"I got you for ten bob, Hermione. Ten bob! That was my price at the time. Ten bob!"
Her mother swayed in the threshold to Hermione's bedroom, leaning slightly to the right, with an empty bottle of wine clutched tightly in her wavering, pale hand. Empty. And there would be 5…10…20 more strewn around the house. The living room directly below would be covered with bottles – green, clear, but all depressingly empty, stood on the coffee table or on the thick carpet around the sofa. Some would be knocked over carelessly as her mother walked out, a last dribble wetting the carpet and making it stick up in thick spikes. A glass would be standing on the coffee table too. Before she gave up on the glasses and resorted to swigging out of the bottle. She took one now. A great, gulping swig that made her eyes water.
"Ten bob." Her mother muttered under her breath, before turning her back on her daughter and stumbling off, hands held out in front of her like a zombie, so she could be guided by her 'friends'. Hermione watched her go, and let out a long deep sigh of relief when she was fully out of earshot. She'd heard that one more than the others.
There was a shatter from the stairs, as the wine bottle broke on the floor, and a clattering whirl of arms culminating in a dull thud as her mother fell down the stairs. There was no reassuring 'ow', so Hermione assumed she had either knocked herself out on one of the wooden banisters or fallen into a drunken stupor. Either seemed just as likely.
I wish this would all end…I wish I did have this in my life were the last longing thoughts Hermione had before she let herself fall into a pitch blackness that was deep sleep. Little did she know, she would always regret those thoughts…
*
An extract from Severus Snape's diary. Encrypted.
*
It's hard to know where to start with this. I suppose I could tell you were I was born, what it was like when Mum was still around, what stupid things I did to the milkman when I was a little kid, all that kinda stuff, but it's not really relevant. Or maybe it is. I don't know. Most of it I can't remember anyway. It's all just bits and pieces and random memories. Bits of things. Things that may have happened – scraps of images, vague feelings, faded photographs of nameless people and forgotten places – that kinda thing.
Anyway, lets get the name out of the way first.
Severus Snape.
Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it. It doesn't bother me much anymore. I'm used to it. Mind you, there was a time when nothing else seemed to matter. My name made my life unbearable. Severus Snape. Why? Why pick a stupid name like that? I could have had a normal name? Why me? Keith Watson, Darren Jones – something like that. Why was I lumbered with a name that turned heads, a name that got me noticed? A funny name. Why? My parents always had been into weird names. Even though they are muggles.
I've always wondered if I was cursed as a baby to have a rubbish life. I'm different at home because I'm a wizard, and I'm different at school because I'm muggleborn. Very different. I don't know how I managed to get into Slytherin. Probably because I was thinking about smashing my Dad over the head with a glass bottle at the time. I hate my Dad. And he hates me. He blames me for Mum leaving. But that's rubbish – Mum always loved me, much more than she loved him. Me and Iphigenia were the only things keeping her there. She left because of his drinking and his wastefulness.
This – what I'm going to tell you about – it all happened just over a year ago. It was a week before Christmas and I'd just come home from Hogwarts. Or Xmas, as Dad calls it. Exmas. It was the week before exmas. A Wednesday.
I was in the kitchen filling a plastic bin-liner with empty beer bottles and Dad was leaning in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, watching me through bloodshot eyes.
"Don't you go takin' 'em to the bottle bank," he said.
"No, Dad."
"Bloody enviroment this, enviroment that…if anyone wants to use my empty bottles again they'll have to pay for 'em. I don't get 'em for nothing you know."
"No."
"Why should I give 'em away? What's the enviroment ever done for me?"
"Mmm."
"Bloody bottle banks…"
He paused to puff on his cigarette. I thought of telling him that there's no such thing as the enviroment, but I couldn't be bothered. I filled the bin-liner, tied it, and started on another. Dad was gazing at his reflection in the glass door, rubbing at the bags under his eyes. He may have been quite a handsome man if it wasn't for the drink. Handsome in a short, thuggish kind of way. Five foot seven (I towered over him at six feet even though I'm only sixteen) , tough guy mouth, squarish jaw, oily black hair. He could have looked like one of those bad guys in films – the ones the ladies can't help but fall in love with, even though they're bad – but he didn't. He looked like what he was: a drunk. Fat beer belly, florid skin, yellowed eyes, sagging cheeks and a big fat neck. Old and worn out at forty.
He leaned over the sink, coughed, spat, and flicked ash down the plughole. "That bloody woman's coming on Friday."
'That bloody woman' was my Aunty Ophelia. Dad's older sister. A terrible woman. Think of the worst person you know, double it, and you'll be half way to Aunty Ophelia. I can hardly bear to describe her, to tell you the truth. Furious is the first word that comes to mind. Mad, ugly, and furious. An angular woman, cold and hard, with greasy, lanky black hair and a face that makes you shudder. I don't know what colour her eyes are, but they look as if they never close. They have about as much warmth as two depthless pools. Her mouth is thin and pillar box red, like something drawn by a disturbed child. And she walks faster than most people run. She moves like a huntress, quick and quiet, homing in on her prey. Probably derived from being a teacher. She's the only other witch in our family. I used to have nightmares about her. I still do.
I hope I never end up like her.
*
Disclaimer: Don't own.
So, everyone liked the first chapter, so what about the second one. I will be giving some more Snape diary later for all you Snape lovers. And there will be Draco as well…review! Review!
Kara