His Greatest Wish, by AndromedaMarine
The Triumph
He hadn't meant to start casting wards. Sev and Lily were used to the normality of Muggle Nurren now, despite the fact that every morning the Daily Prophet brought news that became worse and worse as summer progressed. Three dead in Surrey. Four dead in Merrymount. An attack in Godric's Hollow, even, that left two Muggles in need of spell reversal at St. Mungo's and Memory Charms cast on at least ten witnesses. Relatives of the Prewett and Potter families had been involved with fighting back. The Auror office had its work cut out.
Lily managed to stop him before he broke the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, but he had a good reason. Really.
July was gone. It slipped away before Sev knew what had happened, and only a month was left before the start of their second year. The Evans family and Sev had just finished dinner, Lily and Sev tired from a day exploring the stream past the park and towards the river, identifying common potions ingredients and collecting a few that would be useful in the year to come. Dusk was falling as they made their way home.
A knocking came from the door. It was an insistent knock, a bit intermittent, but there nonetheless.
"Sev, could you get that?" Rose asked from the sink. Her hands were sudsy from the water and Mark had just gone upstairs for a lie down, after a long day of grading papers for his summer class. The neighbors on either side knew that Sev was a school friend of Lily's and had met him briefly a few weeks ago. Maybe the person at the door was Mrs. Grady asking for some of Roses' recipes.
He gripped the handle and turned, pulling it backwards. Sev came face to face with a man exactly a foot and a half taller than his own four feet and seven inches, with greasy, peppered black hair, unfocused eyes and a rank smell of alcohol around him. Sev stared at Tobias Snape for a full five seconds before coming to his thirty-eight year old senses and slamming the door, turning the bolt and locking the handle. He took in deep, heavy breaths, starting to panic a little.
Lily's hand came down on his arm before he managed to flick the wand from its holster and protect the house.
"What in Merlin's name are you doing?" she hissed.
Sev stared at her with wild eyes. "He's outside," he rattled at her. "My father—he's at the door!"
Tobias had apparently finally recognized that his son had just opened the door then slammed it again in his face, for the pounding began again, this time accompanied by angry shouts. He could hear his father screaming at him: "Open back up, you little shit! You and Eileen are dead for lying to me!"
Rose came from the kitchen, not having heard the evil words drifting through the door. "Really now, where are your manners?" she asked with pursed lips as she reached for the door handle. Sev hurriedly threw himself between Mrs. Evans and the door.
"Don't open the door!" he told her. "It's—it's my father!"
Rose let her hand fall back to her side. "What is he doing here?" she asked, her eyes a little wide. She turned to Lily. "Go get your dad."
"I dunno," Sev replied, equally as worried. "But he's obviously surprised that I'm here, so it's probably a coincidence he chose this house to bother," he said, a little unsure even as he said it. How had Tobias managed to pick the one house in all of England where his son was?
Tobias renewed his vigor on pounding the door. "Severus Snape, if you do not open this door you better hope to whatever god you have that your mother can fight back!"
Sev paled and his fear for Eileen made him reach a little for the door handle. Lily, however, who had returned from waking her father, seized his arm and pulled him away. Rose turned to speak with her husband. Lily and Sev stood with bated breath until Mark faced them.
"You're sure he saw your face?" he asked Sev, who nodded.
"I stared at him for about five seconds before I thought to shut the door. I was just startled to see him so suddenly." His voice had dropped an octave. "I think...I think we should call the Muggle police. He threatened Mum, and he's been banging at that door for about three minutes straight now." Sev knew he sounded grown up, older than he looked, but the fact was that Tobias Snape had, by coming to the Evans house, indirectly put Lily in danger. Besides that, his mother had been threatened, again. This had to end, now.
As soon as Mark reached for the telephone, the noise stopped, and everyone froze, listening as Tobias shuffled around on the stoop, before trundling away. Mark and Rose released great sighs, but Sev became wound tighter than before. Tobias had left here, which meant Eileen was in danger. Mark and Rose retreated to the kitchen, talking in low voices. Sev wanted to leave, oh how he wanted to leave to find his mother and destroy the man who had never really loved him nor treated him as a son, to make up for a lifetime of regret for not killing him sooner...
Lily seemed to know exactly what he was thinking and dragged him up the stairs into her bedroom. "You wouldn't," she whispered. "You can't. You'd go to jail."
