Continuation of Frozen Woe, part three
**************************************************************************************
**************************************************************************************
The past. July 1, 1973. Night.
His father was wearing the ageless dress robes, brought out only on special occasions. Now though, the robes have went from being 'shiny black' to 'worsened ill fitting velvet', thanks to Severus' education. Much changes between the age of six and seventeen, including vocabulary.
His father was a bit restless that evening -- so much so that Severus knew to stay in his room, avoid the rush. The house was filled with an unidentifiable energy, foreign and overly tiring to the lazy pace of normal operations. He knew this for sure when his food was served to him, in his room, by his mother.
"Stay in here tonight," she said, gently placing the steaming plate of classic beans and rice on his desk, pushing aside notes and parchment.
"What else would I do?" he replied sarcastically. His mother gave him a look, and looked toward the door.
"It's important that you do not leave the room Severus -- " she looked toward the door again, as aware as a frightened rabbit. " -- your father..."
"Yes," he responsed in the tired way of being told so many times the same truth. Why does his mother feel the need to verbalize something so obvious?
He continued to read, mentally shoving his mother away. She stood there a moment --Severus could see her wring her hands out of the corner of his eye-- until she got the message and leaves, gently looking toward the door.
He finished his sentence and looked toward the beans. The steam was rising from it, and for a moment it was like Severus had never seen the effect in his cold room. It was new -- interesting -- the way the curling of the white vapor kept forming itself over and over again. Severus watched it for a minute or so, then forgot about it. He turned back to his book, one about archaic uses for toad's warts, and read. Every once in awhile he could hear something from the living room that resembled a laugh. Every once in awhile he would wrap the blanket around him a little tighter.
***
It must have been about an hour or so after he lit his candle when his stomache growls. He was reminded that he had not eaten all day, and supposed that he should eat, if only because he was a human being. He was truthfully astonished when sitting down at his desk he found a cold bowl of beans still sitting on the rice. The spoon laid placidly next to it, and Severus picked it up and pokes the food. He took a bite.
He could not explain it then, nor would he explain it to himself later why this simple action seemed profound and meaningful. He supposed later in his life, in his quiet pauses of melancholy, between the hectic life of a double agent, that he, in some way, felt like the lowly beans before him. Cold. Plain. Shunned for the other foods when available. And though he at seventeen could not articulate this thought, and though at forty he refused to, he still felt it. He was cold, and for the first time in a long time he wanted the sensation of heat in the gut of his stomach.
Severus gently opened up his desk drawer, took out papers and such, and pulled out his wand hidden out of sight, out of mind. He had not used it at home before, through fear of the law coming and taking it away. But now, at seventeen, nothing held him back. He could cast the spell and warm his food and perhaps even stop shivering. But as he held the wand poised, he stopped. It was the classic confrontation with the unspoken taboo. Since he was seven, he had not seen magic done at home. Since he was seven, magic had been removed from his home life. He had learned quickly not to discuss his studies here -- at least, related to what his father called 'foolish -wand waving'.
[A\N break: SORRY! It had to be said. I know this is so cliché, but it fits! Think about it. ]
Potions were fine. So was Divination and Arthimancy. He even had a conversation about Potion theory once and awhile with his father, in one of his calm periods.
He, in his young age, did not question this irregularity; it had taken him ten years and seven years of wizarding school to realize there was something to question.
But here, the use of this -- his wand -- it was like committing a sin against the family.
He put his wand down, and stared at it. What stopped him? What, if anything, kept him back besides a little family taboo? Why did he feel so guilty to even consider something for his own pleasure?
In a rash move, he grabbed the wand and pointed it at the food. He paused again, still being held back by the idea of the dirty, gritty, voluntary warmth. Personal weakness. He could live with cold beans. It was his fault he didn't eat it when it was warm. He wasn't good enough for warm food. He went to put the wand up --
And a scream -- a shrill scream rang through the house. Severus jumped up, and grabbed his wand.
