Fic: The Strongest Conjuration (DH spoilers, PG-13 rating), Part Two
Title: The Strongest Conjuration
Author: themoreyouclean
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, Eileen Prince Snape, Tobias Snape, and other Snape and Prince family members.
Challenge: Originally conceived for the Pure-blood Prince Fest, but, well, it’s late.
Warnings: DH Spoilers, character death, verbal and physical abuse, angst, family dysfunction, and gender politics. Your author apologizes for the fact that you will find only a tiny bit of romance and no actual nookie here, though some is implied.
Summary: Home, family, mother: these are complex issues that don’t go away even during several years at a wizarding boarding school. Harry always had to go back to the Dursleys’ during summer hols, and Severus always had to go back to Spinner’s End.
Sunday
Severus woke the following morning with a sense of disquiet. Before breakfast, he sat down to read the rest of Eileen Prince’s letters, but could not bring himself to finish. He bookmarked his place in the letterbook and set it aside.
Pushing unwelcome thoughts about Eileen and his own childhood aside, he forced his attention to school matters. After joining Hermione in the Great Hall for breakfast, Severus spent the remainder of the day marking papers, reviewing his lessons for the upcoming week, meeting with the most recent DADA instructor to clarify crucial curricular components, going over the agenda for Friday’s Board of Governors meeting with Minerva, and catching up on his professional correspondence.
Hermione, on the other hand, studied Eileen Prince Snape’s words thoroughly that day. The act combined her two greatest loves, research and Severus Snape, and the idea that the letterbook might bring so much of his unspoken past to light made her giddy. It was with great difficulty that she forced herself not to read any further than Severus’ bookmark that day.
Severus came back to their quarters that evening from a late meeting about the marketing of one of his new potions to find Hermione already asleep in bed and a new addition to the mantelpiece: his birth announcement, newly housed in a silver frame.
Tobias and Eileen Snape proudly announce the birth of their son,
Severus Tobias Snape
Born on 9 January 1959
7 lbs., 8 oz.
MAY HE BE AS JOLLY AS HIS FATHER TOBY; WILY AS HIS NAMESAKE GREAT-GRANDFATHER PRINCE; STUDIOUS AS HIS GRANDPA ALEX PRINCE; CUNNING AS HIS GRANNIES MAGGIE AND BRIGID; AND HAPPY AS ME, HIS MUM, BECAUSE OF HIS BIRTH.
He grabbed the frame and threw it across the room; the glass shattered with a satisfying crash. He then cursed under his breath, hoping that he hadn’t just woken Hermione. He stilled to listen, but heard nothing. Stupid Gryffindor sentimentality, he thought as he summoned the broken frame and repaired it with a wordless incantation. “Jolly” as my bloody father “Toby”? Great Merlin, I’d rather be anything than like that man! He was certainly never jolly to me. What possessed her to think I would approve of having this thing displayed? He would never confront her about it, though. One of these days, definitely before Draco Malfoy’s next visit, he thought, I will quietly put this idiotic announcement away and never take it out again. She’ll forget.
Eileen P. Snape, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, England, to Brigid Prince and Maggie Snape, Manchester, England
30 January 1963
Dear Mum and Maggie,
I’m writing to you from the family waiting room at the hospital, where we’ve been for a couple of hours now. One of your neighbors is here, and she’s agreed to deliver this letter this afternoon. I wish I’d had the sense to leave Severus home with one of you before I rushed over here. He’s miserable: bewildered and upset by the noise and the mass of people here. He’s just crawled through my legs and is hiding out underneath my chair, poor dear.
A nurse rang me that Toby was here with a broken arm and various cuts and bruises. The doctor had to set his arm and stitch up a deep cut on his cheek. I wish his friends had brought him home first so I could have healed him myself; now he’ll have a scar on his face, which will surely be another matter for him to grumble about.
The mill manager fired him. The letter his friends gave me says that they had to “let him go” because things are slow at the factory now and that they expect to “call him back” soon, but truly it means they fired him and he’s out on his duff. His friends don’t expect that there’ll be “call backs” anytime soon. Apparently, Toby found this letter on his desk when he got into work this morning, and his boss didn’t even want him to stay for the rest of the day, just gave him his pay packet and told him that it’s best that he go now. So, he left, along with a couple of friends who got the same kind of letter, and they went to one of the pubs around the corner. They drank all morning until they got in a fight with one of the mill operators from the day shift who came in to get lunch. I’ve never known Toby to fight before, so I’ve no idea what happened. His mates laughed about it; they seemed happy that he could give as good as he got. Men! I just hope he didn’t throw the first punch.
How could his boss do this to him? It’s just a month after Christmas, just a few weeks after Severus’ birthday. We have some savings, but they won’t last too long. I’m worried about what we’re going to do. Toby’s been moody this last year, too, because of layoffs, which we both think is just the upper managers’ fancy word for firing. His shift has been more difficult to run because it’s poorly manned. How could they possibly turn out their quota with fewer workers? It’s affected us both, I think. Truthfully, we’ve argued quite a bit lately, I’m ashamed to say. Now that he’s out, too, surely his mood can only get worse. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this terrible news.
I’m hoping to get Toby home and into bed soon. Then, I’ll come by, Maggie, and get some of the stew you made. I think we’ll all need something hearty tonight.
Your loving daughter,
Eileen
Eileen P. Snape’s Journal Entry
Manchester Flat
30 January 1966
Except for Severus’ baby book, I haven’t kept a journal since I was on the road conducting my research. (I long for those days right now!) But, I need to write this down, or I’ll scream. I’ll likely scream anyway, but I need to get my head around this first. Also, some of this I can never, never tell Maggie Snape. Mrs. S. has been like a second mother to me for my entire life. My mother’s best friend here in Manchester; as knowledgeable about their shared passion as Mum; if she were magical, she would be a learned and powerful witch indeed. I know that she’s seen some of Toby’s’ behavior over the past few years, and I know she couldn’t do anything to stop it. I just… And, she’s been wonderful to Severus. He’s become such a quiet, solemn little boy, but she can somehow always get him to laugh. I can’t remember the last time I could do that. Oh, my little boy! How can I make him smile when I’m so angry?
And, how in the world can I tell Nanny? I stayed in Manchester for Toby, for our marriage, which now exists only on paper.
So, I’m putting this into my letterbook. It’s a letter to myself, I suppose. Maybe my future self will read this and…and what? I don’t know. Laugh? Cry? See me as the pathetic creature that I’ve become?
OK, the facts: Toby abandoned me…us. His temper had been growing worse and worse since he was fired. He drank more and more…certainly more than the occasional cocktail he used to have with the suits before they brushed him off. He must have started to take something else as well - cocaine, maybe? - because he became incredibly paranoid. He was sure people were out to get him: the postman, the milkman, Severus’ teacher, a certain waitress at his favorite pub, an admittedly creepy looking bus driver, and me and Severus, because I’m a witch and he’s a wizard. Toby started spouting diatribes filled with common Muggle delusions about witchcraft as a tool of the devil. Severus and I have dark hair and eyes, as opposed to his fair looks, so, of course, we must be Dark creatures. I was never a beauty, but when Toby was courting me, he found my looks “exotic” and “unique.” Now he says I’m ugly and calls me a hag and Satan’s whore. A hag. Ha! I wonder if Old Sluggy would find that amusing. Bastard. And Severus; he would never hurt his father. He’s a precocious little kid - I have to give him that! - but even as a toddler he had more control over his magic than do some of the younger kids at Hogwarts.
Toby beat me, and I did not fight back. He nearly raped me, more than once, and he only failed because he passed out drunk. He yelled, and he threw things, and he drank up all our savings. He thought it too demeaning to go out to look for another job, or to have his wife get a job, or to move us to a cheaper flat. What would his daughter and her banker husband (who’s actually still just a clerk) think? And even when he railed against my being a witch, he had the gall to ask me to magic us some money and then accuse me of trying to starve our child when I refused! Of course, the money would never have been mine to spend on food; every other extra bit of cash he got would go to drink or drugs. Though, there have been times when he didn’t get enough. That just can’t happen anymore.
Toby rarely hurt Severus physically, but he did plenty else to make our son suffer. And I didn’t protect him! I couldn’t protect him, not like I should have. And now I’m ashamed. I didn’t use magic. I didn’t want to feed my wretched husband’s paranoia. Somehow I thought that I could reason with him, prove to him that I wasn’t Dark and that everything would be OK. Pathetic. All of the witches I interviewed during those years after school would doubtless think me a weak female (though they might take pity, too). And, I can just hear that bigot Abraxas Malfoy laughing at me viciously, “well, what do you expect, mingling in the dirt with a filthy Muggle?” As if there is no such person as a pureblood who abuses his wife. Toby was always self-important, but he could also be funny and kind, jolly with his friends and sweet on his children. He fell somewhere, and I didn’t want to see it when it happened. And now he’s gone. And, I don’t know what to feel first: angry, relieved, ashamed, sad, or worried. Will I hear from him again? Merlin, I hope not. But I can’t even think about “what ifs” right now - I just need to figure out how to go on from here.
Maggie has been so good to me. The neighbors, though - our Muggle neighbors near the flat, anyway - seem to have gone blind in the face of Toby’s’ downward turn. They still think him to be a noble man laid low, with an unsupportive wife and an ungrateful son. Even my stepdaughter clings to this image of her father, and she has been at our flat when he is drunk and violent. He was never like that when she was growing up, Betty claims, so it must be me or Severus bringing out his “temper.” We’ve never been very close, she and I, but how can she be so blind? Stupid, worthless girl.
Our landlord has already found a tenant for this flat who can move in next week. I am taking Severus back with me to my parents’ home on Spinner’s End. It may be crowded with us there, but no more so than when my sisters and I were growing up. My father won’t really mind us being there, but he’ll react to the news with a scowl and his silent anger. He never liked Toby to begin with, and he’ll be irritated with me, as well, for keeping Toby’s drunkenness and violence and mistreatment of his daughter and grandson from him for as long as I have. Telling him will be difficult. He’ll be disappointed in me. My mother will weep. Severus will probably scurry up to my old bedroom, shut the door, and feel miserable or furious. Or both. What will I ever tell Severus about his father?
I’ll have to get a job now. No Toby to pretend he’s our provider, and we can’t live with my parents and not contribute. I hardly know who I am anymore. I loved Toby so much when we met. I missed my travels and my work with the witches who shared my interests in potions and old magic, but I wanted to be with him. Did I make the right choice? If I hadn’t stayed with Toby, I might have traveled all across the isles by now. I have my son, though, and I wouldn’t wish him away for the world. Severus has become a moody child, but he is my bright spot. I hope I can make him happier. I hope I can do right by him. His magic is developing so quickly; I don’t want any anger or resentment on his part to influence that.
Maggie Snape to Eileen P. Snape
15 March 1972
Love,
I hope this finds you well upon your return home. I always miss and worry about you when you’re away, but this past week, I was glad you weren’t home. Toby showed up on my doorstep, pissed and bitter. I don’t know where he’s been. I know he hasn’t been in Manchester in the last few years. He looked haggard, dirty, just awful really. I can’t sympathize, though.
He was in a mean mood, love. He came over looking for you, said he “couldn’t find” your folks’ house, even though it’s just down the way. He yelled hard at me, demanding to know where you were and where Severus was. He swore a blue streak, insulting you and the boy. I was shocked and shamed by him. I had thought he might have put himself right after he left, but he’s just grown harder and meaner, not to mention drunker and dirtier. I told him that I didn’t know where you were and no idea where Severus was in school. Both true, thank God. You and my grandson are my only family now, and I want no harm to come to you. If I thought Toby would improve, I would help him out again, but I know now how unlikely that is. God help me, but I hope we never see him again.
Stop over when you do get home, please, love. I could use some help with spring-cleaning, and I’d rather spend that time talking with you than with any of the young neighborhood girls who keep offering their time.
Maggie
The Next Week
Severus had, over the years, become used to keeping all thoughts of his mother neatly compartmentalized in a dark corner of his organized mind. Since he began reading her letterbook, though, her shade would not stay put. Lifelong anger with her and his father combined with newer feelings of confusion, ambivalence, and curiosity plagued him. Frustration with it all colored his days. During his years as a spy, he had effortlessly cut off thinking about Voldemort, his Death Eaters, and their atrocities. Classroom time was solely for lecturing at students, monitoring their work to prevent or clean up after accidents, and taking out his ire on hapless dunderheads, not for ruminating on the mystery that was Eileen Prince Snape. He could not, however, get his errant brain to cooperate.
