Chapter 17
Misuse of Magic
FLASHBACK CHAPTER - These are NOT chronological from the other flashbacks, the flashbacks are generally around certain other chapters in the present for plotty reasons
WARNING - FLASHBACKS IN DARK WORLD ARE DARK! There is violence ranging from bloody/injuries to abuse to physical punishment, etc, Voldemort times, you all know what that means. It's evil. If that's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip!
The yelling in the dungeon hallways grew to a ridiculous level as soon as the fight had broken out. It was not an uncommon occurrence, but starting a fight anywhere within Professor Snape's domain was far less common than anywhere else in the castle.
It had all started simply enough. A 3rd year Ravenclaw by the name of Forsythe, who happened to be a favourite of the Dark Arts professor, had been trying to get a rise out of a 2nd year Slytherin all the way down from the 3rd Floor, taunting him the entire way. Fighting was not universally frowned upon, so picking fights was something of a pastime among the more violent types.
But what was uncommon was that the 2nd year target was Professor Snape's only son, who was about as easy a target as a stone statue twice his size. Even as a 2nd year. And, generally, none of the student body wanted on Professor Snape's bad side either.
Pureblood on pureblood attacks were pretty much entirely forbidden, and few would have the guts to attack the kid of one of the Dark Lord's original Death Eaters, so the spectacle drew a rather large and mobile crowd. Clumps of students who followed the pair down all the stairways hoping to see something really good.
Snape was younger and smaller, but he habitually blasted the ever living crap out of much older students in Dueling Club. And Forsythe was just vicious and known for pestering ickles and Mudbloods. If spells broke out, it would be the scene of the week!
"Slytherin couldn't find a better Beater than you, Snape? The bat is bigger than your arm."
"Your head is bigger than your brain," the younger one said back, bored, with a sigh.
"Your head is bigger than the rest of your body. You sure you aren't some kind of half-breed goblin?"
"Just. Go. Away. Is that the best you can do? This isn't even challenging. Get more creative. You're supposed to be a Ravenclaw."
It continued on with several more exchanges, creeping more insidious. Forsythe started hitting on barbs with slightly more dangerous implications. Things that went against the order of things.
"I think you like the half-bloods too much, Snape. You some sort of Blood Traitor?"
That was entirely ignored. But Forsythe had some balls, because if Professor Snape heard that, it would not have been pretty.
"Don't want to answer." The Ravenclaw chuckled, "You know I don't see you playing with the Mudbloods and Blood Traitors on the Wall much."
No answer.
"I wonder what that means when you're such a Daddy's Boy."
And that, finally, did it. Snape tossed a leg-lock at the boy which, on the stairs, was actually quite nasty. It was blocked and the spell-battle was on. Students moved down the stairs and up the stairs away from them in a great clamor of arms and legs.
Forsythe had the advantage of the upper ground, but he kept advancing down to the dungeon, idiotically not keeping the advantage in his heedless pursuit. It would leave him vulnerable at the bottom of the stairs.
One of the students fleeing down into the dungeons away from the combatants had run to get Professor Snape, who, at that point, had no idea it involved his own son. Nobody in their proper mind would want to be the one to deliver that news.
Just beyond the bottom of the steps, it happened. Forsythe went flopping to the ground with blood seeping on his chest and arm. Snape went flying fifteen feet into the opposite wall and then smacked onto the floor with a grunt, air knocked right out of him from the impact.
At this point everyone went running away, afraid of being caught up in whatever was going to happen now. You only used that nasty of a spell on those strung up on the wall for that very purpose. Not in a corridor pissing contest.
A Slytherin 4th year girl came flying into Professor Snape's classroom unceremoniously. He opened his mouth to tell her off but didn't get the chance.
"Professor Snape! Sir! There's a huge fight!"
If the screaming of tortured victims in the dungeons corridors was not enough noise to bother him, some seriously mentally deficient sods thought it a bright idea to fight not one hundred paces from his office?
Judging from Miss Blake's gigantic eyes, it wasn't just another fight, so he was up and out of there, leaving her far behind in his wake of black robes.
"STOP IT THIS INSTANT!" he bellowed, arriving in time to see the last of the straggling observers flee for what could have been their lives judging by the speed.
