A/N: I originally had the Snapes in Coventry (midlands), but then I wanted to move them to Lancashire (north west), before ultimately changing course to Backbarrow in Cumbria (further north and west). The cottage industries in Backbarrow included an iron works that dated back hundreds of years (and is credited as housing the first effective blast forge of its kind). Anyway, the definition furnished by Wikipedia for Coke is: "a grey, hard, and porous fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ore smelting, but also as a fuel in stoves and forges when air pollution is a concern."
Cokeworth easily could have resided in coal country instead given the name, but I always imagined that because of the name Spinner's End, it suggested an affiliation with the textile industry, which was largely based out of Lancashire and Northwestern England. Backbarrow apparently also was home to some kind of cottage industry of spindle makers which seemed far too appropriate, and a number of cotton mills.
"Oh mama what have I gone and done?
With all these years that I've been gone
My life changed me way too fast
I don't know if I could last"
"Mama" – Godsmack
Nine days into the new year saw Hermione and Eileen at London's Euston station waiting together for a ticket to Burneside.
Hermione was encountering far more difficulties with planning their course to Backbarrow than she'd anticipated for the trip. It wasn't by any means easy to make it into the isolated village in the heart of Cumbria, particularly by train, and consequently she had been standing over a map of the stations pointing to various stops along the way, trying to find the most direct route into Cokeworth, a tiny community on its outskirts, as she could manage without having to find another means of transportation after the train. It was hopeless.
Additionally, there were no direct routes into Burneside—their trip would require a change in Birmingham New Street, and even once they had reached Burneside, she knew they'd likely have to take a cab to reach Cokeworth itself, which existed on the outskirts of the Backbarrow factory districts. She expected it to cost a small fortune.
"Bugger it all," she muttered under her breath, reaching deep into her puffer coat pocket for her money. "That's fine," she then announced, more loudly this time for the man in the kiosk to hear. From the look on his spotty face he was becoming increasingly frustrated with how long the two women were taking. "We'll take two—"
A pale hand, long of finger and lean, interrupted her as it appeared between her and the teller, slapping down a number of notes onto the partition. "Three. We'll take three."
Hermione scowled as she craned her neck to the side, knowing whom she'd see. "What're you—?"
"I'll not have you taking my mother to Cokeworth alone, Granger." Snape eyed her in challenge. He seemed curiously under-dressed for the weather, wearing only his new Christmas cardigan over a black shirt.
She rolled her eyes, and darted a look back at Eileen, who was turned away and observing the other patrons of the platform with what seemed like a bit of nervousness. It didn't appear that she'd noticed her son had materialized yet.
"You came all the way from Nottingham just to escort us to Backbarrow?" she hissed to him. He only shrugged.
"It's not so far when one doesn't insist on such mundane means of travel," he said with a small, unkind sneer at the trains.
"Your mother was adamant that we not apparate."
At this his face registered resignation. "Of course she was," he looked like he almost wanted to roll his eyes in frustration. "Just as well—I'll not have you traveling alone to Burneside by," and here he lowered his voice considerably to not be overheard, "muggle means, and certainly not on to Cokeworth. It's not safe."
Hermione frowned up at him, "Sure it is, Severus—"
His eyes hardened with urgency. "This isn't a negotiation, Hermione."
"I'm quite capable of taking care of us,"
He only shook his head, his expression one of iron resolve. "Cokeworth wasn't safe when I was a boy. It wasn't safe when I lived there during the war. It isn't safe now—least of all for two women,"
"What does that have to do—"
"Will you listen?! Christ, Granger—I don't want you two assaulted. Only one of you has a means of defending yourself, and all it would take was for one person to distract you enough to nick your wand off you, or knock it out of your hand, and you'd be served up for supper by a local gang.
"Use your head and forget your ego for a moment: you're small. You and my mother are both small, and she's elderly and unarmed! Additionally, you're not exactly what I'd call a skilled duelist—I taught you in Defense, I would know. The boys in Cokeworth travel in packs—even a trained Auror might have a hard time if he were surrounded by ten lads with switchblades all at once."
"Severus?" Eileen had finally taken notice of the small argument and had approached them from where she had been gawking at the other patrons. "What are you doing here? Won't you be seen?" She asked, her voice urgent as she surveyed her son's natural features.
The man in question snorted and crossed his arms, "In Euston? Not likely." He passed them each a ticket and began to lead the way to the platform they'd be departing from. "What would a wizard be doing in Euston?"
"The Birmingham rail—"
"Mother, it may have escaped your notice, but unless a witch or wizard is traveling to or from Hogwarts, as soon as we learn to apparate, most of us do. I doubt the community in Birmingham is any more accustomed to rail travel than are the blue-blooded purists residing in Wiltshire,"
"Incidentally," Hermione broke in, her voice conversational, "There aren't any more pureblood enclaves in Wiltshire,"
Snape raised an eyebrow at her, clearly interested, but he evidently decided not to pursue his curiosity any further. "And so it may be. Nevertheless—I'm perfectly safe to be myself here. The advantage of being presumed dead is that no one ever expects to find you or thinks that you're the person they remember."
He helped his mother into a waiting car and took her coat, making a fine mimicry of folding it when really he had shrunk it to fit into a small brown paper bag he was toting with him. He held his hand out to Hermione expectantly, and after several beats, she relented and handed her coat to him as well.