In the middle of the week, he decided he’d had enough. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t read the book the whole way through. Perhaps sometime in the future - the distant future - he would try again. After the last little miscreant had left his office, he warded his door against students, took Eileen’s letterbook from the side table, and brought it over to his desk. He glared at it sternly, as if he could stare it into submission like a cowed second-year. As he went to put it into the bottom-most drawer of his desk to be locked away and hopefully forgotten, Hermione came in.
“What are you doing with that, Severus?” she asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing, Hermione?” he replied sneeringly.
“Don’t use that tone with me! Why are you putting your mother’s book into that drawer, Severus? The drawer you usually lock things away in when you find them too precious to part with, but too dangerous to leave out?”
“It’s just a drawer, Hermione.”
“Severus, don’t do this,” she said quietly to him. “I know all this thinking about her has been difficult. I can see that.”
“The bloody woman is haunting me, and… I… I have more important things to do than to walk about crying over my dead mummy!”
“I don’t mean to belittle all the work you do, Severus, but I think that coming to grips with your mother and your childhood is the most important thing you can do right now. Other things can wait. You can’t just pack up her letterbook and behave as if you’ve never read it, as if what you read hasn’t already affected you. You have and it has, and it’s going to continue to haunt you until you, well, forgive the psychobabble, but until you work through it!”
“I have lived with worse things than this without working through them.”
“Oh, yes, and you were so happy all that time you couldn’t speak to anyone about spying and the Death Eaters. You lived wonderfully, and you never inflicted pent-up rage on anyone. It’s a wonder you didn’t explode! Come off it!”
“Don’t taunt me, Hermione!”
“I’m not taunting you, you great prat! My gods, man, you have faced many worse things in your life before with great courage and dignity. You stood up to Voldemort who knows how many times, but you can’t face the memory of your mother? Don’t put this on hold, Severus. Just do it!” And she stormed out of the room with a huff. The slamming door shook the walls sufficiently to rattle several of the specimen jars on his shelves.
Severus felt like throwing something. Instead he sat very still and seethed inside. He banged his fists hard down on the desk, and then rested his forehead in his hand, closed his eyes, and swore vehemently under his breath. She just had to bring up Voldemort, he thought. He had no retort for that. Bloody hell. Sneaky little thing. I love her.
He returned the book to its original place and left the office. Voldemort. Facing Voldemort was easy compared to this. At least then I was sure that I would die in the midst of it and not have to deal with any of the repercussions. Of course, I didn’t die.
“Ten points from Gryffindor for having your wand out in the hallway, Mr. Collins!”
Hermione and Poppy made sure of that. Now, it’s all repercussions.
“Ten points from Hufflepuff, Mr. Jennings! Didn’t you hear what I just told your little Gryffindor friend?”
My father was a violent, drunken fool, and mum did nothing to stop him. She allowed that idiot brute of a Muggle to take advantage of her! Severus stopped dead in the hallway. Gods, what am I thinking? “Brute of a Muggle?” Have I learned nothing?
“Miss Ferrars, Miss Wickham, and Mr. Steele! Ten points apiece from Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor for recklessness! And, Mr. Willoughby, I am disheartened that I must take five points away from my own house for your insensible behavior in simply following your fellows, lemming-like. Where is your house pride, all of you? Now, get to your classes before I am forced to deduct more points.”
Grateful to have this period free, Severus ducked out into the icy cold courtyard to clear his head. I hate him. I hate her… no, I am furious with her, but I hate him: Tobias Snape. Dad. She merely responded - not strongly, not forcefully as she could have, should have. But he, he chose what he did, he decided to drink. And he kept doing it for years. She gave up so much for him, and he took it, and then he turned on her. And me. What possessed the man? He could have at least looked for more work, but no. One injury to his pride, and he collapses and lashes out at his wife and small son. What kind of man does that? I could never be like him! Was I? Am I?
The questions cycled over and over through Severus’ head. He could feel another headache coming on. Just when he was beginning to think it might be wise to go inside and thaw out his fingers in preparation for his next class, a small school owl flapped in front of his face with a plaintive hoot. Severus rewarded the creature with some owl treats from his coat pocket (one piece of wisdom he had learned in the spy game over the years was that it always paid to treat messengers well), and read the brief note from Hermione.
SS,
You’re doing something difficult, but important. My treat for dinner in London, Saturday night, 8 pm. Wear that handsome new waistcoat. I love you.
HG
Bribery. Merlin, he adored her. Resetting his face to its familiar frown, he went back inside to warm up and face the next group of students.
The following Thursday night, Hermione Apparated to London for the monthly meeting of the Royal Arithmancy Society’s Arithmantic Applications in Potions Study Group. Crookshanks meandered out for a chat with Minerva in tabby form. Severus had their quarters to himself. It’s now or never, he thought and poured himself three fingers of Firewhiskey. He had consumed his drink within the first half hour, finished reading Eileen’s book at 10 pm, and spent the next hour battling a phantom opponent in the Room of Requirement, using his knowledge of the most vicious curses, hexes, and jinxes short of the Unforgivables, before retiring for the night around 11: 30 pm, just before Hermione returned from London. Having exhausted his body with dueling, he laid silently in bed, letting Hermione lull him to sleep with her chatter about the new research presented at the meeting. Tomorrow evening would be early enough for another discussion of the “mother issue.”
At Friday lunch, students in the Great Hall warned each other about the Potions Master’s particularly nasty temper that day and directed meaningful glances towards the high table. Said Potions Master glared at his food and, when he finished, shuttered his expression as he stalked out of the room. The Arithmancy Mistress answered the Headmistress’ pursed lips and questioning eyes with a shrug of her shoulders and a silent agreement to check on him immediately following her next class.
Severus closed his eyes as he sank into the bathtub on Friday afternoon seeking comfort. The hot bath calmed him somewhat. Unlooked for, a memory of his mum giving him a bath over at his Prince grandparents’ house surfaced. He must have been five or six. His elder half-sister had given him a rubber duck that he insisted on having with him at every bath. That night, his mother levitated the bright yellow duck, and it zoomed around the tub, quacking and spitting water at him. He’d laughed long and hard. It was one of the few times he remembered his mother smiling. His Grandma Brigid stood in the bathroom doorway, too, laughing and clapping her hands, childlike. He opened his eyes and wiped his face. He told himself the moisture on his cheeks was just perspiration from the heat of the bath and checked to make sure that the door to the room was shut.
Hermione was looking appraisingly at an illustration in the Dioscorides when Severus emerged. “Feeling better?” she asked, looking up from their worktable at the sound of the door closing.
“Relatively speaking.”
“And, um, do want to speak about your relatives?”
Severus rolled his eyes. “A pun? Honestly, Hermione…”
“Fine. But, do you? You couldn’t have failed to notice the impression you made on the students this morning. My first-years were so riled up after your class that they almost provoked an explosive reaction in one of the simplest arithmantic formulae. Their magic was seriously out of whack. You’ve got to get this off your chest.”
He sat down and simply looked at her, saying nothing.
“You must have something to say about the matter.”
“My father was a boor.”
“Yes, so it would seem.”
“My parents fell in love for some reason that I can’t determine. I don’t remember either of my parents happy. Ever. My mother was happy at one point in her life, before she married, before I was born. She wasn’t like that by the time I came along. Not at any time I remember, in any case. My father was a happy drunk. Until he became an angry drunk, and then he was violent.”
“Severus, your mum was happy when you came along. You saw the birth announcement she sent out.”
“Oh yes; that sentimental garbage. Minerva also saw it when she came by earlier this week for a chat. She thought it was simply adorable. I will never live it down. Severus Snape is NOT adorable.”
“No, love, you’re not. Don’t worry.” Severus narrowed his eyes at her. “Apparently, your mum at one point had a much sweeter disposition than you do now. The point is, she was quite pleased when you were born. She was excited to welcome you to the family. She was happy to have you in her life and wished only the best for you. She loved you, Severus. Nothing that came later can erase that.”
Severus stilled for a moment. “And my father? I suppose he loved me, too?”
“I’m sure he did.”
Pushing himself into Hermione’s face, Severus growled viciously, “He loved us, did he? That cannot make up for beating his wife and son! That cannot excuse what he said about us! He was brutal, cruel. Regardless of who he may have been before, afterward he was nothing but a self-pitying, miserly, uncaring toad! I can’t even call the man a bastard. He disgraced his mother, not the other way round.
“Now, you can help me, Hermione, by letting this issue alone! I will handle this however I deem fit, regardless of your good intentions or Minerva’s displeasure. The students will learn to live with the fact that something else is of concern to one of their teachers other than their trite little lives.”
“Severus…”
“I am very clear about this. I will not talk about Eileen Prince or my childhood with you right now. If you cannot resist your natural inclination to question and interfere, perhaps you should leave me be.”
“If that’s the way you want it, Severus, you can brood by yourself tonight. A couple of my colleagues from the Royal Society were interested in continuing our conversation from the other night, and I’m going to take them up on their dinner invitation. Don’t wait up for me, Severus, and don’t be surprised if you don’t see me in the morning.”
“That is acceptable.”
“Push me away tonight, Severus Snape, but we are still having dinner out tomorrow night, and I expect you to be more sociable. If nothing else, you will… tell me about your proposed article for the special number of the journal I’m going to be editing. I will let you be on this for a while, but it is not over.”
At Saturday night’s delicious dinner, Severus discussed his recent reformulation of Wolfsbane, and Hermione brainstormed the possible impact of untried arithmantic theories on its efficacy. Severus believed he had distracted her sufficiently until the end of dessert. As he was helping her with her cloak, she whispered in his ear, “Nice try, lover.”
Severus was cool to her over the next week. Conversation focused on the professional. In bed at night, he had work hard to stay on his side of the bed, his anger at war with his desire to spoon with her.
The Next Friday Evening
In the early evening, Severus sat down on the sofa in front of the fire. He was grateful that the potion he took to relieve his fifth consecutive tension headache of the week would still work if followed by the consumption of alcohol. His shot of firewhiskey went down smoothly.
Hermione emerged from the bedroom already in her flannel pajamas, hair pulled back into a loose knot, and bunny slippers on her feet. Severus smirked at her appearance. “Ready for bed already?”
She narrowed her eyes at him and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa. “I’ve had a very difficult week. My sixth and seventh years are plaguing me with questions about their end-of-term projects. I pushed myself this week to get my article out to Études Arithmantiques. Minerva has been bothering me again to consider taking over as head of Gryffindor. Oh, and the man I love has been a complete arse to me all week long. Other than that, I just need a little rest and relaxation, and I’ll be right as rain.”
“Must we spend another Friday night arguing?”
“I don’t know, Severus. Must we spend another evening with you sitting here nearly boiling over with the anger you’re unsuccessfully trying to hide? You know that I actually had to make a new batch of headache potion last night, don’t you? You used up our whole supply this week. I had to suffer through my own headache while brewing up the new stuff.”
“It’s a relatively quick and simple potion to make. Even a would-be potions mistress like you shouldn’t have had a problem.”
“Yes, even a wannabe like me can do it. At least you should hope so, since you just drank a vial of it yourself. Severus, I hate this! Talk about your mother. Just get it out.”
“You want to know why I can’t… why I couldn’t stomach my mother, Hermione? My father beat her and beat me, and she did nothing to stop it. He abandoned us. She never even tried to leave that appalling relationship, to get me away from the harm he was doing.”
“Many women being abused by their husbands find it very difficult to leave them.”
“I know that, and I know that even when their children are being harmed, it takes some women time before they can gather their courage to go. But, Eileen was a witch. She never called on her simplest magical abilities to oppose him.”
“Witch or Muggle has nothing to do with it. She had married a man she loved, and she tried to make it work, until it didn’t anymore.”
“Couldn’t she see what he was…”
“No, Severus. She couldn’t; she didn’t. Maybe she would have, I don’t know, left him or punished him in some way, though I can’t see her lashing out at him magically, but the fact is that he left before that happened.”
“She should have done something. She should have protected me.”
“Yes, she should have. I think she regretted very much that she failed in that.”
“She did regret it. Believe me, I understand that regret much more now than I ever could when I was younger. I’ve failed at that myself.”
“You protected us over and over again, Severus. Harry, Ron, and I might not have made it through Hogwarts, let alone the Horcrux hunt and the last battle, if not for you. And, we were hardly the only ones you helped.”
“And yet, I let others down, sometimes horribly. But I… appreciate your words. Tobias Snape, however, is another matter entirely.”