It did not take much for Professor Snape to recognize his own son's thick black hair as the student closest to him, just getting onto a knee from the stone and with nary more than than a bloody elbow and a cut on his chin.
The other student, a Ravenclaw, was bleeding so profusely that he knew precisely what spell had hit the boy. Precisely what spell his own son had chosen to use against another student.
He saw Carrow coming from the other direction toward the Ravenclaw (a little too fast to have come from his office or classroom), and he knew that the student was Forsythe. It was too convenient. Forsythe was Carrow's little minion, and Carrow disliked his son for the mere fact that it was his son.
With a growl he grabbed the robes and arm of his namesake and lifted him right off the ground before any other staff could get involved on that end. He gave one look to make sure Carrow had the damage under control before dealing with his offender. He had intended to march the boy off, but he found he was so angry that he was not even patient enough to wait for those too-short legs to rush along in terror.
Trying to breathe out slowly through his nose to calm himself even a little, he waved the door to his office open and then slammed it shut behind them. He had not been this angry in a very long time. Certainly, he had not been this angry at his son…perhaps ever.
Wheeling the boy around to face him, with his feet fully on the floor, trapped between him and the closed door, he leaned down to stare his son directly in the face.
"Show me," he hissed, shaking the boy, who looked appropriately terrified. He wanted to see what had happened and if there was any remotely acceptable reason for what his son had done.
"Dad, you're scaring me."
"The time for 'Dad' is long past," he grit between his teeth. His son had audacity. He knew that it was long past. He knew better. He knew better than to pull out the whimper of 'Dad' on him when he had every right to be every bit as angry and disappointed as he was just then. "And good, I intend to scare you, fully. Now show me, or you will have a blistering headache on top of whatever else I choose to do with you when I look by force."
"Please, sir. I can't focus when you're hurting my arm."
With the amount of Occlumency and Legilimency they practiced and had done for years, and how often they did this very thing, it had been an easy request. The boy was stalling. He was stalling and being foolish, because he was afraid, and that was also rather unacceptable considering.
"And now you're LYING to me!" He saw so much red he almost choked, and he was not used to any lapse of his own control. Where his son was concerned, though, it was not as easy to be completely unaffected. To push beyond the emotion of it, because he had plenty of emotion right now. The boy needed to see how angry he was, needed to know, needed to feel it, right down to his core.
What he had done was beyond unacceptable and inexcusable.
The boy shook his head, that he wasn't lying about not being able to open his mind with his poor hurt arm, which was double-lying. His son knew he was caught and doubled-down on the idiocy.
Apparently, he Severus Snape inspired more terror when upset than meeting the Dark Lord, which Sev had already been subjected to, because his son looked about ready to have a meltdown, and it was simply ridiculous by comparison. If the boy could not meet the consequences head on, he definitely should not be doing spells like that.
Suddenly, the Potions master spewed forth everything he was thinking, not in controlled lecture, but in pure blunt-force truth. The whinging just was not going to do.
"I'm hurting your arm?! And what did you do to that other boy, hmm?" he shook his son by the poor hurting arm again. "And you mean to tell me you cannot open your mind to your father through a little sting on your arm when you can close it at will in all sorts of heinous circumstances and far more painful? You are lying to me, because you surely are not going to plead such nonsense as truth! Now, pull yourself together right now, and you tell me what you did that merits a little discomfort in your poor little arm?"
"I hurt him," his son croaked, clearly unable to get out anything more sophisticated.
"Sir."
Now he'd hopefully stop complaining about his poor hurt arm when he'd just willfully done far worse to someone else.
Yes, the boy knew precisely what he had done by the look in his eyes, only inches away. Too little, too late. He took a deep breath, "Now, immediately stop whimpering so weakly about a situation you willingly walked yourself into, foolishly right outside my door, I might add." He was almost too infuriated to immediately deal with the situation. "And stop acting like a child. You have no right to. Not after what you just did. Not after the caliber of magic you just did." Breathing evenly was such a chore. "Are you going to show me or take the headache? Because I'm going to see it either way."
"I'll show you, sir. You're going to be angry," his son whimpered more. Insufferably so.
He growled, "I'm already angry." Obviously.
