I am back after a long period of silence. All right, Crude Irony will need to be edited after DH. I went from hating Snape to actually liking his character a lot. Have you noticed how he's never really gotten anything he wanted and then he died trying to do something right. Poor guy. Anyway, I made a oneshot fanfic that just sprang into my head, just for ol' Snivelly. I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: Of course, I do not own Harry Potter. My mind is not nearly that inventive.
Too Good To Be True
It had been almost too good to believe that, for a few short moments, Severus Snape had actually felt happy. No, not just happy, but elated.
He had let slip many, many nights pressing his nose against his bedroom window, fogging it absentmindedly with his breath and then wiping it clear again to watch the girl across the street. It had been the happiest moment of his life to watch her clench her fists one day in her backyard after having had a row with her older sister, and then witnessing the explosion of several trashcans behind her. For it had confirmed what he had been dreaming for years now.
His good luck had not worn off since then; only shortly after that, it had been he who approached her at the park and introduced the idea of her being a witch to her. Of course, with her sister's help, it all turned into a disaster, but time gave her the chance to reconsider him and come to the conclusion that she, indeed, belonged to his world.
But he should have known that with too many good things came bad consequences. The idea of visiting a world that was entirely different than the one his father had tried to lock him in proved to be more trouble than it was worth.
It was only last night that he had received the letter he had been awaiting for many years. Heart filled with utter and reckless euphoria, he traced his fingers over the waxed seal (a crest bearing a lion, a raven, a badger, and a snake) and then ripped open the parchment, only to hear the door slam behind him. As his father's voice traveled up the stairs in a loud yell, Severus creased the parchment with his nervous grip. He had obviously had a bad day at work.
He closed the envelope again and looked frantically around, finally spotting the nightstand by his bed. Hastily, he threw open the topmost drawer and shoved the envelope inside. He slammed the drawer shut frantically, just in time to hear a knock on his door.
"C-Come in," he said, aware that his voice came out in a sort of croak. The door opened and the face of a man, similar to the boy in his features, appeared through the gap between the door and the wall. Dark eyes were hidden beneath long, greasy, black locks. His thin and pale lips curled into a somewhat demented-looking, toothy smile beneath his large, hooked nose. He entered the room and Severus receded to his bed immediately.
"Everythin' all right, Sev?" he asked, still grinning in a way that attempted kindness, but he could not pull it off.
"Fine," Severus muttered, and his father's expression turned from badly attempted friendliness to that of doubt. The grin faltered for about a second. "What happened?" Severus pressed on, for the black eyes were now wandering around the room — Tobias Snape had sensed something suspicious in his son's response. But Severus was determined to keep the penetrating eyes from the nightstand where, to his horror, the top drawer was still slightly open.
"Wha' happened?" the man repeated, clearly not understanding what his son had asked.
"Downstairs," Severus continued quietly, "with Mum—"
The word seemed to have triggered something Severus had not been leaning towards, but had nevertheless expected. The man's face, creased as it was, contorted suddenly into something so grotesque Severus was reminded of the troll he had seen in some of his mother's old school books.
"Don' you ever," Tobias roared suddenly, waving a thick finger threateningly at his son, "become what that – that woman is! I come home to find her standin' over the stove with that wand o' hers, tellin' me she's cookin' dinner! It's poison I tell you! She wants me dead! You don' eat nothin' she gives you, understand?"
Severus nodded vigorously as he watched the shadowed eyes survey him. Finally, the finger was dropped and the expression softened a bit. With a few incoherent murmurs under his breath, the man turned and was out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
After hearing the footsteps die away, Severus reached over, pulled the drawer open, withdrew the letter, and tucked it safely between the mattress of his bed and the faded gray head of the bedstead. He would not dare read it while his father was home.
But it only grew worse from there. For when Severus returned home the next day after an afternoon of hanging out with Lily, it was to find that his room had been completely ransacked. He raced to his bed and pulled the mattress back, but the envelope behind it was gone.
And then, in one heart stopping moment, there was a loud crash and then a clang as one of the kitchen appliances hit the tiled floor. A woman screamed from downstairs. Severus' hands grew cold, he could almost feel his heart beating in his throat.
"LISTEN TO ME!"
