The Redemption of Severus Snape

Part 46

Severus launched himself out of the dirty old armchair and began to pace between the tiny sitting room and the connected, and equally tiny, kitchen. He rubbed the sleeve where his wand lay; it gave him comfort. His eyes repeatedly darted to a dingy corner of the kitchen where a small table was shoved against the wall. He remembered a time when it sat away from the wall, leaving enough room for four people to squeeze themselves around it. Severus stopped his pacing as his eyes fogged and his mind wandered into the past.

In the summer before his last year in Hogwarts, young Severus sat on the dirty floor of the sitting room, reading. His father had just woken up from a night of hard drinking, for Tobias Snape there was no other kind of drinking. He heard his father's heavy staggering footsteps stomping about the upstairs. A door slammed, he was likely vomiting in the toilet by now. It was late afternoon and Severus had just returned from stealing tins of food from the local shops. It was easier to steal things when the late-day shoppers were crowding the stores; they tended to be noisy and in a rush to get home. His mother was still asleep. It took much longer for her much smaller body to cope with too much alcohol consumption. She'd likely be awake in another few hours. If there was more to drink, they'd get along tonight. That was the only time they got on well, when they were both stone drunk. Sometimes, like last night, they would even be affectionate with each other. Those were nights that Severus slept outside somewhere, anywhere that he could find that was dry. If there wasn't any gin, there would be a row that would end with Tobias beating her and maybe Severus too.

Severus' research books lay on the floor around him. He kept them hidden amongst his mother's many books where his father was less likely to damage them. He'd long ago surpassed the need for school books. Hogwarts' curriculum wasn't advanced enough for him so he supplemented his education with more advanced texts, many of which he'd borrowed from his mother's collection; others were borrowed from the Malfoy's expansive library. Tobias would've pawned them by now if he'd known how valuable they were, among wizard-kind that is. Tobias was anything but academically inclined; as he saw it, the only use for books was as kindling for the fire.

He heard his father stomping down the stairs and quickly put away his books and notes. He stashed his mother's hand-me-down wand up his sleeve. The wand originally belonged to his mother's father. It passed into his mother's possession after her father died. Severus had never known either his grandfather or his grandmother. They were both purebloods that were loath to admit the existence of a half-breed embarrassment named Severus let alone admit that he was their grandson. Severus knew that his grandmother had died while he was still an infant as she'd been a frail woman all of her life. His grandfather died in a duel with seven Aurors a few years before Severus started Hogwarts. His mother was inconsolable; it was as if the world had ended. She never recovered.

He wasn't stupid enough to remain sitting on the floor as his father entered it and risk having a boot planted in his side. He stood with a week-old newspaper in his hand and pretended to read it. Severus felt his sleeve. Feeling the holstered wand gave him comfort, the only real comfort he'd ever known, and yet it was also a source of terrible frustration. He hated that wand. It was stubborn and inflexible, and didn't suit him at all. It resisted him. He was certain that if he'd had a proper wand, his early altercations with Potter and Black would've ended very differently.

"Smell!" shouted Tobias from the bottom of the staircase. "Where are you, boy?" 'The Smell' was his father's idea of a clever nickname. He'd begun using it a few years ago during a card game with his two closest friends, the brothers Jack and Jim McCarthy. Severus had made the grave mistake those few years ago of being seated at the kitchen table when his father came in with his thuggish friends. They rounded on him before he was able to exit the room. He ended up being stuck between the two hulking brothers and the kitchen wall. They stunk of scrumpy.

"Come sit on my knee, darlin'," said Jack as he pinched Severus' backside.

"It's a boy, Jack," said Tobias. "I know it's hard to tell with the long hair."

"You sure," said Jack.

"Yep," replied Tobias. "Saw it when he was born, didn't I?"

"Yours?" asked Jim as if he didn't know who Severus was. "Not sure I'd admit to fatherin' somethin' that ugly."

