Chapter 42: A Confrontation Of Past In The Present

{A/N: Here's Another update..Early Post.}

My Thanks To All My Readers and Reviewers...Enjoy-S.S.

Northside Cottage, Greenvile, England, Muggle World...

Severus Snape awoke to the constant sound of knocking that had been coming from the front door. He took a moment to note the constant pattering of the rain against the cottage and Hermione sleeping quite peacefully beside him. With a sigh he willed himself out of the soft warmth that surrounded him and ventured out into the cold aiming to put an end to the incessant knocking before it disturbed his slumbering expectant wife. She needed all the rest she could get given her condition and Snape wasn't in the least in the mood for visitors. Quickly shuffling about the bedroom, the dour wizard pulled on a pair of trousers and a discarded t-shirt. Before making it down the stairs, he shook off the remainder of his lingering sleep as he noted just how loud and consistent the knocking had been.

Annoyed beyond measure, Snape finally reached the door swinging it open quite hard before he found himself staring face to face with a winded and rain soaked young lad. Despite the condition he'd been in, The former Potions Master recognized the lad as the son of their new neighbor Claudia, whom had come over to welcome him and Hermione to the neighborhood. Snape had not thought much of her then aside from some minor confusion as to muggle customs but she'd been hardly a passing thought since her initial visit. Now here had been her rather thin and decidedly beaten son with a worried expression filed across his pale face.

"S-Sorry to d-disturb you...but...but my-my mother...we were attacked...she forced me to run for help." sputtered the terrified boy.

Snape had known the look of terror all too well. He had also known that had the boy's mother not insisted her run for assistance, he would have gladly kept silent about the whole encounter and never ventured to The Snape residence at all.

"Where is she?" asked the seemingly highly focused wizard, lightly obtaining more information from the boy's mind as he had not been able to say more. Still he kept up the pretense of needing to be told the information directly if only to avoid suspicion in terms of his magical abilities.

"Up...up the road...the car's turned over...bastard knocked us off the road." replied Royce albeit painstakingly.

Snape got a good look at an older brute of a man whom had not been so unlike Tobias Snape in terms of his build and mental capabilities. He had been trying his best to harm the young lad slamming him onto the ground repeatedly despite the boy's attempts to protect his mother from harm. There was definite fear in the boy when it came to the angry brute, brief recollection of broken limbs and bruised eyes over the course of his young life had painted an all too vivid picture of what life had been like when sharing a roof with the brute in question.

"Stay here, until I return." said Snape in a rather embittered tone.

It seemed the young lad's plight had stirred up some unwanted emotion and vivid memories for the dour wizard as he suddenly stepped away from the young man. His focus had been on the location of the crash site and the means of putting an end to the muggle brute's terrorizing once he arrived. Hermione had still been asleep within the confines of their bedroom and he had not wanted to give her cause for worry. But there was no way he'd let anyone suffer the same humiliation and terror he had as a boy.

Without a word, Snape took off toward the site of the crash leaving Royce behind winded on the front steps.

He had seen this all before of course, but he'd been too young and powerless to do anything about it then.

The heart wrenching anguish that filled the panicked boy had been the very staple of his tumultuous history when he'd been a lad himself back at Spinner's End and having to endure the constant plague of Tobias Snape's existence.

This time, he had been more than capable of doing something about another drunken brute battering a woman and a boy for his own amusement.

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Open Road, Greenvile, England, Muggle World...

The familiar looking red head known as Claudia had been on the ground when Snape arrived, having reverted to apparating to get there faster given the implication in the situation he'd glimpsed in the terrified boy's mind. The down pour continued as Severus Snape found himself face to face with the drunken brute from the boy Royce's nightmares and his own past's reflection.

"THIS DOESN'T CONCERN YOU!" shouted the drunken brute angrily. "THIS IS BETWEEN MY WIFE AND I."

Snape said nothing as he began to scan the scene attempting to piece together what occurred.

As the boy had said, there was evidence that the brute had driven them off the road with his own vehicle and exited once he flipped the car over. The boy and his mother apparently scrambled to get out of the overturned car, running on adrenaline and fear, Claudia managed to get her son to run for safety while she contended with the brute whom had struck her shortly before Snape's arrival.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN RUN OUT ON ME BITCH!?" growled The muggle brute. "NO ONE LEAVES ME!"

Having seen enough, Snape quickly stepped in sending the brute sailing backwards via a well placed wandless burst before he turned his attention to the downed Claudia. She'd been scared and bruised something awful and there was a bit of blood on the scene. Moving quickly he helped her get as far away from the over turned car as possible before scooping the seemingly unconscious woman into his arms in a bid to get her to safety.

Claudia seemed startled for a moment before getting a good look at Snape only for her mind to be flooded with memories she couldn't quite place.

"I-It can't be." she said stunned as she took note of the man carrying her semi limp form in his arms.

Snape continued to walk leaving behind the cars and the unconscious brute as the rain poured down upon them soaking them completely and making it difficult to see properly despite the hour of the day.

"You'll have proper assistance once I get you back to the cottage." said Snape in his usual Professor tone.

Claudia gasped for a moment as the realization of whom her rescuer had been.

"S-Sinister?" she said as tears began to stream down her cheeks, warming them briefly before the constant down pour washed them away. "Is...is that really you?"

Snape looked down at the red head puzzled in his own right as to why she had known that name.

"D-Do I know you?" he asked confused by her gall.

"Y-You damn well should...in addition to being your neighbor, I often went by the name Trendy." she replied more focused on solving one of life's little mysteries than succumbing to her desire to slip from consciousness to avoid the agony of her injuries.

Snape couldn't believe it, his old acquaintance Trendy, had still been around after all those years and with a son no less.

"Let's get you warm, and stitched up...you can tell me all about how you came to be in the company of that drunken arse once we get back to the cottage." he said still baffled by the revelation of another friend from his youth in the muggle world being in close proximity to him. If Trendy had any objections, she had not been of the mind to voice them as she had passed out shortly after sating her curiosity pertaining to her newly discovered hero's identity.