Chapter Twenty
It was Yuletide Eve and Severus sat in the small courtyard that was accessed from the dining area, his thoughts on the dream he'd had the night before. He had yet to discern what bothered him about it.
He remembered when he was younger, about a month before his eighth birthday, confiding in his mother about Lily's continuous change of attitude.
Eileen Snape had sneered at his crush on the girl, and was bent on ignoring her only child, as usual, until Severus mentioned Lily's name change and her statement that she was 'different inside'.
Her stern gaze had speared him and Severus spied a thoughtful look on her face before she blanked her features and sent him off to finish his chores. Throughout the day Severus would find his mother's gaze on him; an action she rarely did, that it was distracting, and he paid for it when his father returned that night, drunk and needing to lash out at the closest body.
Usually, he would have been aware of the time his father stumbled home from the bar, and Severus would lock himself in his bedroom. The longing for his mother's gaze, though mostly stern and lost in thought, kept him on the floor of the living room reading The Lord of The Rings.
So caught in the journey of The Fellowship, he only became aware of his father when a meaty fist slammed into the side of his head with a force strong enough to knock him into the wall near the television.
"Didn' I tell you to stay out o' my sight you li'l freak!"
The lash of a belt rained on his unprotected back, but he didn't scream. He never screamed nor cried, not in front of them.
"Stop it, STOP! Leave him alone!"
The shouts of his mother were drowned out by his father's litany of hate for his only son. He felt the sting of the belt on the back of his hands as he tried to protect his head when suddenly the blows stopped.
"Sev… ahh… run!"
Severus turned painfully to find his mother crouched protectively over him, her eyes full of pain as his father switched targets. He saw as she bit her lip against crying out. Rage bubbled up and his magick reacted, slamming his father across the room and into an old bookcase.
Tobias groaned but quickly staggered to his feet angrier than before; Severus had broken the rule, No Magick!
"Sev, run… hide!"
Hesitant to obey his mother but afraid of repercussions, he scrambled toward his bedroom.
"NO, leave him alone!"
Severus looked back to see his mother grab his father's arm as he tried to follow his son to his room. He ran into the room, locked the door and scrambled under his small bed.
Hugging his knees to his chest, he let the tears flow; flinching at every crack of Tobias' belt and his mother's wails until she was suddenly, eerily silent. Never in his life had his mother ever fought for him or tried to protect him from his father's cruelty.
Though she never said it, like Tobias, Eileen did not love her son. If she ever had, it had died the day her husband began to punish her for breeding a freak like herself. He knew that somehow, like always, his mother would find a way to place the blame for her actions tonight on him.
He was wrong this time though, from that day - after healing him with magick! - his mother's attitude toward him changed completely. She began tutoring him during the days when Tobias left the house. She'd even met Lily once after encouraging him to bring her over during one of the girl's 'nice' days.
Previously unknown to Severus, Eileen Snape had once been a witch on the fast track in the wizarding world. Hauntingly beautiful and a prodigy in all magickal branches of knowledge, it was no wonder her family disowned her for one heinous mistake.
With her intelligence and ability to work out a problem and her research of ancient magickal tomes - some of which she'd kept in a trunk placed under an invisibility Charm in Severus' room - she came to the conclusion that once she willing loved or provided security for her son, his soulmate would not need to take possession of her body.
She was still in shock and awe that her son had a magickal soulmate and a powerful one too. She could remember - before it had quickly faded - the powerful sensation of the remnant of magick the girl had left within her after making Eileen take the brunt of the beating for her son. Eileen had then let her father know; Sebastian Prince would never abandon an heir like Severus.
As he remembered his mother's description of those events, Severus pondered about how much of that powerful sensation had to do with the girl's use of magick and his mother's own lack of use.
Now he was wondering why he'd blocked this memory from his mind; of his mother talking about and approving of an unknown witch for him. The only answer he could come up with was that he'd already attached himself to Lily and refused to acknowledge anyone else.
Startled out of his thoughts he looked up at the birds chirping in the Flowering Dogwood, with branches growing gracefully horizontal and providing shade over the small courtyard.
He was still shocked at his discovery of the new look of the land surrounding the house. Spinner's End was essentially a concrete jungle, he'd believed that anyone stepping outside of his house, would think they'd stepped into a magickal woodland surrounding a small castle.
It was touching, the level of Elven magick Winky and the other house-elves had put into his new home, but this was… had been, humiliating. He, Severus Snape, was no Lord… well, not yet… but he was NOT one for posturing!
