Pureblood Prince Chapter XIII – Your Usual Snape Reunion

If she had looked back on it all now, she would hardly believe any of it… but there had been a time where Tobias didn't loathe magic. Or, at least, there had been a time when he hadn't loathed it as much. When Eileen first began her life with her husband, there had been no need to use it. After all, she had no ties to keep with the magical world any more, not after leaving her parents iron grip. Tobias would have hardly believed that she was even remotely capable of any sort of witchcraft if Eileen hadn't dragged her old Ollivander's case out of the attic to physically prove herself.

"Look…"

A transparent and shimmering bluebird took off from the edge of her wand and fluttered around Tobias, who gaped at it wide-eyed.

"How in the heck are yer doing that?" he demanded.

Slowly, over the years, he had begun to accept it, despite never understanding it. She knew that he only hid his contempt for her gift deep down because she vowed to never use it against him, and he did love her. Despite it all, they did love each other. That's what Eileen had to keep telling herself.

Beep beep… beep beep…

And here he lay, the man she still loved. The man she had almost killed. He was completely still and deep in unconsciousness… horrible as it may have appeared to any outsider, Eileen was almost appreciative of his state for the moment. It gave her time just to look at him and remember.

The day that she had run away from her parents had been one of the happiest of her life; conquered only by the day she became a Snape, which in turn would be conquered by the birth of their son. Tobias had opened the door to his council flat to find her standing in the pouring rain, shopping wet. He seemed at a complete loss for words.

"Eileen?"

She fell into his arms shivering and soaked and unbound. There had been no explanation other than she could never speak to her parents again. As time grew, Eileen would tell Tobias everything, every sordid detail about her family… but tonight he did not question. He was never pushy with her and that was what she loved. They had spent the rest of that wintery night drinking the same cheap and disgusting tea that they did when they first met, tea that would always made her smile whenever she drunk it. From that moment on, she was solely his.

The much older and angrier Tobias shifted in his sleep and Eileen was mentally bumped back into present-day once more. He didn't wake… the nurses had told her he wouldn't wake for a few days, give or take. No one could possibly tell by the placid and serene way he looked that they had almost destroyed one another.

Eileen heaved a sigh and moved her fatigued and aching body over to his, she lay down in the hospital bed and rested her head in the alcove of his shoulder. She knew wouldn't ever leave him… she couldn't. Their insecurities and fears had bound them long ago. In some perverse and twisted way - they belonged together.

~*~

~*~

Muggle hospitals were nothing at all like St. Mungo's. Despite having equally as sick patients in the wizarding wards, there was never the same air of death and illness such as those of the decrepit wards of Derby City General Hospital. He supposed he shouldn't put all Muggle hospitals into this category… merely the ones that he and his working-class family were allowed into, all of which reeked of neglect.

He didn't apparate into the hospital grounds of course, as much as he wanted to. Being brought up more or less as a Muggle, Severus never truly appreciated until now how difficult it would have been for his mother to integrate herself into their community. He sat on the rickety bus clutching the note left for him at Spinner's End so tight that his fingernails began to dig into his palms – though he was far too incensed to feel the sting.

Sev,

I had to take your father to Derby City General… had a fall… went the night before you got back. Didn't want to pull you out of school for it as they tell me he'll be fine. Your choice if you want to visit. Been shopping.

Love you,

Mum.

Had that fool of a woman stayed with him at the hospital all this time? He knew what must have happened, it had happened numerous times before; Tobias must've come home drunk after spending all his earnings and fallen over a gutter on the way there – and had possibly wet himself on the way down. Yes, Severus was so very proud to share half of his DNA with that man…

As he approached the dilapidated reception desk in a very mismatched array of Muggle clothes, he couldn't help but give a small malevolent smirk… he hoped that Tobias has managed to injure himself in a suitably embarrassing fashion. He couldn't wait to see the look on his face as his "useless" wizard son entered the room, revelling in his father's failure and profound misjudgements.

"Tobias Snape."

