Author's Note: This is another Spinner's End fic, set a couple of years after 'On the Brink'. Severus is eleven, very nearly twelve.
Disclaimer: A short fic based on the Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling. She owns the characters and situations, along with the few companies with permission to use them (Bloomsbury, Warner Bros. etc.) I am merely entertaining myself and hopefully those who read this site, making no claims of ownership and no money whatsoever.
……
King's Cross station had changed.
Eileen had not noticed in September, being preoccupied with getting her son, his trunk, the toad and the cloak, which he kept taking off on the too-warm summer morning, safely down from Yorkshire, across London and onto the Hogwarts Express. How on earth witches with large families managed, she had no idea. It had been a tense day, and since daybreak Eileen had been torn between the need to be positive and make sure Severus was excited about this new stage of his life, and the need to warn him about what a half-blood could expect from certain quarters.
She hoped that their lessons over the past eighteen months had given him enough preparation for the enormous differences between his past and his future. Having done all she could to give him the facts, it was now up to him to decide on his own opinions, whatever they would be. Eileen had watched him climb into the train, looking tiny and helpless next to a crowd of boisterous older children and felt that she too was embarking on a new and uncertain future.
Today, in mid-December, she had more leisure to take in her surroundings as she waited for his return. The architecture of the place was the same as when she had been a girl, of course. Huge arches swept overhead in a businesslike grey brick and murky glass, dazzled by the Victorian melodrama of St Pancras station looming red and stunning next door. Panicked people pelted after their trains, just as they had when she was small, bored British Rail officials were being as unhelpful as possible, carol singers near the entrance collected money for some worthy cause or other. Some things had stayed the same and evoked a series of bad memories, strong enough to make her stomach twinge even now. Being in this building always meant the dreaded return to school, to be scolded by teachers and mocked by her classmates for three month stretches at a time.
Deliberately, she forced the feeling to pass as she concentrated on the differences. The sounds had changed. All the trains – bar the important one – now ran on diesel fuel. Instead of idling on their platforms like dragons hissing clouds of steam, then chuffing away in high dudgeon with their shrill whistles exploding violent screams into the smoke-filled air; the new locomotives growled out low rumbling sounds, sliding sleekly in and out with a uniform snake of coaches looking exactly like the engine pulling them. They refused to lower themselves to the undignified steam-whistle of their ancestors. Modern trains made an artificial 'bee-boo' honking sound, which Eileen found much less alarming.
The huge clock hanging from the rafters was unchanged from the days when its slow creep towards eleven o'clock would make her feel increasingly sick, but today it acquired a wonderful new association. Today it told her that it was almost time for the Hogwarts Express to arrive, bringing her Severus back. She pushed her way through the bustling station and headed for platform 9 ¾ , smiling humourlessly at the girlish sentimentality which this place had conjured in her. Her unfortunate past no longer mattered. This place and this day were all about Severus and his future.
Modernisation had made no impact on the wizards' platform, and Eileen wondered how she could possibly have imagined it would. The start of term rush had meant that she had missed getting a good look at the other parents last time, but now here they all were, standing expectantly in small groups, gazing at the spot where the train would first become visible as it brought the young witches and wizards home for Christmas.
Eileen's shudders had nothing to do with the cold. As usual, London was warmer than West Yorkshire, so there was no need to pull up the hood on her duffle coat. She did it anyway, hoping that all the faces she recognised would not get the chance to recognise her. She had been unremarkable at school, so it was unlikely that they would know her after all this time, especially with her new short haircut and her brown bell-bottomed corduroy trousers. Strange thing about those trousers. The mothers of Scoursby had called them very fashionable, praising her skills with needle and 'Simplicity' clothes patterns so that she felt very avant-garde. Now, however, they seemed drab and unfeminine when surrounded by witches in flowing colourful robes made from yards of silk and fur. In the wider scheme of life, their old-fashioned lifestyle was the anachronism, but, unfairly, it was she who felt out of place.
