A/N: I haven't forgotten this story! Apologies for not being around and reviewing and updating and such... nursing school is a cruel Mistress, and I've just been accepted for practicum in the intensive care unit which is pretty much my dream come true - alas the preparation for which is taking up a lot of my time! But we're here now, I'm still very much dedicated in writing this... so for what it's worth, I hope you enjoy :)
The Pureblood Prince Chapter XVII – An Invitation of Sorts
Eileen stormed down the stairs, infuriated with her good-for-nothing husband, and marched straight into the kitchen where she did not notice her son staring perplexedly at the note in front of him.
"I'm getting a job." Eileen muttered vehemently in her fury. If Tobias could waltz around calling the cotton mill his "sanctuary away from this fuckin' prison of a buildin'", so could she.
"Hmmm?"
Eileen picked up his plate without looking at him and shoved it into the sink with such heated energy that a long crack materialized right down the centre of it.
"Blast!" Eileen managed to impede the urge to hurl the plate across the room just in time. Merlin, that brought back some memories… a long lost time when she still had some fight left in her and used to have one urge after the other to fling various pieces of dining utensils at Tobias's head when they used to argue. Indeed, she had done on more than one occasion; another reason why the Snape's lacked so many teacups and saucers. That all seemed like a thousand years ago, now… Eileen had stopped all physical retaliation after storming out of the kitchen one night to find her eight-year-old boy crying on the staircase.
"We only have three of those left, Mother."
Eileen turned around to find Severus glaring at her, parchment still in hand. Her mood immediately vanished.
"That we do," she pretended to busy herself scrubbing the two plates in the sink. "So… you received something from a school friend, I see?"
"No. It's…" but no further response came from him. Eileen quickly glanced over her shoulder to see Severus had returned to frowning at it. She knew her son like the back of her hand and knew that he would certainly not appreciate any sort of prying into any of his affairs, however small, but in the minutes that went by Eileen grew more and more curious that she simply could not contain herself any longer.
"Who's it from then?"
There was another long pause. Eileen stacked the dishes into the door-less cupboard.
"… it's… from Grandmother."
Eileen gave a burst of laughter.
"Alright if you don't want to tell me, you don't want to tell me." She chuckled to herself. Best leave him.
"I am telling you."
"Very well," Eileen smiled and leaned across the table to face him– so utterly pleased to finally have him want to open up to her about these issues, not that she could call herself a Master at them by any means. "Do tell me. Is she pretty?"
Severus blinked at her for a few seconds before his expression morphed into something of utter disgust. "… what?"
"Is she pretty? … It is a girl, isn't it?" Eileen added quickly. He may have been opening up to her far more than she expected.
"No, it is not a girl!I just - !"
"… a boy?"
"No! What on… I keep…" but Severus seemed to be able to tell from Eileen's seriously compassionate looking expression what she was hinting at. "… I like girls, mother!"
"Oh, sorry, I was just…"
"I keep telling you," Severus spat, now extremely angry. "It's from Grandmother. That is not a joke. You can read it yourself; it says not to show you but I can't seriously believe that she assumed I wouldn't."
But Eileen didn't even look at it. He must have charmed it to read something else, of that she was sure.
"I must have 'idiot' written on my forehead today. As if Grandma would ever send you an owl."
"Ugh. Not Grandma!" Severus said in impatient annoyance once it dawned on him just why his mother had been so quick to discard the truth as a badly failed joke "… Grandmother."
The thought that he could have meant another relation had not even crossed her mind. She had blocked the other one out so well that she was almost completely ignorant of her existence nowadays. In fact, Eileen was so ignorant of her existence that it was still taking time to compute.
"Grandmother?"
"Yes," he spat. "Grandmother."
"Wha…"
Eileen hastily picked up the letter. She waited before beginning to read it, to see if Severus would object, but he sat as still as ever. In fact, he continued to sit still until Eileen had read the very last line. She was speechless for a good few minutes, she simply did not know what to say, what to do…
Eventually, she folded the parchment up and raised her head indignantly.
"She's lying."
"Why would she do such a thing?"