The middle-aged receptionist gaped up at him with a curious look (it was nothing he wasn't used to) and begun to type into the computer so fast that her fingers looked like mere blurs across the keyboard.

"Er… Snape… Tobias Sn - ah, yes, take the lifts through those brown doors there. He's on level 4 – ward 4C."

Severus nodded brusquely and made his way upward. The prickly nip of Muggle antiseptic in the air was so unpleasant he momentarily screwed his face up in a futile effort to rid himself of the smell; it was… what was Borealis even thinking, that I would become one of these poor underappreciated souls who work here day in day out?... Severus shook himself away from the grating thoughts of her and the replacement scent of plums that had just infiltrated his consciousness. Antiseptic was better.

He found his mother curled up next to his father on the hospital bed, she seemed to be soundly asleep despite the awkward looking position she was in; she looked paler and thinner and sicker than he had ever remembered. He could see that Tobias was hooked up to various Muggle monitoring devices and had some sort of bandage on his head or other, but it did not faze him in the slightest. In fact, Severus could feel nothing but seething, bubbling rage at the sight of that bastard man actually receiving care for his injuries, where his bruised, sickly, skeleton of a mother had absolute nought for quintuple as many.

And she's lying therein that monsters arms; I can't believe it.

Not wanting to wake either of them, Severus gave a disgusted glower and backed out of the room with the intention of heading back to Spinners End… he had, after all, made an appearance and therefore would not be privy to any guilt for letting his mother down. His duty was done. They'd obviously prefer to be left alone by the looks of them.

Unfortunately, this was the very same time that a middle-aged and very busy looking nurse holding some sort of intravenous line had entered the room. Before Severus could get away from the room, she had opened her mouth; "oh, hello! You must be Toby's son?" She looked over towards her patient and his visitor and clucked, "Aw, Mr. and Mrs. Snape, look at 'em…" like she had known them both for years. Mr. and Mrs. Snape's son repeated his glower from earlier.

Her greeting wasn't a loud one by any means, but his mother had never been a deep sleeper. Eileen Snape rose up her head from slumber; as he caught her eye he witnessed something rather bizarre given the circumstances… her face lit up in such a way that it very well could have been taken for the happiest moment of her life.

"Severus!" she cried, sweeping her chaotic black hair out of her face. The nurse looked rather bemused at the mention of his odd name, but continued with her duties. Completely ignoring the staff's existence, Eileen had managed to run across the room and throw her arms around her son before he could manage to take a breath. He had grown to hate her embraces… they were not 'motherly' in the slightest (though Severus was not sure what that even entailed, he knew was that she was not it) she was always so cold, and her frame so tiny and skeletal… as if she would snap in half if he ever reciprocated.

As usual, he stood there awkwardly, arms straight at his sides, as she held onto him tightly. She drew back for a second and looked at his face, Severus fixed his eyes firmly on the nurse drawing up a drug into a large syringe.

"Look at you," Eileen said, her voice almost choking with heavy emotion. "Don't you dare leave us for a whole year again, I barely recognise you for the man you turned into!" She embraced him again, kissing his cheek fiercely.

For the first time, he had a true look at his father in the bed, the nurse had since left the room to leave the 'family' in peace; Severus hated that he looked so vulnerable, so innocent of any wrongdoing. He hated it. He hated him.

"What happened?" he finally mumbled.

Eileen released him from her grasp. She stood there for a moment, seemingly unable to speak.

"Head butted a lamppost, did he?" Severus prompted. "Stumbled home covered in blood and piss like last time, did he? How long did you spend cleaning it up this time, mother?"

"Sev…"

"I don't know even know why I came here. I care as much about what happened to him as I do the patient in the next room… a lot less, in all sincerity."

"… But I am glad you came here," Eileen replied. "Oh, I've missed you, Sev. I've missed you dreadfully; I wished so much that would come home for the holidays - your grandma had quite a time consoling me on Christmas day..."

She motioned for him to sit down on the chair next to the bed with her… but always and forever uncomfortable when faced with such emotional declarations of love, Severus had long ago decided that the only way out of such uncomfortable situations was to ignore them completely and continue ranting instead.

