All parents mess their kids up a little. In most cases? Not as badly as horcruxes would.
Temporary notes: I meant to post Monday, but there were some Car Issues that left me stranded AFK all day. XP On the upside, this solves the problem of whether to post the rather short chapter five with chapter four, with chapter six, or by itself...
Happy V-day, whatever kind you're celebrating! And for those of you who are within like a hundred miles of me... stay warm and dry do not put your backs out shovelling. This is what they call 'heart attack snow' or 'shovelling concrete.' And for god's sake if you're in a southern state and not used to the snow you're getting STAY OFF THE ROAD, OKAY, PLEASE, BE SAFE! And remember that after it rains in winter there is sometimes black ice, which is, like sneaky nasty Bella black, not bouncy puppyish Sirius (snowball fight) or sulks obviously at you till you pet it Regulus (maple snow) or is equally obviously dazzlingly awesome at you till you dutifully admire it Narcissa (icicle fringe) Black. It is waiting to get you. Sidewalks + friction = love.
This public service announcement was brought to you by CONSTANT VIGILANCE! Severus tested, Moody approved.
If you are not aware of this fact, mulled cider floats are even more awesome than hot chocolate floats made with french vanilla or some other richer-than-vanilla ice cream like butter crunch. Which are pretty awesome, especially when you've been shoveling.
That public service announcement was brought to you by Evan and Reg's approval of Severus's kitchen lunacy.
A little more about V-day below.
Heald Wood, Lancashire
"I don't know why you didn't just come to the house," Eileen said.
"I like it here," said her son, "and I didn't want to give myself an aneurism not-cursing Da. Besides, it's a good chance to build up my stores. Yours, too, I expect."
"Any of those would have done on its own," she noted, sitting down on the blanket he'd spread out.
"Yes, well. Once challenged, err towards overkill."
She looked at her boy, stretched out taller than she was in the sun-dappled shade of the bluebell wood. She hadn't felt herself passing through any wards or shields on her way to him, but that only meant she was welcome—as well she should be, as she'd come at his asking. There were wards, all right: his eyes were closed.
He was skinnier than she'd have preferred. From the look of the skin under his eyes, not getting enough sleep, either. Neither of those things were news. His clothes were of a better quality than anything she'd ever been able to put on him, but nothing fancy, nothing embarrassing. Clearly custom work or transfigured to fit after he'd bought them, because she'd never seen anyone go about with their cuffs stiff to the elbows, and there were far too many pockets tucked cleverly away into the seams of his frock coat, too many straps with subtly embossed runework telling her practiced eye they were wizard-space sheaths. Nothing, though, (it was exactly like him) that wouldn't let him fade out of sight in a crowd (if he put a hat on), or here in these quiet trees.
His face was quiet, too. There was a stillness in it, a looseness to his fingers. They made her, just for now, forgive his arrogant young menace his every smiling threat.
"You and that Evans girl used to come and play here."
"I don't want to talk about her."
"What do you want?"
He turned over on his elbows, smiling at her crookedly from under his hair. "The moon and the stars and for you to chuck the Neanderthal out and let me buy you a damned wand, Mam. You could pay me back, even."
"Best settle for the stars," she said, dry as the dust that choked her streets. He laughed a little, quietly. "You didn't call me here to ask me that."
"No." He rolled back onto his back, and waved at the basket. "I didn't ask you here to comment on my cooking, either, but I'm told it's etiquette to do business over a meal, so help yourself."
"You and your tinkering," she said, but she found a packet of what looked like scones, and reasonably safe. It wasn't bad, although baking sausages into scones should have gotten him stricken by lightning. "What business could you possibly want to do with me?"
"Not I," he denied, almost plausibly. "I've a friend who needs a village witch badly, and she's too posh to know it."
She frowned down at him. "Money solves all sorts of problems." She remembered that. All too well, some days.
"Not all sorts. Only the simple ones."
"I don't need charity even from you, our Very."
"Bite your tongue, Mam. First, not possible, second, not what I'm come with. But I would be obliged if you'd overcharge her about a thousandfold. Put it all in a Neighborhood Restoration Fund if you want, but she'll give your advice less weight and respect me less if you don't."
"Is that the way of it?"
"I said she was too posh to know she needs a village witch," he reminded her. "Well. She does know, though she wouldn't think to call it that. But she thinks I'm the one she has."
"Aren't you?" she asked, feeling her weathered face, too old for a witch of her age, soften a little as she looked at her boy's clever hands.
He smiled a little, wry, and said, "I do what I can, but I don't know shite about babies, Mam. I made her try the hospital, but they weren't much help in the end."
"Bite your own tongue," she said automatically, her mouth forgetting he was grown and could use what words he liked. He laughed at her a little again, just with his eyes. "And what do you think I can do that you and your fancy mediwizards can't?"
"If I knew, I'd read up and do it myself, wouldn't I?"
She had her doubts about that. It wouldn't be the first time he'd tried to smuggle or lie some coin into her purse. But you couldn't turn them away when they came calling. Not a stranger, not a neighbor, and certainly not family. Not without listening, at least. "What's the trouble, then?"
He sat up, tucking his long legs under him. "She's just delivered, near a week ago. We'll call him Drake for now, so you don't scare all the birds off laughing."