Something odd happened. Severus left his room -- wand out -- aware. It was a newly familiar sense, one he accumulated with seven years around the damned Marauders. He stopped before the door to the living room. He heard his mother scream again, and his father dimly say --
"I told you about bringing that up -- especially in front of them!"
"I know you told me Adolphus," he hears his mother sobbing and crying. Pleading.
"Why the hell did you say anything? Huh? Had to speak up like the little commie-pinko-femminist bitch you are? Exercise your fucking rights?"
"I couldn't let you insult him like that!" she screamed in desperation, in midst of a sob. It created a strangled effect, and for a moment Severus considered turning around, going back to his room. He actually is turning toward the room when he hears his mother choke:
"Severus is a good kid!" she strangled out "I -- I won't let you insult him."
"You won't?" Severus could barely hear his father's whispered "Crucio" through the door.
The bang of the door opening was timed exactly to his mother's body hitting the floor. She was on the floor, writhing, screaming. His father has a wand, pointing directly at his mother's figure.
"What the hell are you doing to her?" Severus demanded, wand pointing directly at his father.
"SEVERUS! GET OUT! GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM!"
"Shut up, Lucretia." his father said very quietly. He turned to Severus and pointed his wand at him. For a moment the thought ran through Severus' head that a father should not be threatening a son, but he supposed, in idealistic times, a son should not be threatening a father.
He stood there frozen in the stance, and all Severus could see was the point of the wand and his father's searching, wild eyes.
"Don't you dare raise your wand at me, boy. Put. It. Down."
"I will when you put yours down."
The flush rose in his cheeks. His mother laid writhing on the floor in pain. Nonetheless, neither of them moved, nor lower their wands. Severus could feel his heart beating with a untold excitement, fear, and thrill. It made him feel feverish.
"Fine," his father said nonchalantly.
"Fine," Severus responded coolly. "By the way, where'd you get the wand?"
"None of your damn business," his father spat. "If you know what's good for you," he continued in a low, threatening voice, "then you will get back to your damn room and not come out for a week."
"I'm sorry, sir," Severus said, voice verging on the edge of sarcasm, still maintaining a bare illusion of respect, "I tried to follow your instruction, but the screaming of my mother seriously impeded my studies."
"WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN YOUR MOTHER AND I IS NONE OF YOUR AFFAIR --"
"I CANNOT STAND BY AS YOU RUTHLESSLY BREAK LAWS --"
"WHEN HAVE YOU CARED ABOUT LAWS? ALWAYS TAKING MY GODDAM BOOKS --"
"Severus -- Adolphus -- please!" He could see his mother try to pull herself into a kneeling position. It almost broke Severus' heart. Almost.
"YOU FUCKING MONSTER!" he yelled. He gestured with his free hand at the figure of his mother. "LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO A WOMAN! A WOMAN! A USELESS, WEAK WOMAN WHO CAN'T EVEN DEFEND HERSELF --"
For a moment, there was a collective pause. All three of them froze. His father lowered the wand just a little. His mother, about to stand with the aide of the furniture, fell at Severus' solemn heated pronouncement.
Slowly it dawned upon him what he said.
He lowered his wand, and made his way to his mother. He reached for his mother's arms.
"Come on, Mum. Let me help --"
"Don't help me," she intoned from the floor. She grabbed the armchair and hugged it, not looking up to Severus nor at his father, who just stood there. The cold push blasted Severus like nothing ever before. He stood up solemnly, and looked down at his mother, crying and disheveled as she pushed her hair back, who looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. He felt taller and more the adult now; he looked to his father who now wore an ironic smile.
"So you feel that way too?" he asked.
Severus looked back at his mother. She had quit trying to get up and sat dejectedly on the floor, muttering their names.
He looked back his father. An immeasurable rise of hate for this man, the man whom he had detested in one form or another, and then realized that in avoiding him, he had become him.
