Chapter Eight

Hidden

Daddy…

A single, unspoken word, title, and his fate was sealed. Each layer of himself stripped away with an unseen cut right through his core.

She had already been a captivating flame when he landed in front of her. A sweet face with startled eyes that she tilted back to look up at his concealed features. Diminutive in build and stature but filled with a righteous determination. An innocent beacon in her angel white jumper with her cinnamon chestnut hair half tamed over her shoulder, the rest springing free to circle her like a halo. She oozed the type of purity that made wizards such as himself come alive with a covetous possession that was driven by the need to preserve her but also ruin her. And then her thoughts — so free and clear to understand it was as if she had spoken aloud — penetrated his mind like the killing blow of an arrow, rendering him hers if only he could manage to steal her away.

Daddy…

A title secretly whimpered with a pretty gasp slipping past her Cupid bow lips as he had gripped her sopping wet hair. Her body at once both pliant in his cage and taut with delicious trepidation and excitement. Her hips slowly and without her awareness undulating over his thigh. The scent of gardenias and jasmine lingering on her skin and permanently perfuming his memory with her. And her hands, one with a white knuckled grip on her wand but limp at her side and the other curling around his bicep and flexing free as she waged a war within herself beneath the surface of their duel. It was a moment that was too perfect and over far too quickly. One he was eager to repeat and push further at first chance.

Groaning as he pumped his ill-healed knee in the shower several times to keep the joint from getting the chance to lock up on him, Severus leaned an arm against the slick tile wall and rested his head atop it. The hot water rained upon his back, chasing the white bubbles of his soap down his body until they swirled around the drain and out of sight. With his head bent forward and his eyes downcast, his curtain of hair turned into a waterfall, the curls he relentlessly worked at to keep from exposing themselves, pulled smooth by the weight of the water.

Dropping his used up flannel with a wet, smacking plop, he circled his hand around the head of his willful cock which had yet to submit since he and the little angel began dancing and sparring. With a firm pressure, he pumped his fist down, a hissed sigh leaving him as he reached the base. Stroking back up, he twisted his wrist and swiped his thumb over the tip, before thrusting into his hand as he tightly pumped back down.

Recalling her timid and heated eyes as she dragged her little cunt along the muscle of his thigh, Severus picked up the speed of his hand, a short grunt leaving him to get washed away as he did so. Echos of his would be honorific taunted and teased his mind as he turned around to lean against the wall and begin rolling and pulling at his sac. With his hands working in tandem and his memory sharp and vivid, his body began to flush from the lust that was rapidly reaching a boil within him, his eyes falling to half mast as his head dropped back against the tile.

Daddy… Daddy… Daddy… his mind played over and over while his imagination took the reins to meld their too brief a meeting within Saint James's Park with a fantasy he was determined to will into reality.

Her thick hair free and cascading down her back as her hips rocked back and forth to meet each of his thrusts into her pussy. Her small breasts swaying and bouncing with each of their movements. Her voice high and breathy, pleading for him to give her more, to go faster, to let her come. Him answering with lust roughened praise as he gripped her arse and pressed his fingers in deep enough to bruise before flipping them over.

Hooking her knees over each of his elbows as he pushed her legs wide and back to allow him deeper access and further stretch her so that she molded to his cock alone. Sweet, needy cries filling his room like lyrics to accompany the beat of his headboard and the melody of her wet, little cunt. Quick strums of her small fingers along her swollen clit, that would turn her body rigid as she ascended her peak.

Then falling over from one deep thrust to the next, her broken scream of, "Daddy," or possibly his name, stealing his own release from his sac. His come painting her walls before taking root within her to grow until there was an undeniable claim of his ownership over her.

Finishing with a shout of the name he had heard Lupin calling out into the dark as he and the others sought out the little witch who had recklessly tried to play with him, Severus further slumped against his shower wall, his heart galloping as his rapid breath slowed until his crippled knee gave out, crashing his bum onto the slick floor.

"Fucking hell," he swore, slipping as he tried to stand.

Driving his head back into the wall, he reached for the shower knobs and cut off the flow of water. Hermione had an angelic face but the dirty fighting style of a ruthless warrior. A dangerous combination if properly cultivated.

