Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Inside me. ❯ A little boy lost. ( Chapter 1 )

 

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Eileen sighed and replaced her wand in its box; them tucked the box carefully away in an inconspicuous cupboard. She missed magic, but not as much as she missed her blood family. For Tobias she had given up every scrap of magic and would do so ten times over, but she stroked the cupboard door fondly and hoped `the bump' as she fondly called it would one day devour her books as eagerly as she had done in her childhood days.

 

Curled up on the shabby sofa, resting as dinner kept warm, she placed her hands on her abdomen and smiled dreamily. This child would be a fine witch or wizard some day in the future, the tendrils of alien magic swirling lazily through her body, centring around the developing child made that obvious to her. The magic seemed a little odd to her, but being alone and carrying her first child she had no idea what it meant, and no one to tell her that it didn't just mean that `the bump' was strongly magical.

 

Little Severus was born in early January, a quiet, solemn lad. Eileen's joy in him was tempered by the sorrow and concern she felt for Tobias, whose coping mechanisms having lost his job were not really adequate.

 

The midwife was less distracted, and being a squib of Rom origin was troubled by the child. For all that she was effectively muggle she somehow knew that even newly born this mind teetered on a metaphorical knife-edge and the instability of his family life did not bode well. She laid a careworn hand upon the child's head and invoked a traditional blessing, speaking words of protection that sadly had no effect, not being backed up by magic. Still, it's the thought that counts.

 

He grew up as a quiet boy, after all, his parents never came when he cried and bawling or answering back to his father just earned him a belting. Unfortunately for the boy he was also singularly ugly, thus it was that when the five-year-old boy came to go to primary school he found not friends, but a school of predators who viewed him only as a singularly amusing target. Even the lessons were uninteresting, as his mother had already taught him the basics of reading, writing and mathematics on the afternoons she was able to spare him. His mistreatment only intensified when strange things started to happen around the boy, especially to those who victimised him the most ferociously.

 

Eileen watched him dump his satchel by the front door, place his scuffed shoes neatly by the abused satchel and stamp in on stockinged feet. Severus was bruised and bloody again and seemed strangely tired. She wiped his face gently and handed him a doorstop of bread, thickly spread with butter, then sent him up to the attic to read.

 

Upstairs the child had his bony nose deep in one of Eileen's advanced DADA texts - the thick volume of hexes and counters Eileen's protective older brother had bought her when he made auror training. It was NEWT level at least and the explanations were difficult, even impossible in places for the young Severus to decipher. On the other hand, a mere child could easily read the short, faux-latin incantations, with their concise, comprehensible descriptions on wand movements. Especially when the child's mother has taught them the rudiments of both in order to show him how to cast a few gentle, frivolous charms with her old wand. Even the Ministry could not prosecute them for sharing a wand in order to change the colours of a vase of flowers or repair a broken toy.

 

Severus did not have time for such fripperies though. He knew damn' well that it was a dog eat dog world out there, where the strong subjugated the weak. Hexes could give him an edge, or comfort him with what he would be able to do to those worthless scum if Mam hadn't forbidden him and there was a chance she'd find out what he'd done. Charms were nice, and `reparo' and a few others were genuinely useful, but hexes were vital to a slight child furious with a world that sought only to harm him.

 

Of course there was something better than hexes. This he kept even quieter than the true nature of his studies. His Mam only knew he knew stuff like the `jelly legs jinx' and other mildly annoying spells. If she knew he could gather the fury and burning heat inside that made him and somehow have it flow out against those worthless pigs who hurt him Severus imagined that she might get cross. It felt so good, natural even as he let the magic within him do what they both wanted it to do though. Somehow though it always left him feeling drained and needing a bath though. As he sat in the water the boy would shut his eyes and pour basin after basin of water over himself, letting the pure water sluice away the day's residue.

 

Sometimes potential does not need to be nurtured, especially when manifesting in a line unprepared for it. Sometimes all it takes is to not be stamped out, and all the adults who knew him agreed that Severus was a shockingly bright, independent lad.