Severus Snape {takes no sides} (deatheaterspy) wrote in reoccurrence, @ 2020-07-16 22:34:00 |
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Waking up was difficult. Eileen never dawdled in the morning - she knew she had to be up and ready to go before her husband was awake. Tea, breakfast, everything needed to be set just right. She was rarely this painfully tired, and it took several very long moments for her to realize something just wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t like their bed was particularly comfortable, but this was more uncomfortable than usual. She stretched, and felt her hands hit something that certainly wasn’t a headboard. “What in Merlin’s…” She whispered to herself, realizing what she had touched was the bottom of a chair. A few more moments and she found herself on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Had - had something happened? Did something happen with Tobias and she just didn’t remember it? Before moving any further, she gave herself a body check - everything felt fine and in working order. Not even a headache, really. Hungry, groggy, but otherwise injury free. Up she went - feeling her bones creak as she did so, and upright into her living room. Or, at least, she thought it was her living room. It was the same shape, surely, but everything inside it was wrong. “Tobias? Severus, is this some kind of joke?” She called, brushing her clothes off and taking several tentative steps forward. Walking around revealed that she was indeed in her own home, but only the layout remained familiar. Pictures, gone. Her things, gone. Tobias’s things, gone. It wasn’t as if the place was just robbed though - had Tobias up and left her, he would never have taken her things, for one, not that she had many. No one would ever dream of robbing them, they were dirt poor and obviously had nothing of value. This - this was wholly different. The entire place was just, different. She even stepped outside several times to check the address, walking back in once she was fully reassured it was her home. Conceding that something was wrong but that she couldn’t do anything about it without Tobias, she went into the kitchen to make something to eat. All she could do was wait. Tobias would tell her what to do, and even if he couldn’t, he wouldn’t like her to do something without his permission and she didn’t want to cause another fight. No, no, waiting would be the best bet. Once she ate, she set about cleaning. Everything was dusty, and rather sad looking. How had so much dust accumulated? And where were her clothes? Her growing feeling of unease made her restless and instead of cleaning, she started searching the house. Looking for a sign, any sign, anything, that she had lived there and could prove she wasn’t completely crazy - and she found it, at least, bits and pieces scattered throughout a house. A single photo of Severus and herself, one he was too young to remember being in. When he still smiled when he saw her. A necklace her father had given her, a simple thing, just a chain with a star pendant on it, not worth anything but sentiment. Longer still she waited - she wasn’t sure how long it had been, though it couldn’t have been more than two, three hours, and she got curious about her wand. Tobias simply hated magic. It hadn’t always been that way, and she had never lied to him about what she was, but over time he had changed in so many ways and that was one of them. He took to hiding her wand so she couldn’t perform magic. She’d seen where he hidden it, once, though she never dared to take it before. This was different, though, if she could get to her wand maybe she could… fix this, fix all of it. So she was digging through a closet, to get to a loose piece of wood in the paneling and the removal of a single brick in the foundation and reaching as far back as she could in search of the wand when she heard the front door open. -- Severus was the last person who would have thought that the solitary life he thought he craved would actually make him lonely, but it had happened all the same. Several days alone in the house he’d grown up in, truly alone for the first time in years, had given him a need to be around other people, just for a short while, so he’d obtained some Polyjuice potion and gone out for a couple hours, hoping to appease the need for company enough to allow him some peace in his isolation. After spending some time in Diagon, and reconnecting with a former student on a very superficial level, Severus returned to the house after the potion had worn off, and entered as himself. It took only moments to figure out that something was amiss. Things were in different places than he’d left them. He drew his wand and moved silently through the small house--and then he saw her. He froze, eyes just a little wide, a reaction not unlike the first time his gaze fell on the only other person in the world he’d ever cared about. “Mother,” he said stiffly, not immediately remembering that she wouldn’t remember anything about her last day, or what he’d done to her, or that he looked significantly older than she knew him. All he could remember was the look on her face when she’d understood what was happening the night he’d brought Death Eaters to their house. -- All her focus and attention had been on getting her wand. She hadn’t heard him arrive, or sneak up behind her. Confused as she was, she likely wouldn’t have noticed anything had he not spoken directly to her, so close. That voice - familiar as it should have been, did not register to her. Not immediately. Her fingers clasped around her wand and she turned around in a flash, aiming it at him - balance unsteady, hand shaking. Mother he had said, but this… this wasn’t her son, this wasn’t her Severus, her little boy, barely seventeen and just graduating from Hogwarts. This was a man, a grown man who looked to be nearly her age, and her eyes narrowed. She did not lower her wand. “I’m not - “ She started, but his features made her stop. Were those her dark eyes, staring back at him? Her nose? His father’s jawline, of course, shoulders as well. “No.” She barely whispered, her wand dropping to her side, eyes widening in complete disbelief. “No, you can’t be. You - Sev.” She almost pleaded, and then returned her face to the normal, placid look she typically wore. Her voice just above the whisper it had been. Was this Tobias, and she couldn’t recognize him, just as she couldn’t recognize the house? “Sorry, I - I shouldn’t have taken… this.” She held the wand out to him now, convinced she needed to go to St. Mungos and get her head checked, immediately. “I think there’s something wrong with me, Tobias, I - you don’t look right. I don’t recognize you, or the house.” She braced herself. -- Severus was...very confused by this response. Not her initial response, the denial, that was understandable; he was currently twice the age he was when she died, and in that time he'd grown into most of his more unfortunate features. As Lily had reminded him, he did look more like his father now than he had when he was young. But he didn't look nearly enough like Tobias to be confused for him, in his opinion. That was what confused him. She clearly hadn't thought so at first either, even though she'd seen the man (if you could call him that) much more recently than Severus had. She even said she didn't recognize him. So why did she immediately assume he was his father and that something was wrong with her? He held up a hand and took a step back, physically distancing himself from the comparison. "I am not Tobias," he told her firmly. "I know you're confused, but he's dead and he'll never hurt you again." At least, that was the hope. As far as Severus was aware, no muggles had come back from the dead, and he hoped it would stay that way...or he'd have to kill the man again. He might be 'reformed' or 'no longer a danger' to society, but Severus Snape would not allow a monster like that to exist in the world while he had the ability to do something about it. |