Author's note:
Dear readers,
another update for you to enjoy. I hope that you still like reading my story. Reviews and your feedback are as always welcomed. Special thanks to Kindering, smithback, Mercedes1312 and lunaz for your reviews and DreamASweetDream, biancaruth and holdesh for adding my story to your alert lists. You really made my day and motivated me to update soon. Thanks again to all my readers.
Best wishes
Vani12
Chapter 2 – Life hurts like hell!
Park near Spinner's End, Cokeworth, July 1978
Severus Snape sipped some gulps from his stolen, dusty and cheap Whiskey bottle. Actually, it originally belonged to the well-stocked provisions of cheap hard liquor owned by his alcoholic, good-for-nothing bastard of a "father" Tobias. But Tobias would never again be able to drink his beloved, brain cells reducing liquor because he currently awaited trial in a bleak Muggle prison under the charges of homicide. He had beaten his wife Eileen in a drug-and-alcohol-fueled state of blind rage to death last June. Got arrested by the Muggle police thanks to the call of a noisy old Muggle and awaited his prison sentence in a cell near Manchester. Thinking about the murder of his beloved mum at the hands of her abusive husband, Severus felt an unthinkable rage bubbling up in him. A thirst for revenge tried to overwhelm him and a mixed basket of guilt and regret attacked his depressed soul.
He should have been able to protect his mum against the abuse from Tobias. After all, he was a powerful, young, well-trained in the Dark Arts, wizard who could deal with the pathetic, drunken and jobless inhuman monster Tobias. He should have brewed a dark potion for Tobias or hexed him into oblivion. He could have brewed a Mind-Erasing Potion that would have let him lose all his memories of his freakish family, escaping from Cokeworth without a memory and living somewhere else on the streets. A Personality-Altering Potion that would have changed his violent, bullying and miserable personality into a kind, proud of his family and ambitious in finding a new job, fake man in his mid-forties. Or a Health-Disturbing Potion that would have weakened him constantly, so that he couldn't leave his bed and scream insults at his wife or beat her into a frail, broken and submissive woman. Sure, the sanctions for brewing these illegal potions, administering them to a Muggle and altering his life against his will, would have been some years in Azkaban. But Severus now wished that he would have taken this chance.
But he hadn't done anything. Consequently, his mum was now dead. A cold corpse in a Muggle pauper's grave. After suffering nearly twenty years under the verbal as well as physical abuse of her alcoholic husband. Under her impoverished, foreign and miserable life in the Muggle world. Under the disinheritance, rejection, and hatred of her parents, the wealthy and esteemed Pureblood Princes, for marrying a working-class Muggle. Under the isolation from the Wizarding world and her magical roots and the degeneration of her magical powers. The vibrant, raven-black haired and blue-eyed young woman in the few magical photos who waved happily in the camera, joked around with her friends, played highly concentrated Gobstones or beamed with happiness and pride showing her Hogwarts certificate, had been reduced to a sickly skinny, haggard and depressed looking woman, whose beauty had faded, magical powers had nearly vanquished and sane mind had crumbled into pieces. She was left a broken, sorrowful and hopeless woman by the supposed love of her life. A man, who had vowed in a church, in front of the Muggle God to always love, protect and support his wife, in good times as well as in bad times.
Severus shook his head mercilessly and broke out into a miserable, hysterical sounding laugh while thinking about the stupidity of the Muggles. To believe in some almighty, merciful deity, who forgave them for their sins and guided them on their life paths because he supposedly loved them unconditionally and only wanted the best for them. In Severus opinion, there wasn't some puppet player in the universe, who controlled the actions, morals and thinking of all human beings as if they were his unfree, brain- and heartless puppets. Because every human could act deliberately thanks to its free will, intelligence, and emotions. And if your father was a sadistic, violent, unintelligent and lazy alcoholic without a heart, your life really sucked. Severus knew from his own experience that positive emotions like love, friendship, happiness, and joy only caused pain. Love only hurts, because it could reduce you into a lovesick fool who was obsessed with his special someone, made awful life choices and put on an act to earn the approval of his love. So that you lost yourself in the end and threw away your life, only to be rejected, abandoned and broken.
In fact, Severus knew from wistful stories of his mum, that she met Tobias in a Muggle restaurant, fell quickly in love with him and married him to live a life in happiness, joy, and love - caught in the misconception of him being her soulmate. But after one year of blissful happiness, Tobias had shown his true colors. He had criticized and belittled Eileen for everything. Her poor cooking skills, her fashionable outfits, her asking after his workday. He had screamed profanities and insults at her for being a bad housewife, not cleaning the house spotless enough, not managing her small housekeeping money smart enough, not washing the laundry well enough. And he had controlled her life. No reading of strange books, no waving around with a stick, no meetings with female neighbors.
