Author's Note: Written for Round 2 for Season 6 of the QLFC

Round 2: Jurassic Fever

Team: Pride of Portree

Position: Captain

Captain's Prompt: Tyrannosaurus Rex: Write about a 'dark' character who needs comfort/ affection.

Word Count: 2,954

Beta Love: Le soleil brille pas pour toi , sekdaniels, and crochetaway. You guys are the best!

Lineage

Sheets of freezing rain were falling outside the windows of the seventh-year Charms classroom when one of the Slytherin prefects appeared at the door asking for Snape.

He stood slowly, trying not to wince as his leg twinged with pain, and moved quickly towards the door. He turned back and nodded his understanding when Flitwick squeaked that he would be exempt from the homework that evening due to "special circumstances."

In the pit of his belly, dread grew like a black hole.

The parchment was thrust into his hands with a cold look that didn't help Severus feel any better. It had obviously been opened and viewed by the fifth year, who was one of Avery's little toadies. According to the looping cursive inside, Severus was supposed to see the headmaster "immediately."

Severus murmured a litany of curses under his breath and nodded to the prefect, who gave him another dubious look.

'Keep silent, Severus. You don't have to tell him anything,' Severus repeated silently to himself, bringing down his Occlumency shields until every single troubling memory he knew of was safely hidden away.

Severus had been to the headmaster's office more than a few times. Most of them were for the same reason. The headmaster, in typical Gryffindor alumnus fashion, always seemed to take the side of the Marauders. Severus had expected that to some extent, of course, but he still couldn't understand why the Headmaster would protect a werewolf, Gryffindor or not.

He stood at the door to the headmaster's office and took a deep breath. He was as ready as he'd ever be. He pushed the door open, bracing himself for the worst.

Severus stood, his eyes staring emptily over the headmaster's hat at the stone wall behind him. His body was rigid and motionless as Dumbledore continued to talk, his face filled with a sort of sympathy that made the bile rise in the back of Severus' throat.

"...we will, of course, give you a few weeks of bereavement leave, so that you can make the appropriate arrangements with your family," Dumbledore finished, looking down his crooked nose at the scrawny, shabby, seventh-year Slytherin with something like pity in his eyes.

"I understand," Severus managed, swallowing thickly, even though he couldn't remember half of what the headmaster had just said.

"I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Snape," Dumbledore said, placing a hand on Severus' shoulder. "Your mother was a very talented student, and I can see that she has passed on much of her knowledge and skill to you. It is regretful that she should die in an accident at such a young age. I expect that you will miss her very much."

"Can I be excused, sir?" Severus replied, trying his best not to pull away from the gnarled hand of the headmaster. He was not used to sympathy, and it left a bad taste in his mouth.

"Certainly, my boy," Dumbledore replied, releasing his hold on his shoulder. "You will let us know if there's anything we can do for you, yes?"

"Of course," Severus replied. "Good afternoon, Headmaster."

"Good afternoon, Severus," Dumbledore replied, his eyes shining from behind his half-moon spectacles. "Remember, I will always be here for you if you need me."

Severus turned up his collar and cast a few charms to keep the damp out of his clothing as he climbed the creaky stairs of the house on Spinner's End. He was immensely glad to finally be seventeen and do magic as he pleased.

His mother's service had been short and simple. There had been no money for a gravestone or a proper burial, so her body had been cremated and sealed in an urn, which had been placed on the mantle of the dingy fireplace near the front of the house. Severus disapproved of it. He felt that her ashes would have been best buried in the Prince family plot in the country, but his father had made the decision and that was that.

Tobias Snape had not been sober at the funeral, and from the stench of hard liquor and old cigarettes that assaulted Severus' nose when he opened the door, was even less sober now that it was over. Severus doubted that his father had spent more than a few minutes with a clear head in the past decade. Sure, his alcoholism had gotten worse due to the current economic slump, but plenty of their neighbors had escaped, had found new lives for themselves. Severus wasn't sure if there was enough left of his father's alcohol-addled mind to understand that there was a world outside of the bottle.

It was dark inside, and Severus had to squint to see the body that lay on the filthy, moth-eaten rug in the front room. Rubbish and filth surrounded him, and there were rat droppings all over the place. If his mum had seen the house in such a state, the shock would certainly have killed her.

But she was already dead, so there was no worry of that happening.

"Oi! Da!" Severus growled, kicking at the prone figure, which promptly snorted, broke wind, and turned over in the filthy pile.

Severus suppressed a sneer of disgust and pointed his wand at the bottles, Vanishing them one by one. He opened the thick curtains with another swish and flick. He smirked with pleasure at the groan of pain it elicited from his father.