"You monster." Severus stated plainly.
"You have to be to survive," his father said simply. He then turned attention to his mother. She looked up from her netting of hair and looked to Severus wild, unbridled, and distraught.
"Stop staring at me! Stop STARING! BOTH OF YOU! STOP!" she shrieked.
She then grabbed the armrest and with a mighty heave lifted herself to a standing position, almost toppling over the chair in the process. She leaned to the right, wobbled in place, which made Severus think she broke her foot. Her face contorted in a mixture of pain and anger --
"The both of you are unfeeling, male chauvinistic PIGS!" She rounded on Severus, placing both of her hands on the armrest and almost lop siding again over the armrest.
"You're as bad as him," she said dangerously. "Just because you think I'm a woman, that I have a Muggle great-uncle, that I was in Gryffindor in Hogwarts that I'm worth nothing! It DOESN'T MATTER, ADOLPHUS!"
She swaggered toward him, possessed. If her foot was broken, it made no difference.
"THAT WAS IN SCHOOL! IT DOESN'T MATTER! HOUSES, SCHOOLS, COUNTRIES -- THEY DON'T MATTER! THEY DON'T FUCKING MATTER, ADOLPHUS! WHY DO YOU FEEL THE NEED TO BELITTLE ME BASED ON MY BACKGROUND!?! DOESN'T IT MATTER WHO I AM?"
His mother took one look at Severus and completely shamed him. When she spoke next the tone had the horrible colouring of inevitability, of fate and such.
"If you're not careful Severus," she stated quietly, "you're going to turn out like your father. You're well on your way. All you need to do now is grow up, and you'll end up teaching Potions somewhere."
With this final condemnation, she fell into a chair and started crying again. Severus turned to his father. His father merely turned inward, presenting the same uncaring face Severus knew.
"If you threaten me like that again, I will not hesitate to kick your ass," his father said monotonously.
"If you threaten me like that again, I will not hesitate to kick your ass, father." he replied calmly.
He knew he deserved punishment. He knew he had broken one of the cardinal rules. Several of them. And yet, whether it was the idea that he was an adult, or the profound statement by his mother, or the chance he could get his father arrested by the use of an illegal spell, caused none of that to happen. Instead Severus merely switched views, looking at his mother, then his father, then the space between them in a daze of the mind.
"Say a word about what transpired tonight, and I will not be responsible for my actions," his father said quietly, pointing his wand threateningly toward Severus.
He did not fear the point of the wand anymore. "I will say naught a word," he responds.
Still on the fumes of the argument, he looked to his mother and saw her frailty in a new light. As much as it had hurt him to hear her pronouncement, he knew she was right. He could not help if his cold nature is a direct result of his environment. And for once, for perhaps the first time, he wears that look of unconcern, similar to his own father's, that so many students have become acquainted with.
**************************************************************************************
**************************************************************************************
The present. December 21, 1986. 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
"Hello, Mr. Snape. Come in."
A woman opens the door, and welcomes him into her office. He stops in the doorway. The person already seated turns toward the door, sees Severus, and glares.
Severus purses his lips and turns to the bright red-head next to him.
"I will reschedule this meeting --" He turns to leave.
"Oh, sir, please, it would make it easier for me if both of you are here." She moves to block the doorway. If Severus did not have an ounce of social adroitness, he would have pushed the woman out of his way and left.
Instead he merely stopps moving. He turns back to his father, who now is facing forward. Even the sight of his profile irritates him; the same proud and cold profile he had observed silently for so long.
"No, no, stay, Severus," his father says, turning to the door. "Surely you do not want to inconvenience Miss...."
"Valentine, sir. Lucienne Valentine."
"Miss Valentine, then." Severus narrows his eyes and makes no move to hide his contempt. His father is trying to manipulate him, even now. And though his clothes had gotten a little better, and his hair is a bit greyer, Severus still recognizes the lying, scheming, thoroughly disgusting man who was his father.