It was rather toasty in the train car, after all.
"Anyways, Mam—you don't really think I walk around Nottingham dressed as Tony, do you?"
Eileen gave an affronted snort and pierced her son with her gaze, "I don't pretend to know what you do or think anymore, Severus. It's been thirty years—two weeks doesn't make that big a difference. I still don't know you from Adam after all this time apart."
If Hermione didn't know any better, she'd have thought she'd detected a hint of woundedness in Snape's small grimace, but it was gone before she could decide what the emotion might have been.
"As you say." he acknowledged, finally.
"How did you know we'd be here anyway?" Eileen needled him as she took her seat and crossed her ankles underneath her pressed-together knees, ever a lady.
Snape took a seat on the far end of the bench, which left the middle for Hermione to settle into. "Please, Mother. You were hardly discreet when you asked Granger to accompany you. While I don't relish a trip back down memory lane," he intoned with cool asperity, "I certainly wouldn't have refused you if you had asked me to come,"
"When you've not been there in thirty years?"
Snape shot her an annoyed grimace. "Try eight. You might have abandoned the house, but I didn't. I lived there throughout both wars—which is why I happen to know that it's a far less safe community for you and Granger to travel alone to than you remember from the late seventies. Things have changed, and not for the better, not that it was a particularly robust community even then." He crossed his arms and slouched in his seat, a strange sight for the man whose posture was normally ramrod straight and steel-backed. "Anyway, why today of all days?"
His tone was casual, but it seemed forced, even to Hermione, who was simply sitting back and allowing the two to bicker, as was their wont. There was a definite sign of strain about his eyes, as his brow furrowed ever so slightly.
She found herself grateful that his Occlumency had taken a hit: it was far easier to read him when he wasn't able to manifest an external tabula rasa.
Eileen stiffened slightly and looked uncomfortable. "No reason in particular, Severus. And if you expected I'd forgotten: I've never forgotten. Why do you think I invited you for supper later this evening—I still planned to see you."
Snape didn't say so, but as he slumped further, he reflected on the true manner in which he'd discovered their excursion that morning. Certainly, in the scope of their conversation on Boxing Day, a date hadn't been mentioned.
It was simple really. Pathetically simple. He'd woken that morning, and while he knew he was due at his mother's for dinner that evening, he'd felt he'd had enough of spending his birthdays alone, and had apparated to her place in Waldweirness in the hopes of spending the rest of the day with her. When he had found her house empty and had made his way as Tony Adkins to the office in Waldweirness to inquire about Hermione, he'd been informed that she was chaperoning a resident for an excursion on that day, and it had taken little to no work to figure out their travel plans for the morning.
He'd die before he admitted he'd found them because of his pathetic loneliness, however.
He'd also die before he admitted that he had been missing Hermione Granger fiercely since their night together on Christmas. He'd not seen her since Boxing Day, as she was back to her normal schedule of grocery drop-offs, though from what his mother had told him, she still joined her for tea a few nights a week—yet work in Nottingham had kept him away whenever she was occasioned to drop in for a visit.
He glanced at her surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. She was slouched comfortably in her seat, her legs stretched out in front of her, though not obstructing others' passage through the car, and were crossed at the ankle, with her little white plimsolls, spotlessly clean as ever, ticking back and forth in a rhythm.
He turned his head a bit, risking a more obvious glance, and found that the younger witch had checked out entirely from their conversation—either out of boredom or to respect their privacy. He might have been insulted had he not noticed after a beat that she had stuck the two little white earbuds in her ears and was listening intently to one of the audiobooks he'd loaded onto the iPod for her. He craned his neck to look at the screen: The Once and Future King by T. H. White.
The journey passed in relative silence, Eileen having brought her knitting along in Hermione's enlarged bag, Hermione occupied with an audiobook, and Severus, as ever, brooding with his chin propped in one hand as he stole glances every few moments at his traveling companions.
He regretted inviting himself along on their sojourn, and yet he couldn't fathom a scenario in which there was an alternative choice available. As much as the reason for his presence with them that day had been a fabrication, it also hadn't been: he really didn't want either of them traveling unaccompanied into Cokeworth.
Upon arriving in Burneside, he insisted on hailing a cab himself and covering the fare, even knowing that Hermione had planned on paying for the excursion with some form of departmental dispensation.
He didn't like to mention it often, and he tried to flaunt it even less—the Jaguar being the sum total of luxury he'd allowed himself (which was still modest in comparison to the McLaren that Declan had purchased)—but he had more money than he knew what to do with, and little else to spend it on. Finding ways to funnel it to his mother and even, if he were ready to admit it to himself, Granger, was preferable to doing anything so vain as to upgrade his own living space or accommodations.
He liked his humble studio flat, thank you very much. The fact that Charlie, and to a lesser extent Declan, liked to judge him for his pecuniary restraint not only didn't faze him in the least, it inspired him, in the way only a true contrarian could be inspired, to be even more miserly.
At least Terry was of a mind with him. Though she liked to shell out for her own enjoyment on toys or gaming consoles, or even tickets to her favourite rugby teams, (and she, unnecessarily, spent enormous amounts buying from the Galdrvale in-game store, notwithstanding the fact that she could and should be entitled to much of it for free), she otherwise led a rather humble existence, and she certainly didn't judge him for his lack of peacockery. When it was his turn to host their meetings at his flat, a rotating duty they all traded off, she was the only one who didn't react with any kind of distain to his abode.
