"Remember: if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget."

-Welcome to Night Vale


Tobias


On Saturday, Snape gets out a bag of sugar, a carton of eggs and another of milk, and carries it all out to the car.

"Need help?" beams Harry, rounding the corner. Never far behind. "I can carry stuff."

Snape shoves the whole lot at the overly-helpful brat and grumbles "Hurry up," as he unlocks the car. I suppose it's that time of the month. Again. My penance for the sins of mankind, past and future. It'll only be harder if I delay it. Time to face the beast.

Snape drives ten miles south through corn fields, raising dust from the gravel road that billows in white clouds almost as high as a hurricane in the flat landscape. Across a creaky wooden bridge and crooked path, he turns off into a dirt driveway surrounded by overgrown elms. To the left lies a flowerbed of something dubiously weedy. To the right is a river-rock labyrinth; its neatly laid stones are bleached by the weather, large enough not to be overgrown by the prairie grass. Still just the same as they were all those summers ago, when Snape had wandered their meandering ways with a young boy's clumsy feet.

"Where were we going?" Harry asks behind his back. "Oh, what's over here?" Snape follows the direction of Harry's gaze.

Just over that hill is where the trailer park used to be, but now it's long gone, taken over years ago by far more mundane things than childhood dreams. Gone are the twin rubber tires hanging from gnarled oak branches. The old oak is no longer there, and neither is the park. It's a dusted-over dump of crumbling car carcasses and the rusty ribs of farm equipment rising from the cracked asphalt. The makeshift playground, and the red-haired girl of Snape's childhood exists now only in his memory. As we swung higher and higher together, there wasn't a cloud in sight, and Lily told me in a breathless whisper that she thought she could fly. I believed every word. How could I not? She was my friend and she never, ever lied to me.

"Nothing worth asking questions about," Snape sighs. "This way, Harry."

"Huh!" Harry peers dubiously at the shack Snape is striding towards. "Does anyone actually live-"

Snape knocks. At the disturbance, a little more of the peeling paint flakes away from the door.

"Mother?" Snape calls.

"Did you mean -" Harry says. "- as in, your mom?"

What did he think? That I just grew. In a dank corner of the church, like a mushroom? Snape fires a quelling glare over his shoulder, but luckily the tell-tale reply of "Severus?" from inside cuts in before he can voice his irritation at Harry's surprise.

"Come in, come in!" the same voice adds, growing louder with the faint sound of footsteps from within.

Of all the days for her to stay home… she just had to pick today. Snape pushes the cabin door open and shows Harry through.

"You're late!" Her sharp, scolding tone shifts abruptly to oily interest, "...ohh, and what do we have here?"

Harry beams and bounds forward to introduce himself with all the eagerness of a young lamb unaware of the slaughterhouse. Mother's sudden smile practically oozes smugness at the spectacle. "Ssuch a helpful young gentleman. What a rare treat. Hell-lo, handsome, you look so good I could just eat you up!"

"Hi," Harry gulps, trying to look friendly. "Er, Mrs. Snape?"

"Please. It's Prince; I've gone back to my maiden name. After all, my dear husband's been gone for years and years, and these parts could do with some royalty. But enough about me. Tell me about you. Harry, is it?" Eileen reaches for the pitcher of lemonade sitting on her table and Snape is sure that somehow she can see into his mind, right into the memory of another drink dripping down Harry's sweaty, heated skin. "Here, have a glass to cool you down," she purrs. "You too, Severus. Our guest's tales will be far too interesting to pass up. So," she fixes Harry with an avid stare, "what could possibly persuade you to help a stiff, dour old church dweller like my son?"

"Um," Harry scratches his head and takes the first sip of a golden liquid. "S'good. Thanks! And er, m'not sure myself, ma'am." His grin is bright and contagious. "I guess it's his charm. Must run in the family."

"I like this one," Mother smirks conspiratorially, "Smart and easy on the eyes. You should keep him."

Snape groans. It was a mistake, a big mistake, to unleash her on this unsuspecting innocent. She's eaten lesser brats for breakfast. "Easy, Mother. There best not be anything fermented in that pitcher. He's hardly of drinking age."

"Tsk. Just lemonade and love, Severus." Mother's wolfish grin is as honest as a used car salesman waiting to descend on an unsuspecting buyer. "Don't you trust me?"