"I'll tell you why: because nothing your dear grandmother ever does is simple or straightforward. There is something behind everything with her, and then some. She wants to see you, and this is her way of garnering sympathy; believe me -" Eileen spat the words with pure venom, " – my emotionally empty shell of a mother is never this demonstrative." She waved the parchment in front of Severus's face before dropping it on the table.
Eileen was so irate at her mother that she was beside herself. How dare she write to her son when she had never before met him in her life and just assume that he would come running to her beck and call! All under the absurd pretence that she was…
"She said she was dying, mother."
Eileen gave a short bitter laugh. "She is not dying, darling. She plays all kinds of trick cards when she needs something… she was a Slyth-"
She trailed off in mid-sentence, instantly feeling a pang of remorse for the angry words that were spewing from her thin lips. Severus raised a dark eyebrow at her.
"… erin?" he took the liberty of finishing.
"I didn't mean that, Severus. I'm sorry."
"No mother, I agree - clearly she must be a fraudulent trickster by default, as all of those nasty, evil little Slytherin's are."
"I didn't mean all Slytherin's were like that and you know it, Sev." Eileen grimaced. She felt it would be futile to tell him that she had been brought up by Slytherin's, surrounded by Slytherin's throughout her childhood and had fallen in love with a Slytherin; and that her son was, in all actuality, the only Slytherin she knew who had not caused pain to her in one way or another. "But this particular Slytherin is a particularly good actress."
"Or she could simply want to converse with me before she passes away because she knows her daughter won't believe that she is dying until she is dead? Or is that entirely out of the question for someone who was a Slytherin Head Girl?"
"I know my mother far better than you do, if you had the chance to actually meet her…"
Eileen stopped for a moment, wondering herself why she was fighting this so much. It couldn't have been because Serafina had found it prudent to go behind her back and drag her own grandson into this near life-long feud between them… it had to be something else…
But if he had the chance to actually meet her…
Ever since Severus was born Eileen had always thought it would mean the end of him if he ever met his Dark magic sorceress of a grandmother. Most of her still believed the very same thing. Ever since she had been in contact with her, Serafina was constantly looking for more and more ways to gain as much power and influence as possible in the wizarding world – it was not a trait Eileen used to envy quite as much as she envied her mother's striking beauty, or her grace, or the way in which she commanded immediate respect from whoever she wished, whenever she wished.
And yet now… a small part of her was beginning to think it may be good for Severus to actually meet the woman – to see that Serafina Prince, while still graceful and beautiful and powerful, was also a manipulative, Galleon-digging harlot who used to rope filthy rich (and just plain filthy) wizards into her web and leave them to dust when they had nothing more to give. Perhaps then he would realise that the grass certainly was not greener on the other side… Eileen felt another pang of guilt and knew that she couldn't do that to him; she couldn't leave him feeling that life was as hopeless and bleak as she felt it was.
Then again: Serafina really could be dying and, seeing that the Prince's had cut their daughter off from her sizeable inheritance and seeing that Atticus Prince now had all the power and authority of a particularly dilapidated sponge, simply wanted to hand down the family fortune and the deed to Prince Manor to their half-blood grandson with the Muggle surname. Eileen almost scoffed at herself… what a likely possibility that was.
Severus was gazing at the window, cracking his fingers uneasily and wearing an expression of deep upheaval.
"Sev, it's your decision… do what you want to do," Eileen handed him back the parchment and settled herself down on the couch with a rather monstrous looking leather-bound book; she had made the decision not to speak to Tobias for the rest of the day. After a few chapters, she would head out and search for job vacancies and be damned what anyone thought of it.
After a few moments of hushed stillness, Eileen heard the protracted and purposeful tear of parchment and the beat of a bin lid and she was filled with warmth. He walked past her without further discussion.
"Where are you going, boy?" came a harsher voice from the doorway. So Tobias really was determined to get to work again… if only the money actually managed to stay in their bank account.
There was a painfully long silence, and then: "well? Yer deaf?"