And that was his cue: Severus tore out of his upturned bedroom, raced downstairs (skipping several steps in his haste) and sprinted down the hall, chest aching and mouth dry. He stopped at the door of the kitchen and froze, hands holding the walls to support himself.
The woman was lying on the floor, arm protecting her face and legs hastily working to push her back as a tall figure emerged from the shadows of the dining room.
"I ain't havin' it Eileen!" bellowed the large, hook-noised man, shaking a large bottle of honey-brown liquid to a point where the contents, though half drained, threatened to spill. From his other, clenched hand, he threw a crumpled piece of parchment onto the counter and then slammed it with his fist. "Not again!"
Severus' legs gave out; he fell to the floor and slid over to a corner, watching the piece of paper slowly unfold as the force of the arm lifted. Slowly, tears made their way to his eyes. He had spent all of the summer training himself not to cry, that he was a grown kid now and that he would need to toughen up for his new school.
But as he watched the scene before him, he could not help but feel that any hopes he had of escaping the life he now lived and entering that splendorous one of his mother's were slowly ebbing away. It was as though he were waking from a very good dream, only to find that with each step he took towards consciousness, it slipped steadily out of his reach.
He should have known it was too good to be true.
"Who declared it your choice to make!" the thin, sallow-faced woman shouted back as she pulled herself back to her feet, darkened eyes narrowed in trembling fury, but she did not dare get too close to the muscular man as he whipped his thin, greasy black locks from his face and took another swig of the scotch.
"I tol' you!" the man said very hoarsely, voice unsteady with rage as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He pointed a rather thick finger to the small figure huddled in the corner. Tears were spilling shamelessly from his eyes and he pulled his limbs closer to himself in an attempt to hide them within the dark, but his attempt at invisibility proved fruitless.
"I tol' you the only reason I stayed!" bellowed the man, shaking the bottle again so that drops actually did spill. He took several large steps forward and the thin, pale witch retreated simultaneously. To a stranger's eye, it would be perfectly visible that she would stand no chance against her husband if he decided to release his rage through his massive arms. "An' if 'e becomes one of you, ain't nothing gon' make me come back! You hear, Eileen? NOTHING!"
"What happened to you! Where's the man I—"
"What happened to me!" the man bellowed, and some color seemed to have appeared on his thin, stretched skin. He was moving unsteadily, though whether from rage or from the liquid in his hand, it was hard to tell. "WHAT HAPPENED TO ME! HOW WAS I TO KNOW WHAT I WAS MARRYIN', YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING FREAK O' NATURE!"
He had lost control. His free arm swung itself through the air and struck a violent blow to the cowering woman. The force had knocked her into a wooden table and she collapsed onto the floor, her arm bleeding heavily.
From over in the corner, a terrified voice screamed, despite his efforts to pretend that he was not there. The dark eyes of his father turned to him, each line creased with rage, though it was not the look he had given the woman.
He had gone too far. The boy scrambled up to his feet, shaking all over with a mixture of such hate and fear that he never wanted to see what came tomorrow. But he was too late. The woman had pulled something from her pocket and tore it swiftly through the air. Brilliant flames shot out of the wand's end; they spiraled each other into the figure of an unmistakable beast and then, jaws snapping, tore speedily through the dark, musty air and at the man. He swore loudly and dropped the bottle with a loud crash.
"NO!" the boy yelled, grabbing his mother's arm and trying to redirect the wand, but to no avail. "Mum, please, no!"
"GET OUT THEN!" she screamed maniacally at the large figure's retreating back, closing her free hand around her son's robes to keep him from following, but he made no attempt. There was a large THUD! as the door was bolted open and knocked into the wall, and the man was gone.
The flaming beast pursued him until the dying, yellow lawn's gate before it imploded and dispersed as a ring of fire that soon melted into the bleary morning sky.
And Severus Snape fell to the floor, choking on sobs that he could not restrain. His thin black hair fell clumsily over his face as he pressed his palms and knees into the dusty tiles. He did not care who was watching now, he did not care that his mother was pulling on his robes for him to get up or that he was now rising solely to the command of her wand. Her thin arms wrapped around him in a stiff and cold embrace and she was whispering harshly into his ear, but he did not tear away. She was all he had now — her and the girl next door whose terrified face he could see through the broken, grimy window.