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He heard the front door slam closed and knew his father was in a bad mood

He heard the front door slam closed and knew his father was in a bad mood. He wondered how bad it would be tonight. If he would end up with two broken legs again. Or if he would be knocked unconscious. Or if he might be able to hide up in his room for the rest of the night…no, that was a wish, not a possible reality.

He continued reading his potions book until undistinguishable yelling floated upstairs. He cracked his door open, so he would be able to hear his father calling him. Best not make him angrier.

He sat on his bed and picked up the telephone from his bedside table. He hurriedly dialed his best friend's number.

"Hello?" a woman answered.

"Hello, Mrs. Evans, may I speak to Lily, please?" Severus asked quietly.

"Of course."

He heard her calling Lily to the phone.

"Hi, Sev," she finally said. "What's wrong?"

"My father," he murmured. "Meet me in the playground in half an hour; he should be done by then."

"I'll go now, I don't want you to be waiting if he's faster than you expect."

"It's cold out," he said. "It can wait; he hasn't called me down yet."

"I have a sweater," she said. "How bad does it sound?"

"He's been home for five minutes and Mum's already begging him to stop," he said after listening for a moment.

"I'm sorry. I'll find some straight sticks for splints as soon as I get to the park."

"Good id—"

"SEVERUS, GET YOUR ARSE DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!" Tobias Snape called up to him.

"I have to go," Severus said immediately.

Without waiting for a reply, he hung up the phone and ran down the stairs. The large, red faced man was standing near the bottom of the steps, looking at his wife, who was covered with fresh bruises and cowering at his feet.

"Yes," said Severus respectfully.

"Is what your mother is telling me true?" he growled, turning to face his son and kicking his wife on the way.

"I don't know, Sir, what is she telling you?" Severus asked as politely as he could.

"DON'T TALK BACK TO ME!" he yelled as he slapped Severus in the face as hard as he could. "Stand up!"

He kicked him, full force, in the stomach.

Severus stood up as fast as he could, ignoring the pain in his face and his ribs.

"Is it true?!"

He didn't know what his mum had said. But he preferred one beating to two, so he courteously replied, "Yes, Sir."

The next thing he knew, he was on the floor being mercilessly beaten and screamed at. He felt his father's steel toed boot colliding with every part of his still young body. His father's hands leaving stinging bruised on every inch of his skin. He saw his arm shatter as it was stomped on. He felt his leg snap as metal shoe rammed bone. He heard his ribs crack the tenth time they hit the wooden floor. He tasted blood from the broken nose caused by the back of his father's hand.

Finally, the brutal punishment ended.

"Stand up!"

Severus stood up on the broken leg without hesitation. At least he still had one that was undamaged.

"Are you going to do it again?"

"N-no, Sir."

"Good. Now get out of my sight!"

Severus limped to the door as fast as he could. It hurt and he knew Lily was waiting in the playground with help, only two blocks away. It wasn't as if this was the first time something like this had happened. At least he wasn't having to walk on two broken legs like he had two weeks ago. He could deal with one, even though he did groan loudly with each step.

Before he reached the end on the second block, Lily heard him coming and ran over to help him.

"Get me to the bench before you do anything," he grunted. "I don't think I'll be able to stand much longer."

"Are your arms broken or can you put them around me?" she asked quickly.

"My right arm's shattered, but my right one's fine."

Lily went around him and he put his arm around her shoulder. She helped him over to the bench where both of them sat down.

"So, what's—" she started.

"No need to ask," he interrupted quickly. "My nose is broken; I have a few cracked ribs; my left leg's fractured, and probably misaligned, since I had to walk almost two blocks on it; my right arm's completely crushed; I don't have any cuts; and I think every inch of my bloody body is bruised."

Lily stood up and opened the First-Aid Kit that was on the bench beside them. She bent down and looked at his leg.

"You're right, it's not aligned," she said. She picked up a small booklet from the kit and began looking through it. "It'll say how to splint it in here…"

"Just leave it," he said. "I'll just walk on it the rest of the way to your house, it's faster."

"Are you sure?"

Severus nodded.

Lily looked at his arm then picked up a straight branch from the bench. She gently lifted his arm from his lap, expecting him to show some sign that she was hurting him. No such indication occurred.

"Can you feel this?" she asked worriedly.

"Barely. It could be worse."

"'It could be worse?!' Five inches of bone are so crushed that you can see it!"

"You can't see through it. It could be worse."

"I've been trying to forget that for over a year, bringing it up doesn't help."

"Sorry, but it is true."

"I'd still rather not think about it."

Lily splinted the arm with the stick and some bandages from the kit.