Eileen's anger at her husband had almost now boiled over. Soon she felt that there would soon be another teacup ready for its journey towards her husband's head if he didn't shut-up soon. She glanced up from her book to see father and son eyeing each other up, as if they were about to commence a fistfight in the hallway – it would certainly make a fairer fight now that Severus had now grown slightly taller than Tobias.
"For a walk."
It didn't sound like his usual scathing self; he sounded whitewashed, defeated… he pushed his way past Toby who, for a change, stepped aside and let him go. Tobias came into the room with the same haughty expression on his face. "What you reading there?"
"Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry."
"… Why?"
She knew he would continue to attempt to rile her up, as he always did whenever she picked up a book. But as long as it dealt with a Muggle topic, at least he wouldn't blow a fuse… thankfully Eileen was still very much fascinated by Muggle subjects.
Suddenly, she felt the warm heavy touch of two strong arms around her. Eileen looked upward towards the ceiling, and saw her husband above her. "What are you doing?"
"Makin' up for what I said," Toby replied almost inaudibly, he kissed the nape of her neck and she flinched. She knew he didn't really mean that; she knew what he really wanted.
"Just stop it…"
"Don't you play your hard to get games again, Ei, yer already did that last night before you ended up begging for it like you always do."
Eileen wished beyond all wishes that she could have called him a dirty liar for even daring to assume that she was so physically needy for his advances; but, crass and tactless as that statement was outside of the bedroom, it was not a lie… and Eileen hated him for it from the bottom of her heart; she hated him for knowing how much she wanted him. She hated herself.
"Piss off, Toby."
By the time his hand had swept its way underneath her top and her heart began beating furiously against his palm, Eileen forced herself to break away. She stormed to the other side of the room and fell upon another chair dramatically, whereupon she simply turned the page of the book and resumed reading. Toby remained with one leg on the other chair glaring in her direction, as if he were a lion surveying the weakest runt in the herd. He looked positively dishevelled with either fury or passion, Eileen was not sure – but it was a maddeningly alluring sight. She had forgotten how attractive he was when he was not jumped up to his eyeballs in both lawful and illicit drugs.
"Best idea you've ever had," Toby finally snapped, as he always did. He heatedly snatched his coat from the table.
"Where are you going? You aren't well, Toby…"
Eileen was so emotionally weary now that she didn't feel she would ever be able to stand up again.
"Trust me, Ei, the sight of that face of yours every mornin' makes me sicker than anything out there could make me in a hundred years."
The hopeless way in which her husband said it, the quiet and despondent way instead of the usual shouting match, stung her like a thousand venomous needles in her belly. There was nothing more to say, or to do. Eileen looked away from him and shut her eyes to spite the tears that undoubtedly came.
~*~
~*~
The gloomy, overcast day did nothing to aide the ancient, rusty old swings that moved almost fluidly in the wind. Many years ago those same swings used to be painted red, vibrant red.... now the faded paint had all but flaked off; it was as if the entire playground had been saturated in grey.
Severus grimaced from where he sat on his small hill, overlooking it. A vision of much happier times crossed his mind; he could almost see her sitting opposite him, swinging and talking and laughing all at once and instantly brightening up any sort of horrid day he had had at home. Perhaps the vibrancy came not from the condition of the playground after all, but from the person he used to share it with… Lily Evans had not came back to their usual meeting spot ever since fifth-year. She could have moved to the other side of the country as far as Severus knew, he had not seen her outside of Hogwarts since. The mere passing thought that there was a possibility the girl he was still incessantly in love with could very well be living with that bullying dolt James Potter made his hair stand on end. No one the least bit like him deserved someone like Lily.
When the tall, shadowy figure of his father made its appearance just across from the park – storming down the hill in the painfully obvious direction of their local pub – Severus took one long breath and waited patiently for Tobias's greasy brown hair to disappear around the corner and any other Muggle in the surrounding vicinity to make themselves scarce. He took out a piece of ripped parchment from his pocket: a piece of parchment that he had torn before dropping the other half in his bin.
Focusing on the writing upon the parchment, it wasn't long until, with a loud crack, he had apparated away.