Author's Note:
School: Ilvermorny
Year: 5
Round 2: The Ring
Theme: Write about a character's opinion regarding a legacy
Mandatory Prompt: [Occupation] Gymnast
Additional Prompt(s): [Genre] Drama
Special Rule: None
Word Count: 2,162
Role: Exchange 1 — Year 5
AU tag/explanation: I don't think we learned enough about Tobias to know whether this was true or not, but I will call it AU just in case. :)
Beta Thanks: Thanks to my teammates for helping me to tighten to my prose!
Warring Legacies
"Again!" Tobias Snape barked at his young son, who lay groaning on the patchy grass of their miserable back garden.
"Da, I—think I—ugh—broke something," Severus gasped, his hands aching with blisters from spending hours on the rings.
He'd hoped that when his father had told him they were taking a break from arm drills, it meant an actual rest. Instead, he'd been led out to walk on the four-foot balancing wire that his father had strung between their building and a metal pole in their squalid back garden. It was grueling work, and Severus didn't have the balance or grace to contort himself properly to stay on the line without falling.
"If you can still talk, then you're fine. C'mon! Brush yourself off and try again!" His father loomed over him, holding out a calloused hand.
Severus took it, wincing as he tried to breathe. He looked down at his grimy, chalk-dusted feet and begrudgingly acknowledged that the sharp pain in his lungs wasn't nearly bad enough to need a doctor, which was good because his father hated doctors. A dented tin cup of water was thrust into his hands, and he drew it to his lips, shivering as the cold water sloshed over the side and down his chest.
"There, now you've had a break." His father fixed him with tired, red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes developed by a third shift at the mill and helped along by the gin that dulled the pain. "You're going to need to be a lot better if you want to honour the Snape family legacy."
Severus tried to suppress a groan of irritation. His father had been going on and on about "legacy" this and "legacy" that for years. Severus didn't think that he should have to follow his father's dreams. He had his own dreams, and none of them involved traipsing about on rings, poles, and tumbling mats. What use did he have for the life of a gymnast when he could be a wizard instead?
Tobias Snape, on the other hand, had grown up in a traveling circus. His parents had trained him as an acrobat, and young Tobias had been a natural, mastering the high wire at the age of six. One summer, a member of the royal family had hired their troupe to perform at his daughter's birthday party, and Tobias Snape had done an excruciating routine that had ended with a perfectly executed triple flip. Impressed, the patriarch scouted the young boy and paid for a scholarship for him to become a gymnast at his alma mater. He'd eventually become such a talented gymnast, that, by the age of seventeen, he'd been selected to represent Britain for gymnastics at the Olympics. An unforeseen shoulder injury had dashed his dreams once and for all.
"I don't see why this is so important," Severus grumbled into his cup.
"You wouldn't, would you?" Tobias sneered at his son, raising one arm as though about to strike him, then winced and rubbed his shoulder in pain.
Severus was already halfway across the yard, staring with baleful eyes at the swearing man. Sometimes he wondered if his father had only decided to have a child to saddle his offspring with the dreams that he had lost.
A memory came to Severus' mind unbidden.
"I used to be able to fly," Tobias Snape had told Severus one night, nose nearly dipping into his drink as Severus kneaded at his father's bad shoulder. "Now, my wings are clipped. Permanently. Yours, though…yours are young and strong. You will be a fine gymnast and bring honour to our family."
Severus tried not to hold it against his father, but he honestly couldn't care less about how the older man regretted being unable to realise his dreams. Tobias hadn't given up immediately after he'd lost the ability to run through the rigors of a professional-grade routine himself. He'd even done some gymnastics coaching for a time, but all the skill he had at controlling and contorting his body did not translate to skill at instruction. His short temper and tendency to raise his hand in anger soon left him without any career aspirations beyond backbreaking mill labor.
Severus curled his arms, looking down at his scrawny legs with disgust. He was wiry and small for his age, just like his father had been. He hated that, no matter how hard he trained, he only ever got stronger without any visible muscles to show for it. No matter how much he stretched and contorted his body, he was still shorter than most of the girls at school. He'd been tumbling into rolls and cartwheels since he was practically a toddler under the shouted "coaching" of his father, but it had all become more and more tiresome ever since he'd learned that he also had an aptitude for magic—real magic. Tobias still thought it was all a load of bollocks. They'd had to come to terms with the truth when Severus experienced his first accidental magic incident at the age of five. His father still thought it was not properly grounded in the body. Severus had found it harder and harder not to retort that magic was as much a part of him as his own bones.
"Get back over here, boy, or you can sleep out here tonight!" Tobias shouted, the pain in his shoulder seemingly forgotten.
Severus knew that there was no option but to comply. He slowly made his way back over to the other end of the wire, his eyes on his father. Tobias stood with his hands on his hips as though he had no memory of the casual violence from minutes before.
"I'm ready to go again," Severus said dully, placing the tin cup on the ground.