And when he looked in the boy's mind at what Sev showed him, his son was right. Anger might not even cut it. That was the only feeling bubbling up within him he recognized well. The others were ones that were fairly foreign to him but no less intense.
It was the blow of fatherhood that hit him hard enough to give him pause, absolute hard-stop pause. The combination of disappointment, anger, loss, hurt, responsibility, and perhaps failure that only his own son could ever do to him - and finally had done - was almost overwhelming.
He blinked through what might actually be classified as fury. He could not swallow because he was holding his breath as he stared at that face that was holding back tears with a jaw so tense you could see it in the boy's neck.
If he starts crying, Merlin help him.
"Go stand in the corner," he finally managed to say when his speaking faculties returned.
And the boy actually let out a "W-what?" in response, and then tacked on a very hasty "sir."
He realized he was still grabbing his son's arm, and he used it to fling the boy away from him, toward said corner, because they needed to be away from each other. This was not how he did things.
"You aren't deaf! You heard me. Tell me, when is my son coming back?!" His exasperation spilled out further. Yes. The boy definitely needed to be away from him. The kid was not thinking straight, and he was well on his way to not thinking straight either as a result.
Was he wrong to expect more? Sense? Control? Responsibility?
From the crackling breath, he knew his son was close to tears again, and he hissed at him. "You had better not. Control yourself. And do as I said." He pointed a thin finger at the corner of his office furthest from his desk. He could not get any sentence out longer than a few words. There was a time when tears could be remotely acceptable and this was absolutely not it.
The reality was suffocating him as it seeped further and further into the situation. He rubbed the tension in his face and forced himself not to gnash his teeth.
All it takes is just once and to enjoy it…If he ever turns into Scorpius…
He would have to make sure the boy never fathomed enjoying such a thing after the consequences of it, but first, he would have to calm down. Letting the miscreant stew in the corner would be a good start. For such an active mind, the lack of stimulation was rough, and he knew his son would be unable to do anything but think about what was going on, and that's precisely what he wanted him to do.
A piece of him found it absolute justice if the boy created his own worst case scenarios of what his punishment would be and lived them out in his mind one after another. That mind had very vivid visualization skills thanks to Occlumency training.
"If you just crossed your arms, I would rethink that decision, boy," he said, as he sought the refuge of his desk, putting a solid object between them. That directive was closely followed by, "Look at the wall, not me. Last I checked obedience doesn't require eye contact."
Sev had known he had made the worst sort of mistake the moment the spell left his wand, but it was not something that you could ever just take back. No, his spell hit his target and it might as well have been hitting himself.
The sound when it hit. Like a whizz-sploosh echoed in his head. He squeezed his eyes, but that really didn't help. Though he'd not been able to move right away when he hit the wall and ground, he had craned his head enough to make sure he wasn't about to get killed before he had gasped for air that wouldn't come. He had seen the blood on that white shirt on the other end of the corridor. Then he'd smelt it.
Now he was staring at the corner. Like a child. Feeling like a worm.
Feeling like the uncleaned guts of a worm that had feasted on dead bodies. Because he couldn't unsee it, unsmell it, or unhear it. And he certainly couldn't unfeel it.
He couldn't even feel his fingers or his face.
Quietly, he tried to pull in the sniffle of his nose so it didn't run down his face. His hands were shaking; actually, his whole body shivered now and again, no matter how hard he tried to stop it.
His father rarely did anything that was not perfectly calculated, so to see the stoical man so beside himself made Sev lose every aspect of his composure he could have tried to manage to wrangle even after what he had done.
He let himself lose it until his father barked at him both to control himself and not to cross his arms, reminding him that he was unacceptably in the beyond just by that tone of voice. It required real effort taking struggled breaths through his nose and pressing his soft palate with his tongue to strangle in the tears that threatened.
While everyone in the school might think his father foul and hot-tempered, the sort who would yell and beat his son regularly, a necessary image he did nothing to dispel, that was nothing like what the man truly was with him.
His body's resolve was revolting against him, likely because Sev was now imagining that maybe he had finally done something so meritorious of it that his father would beat him. As in beat him good. That had never happened before, nor had he ever fathomed it, but he was fathoming it now no matter how out of character it would be.
