Disclaimer: I own nothing, characters, concepts, or otherwise, from the Harry Potter franchise.
Severus could barely support the weight of his own body on his legs as history seemed to repeat itself. As he expected...the sins and mistakes of his previous life seemed to overshadow everything, even after he had done so much to repent for them. But as before, what haunted him most was the pain evident in Lily's eyes as she left.
"You...you don't belong here...she was right. The only reason you came back was the hope that you might make things right with her. Everything else that's happened has just been a bi-product of working towards that goal. It's just like it was with Harry...never about him...just about something I felt I owed to Lily..."
The Slytherin boy collapsed to the floor of his train compartment, clutching his head as memories from the previous time sent surges of pain throughout his mind.
"Anywhere but here...anywhere but here..!" he screamed internally as the pain in his head became nearly unbearable…
Lily's own tears continued to flow, still trying to process everything that Severus had told her.
"Why…? Why would he hold on for so long to someone that abandoned him? He held on until the day he died...and even beyond that."
"Lily? Why are you crying?"
The young redhead looked up to see the concerned, blue eyes of Mary staring down at her.
"M-mary...what are you doing here?"
"I wanted to come and talk with you and Severus...I wanted to plan a shopping trip to Diagon Alley this summer and wanted to ask if he'd join…"
Mary's gaze passed back and forth between the door with its privacy curtain down, and the tears still evident in Lily's eyes.
"He...he told you, didn't he? Told you his secret?" the blonde Muggleborn asked with a hint of sadness.
"Told me...what?! You knew?!" Lily asked sharply. For a brief moment, she didn't know whether to be offended or relieved that he had shared the knowledge with someone besides her...
Mary raised her hands defensively as she shook her head. "I don't know what it was that he was hiding, Lily, but I came across him looking quite distraught one day by the lake. He said that he had a great deal that he wanted to tell you, but he was convinced that once he did, you'd hate him forever…"
After a moment of consideration, Mary seated herself right beside Lily against the door to the compartment. "Given the look on your face, it seems like you didn't take his news quite as well as I thought you might-"
Lily interrupted with a snap. "I think I'm taking it QUITE well considering how terrible it turned out to be! Don't speak about things you know nothing about, Mary!" Once the words escaped her lips, she winced a bit; the guilt from taking it out on one of her closest friends hit her instantly.
Mary, however, seemed unfazed by Lily's reaction and just turned her gaze downward. "So was he right then? Do you hate him..?"
Almost instantly, Lily shook her head. "No...How could I feel hatred for anything Severus has done when I'm the reason for it all...if anything, I'm angry with myself...I've been such an inadequate friend to him. I was never there for him in the ways I needed to be in order for him grow comfortable with who he is, the way I see him...and so it seems I'm the only thing he actually seems to care or worry about…"
Her conflicted words were interrupted by a loud crack in the room behind her, breaking her free from the reflection as she knocked on the door.
"Sev..? Sev!" she cried as she opened the door to an empty compartment, the only sign that Severus had been there was his trunk on the luggage rack.
"That sound...I guess that's all the proof I need that what he said was true...well, that and the night at the Astronomy Tower…Sev...where have you gone? And why without your things?" She pondered, looking out the window at the moving countryside.
Mary peeked into the compartment, eyes wide in shock. "Wait a minute, did Severus just apparate?! How can he do that at our age; he doesn't even have a license!"
Lily shook her head with with the barest hint of a smile. "Sev can do a lot of things that he shouldn't be able to do, Mary...I only hope that he's somewhere I can find him." The young witch gently grabbed the handle of Severus' trunk and led her friend out the door, deciding to look after his belongings until she could return them to him later.
Severus let out a groan when he opened his eyes, lifting himself up from a very shabby, brown carpeted floor. He shook his head, trying to orient himself after he accidentally apparated. The walls of the living room were covered in green wallpaper that had been peeling for a number of years, and the ever-present aroma of alcohol and cigarette smoke was obvious as he took a deep breath in. The young Slytherin looked around the living room, finally realizing where he was as he saw numerous items and football paraphernalia crowded along the stained wood shelves and the large television. Years ago, family photos stood where the meaningless items were, but they had long been discarded.
He heard a creaking from the top of the staircase as a small voice called down, one that he hadn't heard in nearly twenty years.
"Tobias? Is that you? You're home early! I'll have dinner made right away!" called the whimpering voice of a woman. Before Severus could react or prepare himself, the gentle footsteps quickly made their way down the stairs, and the boy came face to face with the wide eyes of his aging mother, Eileen Snape.