"I don't know how to help you with your ribs or nose, sorry," she said quietly, closing the kit. "Let's get you back to my house. My parents are home they're the best doctors in the city, they'll be able to make casts for your leg and arm."

"I can't go home with casts on!"

"But Dumbledore said that your bones have to be aligned before we can use the potion on them, or they'll be healed at weird angles," she said, straightening up and extending her hand to him to help him to his feet.

"He send you more?!" Severus said gleefully, trying to stand up on his own. His leg collapsed under him and he fell over onto Lily, who stayed standing and caught him.

"Yes," she muttered. "Need some help?"

"Yes, please."

Lily put her arm around his shoulders, and he did the same to her. She picked the First-Aid Kit up in her free hand.

They started moving, slowly, toward Lily's house. It was seven blocks from the playground, and it was taking them fifteen minutes to cross one.

"I would've brought you a coat if I'd know it would take us so long," Lily said. "It's freezing out here!"

"The cold feels good," Severus said gruffly.

Finally, they reached Lily's house, Lily couldn't help him up the three steps up to the door, so he had to step on his broken leg to climb them.

Lily opened the door and hoped that at least on of her parents was still awake.

"MUM?! DAD?!" she called as she helped him inside and closed the door behind them.

"Yes, Sweetie? The sleepy voice of Lily's mother shouted from upstairs.

"We need some help here!" she cried as she helped Severus over to the couch to sit down.

"Is it Severus again?"

"Yes!"

"Coming!"

There were footsteps on the stairs.

"What's the prob—oh!" she said, seeing how badly hurt he was.

"My leg's the worst, I had to walk on it for a while…but my ribs hurt like hell, too.

"I can see that," Mrs. Evans said, hurrying over to them and beginning to examine the injured boy. "I'll have to align it before I can splint it, though."

"I know," Severus said quietly.

"This is going to hurt," she said, bending down and grabbing his leg both above and below the fracture.

"If I haven't learned that by now, I'm never going to."

Quickly as she could, Mrs. Evans realigned the bone. Severus managed to keep quiet, though it did hurt quite a bit. Lily helped her mother splint it.

"Most adults have never gone through half of what you have," she commented sadly.

"They're lucky."

"You said you ribs are broken?"

"At least one, probably more."

"That could be a problem, since you can't go to the hospital," she said thoughtfully. "Take off your shirt."

Severus unbottoned it, glad to expose his aching bruises to colder air. Lily's mother only had to look at him to see which ribs were broken.

"Don't you eat?!" she asked, shocked at his lack of body fat.

"Rarely. I only eat enough to keep me alive. Any more than that and it would just be more body to get hurt."

"Why won't anyone get you out of there?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, Mum? Sending a wizard whose parents aren't actually dead to an orphanage is illegal. Muggles could find out about us," Lily said. "Not to mention forms of 'Muggle torture' aren't even illegal, because they're so primitive. Found that out he hard way," she added quietly.

"Is everything in your world so stupid?!" Petunia asked snobbishly, rounding the corner.

"Tuney, please, now's not the time…" her mother said distractedly, getting down on her knees and examining Severus's ribs.

Petunia walked out of the room, furious.

"I don't think I can help you here, Severus," Mrs. Evans said, standing up. I don't think we have any choice at all but to bring you to the hospital. They're not aligned and that requires surgery to fix."

"I can't do that! I don't have the money, for one thing, and for another they'll ask questions that I can't answer!" Severus said quickly. "Plus, I know they'll want to keep me there until my ribs heal naturally, and I can't just drink a potion to fix them, they'll lock me up and study me!"

"Well, I can't do they surgery here!" Mrs. Evans said.

"Why not?" Lily asked suddenly. "We have Antiseptic Potion, Numbing Potion, and plenty of kitchen knives."

"Are you even listening to yourself?" Mrs. Evans asked. "Surgery is a big thing that takes planning, lots of people, many medications that you don't have potions for, a safe environment where blood won't get all over my floor…! There's no way I could do one in my living room!"

"We have Blood Dissolving Potions for the floor," Severus said hopefully.

"No, I won't do it!"

"Either you do it or it doesn't get done," he said tonelessly. "And you know that's a bad idea."

"But still…" she trailed off.

"Please, Mum," Lily said quietly.

After a few minutes of consideration, she nodded.

"But only if you have everything required!"

"What will you need?" Lily asked, running over to a box in the corner that was filled with vials of potions.

"Something for blood-loss, something to numb him or put him to sleep, something to paralyze him, and something to disinfect everything," Mrs. Evans listed.