Eileen had confessed to him that she had realized too late how difficult a relationship between a witch and a Muggle could be. Especially, since she had hidden her identity as a witch out of fear for being rejected until Severus displayed his first accidental magic as a three-month-old tot. She had been so fascinated with the newness of the Muggle world. Its technical devices and miracle inventions, its modern music culture and fashion trends, at first that she hadn't realized what a life without magic would mean for her. In a seldom moment of self-reflection, she had revealed to Severus that especially the differences between them had attracted Eileen magically to Tobias. She had been an outgoing, smiling, beloved by her parents, young witch, just out of Hogwarts who loved reading, brewing potions or playing Gobstones and had very little life experience thanks to her sheltered, wealthy life.
He had been an introverted, scowling orphaned young man of twenty-two years who had finished school without higher education, worked at a mill in the small, bleak industrial town Cokeworth, lived in a little house for industrial workers in impoverished circumstances and loved to watch football games. Eileen had naively thought that her soulmate could accept her magical abilities and she living a simple life as a Muggle. But alas, Tobias had rejected her and their little boy thanks to their magical powers for being freakish servants of the devil. He had tried to cure them of their evilness by hiding Eileen's wand and meager magical possessions. Her Magical History, Charms, Potions, Transfiguration and Herbology books, Eileen's cauldron, magical photos/documents, quills, parchment and ink pot.
And, after he had lost his job six years ago, he had tried to cure them more often by beating their wickedness out of them. Eileen had wanted to escape this hell in some rare moments of deviance by running back to her parents or using her wand. But she had been emotionally too broken and alienated from her magical powers that she couldn't successfully manage a non-verbal, wand-less "Accio wand". So she had excepted her fate, numbed her feelings of sadness, depression, and betrayal with liquor and had tried to be the obedient, lovely housewife Tobias wanted her to be. But all had been for naught because she was beaten to death by her husband, her alleged soulmate, on a sunny day in June for forgetting to buy his favorite beer and opening up to a neighbor about her sorrows.
A sole tear leaked down of Severus obsidian eyes, as he recalled the moment he had been informed of her death. Then despite not defending him against the physical abuse of Tobias, leaving him or seeking help, Eileen had been a lovely mother. She had told her beloved boy every day how much she loved him and how special he was. She had read to him in secretive hours bedtime stories of the Magical world, taught him how to brew his first potion and told him marvelous tales of her time in Hogwarts, her former life at Prince Manor and the adventures in the Wizarding world. Consequently, her murder had hit Severus hard and caused him burning feelings of guilt, regret, and revenge. Especially, since he hadn't been able to attend her funeral and say goodbye to her. For Dumbledore and Slughorn had only informed him of her passing away due to her being beaten to death by her alcoholic, cruel monster of a husband on his graduation day.
They had explained to him that they hadn't wanted to burden him with grief during his NEWTs and possibly risk his future career prospects. Severus had been overwhelmed by an instant rush of shock, grief, anger, revenge, and guilt so that he had needed to apply his Occlumency shields to not break down. He remembered that he had been only vaguely able to hear the voices of the two elder wizards as if they spoke through thick layers of wool and had zoned out on them. Lost in pictures and memories of his mum. Severus resented them for making this decision for him and not allowing him to attend his own mother's funeral and felt for the tenth time like a cheat, failure, and trash. Because it seemed that he wasn't important enough to consider his opinion and treat him like a human being. Or, as his cruel, bullying and arrogant Hogwarts nemesis' the Marauders put it, a freak like him shouldn't even have been allowed to live.
To add insult to injury, on his hastily way out of Hogwarts, hiding his grief behind a cold mask of indifference, he had witnessed the love of his life Lily Evans accepting a marriage proposal with happy tears, a beaming smile and a series of kisses from his bully James Potter. Originally, Severus had thought, that he couldn't feel anything any more thanks to the numbness that had enveloped his body following the news of the murder of his beloved mum. But this scene had caused his grief-stricken heart to break in two, paralyzed him for a moment and burned itself into his memory. His mental shields had broken down. The feelings of betrayal, anger, regret, and loneliness attacking him full force and the only thing he could do without making an utter fool of himself had been to run into his dorm, pack his things in record time and leave Hogwarts without a glance back or a goodbye.
Apparating back to Spinner's End in Cokeworth, Severus had landed on shaky legs in the secluded backyard area of his parental hovel, balancing his trunk via magic behind him and looking utterly devastated. Storing his meager possessions quickly in his room, grabbing a Whiskey bottle on his way out and paying attention to not look on the kitchen floor, where his mother's dead, beaten body had lain roughly one month ago, Severus had left this creepy, haunted with ghost from his past hovel and run to the nearby park, where he drowned his sorrows in alcohol. He always knew that life wasn't fair, hurt like hell and never granted him any happiness. But this day showed him that his life was his own personal hell. And he wanted to forget this fact as soon as possible.