As much as he acted like it and - through his aristocratic mien - looked like it, all who really knew him would believe, by seeing his new home, that he lay claim to Pureblood inclinations.
To make matters worse, Winky had named his house Snape Manor and had connected this land, magickally, to the Prince estate; accessible through the garden and into Mystic Grove, on a worn path with large weeping willows lining both sides.
The path remained blocked, though, until his inheritance was released to him in the next five years. For now, that path led - like the other marked paths - to nowhere but through the wards surrounding Snape Manor and onto Spinner's End.
He'd questioned Winky about the birds and other small animals that lived in the woods, wondering if they were a part of the magick, but the elf had assured him that the woods and animals were real.
His jaw had dropped when she'd paused in making lunch and explained it to him.
"Snape Manor is now in the same realm as the Prince Estate. Master's home is not really at Spinner's End anymore, anyone not invited by Master Snape Sir will only see the old house and it would be empty. Not like Hogwarts, where there are only wards to hide the castle. Master's home is safer in this place."
"What about owl posts? I do need to keep in contact with the outside world no matter how much I would prefer otherwise."
"Master can reset the wards on the owl portal," she pointed to a circular window that seemed to be open to the outside, "for owls he knows, but for now Master will need to exit the wards through the front door to get into the living room on Spinner's End."
"This is beginning to get frustrating. If this isn't Spinner's End, where am I? Does this realm have a name?"
"Master be in the Ancestral Realm."
Winky went on to explain to him that most of the ancient magickal bloodlines - Prewett, Black, Longbottom and others - had ancestral homes here in this realm, even the Hogwarts founders and older.
And now Snape, he thought as he rose from his seat in the courtyard. He never knew just how powerful house-elves were; they were the ones that placed the family they served under the protection of different realms. As the centuries passed, that knowledge was distorted and forgotten, placing house-elves on the bottom rung of the magickal community.
In the kitchen, he made himself some coffee and went to his study in the library to finalise the modules of his classes for the rest of the semester.
Later that evening while sitting at his opulent desk and exhausted from exploring the three different forests on his land - Mystic Grove, Wandering Wilds and Solitary Woods - then writing for hours, it suddenly hit him exactly how much Winky had actually done for him; his life was heading for the better and he hadn't even received his inheritance yet. He would still struggle financially for a while but things were looking up.
Severus vowed that he would learn more about her kind and treat Winky with the respect house-elves really deserved. Ending the spell on the Lumos Ball hovering over the desk, he retreated upstairs to his bedroom unaware of the ancient magick he'd performed with his vow about his house-elf and the barrier broken between him and Winky.
Settling down for the night, he was almost asleep when he remembered that it was Yuletide Eve, and groaned.
"Winky." He mumbled, not bothering to sit up as he was just on the cusp of sleep.
"Yes, Master Severus," Winky answered somewhere out of sight. Of course, he hadn't bothered to get up or open his eyes.
"Please deliver those gifts for me as discreetly as possible," he yawned and snuggled into his soft mattress, "and you can take time off tomorrow if you want, I can manage."
"Of course, Master Severus, but it is my duty and privilege to take care of the noble members of the House of Snape." Then with a twinkling giggle, she was gone with a fluttering sound.
Too tired and sleepy, Severus was unaware of anything different about this interaction with Winky and soon drifted off to sleep.
~~~(*)~~~(*)~~~
The tantalising aroma of cooked bacon, eggs and strong coffee was a temptation that roused Severus from the comforts of Hypnos the next morning. The stirring notes of a songbird just outside his open window made his lips twitch. It had been an impossible dream of his as a boy on Spinner's End, wanting to wake to the sound of birds.
He'd completed his ablutions slowly to enjoy the jungle atmosphere. Strolling into the kitchen, he cast a wandless drying charm on his still dripping hair. He stopped and stared at the strange sight before him for a few seconds before immediately summoning his wand from the invisible holster on his arm.
A creature the size of a house elf with large gossamer wings flittered back and forth between his stove and the dining table, conjuring breakfast.
"Who are you?" His voice was pitched low and dangerous, his wand trained on the small being zipping all over his kitchen.
The creature turned at his voice and he noted the large almond shaped brown eyes, caramel skin and cinnamon coloured hair pulled into a messy bun. The being looked almost childlike except for the fact that it wore an indecently short fitted dress that showed off an extremely feminine form with slim, graceful limbs.
"Master Severus," she said in a silvery voice, as she fluttered over to stand in front of him, "I am Winky."