Certainly not, Snape conveys with a silent glower, eyeing his mother down his nose. I know you, he adds as he folds his arms forbiddingly. If I thought you were old enough to know better, I wouldn't be living ten miles away, keeping a close eye on you month after month.

He breaks the stare only when her shrug shows he's made his point. Only then does he glance aside at Harry, to find him watching their byplay with open fascination. It's all Snape can do not to facepalm. It's too bad that the obnoxious teenage attraction for brainless horror shows and poisonous junk already has Harry falling into her trap, hook, line and sinker. How does she do it? Can't be only through copious quantities of questionable garden herbs and stale Mountain Dew in that lemonade pitcher.

I'm still too young to know. Or possibly too old to understand.


Snape's mom is far too interesting; Harry can't help but compare them. Their noses, their eyes. Their voices. Even the cautiously hidden ears covered by greasy hair. Though Snape's mom's wiry hair is streaked with silver all over and Snape's isn't yet.

She's definitely not like Spock though. Not at all. Too full of smiles and dry chuckles and teasing and searching glances that are far too disturbing to be merely curious, and her questions are all prying and bitey, but not enough to make Harry worry. Maybe it's just her way. Most old folks are chatty and nosy. It's just 'cause they're lonely.

Harry waters her poinsettia, her ivy, her catnip and thyme, and then another cluster of hanging plants he can't quite identify, dragging a metal watering can heavy with well water from one window sill to another. He's under strict instructions not to use tap water. Apparently the 'chlorine-n-Kryptonite-and-Cleopatra-knows-what-el se' cocktail brewed up by the local water tower is 'only good for adding flammable heads to Kool-Aid.' (She chuckles, rattles a box of matches, and promises to teach him that trick later.)

Her lemonade is sour and icy and sharp as her stare. Every word that comes out of her thin, smirking mouth is either questionable or a joke or usually both. But that beetle-black gaze doesn't miss much. That, Harry decides after long thought, is where Ms. Prince resembles her son most of all.


"What have you been up to since last time?" Snape asks her pointedly, after Harry, helpful as always, agrees to fetch more water for her outdoor plants from the garden well. A tabby cat curls up in the hanging planter outside, right around the leafy spider plant, as nonchalant as ever about the prospect of being watered by mistake, twitching tail tip poised in a curl above the cattail reeds.

"Severus, you should take care of yourself! Look at you, all skin and bone…"

"Save it." Snape eyes the locked door to the cellar staircase. "What's in the cellar this time?"

"Seriously, have you emerged from your church for a day? It wouldn't hurt you to…"

"What's in the cellar, Mother?" Snape is not about to try to rescue his Dear Old Grey-haired Mother from the consequences of her own pharmaceutical… experiments, any more than he would attempt to drink her under the table.

"Nothing! Not a thing. Seriously, Severus, it's nothing the state troopers, those lovely, vigorous young men, would fret over," Eileen fires right back with a cackle. "And they are lovely this year. Such fresh meat," she purrs, as her gaze drifts over to track Harry.

"Mother…" Snape reaches for the deadbolt. He's hardly happy at the prospect of more cleanup: either of yet another 'chemistry lab', or if not that, of the resulting legal troubles.

Eileen steps between him and the door. "Oh, let me have at least a little fun. You'd get in far more trouble than I ever would, testing the sodomy laws with your young and impressionable… what is he by the way? Hm. Doesn't look much older than a freshman."

"Mother!" Snape growls.

"What? Dear me, did I say something completely inappropriate in front of a priest? 'Sodomy'. You must know the word, if you read that book of yours as faithfully as you think you do. The state troopers, toothfairy godmother bless their thick skulls, will enforce every paragraph and footnote of our fine law, I'm sure. How does it feel to have all your books stacked against you?"

"You wouldn't recognize a 'fine law' if it sat on your nose and shimmied. And for your information," Snape hisses in an undertone, "he's seventeen!"

Only seventeen. The stab of guilt is as thorny and persistent as his mother's insinuations.

"Really? Tsk, what a pity." Eileen shrugs. "A bit too old for a choir boy."

"The church choir," Snape replies in gritted tones that - judging by the smirk on his mother's face - don't have a scrap of effect, "is open and available to everyone who demonstrates the shred of ability to carry a tune. I doubt Harry would make the cut." Unfortunately, Harry outsinging the shower yesterday morning in complete and utter butchering of the Beatles doesn't count as 'shred of ability' one bit, even if Snape does generously round up Harry's odds to a two-in-five chance of hitting the right note.

