Sorry this is a bit short. This is going to be a long story.
Wonderful chapter 23
Things Remembered
Dumbledore side along apparated Eileen and Sev back to a place within sight of Spinners End. "Are you sure there's nothing else I can do for you Eileen?"
"Not today."
The old wizard knew that there were a lot of things he could do for them, it was her Prince pride that kept Eileen from asking for help. "Then I shall say farewell, and good fortunes." With that Dumbledore was gone with a crack and a flash.
"That's neat," Severs said. "Why can't we do that?"
"I can," the mother explained. "But one needs a wand. You will be able to when you are older."
The child frowned. It seemed that everything that was fun or useful could only be done when one was older. 'Can't do real magic; can't have a wand; can't apparate; can't - - ' The boy sighed. The list was too long for the boy to recount. 'What good is being a wizard if all you can do is can't.'
On entering their home, Eileen put her son down at the foot of the stairs. "Why don't you go up to your room." The boy obliged not seeing what his mother had not wanted him to. Tobias was still passed out on the floor. She had hoped maybe he had woken up and gone to look for them, or gone to look for a job. 'Slim chances in that,' Ele thought to herself. She wasn't about to wake him either. 'Don't want to listen to his nonsense.' Going into the kitchen changed her mind. Last night she had not seen what her husband had done instead of looking for their son. Every single one of her potions had been unceremoniously dumped down the sink, the empty bottles draining in a stack. Visions of the magical brews making their way to the nearby river and wondering what would happen to anything that came in contact with it before the water diluted it made their way through her mind.
Now she did not want to leave her husband in peaceful sleep. Toby woke to the shrill voice of his enraged wife. "YOU!" She kicked him. "You drunken, useless, worthless, dung pile of an excuse for a man."
"Love you too sweet-heart." Toby laughed. "You ugly hag, hateful, boring, bitchy excuse for a woman. You find the boy?"
If her look could burn, Eileen's gaze would have bore a hole right though her husband's face. "Yes, our son is safe. No thanks to you." Then she remembered the people who had held Severus in a car trunk over night. "Mr. Snapeivitsky."
This sobered Tobias up. "What did you just call me?"
"You heard me."
"Dang, we haven't gone by that in - - "
"A few hundred years?"
"Except for that Romanian bunch that just came over."
"You knew. You knew you had relatives that were witch hunters."
A laugh that was a cross between mirth and maniacal came forth from Toby. "How do you think I caught you?"
Eileen had never wanted her wand in her hand as much as she did at that moment. "You didn't use any powers to, as you say, catch me."
Tobias seemed not to care if she knew now all of his machinations. "I used the knowledge of your world, passed down for generations, to enter it." The man stood to circle his wife. "Learning all I could about the most affluent of the wizarding families, I then went on a search for the most desperate unmarriable among their daughters. You won. So I gave you the attention you so desperately craved. Is that what you want to hear? Is that what you think?"
It wasn't what she wanted to hear, but it was what she often thought. In the beginning of their romance she was too caught up in the whirlwind to think about Tobias' motives. As he changed she began to think. As she thought, she began to believe he couldn't possibly really love her; truly love her. Then she would think of the little boy upstairs and knew that at some point in time they had loved each other.
"Do you remember when we met?" Tobias asked her.
(Flashback)
It was a formal ball, a sort of graduation/coming out for the Hogwarts class of '58, those that were of the pureblood families of course. Some exceptional halfbloods might have been invited, but they were few. [Thinking of it now, Ele wondered how Toby did get in there. Maybe that was why her guard was down. Who would have imagined a muggle being there? She did not have the same prejudices others there had, but she didn't expect it. Everyone was dressed in their finest formalwear. Being a bit of a tomboy, wearing a fancy dress was the most uncomfortable thing for Eileen Prince. It itched and pulled her in places she'd rather not be itched and pulled. She sat there with the other young wizarding debutantes on the opposite side of the room from the wizarding dilettantes trying not to pull at those places especially the wedgie that was not making its presence known. Some of her wizard cousins had been polite enough to say they would save a dance for her, but she saw them all waltzing away with all of those so-called 'pretty' witches.
Eileen's elbow found her knee and her knuckles found the side of her face making her sit in a pose that she often had. She looked as if she were bored out of her mind and wanted to be anywhere but there. If it hadn't been expected of her, she would have never shown up. She may have been of age, but she still lived under her father's roof, and she had never been a disobedient child. That was all about to change.
"Miss. would you like a glass of punch?" Eileen had heard the voice, but she assumed the speaker was talking to Serena Black who she was sitting next to. Miss. Black seemed to want nothing to with the speaker especially when he made it clear whom he was speaking to. "Miss. Prince?"
Eileen looked up to see a young man who was neither tall or short, thin nor hefty; he seemed ordinary, except for the extraordinarily large nose in the middle of his face. She was not one to complain about another person's appearance and there was something in his hazel colored eyes that drew her in. She found herself actually agreeing. "I guess, Mr. - - "
"Snape; Tobias Snape." The young man handed the young lady one of the drinks he held.
Eileen took a sip and asked, "And I'm supposed to know you how?" He obviously wasn't from Hogwarts. Thinking him a wizard, she wondered if he were home schooled or foreign.
"You don't," Toby admitted. "I asked someone your name."
Playing the snooty pureblood, which she nearly never did, she pointed out, "A proper gentleman would have asked for an introduction."
"Perhaps I'm not a proper gentleman."
This made Eileen's cheeks flush. "At least you admit it."
"Listen - - " Toby was going to be bold. "I'm new around here, and as I was looking around, you looked as bored as I am."
Eileen raised an eyebrow. This was supposed to be a pick up line?
"You wouldn't want to ditch, and go have some fun?"
At this the young woman almost snorted punch out of her nose.
Toby feigning that he had said something improper blurted out, "I didn't mean to imply - - "
"I hope not." Actually a small part of Eileen Prince almost wanted a strange man to approach her and make an improper gesture. She had hardly been a social butterfly at Hogwarts. Still it wasn't as if she had never been kissed. After their champion winning gobstone season, Ele and one of her fellow teammates found themselves celebrating a bit too cozily than planned. After that the boy forgot she existed.
"I know a place not too far from here that has great food and music for people our age," Toby enticed. "Not for the over a hundred crowd you know." His hand was held out.
This made Ele laugh. She looked around the room. None of her family were watching, she was an adult after all, so she took his hand and left the ball.
TBC
