Title: once upon a time...
Challenge: #315 Snape's Best (or Worst) Gift
Word count: 4 x 100
Rating: PG
Summary: ...there was a boy with an apple green snake
The Tracker Team had arrived a few hours later and promptly went about doing their job, accompanied by the men and the snakes. Minerva and Vezza didn't take kindly to being left behind, but stayed back nevertheless, waiting for information about Graham Blaidd to come in.
"I'm surprised he still had this with him," Vezza said, misty-eyed.
Minerva looked at the handkerchief in Vezza's hand. "You made that for him?"
"Amongst other things," Vezza said, chuckling sadly. "Mostly when he was young, though." She traced the faded borders of the handkerchief, which used to be tiny apple green snakes.
---
"Maybe he felt he could use it again, him being small now," Minerva said.
"Our neighbour – Old Snakehand, we used to call him – had pet snakes, small ones, big ones, you name it," Vezza said. "Severus would go straight there whenever he visited for holidays, stayed there most of his holiday, made me wonder who's really the relative around there."
"Oh, bless," Minerva said, always eager to listen to any childhood story about Severus.
"One holiday, he received a snake as a present, and a note Old Snakehand had wrote himself on the care and raising of the wee snake."
---
"He must be so excited."
"Oh, indeed! He couldn't take it back with him, though. And it devastated him," Vezza said, looking both sad and fierce. She had often wished she could strangle Tobias Snape with the snake. "Anyway, another holiday, we took him to a children wands shop and bought him a child's wand with money that Eileen gave us."
"A children wands shop?" Minerva asked.
"Oh yes, there are many wand shops in America, unlike Ollivander's monopoly in Britain," Vezza replied. "Between the snake and the wand, I don't think he managed to sleep a wink!"
---
"Then one night, he spelled the snake apple green," Vezza recounted. "It wasn't a permanent change, but it's enough to horrify him."
"So, that's where your inspiration came from," Minerva pointed at the handkerchief with apple green snake borders.
"I gave him as a present the next year. I didn't expect he'd keep it."
"He's an enigma, that boy."
"Always," Vezza concurred.
The two women sat, a pot of steaming tea between them and the fireplace crackling somewhere there. They waited for news, even as they reminisced about the boy who would be man who was now a boy again.
