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Tobias was at work, down at the mill, and the house was so quiet. It couldn't really feel peaceful, as if the walls themselves were infected with the discord that was constant in the household. Still, it was quiet and that was almost as good. Severus climbed into the ratty chair that his father always sat in when he wanted to hoist bottles of beer and rage about political things going on in the newspaper—or really, rage about anything in general. His father really didn't seem to like anything. He felt so small sitting in that chair, his feet dangling but not touching the floor. He wiggled them, his socks mismatched, filthy, and one sporting a hole that was large enough for most of his toes to poke through. He pointed an invisible wand at the hole in his sock and whispered the word his mother had whispered to him one night, a couple years ago when he had nearly been drowned in the bathtub but more importantly—that was the night Severus Snape had learned that he was a wizard.
"Reparo." The word did nothing to mend the hole. He twisted around in the chair, leaning over the arm and peeking around the tall back of it to glance at his mother who was sitting on the dirty floor with a dusty book in her lap. The sound of her now and then turning a page was the only whisper in the room, besides his muttered magic, but she had seemed not to hear it.
"Severus, you're not to be in your Father's chair." She said coldly, not looking up from her book.
Severus rolled his eyes behind her back. It wasn't as if his father was home right now, nor would his father notice he had been in it. Severus didn't dispute his mother, though. He had learned very early on in his life that it was best to stay quiet, though he found that he often grew weary of it. There were plenty of times he wanted to scream just as loudly as his father, to yell the horrible curses and names that his father called him back into his Father's face, but he was too afraid to do so. He was horribly small, and his father was—well just plain horrible, and certainly much bigger than Severus was.
He slid out of the chair and approached his mother, looking curiously over her shoulder. She sat with her legs curled up beneath her, on a sooty rug next to the fireplace. Off to one side of the fireplace was a bookcase built into the wall and crammed full of old looking books. Severus had often stood in front of the towering case of books and when he was old enough to read he had looked over as many titles as he could see from his height. His mother usually shooed him away when he became too curious, however. She wouldn't let him touch them, and he itched to take one down, to touch the dusty cover, open it, read the words written on the yellowed pages.
Over his mother's shoulder he caught a line of typeface before she snapped the book closed, a little puff of dust floating up from the pages. Her brows sat black and flat above her eyes—eyes that were like dark, cold coals. Her thin lips were flattened into a serious line and she looked at him this way for a few moments. He waited for her to either glare at him for being nosy, or for the look to soften away—he was more hopeful for the latter. However, she did neither. The chilly expression remained the same as she handed the book to him.
"I suppose you're old enough." She said, plucking another book from the case. "These books were enchanted a long time ago. To your Father, they appear as various Muggle titles. If he were to open one, he would see lines of poetry, or prose, or perhaps recipes."
Severus turned the book in his hand, he could tell the cover had once been red but now it looked more brownish, the corners worn and one missing. The spine of the book read in small black letters; British Government: Edition 1.
"Look harder." His mother said, pulling another book from the shelf.
Severus stared harder at the book, a small gasp of delight escaping his lips that were thin like hers. The author's name and title had changed to Owle Bullock: "Secrets of the Darkest Art". Severus gave a shiver of glee and excitement as his tiny, dirty, fingers ran reverently over the magical letters. He could hardly take his eyes from the book, but then he realized that beside him was a whole shelf, which from his vantage point of being a small boy and sat upon the floor, seemed to tower endlessly above him.
"Can—can I read it, Mum?" He asked, his voice very quiet.
"I don't know. Can you?" She said, sliding a couple more books towards him.
"I mean—may I read 'em Mum? Please!" He scooped up the other two books which as Muggle titles read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The first title shifted into an introductory book on charms. That book was very worn, and at the bottom of the cover in a small, tight, script was his mother's name: Eileen Prince. This must have been one of her books for school. The second book title shifted into A History of Magic 1st Edition.