"Azkaban," he corrected automatically, "the Wizard prison." He looked down at her, since in the past month he'd gained another inch over Lily's height. "I'm sick of him beating her up, Lily," he said seriously. "I have to do something about it."
"You talk as though she can't take care of herself. She's lived with him for this long, hasn't she?"
The old anger came back. "You don't know him, Lily! You don't know what he'll do! What he's capable of!"
Lily stood her ground, glaring back with equal intensity. His evil-don't-mess-with-me professor look didn't work on her. "The only reason I don't know is because you've never told me!" she thundered in return. "All you said was that whatever I thought, yeah, it must be true! So you didn't inherit that nose! It means he broke it, right? Before I met you? If that's what he's capable of then why've you kept it all bottled up? You know I listen to you, Sev, you're not bloody alone!" She ran out of breath and sat down on her bed. When she lifted her eyes to meet his again he felt awful.
"You want to know?" he asked softly, giving in. He'd learned it was hard to refuse Lily Evans, especially when in the same House as her.
She nodded slowly, not breaking the eye contact.
Sev let out a breath and turned around, and pulled the t-shirt he wore up and over his head so his upper body became bare. With his back turned to Lily, his scars were on display. He heard her immediate intake of breath indicating a gasp, and he could see her in the mirror across from him that she'd covered her mouth with her hands. He watched her stand up and slowly approach his twelve-year-old body, her eyes fixed on the multitude of scars across the skin of his back.
The silence started to buzz. "Most are from before I knew you," he muttered, jumping when he felt her touch one of the larger scars towards his shoulder. Knowing he would be unable to control himself if she kept touching him he pulled the shirt back down and faced her. "If this is what he does to me, imagine what he does to Mum. She's not his blood. I am." He said it with disgust. "I wish I wasn't. I'm more Prince than Snape, anyway." He sat heavily on the bed and cast his gaze downward.
The summer had gone so well up till now, what with spending all his time with Lily, only to be interrupted again by real life in the form of a drunken father.
Sev and Lily actually fell asleep together on the bed, the after effects of their day at the stream finally catching up to them.
They woke almost two hours later to frantic knocking, which was different from the bangs with which Tobias had struck the door. Sev and Lily descended the stairs just as Mark opened the front door.
"Mum!" Sev exclaimed, rushing forward to Eileen. "What happened? Are you all right? What are you doing here?"
Mark, recognizing that this was Sev's mother, gestured for her to enter the house.
Eileen's hands shook in her son's, her face pale white, her eyes darting around the entry of the Evans household. "Is it safe?" she asked her son, and he nodded at her.
Sev took his mother to the living room and sat with her on the couch. He visually inspected her and found blood at her temple, trickling slowly down to her cheek. Hatred for Tobias increased a hundredfold. "Where is he? I'm going to go murder him," he stated coldly, starting to rise from his seat, but Eileen clutched at his arms.
"No," she whispered. "No, you can't!"
"Mum, stop defending him! He's abusing you!"
Eileen cut him off with a hard look mixed with pain and mystery. "I'm not defending him, Severus."
Sev lost his wind. "What, then?"
"He's dead." The two words induced a silence so calm they could hear the exhale of air from the vents. Lily stood a few feet from Sev's side and Rose and Mark stood at the entrance into the living room. Eileen reached up her sleeve and pulled out her wand, and handed it to her son. Sev studied it. "I've carried it with me ever since your letter that you were Sorted into Gryffindor," she admitted, gathering confidence as she spoke to Sev. "He came home after finding you here and without warning, hit me." Eileen indicated the blood at her hairline. "I Cursed him," she whispered hoarsely, her eyes wide as she stared at her son. "The one your grandfather taught me when I was a sixth year."
"Avada Kedavra," Sev muttered, knowing what she'd meant. "It was self defense, Mum. Besides, no one will miss him and the Ministry can't track magic in our house."
Eileen's lower lip trembled. "I didn't know where else to go."
Mark stepped forward into Eileen's line of sight. "We've started to think of Sev as family, Mrs. Snape. You chose well to come here. Is there anything we can do for you?"
"He had a job, Mr. Evans. Drunkard that he was he still went on a regular basis and he will be missed, if not at work then by the people he drank with. The Muggles could very well start some sort of investigation."
