Mettle
"MUUUUUM!" Severus screamed.
Eileen was up instantly. She wasted no time on finding a robe to cover herself or to find slippers to keep her feet warm as she ran from her bedroom to her son's. Coming into his bedroom, she looked to his bed and was terrified when she didn't see the boy there.
"Severus?" Eileen called.
A scrabbling noise came from the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom and the woman sprinted toward it. Pushing in the heavy door, she squinted into the darkness and just barely made out the shape of her son over the sink. Motioning the lights on with a silent spell on her lips, Eileen gasped at what she found.
Her son's hand was bloody and glass stuck out with jagged edges from his palm. Approaching with faltering steps, Eileen wrapped her own hand loosely around the injured one of her child's and pushed it under the faucet.
Turning on the water, she gave a wince of sympathy when he made a low, pained hissing noise. Opening the cabinet beside the sink, she rooted around for a pair of tweezers and when she found some, Eileen took Severus's hand out from beneath the flow of the water and told him, "This will probably hurt."
Severus suppressed a whimper as she pulled out bits of glass and blotted the wounds with a towel. When she was done, she brought down the first aid kit and bandaged up her son's hand. With that done, Eileen ordered, "Take a seat on the tub."
The boy sat down with no protest and allowed the woman to touch him all over and push his face this way and that way as she expected him closely. "Now, how did you end up with glass in your hand?" she inquired.
"I probably grabbed my glass of water when I was dreaming and squeezed it too hard," Severus replied with a tired shrug, "I really don't know."
It was as plausible an explanation as any and so, Eileen accepted it with a nod and took a seat beside her son and enveloped him in a one-armed hug. "Do you want to talk about it, love?"
Her son started to shake his head, but then he stopped and remarked, "I've seen myself die over and over, but every time, every bloody time he - me - doesn't want to die. He's prepared for it, accepted it and understands it must be, but he doesn't want to. Mum, I think everybody who says they're okay with dying is a liar."
Kissing her son's head, Eileen whispered a promise to her only child, "Then isn't he lucky I have no plans to let him and you die like that?"
"Mum, I don't think you get to stop something just because you don't like it," Severus sighed wearily.
Clutching the boy, the woman said nothing for a long time and soon enough, her son nodded off into exhausted sleep. When she was sure he was asleep, she brought Severus onto her lap and Eileen muttered, "I can stop it. I will stop it. For you, my love, for Qurinius and all the others who don't deserve to die."
-v-v-v-v-v-
"What do you think of the list?"
Still studying the scrap of paper, Eileen read for what must have been the eighty-eighth time,
Pros:
Dad'll be happy.
It will help me get the job I want in the Ministry quicker.
Linus is already a part of the group.
I'll help clean up the Muggle scum that doesn't like how we do things in our world.
Cons:
It'll hurt.
I don't like the look of him.
If someone sees the mark, things could go badly.
I will have to kill people, not just scare them back to their stupid world.
Turning the sheet over, Eileen handed it to her mother and said, "It's fifty fifty with this boy."
The look her mother wore was unamused. "No, Eileen, what do you think about its connection?" she demanded.
"I don't know for sure there is one..."
Taking it, the older woman commented, "We could let Severus see it. I know he only watches people die, but maybe he'll recognize something this boy writes about."
Snatching it back angrily, Eileen refused, "No! I will not let my son see that the man who might kill him is already leading children astray!"
"You won't be able to keep it from him no matter how hard you try, Eileen. In a year he'll be at Hogwarts and just as entrenched in things as this young man here is!" her mother argued fiercely.
Eileen knew she was being ridiculous, trying to hide the truth from her son when she'd promised the opposite; but, could she really be blamed? What this boy had written was terribly frightening and all she could imagine was someday Severus might do the same...
-v-v-v-v-v-
Eileen gasped her way into wakefulness and there was a thump by her feet as Severus slid to the ground.
"Mum?" Severus mumbled.
Standing up, the woman winced at the tingling that began in her legs as she was made to sit back down. Obviously they'd spent at least a couple hours sleeping in the bathrom.
The boy touched her knee. "You okay?" he asked.
"Just some pins and needles," Eileen explained wanly as she started to rub her hands up and down her limbs.