"Takes after his mum," replied Tobias and won himself a round of laughter from his friends.

"Come on then," said Jack, "tell us your name." Severus said nothing. His name was a perpetual source of amusement for the two cretins. Tobias answered for him.

"His mum calls him Severus." Tobias spoke slowly, putting great emphasis on his son's unusual name, much to the delight of his two friends. "But I just call 'im 'the Smell'." Jack and Jim roared with laughter. A malicious grin spread across Tobias' face; he was clearly pleased with his own cleverness.

"I'm still not convinced it's a boy," said Jack, "especially with a name like Severus. Sounds a bit girly to me." He grabbed Severus and threw him at Jim, who wrapped his heavy arms around the boy so he couldn't move. Severus began to kick and Jim wrapped his legs around Severus' declaring, "Oi, you're a feisty one."

Jack yanked Severus' trousers and underpants down. "You're right, Toby; it is a boy, though not much of one from what I can see. That pretty little girlfriend of yours will have a right good laugh when she sees that." Jack sat down and Jim threw Severus face-down onto the floor, his naked backside sticking into the air. "That's right, darlin'," said Jim. "Put your best face forward." The three men laughed so hard, they had tears running down their faces. Severus cried as he struggled to pull his trousers up.

"You cryin' again?" said Tobias with a murderous look on his face. "You should've been a girl. Let him go lads. With a nose that size, he'll have snot on everything."

Severus ran out of the kitchen, clutching at his sagging trousers, and sprinted upstairs to his bedroom where he shut himself up in the closet. When he'd recovered enough to emerge, he stood in front of a long crooked mirror that hung on the wall. He spit on it a few times and rubbed his dirty sleeve on it to remove some of the grime. He opened his pants and looked at himself, wondering if there was any truth to what Jack had said. He'd never seen a naked man, except for the dirty pictures his father showed him, and he certainly didn't compare to any of them. He had no one to ask; Mulciber would likely curse him if he tried. Severus closed his pants and wondered if Lily would mind. She'd never laughed at him for anything else, so maybe she wouldn't care. And even if she did, he'd be a powerful wizard someday, and she'd want him despite his flaws. He'd long ago accepted that he was ugly; there was no reason to believe that, that part of him wasn't ugly too.

Jack and Jim often threatened to do perverse things to him, but they never did. They just liked to make him cry; and that had been the only time they stripped him. But Severus wasn't stupid enough to think that no one else would try anything. That's why he never fully disrobed, especially at school. He washed at the sink fully clothed with his eyes downcast so he didn't have to look at any of the other boys. Some of them were so confident and brazen that they walked to and from the showers with their towels over their shoulders instead of covering themselves. Severus would reach under his clothes with a wet soapy washcloth and got out of there as quickly as he could. The worst times were when he had to wash his hair; he did that at the sink too. He dunked head under the water, raked a cake of soap over his hair, and rinsed quickly before anyone had a chance to hex him or shove his head down.

Severus' roommates insisted that he keep his bed curtains drawn to keep the smell inside. He eventually realized that there was an advantage to being unclean. People didn't like to come too near to him, and they certainly didn't want to touch him. Except for Lily, she never minded touching him, or holding his hand. She didn't mind sitting closely to him either; sometimes she leaned over his shoulder to study Potions.

He vowed in front of that old mirror, never to let anyone fully see him. He was accustomed to being ugly, but he wasn't about to give anyone a new reason to ridicule him. Little did he know that Potter and Black would break that vow for him; and in front of a crowd of girls. Jack had been right, they did laugh at his inferior endowment. He learned that day that there were far worse things than humiliation. He'd unintentionally insulted Lily in a fit of rage and she ended their friendship.

Avery and Mulciber watched the entire altercation with Potter and Black and later berated Severus for being weak. He knew more dark magic than the four Marauders put together, and still consistently lost to Potter and Black. Avery and Mulciber were right, and Severus knew it.