Mark marveled at Eileen's capacity to hold herself together and explain things after having just killed her husband of a little over twelve years. "What did you mean when you said you cursed him?" he asked Sev's mother, curious.
Sev answered for her with an anecdote. "Twenty nine years ago do you remember hearing about the Riddle deaths in Little Hangleton?" he asked Rose and Mark. Lily stared at him, obviously having recognized the name, but she didn't say anything.
Rose and Mark glanced at each other. "Somewhat. All I remember about that story is that a family was found in perfect health except that they were dead," Rose supplied. "I was only seven at the time, but it was a huge story back then, so it kind of stuck with me."
"Only one thing can cause that," Sev said. "It's the Killing Curse, a spell that causes instant death. Nothing can stop it, not even a Shield Charm."
Rose and Mark wore alarmed expressions. "Is that what happened to Tobias?" asked Mark.
"I didn't know how else to stop him for good," Eileen said quietly.
"He wasn't in perfect health, he was an alcoholic." Sev said. "If the Muggle authorities come, it'll be ruled a heart attack or something else that makes sense. There won't be any marks on him indicating Mum killed him."
"What is your address in Spinner's End?" Mark asked Eileen. She gave it, and Mark went to the telephone and picked it up, dialing 999. "Hello, I think a friend of mine's husband had a heart attack about an hour ago. Please send someone." He gave Eileen's address and hung back up. Everyone was staring at him. "Goodness, do I have to explain the cop shows to you?" he asked grudgingly. "Listen, I will accompany you back to your house so I can handle the authorities, but this is being taken care of tonight. Sev, Lily, stay here. Rose, could you watch them?" Mark took the situation by the horns and helped Eileen stand. "I'll drive you back."
There was movement during which Sev spaced out, and when he blinked a few times Lily was next to him, as still as wood as she processed everything.
Rose said, "Sev, your mother used magic to kill Tobias?"
Sev nodded numbly, still wrapping his head around the fact that Eileen had been carrying and using her wand without Tobias knowing ever since September second. Easier to accept was that his father was now dead, unable to hurt him or Eileen any longer. "Yes."
"I doubt Mark will leave your mother at Spinner's End. I suppose she'll be staying the night here, then? Well, since you're in the guest room, where will we put her?" Rose was more talking to herself, but Lily answered.
"Sev can sleep in my room, Mum," she said. "I can get a cot from the closet and Eileen can take the guest room."
Sev remained quiet, wondering how it would play out.
Rose gave Lily a look.
"Mum, we're twelve. Not sixteen. We're not going to do anything."
Sev tried hard not to turn red, even though he knew Lily's cheeks were tinged.
"Oh, you're right," Rose agreed. "I'll wait up for them, if you want to leave," she told them.
Sev yawned as he and Lily went upstairs; he could already feel the sweet call of sleep.
Morning came with the smell of bacon and waffles. Eileen sat at the table holding a mug of tea, sipping it and answering Rose's and Mark's questions about the Wizarding world. They were interrupted by a hooting sound coming from the guest room upstairs, and Mark went to investigate, returning with a rolled up newspaper and an owl circling his head. Sev then practically dove down the stairs, seized the owl by the legs and stuffed a Knut into the leather pouch before hurling it back out the upstairs window. Mark still held the rolled up Daily Prophet.
"What's this?" he asked Sev with a lifted eyebrow.
"Just a newspaper I get," he answered, worried about what might be on the front page. "The Daily Prophet is a Wizarding newspaper."
Mark unrolled it and spread it out on the table. He read the headline after getting over the initial shock of the moving pictures, and slowly looked back up at Sev. "You didn't think this was worth telling us about?" he asked with a voice full of disappointment. He held up the paper for Sev and Lily to see. "This is fifty miles from here."
SEVEN DEAD IN SHIREBROKE—WORK OF YOU-KNOW-WHO.
"Shirebroke is less than an hour away—has there been other news like this? Is there a war or something going on in your world? And who is You-Know-Who?"
Sev shared a quick look with Lily before telling Mark what he wanted to know. "For about three years or so there's been an uprising of a very Dark wizard who calls himself Lord Voldemort..." Sev went on to tell Rose and Mark everything he knew (within reason for a twelve year old) about the darkest wizard of their century.
It will always come back to what I know about him, Sev thought as he explained Tom Riddle. It will always be about Voldemort, until the day I destroy him. And I will destroy him.