Perhaps it was unfortunate after all that he had insisted on hosting the servers: he was obliged to host their get-togethers more often as a consequence, if for no other reason than to be able to update the others and provide visual assurance that everything was in good hands.
Not that the blighters knew enough about networking to be able to ascertain as much themselves. No. They merely looked at the confusing arrays of cables and nodded, as if they knew a thing about it, and murmured approvingly.
It was fine, he reflected. He couldn't work it up in himself to be bothered, given that when he'd made the bulk of the changes to reroute much of the server power to his own pet project they hadn't been able to tell a difference—nor had the network engineers that worked at headquarters, for that matter. He was fast approaching the point where he could go live—though to what end he wasn't sure.
What was a World-Wide Wizarding Web without any users or content?
That was a dilemma for another day.
"—the factory, Severus!"
He was brought rapidly back into the present moment by his mother's excited babbling. She practically had her face pressed to the grimy window of the cab and was poking one of her fingers out at a large, decrepit structure, many years abandoned.
Snape took a cursory glance where his mother was indicating and distantly realized that they were crawling along a winding road, passing the old Reckitt blueworks. It was built like a rather ugly brick castle, with a single tower rising above the otherwise rectangular structure, and a chimney or two. Much of the stone surrounding the factory was a permanent, shocking shade of ultramarine.
He wasn't entirely sure why his mother was so excited. Though she hadn't been in Cokeworth for thirty years, his father hadn't been employed at that factory for at least forty, some full ten years before she'd abandoned their family home and warded it against entry to all but herself and her son. Tobias had lost his position as a tool-and-die specialist when Severus was around seven and had never managed to regain full employment after.
It was curious what time could do to memory, he reflected. He'd noticed over his two weeks with his mother at Christmas that she didn't hesitate to talk about life back when it was the three Snapes together—and at that, she seemed to mourn those times. He'd even heard her speak highly of his wastrel father, though he knew that in truth the man had been nothing but an albatross around his mother's neck the entirety of their marriage—and that was at the best of times. There were more instances than he could count where the drunken brute had been physically aggressive with his wife and son.
She either didn't remember or refused to remember.
Severus couldn't pretend to understand, so he instead pretended he didn't hear her or notice her pointing out the factory that should have been a point of pride in the Snapes' life, and instead had inspired their first step down the road to total ruin.
He cast about for something else to look at and accidently met Granger's brandy-coloured eyes, wearing an annoying expression of sympathy. Or worse yet, it was perhaps pity. He crossed his arms, sneered at her for a moment, and glared down at his knees. He regretted it almost immediately, but for the life of him he couldn't find it in himself to treat her with any sort of gentleness in that moment. The wound was too great.
They were perhaps only five minutes away now. It had been an hour to a half hour walk for his father to the factory back when he'd been employed. Cokeworth was on the far outskirts—a forgotten industrial estate that was now home to only a questionable chemist shop and a single store-front offering kababs, all else that had marked the once-full, if not ever thriving, neighborhood. One couldn't even do their food shopping there, the greengrocer had left with the rest of the population, and no supermarket would dream of wasting its time or money on the decrepit borough.
He stopped the cabbie once they'd driven over the bridge that marked the beginning of the neighborhood, remembering too late to breathe through his mouth—the smell from the river (if one could call it that, for it was more akin to an open sewer) was over-powering. Having paid the fare and helped the two women out of the back of the taxi, he watched it speed away, wishing he could depart with it.
Yet he had committed to this.
The three stood on the kerb, looking entirely out of place in the ramshackle street. It was quite clear that none of them knew which way to start out in, or what to do now that they had arrived. Cokeworth wasn't quite a ghost town, there were people hurrying down the street. He spotted a few older women who were cackling at one another as they shared a cigarette between them, a number of tramps who were sitting outside of their lean-to encampment down underneath the bridge and abreast of the river, a couple of bundled-up pedestrians: one pushing an overladen push-cart and another portly man with his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his jacket, his chin tucked against the wind.
"Well, Mother," Snape began, his voice sardonic, "behold our storied mére patrie, I hope it lives up to your vaunted memory—"
He didn't get the rest of the words out, for Hermione had roughly elbowed him in the ribs and sent him a glance full of censure. It wouldn't have mattered besides, he realized. His mother was looking out at the scene, taking it all in, perhaps, and seemed a world away.
"That's enough from you—this isn't about you or what happened to you here, it's about her," Granger was hissing at him, low enough that he knew his mother couldn't hear her over the rushing wind.
Snape merely glared down at her, his face baleful, while she continued to yap at him like he was a recalcitrant child.
"If you want a trip on your own to address your own demons with the place, I'll happily accompany you back here later."
He should have taken offense—really it was an outlandish thing to suggest. Yet he somehow knew she wasn't being disingenuous. She really was offering to come back just the two of them if he needed or wanted. Worse yet she was right. This was about his mother, not him. If either of them had a prerogative to demons resulting from living there—she probably was rightly entitled to be the first and principal claimant. She had suffered terribly in Spinner's End, often to the end of his own protection.
"Perhaps your motherland, Severus," Eileen answered, at great length, her voice tight. "The Prince Family has its ancestral home in the Cotswolds."