Rubbing at his knee and attempting to coax the lame joint into working just a little longer, he slowly bent and relaxed his haphazardly pieced together patella with teeth gritting force. Bearing down on his molars and screwing his eyes up tight, Severus hissed and panted as he stood up, shifting his weight to the other leg and dragging the one his witch had obliterated behind him as he stepped out to towel off. With barely a perfunctory pat down, he hobbled his way to his bedroom, snagging and downing two vials of pain potion as he went. Collapsing on the dark silk duvet with an arm tucked behind his head in place of a pillow, he awaited the scolding he would incur when Narcissa showed up following the end of her rounds at the hospital to fix the added damage he did to his knee from his hasty healing.

Staring up at his painted ceiling, he watched the enchanted celestial bodies swirl through an endless night sky, drowsily beginning to pick out planets, moons, constellations, and stars.

Uranus… Cressida… Puck… Cupid… Leo… Denebola… Algieba… Regulus… Eridanus… Pictor… Caelum…

Glancing over Walburga, he lazily wanked the air before flipping off the constellation as his left shoulder grew antsy with a phantom itch from fifteen years ago. Blinking slowly as his eyes grew heavier, he scoffed at the sight of Sirius before surrendering to the potion's lulling embrace.

Arriving at King's Cross after an abysmal end to his fifth year, Severus gave Regulus a one armed hug, ruffling his coiffed curls before shoving him off the Hogwarts Express and onto the platform ahead of him. Promising to write once he was settled back into Spinner's End so that they could arrange an unsanctioned trip into Muggle London before the week ended, he stepped off behind him and smirked at a scowling Orion and Walburga, giving them a two finger salute in greeting. With his knapsack pulled high on his shoulder and his trunk's handle firm in his hand as he pulled it behind him on the wheels he added his first year, he started to melt into the chaos of students reuniting with their parents after months away from home on his way to the barrier.

Getting shoulder checked by Sirius, he rolled his eyes and muttered, "Fuck off," for once not rising to the dangled bait of a fight.

Picking up his already quick pace, he went through the barrier and began scanning the bustle of muggles for his mam, her usual post vacant. Not since his first year had she crossed over to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Instead, she always elected to say her goodbyes at the brick pillar between nine and ten, sending him on his way alone and there she would be, waiting for his return each summer.

Keeping a low, quiet, and forgettable presence in the Wizarding World was his mother's greatest ambition. He sometimes resented her weakness and cowardice but given his own history, he couldn't find fault with her behavior, nor her aspirations. Things hadn't always been as they were now. However, after he had paid the price for her crossing Walburga, Eileen Snape née Prince went into social solitary confinement and readily gave in to the demands of their puppeteers in order to spare her son from further harm.

It hadn't been enough though. She may have saved Severus from the abuse of the crazed Black matriarch but there was no escaping the hellish existence that was their life under the Cokeworth Council roof they shared with her muggle husband and his partial namesake, Tobias Snape. Muggle or Wix, it mattered not. A rotted, warped soul was a malignant plight upon any who crossed it.

As the departing and arriving crowds thinned out, Severus was forced to accept that his mam wasn't there. Hauling his trunk behind him, he made his way to the clicking time table suspended above the station and took a seat on a bench to wait for her.

People came and went, the crowds growing as departures grew near and fluctuating again as arrivals pulled in. Train after train, hour after hour, he sat and waited until he finally conceded that she wasn't coming. A gnawing pit in his stomach grew as he approached the ticketing counter to purchase passage to Manchester — from which he could take the tube and then a bus home — the physical manifestation of his intuition, useless as he was forced to transport himself through Muggle means, his magic an all but impotent extension of himself when removed from Hogwarts for another seven months.

More time passed as he made the journey north, then west, the hour late but the summer sky only just beginning to streak with fiery pink hues once he finally arrived at the dismal place he called home. The air was heavy with the stench of pollution after the mill ruined river had spent the day baking in the heat. Making his way up Rushing Arch to cross over onto Spinner's End, that ever present and growing acidic knot in his stomach, began to sink low into his intestines until his skin turned clammy, his hands trembling as he forced his feet to continue on.

Following the bend in the road, Severus was greeted with the unmistakable kaleidoscope of flashing lights atop the cars of coppers. More than a dozen were congregated before a row of crumbling, uninspired houses, fluorescent yellow tape segregating the one at the end. The one that was his home.

Dropping his knapsack and the handle of his trunk, he broke into a run, ignoring the shouted protests of the coppers as he ducked under the tape. Shoving two off of him as they fought to hold him back, he charged the doorway, tearing down the additional tape that forbade entry to civilians.