“Can you forgive him, Severus? Not condone his actions, but forgive him?”
“Hermione…” he practically growled at her.
“He was horrible to you and to your mother, but surely…”
“As I have said before, does that man deserve forgiveness? For that matter, do I?”
“You do, you know that! And it’s been granted by everyone you’ve spoken with since the end of the war, whether you specifically asked for it or not. You’ve declared your guilt at every opportunity. It’s painful to watch sometimes; like witnessing self-flagellation. You also know that the circumstances are quite different from your father’s. As for him, is it important whether or not he deserves it?”
“How very Christian of you, Hermione,” Severus sneered.
“There’s no need to be offensive, Severus! And this isn’t about a theological need to find a place in the afterlife. Judaism places a great deal of emphasis on the necessity of the wrong-doer to repent and specifically ask forgiveness of those they’ve wronged, but it, too, speaks about the benefits of forgiving one who has wronged you, even if that person has never apologized or made retribution.”
“Have you added religious scholar to your list of degrees? Arithmancer, potions mistress, psychologist, and now this, know-it-all?” Hermione stiffened her back at this. “I wasn’t the only person he harmed! As far as I know, he never made it to the point of being sober enough again to make a decision to repent or ask forgiveness of anyone, least of all me. His worthless son.”
“You are not worthless, you know it, and, angry as I am, I will not be provoked into pitying you, a feeling you usually abhor anyway! You manipulative prat!”
“Hermione, you do not know what he did after he left us. It didn’t end.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, so you don’t know it all? Have you not read the whole book?”
“No. I was trying to respect your privacy. I stopped at the spot you last left your bookmark the other week. I actually restrained myself. I know,” she responded to his raised eyebrow, “how unlike me.”
“Then there is a great deal you don’t know. Hermione, his actions were reprehensible. I… don’t want to be like he was.”
“Severus, tell me…”
“No. You’ll have to read for yourself. I have some papers to pick up in Minerva’s office, and then I’m going to make my rounds. I will be late. Please don’t wait up for me.”
Angry, hurt, and dejected, Hermione watched Severus pick up his cloak and walk out the door. The cloak meant that at some point during the evening, he would walk outside. She didn’t worry. Much. He could take on anything dangerous that he came across. He would remember to use a warming charm. He would make it up to Hagrid if any of his creatures accidentally got in his way. Neither of them would sleep well tonight.
The Next Morning
Hermione woke up alone on Saturday morning. Severus’ indentation in their bed was barely warm.
“Severus? Are you in there?” she called out. Not in the loo.
She walked through their quarters, checking each room. Not in the sitting room. Not in his office.
She called out for Winky. Not in the kitchen.
She rifled through his desk drawer. Not even on the map! Where is he?
Getting back into their warm bed, Hermione let out a growl and punched Severus’ pillow. Well, well. At least the prat left me a note.
HG,
My behavior last night was unfortunately typical for me, but quite unfair to you. You did not and do not deserve it. I am unable to hold polite conversation right now. I’ve gone away for the day in the hope that somewhere quiet will help clear my head. I’ve assigned Sinistra to take your place with the students in Hogsmeade today so that you, too, may have some quiet time. Don’t worry; she owes me. Read more of my mother’s letterbook, if you wish. You put up with everything from me; you certainly have at least the right to know this part of my past. I am not sure, however, if I will have much more to say about it when we next speak.
SS
“Oh, Severus.” Hermione closed her eyes and shook her head. “I pity the shrubbery you pass today.”
After a quick breakfast and a walk, Hermione returned to the couple’s quarters and got out the beat-up letterbook. She contemplated nesting in her comfortable armchair in front of the fireplace, but it didn’t feel right. Maybe it was negative energy from their recent arguments. She snorted at that thought. Negative energy, indeed! Or maybe it was the sadness and anxiety of Eileen Prince Snape’s life. In either case, she suddenly felt too claustrophobic to remain in her rooms for the day.
I need a complete change of atmosphere. A café would be nice. Not Scotland. Not London - too crowded on a Saturday so close to Christmas. What’s the name of that book town in Wales? Hay-on-Wye, that’s it. There was a lovely place we went to there.
A quick walk to the Hogwarts gates, a few seconds of concentration after closing her eyes, and Hermione popped out of existence at the school and reappeared in the alley next to one of the famous town’s bookshops. Heaven. Now this is my idea of a peaceful day. And, perhaps I can still get a spot of shopping done.
Hermione walked down the street until she found a tearoom that didn’t remind her too much of Madam Puddifoot’s. She claimed a table near the front window, ordered a pot of tea, and, with a bit of trepidation, settled into walking the remaining footprints of her late mother-in-law’s life.
Eileen P. Snape, Manchester, to Eileen White, Portballintrae, Northern Ireland
20 August 1972
Dear Nanny,
I have sad news. Maggie Snape has died. The wake was yesterday. It’s a devastating loss for all of us. For Mum, of course, since Maggie was one of her closest friends. She was more than a mere mother-in-law to me, and she was very dear to Severus. He adored her. Remember once when he was very small, he called her his “Muggle Grandmum”? Toby was put out by that, but Maggie just laughed and laughed. She always made Severus laugh, a rare gift indeed. He’s cried a good part of the last few days since her death. He was miserable at the wake and refused to talk to any of those who stopped by to pay their respects. Until Dad went in and stopped him, he just lay on his bed yesterday evening, killing flies with his wand.
I won’t tell Severus this, but Mum, Dad, and I have suspicions about Maggie’s death. She was elderly for a Muggle and frailer than she used to be, but she was still very sharp and spry. I was the one who found her dead, at the bottom of the staircase in her house. It was the tumble that killed her, but I don’t think it was an accident. A drunk, enraged Toby came looking for Severus and me at her house earlier this spring - unsuccessfully - and I think he came back the other night for revenge. All the money she’d been saving up at home was gone, but nothing else was touched or disturbed. He pushed her, Nanny, I’m sure of it. I haven’t told Severus, and he thinks she just fell at night, so please don’t tell him my suspicions. He’s upset enough as it is losing his grandmum without having to think his own father killed her.
Please owl Mum when you can. I know she’d appreciate it.
Love,
Eileen
Hermione turned the open letterbook face down on the table and stared out the window in shock. This is what Severus meant. Tobias killed his own mother! Of course, there was never an investigation, but Eileen and her parents were convinced. It’s horrifying, just horrifying. No wonder Severus looked at me as if I had two heads. Thank the gods he never knew this while he was growing up.
She wanted to stop reading then and there and go find Severus. She had no idea what to say to him, but she felt an overwhelming urge to hug him. If he would break down and cry, and if she could then hold him, stroke his hair, and comfort him, it would be so much easier. Of course, not only would Severus Snape not act this way, but he would also laugh (snigger, really) at the very thought of it. Hermione grimaced. She wanted to do for Severus what she thought her own mother would surely do for her. And he would hate it. And no wonder, really. Even those family members who had loved him didn’t seem to be particularly touchy-feely. Must get back on track, Hermione.
She asked the waitress for more tea and a sandwich and stepped outside for a moment to clear her head. She couldn’t go look for Severus now. She owed it to him to finish reading before confronting him again. It couldn’t get much worse, could it?
Eileen P. Snape’s Journal Entry
28 July 1973
Summers used to be happy, or at least pleasant. The last few have been awful. Life here has become cracked and broken. Even more so than when Toby left. When Severus goes back to Hogwarts in a few weeks, I’ll be quite alone.
Dad’s been gone nearly two weeks ago now. It was too difficult to deal with, even to write something down, when it happened. Aurors found his body miles from here in the barn of an abandoned farm. He was lying in a pool of his own blood, his broken wand a few feet away. He’d been tortured and had all three Unforgivables cast on him. There were gashes and burns all over his body. More than one person tortured him and watched him die.
He’d been to London for a few days. He’d gone to deliver some of Mum’s salves, liniments, and scents to Diagon Alley shops, do some research, and, likely, consult with some friends among the Unspeakables. He never came home. From what the auror in charge of the investigation, Alastor Moody, told us, he had been taken in London and secreted away. My father was a powerful and vigilant wizard. His captors were clearly savvy, or at least lucky. Dad must have been furious when he realized what had happened. I imagine that he faced them in his own imperious way. I imagine that they did not at all like this. Moody believed, and I agree, that they were Death Eaters. Organized chaos.
My sisters and their families came to the funeral, as did Nanny and Granddad White. My sisters are still rather oblivious to anything that goes on outside their little family circles. Grandfather Prince, who I haven’t seen since I was a small child, came, too. I always remembered him as clever and witty. It seems he is also smug, arrogant, offensive, and unfeeling. He said barely two words to Mum, which was all right, actually, as she was simply too distraught to do much of anything. He was not socially competent enough to offer condolences or express regrets. Instead, he went on and on to me about Dad’s past “coming back to haunt him” and groused that if “Alexander had done what he should have and listened to me,” this never would have happened to him. As if Dad were responsible for his own murder. He also found it necessary to remark about my “unwise and unfortunate” marriage to a Muggle who, he now hoped I realized, was “clearly a barbarian.” Of course, as luck would have it, Severus was standing right next to me during this whole conversation. Severus’ face reddened and his eyes darkened like I’ve never seen before. If Granddad White hadn’t come over and taken the boy outside, I don’t know which would have been worse: the hexing or the verbal tongue-lashing Severus would surely have let loose. I’m not sure which slander infuriated him more: those about Dad or those about Toby.
I miss Dad tremendously. I’ll miss him even more when the furor here dies down and when Mum leaves. That’s the other piece. Mum’s decided to leave Manchester and return to Ireland with Nanny and Granddad. Dad’s murder has hit her hard, and she’s afraid. I think she feels like she’ll be unprotected here. Dad is gone, and Maggie Snape is gone, and all her girls live elsewhere. Except Severus and I, that is. I know she feels safer going back to Ireland, back to her people there. I’m well and truly abandoned now, though. When Severus returns to Hogwarts, I’ll be on my own here, and when he comes home for the summer holidays, the family home will be a bit empty.
Eileen White, Portballintrae, Northern Ireland, to Eileen P. Snape, Manchester
31 July 1974
My Sweet Girl,
Please come to us as quickly as you can, Eileen, you and Severus, both.
I can scarcely believe I’m about to put these words down on paper. I wish to God that I didn’t have this terrible news to give you. Your mum is gone, Eileen. She’s dead.
She went out yesterday afternoon to collect some rare herbs in a grove several miles from here. She’d been there many times before, both with me and on her own. She hadn’t returned by yesterday nightfall, and your grandfather and I waited up all night for her return. When she hadn’t come in by morning, we called your father’s Auror friend, Moody, up here, and together they went out to the grove to look for her. It’s horrible to think, but the very thing she feared there in Manchester seems to have found Brigid here in Ireland. I cannot bear to detail the desecration done to her poor body. Suffice it to say that its author was clearly the same as killed Alexander.
You should not have to bury both your parents at so young an age. I can hardly stomach the reality that I must bury my daughter. Then I think of Severus, your own sweet boy, and I simply break down. This is just the latest loss in a series for you two. Come stay, Eileen, at least for a little while. I need you both close for the funeral, and I think it might do us all some good if you stayed for the rest of the summer; at least until Severus has to return to school.
The Floo will be open to you all day, or you may Apparate to the back lot.
My love travels with this letter.
Your Nanny
Shit. The blue sky, bright sun, and laughter of those strolling by the tearoom startled Hermione when she looked up and out the window. Dead. Both of them dead, within a year of each other, and by him, by Voldemort. And, I doubt Severus ever really knew…until he began reading the letterbook… oh, no… She plowed on.
Eileen P. Snape’s Journal
30 June 1977
I haven’t heard from Severus in about ten months now. The letters I sent him began to be returned to me in December - even my Christmas gift and New Year’s note came back - and I haven’t tried again this past five months or so. He’s graduated now, a fully accredited wizard. I wish I could have been there. I could never have simply shown up, though, not with the state of things between us. I feel nauseous just thinking about the distance between us now, the emotional gap. He’s carried anger within him since Maggie’s death, and it became more pronounced with each loss. I never expected it would so engulf him or pull us apart. How did this happen?
Professor Slughorn did write to me that Severus achieved the highest NEWT scores in decades, especially in Potions, surpassing my own record, which I understand had stood as a high all these years. And, Severus was accepted for an apprenticeship. It’s with a Potions Master I’ve not heard of. Sluggy has, though. He may be a pompous ass, but he does know who’s who in that academic world of his.