Huh. So, she had been paying attention after all.
"Much good that ever did us," he snarled under his breath, making to follow the elderly woman as she finally began to meander down the way.
The three cut a slow path through town, with Eileen at the helm. She didn't point anything out to her two companions for the first few blocks but would stop and stare at certain buildings for a time. Fleeting expressions of either pain or pleasure lit her face alternatively, and sometimes it looked as if she was going to say something to her son who loomed a step or two behind her, but then she would catch herself and snap her thin lips shut, a frown creasing her brow.
On the third such occasion, Snape had finally met his limit.
"Just say it." He snarled, pulling his cardigan more tightly around himself. He looked to be regretting his decision to come without a coat in early January.
"Say what, Severus?" Eileen asked, her voice mild.
"Whatever it is that you've just thought of. You opened your mouth and looked at us like you had something to convey. Kindly share with the rest of the class—"
Hermione poked him roughly in the lower back from where she followed him, hissing at him once more. "Don't be such a berk,"
"Then kindly stop assaulting me, Granger," he snarled at her over his shoulder.
Their eyes met, and after a moment, he looked down and away, seemingly somewhat ashamed of himself.
If Hermione didn't know any better, she'd have said he almost couldn't help himself. It, admittedly, wasn't how she'd hoped they'd be interacting after their shared night together, but she could see the dynamic too clearly to really feel she ought to take his waspishness personally. Cokeworth seemed to be bringing out the worst in Snape.
Still, it felt like a marked departure from the kind camaraderie he'd offered in Waldweirness, where they had seemed to at least somewhat enjoy one another's company for two weeks.
"If you must know, Severus," Eileen sniffed, her nose turned up, "this building housed the clinic where I'd take you when you were a child—before your magic came in that is.
"There was a nurse here who was very fond of you and attended me for your birth—Nurse Robards. She was the first person to ever hold you," she turned her black gaze on the boarded-up façade. "Forty-seven years ago, today..."
Snape had stiffened, and Hermione noted that his ears coloured in embarrassment, but his mother took no notice and turned to keep walking, talking, if only for her own benefit, as she went.
"You never forget: it doesn't even seem possible when it's happening. Sure, I felt you, and you would kick my bladder, and by the end of things I was the size of a horse... but even when I was pushing... I don't think I was prepared to actually see you.
"You were all white... and you seemed enormous. Just... just impossibly big to have been sitting inside me. You had legs and arms flying everywhere, but you didn't scream really. Not like I'd been told to expect—you just sounded angry, really. Like you were offended by the world already." Eileen chuckled, her eyes facing forward. She refused to look at either of them, as if they would interrupt her and prevent her from reliving her son's birth.
"It's a much messier affair than they like to show on the telly, you know," she continued, conversationally. "Babies don't come out looking like babies. You were covered in blood and some kind of strange white substance, and I remember thinking that you barely looked human. After Nurse Robards cleaned you off and gave you to me, you were so crumpled looking that I thought you looked a bit like an angry gnome. And you already had black eyes,"
"Did he have hair?" Hermione asked, quirking a smile. Snape glowered at her, and she pretended not to notice. It was far too interesting for her to care what he thought.
"Oh, loads of it—but it was caked to his head from all the blood. I didn't see just how much hair he had until I was able to give him a wash."
"And he didn't scream, you said?"
"Well, all babies will scream—but for him it was more that he would holler at you when he wanted something. Like I said: he sounded angrier than any baby I'd ever heard, especially if he had trapped wind—" Eileen laughed.
Snape nearly choked, "Mam, I think that's enough..."
All of the sudden, Eileen whipped around and fixed Snape with a piercing glare that rivaled his own (and perhaps surpassed it). "I'll tell you when it's enough, Severus Tobias Snape. I will have my fill today. You decided to come with us on your own. I came here to remember, and you will not interrupt me." She looked frighteningly close to tears, and Snape wisely buttoned his lip—his mouth closing with an almost audible click of his teeth together.
They stood in a mute stand-off for several moments, before Snape hung his head and issued a surprisingly sincere apology.
"Forgive me... of course..." He swallowed thickly. "Where else shall we go today?"
"Wherever we're occasioned to be led," his mother sniffed, her voice a tad spiteful even after his apology.
They were passing by a rusty, decrepit play set now, that was placed in the middle of a park that had seen better days. From beneath the trampled, muddied snow, it was apparent that the grass was mostly brown and dead.
Snape was staring at it fixedly as they passed, his eyes filled with a sort of far-away longing, but he made no effort to direct their rag-tag group to the faltering swing-set.
It took Hermione a moment to sus out what precisely he found so interesting about the park, but when she did, she felt for all the world like she'd have liked to run back to her apartment and have a good cry.
It was the park from Snape's memories. The one that Harry had told her about.
It was the park where he'd met Lily. Clearly the man was still beholden to the woman's memory, and if that were true, then he surely had no space in his head or heart for Hermione herself, shared night together or no.
"Is the house still standing?"
Snape cleared his throat and looked away from the crippled-looking metal edifice. "Last I checked. I never removed the wards."
"So you were there eight years ago?" Snape's mother inquired, her eyes sharp.
