severus iscariot (calumny) wrote in raveled, @ 2016-12-25 02:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! decade: 1960s, ! log, severus snape |
WHO: Severus & Eileen Snape
WHAT: A gift / part one of seven.
WHEN: Not quite Christmas, 1966
WHERE: Spinner's End, Cokeworth
WARNINGS: children
At the slam of the front door, rattling the shutters of their tiny house, his eyes open. Time stretches in front of him; he tries to breathe lightly so he can hear footsteps on the landing, believes he hears even the gentle rasp of the matchbook as his father lights his first cigarette of the morning. Through the window, morning is a lightening of the darkness, clouded by the soot and grime caked on the glass. Severus waits. A creaking in the kitchen. Rustle of leaves towards the yard, where the neighborhood fox may lurk. He imagines he can hear his father’s exhale, smoke streaming from his nostrils, and then the hock and spit with which he expresses his opinion of this morning, this house, this family, this life. So alert to his father’s movements, real and imagined, he jumps at his mother’s hand on his shoulder. She puts a finger to her lips, eyes round and shining. She helps him out of bed, hefts him in her arms and goes to the window. Pressing against the wall, so their faces only barely peek out from the glass. She rubs at a spot to make the view clearer, but the dirt is on the outside. Tobias visible by his lank, swept-back jet hair, the hunch of a shoulder. He spits again. When he looks back, Eileen is fast and pulls away, but Severus feels a clenching in his chest and curls into his mother’s neck, hands fisted in her thin robe. He saw me, he mouths into the warmth of her skin. He wills it not to have happened: black eyes meeting black, the suspicious glitter. Much too early for Severus to be up—to be watching. And Tobias, he knows, would never think that Sev was simply seeing him off, a little boy both excited and angry and sad to see his father leaving for the day. Would see it as an act of rebellion, disrespect. Crunch of Tobias’ heavy work boots on the litter of dead leaves, cracked and stiff in the frost. As one, Severus and his mother hold their breaths. When she leans forward to look again, Severus tries to make himself flat against her body. Another spit. Thump of something being kicked. Eileen’s exhale is as full and pregnant and magical as the full moon; every muscle relaxes, and she pries still-clinging Severus from her neck. “He’s gone, little rabbit,” she breathes. She wants him to smile, he knows, and he does, strained, heart still thrum thrum thrumming. “Are you ready for your present?” Throat thick with worry, he can’t speak yet. He nods. “Let’s get dressed, then. We’ll be out all day.” Eileen has to undo his monkey’s grip on her robe, setting him down on the bed. Off with his night shirt, his pyjama bottoms, both a navy-and-yellow starry night sky print faded to greenish blue, yellowed gray. He both hopes for and dreads a bath: hopes for so that he can be clean and new, dreads because the water will not get warm for at least a half hour, and if his mother loses momentum the day, like so many others, will simply fall apart. She will stand in kitchen and look out into the yard, smoking cigarette after cigarette, brushing the ash into a bowl of a water, cigarette butts left to swell and disintegrate into the slimy smoker’s porridge that lines the edges of all their bowls. But his mother is too excited to remember a bath. She fusses in his small closet, bringing out first an old pair of black dress pants, then discarding them on the floor; a shirt he’d worn as a toddler, still mysteriously hanging; she pulls item after item out, creating a pile on the floor of rejects. Severus wills her to stop.. He can feel his, heart in his throat again, hands clammy. He’s afraid to move and disturb her further, but something is coming undone and he can’t have this day, of all of them, unravel, so he slides from the bed and patters over. “I’ll do it, mummy,” he whispers. She turns so sharply he winces, cowers for the split second before she crouches down and takes him by the shoulders, kisses his cheek. “What a helpful boy you are,” she says brightly. “Yes, you should pick your clothes out. Mummy has to remember where she’s put it.” The walls, and Severus, breathe out as she disappears through the doorway. He dresses quickly, picking his least worn trousers, a little small for him, and a thick shirt large enough to hang halfway down his thighs. He finds Eileen by sound. She’s standing on the stepstool in the pantry, pulling out old tins of tomatoes, boxes of cereal covered in dust, and a detritus of odd objects: dented pans, half a bowl, split down the side, a toy dog missing a leg. “Your father,” she hushes on the word, “would never look in here. I thought it would be in the bedroom, but then I remembered when—well, nevermind. It’s certainly in here. Ah!” She pulls down an oversized Christmas biscuit tin, oblong. Severus feels a stab of disappointment. Somehow, he’d expected a velvet box, or some fine wood container. He knows that his mother has had to hide everything from her old life, but that even this is dirtied by the mundane… he picks at the edges of a thumbnail, watching his mother from behind his hair. She puts a few things back, then clicks her tongue and hops off the stool, smiling broadly. She leads them out of the pantry, back into the kitchen; she lifts Severus into her arms, cuddling him close for a minute. Then presses the tin into his hands. “Open it, Sev,” she says. She tucks his hair behind his ears. Santa grins at him, technicolor. He thinks this will not be what he wanted, but he smiles. At least he must pretend, for his mum. But he doesn’t pretend the sharp inhale when he pries the tin open and sees the wand, the length of his arm, laying and half-wrapped in a plush bed of folded silk handkerchiefs. He looks at his mother, who nods, and then the wand is in his hands. Instantly he feels in it a warmth, a heaviness, and a curious delicacy; there is the sense that the wand is looking at him, as much or more as he’s looking at the wand. Judging. The magic, here, in his hand, is undeniable. Severus can feel it as clearly as he feels his own heart beat, and feels the press of unknown knowledge. He can feel the shape of the last spells cast by the wand: a stirring motion, maybe of tea, the swish of slippers called to hand. The twitch of the wand’s alarm, a deep sadness; then a sensation of power, roiling motion, and then— His hand around the wand, and a faint white smoke rising off the tip. Approval. “Hah!” Eileen lifts him above her head, and he almost lets go of the wand, but it sticks to his palm. “I knew it! You’re just like him, Sev—this was my father’s wand, and I know he’d—” She brought him close, voice dropping. “I always knew he’d have liked you. That, if he were alive, we wouldn’t have to live here. With him.” The wand lets out what Severus knows is an inaudible, but just as powerful, note of keening. His mother doesn't seem to hear: she’s looking over the kitchen, jaw tightening. The chipped dishes. Butter melting in a pan on the table. Crumbs over everything, the sprinkling of ash around a whisky glass. By now the sun has begun to rise in earnest, and everything is cast with a pinkish orange wash. His mother’s cheeks shine. Severus looks at the wand in his hand, feeling his mother’s body drawn tight. This time, he isn’t supposed to see, but he feels, and the wand feels it too. Severus takes in a deep, slow, careful breath. Lets the intention, the sadness, wash out through his arms and hands, lets it feed into the wand. Already it feels like a part of him, a friend who understands, who hears what he’s saying without words. With magic. And out of the wand tip a bead of magic like a diamond catches the sunlight, flashes. A silvery smoke of bird flies from the tip and sings a pure, high note, circling them. Eileen lets out a guttering sigh. But Severus can feel her posture shift, can feel how they both let the melancholy rise, up and out. She looks at the bird, flying from perch to perch in their tiny, worn kitchen. She shifts Severus in her arms, holds out a hand. The bird turns on the wing, lands on her fingertip. “Thanks, mum,” Severus says. “Thank you, Sev,” she says, and laughs, and kisses his forehead. “Now, into the wood to practice—after a quick breakfast, yeah?” He nods, chest so full of want and happiness he could burst. |