30 July 1977
Still not a word from Severus. I asked Slughorn if he’d heard any news from Severus’ Master, but he learned not a peep, which is odd for him. I think he’s keeping something back. Sluggy’s an old gossip; usually he can’t keep his mouth shut and spreads good news and bad like their both the most delicious morsels in town. But for him to say he learned nothing and keep it at that? Something is amiss.
15 August 1977
The news I’ve received is beyond comprehension. The dread I felt when my father and mother were killed is nothing compared to what I feel now. I’ve had a word from Dad’s friend among the Unspeakables. I let Moody know that I was looking for information, and Dad’s old friend found me. Severus has joined Riddle’s terrorists, the Death Eaters. He’s taken the Dark Mark on his arm. He’s committed atrocities. His Potions Master is not himself a member of the group, but he’s not opposed to it, either. My son has sold his soul, and he has no idea how high a price he will have to pay, nor how high a price his family has already paid for Tom Riddle’s lust for power.
How did this happen? How could I have allowed this to happen? I tried so hard - I was sure - to be there for him, to help him find a way to release his anger. Well, I thought I was helping him. Did I purposely hide my eyes from what was really going on? Did I deny the depth of Severus’ bitterness the way that I denied Toby’s’ violence for so long before he left? Perhaps I hid too much of what I knew? But, honestly, how could I willingly expose a boy to the true brutality of my parents’ murders? I suppose I can’t ever know how he would have reacted to the kind and extent of Dark Magic used or to the name of the responsible party. Severus is not dead, but I am in mourning nonetheless. Is this how my grandmother felt when my mother’s body was found? Will the death that will certain result from this tragic misalliance be his or my own?
I’ve been studying Dad’s work on Dark Magic since Mum’s death, trying to understand You-Know-Who and his motives and trying to find some way to help those who fight against him, like Dad did. I don’t know if it will help me now, but I’ll keep going as long as I can.
I feel lost and like my son is my lost lamb. I know that he is no lamb, though I don’t think he’s precisely a wolf either. I pray to whoever is listening that Severus’ intelligence and goodness will outlast the hell he has walked into. If I could fly now, I would go to him and try to dissuade him from his actions. I think my desire is so great that I wouldn’t even need a broomstick to get there. I know that if I were to do that - find him to talk - neither one of us would be safe…
And that was it, the end. Hermione flipped through the pages following that entry to see if any others remained, but the rest of the book was blank. She closed the letterbook and stared at the front cover for a full minute, oblivious to the chattering going on around her. She looked up and out the window. She almost wished she could believe that Eileen died of a broken heart upon learning of Severus’ induction into the Death Eaters, but Hermione just knew that her cause of death was much more malevolent and violent. This is too much. After leaving money on the table for the bill, she quickly exited the café, eager to find Severus.
Saturday Evening
Hermione spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening Apparating to spots throughout Britain where she thought Severus might be. She checked Spinner’s End, a pub, and a waterfront walk in Manchester; she checked several of the hiking trails they had explored together over the years; Godric’s Hollow, several neighborhoods in Muggle London, the Leaky Cauldron, the Three Broomsticks, the Hog’s Head, his favorite carrel in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, an old Order safe house near Dover, the old fairgrounds at Scarborough, the rearmost table at Bewley’s near Trinity University in Dublin, the god-awful motel where they’d stayed in the crap resort town they’d visited for some unknown reason a couple years earlier, the Shrieking Shack (though why he should want to go there, she didn’t really know), and all of his regular hidey-holes around Hogwarts, including every variation she could think of for the Room of Requirement. He hadn’t been anywhere she looked. The more frantic she’d become to find him, the more outlandish were the spots she thought to check. Now, shivering, she paced in front of the fireplace in their quarters. She’d just sat down and pulled one of her hand-knit blankets around her shoulders when she felt the wards shift with Severus’ entrance. He didn’t speak, just sat down in the chair next to hers.
“You were in Manchester this afternoon.”
“How did you…? You were there! I couldn’t find you.”
“You didn’t have to look, you know. In any case, you went into the wrong pub. I was at the Vine Inn. I saw you from the window go into the City Arms. I wasn’t drinking… But, they do make a satisfying steak pie there.”
“You should’ve come out and said something to me! I was worried about you!”
“You read Eileen’s final entry, I take it.”
“Well, obviously. You have to talk to me about this now. It was just so…. I felt like… Severus, did Voldemort kill her?”
“Yes, he did. It was after I’d joined, before the Potters, though not much before. She… she wasn’t found right away. He…or they… used stasis spells to make sure that whoever found her - which was, in fact, weeks later - they left a copy of a Muggle newspaper on top of her body - was treated to as much gore as if the kill were new. My great-grandmother White contacted Dumbledore after several of her owls to Mum returned, spooked, their letters unopened. Dumbledore informed me.”
“Was it personal? I mean, did Voldemort mean it to pay you back for some fault?”
“I think it was personal, but not directed to me. I’m sure that Riddle saw my joining the Death Eaters as some sort of personal reward for himself. He had always wanted the Princes. They were not one of the oldest, pure-bloodline families, never the wealthiest or politically significant, but they - especially my grandparents - had power, skill, learning, and curiosity. As you read, my grandparents had been involved with Dark Magic in their youth, and Grandfather’s academic engagement with the Dark Arts was probably the deepest of his generation. I think that Voldemort killed my mother in part out of revenge for not getting what he wanted and in part as a means finally to break ties between mother and son. I had already cut myself off from my family, but he made sure that I could never reconcile with my mother. My mother’s sisters and her grandparents were still alive, but they, for just cause I should think, were not eager to renew familial ties with a Death Eater, even one who was secretly spying for the Order. And I was not particularly interested in them at the time. I don’t know what happened to them…”
“Were you aware then of who exactly killed her?”
“No. No Death Eaters owned up to the responsibility. Voldemort certainly never told me or talked to others about it in front of me. I’m sure he thought that I would be pleased, though he scarcely needed that motivation. Of course, I’m sure he also thought that he would live long enough to laugh over it with me. I suppose that I should actually thank Potter for not having to experience that particular perversion.”
“Thrice defied.”
“Pardon?”
“From the prophecy about Harry and Voldemort. He - the ‘Chosen One’ - was the son of those who ‘thrice defied’ the Dark Lord. In a way you, too, were the son of those who ‘thrice defied’ him.”
“Your point being?”
“Well, just, except for the birthday bit, that could be you, Severus. Harry could not have defeated Voldemort without you, in so many ways. And Voldemort just never knew. He really did believe in your loyalty over the years if he spared you from your grandparents’ and mother’s fate. You subverted him from within his own stronghold. His ambition, his desire for power through the Dark Arts… he thought you contributed your family’s knowledge to his cause. He must have been truly mad to have thought so.”
“I would have when I first joined. Hermione, I was a committed Death Eater when I took the Mark.”
“But the fact remains, Severus, that you didn’t. I know that you did…vile things before Lily’s death reawakened your conscience, but you didn’t give Voldemort exactly what he wanted, did you? Your Occlumency skills were rather well developed even at that age; I’ve learned that much. You hid more about the Dark Arts than you ever told the Dark Lord.”
Severus winced and felt his chest tighten at hearing even her brief reference to his true crimes as a Death Eater; the things he really had done rather than the extra guilt he had always shouldered. But, she was right. He had always held knowledge close to his chest. His fellow Death Eaters, and fellow Order members for that matter, always knew that he knew a great deal about the Dark Arts, but none of them ever, ever knew the true extent of that knowledge. And, he would never have simply given it away, never have delivered all of his knowledge, the only real power he held, to anyone for free, Dark Lord or otherwise. He had really trusted only himself. His self-isolation had offered him a modicum of protection, then, even before Dumbledore stood up for him.
“It seems my instincts would not have allowed me to do otherwise… I underestimated her.”
“Your mum? Yes, you did. I did the same to my parents when I was around that age, as well. It took a long time for us to reconcile after the, ah, Australia incident. What I did to them during the war was not, erm, one of my nobler acts.”
Severus smirked at her. “No, it wasn’t, my Gryffindor. It was quite Slytherin. But, you did protect them, and you did reconcile with them.”
“Yes, and I had to eat much more than just one slice of humble pie to do so. It was most un-Gryffindor, but it was important. They’ll never agree with me that charming their memories and sending them out of the country during the most dangerous time of the war was possibly a necessary precaution or even helpful, and they will never fully understand our world. But, we’ve come to a point where we all three accept our differences with some grace. Plus, I had to promise never to use magic on them ever again without their specific request.”
“Oh, poor Hermione.”
“It wasn’t easy! Unlike you, I’m rather close to my family. I did think, at the time, that I was doing the right thing. They certainly wouldn’t have gone if I had just asked them to, and I just couldn’t tell them everything that was happening. How could I have possibly rationally explained to them that my best friends and I were under constant death threat from a dark wizard, that a teenager and his two friends had to kill this dark wizard in order to make the make the wizarding world safe again, and that we were leaving school to tramp all over the country in order to find and destroy artifacts containing pieces of this dark wizard’s soul in order to do this. My parents are middle-class English professionals. They don’t even like reading fantasy novels; why should I have expected them to accept these things in real life?”
“Breathe, dearest.”
“Plus, I was a snotty 17-year old. Of course I thought my mum and dad would never understand. I’m sure I would have felt the same way even had my parents been Merlin and Nimue themselves. And, considering everything, my home life was pretty stable.”
“I blamed my mum for everything after my father left. She was the only one around to blame.”
“And she was more and more alone after the deaths in your family.”
“I treated her abominably.”
“I think she knew that you could and would change someday, Severus.”
“It’s no excuse. I can’t make amends.”
“No. The dead can’t offer forgiveness. Well, ghosts, perhaps, but… you can do something. Had she lived, Severus, you would probably eventually have got to know her better.”
“How can be so sure?”
“I’m not dead certain. It’s a gut feeling, knowing you as I do. You value knowledge. You couldn’t stand not knowing more about someone as significant as Eileen Prince Snape. And, she would have welcomed your interest. If she’d known where to find you all those years, she would never have entirely given up on communicating with you. She may not have been as nurturing as you liked or needed, but she cared about you - that’s clear.”
“I wish I could hear her voice again.”
“You can read it.”
“Why now, Hermione?”
“You haven’t figured that out yet? Where is your home, Severus?”
“Here, with you.”
“Home is more than a structure?”
“Of course it is. Hogwarts has not always been home, and it will not always be my home. But…”
“But?”
“You’re going to insist I say it, aren’t you?”
“Please?”
“It’s you, Hermione. You know that. You have been the essential component of home for me for several years now. If you left, my friendships with Minerva and Filius would not be enough to keep me, to make me feel at home here.”
“Severus, there’s no magic involved in this. I think you’ve been thinking of your mum, and you’re ready to get to know her better because you feel at home now in a way you haven’t before. You’re anchored.”
“You’re my ball and chain, then?”
“Oh, please! Then, you’re mine, and, perversely, I wear you happily.”
“Yes, you are a perverse woman. I approve. I believe it may be time to read the rest of Mum’s library.”
“I think so. If you’d like, I can do a little investigating and find out if the Whites still live in Portballintrae.”
“You will do nothing of the kind, woman. One step at a time.”
“As long as you take that step, I will be as patient as possible.”
“You’re going to write to Mr. Finnegan tonight, aren’t you.”
“It has been quite a long time since I last saw him…”
THE END
Author’s Notes:
I was influenced by many fine fics and other theorizing about Severus Snape’s character, including, in this case, Azazello’s “Therapy” (no longer available online ~sniff, sniff~), Lookfar’s “Jehane Desrosiers”, Whitehound’s (Claire Jordan) essay on the location of Spinner’s End , and Red Hen’s discussion of wizarding social class and Snape’s family life.
I have borrowed the handy dandy Zerocso spell from Grace Has Victory’s wonderful “Moon-Cursers” series. I just love that spell. My sincere thanks to other fanfic authors (especially of the SSHG variety)
All place names are real, but I reserve the right not to be intimately familiar with any of them.
I’m with those fanfic writers who argue that Potions Master is not merely the title of any potions teacher at a magical school like Hogwarts, but rather a title signifying the highest rank in the vocation. Canon, or at least the HP Lexicon, seems to support this. The associated professional society is the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers.
The book Hermione is reading is R. T. Gunthner, ed., The Greek herbal of Dioscorides, illustrated by a Byzantine AD 512, Englished by John Goodyear AD 1655 (London: Hafner, 1934).