His mother nodded her head at him in response, loose strands of black hair whispering around her white face, fallen down from the severe bun she always wore at the back of her long and slender neck. Before he could stop himself, he had flung himself at her and hugged her tightly. She stiffened.
"Severus, that's enough." She pushed him back.
He was too excited over the books to really care at the moment about his mothers lack of affection. He scooped the old books into his arms and hurried towards his room, but then turned back to her.
"Can I take 'em outside?"
His mother stared at him for a moment, at his usually dour face so alight with happiness, at his small arms encircling the books, the milk-white skin marred with bruises of varying color and states of healing.
"Yes, but take the jacket by the door. Cover them up." She said, and Severus knew that she didn't mean for him to cover the books.
He had to wear that big old coat whenever he went out to play. He rolled the sleeves up many times so his arms wouldn't be completely lost in the long sleeves. The coat itself was almost comically enormous on him; it hung down to his knees and it was always shifting off of one shoulder or the other. Sometimes he ran around the grass letting it fly out behind him pretending it was a cape and that he was some sort of hero, even though he knew he never would be. Heroes were handsome, and people loved them. Severus Snape was an ugly little boy, and no one even liked him.
But right now he might as well have been Superman soaring over tall buildings, because he felt a sort of elation that was rare for him. He crossed the stony, pot-holed street and wove through the tall grass and down the litter-strewn bank to the edge of the polluted river. The water moved brown and sluggish and looked more like sewage than actual water. It didn't bother Severus, he was used to the way it looked and smelled. He spent a lot of time here watching the bugs crawl over the garbage and dirt, listening to their varied songs, skipping stones, thinking, watching the sun hang low in the evening and then dip down red in the brown hazy sky before disappearing. Then the moon would come out and almost rest at the top of the smoke stack and bats would swoop down over the black river and he would go home, back towards the tiny, unhappy houses, with their lights on through broken and dirty windows.
Severus dropped to his knees, the worn patches on his jeans thinly protecting his skin from abrasion. He held the three books in one arm, the top one in danger of toppling off, and with his other he swept garbage and debris away to clear a little patch on the soft earth. He spread the books out, his dark, contemplative eyes sweeping over each one as excitement bubbled and buzzed through him. Which one to read first? He nibbled at his broken nails for a moment before choosing the one that drew his attention the most: Secrets of the Darkest Art.
Severus liked to know secrets, and he was good at keeping them—it was easy when he had no one to tell them to—though he sometimes wished that he did.
He tucked a lock of greasy black hair behind his ear and opened the book onto his lap. He read eagerly, taking everything in though some of it he had to read over multiple times to understand it, and still sometimes he wasn't so sure. However he still had four years until he would leave this place behind for Hogwarts and the world of magic so he had plenty of times to read the many books in the book shelf at home and try and make sense of them. The sun rose above him in the sky as he read on, high and hot at noontime, baking down upon his fair skin. He had stopped his reading only to take the obnoxious jacket off and tie the rolled arms of it around his gaunt waist, it was just getting too warm to continue wearing it, and no one was out here to see the marks on his arms anyway. His dilapidated shoes followed shortly after the shed jacket, and were tossed near a tangle of weeds.
Halfway through the dark arts book, he had to put it down and process. There was just so much and his eager mind wanted to be filled with more but he was afraid his head might just explode if he didn't take a break. He curled his bare toes into the soft silt at the rivers edge and hugged his knees as he looked out over the slow moving sludge, thinking very deep thoughts for an eight-year-old boy. The inner workings of his mind were only interrupted at the burping sound of a frog, which nearly startled him. It was just a few feet in front of him, its front legs in the water and its larger back ones still in the mud, as if it was undecided about where it wanted to go. Severus' eyes twinkled and he leaned forward very carefully, hunched and preparing to spring up on it. It gave another burp sound, and he lunged at it, splooshing into the mud and splashing mucky, smelly, water into his face. His small hands were barely wrapped around the large frog which was croaking and wiggling frantically in attempt to get away.