Time had not been kind to Severus' mother, or rather, life in Cokeworth hadn't been. The stress evident on the woman's face and the few, stray gray hairs dotting her thick, black hair which stretched halfway down her back, it was obvious that life in the Snape household had aged Eileen considerably, despite not even being 40 yet.
"S...Severus…" the witch turned her face downward once she realized that her abusive husband was not the one who entered. "What are you doing here already? I was going to be at King's Cross to pick you up...Hogwarts Express doesn't arrive for another two hours."
The boy let out a snort of annoyance, not surprised at the lackluster reception of his mother. Any tender feelings he might have had upon seeing her again were quickly dashed when he remembered that she was just a shell...not the doting mother that she had been once upon a time.
"Sorry to disappoint you by showing up early...I guess this means you can start on your master's dinner earlier than expected then."
"Please don't start with this already, Severus." Eileen made her way into the kitchen, turning on the dim light and beginning to start a kettle of tea. "Tobias...he's...good to me...to the both of us. We'd have nowhere to live if it weren't for him."
"Living under a motorway overpass would be better than sharing a house with that cretin you call your husband. You call yourself a Prince?" Severus spat.
Eileen turned around, shouting back at her son as much as her weak voice could manage. "No! I call myself a Snape! Just like you should! Why must you ALWAYS act this way, Severus?! Don't you understand that I did the best I could with you?!"
"NO! No, you did NOT!" Severus bellowed, stepping into the kitchen and wincing as his mother recoiled at his rage. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself before continuing. He wouldn't make the mistake of stooping to Tobias' level to make his point with the already broken woman.
"You could have stolen some of his money, exchanged it for galleons to buy a wand, and done something about it! There isn't a member of the Wizengamot that would have found you guilty for protecting yourself and your son...even if it meant killing him. Instead, you let him destroy us. There was nothing to EVER love about Tobias Snape, not even before what happened that day. Because he forced you to abandon what made you special, extraordinary, and turned you into a shambling little house pet."
Eileen had turned back around, tending to the stove. Severus could see that her head was knelt down even further in shame at his words. For many years, he felt robbed of the opportunity to truly articulate just how much he resented his mother for what happened, but he never had that chance. It instinctively hurt the boy, hearing the sniffling of the woman as she continued to have her back facing to him. That was when he noticed the bruise on the back of his mother's neck...clearly the abuse had been continuing to this day.
"I don't want to hear this anymore...say what you will about your father, but he continues to provide for us. Tobias has worked very demanding hours ever since I first got pregnant with you just as a way to make ends meet. He's not...the way he was before, of course not. But he keeps us here, hasn't thrown us out. I've told you all of the terrible stories about the harassment he received from my father when I wrote him of our engagement...does it honestly surprise you that he grew to hate magic as much as he did?"
Severus shook his head, realizing the futility of continuing to argue with Eileen. "I don't care how the both of you decide to justify his behavior. All I need to see is that bruise on your neck. Look at me, Eileen…" he spoke with a grim hatred in his voice, calling his mother by her first name.
This prompted the middle-aged woman to turn around frantically, her eyes widening when she saw the wand clutched in Severus' hand, pointed down to the floor. No wand had ever been drawn in the Snape Household in the time since the witch had forsaken her magical heritage at her husband's request, and certainly not by the young Slytherin during his time growing up there.
"What...in Merlin's name are you doing with that in this house..?!" Eileen shuddered.
"Doing what you should have done years ago...if Tobias raises his hand on either of us again...it will be the last time he ever has a hand to raise. We've spent enough years in fear from him. That mark on your neck...is the last I'll ever see."
Eileen had grown visibly weaker in the knees with each word Severus spoke, her lips quivering as her black eyes, the same ones passed down to her son, started to flood with tears. Finally, the witch collapsed to the floor, sobbing. "S-s-sevvie...I never wanted to face the fact that I failed as a mother...every vile thing that man has ever done to me...I-I...I deserved it. For abandoning my baby the way that I did..! Please...you don't have to stay here. You don't have to endure any more of this. This house has not broken you, and I don't ever want to see it do to you what it did to me. But this...living with Tobias...It's my own personal Azkaban...and it's what I deserve for failing you. I'm so sorry, Severus!"
Severus looked down at the crying form of his mother without uttering a word. So many years of animosity for the way he felt she had abandoned him seemed to crumble with a simple apology from Eileen. An apology that he had never received in his previous life.