"I don't think there's such a thing as Paralyzing Potion, but we have ropes and duct tape," Lily said slowly. "Here's the Blood-Replenishing Potion, the Antiseptic Potion, and the Numb—oh shit! Sev, please tell me you have some extra Numbing Potion."

"Hell!" he yelled. "No, I don't, and we can't wait for Dumbledore to send us more, if I even move the wrong way, I could start bleeding internally…I guess I'll have to go without it. Until the mid nineteenth century there was no such thing as anesthetic, so I should be able to survive without being numbed. It won't be my first experience with knives."

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Mrs. Evans shouted, outraged. "I will not cut open a fully aware person for any reason at all! Especially not a child's! You're just being ridiculous! You should be able to survive without it, I won't do it! Most people who had surgeries in the early nineteenth century died from pain alone! It's absurd to expect me to torture a child and possibly kill them just to be on the safe side!"

"If I do end up bleeding internally and I do die, it would be worse than a few minutes of agony," Severus said. It can't be worse than some of the things I've already felt."

"Oh really?" Mrs. Evans said, crossing her arms in an accurate imitation of Petunia. "You seem to be breathing, and like I said, people died from the pain in the 1800s."

"Sev, I left out some of the details, I felt they were…erm…unnecessary," Lily said quietly.

"That explains it…" Severus said. "I've been cut so deep that I could see through my arms, both of them. And I've felt the Cruciatus Curse, which causes such intense pain that it is considered Unforgivable by Wizarding Law. The entire point of it is to cause more pain than it is physically possible to cause without magic. It won't let whoever is feeling it die, no matter how much they want to. I can deal with this if I've gone through that."

The color drained from Mrs. Evans's face.

"Oh, Hell," she said angrily, stunning both Lily and Severus. She never cursed. "I'm running out of arguments."

"Is that a 'yes?'" Severus asked.

"No, that's a 'You might want to get the old camping bed out of the closet, now, Lily, because I just want to get this over with, before I change my mind,'" Mrs. Evans said almost angrily.

Lily ran over to a large closet in the hallway and pulled out a blue camping bed that looked as though it had not been touched for years. She placed it in the middle of the floor and Severus sat down on it.

"Ropes or duct tape?" Lily asked.

"Er…rope could give me rope burns, so I guess duct tape…" Severus said slowly, slightly alarmed by the question.

Lily ran off, up the stairs, to go find some.

"Having second thoughts?" Mrs. Evans said hopefully, noticing the hesitancy of his answer.

"No, that's just an odd question, that's all."

"You're really volunteering yourself to be tortured?"

"It's not torture if it might save my life," he said confidently. "And even if it was torture, it wouldn't be the first time. If I hadn't taunted Bellatrix so much, Lily would've been a lot worse off in that dungeon, two years ago."

"That's right, I'd forgotten. I don't think I ever thanked you for that, did I?"

"I don't remember. But you're welcome."

Footsteps were heard on the stairs.

"Found it!" Lily shouted, rounding the corner, holding a roll of duct tape in one hand, and a spray bottle in the other. "And I found this, for the Antiseptic Potion."

"Good," Mrs. Evans said as though there was absolutely nothing good about it. "You get comfortable, I'll go," she shuddered, "find a sharp knife."

Severus and Lily nodded.

Severus took his shirt off completely and lay down with his arms and legs slightly spread so they ran along the iron bars of the camping bed. He tried to find a comfortable position, despite the fact that he knew there would be no position that would be even remotely comfortable in only a few short moments.

Lily filled the spray bottle with the bright green Antiseptic Potion and walked back over to him.

"Ready for the tape?"

Severus nodded.

Lily looked around for scissors to cut it with, and started walking out of the room.

"Use my pocket knife, it's faster," Severus said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded two inch long knife.

"You were going to keep this in your pocket?" Lily asked as she cut off a piece of duct tape about eight inches long.

"I forgot it was there," he answered meekly.

Lily rolled her eyes and bent down to wrap the tape around his wrist and the metal bar.

"Too tight?" she asked.

"No."

In about three more minutes, he was all taped down and Mrs. Evans had come back with a very sharp paring knife.

"Which potions should I use?" she asked quietly.

The orange one is to mend broken bones, and the purple one is for soft tissue," Lily answered.

"Do you think you can stop yourself from screaming, Severus?" Mrs. Evans asked.

"No, I don't."

"Duct tape?" Lily asked, she was growing more nervous by the second.

"Yes."

Lily put duct tape over his mouth and stepped away.

"Nod when you're ready," Mrs. Evan said, spraying everything around them with Antiseptic Potion.

