Chapter 2

Severely disheartened, Severus walked over to a swing in the now abandoned playground and sat down on it, not bothering to swing back and forth but just sat suspended, remaining quite still, his gangly feet barely skimming the ground. It had all gone so horrible wrong, he thought miserable, how would he ever make this right?

After a few minutes of staring aimlessly into space, a non-descript object on the ground caught Severus' attention, causing him to snap out of his reverie. Jumping off the swing with a soft thud, in sudden inspiration Severus walked over to where the crumpled flower that Lily had tossed aside lay on the ground. Crouching to pick it up, Severus held the flower in his palm and examined it quietly, gently separating the crushed petals of the flower. In a fluid motion, he had pocketed it and strode toward the exit leaving the park. He set off once again, down the hill going back the way that he had come with this thin shoulder hunched and his head bowed against the wind as though carrying a burden too heavy for a ten years old's shoulders.

As he arrived at Spinner's End, Severus' thoughts briefly flitted back to the horse faced girl in the back, as she sneered at him while naming his address. "Spinner's End", she had cried derisively. Now as he looked around the all too familiar neighbourhood, his mouth pushing into a hard line Severus could see what she had meant. His mouth twisting almost imperceptibly in disgust at the pungent smell of the garbage piled up at the shore of the river, Severus acknowledged that Spinner's end was just the sort of dank and grimy place most people wouldn't want to set foot in after dark and his house, it seemed to him, was positioned in exactly the grimiest and dingiest place of all.

Loitering around the porch of the dilapidated brick house for a few minutes, Severus listened intently for any sounds that would indicate that they wernt done fighting yet. Hearing nothing but silence, Severus walked around the back of the house, on finding the backdoor unlocked, he entered through it and walked in to find the man asleep on a chair. Hoping to slink away quietly, Severus turned sideways and slid his skinny frame through the gap between the chair and the wall with scarcely an inch to spare. Just as he nearly made it through the crevice, Severus felt a hand brush the skin on the back of his neck before roughly grabbing his collar, "Where have you been?" the man asked softly, in a silken voice that made him sound like a snake poised to strike, more dangerous than if he had been yelling. His words framed a question while his tone conveyed a poorly veiled threat. Severus' eyes were wide with panic, "Let me go!" he yelled, his own voice displaying none of the silken finesse of man as he struggled wildly. Twisting one way first and then another in an attempt to slacken the man's grip on him, Severus did not realize when something small slipped out of his coat pocket and floated for a moment on catching the wind before landing softly on the floor. Severus did not immediately register what it was and thus was not expecting it when the man released him and bent down to pick whatever it was from off the floor, remaining instead briefly frozen in his struggle. An instant later however, Severus' eyes were wide with dread and comprehension and all struggle and instinct forgotten, he was on his hands and knees scrambling forward reaching toward the crumpled flower at the same time as the man, as though trying to block it from view.

Severus' scrawny arms however were no match for the man's own well muscled girth and were knocked out of the way easily by the man who now stood triumphant, the fragile flower clutched in his sweaty palm. "So this is what young Severus' gets up to during the day!" the man sneered, his greasy locks falling into his eyes which were alive with malice. "Collecting flowers!" he barked with a mirthless laugh, looking disgusted. "Tell me boy, do you think this makes your father proud? Tell me!" he added, leaning down so that he was an inch from Severus' face as he shouted the last two words. Severus flinched as flecks of the man's spit flew at him, but stood motionless, waiting for the man to lose interest and storm away as he knew he would, eventually.

Looking even more disgusted at the lack of response, the man straightened up to his full and considerable height and looked down at Severus' through the length of his hooked nose and spat at the floor, barely a few inches ahead of where Severus stood. Throwing the flower down at his feet, he stepped on it and began crushing it with his boot, sneering as he did, "No good piece of trash, just like his mother." At these words, Severus' deliberately stoic features contracted into a furious expression, more than a little reminiscent of the man before him. Without thinking or pausing to consider the size of the man before him, Severus' ran at the man and launched himself at him, punching and pummeling at every inch of the man that his tiny fists could reach. The only thought in his head was to cause the man immeasurable pain, as much as he was possibly capable of.

To his surprise and gratification, the man cried out and crumpled beneath him as though the weight of the scrawny boy was too much for him to bear. In between his screams however, Severus heard another voice, a woman's voice coming from the vague direction of the doorway, "What are you doing? What are you doing to him?! Stop it!" Half in shock, half obeying Severus obliging released the man and slid to the floor and turned to face his mother. He watched catatonically, his arms hanging limply by his sides as she ran to and knelt beside the man who lay still crumpled on the floor with his face hidden in hands as though in great pain. With a sudden great rasping sob that surprised even him, Severus scrambled stumbling and flailing over to the far end of the wall. He stood pressing his back and palms flat against the wall and edged along it, the expression that now reached his face reminiscent of a cornered animal.

Shutting his eyes and pressing them together tightly as though to make the images behind his eyelids disappear, Severus seemed to close in on himself as he reached the end of the wall. Sliding down to the floor and hunching, he crossed his scrawny arms across his chest and fit himself into the corner gap between two walls as though trying to make himself as insignificant as possible and fade away. His closed eyes however, couldn't block out the sounds that came to him. They couldn't prevent him from hearing the man's low groan as he recovered himself and rose from his place on the floor. They couldn't stop him from seeing the scene clearly from behind closed eyelids, as the man pointed at him and bellowed at his mother, "You see? You see what magic has done to him?!" His closed eyes did not muffle the sounds of the man cursing at him, nor the thud of his footsteps as he advanced toward Severus, yelling "Insolent, ungrateful little-", nor the scream as his mother jumped in the way, obstructing the man's path. "You dare..You dare point that thing at me? You dare use your magic against me as well- Goddamn wretch!" the man bellowed, sounding less and less human with every moment. Severus heard a screech before the sickening crunch of wood on bone and the crash that meant that his mother that has mother had been knocked on. He saw her, as clear as day, as she fell, her eyes closing in the brief instant before her head hit the ground. He saw her fall, again and again long after the sounds had ceased and there was only silence. He saw, though he did not want to see, as though the image was seared into the back of his eyelids. Severus slumped against the wall, began to sob, at first softly and then in great heaving rasps and then he screamed, a toneless, one-pitch scream that went on for what felt like forever, until eventually it subsided once again into soft, inconsequential sobs.