One particular witch standing close by looked as though her outfit had cost more than the Snape family's annual income and Eileen could not help staring. The woman turned her pretty head impatiently to check the platform clock (it said 'Almost Here') and Eileen gasped, burrowing deeper inside her hood. Vivicia Malfoy! Eileen scowled. That utter bitch had spent years tormenting her younger housemates, but had got her comeuppance. One of the last letters she received from her mother before being completely cut off for marrying Toby had included a very pleasant piece of gossip. Vivicia had made a brilliant marriage to a fabulously wealthy wizard of pure and even slightly royal African blood, named Zambezi or something. Mrs Prince reported with a kind of gleeful outrage that within a year he had presented her with two illegitimate children – and their lower class mothers – expecting her to welcome them into the marital household. At the time of writing, another little bastard was alleged to be on the way.
"Enjoy your posh frock, Viv," she murmured inside the fleecy sanctuary of the hood. "Your husband may not respect you, but at least your dressmaker does."
Edging away from Vivicia, she scanned the rest of the platform, marvelling at the claustrophobic little world she had abandoned. She knew almost all of these people. Both branches of the Black family had deigned to appear in public; the brothers talking in loud, self-important voices, while their wives indulgently fed sweets to a dark boy and a pouting blonde girl. The Crabbes stood well away from each other, staring silently in opposite directions. Goody-two-shoes Demeter Longbottom was leaning heavily on a cane, no doubt injured as a result of some heroics in the line of auror duty.
Eileen's eyes moved across the crowd and did a double take when they reached Josiah Potter. He had been Head Boy when she arrived at Hogwarts, Quidditch captain with perfect muscles and a winning smile; he was the general heart-throb and darling of the whole school. Fat as a pig with dimples and three chins, he was almost unrecognisable now. He did look happy, though, that infernal grin looking jollier than ever when framed by the new babyish pudgy cheeks.
Hovering timidly under one of the arches was a family she did not recognise, but immediately she identified them as muggles, nervously trying not to stare at the unusual folk surrounding them. A skinny girl of thirteen or fourteen with a sour face was glaring at everyone with a look of pure scorn, reminding Eileen of herself at that awkward age. She was evidently not impressed about having a brother or sister who was magical, while she was not. She tried to smile supportively, but the girl only frowned even harder.
"It's coming! I can see it!" shouted a very little boy, standing at the farthest edge of the platform. He began bouncing up and down, yelling to his mother, "Mumsie! Here it comes, Mumsie! Oh, she'll be here in a minute!"
"Gildy, come away from the edge, dear," sighed one of the impeccably dressed women, sounding bored despite the murmur of excitement spreading along the platform. "I'm sure it would spoil your sister's Christmas if you fell under the train and were squashed flat."
And then the train was groaning to a steamy halt, children poured out everywhere in a flurry of hugs and shouts and clattering luggage, an owl screeched, a cat escaped from its box and fled through the magical barrier, a baby started bawling, a duel of nasty hexes broke out between two older girls, a boy fell to his knees and vomited what had once been at least three packets of Every Flavour Beans and amid the total chaos, Eileen spotted her son stomping towards her with a dour expression on his dirty face.
Her heart leapt.
She had not planned how to greet him. He looked the same, yet different, taller but somehow smaller than he had been in September, and she was overwhelmed with things she needed to say to him at the end of their first ever separation. Other parents were cuddling and leaping around, making loud exclamations of how much their offspring had grown, being introduced to new friends and told exciting stories about Quidditch and after-school adventures. None of this seemed appropriate for the two of them.
"Hello," she settled for a warm smile, hoping it conveyed her delight at having him back.
"Can we go, please?" he didn't look at her.
"Are you all right, Severus?" she reached out to touch his face but he jerked away.
"Fine. Can we go?" he was edging towards the barrier already.
"Of course," she took his trunk and shrank it. "Where's Flax?"
He reached crossly into his pocket and held up the toad. Eileen frowned.
"Why is she…lavender?" she asked.
He muttered something unintelligible.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Toads are familiars for old ladies and poofters, and so apparently they should be lavender-coloured," he sighed, before adding pointedly. "Smart people have owls. Can we go now?"
…….
It felt as though the house had awoken after fourteen weeks of enchanted sleep.
Severus' boots sat untidily on the doormat next to her tatty shoes, as though proclaiming him back in his rightful place. Flax – restored swiftly to her natural colouring - was already crawling determinedly towards hers and Tobias' favourite chair, setting herself up for trouble later on when he would be unimpressed at having to share it with a slimy amphibian. Eileen hoped that Severus would explain his comment about the reason she had been lilac earlier on. She hated to think of him being picked on for something as pathetic as having the 'wrong' sort of pet, though deep down she knew that was more than enough reason to set the dogs of war onto a peculiar and obviously less well-off child.