He slowly made his way towards the kitchen, ridding the hallway of various debris and making sure not to roll his ankle on the empty bottles that lined the walls. The kitchen was a mess—fuzzy black mold everywhere, food so old that it had gone off weeks ago. Dirty dishes were piled high in the sink, and there was a cloud of fruit flies swarming around the rotten remains in the fruit bowl.

"I didn't realize we even had a fruit bowl," Severus mused, Vanishing its contents. He then set out to make the kitchen halfway decent with a few household charms he'd learned in school. Then, he cooked up some eggs and toast and placed equal portions on two of the cleanest chipped plates.

"Severus." Tobias Snape's voice was a guttural, gravely thing. Once it might have been deep and rich, but now it was a mere shadow of what it had been before booze and cigarettes had destroyed it.

"Hello, Father," Severus replied. "Here. Eat."

His father sat at the old table, which had seen better days long before Severus had been born, and ate. Severus was actually surprised that the old man was being so compliant. It was as though all those years at school and summers spending dawn to dusk away from home had added up in a moment to replace the hulking beast of a man who'd terrorized Severus when he was a child with this stooped husk of a man with shadows for eyes.

When they had finished, they sat across from each other silently. Severus spoke first.

"How did it happen?"

Tobias scowled and stared at the floor like a petulant child. "Accident. Eileen slipped on the stairs 'n broke her neck. Nothin' I could've done."

"At the pub again, were you?" Severus couldn't keep the sneering tone out of his voice.

"Somethin' like that," Tobias growled. "Now, stop askin' questions. It's disrespectful to the dead."

"You know what? I don't believe you," Severus countered, standing slowly with his hands digging into the table until his knuckles went ghostly white.

"Oi! You will not speak to me like that in my house!" Tobias stood as well, fury burning in his bloodshot eyes. He raised his fist as though to strike at his son.

The man was still bulky in ways that Severus was not, but Severus stood at least a head taller now, thanks to the ample nutrition at Hogwarts. Though his initial instinct was to flinch, Severus' body acted without any conscious thought and he drew his wand, silently casting a Full Body-Bind on Tobias and freezing the man where he stood. Severus wanted to laugh at the horrified look in his father's eyes as he tried to fight the spell.

"All these years you terrorized us," Severus hissed, "and we could have kept you in line like this. Mum said that it was wrong to use magic against Muggles. But I reckon that you're no Muggle, Father. Even an animal knows better than to do what you did to us."

A sudden idea came to him, then, and a wicked grin tore open his face like a sinister gash. "An accident, you say? What aren't you telling me? Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit. Pity. Legilimens."

Severus stumbled through his father's drunken memories. He watched his father drag his mother up the stairs, calling her terrible names and accusing her of hiding money from him. He watched her break away at last at the top of the stairs and slap him. For a moment, his father paused, so shocked that this woman he'd beaten into a shambling shadow of a person had fought back against his tyranny. And then, he hit her with a closed fist, catching her on the jaw. She stumbled backward, trying to catch the railing, but her foot twisted at a terrible angle and she was falling—

Severus pulled himself from his father's mind with a shout, the bile rising in his belly as the full realization hit him.

"Murderer!" Severus screamed, fixing his wand on his helpless father. "You absolute bastard! You killed her!"

Sparks flew around his fingers and Severus could feel the magic in the air, prickling his skin. He wanted to hurt the pathetic waste of space before him more than he had ever wanted anything in the world. He wanted Tobias to feel the horror and pain of being used up and beaten down for years.

But Severus also knew that he was not willing to give up the rest of his life to a cell in Azkaban for a bit of petty revenge. When he finally pointed his wand at Tobias, it was to undo the spell. Tobias sank to the floor, his face red with humiliation as tears began to pour down his cheeks.

"I should kill you," Severus spat. "But you know what? You're not even worth murdering. You deserve this. The filth. The solitude. You've made your rubbish bed, now you get to lie in it, you disgusting bastard."

"Severus...please…" Tobias crawled forward, grasping at Severus' robes, and Severus sneered with revulsion.

"You're pathetic," he said, stepping back and away from his father's grasp. "But I'm not completely heartless. You're family, after all."

Severus then pulled a small bottle from his robes. "This is a very deadly poison that I have brewed myself. It is odorless, colourless, and completely untraceable."

He placed it on the table gently, and Tobias flinched at the sound.

Severus then drew a bottle in a brown bag from his other pocket. "Now this is something you probably recognize."

He rolled down the brown bag and showed his father a familiar label of the rotgut blend that had littered the floor earlier that morning.

"What are you—" Tobias went silent as Severus unscrewed the larger bottle and set it on the table, then emptied the contents of the smaller bottle into it. He snapped his fingers and the smaller bottle disappeared.