Back to Part One
Author: themoreyouclean
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, Eileen Prince Snape, Tobias Snape, and other Snape and Prince family members.
Challenge: Originally conceived for the Pure-blood Prince Fest, but, well, it’s late.
Warnings: DH Spoilers, character death, verbal and physical abuse, angst, family dysfunction, and gender politics. Your author apologizes for the fact that you will find only a tiny bit of romance and no actual nookie here, though some is implied.
Summary: Home, family, mother: these are complex issues that don’t go away even during several years at a wizarding boarding school. Harry always had to go back to the Dursleys’ during summer hols, and Severus always had to go back to Spinner’s End.
Sunday
Severus woke the following morning with a sense of disquiet. Before breakfast, he sat down to read the rest of Eileen Prince’s letters, but could not bring himself to finish. He bookmarked his place in the letterbook and set it aside.
Pushing unwelcome thoughts about Eileen and his own childhood aside, he forced his attention to school matters. After joining Hermione in the Great Hall for breakfast, Severus spent the remainder of the day marking papers, reviewing his lessons for the upcoming week, meeting with the most recent DADA instructor to clarify crucial curricular components, going over the agenda for Friday’s Board of Governors meeting with Minerva, and catching up on his professional correspondence.
Hermione, on the other hand, studied Eileen Prince Snape’s words thoroughly that day. The act combined her two greatest loves, research and Severus Snape, and the idea that the letterbook might bring so much of his unspoken past to light made her giddy. It was with great difficulty that she forced herself not to read any further than Severus’ bookmark that day.
Severus came back to their quarters that evening from a late meeting about the marketing of one of his new potions to find Hermione already asleep in bed and a new addition to the mantelpiece: his birth announcement, newly housed in a silver frame.
Tobias and Eileen Snape proudly announce the birth of their son,
Severus Tobias Snape
Born on 9 January 1959
7 lbs., 8 oz.
MAY HE BE AS JOLLY AS HIS FATHER TOBY; WILY AS HIS NAMESAKE GREAT-GRANDFATHER PRINCE; STUDIOUS AS HIS GRANDPA ALEX PRINCE; CUNNING AS HIS GRANNIES MAGGIE AND BRIGID; AND HAPPY AS ME, HIS MUM, BECAUSE OF HIS BIRTH.
He grabbed the frame and threw it across the room; the glass shattered with a satisfying crash. He then cursed under his breath, hoping that he hadn’t just woken Hermione. He stilled to listen, but heard nothing. Stupid Gryffindor sentimentality, he thought as he summoned the broken frame and repaired it with a wordless incantation. “Jolly” as my bloody father “Toby”? Great Merlin, I’d rather be anything than like that man! He was certainly never jolly to me. What possessed her to think I would approve of having this thing displayed? He would never confront her about it, though. One of these days, definitely before Draco Malfoy’s next visit, he thought, I will quietly put this idiotic announcement away and never take it out again. She’ll forget.
Eileen P. Snape, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, England, to Brigid Prince and Maggie Snape, Manchester, England
30 January 1963
Dear Mum and Maggie,
I’m writing to you from the family waiting room at the hospital, where we’ve been for a couple of hours now. One of your neighbors is here, and she’s agreed to deliver this letter this afternoon. I wish I’d had the sense to leave Severus home with one of you before I rushed over here. He’s miserable: bewildered and upset by the noise and the mass of people here. He’s just crawled through my legs and is hiding out underneath my chair, poor dear.
A nurse rang me that Toby was here with a broken arm and various cuts and bruises. The doctor had to set his arm and stitch up a deep cut on his cheek. I wish his friends had brought him home first so I could have healed him myself; now he’ll have a scar on his face, which will surely be another matter for him to grumble about.
The mill manager fired him. The letter his friends gave me says that they had to “let him go” because things are slow at the factory now and that they expect to “call him back” soon, but truly it means they fired him and he’s out on his duff. His friends don’t expect that there’ll be “call backs” anytime soon. Apparently, Toby found this letter on his desk when he got into work this morning, and his boss didn’t even want him to stay for the rest of the day, just gave him his pay packet and told him that it’s best that he go now. So, he left, along with a couple of friends who got the same kind of letter, and they went to one of the pubs around the corner. They drank all morning until they got in a fight with one of the mill operators from the day shift who came in to get lunch. I’ve never known Toby to fight before, so I’ve no idea what happened. His mates laughed about it; they seemed happy that he could give as good as he got. Men! I just hope he didn’t throw the first punch.
How could his boss do this to him? It’s just a month after Christmas, just a few weeks after Severus’ birthday. We have some savings, but they won’t last too long. I’m worried about what we’re going to do. Toby’s been moody this last year, too, because of layoffs, which we both think is just the upper managers’ fancy word for firing. His shift has been more difficult to run because it’s poorly manned. How could they possibly turn out their quota with fewer workers? It’s affected us both, I think. Truthfully, we’ve argued quite a bit lately, I’m ashamed to say. Now that he’s out, too, surely his mood can only get worse. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this terrible news.
I’m hoping to get Toby home and into bed soon. Then, I’ll come by, Maggie, and get some of the stew you made. I think we’ll all need something hearty tonight.
Your loving daughter,
Eileen
Eileen P. Snape’s Journal Entry
Manchester Flat
30 January 1966
Except for Severus’ baby book, I haven’t kept a journal since I was on the road conducting my research. (I long for those days right now!) But, I need to write this down, or I’ll scream. I’ll likely scream anyway, but I need to get my head around this first. Also, some of this I can never, never tell Maggie Snape. Mrs. S. has been like a second mother to me for my entire life. My mother’s best friend here in Manchester; as knowledgeable about their shared passion as Mum; if she were magical, she would be a learned and powerful witch indeed. I know that she’s seen some of Toby’s’ behavior over the past few years, and I know she couldn’t do anything to stop it. I just… And, she’s been wonderful to Severus. He’s become such a quiet, solemn little boy, but she can somehow always get him to laugh. I can’t remember the last time I could do that. Oh, my little boy! How can I make him smile when I’m so angry?
And, how in the world can I tell Nanny? I stayed in Manchester for Toby, for our marriage, which now exists only on paper.
So, I’m putting this into my letterbook. It’s a letter to myself, I suppose. Maybe my future self will read this and…and what? I don’t know. Laugh? Cry? See me as the pathetic creature that I’ve become?
OK, the facts: Toby abandoned me…us. His temper had been growing worse and worse since he was fired. He drank more and more…certainly more than the occasional cocktail he used to have with the suits before they brushed him off. He must have started to take something else as well - cocaine, maybe? - because he became incredibly paranoid. He was sure people were out to get him: the postman, the milkman, Severus’ teacher, a certain waitress at his favorite pub, an admittedly creepy looking bus driver, and me and Severus, because I’m a witch and he’s a wizard. Toby started spouting diatribes filled with common Muggle delusions about witchcraft as a tool of the devil. Severus and I have dark hair and eyes, as opposed to his fair looks, so, of course, we must be Dark creatures. I was never a beauty, but when Toby was courting me, he found my looks “exotic” and “unique.” Now he says I’m ugly and calls me a hag and Satan’s whore. A hag. Ha! I wonder if Old Sluggy would find that amusing. Bastard. And Severus; he would never hurt his father. He’s a precocious little kid - I have to give him that! - but even as a toddler he had more control over his magic than do some of the younger kids at Hogwarts.
Toby beat me, and I did not fight back. He nearly raped me, more than once, and he only failed because he passed out drunk. He yelled, and he threw things, and he drank up all our savings. He thought it too demeaning to go out to look for another job, or to have his wife get a job, or to move us to a cheaper flat. What would his daughter and her banker husband (who’s actually still just a clerk) think? And even when he railed against my being a witch, he had the gall to ask me to magic us some money and then accuse me of trying to starve our child when I refused! Of course, the money would never have been mine to spend on food; every other extra bit of cash he got would go to drink or drugs. Though, there have been times when he didn’t get enough. That just can’t happen anymore.
Toby rarely hurt Severus physically, but he did plenty else to make our son suffer. And I didn’t protect him! I couldn’t protect him, not like I should have. And now I’m ashamed. I didn’t use magic. I didn’t want to feed my wretched husband’s paranoia. Somehow I thought that I could reason with him, prove to him that I wasn’t Dark and that everything would be OK. Pathetic. All of the witches I interviewed during those years after school would doubtless think me a weak female (though they might take pity, too). And, I can just hear that bigot Abraxas Malfoy laughing at me viciously, “well, what do you expect, mingling in the dirt with a filthy Muggle?” As if there is no such person as a pureblood who abuses his wife. Toby was always self-important, but he could also be funny and kind, jolly with his friends and sweet on his children. He fell somewhere, and I didn’t want to see it when it happened. And now he’s gone. And, I don’t know what to feel first: angry, relieved, ashamed, sad, or worried. Will I hear from him again? Merlin, I hope not. But I can’t even think about “what ifs” right now - I just need to figure out how to go on from here.
Maggie has been so good to me. The neighbors, though - our Muggle neighbors near the flat, anyway - seem to have gone blind in the face of Toby’s’ downward turn. They still think him to be a noble man laid low, with an unsupportive wife and an ungrateful son. Even my stepdaughter clings to this image of her father, and she has been at our flat when he is drunk and violent. He was never like that when she was growing up, Betty claims, so it must be me or Severus bringing out his “temper.” We’ve never been very close, she and I, but how can she be so blind? Stupid, worthless girl.
Our landlord has already found a tenant for this flat who can move in next week. I am taking Severus back with me to my parents’ home on Spinner’s End. It may be crowded with us there, but no more so than when my sisters and I were growing up. My father won’t really mind us being there, but he’ll react to the news with a scowl and his silent anger. He never liked Toby to begin with, and he’ll be irritated with me, as well, for keeping Toby’s drunkenness and violence and mistreatment of his daughter and grandson from him for as long as I have. Telling him will be difficult. He’ll be disappointed in me. My mother will weep. Severus will probably scurry up to my old bedroom, shut the door, and feel miserable or furious. Or both. What will I ever tell Severus about his father?
I’ll have to get a job now. No Toby to pretend he’s our provider, and we can’t live with my parents and not contribute. I hardly know who I am anymore. I loved Toby so much when we met. I missed my travels and my work with the witches who shared my interests in potions and old magic, but I wanted to be with him. Did I make the right choice? If I hadn’t stayed with Toby, I might have traveled all across the isles by now. I have my son, though, and I wouldn’t wish him away for the world. Severus has become a moody child, but he is my bright spot. I hope I can make him happier. I hope I can do right by him. His magic is developing so quickly; I don’t want any anger or resentment on his part to influence that.
Maggie Snape to Eileen P. Snape
15 March 1972
Love,
I hope this finds you well upon your return home. I always miss and worry about you when you’re away, but this past week, I was glad you weren’t home. Toby showed up on my doorstep, pissed and bitter. I don’t know where he’s been. I know he hasn’t been in Manchester in the last few years. He looked haggard, dirty, just awful really. I can’t sympathize, though.
He was in a mean mood, love. He came over looking for you, said he “couldn’t find” your folks’ house, even though it’s just down the way. He yelled hard at me, demanding to know where you were and where Severus was. He swore a blue streak, insulting you and the boy. I was shocked and shamed by him. I had thought he might have put himself right after he left, but he’s just grown harder and meaner, not to mention drunker and dirtier. I told him that I didn’t know where you were and no idea where Severus was in school. Both true, thank God. You and my grandson are my only family now, and I want no harm to come to you. If I thought Toby would improve, I would help him out again, but I know now how unlikely that is. God help me, but I hope we never see him again.
Stop over when you do get home, please, love. I could use some help with spring-cleaning, and I’d rather spend that time talking with you than with any of the young neighborhood girls who keep offering their time.
Maggie
The Next Week
Severus had, over the years, become used to keeping all thoughts of his mother neatly compartmentalized in a dark corner of his organized mind. Since he began reading her letterbook, though, her shade would not stay put. Lifelong anger with her and his father combined with newer feelings of confusion, ambivalence, and curiosity plagued him. Frustration with it all colored his days. During his years as a spy, he had effortlessly cut off thinking about Voldemort, his Death Eaters, and their atrocities. Classroom time was solely for lecturing at students, monitoring their work to prevent or clean up after accidents, and taking out his ire on hapless dunderheads, not for ruminating on the mystery that was Eileen Prince Snape. He could not, however, get his errant brain to cooperate.
