succeeded in raising Tobias' ire against her instead. He bellowed at her to mind her own business and slapped her open-handed. Eileen staggered back, falling against the cooker, her voice rising in desperate placation. All the shrill hysteria did was merge into one stream of high-pitched aggravation.

 

Severus had been distracted from his studies by the sounds of conflict below and his black eyes chilled. He stood and pedantically slid his uncomfortable wooden chair under the rickety table he had been studying from before descending the staircase. His mother was half-collapsed, pleading frantically with Tobias as she held herself upright. His father's fist clenched and he glared at her with such an expression of hostility Severus didn't have time to think. He strode across the room in a few sharp paces and grabbed his father by the wrist, yanking Tobias around, face-to-face with him. `Do not touch her, tha disgrace!' Severus growled, spitting the words at his father. It was a measure of his fury that the boy did not even notice as his voice snapped into the local mode from his usual carefully cultivated Received Pronunciation.

 

`Gerroffwiyer!' Tobias shouted, swinging the arm Severus had grabbed, slamming his son into the table with a punch and grabbing his upper arms to shake him viciously. `Ah'll dob ee wun if tha don't be'ave!'

 

`Tha culdn't knock t'skin off rice pudden!' Severus snarled back defiantly, voice growling into the lower registers. Severus felt his magic roiling within his body and mind, but clamped down on it hard, black eyes conveying the depths of his hatred fear and loathing as he hung limp from his father's cruel grasp. He silently snarled defiance within the depths of his mind, but did not dare raise hand or wand against the man who sired him. Eileen recovered enough to throw herself at Tobias, hanging from one arm and sobbing at him. The two males held the stare for a moment before Tobias dropped Severus and staggered off to bed. Severus released his own breath in a sob; Eileen brushed her fingertips over the back of one of his hands before hurrying away to her bed.

 

Severus fell across his own bed, shoulder quaking as he sobbed, overcome with futility, rage and an agonising sense of loyalty. He hated them with every fibre of his being and yet there was a desperate yearning hunger, a burning, aching, cank'rous love somewhere in there too. After all, one doesn't have to like a person to love them. He probed his face cautiously with spider-thin fingers, wiping the bloodied nose on a hankie and sucking on a blood lollipop from Honeydukes. The first of these had been given him as a joke by Rosier who'd suggested he develop a taste for them in order to taunt the Marauders, who'd been muttering about what species the youth really was. Severus had noticed that they were an adequate substitute for blood replenishing potions, as well as surprisingly palatable.

 

The next morning Tobias was predictably remorseful, burying his face in his wife's apron and holding her close as she stood over he seated position at the kitchen table. Eileen smoothed his hair, looking down at the man she loved sorrowfully. He was a good man and he loved her, but the strikes and closures had put a strain on a painfully proud man. All he wanted was to have a good job, work for a living to provide for his family and come home to her. Instead the lack of stability within the job market left him hunting for work every few months and forced his wife into taking odd jobs as a cleaner or dinner-lady. There was no route out and his only consolation was also his greatest suffering. Eileen kissed his forehead as if in benediction and turned away to stir the porridge on the hob.

 

Her forgiveness of a crime against the man's own flesh and the woman he'd sworn to love, protect and honour made Severus' stomach clench. He stood by the kitchen door wraith-like, bruised and with a carefully blank expression. Sitting down to his bowl of thick, unsweetened porridge he treated both parents to an ostentatiously neutral stare, which turned into a flinch when Tobias raised his hand to pat the lad on the shoulder in a tentative request for forgiveness.

 

Eileen turned to look out of the window at the tiny paved back garden. Dishevelled clothes flapped in the wintry breeze and echoed her melancholy. Severus was angry, confused and suffering, not understanding her reasons for remaining steadfast and hating his tormentor without being capable of looking beyond his own pain, like a wounded beast. She sighed, he was only thirteen after all and for all his bravery in defending her, he simply was not yet mentally equipped to understand her motives. Instead in his incomprehension she could see the way in which the situation corrupted him, warping the boy. For all he occasionally hated his Da the desperate love and burning need for approval from him was killing his spirit as he realised that the man could never even tolerate the concepts of what he excelled in, let alone laud it. Instead the situation was killing his spirit and threatening to turn him into that which he most hated, becoming unable to tolerate mugglish ways and fearing their ignorance. And all Eileen could do was to watch the two people she most loved as they destroyed themselves and each other.

 

The room remained wrapped in silence as Severus sat drinking his strong tea with a hefty dollop of condensed milk dropped into it. Tobias cautiously sipped his own tea and manfully consumed the cold toast, ignoring the way it turned his stomach. The silence hung over him like a sodden coat and he positively anticipated work as the chance to escape from the caution and fear in the faces of Eileen and little Sev. Then after work his mates would invite him down' pub for a few jars and he couldn't be so rude as to refuse… he just had to get through the day.

 

The remorse didn't last long.

 

Eileen pressed against the wall, eyes wide with terror and her breath hitching in high anxiety, unable to wrench her gaze away from the unfolding action. It was the 27th of December and Tobias had gone too far in his drunken criticism and insult of Severus. Telling a boy who regularly stands up to the abuse of a gang of four that he is a cowardly nancy-boy and that his bloody airy-fairy magic bollocks is going to get a reaction. A strange dark corner of her mind desperately hoped that tonight's events might prove a catharsis, snapping Tobias out of the cycle of ill-tempered alcohol-spawned violence for a while. The thought that her beloved's behaviour required such a catalyst and her willingness to allow her son to take this role shocked her. Desperation makes villains of us all. Under her breath she began to mumble `Confiteor Domini omnipotenti, beatae mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, et omnibus Sanctis, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione*….' It trailed off as Tobias swung at Severus, the fist landing squarely on the boy's cheek with a resounding crack. Nausea flooded through Eileen as she stared down at the limp form of her son.

 

A crackling noise echoed through the small kitchen and the still body was abruptly perpendicular in an eyeblink, stalking over to his father, who could only stare in terror, transfixed. His breath came fast in shallow gasps of fear. A wiry hand shot out, trailing sparks and grabbed the man's throat in a strangling grasp, forcing him backwards until Tobias hit the wall. The smell of burning flesh assaulted Eileen's nostrils and she gagged. A feral despair burned his Severus' eyes and he looked quite unhinged, face set in a rictus of terrified insurmountable rage. Wild magic lashed about him like a localized storm.

 

Desperate fear galvanized Eileen into action and she jumped forwards, flinging her arms around Severus in a convulsive embrace, dragging him away from his father and back to a semblance of conventional sanity. Something of what she was shrieking into his ear seemed to sink in and she staggered under the sudden weight as Severus collapsed. Tobias dropped to his knees, clutching at his burned and hoarse throat, sobbing in fear. He screamed at Eileen to get the monster out before he killed them both. Tobias grabbed the unconscious form of his son by the upper arm; hard enough to leave bruising and flung him out of the house, then chucked the boy's belongings out on top of him. The little beast could slink off to his own kind.

 

Lucius Malfoy looked up from the book he was perusing by the fire as the flames thereof turned green. He raised an eyebrow at the ragged form that had staggered through only to promptly collapse at his feet. `You are early, Severus.'

 

 

* This prayer extract is from the Latin form of the Confiteor, a prayer of humility and acknowledgment of the reciter's sinfulness.