Chapter Twenty-One
It was the shouting that woke Severus up.
He rolled to one side, half-wondering if he was still asleep and having a dream, when the door to his bedroom flew open so hard, the doorknob dented the plaster under the wallpaper when it hit the wall.
And there, after nearly two months, was his Aunt Lobelia, dressed in her customary black, looking as angry as he'd ever seen her.
Another witch and a wizard were right behind her, red-faced and angry themselves, though trying their best to compose themselves in front of the boy wizard. All three of them had their wands clutched tightly in their hands.
Severus felt the blood in his veins turn to ice. Whatever Aunt Lobelia had in mind, it couldn't be good.
"So," she said, in that viciously grating voice of hers that she reserved for when she was most displeased with him, "this is what you've been up to, you miserable cur!"
"Miss Prince!" cried out the witch next to her, in obvious horror. "This is uncalled for!"
"You'll be lucky not to land a stretch in Azkaban for what you've just done downstairs," chimed in the male wizard, shaking his long head in mixed disgust and disbelief. "Stunning the boy's Muggle benefactors like that."
Bloody hell, Severus thought, as his insides turned to water. She dared to attack Dad and Mom and Becky...
"And was I supposed to just let that little mare, that – that girl – bite into me?" snapped back Aunt Lobelia, waving around her left arm; the sleeve of her dress was indeed torn at that point, revealing a bony forearm. There was a set of child's teeth marks around the one fleshy spot of that part of her arm.
Well done, Brat, Severus found himself thinking, even as he tried to move for his wand without being seen doing so. If only Aunt Lobelia and the others would stay distracted by arguing amongst themselves, he could perhaps Apparate away from here and get help...
"Perhaps she wouldn't have bitten you if you weren't doing your best to be unpleasant to her and her family," the red-haired witch said in that sort of low, tightly controlled voice one adopts right before throwing the grandest of wobblies.
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" the wizard said, cutting off Lobelia's retort to the red-haired witch. "He seems to be doing well enough right where he is," he said, indicating Severus' bedroom – and by implication, the Stunned family downstairs – with a wave of his hand. "And you really weren't interested before –"
"I am now!" hissed Lobelia, stamping a black-leather-shod foot on the floor. She shot Severus a venomous look. "No offspring of my sister's is going to live as a cursed Muggle! Not when I have the power to prevent it!" She turned towards the wizard, a cruel smile on her face. "You know what to do, man," she said, in a voice of creaky menace.
The wizard looked at her aghast. "You cannot mean it!"
Severus suddenly knew what was coming next. He could feel his life with the Nortons, with Julie, all his chances at happiness, slipping away like mist through his fingers.
Lobelia's smile grew even crueler as it grew wider. "I can, and I do." She paused a moment before sinking her next barb into the wizard's flesh. "It's your duty as a Ministry employee to fulfill my wishes as his next of kin."
"But to do that –"
"I don't want any Muggle taint on him, Rostand, d'ye hear me? NONE!"
The wizard she had called "Rostand" turned a sad face towards the boy in the bed. "I'm sorry about this, lad," he said, as he pointed his wand at the boy. "Obliviate!"
And suddenly for Severus, the world went fuzzy.
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Another bed, twenty-two years later:
The Potions master felt himself in free fall yet again, his spirit plummeting toward some unspecified doom even as his body remained secure in his bed, in his chambers.
Severus John Prince Norton... Severus Snape?
Who am I? Who should I be?
Who can I be?
Help me, somebody... please...
He really wasn't expecting that last to be answered, as he fell helplessly to his doom, but it was.
The – something, that same recurring something that kept coming in to save him, saved him yet again, surrounding him in a soft pink haze that felt like a feather bed. The something that was a someone, but whose name he couldn't quite place at the moment.
I won't let you fall, Severus...
The next thing he noticed was that he wasn't falling anymore, but standing on what passed for solid ground in his dream-world. A man was standing in front of him.
"I can't tell you how good it is to see you again, son," the man said, extending a work-worn, sunburned hand to him.
Severus then knew that the man was his Dad, and the pink mist was Julie.
He wanted to run to his Dad, to hug him and never let go. But the memory of the last twenty years intervened, and stood between them like a brick wall.
"Please, go away, sir," Severus said, turning away from John Norton's outstretched hand. "I have no right to be your son. Do you know the things I've done in my life?"
"Albus told me all about them, son."
Dream-Severus turned around to face the man. "He has? Dumbledore?"
"Yes, he has, son. He's a good man, your boss."
Severus looked down at John Norton's seamed, smiling face. It had acquired a few extra wrinkles in the last two decades. "And... and you still..." His dream-self paused, not quite able to say the words without breaking down.
"I always have, son. And always will."
It was a lovely dream, Severus thought as he felt himself suspended halfway between sleep and wakefulness. But of course Dad's not here. Or Julie. The things I've done, the life I've led – they could never forgive that...
"You're not real, Dad," he said, as he felt himself being gathered up against the buttons of Dad's shirtfront. It was such a perfect illusion; he could even feel the round can of Copenhagen Dad kept in his shirt pocket. "Merlin knows I wish you were. But you're not..."
"You bet your sweet bippy I'm real, son," said the voice of his Dad. My, how efficient Severus' subconscious was, to create such a good illusion; it had thrown in a slight quaver into his memory of John Norton's voice, to add in the twenty-odd years of aging to make up the difference between 1974 and 1996.
"Dad, how can you be real? How can you be real and still forgive me?"
"Forgive you for what, son?"
"For – for being a Death Eater. For being everything you would never have wanted me to be."
The nonexistent strong arms around him gave him a big squeeze. "But you're not now, son. That's the important thing." Another squeeze of those illusory arms. "If you were really as bad as you think you are, you wouldn't be sorry over what you've done."
"You make it sound so easy," Severus said bitterly, feeling more than uncommonly foolish for arguing with an illusion. "You make it sound as if I'd done nothing worse than break a window. How can you do this? How can you trust me?"
"Because, son. Just because. I don't need a reason to trust my own son."
"But I'm not your son, Dad!" Severus cried out, his anguish contorting his features as they tried to burrow into the comfort of the nonexistent flannel shirt. "I don't deserve to be your son."
"'Course you do, Severus. 'Course you do."
"Dad..."
The arms about him felt so strong, so real. And Severus could even smell the Copenhagen in the can, the moist aroma of fresh chewing tobacco filling his nostrils, so close they were to where the can sat in Dad's shirt pocket. Severus could even feel himself being propped up in his own bed, in his own bedchamber at Hogwarts.
At Hogwarts...
Severus tensed, and ran a hand tentatively along the sleeve of one of the illusory arms. His fingers felt flannel cloth, and hard muscle and bone underneath.
He had the sensation of swimming upward, of breaking the hazy, shimmering surface of his dreams and entering into a new, harshly-lit but extremely clear reality.
The Potions master was fully awake now, though his eyes were still closed and his face still pressed against what he still feared was the illusory flannel shirt of his illusory Dad. In a mixture of hope and trepidation, he slowly pulled his face away from the shirt, opening his eyes at the same time.
And, as he looked up, he saw looking down at him, in the flesh – the real, undeniable, living flesh – the smiling, weatherbeaten face of John Bennett Norton, his Dad.