In the middle of the week, he decided he’d had enough. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t read the book the whole way through. Perhaps sometime in the future - the distant future - he would try again. After the last little miscreant had left his office, he warded his door against students, took Eileen’s letterbook from the side table, and brought it over to his desk. He glared at it sternly, as if he could stare it into submission like a cowed second-year. As he went to put it into the bottom-most drawer of his desk to be locked away and hopefully forgotten, Hermione came in.
“What are you doing with that, Severus?” she asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing, Hermione?” he replied sneeringly.
“Don’t use that tone with me! Why are you putting your mother’s book into that drawer, Severus? The drawer you usually lock things away in when you find them too precious to part with, but too dangerous to leave out?”
“It’s just a drawer, Hermione.”
“Severus, don’t do this,” she said quietly to him. “I know all this thinking about her has been difficult. I can see that.”
“The bloody woman is haunting me, and… I… I have more important things to do than to walk about crying over my dead mummy!”
“I don’t mean to belittle all the work you do, Severus, but I think that coming to grips with your mother and your childhood is the most important thing you can do right now. Other things can wait. You can’t just pack up her letterbook and behave as if you’ve never read it, as if what you read hasn’t already affected you. You have and it has, and it’s going to continue to haunt you until you, well, forgive the psychobabble, but until you work through it!”
“I have lived with worse things than this without working through them.”
“Oh, yes, and you were so happy all that time you couldn’t speak to anyone about spying and the Death Eaters. You lived wonderfully, and you never inflicted pent-up rage on anyone. It’s a wonder you didn’t explode! Come off it!”
“Don’t taunt me, Hermione!”
“I’m not taunting you, you great prat! My gods, man, you have faced many worse things in your life before with great courage and dignity. You stood up to Voldemort who knows how many times, but you can’t face the memory of your mother? Don’t put this on hold, Severus. Just do it!” And she stormed out of the room with a huff. The slamming door shook the walls sufficiently to rattle several of the specimen jars on his shelves.
Severus felt like throwing something. Instead he sat very still and seethed inside. He banged his fists hard down on the desk, and then rested his forehead in his hand, closed his eyes, and swore vehemently under his breath. She just had to bring up Voldemort, he thought. He had no retort for that. Bloody hell. Sneaky little thing. I love her.
He returned the book to its original place and left the office. Voldemort. Facing Voldemort was easy compared to this. At least then I was sure that I would die in the midst of it and not have to deal with any of the repercussions. Of course, I didn’t die.
“Ten points from Gryffindor for having your wand out in the hallway, Mr. Collins!”
Hermione and Poppy made sure of that. Now, it’s all repercussions.
“Ten points from Hufflepuff, Mr. Jennings! Didn’t you hear what I just told your little Gryffindor friend?”
My father was a violent, drunken fool, and mum did nothing to stop him. She allowed that idiot brute of a Muggle to take advantage of her! Severus stopped dead in the hallway. Gods, what am I thinking? “Brute of a Muggle?” Have I learned nothing?
“Miss Ferrars, Miss Wickham, and Mr. Steele! Ten points apiece from Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor for recklessness! And, Mr. Willoughby, I am disheartened that I must take five points away from my own house for your insensible behavior in simply following your fellows, lemming-like. Where is your house pride, all of you? Now, get to your classes before I am forced to deduct more points.”
Grateful to have this period free, Severus ducked out into the icy cold courtyard to clear his head. I hate him. I hate her… no, I am furious with her, but I hate him: Tobias Snape. Dad. She merely responded - not strongly, not forcefully as she could have, should have. But he, he chose what he did, he decided to drink. And he kept doing it for years. She gave up so much for him, and he took it, and then he turned on her. And me. What possessed the man? He could have at least looked for more work, but no. One injury to his pride, and he collapses and lashes out at his wife and small son. What kind of man does that? I could never be like him! Was I? Am I?
The questions cycled over and over through Severus’ head. He could feel another headache coming on. Just when he was beginning to think it might be wise to go inside and thaw out his fingers in preparation for his next class, a small school owl flapped in front of his face with a plaintive hoot. Severus rewarded the creature with some owl treats from his coat pocket (one piece of wisdom he had learned in the spy game over the years was that it always paid to treat messengers well), and read the brief note from Hermione.
SS,
You’re doing something difficult, but important. My treat for dinner in London, Saturday night, 8 pm. Wear that handsome new waistcoat. I love you.
HG
Bribery. Merlin, he adored her. Resetting his face to its familiar frown, he went back inside to warm up and face the next group of students.
The following Thursday night, Hermione Apparated to London for the monthly meeting of the Royal Arithmancy Society’s Arithmantic Applications in Potions Study Group. Crookshanks meandered out for a chat with Minerva in tabby form. Severus had their quarters to himself. It’s now or never, he thought and poured himself three fingers of Firewhiskey. He had consumed his drink within the first half hour, finished reading Eileen’s book at 10 pm, and spent the next hour battling a phantom opponent in the Room of Requirement, using his knowledge of the most vicious curses, hexes, and jinxes short of the Unforgivables, before retiring for the night around 11: 30 pm, just before Hermione returned from London. Having exhausted his body with dueling, he laid silently in bed, letting Hermione lull him to sleep with her chatter about the new research presented at the meeting. Tomorrow evening would be early enough for another discussion of the “mother issue.”
At Friday lunch, students in the Great Hall warned each other about the Potions Master’s particularly nasty temper that day and directed meaningful glances towards the high table. Said Potions Master glared at his food and, when he finished, shuttered his expression as he stalked out of the room. The Arithmancy Mistress answered the Headmistress’ pursed lips and questioning eyes with a shrug of her shoulders and a silent agreement to check on him immediately following her next class.
Severus closed his eyes as he sank into the bathtub on Friday afternoon seeking comfort. The hot bath calmed him somewhat. Unlooked for, a memory of his mum giving him a bath over at his Prince grandparents’ house surfaced. He must have been five or six. His elder half-sister had given him a rubber duck that he insisted on having with him at every bath. That night, his mother levitated the bright yellow duck, and it zoomed around the tub, quacking and spitting water at him. He’d laughed long and hard. It was one of the few times he remembered his mother smiling. His Grandma Brigid stood in the bathroom doorway, too, laughing and clapping her hands, childlike. He opened his eyes and wiped his face. He told himself the moisture on his cheeks was just perspiration from the heat of the bath and checked to make sure that the door to the room was shut.
Hermione was looking appraisingly at an illustration in the Dioscorides when Severus emerged. “Feeling better?” she asked, looking up from their worktable at the sound of the door closing.
“Relatively speaking.”
“And, um, do want to speak about your relatives?”
Severus rolled his eyes. “A pun? Honestly, Hermione…”
“Fine. But, do you? You couldn’t have failed to notice the impression you made on the students this morning. My first-years were so riled up after your class that they almost provoked an explosive reaction in one of the simplest arithmantic formulae. Their magic was seriously out of whack. You’ve got to get this off your chest.”
He sat down and simply looked at her, saying nothing.
“You must have something to say about the matter.”
“My father was a boor.”
“Yes, so it would seem.”
“My parents fell in love for some reason that I can’t determine. I don’t remember either of my parents happy. Ever. My mother was happy at one point in her life, before she married, before I was born. She wasn’t like that by the time I came along. Not at any time I remember, in any case. My father was a happy drunk. Until he became an angry drunk, and then he was violent.”
“Severus, your mum was happy when you came along. You saw the birth announcement she sent out.”
“Oh yes; that sentimental garbage. Minerva also saw it when she came by earlier this week for a chat. She thought it was simply adorable. I will never live it down. Severus Snape is NOT adorable.”
“No, love, you’re not. Don’t worry.” Severus narrowed his eyes at her. “Apparently, your mum at one point had a much sweeter disposition than you do now. The point is, she was quite pleased when you were born. She was excited to welcome you to the family. She was happy to have you in her life and wished only the best for you. She loved you, Severus. Nothing that came later can erase that.”
Severus stilled for a moment. “And my father? I suppose he loved me, too?”
“I’m sure he did.”
Pushing himself into Hermione’s face, Severus growled viciously, “He loved us, did he? That cannot make up for beating his wife and son! That cannot excuse what he said about us! He was brutal, cruel. Regardless of who he may have been before, afterward he was nothing but a self-pitying, miserly, uncaring toad! I can’t even call the man a bastard. He disgraced his mother, not the other way round.
“Now, you can help me, Hermione, by letting this issue alone! I will handle this however I deem fit, regardless of your good intentions or Minerva’s displeasure. The students will learn to live with the fact that something else is of concern to one of their teachers other than their trite little lives.”
“Severus…”
“I am very clear about this. I will not talk about Eileen Prince or my childhood with you right now. If you cannot resist your natural inclination to question and interfere, perhaps you should leave me be.”
“If that’s the way you want it, Severus, you can brood by yourself tonight. A couple of my colleagues from the Royal Society were interested in continuing our conversation from the other night, and I’m going to take them up on their dinner invitation. Don’t wait up for me, Severus, and don’t be surprised if you don’t see me in the morning.”
“That is acceptable.”
“Push me away tonight, Severus Snape, but we are still having dinner out tomorrow night, and I expect you to be more sociable. If nothing else, you will… tell me about your proposed article for the special number of the journal I’m going to be editing. I will let you be on this for a while, but it is not over.”
At Saturday night’s delicious dinner, Severus discussed his recent reformulation of Wolfsbane, and Hermione brainstormed the possible impact of untried arithmantic theories on its efficacy. Severus believed he had distracted her sufficiently until the end of dessert. As he was helping her with her cloak, she whispered in his ear, “Nice try, lover.”
Severus was cool to her over the next week. Conversation focused on the professional. In bed at night, he had work hard to stay on his side of the bed, his anger at war with his desire to spoon with her.
The Next Friday Evening
In the early evening, Severus sat down on the sofa in front of the fire. He was grateful that the potion he took to relieve his fifth consecutive tension headache of the week would still work if followed by the consumption of alcohol. His shot of firewhiskey went down smoothly.
Hermione emerged from the bedroom already in her flannel pajamas, hair pulled back into a loose knot, and bunny slippers on her feet. Severus smirked at her appearance. “Ready for bed already?”
She narrowed her eyes at him and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa. “I’ve had a very difficult week. My sixth and seventh years are plaguing me with questions about their end-of-term projects. I pushed myself this week to get my article out to Études Arithmantiques. Minerva has been bothering me again to consider taking over as head of Gryffindor. Oh, and the man I love has been a complete arse to me all week long. Other than that, I just need a little rest and relaxation, and I’ll be right as rain.”
“Must we spend another Friday night arguing?”
“I don’t know, Severus. Must we spend another evening with you sitting here nearly boiling over with the anger you’re unsuccessfully trying to hide? You know that I actually had to make a new batch of headache potion last night, don’t you? You used up our whole supply this week. I had to suffer through my own headache while brewing up the new stuff.”
“It’s a relatively quick and simple potion to make. Even a would-be potions mistress like you shouldn’t have had a problem.”
“Yes, even a wannabe like me can do it. At least you should hope so, since you just drank a vial of it yourself. Severus, I hate this! Talk about your mother. Just get it out.”
“You want to know why I can’t… why I couldn’t stomach my mother, Hermione? My father beat her and beat me, and she did nothing to stop it. He abandoned us. She never even tried to leave that appalling relationship, to get me away from the harm he was doing.”
“Many women being abused by their husbands find it very difficult to leave them.”
“I know that, and I know that even when their children are being harmed, it takes some women time before they can gather their courage to go. But, Eileen was a witch. She never called on her simplest magical abilities to oppose him.”
“Witch or Muggle has nothing to do with it. She had married a man she loved, and she tried to make it work, until it didn’t anymore.”
“Couldn’t she see what he was…”
“No, Severus. She couldn’t; she didn’t. Maybe she would have, I don’t know, left him or punished him in some way, though I can’t see her lashing out at him magically, but the fact is that he left before that happened.”
“She should have done something. She should have protected me.”
“Yes, she should have. I think she regretted very much that she failed in that.”
“She did regret it. Believe me, I understand that regret much more now than I ever could when I was younger. I’ve failed at that myself.”
“You protected us over and over again, Severus. Harry, Ron, and I might not have made it through Hogwarts, let alone the Horcrux hunt and the last battle, if not for you. And, we were hardly the only ones you helped.”
“And yet, I let others down, sometimes horribly. But I… appreciate your words. Tobias Snape, however, is another matter entirely.”
