Severus found his mother, Eileen, down in the darkened kitchen, nibbling on cheese and bread while sorting her old gobstone collection. She had hundreds of gobstones, amassed before she married when she was still playing competitively, mostly won in tournaments or gifted from various members of her wealthy, pure-blood family. The same family disowned her for marrying a muggle and cut her out of any inheritance, but they couldn't take away what was already rightfully hers. She had long ago sold anything from her family of actual value, but not the gobstones. Ever since Severus' father's murder, he would see her sorting through them more often than not, a strange compulsion he found incredibly depressing.
Severus pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down. She pushed the plate of cheese and stale-looking bread towards him, but he shook his head. "I already ate." Petunia's Yorkshire pudding was much tastier and more satisfying anyway. She shrugged and pulled it back towards herself. Severus hesitated, trying to think how best to phrase his question. "Mother, I wondered if you had any thoughts on how to help families with young children dealing with, er, problematic accidental magic."
Eileen raised an eyebrow and looked up at him. "Something I should know?"
Severus smirked. "Nothing like that." He had never even had a serious girlfriend, being supremely unpopular in school, then a Death Eater/double agent, and now a schoolteacher with an almost non-existent social circle. "No, er, old Professor Parkinson ironically appears to be coming down with something disturbingly reminiscent of the muggle Parkinson disease." The astronomer had started complaining of a tremor and difficulty adjusting the fiddly dials on his telescopes midway through the year and had almost fallen down the steps in May. Last Severus had spoken to him, no one at St. Mungo's was yet sure if it was some kind of curse directed at him by someone with a personal vendetta, or if it was truly organic. It was rare for wizards to develop muggle illnesses, but not impossible with old age. "Anyway, he's likely to retire in the next few years if this continues, and as the only other staff member from Slytherin at the moment, I will then become head of house." He shrugged. "I will have to be more 'hands-on' with the younger students if that's the case, and be the point of contact with their families."
Eileen had watched him with a completely blank expression while he spoke, and now she looked back at her gobstones, appearing totally disinterested. "Your Slytherins will all be purebloods, so they'll have had enough informal schooling they won't be a problem by the time they come to you. If their parents are having problems with them, well, that's what grandparents are for."
"I wasn't a pureblood," Severus pointed out softly. He had not gotten his wand early, as it took his parents the full eleven years to save up enough to make the purchase. The only spells he sort of knew before arriving at Hogwarts were the ones he'd seen and heard his mother perform a thousand times, so household charms and light hexes mostly, not the standard curriculum. He only remembered meeting his wizarding grandparents once prior to starting at Hogwarts. "There have been more and more like me since the war decimated and broke apart so many of the old families. Even some of the purebloods are being raised in, shall we say, lesser households now that their parents are dead or imprisoned."
Eileen started sorting faster. When she looked up again, she looked crazed. "If you want to avoid accidental magic, be born a muggle or squib and have muggle children. Nothing else works," she hissed.
Severus blinked in surprise. "Mother... what are you saying?" When she didn't answer him, just kept up her frenzied gobstone sorting, he asked, "Was I such a problem as a child?"
She snorted. "You... you were the best wizard son I could have hoped for, I suppose. But a wizard isn't what Tobias and I wanted, not after what my family did to us." She glared at him. "Tobias might still be alive if it weren't for you."
It was Severus' turn to snort skeptically. "Or all three of us might be dead. Father was killed because he married you, not because he sired me," he said bluntly.
Without warning she launched herself across the table at him, grabbing fistfuls of his robes and hair. "Don't you dare speak of him that way! He was your father! He loved you and took care of us!" She yanked hard on his hair.
"Ow." Severus snarled at his mother, grabbed her fists and squeezed across her knuckles to force them open again. "He loved you, Mother, and I know you loved him. But he was a terrible father. And an abusive one," he snapped, and shoved her away. Perched as she was on the table covered with tiny spheres, she slipped and tumbled to the floor. Severus had lived in terror of his own father for so long, he was not sorry the man's death, only for the violent way it happened. That he had not immediately discarded every reminder of Tobias Snape in this house was only a respect for Eileen. And she knew that. "I know you're still grieving, Mother, but seriously, what is wrong with you?"
She hugged her knees to her chest and started rocking in place, muttering to herself. Concerned, Severus leaned closer to make out the mantra, "I should have been a squib. I should have been a squib. I should have been a squib. I should have been a squib..." Now he was even more alarmed. Severus really did not see much of his mother outside the school holidays, and even since he had been home for the past month, they had mostly kept to themselves. He had not realized she was doing this poorly since his father's death.
The moment he touched her shoulder she lunged at him again. This time, though, he was half-expecting it. His wand was in his hand almost as soon as she moved. Impedimenta. Expelliarmus, he cast silently. She froze, but nothing else. He frowned. If she was so inclined to attack him this evening, why was she doing so with her fists? "Accio Mother's wand." Nothing happened. Severus' eyes widened. "Finite." He held her down with his free hand as she unfroze. She started struggling ineffectually against him. "Mother, where is your wand? Did someone steal it?"
She grinned widely. "It's gone. It's gone!" She giggled.
"What happened to it?" She just kept laughing. Truly disturbed, Severus directed his wand at her again. "Legilimens." She did not even try to resist him. Rather, she couldn't. Any occlumency she knew was beyond her mental capacity, judging from the undiluted chaos of her thoughts. Severus' blood ran cold at what he saw, but he steeled himself, resolved to find his answer. And there it was, a memory. Eileen sat at this very table with one of Tobias Snape's old fine-toothed hack saws, carefully destroying her own wand. She cut it into twelve pieces, then put them in a cast-iron skillet, dowsed them with cooking oil and burned them. She put the ashes in Tobias' urn on her bedside shelf. The memory was almost a year old. What by Merlin and the Founders had she been doing since then? Severus picked through her mind frantically and found no recent memories at all of her using magic. He pulled back out of her mind and asked the burning question, "Mother, are you... living as a muggle?"
She nodded happily. "It's wonderful," she breathed. "I feel purged and clean..."
Severus did not know what happened when adults tried to stop doing magic, because he had never heard of it before. But he was absolutely certain it couldn't be good. "I'm taking you to St. Mungo's," he said.
"No!" She scrambled away from him on all fours.
He sighed and waived his wand again. "Stupefy."
Author's Note: so, I know that was a curve ball and a shorter chapter, but hopefully this novel plotline proves fruitful. It just sort of grew up in my mind spontaneously while working on other parts of the story before coming back here. I guess I can't help but add emotional, grown-up themes to my stories, even in the ones that are supposed to be fluffy...
Depending on how busy I am, I may upload the next chapter early (tomorrow), since it's already mostly done. If not, look for it on Friday again. Thank you for the reviews!