Always Gold
He was curled on his side with one foot stuck out past the dust ruffle allowing light beneath the bed to dimly illuminate the photos in his mother's childhood photo album. There were only a couple of her as a baby, but many of her, Uncle Sev, Aunt Edie and cousins starting from when she was a toddler until she was maybe fifteen. After that, the pictures tapered off again into nothing and not one held Lottie's face. He hadn't understood why that was when he was younger, but now that he was eleven, he realized they'd stopped taking photos except for on special occasion after they lost his cousin.
There was another, thinner album tucked above his head between the mattress and bed frame that held almost a year's worth of photos from when his mum was pregnant with him. A lot of them featured his cousins and aunt, but few of the uncle he was named for. When he was in the pictures, he looked exhausted and burdened. From the stories he'd heard and begun to read, it was no wonder his namesake looked like he was carrying all of Hogwarts on his shoulders – he nearly had been. They cut off shortly before he was born and only in the very last photo did he feature at all as a wrinkly-faced bub. Severus occasionally looked at that one too, but, by far, he preferred to look at his mother's childhood album. She used to smile so much. Really smile, not just curve her mouth into small, closed-lip bow.
Sometimes, he thought he may have liked her for a mate when she was a girl like he was a boy now. The stories his Aunt Edie and cousins told him often confirmed that thought. She'd been brave, cheeky, and fun. Not at all the nervous Nellie he knew her to be now.
"Lottie, Sev'rus… Their deaths changed yehr mum. She frets 'cause she doesn' wan' ter lose anyone else like she los' 'em."
Severus heard the doorknob to the room begin to turn. He yanked his foot underneath the bed, closed the album, and put it up next to the other one. The ruffle fluttered from a gust caused by the opening of the door. A moment later he saw the silver metal tips of his mother's boots through the gap between the dust ruffle and the floor. Then they turned away so he could see the worn-down heels of her shoes. The bed sagged and he held his breath.
"Are you going to come out or do I have to crawl underneath there like when you were at my hip?"
He scowled before scooting out from beneath the bed. His mother rolled her eyes at him when she saw his face. "If you don't want me to find you, find a better hiding place," she chided.
Severus didn't say anything in favor of dropping down next to his mother on the bed and crossing his arms. They sat in silence for a time. Then his mother's hand came to rest atop his head. Absently, she twisted and tweaked his short brown locks. In spite of himself, Severus leaned into the touch. As he basked in his mother's kind touch, he took in her and his cousin's old childhood bedroom. His Aunt Edie had assured him numerous times over the years that the room was more or less exactly as it was when his mother was a child – if far neater.
The quilts on the beds were the exact ones his mother and cousin Eileen used to sleep beneath when they were his age, the landscapes of Hogsmeade, Hogwarts and its grounds stuck on the wall behind Eileen's bed were in the same arrangement she put them in over her adolescence. The small bowl of oddly shaped rocks on his mother's bedside table were all collected by her when she was littlie shortly after she had come to live at Hogwarts. Severus liked to spend time in here. It, perhaps more than the photos, made him feel close to the girl his mother used to be.
"You should come out now," his mother said. "Marcus and Karen have woken up from their nap and I'm sure they would like to play with their big cousin."
Severus shifted his gaze to the bed. "Okay…"
His mother continued to pet his hair. "Every time we visit Edie you come in here to look at the albums. Would you like to take them home with us?"
He thought about the question. Would he? Severus didn't think so. He liked looking at them here in his mother's old room because then Severus could almost feel his girl-Mother sitting just above him painting her nails or reading a book or playing exploding snaps with one of his cousins. He wouldn't be able to anymore if the albums were on the bookshelves in his bedroom at home.
"No," he replied.
She was quiet for another moment. "Why do you like looking at them so much?"
Severus shrugged his shoulders and gave a half-truth. "To see how much I look like you and the cousins when youse were my age." Bitterly, he muttered, "It's always hardly at all."
"That's not true," his mother protested. "You have my eyes…" she tapped his nose, drawing his gaze to her. "And that's the Snape beak you have there; you must never tell your cousin Esther, but it suits you far better than it ever has her," she teased.
He smiled a moment, but it quickly faded. "Are you ever going to tell me who my Dad is?"
The little bit of mischief that had come to his mother's countenance disappeared instantly. "Someday," she answered evasively.
"I'll be eleven in a week and I start at Hogwarts in the fall, I'm not a littlie anymore."
His mother snorted. "I didn't know eleven was when you became a man now."
"Mum, you know what I mean," he huffed.
She sighed. "It's not that I don't want you to know, Severus–"
"–If that were true, you would tell me who he was."
Her fingers grasped his chin, forcing him to meet her identical black gaze. "It's for you I don't say. He isn't…" she dropped his chin and looked away. "He isn't good."
"Then why did you have sex with him?" Severus asked in bewilderment. His mother had never told him his dad wasn't good before.
She looked at him through her fingers. "You're right that you're getting older and that's why I'm telling you this now – even if I won't share his name. I had sex with him because we were bladdered and hardly remembered our own names let alone what side of the war we were on when we locked ourselves in the pub's lav for a quick shag." Voice muffled by her hands, she told him, "Us being pissed beyond belief is the very reason you're here, protection was also something we forgot."
Severus's cheeks burned with embarrassment. He always knew he had not been planned for, but was alright with it as his mother always called him a "surprise" and a "gift", not a "mistake" or an "accident". Severus may not have been deliberately made like his wee cousins Marcus and Karen or their soon-to-be little sibling, but he'd been wanted and loved in the end.
An uncomfortable idea came to him. "Does my dad even know I exist?"
"I told him after the war and before we moved to Australia," his mother explained. "He wasn't… He was not interested in being a father to you."
"Oh," he whispered, blinking his eyes rapidly.
His mother brought him close once more and kissed his forehead. "It's his loss, sweet, not yours."
Severus nestled his face into the space where her neck and shoulder met. "Thanks, Mum." He bunched a hand in the fabric of her skirt. "For telling me this too. Love you."
"I love you too, Severus."
So this is very far-flung into the future. It's more prepared and written than the more direct follow-up I have to Summer Skeletons, so I'm uploading the first chapter now.
I hope you liked this first chapter and thank you for reading :)