Severus slowly came into the room, trying to not look at his father, remaining perhaps a little more expressionless than usual.
"Please, sir. Sit."
Severus looks down to the other empty chair, and sits down carefully.
The handler for the estate walks jauntily to her desk. Her red hair, cut in what Severus supposes was a fashion, bobbed around her face. He supposes it is a pleasing face, but he quickly suppresses such thoughts.
"Now, your wife, Adolphus --"
"I would you prefer you call me Mr. Snape," his father says quietly.
The red-head does not stop a moment. "Okay, your wife, Lucretia, left behind quite an amount of wealth and land property."
Severus watches his father nod his head once. And while Severus knew of no inheritance, he neither says nor indicates otherwise.
"Now, Lucretia was fortunate to perceive the complications that her death would create," the redhead says plainly, and puts her elbows on the table, entwining slim fingers with long red (obviously manicured) nails.
"She, from her grandfather, inherited several Muggle properties which will have to be handled through their law office -- their laws regarding deaths are different than ours. You will have to contact the office yourself -- here's their card."
She pulls out a business card and givesve it to Severus' father. She proceeds, almost ignoring Severus --
"As for her wizard properties, she had an annual payment of 2000 Galleons a month from her father's death which she was not allowed to touch as long as she was married."
The smallest of sneers appears on Severus' father's face.
"Now, in her will -- " here the redhead pulls out another piece of parchment -- "she dictates that an apartment and....10 Galleons a month be decreed to her spouse, if any --"
She looks up at his father. The slightest hint of disappointment and anger now crosses his father's countenance; Severus found himself feeling not in the least bit sorry.
"We will arrange that with Gringotts, Mr. Snape, and payments should start within the month."
Severus' father could not glare at her, Severus notices. He has enough sense to know that this girl is not the one who brought his miserly life; for that's what 10 galleons meant, even worse than what Severus had experienced as a child. Instead he glares at the card of the Muggle funeral executive.
"She has written -- very explicitly, so there are no loop holes that our lawyers can determine, that one son, one Severus Snape, should receive the full sum of both her allowance and the remnants of her original inheritance."
She looks at Severus. "Sir, you are now a very wealthy man."
"How much is the inheritance?" Severus merely asks. The redhead looks down at a note and says, with somewhat of an air of premature happiness, "Eight hundred and sixty-two thousand, nine hundred and twenty three Galleons."
Her smile betrays her job. That was...a lot of money, Severus reasoned. A lot. More than he had ever seen or heard. And it was his, all his....
"Is that with or without the properties?" he saysid in the same tone as before. Miss Valentine's smile dims a little.
"With the properties. Now, I'm going to need you to sign a few things..."
She withdrew papers from her desk. With a slight smirk toward his father who sat seething innwardly, Severus leans forward so he could sign.
"Okay..this one is to notify that you understand the terms of the will...this one agrees that you are responsible for all taxes on properties, this one signs all deeds to you."
He signs them, feeling a pang of contempt for his father.
The redhead quickly withdrew them, and waves her wand first across his signatures, and then across the papers themselves. She taps her desk once and with a foggy POOF a set of identical papers, on blue tinted parchment, pops into existance. The smoke is thick and white, causing Severus to cough a bit.
"Sorry, sorry about that," the red head apologizes. Severus could see her red fingernails dissapate the smoke. He notices his father coughing also, and it gave him a savage pleasure to see him suffer.
When the smoke cleares, she apologizes again. "I've only been at the job for about two weeks, and that's the first time I've done that alone. Forgive me?"
She looks to each Snape. Strangely both glares at her with a remarkably similar glare.
"Okay -- these are for you, Severus--"
She hands the blue copy to Severus, who took them as if they were dirty.
"Now, unless you have any questions, we're all done here!"
