A magical love affair - Severus Snape x Petunia Evans

Chapter 6 - Honesty is the key to healing!

Park near Spinner's End, Cokeworth, July 1978

Petunia really was flashed by Severus openness and honesty. She knew that he was a deeply private person and normally guarded his secrets close to his chest. So it was a huge signal of his trust and companionship to open up to her about his abusive home life. Although Petunia heard rumors about it in hushed talks between her mother and her gossiping housewife friends, she never really paid attention to it or investigated further into the matter of Severus' broken home, because she despised him and didn't care about his sorrows then. Ok, perhaps Petunia wasn't quite honest with herself here. She naturally cared about the new rumors that circulated in the rumor mill of Cokeworth, because she was a nosy person by nature, often listening to her parents' talks in the hope to hear them admit, that they loved her and were proud of her behind closed doors. A hope that was sadly never fulfilled. Or she listened closely to other people's hushed conversations in the hope to learn some useful, personal secrets that she could use to her advantage in the future. Petunia really had been a nasty, petty teenaged girl. Therefore, she had registered the gossip about the Snape's fully.

And it really wasn't a huge secret that Tobias Snape was a violent alcoholic who spent most his money and time in a pub beer-drinking, liquor-sipping and football-watching and oftentimes lost his temper in some bar fights with other drunken brutes or insulted his wife. The good-for-nothing satanic bitch with her bewitching, amoral abilities. He also humiliated his son as the ugly, science-obsessed Nancy with useless, demonic skillx in his drunken rants in front of his hysterically laughing and yelling friends. Besides that, everyone with a keen observation could see that he physically abused his wife and son, because they often spotted a black eye or several bruises on their faces and rough looking grazes on their arms and legs. Therefore, it was a well-known fact in Cokeworth that Tobias Snape was a jobless, alcoholic, sadistic and cruel bastard who verbally and physically abused his wife and son. Thanks to this fact, he was looked upon, regarded as trash and a disgrace for any hard-working industrial worker. Hence, nobody wanted to have to do anything with him and badmouthed him behind his back.

For in addition to his drinking problem, he was also addicted to compulsive gambling and cheated on his wife with some prostitutes, so that he spent his whole money that he hugely generated out of social Funds for unemployed mill workers on liquor, gambling and whores. Mrs. Snape and their son Severus had only had very little money. Petunia estimated around 100 £ a month to cover their expenses. Thankfully, they didn't need to pay any rent for their run-down, small two-bedroom-house that looked more like a broken hovel anyway and could draw most of their food for free from the local food bank and most of their clothes for little money from the community welfare association, with the result that they didn't need to live on the streets or starve to death. But Mrs. Snape and Severus were very proud people that didn't want to be on welfare all the time. Hence, they oftentimes starved, ditched their personal hygienic products or wore extremely worn-out clothes to not have to visit the charity services very often.

As a result, they were both sickly thin, had blemished, yellow-looking skin, greasy raven black hair, and yellowish crooked teeth. Looks that earned them mocking stares and insults by neighbors, by-passers and schoolmates. So, they were treated like outcasts in Cokeworth. This unfair treatment didn't only stem from their unkempt looks, but also from the odd things Severus could do. He e.g. had jinxed a serpent's tongue into the mouth of a nosy, his mum insulting neighbor at the age of four or had transfigured the toy car of a nasty classmate who had bullied him relentlessly into a spider at the age of seven. It circulated the gossip that he attended a school for mentally unbalanced and intellectually retarded children in Scotland.