The boy took a few steps further into the kitchen and knelt down next to the wilted form of Eileen Snape. With a gentleness that he only reserved for one other person, Severus wrapped his arms around his mother's shoulders and brought her into an affectionate embrace. "I know what that self-loathing feels like...more than you may ever know. But choosing to live in hell...for the sake of another...I feel like a hypocrite for saying this...don't do it. I've never been angry enough at you that I would ever condone what happened. There's still so much you can do...don't give up on living...Mum…"
"Sevvie…" Eileen choked, taken aback by her son's tenderness. "You haven't...called me Mum since your second year at Hogwarts…"
Had it really been that long? Severus' memories of that time were so hazy that it surprised him that his brewing cauldron of anger and loathing had started so early on. "Perhaps I've needed to...for both of our sakes. We'll worry about that once I've put Tobias in his place."
Eileen nodded weakly. "Okay, sweetheart. Just...don't do something that will get you in too much trouble. You're still underage...and still on the trace."
After taking several minutes to recompose herself, Eileen gathered enough strength to stand back up and take a seat at the kitchen table as Severus served the both of them tea.
"So...how have things gone at school this year? Do you have a good feeling about your O.W.L.s?" Eileen asked with a slight smile.
"Honestly, if I got less than an O on any of them, save perhaps History of Magic, you have my permission to disown me." Severus snorted.
Severus' unwavering confidence caused his mother's smile to widen, as well as some of it to stretch into her previously hollow eyes. "No surprise. I doubt anyone at that school could touch you. If you don't mind me asking...that boy, Fleamont Potter's son. Is he still menacing you as always?"
He shook his head with a bit of a sigh of relief. "Not anymore. There's been a lot going on at school as of late, so I've managed to avoid any recent encounters with him."
"And these 'goings on'. Do they have anything to do with Lily?" The smile on his mother's face had finally progressed to something more natural when they arrived at the subject of the muggleborn witch.
"I would...really prefer to avoid talking about her right now." Severus sighed, his gaze turning downward. "I'm not even sure if I'm ever going to speak with her again...I messed up pretty badly."
This time, it was Eileen's turn to snort derisively at the words of her son. "Severus, you two have known each other since before Hogwarts. Whatever it was that you said or did, as long as you have the opportunity to make amends, you'll both come out of it stronger, and hopefully, more understanding of each other. Are you still holding on to that silly idea that joining your housemates on their crusades is going to impress her?"
"No. I've burned so many bridges with them as of late, that I might as well forget about that offer Lucius left on the table for me. Which is for the best, if I want to try to salvage anything with her."
"Do try...that girl...she puts a smile on your face in all the ways I wish I could have when you were younger. Sometimes, it even reminds me of the time before…" Eileen droned off, hearing the familiar sound of a car pulling up to the house.
The roar of the engine, entirely too loud, immediately caused what little color that was on Eileen's face to drain. "No...he's...he's here already…!"
Author's Note: I really can't apologize enough for how long it took me to bring this chapter to you guys. For the last several months since my last update, I've held down a job which was severely taxing my life. Hobbies, interests, things that usually served to relieve stress and put a smile on my face, all of it seemed to just be a distraction more than anything as of late. Things that I did no longer made me happy, and it was turning me into a shell of a person.
That being said, last week, I ceased working there. Took some time to get reacquainted with the things that used to make me happy. Thankfully, it all seems to stick a little better now that I don't have the cloud of this job over my head. I work somewhere else now, somewhere that the stress doesn't carry over nearly as much.
Anyway. Back on topic. How could I honestly follow up the last chapter with Severus' big revelation to Lily? That was the question that was burning in my mind these past several months, and I decided it was best to make this a sort of cool-off chapter, a wee bit of the fallout on Sev and Lily's take on what happened, but more importantly, to introduce Eileen Snape to the readers.
There have been so many great fan interpretations of what this woman was like in these "Back in Time" stories. The image that's always stuck in my mind is a really broken woman who is holding on to whatever twisted idea it means to be a mother to her son. There's a lot he needed to say to her to get off his chest, but by no means does he place anywhere near the level of blame on her that he does Tobias.
Next up...the encounter with said horrible man.
As always, if you enjoyed what you read, or even if you didn't, yet just took the time to read anyway, I really welcome any and all feedback that comes my way. Just as so many of you have waited for an update with bated breath (and it's really flattering to me that many of you have), I wait eagerly to see what your responses are. Thanks again for reading, especially those of you who have been patient in your waiting for an update.