As the weeks went on, Lucius used Severus' ability to perform magic to its fullest extent. He taught him all the curses he knew, warning him that he'd need to stick up for himself at Hogwarts. Severus was starting to feel slightly nervous about attending the wizarding school now. Although, he considered, it would definitely be worth it to get away from his father and the constant arguing he did with his wife. But all of a sudden, or so it seemed to Severus, it was the last day in August. The night was clear, quite mild, and Severus strolled back to his house feeling nothing more than slight trepidation of tomorrow. He'd packed his trunk and neatly folded his robes, polished his wand, read all his schoolbooks at least three times each. But as he drew closer to the house his heart sank as he heard the angry shouts of his father. Cautiously, he looked through the kitchen window, half-hidden by the limp green curtain hanging by the side and partly drawn. His mother was wincing as his father twisted her arm behind her back, snarling. She cried out;
"Alright! You win!" he let go of her arm, a horrible, satisfied smile on his face. Severus hated seeing that. He wanted to smash the window with his fist, a feeling that intensified as he saw a glimmer of tears on his mother's cheek. He slipped in the back door and quietly climbed the stairs to his bedroom, closing the door immediately and silently. He lay on his bed, looking miserably at the ceiling.
"Hogwarts has to be better than this place," he said quietly to himself, lying there for hours listening to the distant sounds of his mother sobbing. His father had gone out to the pub. Severus considered going to her, but couldn't seem to summon up the energy to move. Eventually, the sobs died down to an almost silent level, and Severus presumed she must have gone to sleep. It was about 1am. He could see the moon through the window from where he lay. He must have fallen asleep, too, because the moonlight suddenly became brighter and filled the room with its iridescent beauty. He got up off his bed, went to the window, and opened it. There was an owl outside, flying towards him - or was it an owl? He slammed the window shut as he realised what he was seeing was a swarm of hornets. They buzzed angrily against the glass before swooping down towards a giant red bush on the ground, which burst into flame and disappeared, along with the hornets. Then it began to rain. The rain got heavier and heavier, until the sound of it falling on the roof was almost deafening... Severus opened his eyes and blinked a few times, realising the sound he had taken to be rain falling on the roof was his father tapping on the door. Well, tapping was a bit of an understatement. A more accurate description would have been almost knocking the door down. Clearly he was in a very bad mood. A hangover would be the cause of that, Severus thought grimly. And banging doors around all over the place wasn't really going to help... oh well. He wasn't likely to tell him that. He got out of bed and dressed quickly and quietly before trudging downstairs.
"What would you like for breakfast, Severus, dear?" asked his mother as he appeared in the doorway. She looked strained. Severus noticed a shadow of a bruise beginning on her face. It wasn't the first time he had been greeted with this sight at breakfast. His father sat at the table, sleeves rolled up, head resting on his hand, eyes screwed up. He held a mug of steaming tea with his other hand. His dark hair was beginning to turn grey.
"Just some toast, thanks," he replied, "I'll make it." He crossed the room towards the toaster and put a slice of bread in. He caught his mother's eye and she looked away, embarrassed, as she saw the look of concern Severus wore. He took his toast as it popped up and sat down at the table to eat it. "What time are we leaving, father?" he asked politely as he spread butter. His father glared at him across the table. He quickly turned his attention to his plate.
"Half eight." he said curtly, catching Severus' eye with a steely glare which made him look away again. "If you've finished your breakfast, you can go and make sure you've packed everything properly. I'm not wasting time and money sending stuff on to you that you've forgotten." Severus put the last piece of toast in his mouth and left the room. Once in the corridor, he was aware of how tense the atmosphere in the kitchen was. He shrugged the feeling off and ran up the stairs two at a time, happy to be getting away from here at last. "Severus!" growled his father from below. "Do you have to make such a racket?" he didn't answer the question, but slowed down to a walk so as not to make any noise. Once in his bedroom, Severus sat down on the bed, fingering the ticket which had come with his second Hogwarts letter. It was printed on thick parchment; almost card; and in green ink, like the letter.