Severus nodded immediately, just wanting to get this over with.

"I'll be as fast as I can," Mrs. Evans reassured.

Severus felt a searing pain in his abdomen, around the area of his broken ribs. He grasped the bars as hard as he could, looked away as best as possible, and closed his eyes. He didn't need to watch it to know what was happening. The pain was enough to be able to visualize it.

Almost immediately, he realized that he was trying to scream. Soon after that his body began struggling of its own accord.

Soon, Mrs. Evans sealed him up with the potion and the pain stopped. Lily hurried over and pulled the duct tape off his mouth.

"FUCK!" he shouted.

"I'm so sorry!" Mrs. Evans said with tears in her eyes as she and Lily began removing the duct tape binding him to the table.

"Are you alright?" Lily asked urgently.

"Maybe," he gasped hoarsely, sitting up and wrapping his arm around his stomach. "I'm not—sure."

"You are," Lily said. "If you were too traumatized, you'd be hyperventilating and asking for a Calming Potion, and if you were insane, you wouldn't've answered me."

"Are you—alright, Mrs.—Evans?" he panted, noticing that she looked like she'd just killed somebody.

"I can't believe I just did that," she muttered. "I've just tortured a child!"

"You did not torture me!" Severus said after drinking a blood replenishing potion that Lily had brought him and regaining his breath. "You may have saved my life."

"I think I just need some sleep," Mrs. Evans said, walking upstairs.

"Can I have some water?" Severus asked.

"Of course!" Lily said as she ran into the kitchen and came back with a large glass of water.

"Thanks."

He drank it all at once.

"Would you like some more?" Lily asked.

"No, I'm fine."

"Does it still hurt?" Lily asked quietly as she poured some Blood Dissolving Potion on the large blood stain on the floor.

"It's just a bit sore. I can barely feel it since it was so bad a second ago."

"Was it horrible?"

"Do you want an honest answer?"

She nodded.

"It was dangerously close to unbearable. I never want to do it again, if I can help it. Never wanted to do it this time, but you know what I mean…"

Lily nodded.

"Hungry?" she asked a few seconds later.

"Not really."

"Don't lie!" she said with surprising ferocity. "You look like you haven't eaten since summer began! I'll force feed you if I have to, you aren't going to leave here like a walking skeleton!"

"Alright, alright, I'll eat something!" he said. "Just, not tonight, it might make my stomach hurt worse than it does already."

Lily nodded.

There was a pause.

Severus yawned.

"D'you want some Dreamless Sleep Potion?" Lily asked.

"I used it all last week," he replied sadly, moving over to the couch and laying down on it. "I'll have to deal with the nightmares, tonight."

"Do you honestly think Dumbledore doesn't have enough sense to send some to me every few days?" Lily said, pulling another vial out of the box and handing it to him.

"Thanks."

He drank the potion quickly. In a few seconds, he felt glorious, dreamless sleep wash over him.

A/N

I know this in incredibly stupid and unrealistic, I promise the rest of the story will be better, but I couldn't cut the 'home surgery' thing out, the next story in the series type thing (downward spirals) has some references to it that I couldn't cut out without making it extremely confusing. It was even worse in my notebook, but I won't go into that...Just don't ask me how I ever thought that this was a good idea...

I think I mentioned that Sev was not suicidal 'right now, anyway,' but I'm not sure if I cut it out or not and I'm too lazy to look. If I did leave it in, I'll tell you that yes, he did try to kill himself at age ten in the prequel to 'The Rightest Thing' and Lily saved his life at the last minute. It makes more sense in the story, and I don't want to put more than that here because that's a major plot twist in the prequel, which I've just named 'That's Life.' There is a good reason he wants to die, then, even at age ten, it's fairly legitimate.

Don't ask why it's 'freezing out' near the end of summer, I wrote this in the middle of winter originally, and I wasn't thinking. I liked the idea, so I left it like that.

It is near the end of summer, by the way. It's supposed to be set two weeks before they have to go back to Hogwarts.

Tomorrow I have to go back to school, so I won't be updating too soon. I'm going to be buried in homework and I only get the computer on weekends during the school year, anyway, because my mom's on it all day and I have to stay up late to get on.

UPDATE: I have changed one minor thing in the chapter because I forgot to put it when I typed it up and it makes it slightly more realistic. It turns out that I get home before my mom does this year because of the bus schedule...but anyway, that means I might update sooner than expected...also, congradulate me for surviving my first two days of high school in an area where people move to a place that has almost daily gang riots in school, just so they can stay away from the violence in mine!

Anyway, I really need reviews to help motivate me to write another chapter, so REVIEW!