severus iscariot (calumny) wrote in raveled, @ 2017-01-12 17:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! decade: 1970s, ! log, severus snape |
WHO: Severus Snape & Lily Evans (cameo Lucius Malfoy)
WHAT: a slow fraying x
WHEN: Summer 1975
WHERE: Cokeworth
WARNINGS: child neglect
Even when summer comes the space between them is wide as an ocean. They leave bodies between them, so careful not to touch by accident. Each pantomime is suffering, for Severus: at the same time he knows that touching her could kill him. He misses when they were kids, even a year ago, tripping over each other’s legs as they ran, shoving each other at the slightest tease. Going to the Evans house had been comfortable, a ritual; Lily’s mother fixing them sandwiches that Severus ate as slowly as possible, trying not to look as hungry as he usually was, Lily’s father making jokes about how their spellwork was coming on. Now, Lily only lets him come over when her parents are both working, and the house’s warmth is dimmed by absence. He sees her family in what they’ve forgotten: her mother’s knitting left on a table, newspapers stuffed under a book, Petunia’s heady perfume lingering outside the door to her room. And if the Evans’ are out, that means it’s midday, with the heat a closer companion than Lily herself, so that they lay on her bedroom floor and their words come thick and slow. Padding on sweaty feet to the kitchen for a snack, Severus always lagging behind. Other summers if Lily went to make herself something he’d jostle her, make a comment, they’d joke. The air is static. He doesn’t push, avoids looking at her hands and mouth, so that he only eats when she offers. And she doesn’t always. At night in his room, he can’t help but think, and she knows how it is for me, and i know how her family is, and she doesn’t ask if i want anything. When for twelve hours he’s eaten a handful of saltines found half-moldy in a drawer, stashed there by a younger Sev, no doubt, during a time of relative peace. Tobias leaves early to look for work, or a drink, if his mother’s to be believed. Sev spends long hours sitting with her at the kitchen table, their chairs turned to the window looking out on their patchwork yard, the door open to catch a lazy breeze. Eileen smokes all the time; before he went to Hogwarts, it was only in the worst of times. The house is choked with her and Tobias’ tobacco stench. Sev might be allergic to it. After each session with his mother his eyes are swollen, running, and he coughs gray mucus into the sink. One day she reaches into the pack, slim white cigarette between dirty fingers, and instead of lifting it to her lips she arcs a casual hand towards Sev. And, he doesn’t know why, he takes it. Puts it in his mouth, leans towards her. Since starting at Hogwarts there have been less hugs, less ruffling of hair. when he was a kid he remembers his mother couldn’t get enough of him—she was always picking him up, tucking his hair behind his ear, pulling him into her lap, holding his hand when he was far too old for it. Eileen can’t seem to look at him for long enough to love him like that anymore. When he catches her eye, leaning into the light (a Muggle light), he sees something sad and very, very sick. He jerks away with the cigarette only singed, but he can snap his fingers and there the fire comes. He knows as soon as he exhales the first lungful that what he has done is wrong. Not the cigarette, which is nothing, which is a gesture of, if anything, a drowning woman reaching out. With his magic. Eileen is too close for him not to see the betrayal, and hunger, as surely as if he’d slipped a knife between her ribs. ”A witch without her magic,” Lucius’ voice a white ghost, seductive as oxygen in a fire. ”Worse than a Muggle. Losing it over something as foolish as love.” They’d been in Diagon, taking tea before meeting their parents. The woman he’d pointed out to Severus was apparently the subject of popular Pureblood talk, having fallen in love with a Selwyn even though she was a mudblood. Living proof that the Muggle taint was strong. Severus had forced a laugh. Lucius didn’t know his mother hadn’t been able to do magic in years. Only Lily knew. Their house is too filled with hurt for him to stay, and he wanders out into the wood, coughing (he will cough for hours) where he finds Lily coaxing a new flower to bud. She starts when he sees him. He remembers her that first year coming back from Hogwarts, worrying that she wouldn’t be able to practice all summer, with her muggle parents, she’d get in trouble from the Trace. Sev had offered his house; Eileen was supposed to be able to do magic, she would cover for them if any questions were asked. But they had been meant to practice together. So this is how his mother feels, he thinks, coming on Lily alone, Lily furtive. I showed you everything, and you want to throw me away like it was nothing. Lily can’t see his hand fisting, the way they stand, but the mask Severus puts on for his mother and father and at school is not the one he usually wears around her. She asks if he’s okay. Her guilt, though palpable, feels insincere. “Just, you know,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “The usual.” Lying to Lily has never been so easy. And she’s never been so easy to fool, looking down in sympathy, as if he doesn’t see the twitch in her arm where she almost reached out to him, stopped herself. Growing up has made her tall, and he can see already, more beautiful than ever before: a too-big child’s mouth shaping into a woman’s pout, crooked front teeth neatened by a night of experimental magic in her dorm with her mates. He misses her gap, and he doesn’t like that at times like this—crouching next to her in the sun-bleached grass and dry dirt, their wands coaxing the flower to bloom—he feels like everything she gains is something taken from him. Her talent with magic, that he showed her; her looks, which he’s never had much of and certainly has little of now; even the way she talks, arcing from Petunia’s noxious new boyfriend to their Ravenclaw rivals at school so that before he can catch up she’s said everything and he has only silence and a nod to offer her. She was having more luck with the flower before he found her. “My wand hasn’t been working as well,” he says. It sounds like the excuse of a tired child. He can’t tell if that’s how Lily takes it, or if she believes him, but it’s the truth. “It was your grandfather’s, wasn’t it? It’s old now. Maybe it’s just losing juice.” “Wands aren’t supposed to lose their ‘juice.’” Immediately he regrets being short with her and shoots her a strained grin. “Maybe I’ve been a squib all along and I’ve been stealing your magic.” She smiles, but it’s as thin as his. Only later does it occur to him that a joke about mudblood superstitions, when their mudblood classmate’s mother was killed last break, might not be funny to her. |