Author: Mia
Translator: ferporcel
Beta reader: GinnyW
Gratitude: To SnapeFest.
Note: Mother's Day fic.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling is the characters' creator. I am not gaining anything with them, but I would adore reviews!
Summary: Young Severus comes back home for yet another holiday.
At Home
The boy walked slowly along the platform, in that swingy way, clumsy, not facing anyone ahead of him. He was annoyed, always annoyed. Coming back home was always complicated.
She was late again. She probably had had another of those endless arguments. Not that he needed to be escorted home. He was already sixteen years old. He knew how to get around London by himself. Even Muggle London. But he knew that it was a way for her to leave the house, see people, and get away from the screams and threats from that monster for a while. That was why he waited, wandering through a busy King's Cross station, trying to avoid the indifferent Muggles, unaware of what was happening inside him.
She was quiet as always, but she eyed him a little longer than usual, noticing by his face that this year had been a more difficult one.
She arranged the collar of the Muggle shirt he wore, disguising her welcome in the gesture.
They left the station in the same silence they had been sharing for a long time, both finding the sunset that shone weakly on both of their black eyes uncomfortable.
In the glass of the bus' window, he watched his mother's reflection, absorbed in apparent unhappiness, deep in her grim countenance, in her hidden thoughts, and in her clasped, distressed hands.
He knew something inside her hurt. Disturbed, as if she wanted to tell him, the words struggled to come out. He looked at her, waiting, as if to encourage her. A wan shadow of a smile formed on the woman's closed face.
"I'll make that hot soup you like."
It was nothing special, but she said she made it just for him. It was the warmest thing he got at home, reserved for the moments which lacked words and gestures. It was for the moments when she showed him that, despite all the rudeness, despite the distance, despite the cold, distressing emptiness that infiltrated painfully into their lives, she was by his side, she was his mother, she loved him, she wanted him.
Severus stared into the street outside. The bus entered the dirty neighborhood, the smokestack of the old factory distinguishing from the dark roofs, emitting the grey, smelly smoke.
Eileen eyed her son, his physiognomy cut from the ugly scenery of the window, and she had the urge to cry. She hadn't learned to express her love, and the one who suffered the most was him, the dear boy sitting beside her. She promised to herself in her silence that it would be the richest soup that she would make.
When they left the bus, his trunk Transfigured into a small package, their arms touched, briefly in casual contact. They walked in that imitation of hug, following the street flanked by drainage and dirt, but both a little lighter, a little warmer in each other.
The end