I own nothing … sadly.
I dedicate this story to „cherrylizastar" my first reviewer and the first to add me to their author alert. Thank you, I hope you like this one too…
I have been struggling with this one because it is very personal… The reason I like Severus is that I can identify very well with his family background and know its consequences… The story was very cathartic for me.
Moments in time
The Slytherin common room was pleasantly empty as Severus arrived at ten from detention. He suddenly remembered that one of the Slug Club parties was being held and most of his friends were invited to attend, while the younger house-mates were probably getting ready for bed. Those thoughts relaxed him somewhat. He didn't feel like explaining to anyone what possessed him to intervene between the two brothers that morning. Maybe because the eldest, the aggressor, was Gryffindor, while the youngest, a Hufflepuff, or maybe because as the sixth year Gryffindor was a Prefect and no one but a seventh year student would say a word. Of course, as he slumped on the couch in front of the fireplace glaring malevolently at the ceiling, he knew that those were the excuses he would serve his colleagues when they will inquire why he risked a detention so easily by hexing the elder boy in the matter that didn't affect him, after managing to avoid so many in the seven years of personal war with the Marauders. He couldn't tell them that words like useless, pitiful, cowed bodies and the sound of slapping were what his nightmares were made of. He couldn't admit that he saw his mother in that little boy and having those horrors before his very eyes, at Hogwarts, where he always believed to be safe, made his blood curl. He doesn't even remember hexing the boy, just the hatred. He didn't explain it to a furious McGonagall, just accepted his detention and darted for a secluded area of the Lake where he promptly vomited the remains of his breakfast. Of course, he couldn't let them know that. What irked him even more was his break in pattern. It took him several letters from his mother after each holiday to make him lose it. When he was at home, the fact that there were two persons to argue with meant that most of his dad's anger was spent before the striking started, but with him gone to school the burden was left solely on his mother's shoulders. It was only a matter of time before one of the weekly letters bore the signs of tremors in the writing. Damage had been done… again. He always burned those particular letters after returning from the Lake. Today, the slap the boy received for not getting on the Quidditch team, made him feel like he was six again, staring incredulously in his father's eyes as both his little hands struggled to cover the vast area of his face that burned in pain. He trembled for two hours afterwards , desperately trying not to cry, lest he might be struck again. All for a spilled glass of milk. The second time he was guilty of just being there on a night his father was drunk. That is how his mother rationalized it and the innocence he still had convinced him that it was the case the first time too, and he just didn't notice. The third time there was no more innocence to rationalize it. It had lost that with the droplets of blood that fell from his brow on the carpet as he struggled to get up. Ten years later they were still there. Seven filthy circles on a filthy carpet, one for every year he had disgraced the world with his presence, as his father put it then.
"Hatred is a bad counsellor, boy. It blinds you to whatever good there still is and nourishes greater monsters than the ones that put it there in the first place."
The Bloody Baron had been watching all this time floating beside him.
"What would you know?" he snarled at the specter while darting for his dorm. For a moment he thought he heard a sigh but he must have imagined it …