"I'm sure you'll find some use for him. A bright young thing like that, so eager to be impressed with your knowledge of scripture. How does it go? 'Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me'?"

Snape draws a deep, calming breath. "It must be a special sort of skill, to take a source of strength and inspiration and twist it inside out, all for the sake of sinking deeper in that mental gutter of yours." Mother's jokes were actually funny when Snape was six: they were rare then, but far more bitter, with Father around. Now, they are tolerable on a good day. "By the way, you can stop fighting now," he adds acidly, "The war's over. Just in case you didn't get the memo, I graduated from Seminary, whether you like it or not."

"Hmph, and how is that working out for you?"

"Just fine," Snape intones.

"'Just fine'!" she mocks, with a stiff upper lip. "A fine mess! Upstanding citizen, prim and proper with a church of your very own, not a man to speak against you with God on your side. Psh. At least I don't pretend that a crucifix on the wall solves all my problems."

"Careful, Mother. You could be hosting the police instead of me. And they won't be nearly as forgiving of your cellar experiments."

"Want to test that theory? I'm sure your entire Sunday flock would just love to see me in the papers!"

Harry calls from the yard, "All done, Mrs. Prince." A tousled head pokes in the door. "Papers? What would they write about?"

Eileen breaks out in crowing laughter, too raucous to be genuine. "Never you mind, dear. Just ignore an old hag's ramblings: Severus always does. Until his own stubbornness comes up sooner or later, to bite him in his pale, bony ass." For good measure, a light smack lands on Snape's side. "Check him for bite marks sometime for me, boy. Someone ought to."

Never before has Snape wished his mother away so thoroughly or desperately.


They don't leave until nightfall. Mother has taken too much of a liking to Harry, like a spider with an especially juicy fly. She is positively salivating at the prospect of asking him just one more question. It must be comic books, or possibly movies. Either way, it's fine by him: with a mother who, he's convinced, can cause a crack in the church steeple just by stepping under it, Snape isn't looking forward to another spiritual debate at the dinner table.

So far the discussion seems to swings toward the key argument of who'd win in a wrestling match: Cthulhu or Godzilla. His mother is far too amused by Harry's description of either, and Snape's pointed stare does nothing to distract her from her slyly prying remarks. However, most of her insinuations of suitors or sodomites drift past Harry's ears like cigarette smoke, and for that Snape is thankful.

The screen door lets in the evening breeze, as warm and humid as a breath. The cat, Minerva, Minnie for short, has also been let in. She stretches up, hooks her front paws carefully over the edge of the rickety wooden table, and strops her claws. The methodical scratch-scratch doesn't disturb the Tarot deck spread out in a configuration Snape recognizes as a very standard Celtic Cross reading. Apparently Mother's had a client today: not a regular, not someone she feels obliged to go to an effort to impress. The smoke of Eileen's cigarette curls its meandering gray tentacles up to the kitchen ceiling, where braids of garlic and wilted bundles of sage hang drying above the stove.

It smells more of plain tobacco in her kitchen than Snape ever remembered before. Snape doesn't miss his childhood one bit, but even he has to admit that the occasional company of his mother's nosy, dubious circle of friends and the natural solitude has been better for her than

Father's company ever was.

It's not as if his mother has mellowed out, even if she doesn't feel the need anymore for help from hemp. The produce from Lovegoods' All-Organic Onion Farm a mile south causes fewer tears than anything she's ever cooked up, literally or metaphorically. Which is quite the achievement, since the Lovegoods' fertilizer supply comes solely from free range llamas and a wind-powered compost tumbler. Or so they claim.

Just like everyone else in Pleasant Hope, Snape has long learned to take the Lovegoods with a grain of salt and patience for conspiracy theories. Any Luna Lovegood Conspiracy Theory op-ed in the Sunday paper is about as reliable as your average flying saucer sighting, and about as welcome as an alien anal probe.

Speaking of unwelcome probing, how ironic is it that Mother has snatched up this innocent into her web. There'll be questions later, no doubt.

Before they part, Eileen shakes Harry's hand, leans over and breathes a word in his ear with a suspicious smirk. Snape doesn't have to wait long to find out what she's up to.

"Huh?" Harry asks back, nowhere near as stealthy. "Tobias, what?"

"His middle name," Mother grins, ever so smug. "Use it well."

Snape cringes, unclenches his fists, and reminds himself yet again that matricide is a deadly sin.