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Innocent minds
Chapter 1
The tall man watched the folded figure from the shadows. Hours ago, this child had ruined his first-year's potion's class, and now, here he had himself secluded inside an alcove, sniffing and crying quietly. The Gryffindor common room was not far. This was definitely one of Minerva's stray cubs. He waited quietly hidden against the shadow of the column and watched the figure. He loved this game of mouse hut. When those kids thought they had given the teachers a slip, just a hair width away from their common room entrance, he would pounce on them gleefully.
'Neville Longbottom, Alice, and Frank Longbottom's only son,' he thought ruefully. He tried to bring up the hatred he had allowed to shimmer in his heart. But gave up with a soft sigh. How many kids was he going to hate or pretend to hate?
He was not the Devil. He could pretend to be one, making those hundreds of students cover under his single glare. He was not Albus Dumbledore, yet he did take several leaves for the headmaster's providential book of uncoded advice. And the first few he preached to each and every snake that slithered into his dungeon. Self-preservation because no one less would look out for you, definitely not the Headmaster. Be shrewd because you would always be singled out. Stick together because your house alone will protect and the rest will watch you getting humiliated. Among many…
Though each time he came across the strays, his heart would lurch in pain. He could see those sunken eyes filled with fear, doubt, and mistrust. And today, when he yelled at the Longbottom brat, he saw himself in his whimpering eyes. All those years ago, how badly he wished it to be the Longbottoms. He wished their death in the hands of Voldemort. But what then, would the Dark Lord stop at that? Would he not come searching for the other boy born around the same time? Wouldn't he go for the Potters?
How many times did he make plans to steal a time turner? Almost every single waking hour for the first year after that fateful Halloween night. But he knew he couldn't do anything, change one event and you will have to change a thousand others...and here he would be toying with the fate sisters. Play the Devil himself.
The boy sniffed once again and whispered, his breath ghosting over the glass window," Mum do you miss me?" Severus couldn't help but slip into his unsuspecting mind. What he saw in there was nothing less of a sad example of a lonely kid's scrapbook. A boy of two, kissing a woman's cheek, who neither turned back at him, nor smiled, nor said a word but continued to sit still looking fixated at a blank white wall. A boy of four whispered into a comatose man's ears and giggled all by himself, until an old woman's wrinkled hand, guided him away from the hospital room.
And there were more, purposefully jumping off tall cupboards, walking over walls and tumbling down, trying to fly on a broomstick, racing along the slope of a hill and stumbling into a heap. The images continued to flash by. The boy kept mumbling the several healing charms and spells he had heard the medi-witches utter. He saw him pouring over his first-year's new books in a dim-lit room, dead into the night. Muttering, hissing biting his bottom lip and noting down points on a parchment, sticking the tip of his tongue out, absent-minded. He saw him walking in small circles repeating the spells. He saw him holding a popsicle stick and imitating the various wand moments.
And then he saw him at the platform 9 3/4s. Frightened and beyond himself. Feeling suffocated in his new uniform, sweating horribly. And struggling to keep in mind those several instructions his grandmother was hastily trying to remind him. He was nervous, excited, and panicking. Snape pursed his lips watching the toad called Trevor making the boy look like a joker in front of all the occupants of the train. A boy of eleven, yet so unsure of himself.
He went back and flipped through those memories until he saw the boy in his little rusty room hunched over his new potions textbook. Neville Longbottom had gone through the first few chapters. Next, he looked about a little more and saw him standing on his toes watching his Granny make a simple pepper up potion greedily. He heard her stern voice," Now, Neville, don't you ever touch these things, they are not for children to play with. If you touch, be sure of it boy, She will know, and she will come back!" The child gasped and ran away.
There were many references to this unknown 'she'. Snape gritted his teeth unaware of the anger boiling in his veins. The idea of terrorizing a child in order to discipline him did not sit well with him. At least he did not stoop so low today to refer to his parents, the potion master tried fishing fresh excuses for his outburst hours ago. The son of brave Aurors growing up like an orphan. Sounds of soft snores brushed against his ear and he retreated instantly from his mind to find the boy fast asleep. Creeping close to him, he knelt on one leg and lit his wand with a whispered 'Lumos'. Neville had strikingly pale chubby cheeks with several tear tracks on them, pouting lips and tousled hair. He looked like those sad cherubs, Snape had seen in his Cokeworth Church.
A soft 'Scrogify' got rid of those sordid reminders of the boy's grief. He checked him closely. Madam Poppy had indeed got rid of those painful boils. Snaking one hand below his knees and the other under the nape of his neck, he picked the boy up, easily enough. Walking slowly through the corridors, he stood in front of a portrait of a furious and proud ginger cat and drawled," Felis, get Minerva." The cat hissed and then checked his arms and looked back into his eyes trying to read him. Swishing his tail, he disappeared behind the red curtains hanging in the backdrop of the portrait. The boy in his arms snuggled closer to his firm chest and mumbled," Dad, I no longer feel so cold. Wake up soon." Severus swallowed hard and blinked a couple of times.
The door clicked open and Minvera Mcgonagall, wrapped in her tartan robes stared at him and whispered," Severus, it's three in the morning...what...who is this…" She stepped forward and looked at the bundle wrapped over the potion master's arms. Then tutting her tongue, she gestured to him to follow her inside. Snape strode in and lowered Longbottom on the couch closest to the fireplace, which the witch had lit up as soon as he crossed the threshold.
Watching the sleeping boy, she worriedly asked," Where did you find him?" Snape was standing with his back turned, watching the flames of the hearth. He whispered," four corridors away. Don't make the mistake of thinking he is another case of homesick child and it will wane off once he starts making friends." He didn't wait to hear the Scottish Woman's reply, picking up some floo powder from the bowl over the mantle, he threw it at the fire. As it flashed green, he threw the meaningless words," goodnight" over his shoulder, and was off to his own quarters.
Hobbling to his cupboard, he brought out a tumbler and poured some firewhiskey trying hard not to let it slouch. He was trembling all over, with emotions he thought he would never feel. Emptying the contents in a single swig, he allowed the glass to fall from his hand and crash against the flagged stone. He was such a fool. An utter idiot, he thought he would have to deal with one Harry Potter. He laughed at his own foolhardiness. 'Severus Snape, you think you are smart?", he mocked himself," Time is smarter than you, lad." There would not be one Harry James Potter to deal with, there would be many. Down the years the number of those children was increasing steadily. Only Poppy and he noticed it. The Headmaster was blissfully pretending to be unaware of it. Minerva, Flitwick, and Sprouts managed it through sugar-coated criticism. They left the dirtiest of jobs for one Severus Snape.
He whispered into the cold air, the fireplace hardly alive. "Innocent minds are no longer so innocent, look behind every pair of eyes, you see the horrors they have seen." That night Snape tossed and turned, thrashed at his bedsheets. Nightmares were his bedfellows. Every night he would see the same thing. And each time he woke up, it started with the same routine, a series of gibberish words and then a piercing scream," No, not her, Lily!" a blinding green light, an echo of menacing laughter and a persistent cry of a small boy trapped in his own crib.
After eleven years, tonight, Severus Snape dreamt of Bellatrix Lestrange and her singsong way of casting the Unforgivable curse, "curio".