A magical love affair - Severus Snape x Petunia Evans

Chapter 4 - Whiskey sharing with a childhood nemesis

Park near Spinner's End, Cokeworth, July 1978

Severus Snape opened his mouth in shock. He couldn't believe his eyes, ears and senses. Perhaps his whiskey drinking had already clouded his mind and he was now living in an alternate universe, seeing phantasms and hearing acoustic hallucinations. Because the mighty, sneering Petunia Evans couldn't be standing in front of him with a tear-stained face, ruined makeup, tousled honey-blond locks and empty icy blue eyes asking him to share his whiskey with her. Well, his mind imagined really strange things in its drunken state. Perhaps he should stop drinking liquor at once because it really seemed to cost him his last brain cells. And he could surely use some of these to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

If he should end it all by taking a self-developed, self-mixed poison. If he should crumble under the pressure of his Slytherin mates and join the hell-bent on conquering the Wizarding world and wiping out all Muggles, Squibs, Muggle-borns and Magical Creatures dark wizard Lord Voldemort he. If he should leave his past behind and start fresh over-seas or if he should stay in Britain, fulfill his dreams of becoming a renown potioner by apprenticing under Master Nobel in Liverpool and fight for the unification of the Wizarding world? Severus was utterly lost, in grief by his beloved mum's murder and wanted to forget everything by drowning his sorrows in liquor. But even his hallucinations seemed to be hell-bent on mocking him and adding some more to his sorrows, because how could he otherwise explain the appearance of his childhood nemesis, Lily's snobby sister Petunia "Tuney" Evans in them?

Was it not even possible for his drunken mind to throw his enemies under the bus? How crazy must he be, if his own mind tormented him with images of his childhood foes? Severus really didn't want to get to the bottom of this questions, shook his head, squinted his eyes in high speed and pinched himself to awake from this nightmare. But alas, the hallucination of Petunia didn't vanquish. She only gazed at him with pitiful sapphire eyes, a raised eyebrow and her arms crossed as if she awaited him to react to her offer of a drunken heart-to-heart talk under enemies. Severus really became right upset with his mind now and got up from his slumped down position in front of a broken rocking horse in a flash. He tried to steady himself on his wobbly legs and staggered to his illusion. Then he screamed in his slurred, deep baritone with a blazing look in his obsidian eyes, "Get the fuck out of my head, Tuney".

To his utter shock, his Fata Morgana didn't disappear. Instead, she visibly flinched, blue eyes widened out of shock and gazed fearfully at him. After one short moment of a staring contest, she dropped her gaze on the floor, fidgeted with the hem of her roses-covered dress and seemed to seek shelter in her arms which she now looped around her body in a rocking motion. In this moment she looked like a younger version of his mum. Expressing the same fear of physical abuse in her eyes, adopting the same introverted position standing rigidly on the ground, radiating the same tenseness in her body and embracing herself like an unloved and frightened little girl.

This realization moved Severus deeply. He felt guilty for frightening his hallucination, loathed himself for acting like his criminal, alcoholic murderer of a father and broke down into sobs. With a crazed expression in his eyes, he walked up to the virtual Petunia. He took a deep breath between his sobs, tried to compose himself, touched her chin to level up her head and gazed out of sorrowful onyx eyes into her baby blues,

"I'm so sorry, Tuney. I didn't want to frighten you. I won't end up like this bastard Tobias who only felt power and joy by beating his wife up and seeing the fear in her eyes. I swear to you that I will never raise my hand against any woman. Please, forgive me for my outburst, but my emotions really overwhelm me at the moment and my life is a living hell.