..

Oh bloody hell. She'd been picked up by bullies.

Lily kept her head up high, trying to reply, but she was getting cornered by a half-dozen Hufflepuff girls, who were surrounding her and snapping at her with every word from her. The Gryffindor girl next to her was doing little more than quivering her lips, which didn't help. A second glance showed her to be a small kid, a second or third year at most.

And the Hufflepuff students were... Fuck! Severus chewed the expletive in his mouth. They were sixth and seventh years. Even Smith, the Hufflepuff sixth-year prefect, was in the mix.

Severus jumped to his feet and nearly ran as he watched Lily's face go from red to white. Lily, with that expression, was dangerous, either to others or to herself.

Lily's voice, slightly trembling but clear, pierced Severus' ears.

"I swear, if having a wizarding bloodline means to be like you, I would rather be a hundred times a mu..."

"Liiiiiiils!"

Severus called out to the girl, his voice deafeningly loud. His voice was loud enough to make Lily and several of the surrounding Hufflepuffs turn to look at him in surprise.

Severus had not the slightest intention of taking Lily's side and joining the argument. It was suicidal for a Slytherin to engage in a debate about muggleborn rights in public. And aside from that, it was bloody bullshit that a boy could have a debate on whatever topic with six senior girls from another house and triumphantly come out on top.

"Lily, you're already ten minutes late for your study session! Stop fooling around and come with me!"

With a rough hand, Severus grabbed Lily's arm and yanked her unceremoniously, his grip so firm and strong as if she were a fellow boy that the Hufflepuff girls froze for a moment, and Lily's eyes widened, but she was dragged along nonetheless.

Their meeting was supposed to be outside, but Severus deliberately drew her into the library. If they went outside, there was a good chance those bitches would follow and hound them. The only place to go was inside the library, protected by Madam Pince's General Silencing Order.

Sure enough, as he dragged Lily into the library, the Hufflepuff girls snorted in triumph and stomped away. He could hear them snickering as they walked away.

Severus said nothing in response, just reviewed their faces in his brain. The first chance he got, he'd make sure those bitches got their arses drowned in a nasty potion without anyone knowing. Never just once. By Morgana, he'd give them a taste of how long a Slytherin's grudge lasts.

He didn't let go of her and pushed her to the back of the library, where a small study room had been granted access by Madam Pince after Lily's endless cajoling and bribery to her. It was sound-proofed and was the only place in the library where they could talk in peace.

Severus opened the door to the study and shoved Lily in. The less-than-helpful Gryffindor kid tried to follow him in, and he shooed her away with a frightening glare. Lily watched from the sidelines, exhausted, letting him scare the young girl away.

The door to the study closed behind them, and the words that came out of Severus' mouth were far from warm and comforting (as she hadn't expected them to be).

"You, do you have any thought in your brain or not."

"..."

Lily didn't answer, just looked up at the boy with weary eyes. On days like this, it makes me a little doubtful of myself that I have Sev as a friend, she thought in her tired brain.

What came out of Severus' mouth the next moment was completely unexpected to her.

"Please, don't say 'I swear' casually. No, don't say it at all. Period. I almost had a heart attack because of you, Lily!"

"Uh, ...What?"

The boy paced wildly in the study room. Then he shot her a fierce glare.

"We're going to be sixteen in three months. We're kids now, we can talk crap. But the closer we get to adulthood... Lils. You're a genius, so why don't you know that magic is terrifying!"

Lily was almost lost for a moment in the boy's accusation, which was a wild mixture of facts, praises, fear and anger, but she took a deep breath and thought over his words, and remembered what she'd been just about to say with 'I swear' a moment before Severus burst in.

"..Er... I'd said... I swear, if having a wizarding bloodline means to be... Ugh!"

Severus physically clamped his hand over Lily's mouth. Reflexively, he shoved his fist halfway into her mouth and yelled, pure fear in his coal dark eyes.

"Lily Evans, SHUT UP! Do you want to be like my mother?"

Lily's eyes widened about twice as wide. As far as she could remember, Sev had never mentioned her mother's condition to her, so what the hell did he mean by saying she wanting to be like her?

The next moment, Sev realized what he'd blurted out and sank back in a chair. His breath came in ragged gasps. His heart was pounding.

For a moment, he thought he wanted to die, but then he realized that Lily hadn't uttered anything, not even after his hand slipped out of her mouth.

Okay. This wasn't a fatal weakness. Lily already knows that my mother, Eileen Snape, is a dirt-poor woman living in the slums of Cokeworth. How much worse could it get from here?

...You know how much worse it could get, a dark voice whispered in the boy's heart. But he shook it out of his mind and opened his mouth to speak. It was more like a resignation.