"I was. I recovered there after the war. Though I left it as soon as I could afford to go somewhere else,"
The older witch sighed deeply. "I suppose I shouldn't be angry. I left that house for you, Severus. For your safety. It was the last thing I felt like I could do for you... but I suppose I can understand why you've abandoned it—"
"I'm not the only one who abandoned Spinner's End, mother." Severus replied, his voice soft. He wasn't accusing her. He wasn't holding her to account. He was merely stating a fact. One he seemed to regret having to mention.
Eileen's response was stiff and frosty. "Quite right."
"Would you care to stop by?" He offered, "It's empty now, I moved anything of value to my new flat—"
Eileen shrugged in the peculiar way the Snape family seemed to prefer, with one shoulder only. "I suppose we should. I wasn't decided on whether I'd want to go there when I first thought of visiting but..."
"It'd seem a wasted trip not to," Hermione finished for her, nodding her head in understanding.
Snape seemed terribly exhausted by the whole affair, and by the small tiff he'd had with his mother, so Hermione took the older witch's arm and allowed her to direct their steps toward Spinner's End, Snape trailing behind the two where he could have a moment's privacy.
When Hermione made to glance over her shoulder at him and see how he was faring she saw his face set in some sort of aggrieved grimace.
This was clearly more painful for him than he'd wanted to let on.
The denizens of Cokeworth appeared as keen to avoid the three clear interlopers as they were keen to avoid interacting with the locals. In their wake, as they walked, and as Eileen made small mentions of little dramas that had played out on the streets some forty years past, they were subject to distrustful sneers and anyone within the vicinity shuffling off wearing weary looks upon their long, sad faces.
Or at least it seemed that way until about a street away from the Snape's family home. The three were preparing to cross the street when a strangled shout came from behind them.
It wasn't immediately clear what was happening, but after a beat of being rooted to the spot in her surprise Hermione became aware of a small girl, chasing her hat away from the kerb, the wind apparently having stolen it off of her head and whisked it into the street.
It was sheer bad luck that there was a car coming—the streets had otherwise been nearly completely empty for their entire trip.
"TILDY! STOP! COME BACK!"
But the girl either didn't hear or was too preoccupied to follow the directives of the older man who was attempting to chase her. Unfortunately, his age and weight seemed to be impeding him, he was red in the face as he ambled after her, far too slowly to prevent her from being leveled by the oncoming Audi.
Or at least that's how things would have certainly played out—had there not been a wizard present.
At the shout, Snape had whipped his wand out of his sleeve out of sheer habit, and having only a few moments to assess the situation, made to summon the girl by the back of her coat out of the path of the car. She shrieked as she was hoisted away by the phantom force, and a second later, her hat was flattened underneath the tyres, causing the flying girl to wail in horror.
Snape caught the girl, whose momentum made him stumble back several steps against a boarded-up store front. Tildy's (for naturally that was the girl's name) face was frozen in an expression of clear shock, her eyes wide and her hands pressed against her mouth where they had flown when she'd realized that she was flying through the air.
All of the adults were motionless for several breaths while the confusion was still present, before Tildy let out a wail and flailed her arms. Snape dropped her as if scalded and she ran back toward the man, now red-faced and puffing out of both exhaustion and terror. He welcomed her into his embrace and pressed relieved kisses to the small girl's flaxen hair.
"Tildy! Tildy, what have I told you about the street? What would your mother have done if you'd been hit by that car?!" He gesticulated with a pudgy finger at the Audi, now several blocks away and seemingly oblivious to the accident that almost was but wasn't. "What would I have done!? You've nearly gone and given me a heart attack, child!"
She had finally begun to sob, the immediate terror having worn off enough for her to realize, far too late, what might have happened, and how much trouble she likely was in as the man continued to take her to task.
Hermione turned to look at Snape, who was surveying the reunion between the man and the girl with what appeared to be a touch of nervousness.
"I see you never lost your proclivity for saving children," she said to him, sotto voce.
He took but a moment to scowl at her before turning his gaze back to the two. "It'd be far easier to avoid if children would stop trying to kill themselves in front of me through sheer stupidity, Miss Granger," he matched her undertone but his point was rather clear. Hermione had the good grace to blush.
"Yes, well..."
"You don't suppose I'll need to oblivate them, do you?" He finally asked. His voice was sardonic, but Hermione suspected that he was truly unsure of his next steps in this situation: there was the statute of secrecy to consider, but then again there was also the fact that were he not supposed to be dead, he'd earned a death sentence. Yet, before she could respond the man hustled over to them, Tildy's hand gripped tightly in his own.
"Sir! Sir, thank you! I don't know how you did it, but—" And he froze, his mustachioed face making a comical expression of complete surprise. "Why that's a face I didn't think I'd see again," he murmured, mostly to himself. His brown eyes finally looked from Snape to the two women who accompanied him, passing quickly over Hermione, but lingering on Eileen for a long moment.
"I don't suppose—please pardon me asking—I don't suppose you're Tobias Snape's boy...? I can't remember his name now, it was a bit of an odd choice if I recall—"
"Severus," Eileen stated, her face seeming to blossom into an utterly improbable soft, shy smile.
"That's the one!" The man said affably. "By Gor, I never thought I'd see you again! Look at you now—a whole man! And tell me that's not the lovely Mrs. Snape with you! Ma'am, you look like you haven't aged a bit!"
To Hermione's complete surprise, and apparently Severus' as well, the woman giggled. Actually giggled. Like a young woman a quarter of her age might have.