"No, no you don't!" Severus squeezed a little harder to keep his grip on it, but the skin was muddy and slippery and it nearly got away—he just barely grabbed it by one of its long back legs and there it dangled from the boys fist jerking and ribbitting.
Severus tugged his jacket from his waist and quickly wrapped the frog up in it to keep it from escaping him once again, and climbed back up the slippery bank, mud squishing between his toes as he went. He felt victorious as he sat back down by his three books, the lump of fabric with frog in it wiggling in his lap. He wiped his dirty hands on his shirt and then opened the dark arts book again, flipping through pages until he found what he was searching for. He carefully opened the bundle of jacket, his heart hammering with anticipation. He didn't have a wand, but there was some talk in this book of wandless magic, though it was usually a more advanced sort of art, and Severus wasn't even old enough to be labeled a beginner. However, he remembered what he had done to his father when he was five years old, so he wasn't deterred from trying. Unluckily enough, the accidental stunning of his father hadn't deterred his father either, so said the bruises up and down Severus' bare and now filthy arms.
The green and brown frog in his lap seemed to scowl up at him, though he wasn't sure if frogs could scowl. Severus had seen a lot of scowls and it involved displeased looking eyebrows, and frogs did not have eyebrows. Severus pointed at the frog, a very serious expression of concentration on his dirt splashed face.
"An-teo-cul-atia!" He said slowly, sounding the word out. He watched the frog for any signs of growing antlers as that was what this particular hex was supposed to do. The frog just scowled without eyebrows. "Damn it. Ante-o-culatia!"
He tried again, saying the word a little faster. Still, there was nothing. He tried a couple more times, emphasizing different parts of the word each time he spoke it, but still the frog did not grow antlers. Severus was disappointed, he would very much have liked to see a frog sprout antlers.
"Fine, jus' bugger off then." He dumped the frog out of his lap, glaring at it slightly, but then his mouth fell open. The frog hopped over a broken piece of brick and a crushed can, and had almost disappeared before Severus was up and scrambling after it.
"Wait!" He called, as if it would listen.
Severus hurriedly scooped up his three books, and took off after the frog which just hopped into a patch of tall grass.
"Come back!" He called, his voice breaking up into a fit of giggles.
The hex had worked, but not quite properly. The frog had grown a small bony protrusion...on its arse. Severus kept after the frog as well as he could, stumbling over garbage, the tall grass swishing against his ragged jeans. He had almost caught up with it when one of his feet came down on a chunk of glass. A wail of pain followed by a jumble of swearwords came out of his mouth as he pitched forward, his books flying from his arms and spreading across the ground. The frog wiggled its way into a hole in a rotting tree stump, giving a burpy goodbye and one last glimpse of its horned arse.
Severus sat up and twisted his leg up so he could see the bottom of his foot. A large chunk of bottle-green glass was lodged into the arched middle, a trickle of blood winding down the sole that was blackened with dirt and mud. Severus grabbed the glass, bit down on his lower lip, and pulled. It came out easily, at least. The blood flowed freer from the gash, and painted his fingers as well. With a sigh he tossed the chunk towards the river. He looked back down at his bleeding foot and mumbled without much hope of it really working 'reparo'. He remembered his mother using that word to repair the frayed band of his undershorts the same night he had found out about being magical. He had tried to use it multiple times since but it had never served him as well as it had her. He was doubtful that it would work on something like a cut anyway, and he must have been correct because nothing happened, except that the crimson kept dripping from his foot.