“Can you forgive him, Severus? Not condone his actions, but forgive him?”
“Hermione…” he practically growled at her.
“He was horrible to you and to your mother, but surely…”
“As I have said before, does that man deserve forgiveness? For that matter, do I?”
“You do, you know that! And it’s been granted by everyone you’ve spoken with since the end of the war, whether you specifically asked for it or not. You’ve declared your guilt at every opportunity. It’s painful to watch sometimes; like witnessing self-flagellation. You also know that the circumstances are quite different from your father’s. As for him, is it important whether or not he deserves it?”
“How very Christian of you, Hermione,” Severus sneered.
“There’s no need to be offensive, Severus! And this isn’t about a theological need to find a place in the afterlife. Judaism places a great deal of emphasis on the necessity of the wrong-doer to repent and specifically ask forgiveness of those they’ve wronged, but it, too, speaks about the benefits of forgiving one who has wronged you, even if that person has never apologized or made retribution.”
“Have you added religious scholar to your list of degrees? Arithmancer, potions mistress, psychologist, and now this, know-it-all?” Hermione stiffened her back at this. “I wasn’t the only person he harmed! As far as I know, he never made it to the point of being sober enough again to make a decision to repent or ask forgiveness of anyone, least of all me. His worthless son.”
“You are not worthless, you know it, and, angry as I am, I will not be provoked into pitying you, a feeling you usually abhor anyway! You manipulative prat!”
“Hermione, you do not know what he did after he left us. It didn’t end.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, so you don’t know it all? Have you not read the whole book?”
“No. I was trying to respect your privacy. I stopped at the spot you last left your bookmark the other week. I actually restrained myself. I know,” she responded to his raised eyebrow, “how unlike me.”
“Then there is a great deal you don’t know. Hermione, his actions were reprehensible. I… don’t want to be like he was.”
“Severus, tell me…”
“No. You’ll have to read for yourself. I have some papers to pick up in Minerva’s office, and then I’m going to make my rounds. I will be late. Please don’t wait up for me.”
Angry, hurt, and dejected, Hermione watched Severus pick up his cloak and walk out the door. The cloak meant that at some point during the evening, he would walk outside. She didn’t worry. Much. He could take on anything dangerous that he came across. He would remember to use a warming charm. He would make it up to Hagrid if any of his creatures accidentally got in his way. Neither of them would sleep well tonight.
The Next Morning
Hermione woke up alone on Saturday morning. Severus’ indentation in their bed was barely warm.
“Severus? Are you in there?” she called out. Not in the loo.
She walked through their quarters, checking each room. Not in the sitting room. Not in his office.
She called out for Winky. Not in the kitchen.
She rifled through his desk drawer. Not even on the map! Where is he?
Getting back into their warm bed, Hermione let out a growl and punched Severus’ pillow. Well, well. At least the prat left me a note.
HG,
My behavior last night was unfortunately typical for me, but quite unfair to you. You did not and do not deserve it. I am unable to hold polite conversation right now. I’ve gone away for the day in the hope that somewhere quiet will help clear my head. I’ve assigned Sinistra to take your place with the students in Hogsmeade today so that you, too, may have some quiet time. Don’t worry; she owes me. Read more of my mother’s letterbook, if you wish. You put up with everything from me; you certainly have at least the right to know this part of my past. I am not sure, however, if I will have much more to say about it when we next speak.
SS
“Oh, Severus.” Hermione closed her eyes and shook her head. “I pity the shrubbery you pass today.”
After a quick breakfast and a walk, Hermione returned to the couple’s quarters and got out the beat-up letterbook. She contemplated nesting in her comfortable armchair in front of the fireplace, but it didn’t feel right. Maybe it was negative energy from their recent arguments. She snorted at that thought. Negative energy, indeed! Or maybe it was the sadness and anxiety of Eileen Prince Snape’s life. In either case, she suddenly felt too claustrophobic to remain in her rooms for the day.
I need a complete change of atmosphere. A café would be nice. Not Scotland. Not London - too crowded on a Saturday so close to Christmas. What’s the name of that book town in Wales? Hay-on-Wye, that’s it. There was a lovely place we went to there.
A quick walk to the Hogwarts gates, a few seconds of concentration after closing her eyes, and Hermione popped out of existence at the school and reappeared in the alley next to one of the famous town’s bookshops. Heaven. Now this is my idea of a peaceful day. And, perhaps I can still get a spot of shopping done.
Hermione walked down the street until she found a tearoom that didn’t remind her too much of Madam Puddifoot’s. She claimed a table near the front window, ordered a pot of tea, and, with a bit of trepidation, settled into walking the remaining footprints of her late mother-in-law’s life.
Eileen P. Snape, Manchester, to Eileen White, Portballintrae, Northern Ireland
20 August 1972
Dear Nanny,
I have sad news. Maggie Snape has died. The wake was yesterday. It’s a devastating loss for all of us. For Mum, of course, since Maggie was one of her closest friends. She was more than a mere mother-in-law to me, and she was very dear to Severus. He adored her. Remember once when he was very small, he called her his “Muggle Grandmum”? Toby was put out by that, but Maggie just laughed and laughed. She always made Severus laugh, a rare gift indeed. He’s cried a good part of the last few days since her death. He was miserable at the wake and refused to talk to any of those who stopped by to pay their respects. Until Dad went in and stopped him, he just lay on his bed yesterday evening, killing flies with his wand.
I won’t tell Severus this, but Mum, Dad, and I have suspicions about Maggie’s death. She was elderly for a Muggle and frailer than she used to be, but she was still very sharp and spry. I was the one who found her dead, at the bottom of the staircase in her house. It was the tumble that killed her, but I don’t think it was an accident. A drunk, enraged Toby came looking for Severus and me at her house earlier this spring - unsuccessfully - and I think he came back the other night for revenge. All the money she’d been saving up at home was gone, but nothing else was touched or disturbed. He pushed her, Nanny, I’m sure of it. I haven’t told Severus, and he thinks she just fell at night, so please don’t tell him my suspicions. He’s upset enough as it is losing his grandmum without having to think his own father killed her.
Please owl Mum when you can. I know she’d appreciate it.
Love,
Eileen
Hermione turned the open letterbook face down on the table and stared out the window in shock. This is what Severus meant. Tobias killed his own mother! Of course, there was never an investigation, but Eileen and her parents were convinced. It’s horrifying, just horrifying. No wonder Severus looked at me as if I had two heads. Thank the gods he never knew this while he was growing up.
She wanted to stop reading then and there and go find Severus. She had no idea what to say to him, but she felt an overwhelming urge to hug him. If he would break down and cry, and if she could then hold him, stroke his hair, and comfort him, it would be so much easier. Of course, not only would Severus Snape not act this way, but he would also laugh (snigger, really) at the very thought of it. Hermione grimaced. She wanted to do for Severus what she thought her own mother would surely do for her. And he would hate it. And no wonder, really. Even those family members who had loved him didn’t seem to be particularly touchy-feely. Must get back on track, Hermione.
She asked the waitress for more tea and a sandwich and stepped outside for a moment to clear her head. She couldn’t go look for Severus now. She owed it to him to finish reading before confronting him again. It couldn’t get much worse, could it?
Eileen P. Snape’s Journal Entry
28 July 1973
Summers used to be happy, or at least pleasant. The last few have been awful. Life here has become cracked and broken. Even more so than when Toby left. When Severus goes back to Hogwarts in a few weeks, I’ll be quite alone.
Dad’s been gone nearly two weeks ago now. It was too difficult to deal with, even to write something down, when it happened. Aurors found his body miles from here in the barn of an abandoned farm. He was lying in a pool of his own blood, his broken wand a few feet away. He’d been tortured and had all three Unforgivables cast on him. There were gashes and burns all over his body. More than one person tortured him and watched him die.
He’d been to London for a few days. He’d gone to deliver some of Mum’s salves, liniments, and scents to Diagon Alley shops, do some research, and, likely, consult with some friends among the Unspeakables. He never came home. From what the auror in charge of the investigation, Alastor Moody, told us, he had been taken in London and secreted away. My father was a powerful and vigilant wizard. His captors were clearly savvy, or at least lucky. Dad must have been furious when he realized what had happened. I imagine that he faced them in his own imperious way. I imagine that they did not at all like this. Moody believed, and I agree, that they were Death Eaters. Organized chaos.
My sisters and their families came to the funeral, as did Nanny and Granddad White. My sisters are still rather oblivious to anything that goes on outside their little family circles. Grandfather Prince, who I haven’t seen since I was a small child, came, too. I always remembered him as clever and witty. It seems he is also smug, arrogant, offensive, and unfeeling. He said barely two words to Mum, which was all right, actually, as she was simply too distraught to do much of anything. He was not socially competent enough to offer condolences or express regrets. Instead, he went on and on to me about Dad’s past “coming back to haunt him” and groused that if “Alexander had done what he should have and listened to me,” this never would have happened to him. As if Dad were responsible for his own murder. He also found it necessary to remark about my “unwise and unfortunate” marriage to a Muggle who, he now hoped I realized, was “clearly a barbarian.” Of course, as luck would have it, Severus was standing right next to me during this whole conversation. Severus’ face reddened and his eyes darkened like I’ve never seen before. If Granddad White hadn’t come over and taken the boy outside, I don’t know which would have been worse: the hexing or the verbal tongue-lashing Severus would surely have let loose. I’m not sure which slander infuriated him more: those about Dad or those about Toby.
I miss Dad tremendously. I’ll miss him even more when the furor here dies down and when Mum leaves. That’s the other piece. Mum’s decided to leave Manchester and return to Ireland with Nanny and Granddad. Dad’s murder has hit her hard, and she’s afraid. I think she feels like she’ll be unprotected here. Dad is gone, and Maggie Snape is gone, and all her girls live elsewhere. Except Severus and I, that is. I know she feels safer going back to Ireland, back to her people there. I’m well and truly abandoned now, though. When Severus returns to Hogwarts, I’ll be on my own here, and when he comes home for the summer holidays, the family home will be a bit empty.
Eileen White, Portballintrae, Northern Ireland, to Eileen P. Snape, Manchester
31 July 1974
My Sweet Girl,
Please come to us as quickly as you can, Eileen, you and Severus, both.
I can scarcely believe I’m about to put these words down on paper. I wish to God that I didn’t have this terrible news to give you. Your mum is gone, Eileen. She’s dead.
She went out yesterday afternoon to collect some rare herbs in a grove several miles from here. She’d been there many times before, both with me and on her own. She hadn’t returned by yesterday nightfall, and your grandfather and I waited up all night for her return. When she hadn’t come in by morning, we called your father’s Auror friend, Moody, up here, and together they went out to the grove to look for her. It’s horrible to think, but the very thing she feared there in Manchester seems to have found Brigid here in Ireland. I cannot bear to detail the desecration done to her poor body. Suffice it to say that its author was clearly the same as killed Alexander.
You should not have to bury both your parents at so young an age. I can hardly stomach the reality that I must bury my daughter. Then I think of Severus, your own sweet boy, and I simply break down. This is just the latest loss in a series for you two. Come stay, Eileen, at least for a little while. I need you both close for the funeral, and I think it might do us all some good if you stayed for the rest of the summer; at least until Severus has to return to school.
The Floo will be open to you all day, or you may Apparate to the back lot.
My love travels with this letter.
Your Nanny
Shit. The blue sky, bright sun, and laughter of those strolling by the tearoom startled Hermione when she looked up and out the window. Dead. Both of them dead, within a year of each other, and by him, by Voldemort. And, I doubt Severus ever really knew…until he began reading the letterbook… oh, no… She plowed on.
Eileen P. Snape’s Journal
30 June 1977
I haven’t heard from Severus in about ten months now. The letters I sent him began to be returned to me in December - even my Christmas gift and New Year’s note came back - and I haven’t tried again this past five months or so. He’s graduated now, a fully accredited wizard. I wish I could have been there. I could never have simply shown up, though, not with the state of things between us. I feel nauseous just thinking about the distance between us now, the emotional gap. He’s carried anger within him since Maggie’s death, and it became more pronounced with each loss. I never expected it would so engulf him or pull us apart. How did this happen?
Professor Slughorn did write to me that Severus achieved the highest NEWT scores in decades, especially in Potions, surpassing my own record, which I understand had stood as a high all these years. And, Severus was accepted for an apprenticeship. It’s with a Potions Master I’ve not heard of. Sluggy has, though. He may be a pompous ass, but he does know who’s who in that academic world of his.