"Now you're having a lark, Constable Howarth, I look every moment of my age,"
"Nonsense! Why, even your hair is still mostly the same colour," he marveled with a touch of envy. He patted his own whispy white fluff with a comical snort.
"And you're still here? Patrolling Cokeworth?" Eileen asked with a small smile.
"Oh, heavens no, I thought I'd take Tildy here," he ruffled the small girl's hair a bit with one meaty hand, for which the girl repaid him with an impotent glower, "off her mother's hands and show her Grandad's old stomping grounds, didn't I? No, Doreen and I moved out in '82– it was the best decision we could have made. She didn't have to see her old neighbourhood die in front of her eyes before the Parkinson's took her… We got eighteen years together by the sea— that's where she really wanted to be after all,"
"Parkinson's? Constable, I'm so sorry—"
"Oh, none of that now, Mrs. Snape. I've not been a Constable since Doreen entered hospice care... I'll have to insist you call me Stan. Perhaps Stanley if you're feeling a mite cross with me, from that standpoint." The man chuckled and then sobered again as he considered his late wife's passing once more. "In the end it was pneumonia… her lungs were too weak— but she spent her last days watching the ocean…
"Anyhow, it's best not to dwell on the bad times, from that standpoint, from there." He seemed to draw himself back up and cloak himself in cheeriness once more, making him the lone point of good humour in all of Cokeworth, by Hermione's estimation.
"And I'll expect you're Severus' little woman? Tell me, are you from these parts?"
Hermione blushed to the curly roots of her hair and stammered for a moment, but in the end Severus rescued her with a strangled growl and a rushed explanation.
"Ms. Granger is accompanying us today as a favour to my mother, Mr. Howarth. For, ah, moral support I suppose one might say," he said. He had deliberately avoided mentioning her occupation as a social worker, likely to spare his mother any shame she might have felt over needing state assistance.
"From that standpoint, isn't that what she has you here for?" Stanley Howarth asked, visibly confused.
"I invited myself along at the last moment," Snape responded evenly. "I'm often busy with work anymore and it wasn't a certainty that I'd be able to accompany them until this morning." He lied, smoothly.
Hermione finally had recovered herself enough to remember her manners. She extended a small palm out to the former constable and cleared her throat. "It's as he said, Mr. Howarth. In any case: Hermione Granger, it's a pleasure to meet you."
Howarth grasped her hand in his own large red one and shook it firmly. "So, you're not a local I take it? Not with that accent,"
Hermione smiled at him, her eyes warm. She found she quite liked Mr. Howarth. "I'm afraid not, I'm from London by way of Devon."
"You'll have to forgive my nosiness, from there, Ms. Granger—a remnant of my profession from that standpoint: how did you come to know the Snapes? As far as I ever knew, they never did leave Cumbria,"
Hermione offered him a small smile, but she felt slightly offended on behalf of both Severus and Eileen. Both of them had been gone from Cokeworth for decades, and at the very least hadn't been in permanent residence since the late seventies. Mr. Howarth, having left, by his own admission, in '82, might not have been privy to this, but all the more reason for him to avoid making an assumption.
"I'm afraid you're operating under a misapprehension, Mr. Howarth: Eileen lives in London now, it's where I met her by mere happenstance. I've known Severus far longer: he was my schoolteacher from age eleven to seventeen. And since the school was in Scotland, he certainly wasn't staying here locally that entire time."
"A schoolteacher! Well, I'll be, Mrs. Snape! You must be very proud—"
Snape coughed loudly. "Former schoolteacher. I had cause to retire nearly a decade ago."
"I stand corrected from that standpoint," Howarth blustered, looking a tad bit shame-faced at last. "I suppose I must admit, the last I'd seen you, Mrs. Snape, Severus here was away at school, if I'm recalling things correctly— Stonyhurst, perhaps? I think I remember Severus here coming home from school one year in the old green and white! If I'm right, your husband is a Jesuit?"
"Ex-husband," Eileen seemed only too happy to correct him, though she said nothing to refute his assumptions about Snape's schooling. It was easier that way.
"Ah, a shame… I'm terribly sorry—" Though Howarth didn't seem sorry in the least.
Then again, no one gathered there seemed the least bit sorry that the Snape's marriage had been dissolved.
Eileen blushed coquettishly "Please, don't be. It was your reports that allowed me to seek a divorce, after all."
The old man nodded, his face solemn. A moment seemed to pass between the two that even Snape didn't seem to be included in, much to his mounting and all too evident discomfiture.
In the end, it was Tildy's impatience that broke the somber pall that had descended over the gathered adults. She tugged at her grandfather's hand with a disappointed frown. "Grandpa, you told me you'd show me the yard where they keep the candy cars—" Tildy whinged, her frown turning into an imperious scowl.
"Ah, so I did, Tildy," Stanley Howarth sighed softly. "From that standpoint it'd serve you right if we went home, you realize, after you ran into the street. I still am not sure how you got her away, Severus, but I'm grateful to you—"
"Don't think on it," Snape said immediately, "It's no matter."
Stanley Howarth finally smiled at them each in turn, wearing a sheepish grin, but before he turned away to leave, he couldn't seem to find the will to retreat, his eyes drawn once more to Eileen's and hers to his in turn.