She looks at them expectantly. Severus turns to his father; he is astonished to find his father turning to look at him. He sees the same feeling of hatred for this woman -- this stupid woman who had no business even holding a wand --
Severus froze. He is thinking in that way again, the way that he was thinking when he left his house that summer night, after he yelled at his mother and threatened his father.
He turns and forces himself to address the woman. "I don't have any questions at this time, but I will not hesitate to contact your office should any arise."
"Great!" She checks her watch, clinging fashionably to her wrist, and then stood up. Both Snapes stand also.
"Well, though it was nice meeting both of you, I am sorry that it had to occur under such circumstances." The touch of seriousness was not real, Severus saw. It is as ephemeral as the vapour in his cold room.
"Thank you," Severus muttered, and strides out through the door, grateful to leave the presence of his father.
He heard, to his anger, but also expectantly, the offbeat footsteps of his father following him, getting quicker. Trying to get up to him. Well, Severus reasons, he is quicker; he will beat the old man, get outside, Apperate to Hogsmeade, and leave this burden.
He gets outside. Immediately a cold December wind hit him; there is no snow falling, but it laid clumped underneath Severus' feet. The door did not slam behind him; instead the damned footsteps follow, their transition to the snow evident by the change in crunch.
Severus whirls around. "I do not wish to speak with you," he spat.
"You're not going to pay respects to your mother?" his father retortes.
"No." He turns to Apperate --
"God-damn it Severus! Do you not care at all for your mother?"
Severus pauses. His hair flew all around his face; now he pulls a strand or two back to see his father. Whether it was the coolness of the weather, or the burning hate within, he saw his father now, not as tall, not as menacing, just...pathetic. The years have done well to diminish his father's authority, so Severus thinks.
"I told you, I wish to not speak with you--"
"This is not about me!" his father hisses. "Your mother is DEAD, Severus! Show her some damn respect and get your ass in there!" He gestures impulsively toward the warm interior of the funeral home.
Severus does not respond immediately. When he does though, his voice is so quiet, almost temporal itself, and very cold. One has to strain to hear it over the howling wind. "I will respect my mother as the person who gave birth to me. But as far as I am concerned, she was not my mother in the most caring sense of the word. Now, if you please, I have duties--"
"You have duties as a son! You were the only thing she had, and when you yelled at her--"
A wild, unbridled passion rises to strangle his father; he flies for his father's throat and clutches its collar. Severus, already taller than his father with his bent back, glares at him. His father makes no struggle, just stands defiantly.
"Don't you dare bring that into the situation," Severus says murderously. The wind still whips and wrangles around them, but Severus did not notice it."I do not know if you have gleaned this little fact about me, father, but I am a rather private person, and prefer to grieve in private. Especially if the service is for your own pity benefit, fulfilling some pathetic subconscious desire to somehow apologize to my mother about what you put her through during your marriage--"
"-- You know NOTHING of our marriage!" his father spat -- Severus' instinct is to look around him, see if anyone else is coming. No one -- Severus had chosen a back exit. "NOTHING!"
"I think I have a pretty good idea, considering I lived in the same household for eighteen years."
"Boy, watch your smart mouth--"
His father reaches for his wand; Severus let go of the collar, whips his wand out, and jumps into full dueling position out in the back alley.
An amused expression spreads over his father's face. "Don't be an idiot, boy."
"I am not a boy."
His father laughs a few chuckles, lost in the wind, but Severus stands there, not moving, not amused. His father turns away; he finds his son still staring at him with that same determined face. Severus watches his father's face morph into one more concerned. Worried. Then fearful. For once, Severus is satisfied in making his father sweat, and that balanced out the pain in his bare hands. He was gripping the wand so tightly his knuckles were white.
"You know," his father muses, "if you attack me, like I know you want to do, it would be considered assault. You would get ten years, easily."
"Yes, but if you attack me, like I know you want to do, it would be considered self-defence."