He pushed his feet right up against the grille of the gas fire in the kitchen and she automatically pulled him back a few inches, as she had done every cold day since he was big enough to crawl towards it. The gesture made her smile and before she could stop herself, she had kissed the top of his head.
He looked up, but did not object, or even scowl, which was as good as a declaration of love, coming from him.
"You've got milk on your lip," she said. He wiped it. "Not on your sleeve! Where is your handkerchief?"
"It got burnt," he said quietly.
"Oh, Severus," Eileen rested her hands on her hips. "How many have you got through this year now?"
"I'm top in nearly every class!" he countered.
"Really?" she sat down next to him, more interested in hearing about his school life than in lost handkerchiefs, as she knew that he knew that she would be. This relegation of cleanliness to only second Most Important Thing In The World made Eileen radically different from the other Scoursby mothers, but wasn't about to change now. "Nearly every class?"
"There's this girl," he slurped his milk crossly. "She's top in the things I come second in, and she comes second in the things I am first in, because no one else…"
Eileen heard the sound of heavy boots being scraped on the back doorstep a fraction of a second before her son did, so she was able to watch his face change when he realised the significance of the sound. He went from grumbling to alert. He sat up straight as the doorknob turned and put down his mug as the door creaked open, bringing in a gust of freezing air and Toby Snape.
Father and son stared at each other.
"Evenin', young Merlin!" Toby's thin face cracked into a teasing smile as he closed the door behind him. The clock ticked about three times in the silence.
With a sudden screech, Severus' chair flew backwards across the old kitchen tiles and as though propelled by a racing broom, he flung himself around his Pa's waist, clinging on as though his life depended on it. Eileen and Tobias stared at each other in surprise for a moment, before Tobias managed to recover enough to hug back.
Eileen had not expected the painful flash of jealousy at not getting such a demonstrative greeting herself, knowing she should feel relieved that the little Slytherin had not decided to completely ignore his muggle father. Toby peeled the boy off with a degree of moist-eyed embarrassment and gave him a manly slap on the shoulder which almost knocked him against the wall.
"You've grown!" he stated gruffly.
Severus nodded, already blushing at his moment of childishness.
"Has he?" wondered Eileen, pouring her husband a mug of painfully strong tea. If anything, she thought he looked even smaller now than he had in September.
"Yes!" they chorused, staring at her with identical expressions of indignation.
…….
Later on, she gently knocked on Severus' bedroom door and found him unpacking. Clothes lay in a mangled heap to one side, trodden on and carelessly ripped or stained in places. Books were tied in immaculate bundles and wrapped in brown paper to protect them on the journey. They also seemed a little blurred, if you looked closely, and Eileen was delighted when she recognised a crudely constructed but perfectly adequate cushioning spell.
"Did you do that?" she asked in a brisk tone, knowing how he hated being cooed over.
"Yes," he said.
"It looks like a good, sturdy piece of spellcraft."
"Thank you," for the first time since his return, he looked at her properly. His lips curved upwards very slightly, but she was watching his eyes. He had always been good at keeping a straight face, preferring to keep people guessing at what he was really thinking, but those eyes could hide nothing from Eileen Snape. She saw them in the mirror every day, after all. Genuine warmth sparkled in their darkness for a precious moment, then he turned away and began unloading all the Enid Blytons, the Conan-Doyles and the dusty collection of Beano comics from his shelves, carefully replacing them with his new textbooks.
Eileen realised she was witnessing a seminal moment in his life and sat on the edge of his bed in silence, just watching as Sherlock Holmes, the Famous Five, Bash Street Kids and all his other old friends were laid aside. It was hard not to smile with maternal indulgence at the charming way he methodically checked each magical volume for damage before stacking it in alphabetical order.
Tobias had lingered for longer than usual after dinner, obviously pleased to see Severus again, even though he had trouble following a lot of the conversation about Hogwarts and magic. Eventually, Cadge Whitehouse had been dispatched by the lads from the pub to come and fetch him, as the dominoes tournament was disastrously short of players. Cadge had pinched 'Einstein' on the cheek and brought him a bottle of Dandelion & Burdock before spiriting Toby away, which had been very considerate, Eileen thought.
