Chapter Text
For the first time in his life, Severus was relieved to be returning home for the holidays. His father would be there, haunting that small, crooked house in Spinner's End, but Severus knew his tricks and habits, knew when to push his luck and when to retreat, knew when it was safe to enter and when to sleep rough. He didn't have to look over his shoulder, because Tobias never gave chase. So long as he stayed out of reach of those long arms and broad hands, Severus should be fine. And even if Tobias did manage to grab him, the only thing he would do was beat him bloody. He wouldn't feed him to a werewolf or strip him naked in front of a crowd.
Stop that crying, Tobias snapped at him when he was about five or six years old after an older kid had pushed him into a puddle. What are you crying for? They can kill you, but they can't eat you.
It was some stupid Muggle metaphor. Severus hadn't understood at first until his father explained it: They can't eat you because you're too tough. The world will chew you up, but it'll spit you back out again.
It was stupid, but Severus caught himself saying it over and over, whenever the Marauders bullied him, whenever his father drank too much and lashed out at him. It was a charm he wielded, a sort of spell that he whispered to himself when he needed comfort, a reminder that one day It would end and he would leave this place and things would get better. It wasn't meant to be literal.
Until the Marauders very nearly killed him. Until Lupin almost ate him.
He sat beside Mulciber and stared out of the window as the train rattled into London. The sun was blazing hot on his face and Severus closed his eyes, letting the sounds of his housemates drift over him. Despite being surrounded by these people he called friends, Severus felt very alone. He couldn't talk to any of the boys he roomed with the same way he could talk to Lily. A piece of his soul had been sliced cleanly off. How was he supposed to go on without her? It seemed impossible, she had been a part of him for so long.
He felt like he was being digested.
He wondered if she told her parents they had a falling out. Severus's mother, Eileen, had made it very clear to his head of house that he was not to send any letters home, that Tobias wouldn't like it. They would rather not hear about anything that went on in that school. It was Mr and Mrs Evans that Slughorn reported to. They had to sign official documents from both the school and the Ministry to be able to receive any updates on Severus's progress. Every autumn Lily's parents drove him to King's Cross, and every summer they picked him up again. They took him to Diagon Alley to get him school supplies, and in the summer, whenever Severus was forced out of his home and made to sleep in the bushes in the park, he could go over to their house and they would feed him dinner.
Would that all change now? Would Severus find himself standing alone in the middle of the platform, watching as Mr and Mrs Evans took Lily home without him?
The Hogwarts Express pulled into the station and Severus opened his eyes, blinking away the spots dancing in front of him, and forced himself to his feet.
He slowly removed his trunk and followed Mulciber as they exited the carriage, dragging his luggage behind him. His stomach twisted itself into knots the closer he got to the exit. He stepped down the metal steps, his head down, hair tangled and greasy in front of his face, not wanting to see–
Oh. There she was. Lily stood with her arms folded, a scowl on her pretty face, and glaring down at her feet. Her parents were beside her. Mrs Evans waved at him. “There you are! Come along. We might be able to beat the rush.” She hadn't told them. Or maybe she did, but her parents still wanted to make sure he got home alright. They were good people, the only decent Muggles Severus knew.
Severus numbly trotted behind them. He stared at the back of Lily's head as he climbed into the car behind her; neither of them said a word. Severus made sure to squeeze himself against the door, as far away from her as possible. He didn't want to accidentally brush up against her, fearful of what she might unleash if provoked. The ride was silent, and her parents must have felt uncomfortable because Mr Evans kept shooting them little glances from the rearview mirror and Mrs Evans fiddled with the radio. “Anything you want to listen to?” She asked them. “Do you want to stop somewhere and get something to eat?”
Severus stole a glance at Lily, wondering what was safe to say. He finally settled on, “I'm fine with whatever you decide, thank you,” when Lily made no move to respond.
It was almost a relief to see that dirty, crooked house squeezed between two identical dirty, crooked houses in the middle of Spinner's End. “I haven't seen your mother around this past week,” Mrs Evans called from the window as Severus pulled out his trunk from the boot. “Tell her I've got leftovers from the church if she wants them.”
Severus nodded and gave an awkward, half-aborted wave as they drove off. Lily had not acknowledged him once; she hadn't even looked at him. It hurt. It hurt worse than when Tobias went after him. He couldn't remember ever having his father's love; you can't miss what you never had. But Lily…
She can kill you, but she can't eat you, he thought. It gave him no comfort. All he could think of when he said that phrase was glowing yellow eyes and sharp fangs.