Standing in the short receiving hall — his blood pounding through his ears as his heartbeat thunder through his chest — Severus turned his wild eyes about the room trying to make sense of what was before him. Shattered glass, broken plates, turned over drawers and shelves, a pungent odor that burned his hypersensitive olfactory. Ignoring it all though, he fixated on the runner that had adorned their stairs and the way it had been pulled and clawed at until it was lifted from its grips and bunched in a lifeless heap across the bottom three steps.

"Watch ya self," a voice called from the top of the stairs a moment before he and another man began to descend with a sheeted gurney between them. "Victim One, Eileen Snape, coming down now. I'll do an autopsy but it's pretty clear this was a murder suicide."

"Anyone know where the boy in the photo is?" someone else asked, Severus mechanically raising his hand and mumbling, "Right here," as he approached his mam.

"Son, you shouldn't be here. This is no place for a child; nothing your mum would have wanted you to see," a third muggle said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Let's get ya back outside, hmm?"

"Where are you taking her?"

"My office for a standard autopsy," the copper replied with a frankness Severus appreciated even in his blank state of shock. "After everything is concluded and findings recorded, we'll release her to whichever funeral home you choose. Same for you da."

Stopping the coroner and his assistant, Severus gently took hold of his mam's hand, numbly noting the flaccidity and room temperature warmth of her limb. She had been taken from him long before he had even stepped on the train to return home. Already gone and he too wrapped up in the melodrama that was his and Lily's friendship imploding to even realize a true travesty had occurred.

Tucking her arm back under the sheet, he shuttered his returning flood of emotions before saying, "I don't give a fuck what you do with Tobias. Use him for fertilizer in your garden for all I care. Just keep him away from my mam," striding out of the broken home of hellish lies.

"Son, wait! You can't go off on your own."

Not bothering to look back, he called out, "Watch me."

"Can't do that. You're officially an orphaned minor. You gotta stay with us until a representative of the care board arrives."

"What?" he asked, finally turning around.

"Sorry mate. I know it's shite piled on shite considering what's just happened and your age but that's the law. One of the agents should be arriving any moment and she'll take you into Manchester and get you sorted with either a placement family or a bed in the orphanage."

"Are you fucking for real? You lot want to intercede now? After everything that's gone on in that house, you all want to ride in and finally earn your salary?

"Where the fuck was this shite when Tobias would beat her? Where were you all when he would drag my mam by her hair and throw her on the bed to rape her? Oh excuse me," he seethed, lifting his hand up in pause, "you cunts don't count it as rape since they were married, because apperently being in posession of a marriage license negates the word, no.

"So why don't you take your shite laws and shove'm up your arse, mate. I'm not fucking going. I've done just fine without any help from the Queen's loyal do-rights up until now. I'll probably do even better now that that scum sucking pig is about to be six feet under."

Back and forth they went, until Sarah Todd arrived on the scene. Before he knew it, Severus was getting manhandled into the backseat of a sedan, his trunk and bag loaded into the boot, and Spinner's End becoming a pin dot behind him as the woman made inane chatter all the way back to Manchester. Once there, she started in on processing him as a ward of the county given that as far as they were concerned, he had no living relatives they could phone. Not that either would have come for him if they were in possession of such things.

It wasn't hopeless though. Cissy would make sure of that. All he had to do was write her a letter and have patience. The jewel of Wizarding society and of her sisters, who could be denied nothing by Cygnus would see to it. She had already wielded little effort when it had come to convincing her father to finance his education in the social graces of Pureblood Society. What was one more request?

After all, the Black family couldn't stand any more hits to their ancient name after Andromeda and Sirius had both done their best to tarnish it. It would be an absolute scandal if anyone found out not only about the hidden away bastard, but that he had been left to languish in Muggle slums before being downgraded even further to inhabiting an orphanage. What would the peerage say? What would the Dark Lord say? Surely nothing good. Not when Severus was the ultimate hidden and cast away secret of Orion Black.

All points he had no doubt Narcissa would bring up to her father the moment his letter arrived. And true to Severus's estimation of his cousin who was a force to be reckoned with when she so chose, he was released into her care as her newly acquired ward promptly at the start of business the following morning. The both of them, as well as their things, on their way to Wiltshire to be relocated to an apartment suite within Malfoy Manor.