Sitting on the floor, Severus stared at her as she ran her hands up and down her legs. After a while, the boy got up and went to the sink and unwrapped his bandages.
"Do you think I'll need to see a healer? A couple of these look a bit deep," he commented.
Eileen wished she could have joined him at the sink, but her legs were still too sharp for her to stand on. "Maybe," she admitted. "But, we'll let your grandmother decide. She's the one who trained as a healer."
"She did?" her son questioned with true interest.
Nodding, Eileen informed the child, "That she did. It was her way of biding time between school and marrying your grandfather. They'd been engaged before he left Hogwarts, but he wanted to do a roundabout the world before he settled down and that took a few years, so grandmother decided to further her studies."
"That's kind of wicked," Severus smiled at her.
Eileen smirked back. "You might have to ask her about it some, then," she commented.
Severus nodded and re-bandaged his hand before inquiring, "Do you need help, mum?"
"No, I'm just fine, you can go."
And go, Severus did.
Sighing, Eileen pushed herself up and took the first few painful steps and relaxed as the pain ebbed away to nothing on her way back to her rooms.
-v-v-v-v-v-
"Are you ready for dinner at the Selwyn's, Severus?" Eileen asked as she finished putting on the emerald choker her mother had given her to wear tonight.
Pulling at his bow-tie, the child gave a shrug. "Is the tie really necessary?" he asked.
Smiling at his reflection in her full-length mirror, the woman laughed, "Yes, my love, it is."
"Okay," he sighed as he flopped back onto her bed.
Rolling her eyes with good humor, she told him, "Sit up now, you wouldn't want to cause any wrinkles."
He did so and made a face at her - which, Eileen echoed with one of her own.
Severus broke into a peal of laughter and she wondered, how could he be such a little boy and so old at the same time?
-v-v-v-v-v-
The moment Severus laid his dark eyes on Thomas Selwyn, Eileen saw things were already too far out of her control. Tears gathering in his eyes, Severus did not step away or start to shout or even whimper. Instead, the skinny lad moved to Katrina and took up her smaller hand in his and with a voice so full of aching and regret, he whispered, "I'm so, so sorry."
To say the least, the girl was frightened and the couple were less than pleased with her son's odd behavior. Eileen didn't know what she could say to fix this, but as always, her mother seemed to know just what to do.
"Severus, young man, knock off your antics this instance!" she snapped as she pulled him away from Katrina. "I told you to save your presentation for after dinner."
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Eileen's son gave his mother a look that only hinted at the true confusion he must have felt at her behavior as he gave a mute nod of his head.
Apologetic, the old woman pulled her rouged colored lips into a frown and told the Selwyn's, "He's been very eager to show off the scene of Shakespeare he learned for his lessons this week."
"Shakespeare, you say?" Clodagh replied with some doubt, "I don't think I'm very familiar with his work other than Romeo and Juliet."
Taking a slow, quiet breath, Eileen felt her heart return to a steady rhythm. Thank merlin for small favors, she thought as she put a delicate hand to her chest. If Eileen hadn't been more concerned with soothing her battered heart, she may have note how Thomas's wife's eyes snapped to her as Eileen's mother began to thank Thomas once again for helping them change Severus's name.
Dinner was a dull affair. Seated around a table smaller than the one they had in the Prince manor in a vaulted room, Eileen spoke little as her mother chattered on about gossip she'd heard from her visits with other well-to-do families with Clodagh and Thomas.
Katrina kept glancing at Severus. Severus kept his eyes on his plate and ate little.
It hurt Eileen and she wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to see the child who'd made faces at her in her bedroom jus an hour before again. She wanted her little boy back.
The worst part, the woman mused, was that things would continue on this path as he grew older and older and thought himself too big and grown for his mother's gentle ministrations.
-v-v-v-v-v-
Dinner several hours past, they've retired to a parlor and Katrina's dozed off on a sofa with Severus sleeping fitfully beside her.
Swirling a glass of Chardonnay, Eileen's mother argued, "No, no, I'm certain he said that we are all fools! No matter how we feel about ourselves!"
"That's just asinine, here-" Getting up, Thomas asked Eileen's mother, "Would you accompany me to my study, Misses Prince? I think we'll find the very book we are speaking of there."
"Of course, my good sir," the aged woman agreed as she took his offered hand and together, the two stepped out into the hall.