"I'm giving you a chance to make it right, Father," Severus deadpanned. "For once in your miserable life, I suggest you take it."

With that, he strode from the room and slammed the front door behind him, Apparating away with a thundering crack.

"Sev, you're back early," Mulciber said as Severus flopped onto his bed and curled up into a ball on top of the duvet.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Severus mumbled into his pillow.

Mulciber shot Severus a glare, but finally he let out a laugh. "Ok, ok, I admit I deserved that."

"Go away so I can brood in peace," Severus growled.

"Oh no you don't," Mulciber replied, taking a seat on the side of Severus' bed. "I remember what happened last time, and I don't fancy having to literally carry your sorry arse to the infirmary again. Now, then. Spill the beans or I'm going to cast a Tickling Jinx on you."

"I hate my dad. He killed my mum. So I told him he deserves to die for what he did and gave him the means to do it. But even though I hate him, I still love him and hope he doesn't do it and I hate myself for that. Does that clear things up a bit?" Severus gave Mulciber a sideways glance and then buried his face in his pillow again.

"Hey," Mulciber said, placing a hand on Severus shoulder. "I get it. I've hated my dad ever since I found out he cheated with a Muggle woman and they had me. I wanted so badly to be a real Mulciber that I make myself sick. But I still love my dad. Even though he's a right bastard...as am I, now that I think of it."

Severus let out a snort from where his face was hidden by his pillow.

"We are living proof that Muggles and Wizards don't mix well," Mulciber continued. "Look at all the pain caused, and for what? Did we benefit? Did they? We're better off without them."

"Well here's what's what. I refuse to have children," Severus said, turning to the side and looking up at his friend. Ever since he and Lily had no longer been speaking to each other, Mulciber had become his closest confidant. "Let the Snape name die with me, and good riddance!"

Mulciber sat on the bed, patting Severus on the back to comfort him. "Maybe he won't do it. But let's be honest. I hope he does."

"I don't care either way." Severus threw his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up next to Mulciber with an uncertain expression on his face. "I mean, that's what I want to say, but...he's my dad."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm here for you, Sev, so don't bottle things up so much," Mulciber replied, placing his hand on Severus' shoulder. Though the contact wasn't the most tender display of affection, coming from Mulciber it meant a lot.

A few weeks later, when Severus was called to Dumbledore's office for a second time with the very news that he had expected, Severus let out a tiny, pained noise that made the Headmaster fix him with a pitying gaze and he wrapped his gnarled arms around Severus for a long moment as Severus tried to keep his grief at bay. It was as though all of the sadness from when his mother had died had simply waited until his father was gone as well.

"It's all my fault," he said later, clutching Mulciber's arm until the taller boy winced with pain.

Severus hated feeling so weak, but with his father gone, he had to get things in order, even if all he wanted was to lie under his duvet and stare listlessly at nothing in his dormitory.

He was struck by how small the house looked when he entered. A number of the outer walls let in small patches of sunlight, and the shabbiness of the interior seemed even greater in the light of day.

Severus slowly shambled through the front room towards the kitchen. When he got there, he was surprised at what he found. A small envelope sat next to the bottle that Severus had prepared for his father all those weeks ago.

It was full.

With shaking hands, Severus grabbed the envelope and ripped open the top, pulling the folded paper out and reading it with widening eyes.

"Dear Severus," Severus read slowly. "I know I've been a poor husband and father, and I'm so tired all the time anymore. Yer mum 'n I never had a chance, but I done her wrong by laying hands on her. I reckon that Hell will be my resting place even if I died all normal-like in my sleep or sommat. But I got my own way of ending things. I don't want my sin on your hands. Witchy business or no, you're still my son."

Severus traced his finger over where Tobias had scrawled his name and his eyes stung terribly with unshed tears. All this time he'd been dreading the call, knowing that his father's death would be partially his fault. Now, however, he knew that his father had given him one final gift.

"There was nothing I could have done," Severus said, feeling his eyes welling up. "And now, they're both gone forever."

The house settled around him, creaking like a gentle ghost. Severus knew that it was nothing remotely supernatural from seven years of experience with ghosts at Hogwarts, but there was a sense of stillness that he'd never known within the walls in all the years of his life.

"It is done, Severus." Though it was his voice that said the words, it felt as though someone else was speaking through him. And then, just as suddenly, the feeling was gone.

As the sun set, Severus finished closing up the house and cast a ward over the entire property, shrouding it from Muggle eyes. Though it held nothing but old, bad memories, he still could not bear to part with it.

He walked down the darkened road until he was indiscernible from the shadows of the trees and Apparated away so silently that the sound was indistinguishable from the rustling of the leaves in the wind.