"It's a crime!" he spat bitterly, "a crime that he is taken to a bloody hospital the moment he gets a scratch on his empty drunk head and yet when he beats you to a pulp no-one lifts a finger for you!"

"It's not what you think."

"No, it's never what I think. Would you stop treating me like a child for once, woman?"

Eileen rubbed her head forcefully, clearly in distress. He would have felt ashamed of himself for talking to her the way he was if he didn't feel so correct, which he almost always was.

"Sev, shush."

"Don't shush me, Eileen!"

And then she snapped.

"How dare you talk to your own mother like that!" she pushed him behind the door, and though she could possibly be the most physically weakest thing on the planet, Severus was instantly silenced into a child-like submission. "I thought I'd taught you to be a respectful and civilised person, not a spoiled brat on a relentless high horse!" her face was full of parental condemnation.

"I'm not-!"

"You can stop pretending that you know everything about me, because you certainly don't, my darling. I'm older and wiser and I've been to hell and back for this family, so you can just stop. Please..."

He stopped.

"I know your father has done some terrible things, I am no fool," Eileen continued; she spoke in barely a whisper, Severus had to lean downwards to hear her. "But there others who have done far, far worse things than even he could possibly imagine. Besides, he had nopart in… this."

Severus was genuinely interested for the first time since he had walked into the room. "Who…" and then a fantastic thought crossed his mind, "… you did this?"

By the way she stared silently into his wide eyes, barely even breathing, he knew his wild stab in the dark to be true.

"What did you do?"

"Your father's elderly and very distressed parents are in the canteen - don't look so happy Severus, for God's sake."

But he wasn't taking any notice of her warnings. "What did you do?" he asked excitedly, as if he were a child being given the promise of a new toy. It was the first time in years he had felt genuinely proud of her.

"I…" Eileen closed her eyes and pursed her lips; she took a deep breath and started again in an almost inaudible whisper. "You must promise me that this stays between us… if the Ministry gets wind of this…"

The Ministry? Severus grew more and more ecstatic by the second.

"... I just threw out my hands," Eileen continued, tears welling up in her red and tired eyes. "I didn't mean to! He… he was like a vicious animal… I would never have fought him if he hadn't said such cruel things about you – his own son for God's sake. It was just a reaction, Sev."

Severus jolted so much that he reached out and grasped her gaunt shoulder. "Magic?"

Eileen nodded glumly. "I didn't curse him! I would never... he fell down the stairs before I could do anything. And that's how-" she made a sweeping gesture over the bed, "-this happened." She let her arm to fall heavily back to her side.

There was a moment where neither of them spoke. Identical black eyes bored into one another… one filled with tears, the other filled with pride. And then Severus did something that was, in his opinion… completely off the wall.

It wasn't any sort of unyielding embrace by any normal loving family standard; in fact it was nothing more than him stepping forward and awkwardly draping one arm around her shoulder for a couple of seconds at most. But it was more than enough for them.

He spent the next hour telling her about his last year at school; they always had this discussion at the end of every year and this year was no different. As always, he casually omitted the existence of such perilous female associates as Lily Evans and Aurora Sinistra.

By the time his paternal grandparents had arrived back, along with Severus's Uncle (who closely resembled his younger brother Tobias minus the drug addict and son hating) – he decided it would was time to head back to Spinners End. He said his goodbyes to his beleaguered looking mother (despite first pleading with her to come back home and enjoy some quiet solitude while it lasted) and left the building post-haste, breathing in the fresh, cool air with such appreciation as the front doors of the hospital slide automatically open.

Air that was not shared by Muggles who possessed his last name was sweet air indeed.

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AN: Sorry I've been so slack with pushing out chapters! Uni's finished now so I should be getting more out very soon, however I was a little bogged down with this one - I don't do well with 'transitional' chapters quite as much ;) This one is short but I'm attempting to shorten them all down substantially as I felt they were getting a bit too "much". I hope you all enjoy this one. Reviews would be sorely appreciated. Thank you :) And as always, thanks for all your reviews so far :)