Severus was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
He had sworn to himself that at the umpteenth plate knocked on the ground he would kick his wife out of the house.
He didn't care if she was still in her dressing gown.
That morning had not started in the best way.
He had to call his employer at the school where he taught, and warn him that he would be late.
Luckily Neville his sixteen years old son was out of the house before his mother could vent her frustration on him.
Bellatrix had changed and had done it overnight without him being able to prevent it.
Severus had changed too, but in a different way from her, bellatrix suffered from nervous breakdowns in front of which even a psychiatrist would have lost his mind.
Only because she wanted to be the center of attention, because one always had to do what she said.
Over the years, there was nothing left of the cheerful and carefree girl with whom Severus had fallen in love, and with whom he had had a child. I
n its place a cynical, mean and suffocating woman had appeared.
"I'm listening" he said weighing the accent on each word as if he wanted to vent his anger on them
" If you'd stop screaming…"
"If you had listened, you would never have given Neville permission to go and celebrate his 14 th birthday in such a dull place, full of drunkards! "
"Dull place full of drunkards, you say?" he asked raising the tone of a note too
"The Apocalypse is not at all the place you think it is.
It's a well-known venue and it's where Neville wanted to go.
Why should I have forbidden him to go there? "
Bellatrix began to go back and forth through the kitchen, heedless of the glass that creaked under her slippers.
"Why? Because you are the father, Severus.
Is it possible that you don't say anything about your son's friendships, about the places he frequents, about his girlfriend … ah, she is a slut who has found the right chicken to pluck. "
Severus put his hands over his eyes asking forgiveness for all the mistakes he had made in those first thirty-five years of life.
The first was to believe that true love existed and also came at the first shot!
"Like you did?" he wanted to ask Bellatrix, but if he did they would never have finished fighting that morning, and he was already so late.
"Sure, you don't say anything.
You didn't even say anything about the school he attends.
We could have sent him to a private school, among decent boys, among rich and high-ranking people. "
"Bella, enough!
There is nothing wrong with his school.
Neville is not like your friends' children, thanking Heaven!
He's not a spineless rookie.
He is an extraordinary young boy and wanting to compare him at all costs to those fools you are doing nothing but offending his intelligence.
He must know the world with his hands, and if he is wrong then he must get up.
These are life's lessons that unfortunately we parents can point out to him but we cannot live in his place.
Some experiences are worthy to be made by yourself. "
The woman in front of him looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time.
Only for a moment did Severus think that his wife had understood his point of view which, after all, was the most normal reasoning in this world.
"If you don't change the place where Neville will have his birthday I'm not going to come." she thundered evil and menacing.
Severus sighed as he rolled his eyes.
"Bella, do as you like. It's your son whom you'll be hurting, not me. "
"Yes, because you don't care about me anymore." she yelled bursting into tears
"You're just a huge bastard.
You took my best years and now you would like me to leave you, right? "
"I've never said that." Severus clarified calmly.
It was ignoble of him to claim that he had been a model husband.
No, it wasn't, but he never would have thought his marriage would degenerate like that.
From the day they married, within a few years, Bellatrix had given out the worst in herself.
At first Severus hadn't noticed it, but over time the greed of that woman he thought he loved had taken over.
He had carried on for Neville, their only son, but now the situation was really unbearable.
He hadn't really been able to digest it for about two years.
A bite gone wrong: that's what Bellatrix had become.
"Oh you don't want a divorce, Severus?
Good because I will never give it to you. " she said taking the vase on display on the table and knocking it to the ground.
The water spread over the floor along with the flowers.
"I'd rather go back to my father." Bellatrix blurted out walking towards the bedroom.
Severus sighed for the umpteenth time.
Bellatrix had been repeating that same story for about two years.
She packed her bags and went to her father for a couple of days, a week at the most.
Then he seemed to come to his senses and return home.
He looked at his watch realizing that he was really in a huge delay.
He decided to clean quickly and then run to the school.
After about a quarter of an hour he threw himself under the shower.
Bellatrix had dressed and packed her bags, she hurried to the door without giving him more than a glance or a word.
Severus only heard the front door slam hard and sighed.
—
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—
Sitting on the steps of the schoolyard, Neville watched the view, deep in thought.
Ginny's small body was resting on his chest.
Every time his parents argued something inside him cracked.
For five years the situation in his home had become heavy and oppressive.
His mother did nothing but scream from morning to night and smash everything that came to hand.
She was so attached to money and the good name of her family that she didn't realize she was hated and pitied.