"This is that Black friend of yours," she said flatly. A Good Family, but not a good family.
"Black as was, yes. Her mother was a Ros—"
"The boy's named for a constellation, then."
"…It's not his fault. He's got grandparents. Great-grandparents, yet. Not to mention all the highly opinionated ancestral portraits."
"And how many toy dragons so far?"
"Not sure I can count that high, Mam."
She nodded, mouth twitching. Severus looked put-upon and rueful himself. She only hoped he'd managed to get out of the proud parents' earshot, when he'd first heard the poor mite's name, before breaking down and expressing his opinion. "It's the baby having trouble, then, not the mother?"
He nodded. "He's just…" he trailed off, seeming to run out of words. "He's too quiet, Mam. He doesn't even cry, really. Just this thin little wail sometimes, it's… He isn't… I've done a little reading-up, and it's just not right. He ought to be grabbing if you poke his hand and moving towards something to suck, shouldn't he? You shouldn't have to shove it in his mouth and pinch his nose closed till he gets the idea, not every time. And the tests say he isn't deaf at all, but you can set off an Exploding Snap card right next to him and he barely twitches."
She frowned, and agreed, "That's not right. His mam ever pick him up?" She'd seen that sort of thing, or nearly, when a mother was hit too hard with the baby blues to get up, or died and the father blamed the child, or one never got touched for some other reason.
They'd probably had a close call with their own boy, she and Toby had, just from working long hours and feeling awkward and stiff and worrying about dropping him and not knowing anything or having living parents who'd speak to them. Fortunately, one or two of the older women hadn't been too put off by the young and overwhelmed Eileen's 'haughty' reserve to explain to her that it was not, in fact, a good sign when a baby stopped bothering to cry.
"Hardly puts him down," her baby said, with exactly the same kind of would be smiling gently if men were allowed to do that expression his father had given him all the time back before magic, the pub, and the dole had ruined them for each other.
"What did those tests rule out?" He reached into his waistcoat and pulled out an accordion of parchment that had probably been a scroll before he'd folded it up. Well, it had taken her years to get used to folding instead of rolling, what with muggles not having cushioning charms. She only hoped no one noticed him thinking the other way.
It took some reading. When she was done, she folded it back up again. "If it makes you any happier, you can draw up a bill for a consultation fee and I'll sign it," she said, "and if she'll lower herself to come by with him, I'll look him over. But I expect your friend has the right of it, Very. It's you she needs, not a midwife."
"Mam, I told you, I don't know about—"
"I'm not deaf, my lad." He looked grumpy at her, but subsided. "All you need to know about babies is they've got no defenses of their own. The boy's a Black, isn't he? And the father's family won't be any more progressive, knowing that lot."
"No. Worse. More to prove." He was still looking at her questioningly, but held his tongue, waiting for her to get to the point.
She obliged. "Then who's to say what enemies they've laid by, or what they've got hidden below the wine cellar?"
She watched the expressionless, slapped look slam down on his face, his whole body freeze. Slowly, his voice heavy with horror and self-blame, working against the corded rigidity of the long throat that had skipped her generation, he grated, "She miscarried three times. Twice before she even knew she was carrying. It took everything I could think of to get this one through to term. Including a need-awareness enhancer, and she was craving to be outside like mad almost the whole time. The healers say she can't, again. I thought it was just—they're all so inbred, and her mother had trouble, too… their house wards are in the safe with the—oh god…"
Eileen cuffed her son upside the back of his raggedy head with the folded-up parchment, none too gently. "Nitwit," she said fondly. If someone didn't give him an accusation to resent and disagree with, he'd be accusing himself until the end of time.
Vaguely, he told her, "Keep the basket," and apparated away without even standing up. To his friend's house, no doubt.
"I ought to feed it to the chipmunks," she grumbled. He'd left her with not only a gathering-quality basket and all the food in it, but a nearly-new blanket besides. Just as if he'd only done it because he was in a sudden hurry and hadn't meant to from the start. Well, she'd known he was a sneak and a conniver since before he left for school; nothing to be done about it now.
Chapter Notes: No, Severus doesn't know what Tom's Horcruxes are. And he hasn't seen them, themselves, proper. But he has seen the box they're kept in and felt the vibes it gives off. Twice. Because Narcissa keeps him up to date and Luke brags.
Parent-blaming: Eileen is thinking of a real phenomenon, of course (failure to thrive), when she blames not holding Severus enough as a baby for the way he turned out. Babies absolutely need touch. However, if you look at A Key Called Promise: January '73 and do Narcissa's math, you'll find he was born about three weeks early. As I mentioned to a reader on AO3 who was wondering if my Severus was on the autism spectrum, a look at preemie syndrome might be interesting. Keep in mind, if you do look, that his mother was a brewer and might well have been able to correct any physical symptoms that manifested, that it's not usual for people to get *all* the symptoms of most mental health conditions, and that three weeks isn't so premature that a parent ought to be freaking out.
On V-day: One could almost suppose a higher power struck down my car so I'd have to post an Eileen chapter right before V-day. Because as well as Valentine's day, it is, for some, a day to fight violence against women and girls . Against all domestic and intimate partner violence, I'd hope. This isn't what the chapter's about, but I'd just like to share the link to an advocacy hub for anyone who's interested.
www dot vday dot org