Hogwarts Express
Kings Cross Station, London
Platform 9¾
11:00

It said. He glanced around the room. Everything was in its place, all tidied away. You wouldn't know a boy lived here, Severus thought suddenly. In Lucius' room, even in termtime there was evidence of him. A jacket carelessly left on the back of a chair; the bed unmade; dirty magazines hidden under the bed, probably, he thought, grinning. Mrs. Malfoy didn't often clean in Lucius' room. But here... here all of Severus' (very few) possessions were packed away in his trunk, ready to take to Hogwarts. It was as if he had been wiped from existence. He heard his father shouting from downstairs.
"Coming!" he replied, dragging his trunk out of the room and down the stairs, outside, into the car. The journey wasn't pleasant, to say the least.

Severus began to feel nervous again as his father drew up outside the station, found a parking space, (by magic, one could only guess,) and accompanied him onto the platform. His father generally avoided crowds when he was sober, and Severus noticed he looked strained and almost nervous himself.
"Right, son. Let's just- let's just keep this short." Severus couldn't care less whether or not his father said goodbye to him, or how long or short it was. "Study hard. Make me proud. See you at Christmas... or in the summer, maybe. Send me an owl. Have a good time." He clapped a hand on Severus' shoulder, waved and retreated into the crowd. Severus looked for Lucius, and after a while spotted him chatting to a boy with messy brown hair.
"Lucius!" he called. Lucius broke off his conversation and he, the boy with brown hair and a few others turned to stare at Severus. He felt very small.
"What?"
"Can I sit with you? On the train?" Severus didn't notice the brown-haired boy draw a finger across his throat, but Lucius did.
"Piss off, you little freak!" he said incredulously. The brown-haired boy laughed, as did a couple of others behind him.
"We ain't having any snotty little first-years in our compartment!" said a girl, chewing gum and tossing her head haughtily. She blew a bubble, which popped. Severus felt stung by this reaction.
"But we're friends!" he cried. "Bl-"
"Yeah, whatever." Lucius interrupted in a careless tone. "See ya later, alligator!" for some reason the rest of them found this hilarious and couldn't stop laughing. The girl blew more bubbles at him. Severus walked away and left them to it. He decided to go onto the train and find an empty compartment. Most of them were occupied, but he found one right at the end which had nobody in it. He slumped down on the seat and waited for the train to start moving. He didn't have a watch, but he guessed that about five minutes had gone by before a crowd of third-years had joined him.
"Anyone in that one?"
"No... well, some first-year kid."
"Oh, he won't mind. Will you?" he addressed Severus, who shook his head.
"Alright, we can go in here!" a girl called down the corridor. Two boys and four girls entered. Severus resigned himself to digging through his trunk in search of the little black notebook he had found behind the sofa and filled with the curses Lucius had taught him. He flicked through it, mouthing the words to himself as the almost unbearably hot day slowly cooled to icy night. He had a system he had developed for himself, to make long lonely hours he spent by himself go by quicker. He couldn't explain how it worked, it just came naturally to him. It came as a shock when one of the third-years spoke to him.
"Scuse me," she said, "Scuse me, I don't know your name, but would you like some chocolate?"
"Oh! I mean, yes, please. Sorry."
"No need to be sorry. We're going to be there soon, do you think you should get changed? What is your name, by the way?"
"Severus. Yeah, okay. I'll go in the toilet"
"It's outside and to the left. My name's Mia." She handed him a square of chocolate.
"Thanks." He took it and his robes and went to change in the toilet, thinking maybe Hogwarts wasn't going to be that bad, if all the people were like Mia. It was quite dark when he got back to the compartment. Mia and her friends were playing Exploding Snap. They didn't ask him to join in, but he didn't want to anyway. Severus pressed his nose against the window, trying to make out anything beyond his reflection in the glass.

That night was a strange one for Severus. Although a combination of the excellent food and travelling all day seemed to have made the other boys in his dormitory fall asleep almost immediately, Severus remained awake. He sat on the windowsill, breathing in the chilly night air and gazing at the stars. He wondered about his mother - whether she was alright. He felt almost guilty for being here, safe, while she was at home... with him. Severus would have cut off his own hand rather than admit it, but he missed her terribly already. A midnight breeze blew through the window, and it was the raw feeling on his cheeks that this gave him which made Severus aware that there were tears coursing down his face. He sniffed and quickly wiped them away with the sleeve of his pyjamas, lest any of the other boys should see, and crept back to his bed, where he drifted at last into fragmented sleep.