His father, on the other hand, sooner or later they would have sanctified him.
He just didn't understand how Severus still managed to endure all that ordeal.
Love?
He doubted it.
Perhaps affection and nothing more bound them.
But Neville persisted in hoping that Severus wasn't putting up with everything for him.
His father loved him so much that he overshadowed his needs, even his health sometimes.
"It's not right." he didn't shout it, but the emotional power of those three words hurt him, digging deeper into a chasm in the center of his chest.
Ginny looked up, meeting the dull stare of her boyfriend.
His eyes had lost the spark that characterized them.
"Nev!?" Ginny only spoke his name for fear of irritating him with the fateful question that had been itching on the tip of her tongue for months.
Her brother Ron and the others had mentioned something to her about a certain thorny situation at Neville's house, but Ginny had never felt like investigating further, or asking anything of the person concerned.
She stroked his cheekbone and jaw lovingly.
She wanted him to know that she would listen to him, let him vent, whatever to make him smile.
The weight in his chest became so unbearable that Neville acted on instinct; it was the heart that guided him.
He grabbed Ginny by the hips, and pulling her astride him he squeezed her tight, resting his head between the hollow of her neck and her shoulder.
He took a deep breath of her scent, a calming effect on his strained nerves.
"My parents haven't gotten along for five years now.
For two years, however, living with my mother's mentally ill shots has become impossible.
Every day, my father and I are forced to go through her moments of anger.
She complains about everything and everyone and does nothing but spend our money. "
Neville spoke without stopping, as if chased by a pack of angry and hungry dogs.
He didn't fear Ginny's judgment because she wouldn't pity him as others often did.
The redhead widened her blue eyes, thanking the position that did not allow Neville to see how bad his confession had hurt her.
A hurt caused by the inability to do nothing but listen, and console her boyfriend.
"Why don't they divorce if it is so bad?" she asked shyly, blushing when Neville pulled back to look at her.
"I wonder that too, but I'm sure it all depends on the negative influence of my grandfather, my mother's father" he explained
"One day I found out that my mother got pregnant by mistake when she was nineteen and my father was twenty one.
My grandfather immediately wanted them to marry even though they were very young.
My parents weren't sure because theirs was a fluctuating story, but they eventually succumbed to my grandfather's will, getting married five years after my birth.
They loved each other, but in the long run the constraint imposed by my grandfather began to weigh on the life of the couple.
Love has waned at the speed of light, and there is nothing left of a burning fire but ashes.
My father, I know for sure, doesn't want to leave her for me, so as not to make me suffer, but I'm fed up.
My father is everything to me, he's always there, my mother isn't.
It makes me weigh the fact that I was born. "
Neville squeezed his forehead into creased lines, a symbol of the discomfort he had felt for too long.
"This morning I went out, I felt that I had to stay and listen, and my mother started attacking my dad, blaming him for my choice to go to public school rather than a private one, like the idiot children of the friends she accompanies everyday.
Or that I've picked a low-key venue for the party, and she won't even show up unless I change my mind. "
Neville bit his bottom lip to stop.
He couldn't tell Ginny that his mother had allowed herself to denigrate her.
"And she went, once again, to her father.
And as always, my grandfather will fill her head with bullshit to make her retrace her steps.
He respects my father only for the social class to which he belongs, only for this. "
He realized that he had told her almost everything.
The weight in his chest had decreased in volume as he brought out this absurd family situation.
Ginny couldn't believe her ears; what kind of person was a mother who reproached the birth of her own child?
She was so sad for Neville and that poor father that for his son's sake forced himself to put up with a hysterical, ungrateful, unhindered woman.
Her mother, Molly was an exemplary mother, and she had enjoyed all the things that Bellatrix was taking for granted, despising what was most beautiful in the world.
Ginny put an uncertain smile on her face.
"My love, I'm so sorry for you and your father.
But don't feel guilty.
You have no faults.
Try talking to your father, I'm sure that together you will find the right solution for everyone.
As for your mother, forgive me, but I can't pronounce myself.
It makes me too angry.
Nobody can treat you like that. "
"I know, my love.
Thanks.
I don't know what I would do if I were to lose you. "
Neville stroked her cheekbones with his thumbs, and then kissed her.
—
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Soooo …
Another story, a supernatural AU.
In the next chapter Severus will make the acceptance of a new colleague in the school where he teaches…
Hope you like it!
I'll post the next chapter of Truth of Slytherin Heiress in a few days… as a christmas Gift!
See you!