He took his smock-like shirt off, revealing an underfed figure with a terribly thin waist and the ridges of his spine and ribs. His shoulders were small and knobby, and the blades of his shoulders looked pointy, like some sort of giant eyeteeth trying to break through from the inside out. His greasy hair hung around his face and shoulders like little black snakes, some at the back of his head matted together. He washed as little as possible—up until his mother would finally notice and make him do it. He didn't like to go into the washroom any more than he had to. It still held bad memories for him and although he suspected it was all in his head, he still felt afraid every time he sat foot in there, as if his father would rush in and shove his head beneath the water again. Just thinking of it made his chest and throat feel horribly tight, so he avoided that haunt. For a boy with black hair that was unnaturally oily anyway, the infrequent washing made it all the worse. However, his clothing was just as poor and dirty looking, so it all happened to match in a very odd sort of way.
It was one of these pieces of stained clothing that he held now in his hands and wound around his foot to take care of the bleeding. He tied the shirt which was now a makeshift bandage and then picked himself up, and limped around to collect his fallen books. He knew in a little while he would become tolerant to the pain that was throbbing down to his toes and up to his ankle, but for now, he wanted something to take his mind off of it. Having collected all three books and brushing them off a bit, he sat back down in his new found spot among the tall grass, and opened A History of Magic. The top of his oily head could barely be seen over the weeds that grew along the river bank amongst the garbage. Severus Snape blended in perfectly there.
By the time the sun had begun to go down and the tall weeds began to cast skeletal shadows over Severus, he had finished A History of Magic and gotten about half through the potions book, which he found equally as intriguing as the one on dark arts. The low light and long reading was beginning to strain his eyes though, and sometimes the magical text shifted and a sentence speaking of a certain potion would trail off into something that made no sense and he knew it was pieces of the Muggle book coming back through. Severus rubbed his eyes, and looked back at the page.
This is a valley of ashes-a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Severus closed the book, the title as he knew it would now reading back to The Great Gatsby. Whatever passage he had stumbled upon in the Muggle form of the book had hit home with him. It sounded like Spinners End, like most of Cokeworth, really. It reminded him of home, and he knew that he needed to be there lest he get in trouble for being back too late. Severus unwound the fabric from his foot. It had been bandaged up for hours now, and the bleeding had ceased. The shirt however was very bloody, and it wouldn't do to take it home as such. He washed it as best as he could at the rivers edge and rung out the excess water. There were still faint coppery stains on some of the shirt where the blood would not completely come out, but now those stains just blended in with the rest. He slipped the wet material over his head. By the time he got up to the house it would probably be nothing more than damp, the material was very thin. He grabbed his mother's books and made his way back up the bank.
He opened the door slowly, peeking in and hoping to sneak by without capturing his father's attention. The large man was slouched in his favorite chair, a toppled battalion of empty beer cans already around the bottom of the chair and his large feet. He was grinding his broken and rotting teeth, his thick brows drawn into an angry expression that for him was very normal.
"An' the soddin' mill jus' laid off more a' us today. Reckon soon they'll be tryin' to boot me arse ou' the door as well. Heh. An' af'er all the years I put in fer 'em breakin' me bloody-focken' back. What d'they care, huh? No one does though, ain't that sweet? Got a bitch that sits home knittin' all day while I bus' me back on the dock all day long—and she don' care either, do yeh 'Leen?"
Tobias didn't look at Eileen as he said this, he was staring straight ahead over the top of his beer can with glazed looking eyes.
Tobias took a swallow, and Elieen shifted stiffly in a straight backed chair near the fireplace where she was indeed knitting a scarf even though cold weather was not yet arriving. Knitting was one of her few pleasures, though one would not know it by watching her in the act. Her face was as serious as ever, a line between her black brows as the long needles moved in her thin and agile hands.
"Toby..." Eileen said quietly, glancing away from her knitting and at the top of her husbands head just seen over the back of his chair. "You know that isn't—of course I appreciate you." She amended quickly from what she had begun to say, which was a phrase that her husband would have no doubt twisted into her accusing him of being a liar. Instead of that, he snorted loudly at her.
"Bitch." Tobias spat, draining the last out of his can and tossing it down to join the others.