None of Toby's mates seemed to mind that 'our Sev' had got a scholarship to a boarding school in Scotland for very gifted children, which was better than could be said for some of their wives. Most of the men were happier with a goal on the school football pitch than a good mark in a test from their kids, but a few of the women narrowed their eyes with furious envy when they saw her in the shops. For all their professed preferment of cleanliness to cleverness, there were mutterings about Severus daring to have a future other than the solid monotony of Batworth's Mill, which was good enough for everyone else.
She avoided any of the malice they threw her way by imagining their faces if they ever found out the truth. Even her friends thought her odd and not really normal. Fortunately, they had no idea how right they were!
"I'm very glad you taught me how to speak properly," Severus said at last, without looking up from his little library. She closed her eyes, remembering the tortuous elocution lessons - forcing him to pronounce his 'H's; to say 'goodness!' instead of 'by 'eck!'; that his father's 'it were right cowd out' should actually be 'it was very cold outside'. Each and every session had ended in a tantrum from him, and had almost reduced her to tears. She hated causing him such distress by forcing herself into a kind of bullying Henry Higgins role, but he wouldn't have stood a chance in Slytherin without it. ("Who cares what weather they get in H-ertfordshire, H-erefordshire and H-ampshire anyway? They're all miles away! I hate this! Either teach me some more groovy things about dragons or else let me watch the Lone Ranger!")
He continued. "The girl I was telling you about, the one who's clever. She's from the East End of London, though her family has just moved to Surrey, but she has a dreadful accent. She speaks like…" he struggled for an example, then grinned. "She speaks like the Artful Dodger in the Oliver Twist film! Just awful! They all tease her really badly, especially as she's a muggle-born."
"Do you tease her?" she asked nonchalantly, not sure what she wanted the answer to be. She hoped her own son would not grow up to be like the cruel children who had upset her, years ago, though the realist inside her acknowledged that if he were one of the bloodthirsty pack, at least it would mean he was being accepted.
"No," he answered, rubbing at a mark on the cover of his potions textbook. "What would be the point?"
She let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding and saw him frown at his bookshelf and begin taking everything off again.
"Should be organised by subject, not author's name," he muttered. There was silence for another few minutes as he worked and she watched.
"Some people say muggles are no better than monkeys," he kept on stacking the shelf, his voice light and conversational. "Just as you said they would."
"Who says that?" she tried to match his nonchalance, as though his opinion on this was not absolutely crucial to their future as a family, to the adult wizard Severus would become, to magical Britain as a whole when he and his peers grew powerful.
He shrugged.
"People." The unexpected cuddle the un-tactile child had given his un-tactile father had just begun to make sense.
"And what do you say?" Eileen asked.
"I can't understand why you would leave all of that for, for this," he stood up and stared at her, eyes probing to the point of discomfort in his confusion. "The way they live! Magic, the lifestyle, the history, the food, the fresh air, the flying, Merlin's balls, the flying!"
"Language," she chided reflexively.
"Life could be so much more exciting, it could be easier. It could even be warmer! Yet you've chosen to leave it all and lock yourself in this tiny house in this pointless little town," he visibly checked himself. Careful, even in his passion, not to go too far. "The Rosiers' house has eight bedrooms. The Blacks have a massive place in London," he went wide-eyed at the very thought of living in the capital city, which, among the younger residents of Scoursby, had the reputation of being a fascinatingly unimaginable blend of pure heaven and bloody hell. "You told me that you don't get on with your family, but are they really so bad that you had to come here?"
The outburst could have been so much worse, Eileen reflected. Over the next seven years, the accusations would probably become more painful, more aggrieved and closer to the bone, as he learned more about his supposed inferiority. At least he had not rejected Toby. It looked as though the first taste of prejudice against muggles had merely hurt Severus, rather than brainwashed him. So far. They must discuss it before he went back - she must engage his imagination with ammunition to counter the arguments of his glamorous peers, while he was still young enough to listen to his mother.
But now was not the time. He was tired from his day-long journey, emotional at being back in his own room and probably nervous about meeting his Scoursby friends for the first time since his departure for boarding school and theirs for the local Comprehensive. He needed to rest and readjust to family life after months as part of a huge school body.