He had also never disobeyed one of his father's most principle rules before. Now he'd done more than one in one fell swoop, so all comfort in punishment history was somewhat lost. He bit his lip.
You do not do magic out of anger. You do not disrespect the power of advanced magic. You don't go out of your way to hurt people.
I wish I could see if he was calming down or getting angrier.
That was a lot of blood. What if I killed him?!
He rubbed his fingertips together as he stood. His hands were so cold. He knew it was a stress response, the same as the shaking, but it did not make it any easier to will it away.
Without otherwise moving, he put his hands in his trouser pockets to warm them up.
"Hands out of your pockets. You know better," his father said in that slow, dangerous tone. His patience was truly down to the last thread.
Is he staring at me staring at the wall? Sev knew better than to turn around and look after being ticked off for it the last time.
"Sir…my hands are freezing."
There was some sort of a sound. He wasn't sure what it was. His father put something down with displeasure or exasperation.
"The physical state of your hands at the time does not make it any less disrespectful to shove your hands in your pockets," his father censured him sharply. "Thank yourself for your discomfort, you'll garner no sympathy from me. Honestly, your hands are cold, boy? After what you just did! Suffer. Through. It." There was a certain disgust in the voice, and a disbelief perhaps.
His own child had just done far worse than make someone cold. He could have killed that Ravenclaw boy. And considering how exacting your aim had to be, he could have killed an onlooker or more than one just as easily.
When his son folded his hands behind his back again, he added, "Were I you, I would think to limit my vocabulary to three words until my tongue attaches back to my brain. You seem to be entirely in leave of it, and I have no more patience for you."
It took less than fifteen seconds for that to sink in, and he adopted the barely veiled directive, "Yes, sir…"
It was barely more than ten minutes and he was forced to hiss yet again, "Stop fidgeting, Severus. I am growing rather appalled with your lack of control, and you are not leaving that corner until you get back in touch. You are more than capable. This is inexcusably foolish and weak to give in to yourself selfishly. After what you just did, you have no right to be self-concerned in the very least."
Apparently real trouble with his own father was the thing that tore the boy down to defenseless. So long as it never translated across to any other situations, perhaps that was fine.
He felt undone himself. Watching his son use one of the nastiest curses that was not an Unforgiveable - his own spell - with the proficiency he had taught the boy the spell for use against fully grown adults trying to murder him or others - aggressively against a Ravenclaw boy in the hallways - was still physically painful a quarter of an hour later.
Another twenty minutes went by, and thankfully there was stillness from the corner. Not that he planned to give his son a reprieve anytime soon. He was still far too agitated to discipline him properly, and he made it a practice of never doing that when he was not calm.
A rapping at the door ripped him from his thoughts.
"Unless it is an emergency, I'm busy!" he barked at the door. "Get a prefect!" He had enough to deal with at the moment; whatever it was could wait.
"Severus, it's Dolores," came that peachy venomous voice from the other side.
Fatherly protectiveness flared up in him, trumping any displeasure he had with his son entirely.
This was a super hard flashback chapter to write, as is the one that follows this up bc I split it into two parts, so drop me a note if you liked it and let me know what you liked!
What do you think is going to happen when Umbridge arrives?
What is in store for our favorite Snapes?
REVIEW NOTES
J - You have to get to know Sev a bit more before the action starts and he needs to know his new world. As to the name thing, I decided to let him tell it when and if he wants to. Right now, he's struggling with the loss of his dad, so he's rather attached to his name and it's one of few things that's familiar to him. I didn't want to rush it.
Guest 1 - Yes, it's wholly innocent as you point out but that's when to make sure it doesn't get out of hand too, for the exact reasons you say. Plus, Sev is small bc he hasn't really hit puberty yet, so he has very little interest in girls and zilch interest in girls romantically (nor boys). He struggles with emotions, trust, and touch from his old world, so it would take quite awhile for him to even be capable of anything like that anyway. But that doesn't mean that boy's bodies aren't doing all sorts of things, whether they get it or not! I particularly loved the Finite too.
Duj - So beyond my PM review reply, I do just have to say that Sev's muse really quite loved it when you said his dad would be proud of him and amused. Like his voice was super chuffed about that. Plus, I like your vision of characters and esp Snape, so that feedback means a lot!