Tobias got up from his chair, the furniture giving a creak as his weight lifted from it. He took a couple of lumbering strides towards his wife, snatched her half-knitted scarf from her hands, and threw it into the fire. Eileen's shoulders slumped, the thin and lifeless line of her lips drooping down into a frown. She looked down dismally at the needles in her hands and the bit of yarn in her lap. There was still a small ball of it, but not enough to knit another scarf to replace the one that was now burning. Tobias wore a disgusting look of victory on his face; a smug twist of the lips, and a mean glimmer in his eyes. The light of the fire red and orange over his features, casting dark shadows upon him, made him seem as though he had come as a demon from hell to linger and make Severus' and his Mum's life miserable.
Tobias turned away from the fire and went back to his chair, sinking into it with a groan. He picked up a new beer, and opened it.
"Where's the boy?"
Severus' throat constricted. He held tightly to the books in his arms, and taking a deep breath that managed to go past the knot in his throat, he stepped inside.
"An' what was you doin', boy...spyin' a' the door?"
Severus swallowed hard.
"N-no Sir." He answered in a tiny voice. His father's eyes roamed over his pathetic and dirty form, coming to rest at his feet and then his father looked angrier than ever. Even before the words had come spilled from his fathers drunken mouth, Severus realized his mistake. Reading had taken his mind off of the pain in his foot. It hadn't even hurt him as he'd walked home...without his shoes.
Tobias ranted about the shoes. He knocked the books from Severus' arms, cursed him, called him terrible names, hit him several times, raved, and finally demanded him back out into the night to collect his shoes. He could certainly not afford to by the boy a new pair, which he expressed in more hateful words, nor did the boy deserve them when he couldn't even take care of the ones he already had. Tobias went on about lack of respect, finishing by throwing an unopened beer can at his sons head. Severus barely dodged it. The can exploded like a bomb against the wall above his head and rained down a shower of beer suds.
Severus left the house as quickly as he could, one eye already swelling where the butt of his father's hand had caught him. It was completely dark out now, and there was no way he was going to find his shoes now. He stood at the edge of the road, at the top of the slope that lead down to the river. The bugs were whirring and singing loudly, frogs croaking in synch amongst the tall and whispering grasses. Bats swooped down, careening just above the tips of tall brush and down towards the river where they would flap and dance in nocturnal celebration.
Severus took a timid step forward, but he couldn't bring himself to go all the way. During the day snakes were alright, even interesting, when he could more likely spot and dodge them, or watch them from a safe enough distance. He wasn't sure that there were any in these parts that were particularly poisonous, but he also did not want to find out. Walking down to the river at night and bare of his shoes was not something he looked forward to doing. There weren't just snakes, either. Lots of creepy things came out at night time, and animals were always drawn to the cover of overgrown plants, the edge of the river for a drink, the garbage to nose amongst the old food wrappers and containers—and they were drawn to little skinny boys who went lurking after dark.
Severus shivered, and watched his surroundings warily through locks of oily hair. He glanced back over his shoulder towards the house where he lived at the very end of Spinners End. He was weighing the danger of going forward, or going back home. If he went home without his shoes, his father would definitely beat him good. He might even take off his thick belt, and use that.
Severus moved carefully down the dark slope, deciding that the possibility of being eaten by something unpleasant wasn't as scary as the fact of what he would receive should he return home now. He had wished that he had ran across some sort of spell for light while he had been reading those books today, but unfortunately, he had not.
For what seemed like ages he blundered over the garbage and through the weeds, becoming more and more afraid and disoriented. A few times he thought he had heard strange noises, and he knew that he had seen flashes of silvery eyes in the darkness. There was no way he would find his shoes. He couldn't go home. A nightmare played out in his head that he was stuck out here all night long, jumping at every sound, squeaking scared at every shadow, curled up alone in the darkness with nothing but prying eyes of predators whose teeth dripped with blood and hungered for more. He had tried hard not to cry but the longer he stumbled around blindly searching, the harder it became not to. Tears trickled over his dirty cheeks and dripped from the tip of his large hooked nose. Now and then he would stop to wipe the tears away on the back of his hand, but he found that he didn't like to stop for long because being still made him feel even more afraid, and while he was walking around, the pain in his foot didn't throb as much.
