Disclaimer: Nope, not mine.

Misery
By WitchyWays13

Eileen had tried to leave once. Only once. She'd managed to get as far as the bus station when he'd found her. She had the baby with her; he almost slipped out of her grasp when Toby's large hand pulled her away.

The beating that followed left her bruised for a week afterwards. She moved slowly, carefully. Getting up to feed the baby was a long process. She shuffled weakly into the nursery, her arms shaking as she picked Severus up. Toby hated to hear him cry.

Severus showed his magical ability at sixteen months old, when a bowl of porridge on his high chair spun around wildly and launched itself into the air. He laughed gleefully, Eileen looking on from the kitchen sink with an expression of mixed joy and horror. Toby slammed the paper he was reading to the table and grabbed the bowl from midair. He looked into Eileen's face with such loathing she shuddered.

She knew he hated magic. Hated to know that his wife was not normal. Toby had never been a tolerant man. He hated the idea of being thought of as lower class.

Things had been good when he'd met Eileen; he had a good job fixing cars and a small but decent flat to himself. He met Eileen when she was nineteen, at a local pub. She was shy and nervous, had come there with a girlfriend of hers: a loose-looking, fast-talking blonde girl in a tight sweater. Toby didn't like that kind of girl; he was drawn to the quiet, mousy Eileen. She wasn't pretty, but at first glance one might call her striking with her liquid black eyes and pale skin. A few beers later and she opened up. Toby found her intelligence refreshing. She spoke as if she lived in a different world, he thought to himself.

Eileen was drawn to Toby too; he was so different from the boys she knew. Her parents would be shocked to see her at this Muggle pub, consorting with the sort of rough-hewn workmen her parents thought of as far beneath them. Nobody had ever looked at Eileen like Toby did that night, with something close to lust in his eyes.

She was terrified when he took her back to his flat. She trembled in his arms, flushed with nervousness and excitement. What would her parents say, if they knew where she was? She almost laughed aloud at the thought, as she lay on the hard mattress. Empty beer bottles and food wrappers lay on the floor, the strange box she knew to be a Muggle television propped up on crates in the corner. She saw the shabbiness and felt a fresh wave of panic. What am I doing here? She thought to herself. She had left her friend in the pub, flirting with a young sailor. The panic rose in her chest until she saw Toby, his shirt off and pants unzipped, dropping down on the bed beside her. He kissed her and she could taste the stale beer, the cigarettes. Freedom, she thought to herself. This is freedom, to have a man all to yourself and not a care in the world. She vowed right then and there, as his hands snaked under her skirt, that she would love Toby Snape until the day she died.

Imprisonment. That's what it felt like now. She clutched Severus to herself as she rocked him. Toby was downstairs, watching television. She could feel the vibration of the volume through the floorboards. She ground her teeth and stared out the window, though all she could see were the windows of the houses opposite her.

She loathed Spinner's End, but she knew they were lucky to even have a roof over their heads. Without the housing for mill employees they'd be out on the street. Toby worked twelve hour shifts at the mill. He came home for dinner every night, drank beer and stared at the television screen. They never spoke except to shout at one another. Toby was angry at everything - his job, his wife, his son.

Severus was nothing Toby had expected. Eileen had blurted out the fact that she was pregnant three months after the first drunken night at Toby's flat. It had taken her two months to figure it out, another month to pluck up the courage to tell him. He hadn't taken it very well. He'd just been laid off from his job at the machine shop, and a pregnant girlfriend was the last thing he needed. He came to his senses a few weeks later, finding Eileen at her girlfriend's house where she'd been staying. Her parents had disowned her, he knew. Toby proposed to her, but he had no ring to give. She didn't care. They were wed on Guy Fawkes Day, bonfires burning in the hills.

The first time he hit her was when she was pregnant, and she could honestly say it was the only time he ever regretted it. She was in a fit state, heavily pregnant and angry because there was no money. Toby had applied for a job at the mill, but they were living on a tiny stipend and there was barely enough for the rent. Eileen had been griping about the lack of heat and decent food when Toby hauled off and slapped her, just to shut her up. He was godamned sick, he said, of her complaining. It wasn't his fault the mill was taking their time hiring him. She should be damn lucky, he said, that they had what they did.

Eileen set her jaw and looked Toby full in the face. She went to the kitchen drawer and pulled out what Toby thought was a wooden spoon. When a roaring fire sprung up in the grate where there had only been smoldering coals before, he jumped with fright and glared at his wife. A bruise was already starting to shade her pale cheek, and she looked downright pathetic, yet formidable. He wasn't sure what to think, so he spat out the first word that came to mind. "Witch," he called her. He'd meant it as an insult, but she narrowed her eyes and pointed the wooden thing in her hand at him.

"Yes." She said simply. "I am a witch. I never was able to tell you before. I was too scared. But what do you think now? Do I frighten you?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

Toby realized the thing in her hand was not a spoon, but a wand. He almost laughed, but the look on her face beseeched him. He would not say I'm sorry; Toby Snape would never apologize to a woman. But how on Earth could this be real?

Eileen only rarely did magic after that night. She'd catch Toby looking at her with something close to fear in his eyes. If he caught her eyes he'd scowl and curse under his breath. She seemed determined that their son would have the magical ability, and this he would not allow. Wasn't it bad enough that his wife was a freak? He couldn't stand it if their child was too.

She had tried unsuccessfully to leave when Severus was an infant. Toby's ranting and raving about how miserable his life was finally broke her down. She would regret her rash decision, though, in the months to follow. Toby turned their home into a veritable prison, and she a prisoner within it. Severus was the only bright spot in her life. When she saw him perform magic, she knew the path she had to take.

She began whispering things to her son, stories of great wizards and witches. Familiar stories and children's tales. And of a great castle in Scotland where he would one day be a great wizard. "My half-blood Prince," she called him, nuzzling her chin against his black hair. He would be everything his father was not.

End