30 July 1977
Still not a word from Severus. I asked Slughorn if he’d heard any news from Severus’ Master, but he learned not a peep, which is odd for him. I think he’s keeping something back. Sluggy’s an old gossip; usually he can’t keep his mouth shut and spreads good news and bad like their both the most delicious morsels in town. But for him to say he learned nothing and keep it at that? Something is amiss.
15 August 1977
The news I’ve received is beyond comprehension. The dread I felt when my father and mother were killed is nothing compared to what I feel now. I’ve had a word from Dad’s friend among the Unspeakables. I let Moody know that I was looking for information, and Dad’s old friend found me. Severus has joined Riddle’s terrorists, the Death Eaters. He’s taken the Dark Mark on his arm. He’s committed atrocities. His Potions Master is not himself a member of the group, but he’s not opposed to it, either. My son has sold his soul, and he has no idea how high a price he will have to pay, nor how high a price his family has already paid for Tom Riddle’s lust for power.
How did this happen? How could I have allowed this to happen? I tried so hard - I was sure - to be there for him, to help him find a way to release his anger. Well, I thought I was helping him. Did I purposely hide my eyes from what was really going on? Did I deny the depth of Severus’ bitterness the way that I denied Toby’s’ violence for so long before he left? Perhaps I hid too much of what I knew? But, honestly, how could I willingly expose a boy to the true brutality of my parents’ murders? I suppose I can’t ever know how he would have reacted to the kind and extent of Dark Magic used or to the name of the responsible party. Severus is not dead, but I am in mourning nonetheless. Is this how my grandmother felt when my mother’s body was found? Will the death that will certain result from this tragic misalliance be his or my own?
I’ve been studying Dad’s work on Dark Magic since Mum’s death, trying to understand You-Know-Who and his motives and trying to find some way to help those who fight against him, like Dad did. I don’t know if it will help me now, but I’ll keep going as long as I can.
I feel lost and like my son is my lost lamb. I know that he is no lamb, though I don’t think he’s precisely a wolf either. I pray to whoever is listening that Severus’ intelligence and goodness will outlast the hell he has walked into. If I could fly now, I would go to him and try to dissuade him from his actions. I think my desire is so great that I wouldn’t even need a broomstick to get there. I know that if I were to do that - find him to talk - neither one of us would be safe…
And that was it, the end. Hermione flipped through the pages following that entry to see if any others remained, but the rest of the book was blank. She closed the letterbook and stared at the front cover for a full minute, oblivious to the chattering going on around her. She looked up and out the window. She almost wished she could believe that Eileen died of a broken heart upon learning of Severus’ induction into the Death Eaters, but Hermione just knew that her cause of death was much more malevolent and violent. This is too much. After leaving money on the table for the bill, she quickly exited the café, eager to find Severus.
Saturday Evening
Hermione spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening Apparating to spots throughout Britain where she thought Severus might be. She checked Spinner’s End, a pub, and a waterfront walk in Manchester; she checked several of the hiking trails they had explored together over the years; Godric’s Hollow, several neighborhoods in Muggle London, the Leaky Cauldron, the Three Broomsticks, the Hog’s Head, his favorite carrel in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, an old Order safe house near Dover, the old fairgrounds at Scarborough, the rearmost table at Bewley’s near Trinity University in Dublin, the god-awful motel where they’d stayed in the crap resort town they’d visited for some unknown reason a couple years earlier, the Shrieking Shack (though why he should want to go there, she didn’t really know), and all of his regular hidey-holes around Hogwarts, including every variation she could think of for the Room of Requirement. He hadn’t been anywhere she looked. The more frantic she’d become to find him, the more outlandish were the spots she thought to check. Now, shivering, she paced in front of the fireplace in their quarters. She’d just sat down and pulled one of her hand-knit blankets around her shoulders when she felt the wards shift with Severus’ entrance. He didn’t speak, just sat down in the chair next to hers.
“You were in Manchester this afternoon.”
“How did you…? You were there! I couldn’t find you.”
“You didn’t have to look, you know. In any case, you went into the wrong pub. I was at the Vine Inn. I saw you from the window go into the City Arms. I wasn’t drinking… But, they do make a satisfying steak pie there.”
“You should’ve come out and said something to me! I was worried about you!”
“You read Eileen’s final entry, I take it.”
“Well, obviously. You have to talk to me about this now. It was just so…. I felt like… Severus, did Voldemort kill her?”
“Yes, he did. It was after I’d joined, before the Potters, though not much before. She… she wasn’t found right away. He…or they… used stasis spells to make sure that whoever found her - which was, in fact, weeks later - they left a copy of a Muggle newspaper on top of her body - was treated to as much gore as if the kill were new. My great-grandmother White contacted Dumbledore after several of her owls to Mum returned, spooked, their letters unopened. Dumbledore informed me.”
“Was it personal? I mean, did Voldemort mean it to pay you back for some fault?”
“I think it was personal, but not directed to me. I’m sure that Riddle saw my joining the Death Eaters as some sort of personal reward for himself. He had always wanted the Princes. They were not one of the oldest, pure-bloodline families, never the wealthiest or politically significant, but they - especially my grandparents - had power, skill, learning, and curiosity. As you read, my grandparents had been involved with Dark Magic in their youth, and Grandfather’s academic engagement with the Dark Arts was probably the deepest of his generation. I think that Voldemort killed my mother in part out of revenge for not getting what he wanted and in part as a means finally to break ties between mother and son. I had already cut myself off from my family, but he made sure that I could never reconcile with my mother. My mother’s sisters and her grandparents were still alive, but they, for just cause I should think, were not eager to renew familial ties with a Death Eater, even one who was secretly spying for the Order. And I was not particularly interested in them at the time. I don’t know what happened to them…”
“Were you aware then of who exactly killed her?”
“No. No Death Eaters owned up to the responsibility. Voldemort certainly never told me or talked to others about it in front of me. I’m sure he thought that I would be pleased, though he scarcely needed that motivation. Of course, I’m sure he also thought that he would live long enough to laugh over it with me. I suppose that I should actually thank Potter for not having to experience that particular perversion.”
“Thrice defied.”
“Pardon?”
“From the prophecy about Harry and Voldemort. He - the ‘Chosen One’ - was the son of those who ‘thrice defied’ the Dark Lord. In a way you, too, were the son of those who ‘thrice defied’ him.”
“Your point being?”
“Well, just, except for the birthday bit, that could be you, Severus. Harry could not have defeated Voldemort without you, in so many ways. And Voldemort just never knew. He really did believe in your loyalty over the years if he spared you from your grandparents’ and mother’s fate. You subverted him from within his own stronghold. His ambition, his desire for power through the Dark Arts… he thought you contributed your family’s knowledge to his cause. He must have been truly mad to have thought so.”
“I would have when I first joined. Hermione, I was a committed Death Eater when I took the Mark.”
“But the fact remains, Severus, that you didn’t. I know that you did…vile things before Lily’s death reawakened your conscience, but you didn’t give Voldemort exactly what he wanted, did you? Your Occlumency skills were rather well developed even at that age; I’ve learned that much. You hid more about the Dark Arts than you ever told the Dark Lord.”
Severus winced and felt his chest tighten at hearing even her brief reference to his true crimes as a Death Eater; the things he really had done rather than the extra guilt he had always shouldered. But, she was right. He had always held knowledge close to his chest. His fellow Death Eaters, and fellow Order members for that matter, always knew that he knew a great deal about the Dark Arts, but none of them ever, ever knew the true extent of that knowledge. And, he would never have simply given it away, never have delivered all of his knowledge, the only real power he held, to anyone for free, Dark Lord or otherwise. He had really trusted only himself. His self-isolation had offered him a modicum of protection, then, even before Dumbledore stood up for him.
“It seems my instincts would not have allowed me to do otherwise… I underestimated her.”
“Your mum? Yes, you did. I did the same to my parents when I was around that age, as well. It took a long time for us to reconcile after the, ah, Australia incident. What I did to them during the war was not, erm, one of my nobler acts.”
Severus smirked at her. “No, it wasn’t, my Gryffindor. It was quite Slytherin. But, you did protect them, and you did reconcile with them.”
“Yes, and I had to eat much more than just one slice of humble pie to do so. It was most un-Gryffindor, but it was important. They’ll never agree with me that charming their memories and sending them out of the country during the most dangerous time of the war was possibly a necessary precaution or even helpful, and they will never fully understand our world. But, we’ve come to a point where we all three accept our differences with some grace. Plus, I had to promise never to use magic on them ever again without their specific request.”
“Oh, poor Hermione.”
“It wasn’t easy! Unlike you, I’m rather close to my family. I did think, at the time, that I was doing the right thing. They certainly wouldn’t have gone if I had just asked them to, and I just couldn’t tell them everything that was happening. How could I have possibly rationally explained to them that my best friends and I were under constant death threat from a dark wizard, that a teenager and his two friends had to kill this dark wizard in order to make the make the wizarding world safe again, and that we were leaving school to tramp all over the country in order to find and destroy artifacts containing pieces of this dark wizard’s soul in order to do this. My parents are middle-class English professionals. They don’t even like reading fantasy novels; why should I have expected them to accept these things in real life?”
“Breathe, dearest.”
“Plus, I was a snotty 17-year old. Of course I thought my mum and dad would never understand. I’m sure I would have felt the same way even had my parents been Merlin and Nimue themselves. And, considering everything, my home life was pretty stable.”
“I blamed my mum for everything after my father left. She was the only one around to blame.”
“And she was more and more alone after the deaths in your family.”
“I treated her abominably.”
“I think she knew that you could and would change someday, Severus.”
“It’s no excuse. I can’t make amends.”
“No. The dead can’t offer forgiveness. Well, ghosts, perhaps, but… you can do something. Had she lived, Severus, you would probably eventually have got to know her better.”
“How can be so sure?”
“I’m not dead certain. It’s a gut feeling, knowing you as I do. You value knowledge. You couldn’t stand not knowing more about someone as significant as Eileen Prince Snape. And, she would have welcomed your interest. If she’d known where to find you all those years, she would never have entirely given up on communicating with you. She may not have been as nurturing as you liked or needed, but she cared about you - that’s clear.”
“I wish I could hear her voice again.”
“You can read it.”
“Why now, Hermione?”
“You haven’t figured that out yet? Where is your home, Severus?”
“Here, with you.”
“Home is more than a structure?”
“Of course it is. Hogwarts has not always been home, and it will not always be my home. But…”
“But?”
“You’re going to insist I say it, aren’t you?”
“Please?”
“It’s you, Hermione. You know that. You have been the essential component of home for me for several years now. If you left, my friendships with Minerva and Filius would not be enough to keep me, to make me feel at home here.”
“Severus, there’s no magic involved in this. I think you’ve been thinking of your mum, and you’re ready to get to know her better because you feel at home now in a way you haven’t before. You’re anchored.”
“You’re my ball and chain, then?”
“Oh, please! Then, you’re mine, and, perversely, I wear you happily.”
“Yes, you are a perverse woman. I approve. I believe it may be time to read the rest of Mum’s library.”
“I think so. If you’d like, I can do a little investigating and find out if the Whites still live in Portballintrae.”
“You will do nothing of the kind, woman. One step at a time.”
“As long as you take that step, I will be as patient as possible.”
“You’re going to write to Mr. Finnegan tonight, aren’t you.”
“It has been quite a long time since I last saw him…”
THE END
Author’s Notes:
I was influenced by many fine fics and other theorizing about Severus Snape’s character, including, in this case, Azazello’s “Therapy” (no longer available online ~sniff, sniff~), Lookfar’s “Jehane Desrosiers”, Whitehound’s (Claire Jordan) essay on the location of Spinner’s End , and Red Hen’s discussion of wizarding social class and Snape’s family life.
I have borrowed the handy dandy Zerocso spell from Grace Has Victory’s wonderful “Moon-Cursers” series. I just love that spell. My sincere thanks to other fanfic authors (especially of the SSHG variety)
All place names are real, but I reserve the right not to be intimately familiar with any of them.
I’m with those fanfic writers who argue that Potions Master is not merely the title of any potions teacher at a magical school like Hogwarts, but rather a title signifying the highest rank in the vocation. Canon, or at least the HP Lexicon, seems to support this. The associated professional society is the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers.
The book Hermione is reading is R. T. Gunthner, ed., The Greek herbal of Dioscorides, illustrated by a Byzantine AD 512, Englished by John Goodyear AD 1655 (London: Hafner, 1934).
Back to Part One