"I had hoped you would understand by now that nothing in life is black and white, Severus," she said. He stared but stayed silent. "There is no such thing as a simple answer and tonight is not the time for a complicated one. I'm very proud that you have worked so hard this term, when everything was so new and confusing. Is this your dirty laundry?"
Severus nodded and she bundled up the heap of clothes. She paused in the doorway, seeing he was still lost in thought. He looked so small to have to grapple with such huge social issues. Perhaps it would do him good if she let him be a child for a little while longer.
"Shall we go to the market tomorrow and get a Christmas tree?" she offered, fondly remembering his feverish excitement about anything to do with the festive season, back in more innocent, more straightforward times.
"Yes, please," he said, staring as though trying to read all the answers written on her face. Then he smiled. "That would be nice."
…….
Roars of laughter in the street.
"We three kings of Leicester Square!"
"Shush, you'll wake the kids!"
"Selling knickers a penny a pair!"
"Pack it in!"
"No elastic, how fantastic! Nobody seems to care! Whoa-hoa…"
A bedroom window flew up with a bang.
"Who's singing that disgusting, blasphemous song? Yer should be ashamed of yerselves!" Eileen pulled the blankets over her head as the menfolk of Spinner's End got it in the neck yet again from Mrs Whitehouse at number seventeen. She hoped they wouldn't wake Severus.
A few minutes later the commotion ended and the stairs began to creak. She could hear Toby humming 'We Three Kings' under his breath, probably imagining he was being very quiet. Then he stopped.
"What you doing up at this hour?" he asked.
Eileen scowled, realising that Severus was awake. Really, she thought, that bossy cow made more noise than all the men put together, with her shouting and her slamming.
"I know a better one, Pa," their son sounded very excited. She recognised that tone of voice. It would take him hours to get back to sleep now.
"Do yer? Go on then," Toby prompted, and Severus sang in his flat, reedy little voice:
"We three kings of Orient are,
One in a taxi, one in a car,
One on a scooter, pipping his hooter,
Smoking a big cigar!" Toby cackled and joined in, just as tunelessly;
"Whoa-hooooooooooa,
Star of wonder, star of light…"
Eileen stopped scowling and laughed, letting them finish the chorus before getting up to shoo them both off to bed. There were so many things wrong with the picture that met her, out on the landing. Her husband was drunk, stinking of beer and clutching a giant wooden spoon which was engraved with 'Loom & Shuttle Public House, Scoursby, Dominoes Duffer', denoting yet another spectacular failure at the Dominoes competition. Severus had been wearing his Quidditch robes in bed, picking his nose and singing joke versions of Christmas carols. But something about the scene flooded her with an intense happiness which she hadn't realised she had been missing. They were an odd bunch, a trio of strange and awkward people, yet it was right to be all together again. They were a family.
It was really rather wonderful.
"But I'm not tired!" sulked Severus, as she tucked him in for the second time that evening, peeling off the flying robe and replacing it with his pyjama top.
"Neither am I!" leered Tobias, when she climbed back into bed. He waggled his eyebrows, oblivious to the dribble running down his chin.
"Think that's alluring, do you?" she asked icily.
"Ah, come on, love, it's Christmas!" he smoothed her hair, in what would have been a tender gesture, but for the loud belch.
"Not yet, it isn't," she rolled over.
He gave a little grunt of disappointment and gave up. Somewhere further down Spinner's End, a door slammed as the sounds of an argument set a couple of the dogs barking. Floorboards in Severus' room creaked.
"I can hear you, young man!" she called. Even through the wall, they both heard the sound of grumbling, and a thump as he flung himself back into bed.
A moment later, things quietened down, inside and out.
"Leeny?" whispered Tobias, hugging his competition booby-prize against his chest. He had won it five times in the last eight years and was absurdly attached to the thing, to the point of actually sulking if he didn't come last.
"Mm?" she said.
"It's good to have him home, ain't it?"
She thought of the lilac toad and the obvious trouble he had experienced during his first term, his confusion about her decision to leave the glorious new world he had only just discovered and his confession that some of his housemates classed muggles alongside monkeys. He would return to Hogwarts in January to confront all these grown-up problems, but for now, she could baby her boy with Christmas trees and tuck him into bed. Just for a little while.
Eileen turned over and snuggled up to her husband.
"It's lovely," she said.
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AN: Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas and a fun and healthy New Year! Lots of love from London, SN x