Clodagh who'd been silently stitching something across the room, turned her eyes on Eileen and said, "You're son was not acting out a scene of Shakespeare."
"Yes, he was," Eileen firmly disagreed. "He's very fond of his works - especially King Leer," she insisted as her hands dug into the fabric of her skirt.
Bright eyes sharp as arrows, Clodagh shook her head and proclaimed, "You are not a skilled liar, Prince. You're mother mayhap have convinced my husband - and myself too, if I had not looked to you behind her and saw the fear in your eyes."
"No..." the woman uttered.
Standing up, the other woman came to tower over Eileen as she demanded much more forcefully, "Tell me or your son will never lay his dirty eyes upon my daughter again."
Eileen did not like being threatened, she hated that her son had been brought into their fight and she would have begun to claw Clodagh's eyes out if it were not for the pair of children sleeping just a couch away.
So, meeting bright eyes, she spat, "My son saw your husband's death. He saw it and he was so moved by it he felt he should apologize to your daughter because it was likely unpleasant."
"You-" blinking, Eileen could see there were tears in Clodagh's eyes as she warbled, "You lie."
Smirking Eileen rose to her feet and met the woman's gaze equally. "Was it not just you who declared I have no talent for such a thing?" she inquired spitefully.
"No!" she shouted and the bully of a woman's legs buckled beneath her.
Watching as she wept on the rug of her husband's home, Eileen looked back to the children and saw their eyes were on Clodagh. Katrina was holding Severus's hand in a bone-snapping grip and Severus's eyes were terribly solemn.
Getting up, her boy lead them both to the sobbing woman. Taking a seat on the floor, Severus laid a hand on the woman's elbow and said, "I'm sorry, Misses Selwyn, but it is already too late."
Alarmed, Eileen demanded, "What do you mean, Severus?"
"He dies," Severus told them, "Tonight."
More scared than she had been in years, Eileen grabbed him and began to shake him. "What do you mean?" she yelled, "He just left with your grandmother a moment ago!"
Wrenching himself away, Severus scowled and turned a kind gaze on Katrina. "Come," he whispered to her, "We need to write your brother."
Her eyes rimmed red, the girl did not question her son, but followed his lead and the two were gone.
A few agonizing and frightening minutes later, Eileen's mother came back alone with two glasses in hand. "Your husband was called away while we were in his study," the old woman said before truly registering the two's expressions. Her mind muddle some by the wine, she asked, "What's going on? Where are the children? Clodagh, why are you crying and Eileen-"
"Thomas dies tonight," the woman told her mother. "Severus says so."
Dropping the glasses, they shatter on the hard ground of the doorway and Clodagh's crying turned to shrieking.
And not a half hour later, men in black coats bring in the body of Thomas Selwyn half-burnt and completely devoid of life.
"What happened to him?" Eileen demanded of the two as Thomas's wife throws herself on top of him screaming and bawling.
Faces hard and lips thin, one of them, a young man that looked vaguely familiar with his square jaw and small ears, told Eileen, "Tonight did not go quite as planned."
Wanting to grab the young man she's sure is the son or daughter of someone she went to school with, she hissed, "That's not an answer! What didn't go well? What didn't go as planned!?"
The other man, a thicker fellow that Eileen knows is utterly foreign gives her a cruel sneer as he said, "We don't owe any explanation to a blood-traitor like you!"
"Then what of his grieving wife!?" she countered furious.
"We will be in contact," was all the young man said before the pair left.
When they were both gone, Eileen's mother whispered, "Oh-Oh, we can't let the children see this..."
"Ward the hall," she told her mother. "Put up an age line."
Nodding she went off to do just that as Eileen put a hand on Clodagh's back. "This won't happen again," she promised. "I'm going to stop it."
"How!? How you filthy blood-traitor!?" the widow screamed at her.
Keeping their eyes locked in an even stare, she offered the woman a hand and whispered, "I'll do it with your help."
Face blotchy and lip wobbling, Clodagh took the hand and Eileen let out a breath she'd not known she was holding.
Thoughts? What do you think? Does it seem Eileen might get to accomplish her goal?
To reviewers, Dixie.f.9, NightmarePrince, Nymphxdora, KodeV, Jemennuie you guys rock :)
Thanks for reading and please review!