"...My mother... was a member of a respectable pureblood family, and she married my father, a poor muggle laborer. You know that, don't you?"

Lily nodded. That was all she knew about Sev's parents, actually.

"So... there was a lot of opposition from my mother's side of the family, when they got married."

Lily kept silent and nodded again.

No wonder, she admitted to herself. Marriage with a muggle, a poor muggle at that, not even a muggleborn. Even if Eileen's family weren't exactly a pureblood-supremacists, there would have been opposition.

Severus took a deep breath. "Eileen... when my mother was arguing with her family who were firmly against the marriage... she snapped. She said... in the heat of the moment she swore, she'd rather have a muggle for her family than a hundred wizard families like hers, that she doesn't need magic, that she'd rather be a muggle than a witch even if she had to be born again."

"..."

"How could she? Surely she had been taught from a young age not to insult Magic! What a stupid, imbecilic...!" Severus pressed his eyes tightly shut, and opened his mouth again. His voice was harsh.

"My mother's magical core was irreparably damaged by that oath; on seeing that, her family didn't try to persuade her anymore; they severed the tie and disinherited her. And she's been...ever since then, she's not even a witch. She's practically a half-squib."

And as neither a witch nor a muggle, she could never be a whole person in either wizarding or muggle society.

When his father was drunk, he would rant about how he was betrayed by his wife for keeping her magic secret, and how his life was ruined because a wicked witch had tricked him into marrying her. But as Severus saw it, it wasn't the main problem : if his mother had been a proper witch from the start, their marriage life would have run much smoother than it did.

The problem was, Eileen, born a pureblood and brought up a witch all her life, and then one day stripped of her powers, could become neither a witch wife nor a muggle wife.

She would try to light the stove in the morning by flicking her empty fingertips without bringing a match, panic when she couldn't light a fire, flail her wand in desperation, and eventually break down in tears, and later sit in front of the cold stove and stare gloomily ahead. On days like that, neither Tobias nor Severus could get her to talk to them, no matter how much they tried.

Tobias was not a generous husband who could quietly support an incompetent spouse who would have to depend on him for life, and after their honeymoon period had worn off, he did not treat the woman as his wife who could never be a full functioning member of household.

Severus breathed slowly, steadying his emotions. He opened his eyes and opened his mouth to speak dully.

"You must not blaspheme Magic. Magic is not a convenient tool for you, nor is it your birthright that can't be taken way. A wizard or witch who insults it, those who speak of Magic in petty frustration, those who toy with magical oaths and magical contracts, are no longer entitled to magic. It is a lesson my mother taught me with her own life."

Lily didn't open her mouth. She looked down at her hands. Her fingertips were trembling.

Severus's voice sounded emotionless. "...Most of all, Lily, you weren't even sincere. Do you really think it's better to be a muggle? Do you honestly believe that a decent muggle is better than a mean witch who looks down on others?"

"...NO!" Lily screamed out. Her voice cracked like gravel. "...And... that's what makes me even more pathetic..."

That she'd rather be a nice, decent muggle over an arrogant witch? No! Never!

She couldn't abandon magic. She could never renounce it and live as a muggle, not after she had already found it. Magic was her life. She had to stay a witch, no matter what, even if she had to beg and plead on her knees.

Her fear, her anger, was not directed at Magic, even when she heard the savage truth of how a witch's magic had been taken, after she made a comparison between wizards and muggles in the heat of the moment. It was only directed at the absurdity that this fatal knowledge was not written or taught publicly, not in books, nor in courses, as Marlene had said, but only as a lesson within the magical family.

On the fringes of a society, composed of arrogant, unreasonable group of wizards and witches, a society that was even more discriminating than even Britain where class was still very much in place, and she was conscious that she was terrified of the possibility of being cast out. It was pathetic.

And so the two, one the son of a woman whose magic had been taken from her, and the other a girl who found magic and desperately clung to it, exhaled harshly and fell silent in the study room.

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(Note)

I am somehow not convinced that Tobias Snape was a magic-hater from the start. He is after all, a poor laborer who must think of household economy. A witch wife, even if she is forbidden to produce gold or other illegal gains, should be a valuable member to a poor working class household, even by using a few perfectly legal spells. Even being a perfect housewife by means of some household magic would be an asset to a common laborer.

So I theorize that Eileen had been turned into a near-squib. Then Tobias would not experience magic being any use to him, or anything to be feared. He would regard magic as some useless being that made his wife incompetent and depressed, and hate it eventually. And Eileen, as a squib, could not divorce and return to her birth family even if Tobias mistreated her.

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* I always appreciates reviews from you 😸