In one smooth motion, he vaulted up into the air, landing back on the little platform set up at one end with the sort of precision that spoke of too many terrible falls and hours of practice. He tried not to glance back at where his father stood with his arms crossed and his mustache wiggling beneath his nose like a worm catching a particularly bad scent. The wire wasn't more than four feet off the ground, but if Tobias thought it was unusual for a ten-year-old child to be able to leap his own height, he said nothing about it. Severus, for his part, did his best not to look smug. He'd been practicing in his free time, after all. Not the gymnastics stuff, of course, but in working out the limits of his magical abilities in small and subtle ways.
His mum wouldn't be taking him to get a wand until after he got his Hogwarts letter, but that didn't mean that Severus was going to live like a Muggle in the meantime. His father constantly got on his case for borrowing the fortune-telling robes his mother had boxed away in the attic, but it made Severus feel more like a wizard. Out in the yard, he was wearing a sweat-stained undershirt and a pair of shorts that made him feel even scrawnier and more vulnerable than usual. It didn't help that Tobias Snape was not above giving him a few whacks on the bottom if he dared to give him any lip.
"Now, like we practiced—balance down to the end and back."
Tobias clapped suddenly, and Severus felt proud that he was able to stop himself from flinching at the sound.
Instead, Severus closed his eyes and focused on the sensation of the wire beneath his feet. He imagined tiny little hairs, like those on a garden spider, protruding from his skin. He could feel an itchy heat spreading out from his toes to his heels, then delighted as they caught on the wire. He could feel his confidence spike as he took a step forward.
"Very nice. A single step. We don't have all day, Severus," Tobias growled sarcastically.
Severus felt his lips twist into a sneer. If the old man wanted him to hurry, then he'd hurry, all right.
He moved forward, his feet growing lighter and less shaky with each step. He dropped his arms and soon, he was picking up momentum until he was running at top speed. There was a moment when his toe wobbled and a flash of fear gripped at his throat, but then he vaulted into the air. He gripped the metal pole that line was attached to and twisted around it like a whip, letting go and sticking back onto the line.
He didn't even glance at his father as he started to move, then, gathering his momentum, he leapt into the air, calling upon the invisible wings that Lily had described when he'd asked her how she'd learned to float. They weren't actual wings, but the magic acted like a parachute, allowing him to catch the air, slow down just a bit, then land on the wire again. By the time he got to the end of the line, he was grinning with a wild pride that filled him up like a flame.
"See? I told you, boy. Practice makes perfect. Now, do ten more." Tobias made a brushing gesture with one hand as though unimpressed.
As he turned back around, Severus noted that his father was not smiling. Instead, there was a cold flame in his eyes, one that Severus wouldn't be able to place until much later in life.
Severus Snape hadn't realized that he'd need his gymnastics training at Hogwarts. Within the first week of schooling, he'd narrowly escaped at least a half-dozen messy ends. Some were at the hands of the idiotic duo, Potter and Black, and their ridiculous vendetta against him for being in Slytherin. The castle, on the other hand, provided additional deadly challenges.
Severus was on his way to his first Transfiguration class when the moving staircase in front of him suddenly twisted and broke apart. Lily had stopped to tie her shoe and he had turned his head back momentarily to see what she was doing when it happened. She screamed just as Severus touched open air with one foot. His body reacted instantly. He bounced back on the heel of his other foot, then pushed off the landing and grasped at the banister on the retreating staircase above. Using the momentum of his leap, he twisted around and rolled over it onto the steps, rolling one ankle but managing to land otherwise unhurt.
"Wow! Sev! That was amazing!" Lily's jaw was nearly on the floor as she stood on the lower staircase that was swinging away. "I guess I'll see you at Transfiguration in a bit. I'll be taking the long way around."
Severus felt his cheeks colouring as some of the other students on the staircase gave him a smattering of applause. He didn't feel comfortable being acknowledged on a good day, but it was especially grating that it wasn't magic that had brought such recognition.
The glossy wood under his palm was a far cry from the splintering pole his father had forced him to work on for hours, but the memory of it brought bile to the back of his throat. Gymnastics. Acrobatics. Feats of agility and balance. Sure, it made him hard to hit and harder to catch, but what good was that when all he wanted was power and respect? Nobody respected a tumbling fool who was one bad fall away from climbing into a bottle and never coming out again.
"Balance, Severus. Gymnastics is all about balance," his father would say, ruffling his hair as Severus limped back into the house. "You will bring that balance back to us."
Severus sneered and tried to scrub away the memory of the fondness and pride in his father's eyes. No. His legacy would be magical. His mother's side of the family, the only good blood he needed.
"I am the Half-Blood Prince." He wrote in the old copy of Advanced Potion Making that he'd smuggled into school, despite it being his first year.
Already, he was managing third year spells, and making minor modifications to others. With any luck, he could one day create a grimoire of his own, and ensure that his magical legacy would never be forgotten. Severus would show his father what that accursed word really meant. He would take his rightful place as the next powerful member of the Prince line, and he would finally be free of his father's foolish Muggle gymnastics legacy. He didn't need balance. It was time to seize the power burning within him and take back his true birthright.
With a twist of his wand and a muttered incantation, Severus practiced levitating himself into the air, a satisfied smirk twisting his lips.
"What use is the false flight of a gymnast when a wizard can soar?" Severus chuckled to himself, his pen already itching to add to the margins of his textbook.