"I suppose I won't get to see you much anymore, Mrs. Snape—I... not that I would anyway, living to the west as I do... or that I did before for that matter from there,"
Eileen suddenly looked stricken and turned to Severus with a pleading look. "Severus, what was that nonsense you created for me last week...? You said I'd be able to keep in contact—"
"Electronic mail, mother." Snape said, clearly trying not to roll his eyes in exasperation.
"Yes! Yes! Stanley," Eileen began, her voice trilling with what Hermione thought might have been pleasure over using Mr. Howarth's name, "I don't suppose you have electronic mail...?"
"You mean e-mail?" He laughed, clearly amused, "I was conscripted into that racket by my kid, same as you, seems like,"
Eileen wrung her hands nervously, again, something Hermione might have expected from a much younger, more insecure woman.
"I don't suppose you'd like to keep in touch..?"
"Why, of course I would Mrs. Snape," Mr. Howarth enthused, seeming as excited by the prospect as Eileen herself was.
It took several moments more of awkward negotiation, during which Hermione noticed Severus surreptitiously conjuring a scrap of paper out of thin air at his side in order for the two to exchange addresses, but by the time Mr. Howarth and Tildy and the Snapes and their Granger hanger-on departed company, Stanley and Eileen were both fairly buzzing with excitement as they made their protracted, near excruciating good-byes.
It was all the other three could do to coax them away from one another, much to Severus' and Tildy's chagrin.
Following the excitement of meeting Mr. Howarth and Tildy, their trip to Spinner's End was curiously anticlimactic. It was a dusty, ancient, terraced house, that, as Snape had assured them, now sat quite empty. Eileen seemed strangely emotionless when seeing it, even after they ventured inside.
The wallpaper was peeling everywhere, there were wet spots that seemed to creep down around the edges of the ceiling, and the smell of mould permeated every room. Even with no furniture it seemed cramped and tiny.
Snape hadn't said a word as he showed them what remained of his childhood home. Likely because he knew what they'd find. The only piece of furniture that remained in the entire house was the narrow bed-frame in what once was his childhood room—he had no use for it as an adult, unless he preferred to sleep with his long legs dangling over the edge.
They only stayed for perhaps five minutes before Eileen sighed wearily, glanced around, nodded her head once, and led them back outside without a word.
"Is it as you remembered?" Severus asked, his voice seeming over-loud after their silent march through the Snape house.
Eileen frowned slightly as the three stood huddled together on the stoop, clearly considering her answer.
"It both was and it wasn't..." she said, her face thoughtful. "I may as well have left yesterday—you certainly took no pains to improve anything, Severus, but I can't say it's any worse off than I remember leaving it either..." she continued, a note of bitterness, or perhaps annoyance colouring her words, "But I don't..." she paused before sighing lightly, "I don't remember it feeling so small. I don't remember it feeling so sad,"
Snape shook his head, though his expression was inscrutable. "It's as it ever was, Mam. No more, no less." Whether he was agreeing with her or correcting her was open to interpretation.
Thus began their slow trod back to the single street in town where they had any hope of hailing a cab. Eileen seemed fatigued, and she set a sluggish pace that neither Snape nor Hermione felt compelled to urge on. The three were completely silent.
By the chemist's shop, Snape succeeded in waving down a sad-looking taxi, and while he helped his mother into the backseat and negotiated with the cabbie, Hermione let her eyes wander.
She could scarcely believe that this was where Snape was from. Humble beginnings indeed...
She was startled out of her reverie by one of the tramps she had spotted earlier who seemed to occupy the space near the river.
A tall, aging man, stooped and with rheumy eyes. The broken blood vessels on his nose belied a severe drinking problem, and he certainly didn't attempt to prevaricate when he murmured that he'd be appreciative of any cash she could spare.
Hermione felt terribly sorry for him. He reeked, but aside from his offensive odour, he appeared harmless enough. After all, he was elderly—and she'd clearly demonstrated that she had a soft space in her heart for that particular contingent of society.
Besides, Snape had already paid for everything she had planned to pay for out of the department stipend... who would miss a fiver? She knew well that the workers in the department weren't always well versed in the conversion rates of wizarding gold to muggle sterling. The fact that a single pound was so terribly devalued next to a galleon, (or even a knut, for which a single unit was equal to some eight and ten pence) meant that she felt she could easily obscure the fact that she'd handed over a single note to the bedraggled tramp.
She was reaching to extend her hand with the money toward him when Snape's hand shot out in front of her for the second time that day, grabbing her wrist and wrenching her arm down to her side.
She turned to snarl at him, "What's the matter with you?"
His face was stony, but he didn't look back at her. Instead, it looked like the fires of the Phlegethon were burning hot in his eyes as he stared across at the older man.
"Put the money away, Hermione—" his voice was soft in spite of his fury. "Go wait with my mother in the cab."
"I don't—" she began to protest.
"I'll join you shortly."
At great length, and after finally coaxing the impossible man to look at her (which he did for only a moment in which he gave her a cursory, though reassuring, nod), she finally pursed her lips and marched her way over to where the taxi was waiting, Eileen leaning out of the back seat and watching the proceedings with avid interest.
"What's gotten into him, Eileen? Why wouldn't he—"
"Shush, girl!" The older witch admonished with a shake of her head. "Don't draw his attention..." she begged, her eyes pleading.