Severus kept telling himself to stay calm, but it was easier said than done. Finally he began to distract himself by listing in his head all the hexes he could think of that he had read in the dark arts book today. Since he was focusing on something other than the swooping bats, glinting eyes, and howling-hooting-hunting noises around him, his nerves began to calm a bit. He knew he would still be damn lucky to find his shoes, but at least he had succeeded in stopping his tears, and he thought he wasn't shaking as badly as he had been before.
More searching was in order, and so was more of not finding his shoes. The fruitless search went on for quite some time, along with the mentally repeated list of hexes, until a voice called out to him from up the bank at the edge of the gravel road. His mother was calling his name. He bounded through the dark debris and back up the bank, stopping doubled over from his hobble-run up the slope, clutching a stitch in his side.
"Ye—yes Mum?" He panted, trying to straighten up a little. He wanted to hope that she might say some magical word that would cause his lost shoes to appear in her hands, but he knew better. Instead she looked down her nose at him with thin lips pressed together and her eyes so dark they seemed deeper than the night.
"Go to bed." She said in a chilly tone. "At the first light of morning, you'll go get your shoes. As long as you can't take care of your things, you won't be allowed to read any more of my books."
Severus dropped his gaze glumly down to his bare toes, so pale that he could make them out rather easily even in the darkness. His posture and look was much like what his mother's had been when Tobias had cast her knitting into the fire.
"If you can't keep track of your shoes, then you certainly can not keep track of magic." This part she said in a voice that was so quiet it was nearly a whisper.
"Yes Mum." Severus said obediently, though he was devastated that he wouldn't be able to read more tomorrow. He supposed he should be glad that she had called him in, and that he hadn't been eaten by creatures, though maybe it wouldn't have been so bad.
Severus went right to his room, past his father who was now passed out and snoring in his chair, his last beer clutched crookedly in his enormous hand. Severus untied the big awkward jacket from around his waist and tossed it onto the cot, followed by his shirt—which was dry now—and his filthy and frayed jeans. He moved closer to the spread of clothing, a dark hairy leg having caught his eye. He reached into the pocket of the jacket, and drew out a fat and wooly spider that must have sneaked in while he had been blundering around in the dark. Severus opened his hand just enough to study it a bit more without it scrambling away. It's prickly legs moved against his hand, its many black eyes staring at him.
"Anteoculatia."
The spider sprouted a small, crooked, pair of antlers on top of it's rear end. Severus covered his mouth with his other palm and laughed a bit. He was imagining what would have occurred had he shouted that hex at his father earlier. Though he would never dare do so, it was still fun enough to think about. Severus slid off the cot and moved over to a corner of the room. There was a crack that led to a small hole at the base of the wall, and Severus put his hand down and shooed the hexed spider out the hole. It squeezed its furry body and eight legs through, and was gone. Severus curled back up on his bed with a mischievous smile on his thin lips as he imagined his father with antlers out his arse.
Morning came all too soon. His mother roused him from a thin sleep just as the sun had begin to rise and cast a sleepy glow over the hazy, scroungy, city of Cokeworth. While many of the cities men were putting in their early hours at work, Severus was searching the long dewy grasses and rubbish for his shoes. He finally found them and slipped them onto his feet. The soles were thin and worn, so much so that there was a hole in the bottom of one. The other sole was half unglued from the rest of the shoe, and when he walked it flapped like a dogs tongue out of its mouth. The laces were missing, which made them flop around on his feet, and the cloth sides were stained to black and ripped in multiple places. They were hardly worth picking them out from the rest of the rubbish, and certainly not worth all of the trouble they had gotten him into.
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