“Ma, I'm home!” Severus called out as he stepped inside the house, dragging his trunk behind him. The house was dark and empty; Tobias must be at the mill. Severus breathed a sigh of relief and abandoned his trunk in the living room. He headed for the kitchen, batting at the flies that flew around his head. A pungent stench lingered in the air. Merlin, had his parents left scraps of food to pile up on the table again?
He peeked into the kitchen, but nothing seemed out of place. There were dirty dishes in the sink, and flies gathering on the window, but nothing that accounted for the smell.
“Ma?” Severus called again as he turned toward the narrow, rickety stairs. They were slightly uneven. One step was a little taller than the others, the next jutted out just a millimeter too far. He kept his eyes trained on his feet; he'd trip otherwise.
Severus looked at his feet. It was all he could see. The curtain of black hair hanging in front of his eyes obscured everything else. He could hear the flies buzzing around him. The smell grew noxious. Something must have died in the walls. A rat maybe.
He pinched his nose shut and struggled to breathe through his mouth. He might actually vomit.
He reached the top of the stairs. He stared at his feet through the narrow tunnel of his hair. Flies crawled out from underneath the crack of his parents’ door, darting across the wooden floor and over his dirty, taped trainers. “Ma?” Severus croaked out.
He opened the door and looked up. There was a large black lump lying on his parents’ bed. It was vaguely human-shaped, but swollen with putrid gases, rippling as the flies and maggots crawled across the mottled flesh. “Mummy?” He asked, half-expecting the thing on the bed to answer in his mother's voice.
Severus heard a clicking sound. He turned his head away from the body and saw his father sitting in a chair in the corner. There was a shotgun in his hands and he leveled it as Severus. He saw his father squeeze the trigger, saw the flash of light, and–
Sev looked so peaceful, so innocent lying there in his hospital bed. Lily missed the intensity of his dark eyes, the funny little smile that tugged on his lips when he thought of something cutting to say, that mind that was always turning, turning, turning now forcefully stopped in an endless sleep.
They had laid him out like a corpse in his coffin.
He wore a white robe, his pale hands were clasped across his stomach over a white sheet, his black hair had been washed of blood and curled against his shoulders. The healers had taken care of his wounds, but his skin was still strangely pitted around his left brow and temple– that was where the birdshot had struck him. He was lucky, the Muggle police had said before St Mungo's took over the case. A direct shot to the face even with bird pellets was lethal 99% of the time.
Lucky. Sev was in a coma and no one knew when he would wake up. How lucky was that? It would have been lucky if Tobias had missed.
Lily's only consolation was that after he had shot his son, Tobias Snape had placed the barrel of the shotgun in his own mouth and fired. Blew his head clean off. Sandra Ellis had heard from Gregory Holloway who knew Bob McGaughey from next door to the Snapes say that the police had to scrape Tobias's brains off of the ceiling.
Sev would laugh to hear some of the rumours that were going around. He was always interested in things like that: rumours, scandals, murders, salacious tales. Lily missed his laugh, his voice. God, the last time she had spoken to him was that day in front of the Gryffindor common room.
“Is there no hope at all?” Lily's mother asked.
“There is always hope, Mrs Evans,” the healer said. “He might wake up two weeks from now or in ten years. We just don't know. But no matter how long it takes St Mungo's will care of him and we will ensure that he will never miss out on any years of his life.”
Henry, Lily's father, frowned at that. “What do you mean? I don't understand.”
“It's–” The healer struggled to come up with an explanation these Muggles would understand, before finally turning to their daughter. “You know about Time-Turners, don't you?” Lily nodded her head. “There are other ways we are able to manipulate time. Do you see the runes carved into this door? So long as Mr Snape stays inside this room he will be frozen in time. He will never age. He could sleep for a hundred years and when he awoke he would still be sixteen.” He turned back to her parents. “That's the reason why St Mungo's contacted you. We couldn't locate any next-of-kin, but Hogwarts had you listed as authorized guardians. We were hoping you would take over as his custodianship. Someone must be willing to take care of him when he wakes up, and if he's still in a coma by the time you pass then he will be inherited by your children, or your children's children. However long it takes.”
“We'll do it, we'll take care of him,” Henry readily agreed. “What do we have to sign?”