"Whose? Severus'?"
Eileen had begun to drag her back into the cab, seating her so that Hermione was blocking the way in from the door and providing an additional barrier between the older woman and the kerb. She was white as a sheet and seemed to be shrinking back against the far door, tucking herself into the shadows produced by the enclosed space.
"Would you mind telling me what's going on?" Hermione hissed, low enough so only the occupants of the car could hear. She hadn't taken her eyes off of Snape, who was standing as stiff as she'd ever seen him as a professor: seeming to radiate authority, even without his robes, and even at a few inches shorter than the elderly man he was going toe-to-toe with.
It was clear that words were being exchanged, and though Snape was still standing as if he were calm, Hermione had seen him on-edge enough to know that he was just a moment away from violence. The old man, on the other hand, was already to the point of gesticulating wildly and yelling in Snape's face—though his accent was so thick, and she was now so far away, that she couldn't make out what he might have been saying.
Eileen didn't answer her question, but was staring at the tableau the two men presented with the same captivated curiosity that Hermione knew she herself was.
After several tense moments, Snape finally turned to leave, the old man still spitting epithets in his wake. Yet, before he had made it more than a step, the tramp seized his shoulder and made to spin him into the right hook he was preparing to throw. Unfortunately for him, Snape was faster.
He spun on his heel in a single, fluid motion and fisted his hands in the man's dirty parka, throwing him onto the pavement at his feet, and then delivered two quick blows to the man's face.
Hermione let out a strangled gasp and went to get out of the back but Eileen had hold of her coat and didn't allow her to leave to help the old man.
It looked for all the world like Snape would have liked to keep going. He stood over the pitiful figure, breathing heavily, and his leg jerked like he had only just restrained himself from letting loose with a kick in the man's direction, but after a moment, he snarled, spat on the man's jacket, and strode over to the two women waiting for him in the car, his face murderous.
"Move over, Granger."
"Sir, ought I to call the police—?" began the cabbie, looking between the tramp and Snape with a nervous grimace.
"You saw what happened," Snape snapped at him. "He struck first,"
"Well, he triedto," Hermione murmured, under her breath.
Finally, all three of them were packed into the back like a tin of kippers, and the cab had started on its slow crawl back to the train station.
"What did he want, Severus?" Eileen whispered, her hands shaking.
"What did he ever want, Mam? Money for drink from a woman with too big a heart to tell him no," he sneered. His head was tilted back against the headrest and his eyes were closed. He looked pained and tired.
"Did... did he see me? Did he know you...?"
"By the end he did. Took him a disgustingly long time, but that's what comes of pickling your grey matter, I'd expect."
"If he saw me, why ask Ms. Granger—"
"I don't know that he saw you at first, Mam. He asked Granger because she's obviously a soft touch,"
"Hey!" Hermione interjected, feeling heat flood her face.
"I don't mean to insult you," Snape sneered back, "but it's true. You look far too clean-cut and compassionate to be walking in Cokeworth. You make an easy target." He took a deep breath and then opened his eyes, the navy-black surveying his mother and Hermione for a time before he continued talking. "At the end, though, he asked if it was you in the cab."
"What did you tell him?" Eileen asked, near breathless.
Snape sneered at her, "I told him it was none of his business, and that's when he swung at me. Why do you care whether I told him it was you or not? If I didn't say who you were, it was only to protect you—"
"I... it's been nearly forty years, Severus—"
"Oh, Merlin preserve me! For the love of God, mother—you really wanted to see him?Of all people? You imagine you could reconcile yourself to a man who is in his eighties and lives in a lean-to under the bridge? Who hasn't been sober for longer than a day or two in the past fifty years—"
"I hate to hold a grudge..." his mother began, her voice timid.
"Then dispense with your grudge," Snape snarled at her, his voice savage. "Forgive him from a distance if it will do you some good. But I'm begging you, Mam, don't attempt to see him or talk to him. I haven't seen him in the same amount of time that you haven't and he still tried to take a swing at me," his eyes softened. "I'd hate to see what he'd do to you. He might be weaker than he was back then, but so are you. There's no reason to put yourself in danger for the sake of your misguided conscience—he bled you dry for long enough. The mugg—the authorities—" He corrected himself, glancing ahead at the driver, "helped you get a divorce. Don't look back, Mam."
Eileen sniffed once and nodded, her eyes swimming with tears as she stared down at her lap. Hermione took her hand in her own and gave it a squeeze. She turned to look at Snape, whose face was in profile. He looked exhausted.
"That was your father, then?"
"That was Tobias. Yes."
"Oh mama if you could've only seen
Everything I've done and where I've been
If only one thing I would ask
Why did you let me grow up so goddamn fast?"
"Mama" (reprise) – Godsmack
A/N: I didn't realize it until I began writing him, but I very loosely based Stanley Howarth off of my OB who finishes every sentence with "From that standpoint, from there." It's been a bit of an inside joke between my husband and I throughout my pregnancy, but then I realized that a vocal tic like that might make for an interesting, if slightly annoying, character trait.
There's a piece of art that goes along with this chapter: "Headed Home" on my Deviantart (Mothboss). It was actually something I drew before I started writing this fic back in 2019/2020 and it inspired the whole thing.
I hope you're enjoying the ride! Thanks for reading and thanks for the reviews! *love*