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Severus had always known fear. It had been the chill in the summer evening and the sweat that stood out on his greasy brow when he sat down to dinner, the flavoring that made his food taste bitter. He was sick with fear, half-dead with it, and in all his long, long ten years, he had never, never, never been without it.
It was late in the warm summer, the English air hanging thick and soft with a dreamy sort of haze. The rose and honey of the darkening horizon gave way to stars as bright and hard as far-away diamonds, an immense treasure, unreachable, only longed for and speculated. The night rolling in like a roll of deep laughter coming to a happy close held no cheer for Severus, sitting by his darkening bedroom window and gazing out at the bloodying sunset through the speckled glass, over the roiling ocean water. He was hunched, dark and oily, in the shadows like an overlarge, miserable spider, calculating not the stars, but the darkness between them, the bleak, barren world where there was nothing and had been nothing and never would be anything, nothing forever.
"Severus! Supper!"
That was a mother's voice, which some called scratchy and sullen, but to her son rang as sweetly as the honey glowed in the sunset, but subtly hurt in a way Severus knew the vain sunset could never know. He let the drapes, sticky with the residue of doxy eggs, fall across the spotted glass.
He walked slowly, ssssllllllooooowwwwyyyyyyy down to dinner, as slowly as he dared, just like last night…and the night before…
His mother was setting out dinner on the table with delicate twitches of her wand. And at the head of the table…
Tobias. Not father, never father. Just Tobias, with a scowl like moonless midnight on his waxy face, dark eyes squeezed to slits. His familiar tankard was set in front of him, brimming with amber.
They ate in silence, having nothing to say, and the constant, clouding fear sitting beside them to choke out any words. Severus toyed with his chicken, hardly able to smell the sweet seasonings for the heavy scent of Tobias's drink, sitting with malicious guilt in the man's hand.
And his mother stood with that false, pained smile plastered onto her pale face, and gave her son's plate a condescending, motherly sort of look, clicking her tongue in that amiable way.
"Dear, dear," she said as his plate floated up in front of his greasy, hooked nose to land in the sink. "You should eat more, haven't I told you? You're wasting away—"
"Curse it! 'Course he's wasting away, the little rat! He's nothing, yellow skin and rotten bones, that's all heis! Rotten!"
Severus sat and listened to it. He could smell the ale on Tobias's breath. Just like every other night.
"ROTTEN! Are all your wizard-rats like this, Eileen? Are you all so rotten and useless and drab? Did you hear me, you rotten little scab? You're useless! USELESS!"
He was on his feet, towering like nightfall itself, before Severus could move, could run, could so much as flinch—
The blow landed hard as ever, smashing the boy out of his chair, wizard and seat clattering to the cold floor. Severus felt tears of pain sting his eyes and pressed his fingertips to the swelling bruise on his cheeks, heard the heavy, drink-laden breath of Tobias looming over him, curled his knees into his bony chest, held back the sobs, waited for the next blow—
It came, sure enough, crashing with drunkenly awkward strength into his scrawny shoulder. His mother was screaming, somewhere, and Tobias turned from his son in ungainly contempt to blaze anger onto his witch wife.
"YOU, YOU FILTHY, WITCH-WOMAN! YOU AND YOUR WAND AND YOUR SON! YOUR ROTTEN SON!"
He turned his face to the cobweb-ridden ceiling, and it was questionable whether he was speaking to his God or the scuttling spiders.
"WHY A WITCH?! WHY A WITCH AND HER FOUL, HOOK-NOSED DEVIL OF A SON?! WHY ME?!"
Severus felt his mother's trembling arm wrap around his shuddering shoulders and winced his way to his feet as Tobias railed to the spiders like the madman Severus knew he was. It wasn't the drink that did this to his mother, his mother who had a fresh, dark, pulsing spot forming on her neck from her husband's knuckles. It was Tobias. It was all Tobias.
In the dark, hours later, Severus and given up crying. He had cried every night since he could remember, and the smell of ale was as familiar to him as the warm embrace that followed as his mother guided him gently to his room and locked the door, sat him down on her lap in the black sanctuary of a corner and, in the light of the rising moon, rocked back and forth as they wept together for the love, and for all the pains and sorrows, but mostly for the love in its absence.
And that was how they slept, night after night, sobbing away the lightless hours.
Like the rat he was to his father, Severus uncoiled himself from his mother's slumbering embrace and straightened up. His heart hurt more than the bruise on his face, even as it rose and throbbed. His stupid heart. It was a wonder it hadn't given up and shriveled and died yet, but the foolish just kept beating on and on and on and left him to live out this terrible, half-dead life.
His mother's wand was lying at her side, a silent little reminder of why husband and father hated his family with a drunken passion. Why they had hidden away in this little house on the coast, for his shame. Why Severus's heart hurt.
Why live like this? he thought, or perhaps wept. Why do I have to hurt? Why can't I go to school or have friends or fall asleep in a bed and have good dreams. I've never had a good dream.
And this night, this night was immeasurably worse than any of the other, because this night, this painful, broken night, was ticking, second by second, closer to his eleventh birthday.
By the moonlight that peeked in through the stained drapes to reflect on the glass face of the clock on the wall, Severus watched his birthday tick nearer.
Five minutes to go…
Severus stood there in the darkness, listening to his mother's soft, sleeping breathing, and mourned the life he'd never had, the life where the boy had grown up and had friends and birthday parties and a father who taught him how to ride his first broomstick.
Three minutes to go…
What would have been different, maybe, if there had never been a Tobias to curse—and no Severus to be cursed.
Thirty seconds to go…
What would happen if this stupid, hurting heart wasn't around to make Tobias drink and rage and thunder at the spiders on the ceiling? What if the wand wasn't around, to make him shameful of what love that he had once held so close and dear had brought him to? What if it became as if…as if…as if Severus had never been at all.
Twenty seconds to go…
If Tobias and Eileen had a second chance? Without their son--their problem?
Ten seconds…
Severus picked up the wand from beside his mother, so peacefully, blissfully, wonderfully caring. She deserved this, this freedom.
Nine…
If only for this stupid heart! He wasn't abandoning her—he was helping her! He couldn't be abandoning her—
Three…
And so the boy stood with his mother's wand in hand, in the shadow and moonlight, and let his heart die. Let the pain die away. And stood numb. Unfeeling. But still pained.
Two…
One…
He had turned his back on his mother, unbolted the door, and was sprinting down the rocky, salty coastline by the time he was eleven.