The pause between them is as icy as the weather. His father pulled out his wand, and Severus almost got excited. After apparent thought, and frequent glances at Severus, he slipped it back into his pocket.
"It's too cold to fight out here," Severus' father comments offhandedly. Yet Severus saw the turmoil behind those black eyes, and he likes what he sees.
"I agree," says Severus, slowly putting his wand into his pocket, and then his hands. They felt like two ice cubes.
"Inside?" his father says, gesturing toward the door.
Severus looks toward the doorway. He imagines the warmth of the room, juxtaposed to images of that incompetent woman's fingernails, and further imagines his mother laying quietly, but altogether dead, in some cheap wood box so that only a few friends and neighbours could come see a woman that many only really had pity for, and not adoration. Severus did not even know if she thought of him -- he could not help but see her glaring vices echoed from long ago..
"She always talked about you," his father mutters. "Always wondered where you had went after you left that night, what you were doing, why you hadn't written. 'I wonder what Severus is doing now?'," he mocks cruelly, "'Have you heard from Severus?' 'Where is Severus?' All damn day and night."
His father poppes a knuckle and continues. "And when she was dying, she would go into these spasms, screaming into the night your goddamned name. Cursing herself, and me for pushing you away."
He turns to the wall of the funeral home, face in deep thought. For a moment Severus swears he really did see regret in the old man's face. But he did not trust the assumption; he did not know regret as well as deceit, lying, hatred, contempt.
And yet having his father, his father, of all people, tell him that he had been called for, he had been wanted, he had been desired....It challenges the coldness of his heart, and for the first time he considers going and paying his respects to his mother. He actually takes a step toward the door --
Wait. He must not go. This woman still did not defend him. She stood by while his father abused him, hid in her corner and just screamed 'stop it Adolphous, stop it' while it was he who took the blunt of the blows. Some caring mother she was, didn't protect him one bit.
He turns to leave. He makes the motion to Apperate--
"Your name was her last word!" his father yelled.
Severus turns once more. "You lie."
"No I'm not." His father hobbles toward him. "I was there -- she said 'oh Severus' in the most pitiful way, and died."
Severus stares at his father contemptuously, almost not believing and at the same time believing. His father has taken a sort of unnatural turn. He is pleading, nose a little red, eyes a little wet, or it might have been the wind. But the wind knew to stop when he came forward in one last attempt.
"Please, pay some respect. If not for me, for her."
Without another word, Severus Snape Apperates out of the alley.
***
Back to Hogwarts, his wonderful Hogwarts where he could hide and play the superior. He knew, and yet did not know at the same time, that he had become his father. His father's words made him think of himself (an overly unpleasant experience), and whether he was only hiding behind his father's cold impersonal logic, or whether it was really himself, that it was just a coincidence that he too teaches Potions, or some other reason unknown to him.
His uncertainty annoyed him. His racking pain he felt in his heart defied everything he believed in. His enigma wanted to worm its way into his every waking moment, but he forced it down. He had to, to deal with the environment. Cold, sterile logic was what he needed now, to plan lessons for the next year, acquire ingredients, develop new practice NEWT and OWL questions, teach.
Maybe his job would eventually quash his emotions, he thought. Suffocate it, till it loses its warmth. He determines he shall wait until it does. Meanwhile it is quite uncomfortable. Of course, he muses, he is used to pain. Just...not this kind.
FIN
Note: I know nothing about British law regarding the division of property so I have taken American law. Usually the spouse receives a certain percentage and the child receives a certain percentage, but if the documents are well-written, any individual arrangement can be and is recognized by law. This includes the petty allotment of allowances to the father, and the massive cash pocket Severus received.
I realise that Severus comes off as a bit of a misogynist. For this context, I find it fits. Actually, I would not be surprised if we find out Snape is a bit of a misogynist. It would serve the raving fangirls right to find out he hates women.
Please tell me if you enjoyed the story, or whether it is bad. Hit the 'Review' button.