699Chapter 19: Ch II,16: To Remember Home
Chapter 16: To Remember Home
Tobias Snape wasn't in the slightly run-down house on Spinner's End when Severus finally entered it in the late evening, and for that, the sixteen-year-old wizard found himself relieved. Whether his mother had told Tobias that he'd be coming or not, the sixteen-year-old didn't know, but not having his father in the house gave him enough time to unpack all of his things and put them in their respective hidey-holes before they got accidentally-on-purpose destroyed in some way or other.
"I thought you would be here hours ago," was the first thing Eileen Snape said to him after he'd placed his trunk and backpack on the ground by the door to the upper floor and stepped into the kitchen.
"I went to London," he replied, crossing his arms over his chest and waiting for his mother to properly acknowledge him.
Eileen Snape was in appearance quite an unremarkable woman, really. Medium height, medium build, she had ink black hair that she kept tied in a skull-pulling bun at the back of her head, and the same black eyes that Severus himself did. Beneath it, her skin was pale and there were frown lines on her forehead, which, combined with her mildly aquiline nose, gave her expression an unceasing severity that forever prevented her from being called pretty, let alone beautiful. She was never to be seen out of ankle-length skirts and buttoned-up wrist-covering shirts that were always in dark colours and reminded starkly of wizarding robes while still being Muggle clothing.
And currently she was washing dishes, the Muggle way. The sight rankled at Severus for age-old reasons that made his fingers itch to cast a cleaning charm, but he contained himself. After all, he had no idea when Tobias had left, and to have the man stumble onto a spell in work... no. If there was one thing that wasn't done in this house if there was even the slightest chance of Severus' father witnessing it, it was magic.
"For that Evans girl, I presume," his mother commented, shutting the water and taking a dish rag to wipe her hands on as she turned back to him. Eileen Snape had never liked Lily, which had grown into a silent point of contention between the two of them as Severus grew older and his feelings for Lily morphed from a childish infatuation into a teenage passion.
So it was nigh-on impossible for him to respond with anything other than defensiveness to her probe. "So what? You know perfectly well how school is about inter-house friendships."
His mother sniffed lightly.
"Put your things away before your father comes back," she reminded him with a nod. "I have brewing for you to do for me over the summer."
Severus clenched his jaw and exhaled forcibly through his nose. "I won't be here for the whole summer."
"And why not?"
"I have other obligations in August," he replied.
Eileen studied him for a long, silent moment. Then she let go of the dish rag and turned back to the sink. The piece of cloth, rather than falling to the ground, floated with some speed over to Severus, and he grabbed it out of the air almost automatically. He stepped up to the counter, letting the weariness of home finally fully settle in his bones, and began drying the dishes and stacking them neatly to the side as his mother handed one after another to him.
"To whom are you obliged?" she asked quietly, focused on her task. Severus swallowed past his dry throat.
"Does it matter?"
He didn't know how much true contact his mother had with the wizarding world. Certainly there had never been any issues of the Daily Prophet in the house, because even the one owl post Severus had gotten five years ago – his Hogwarts acceptance letter – had caused such a ruckus in their home that their mother had seen to anything and everything delivered by magical means being rerouted through the Muggle post to them from then on. Severus still had a pale scar on his shoulder, from where he'd struck the wall and the glass-framed painting above their dining table when Tobias had expressed his anger over the letter on his son. Having newspapers with moving pictures in them and words like 'dark wizards' and 'Ministry for Magic' emblazoned on the front was beyond Severus' imagination by comparison.
There was some contact, though, that much Severus knew. Tobias Snape may have been a crafty man, back before alcohol had poked holes in his brain, but he had nothing on his wife, and Eileen was nothing if not attached to her wizarding heritage. Aside from that, their house needed upkeep, and they needed food on the table, too, neither of which would have been possible with the way Tobias' drinking had gone from an occasional shot of whiskey on Friday evenings to a regular near-all-nighter at the local watering hole. Severus' mother had been brewing for profit ever since Severus could remember, and though he knew that most of that money did go into his father's drinking account, enough that buying new rather than used was treated as a funny joke in their house, Eileen did manage to save enough to allow for the purchase of potion ingredients and to keep the household going, especially nowadays, when Tobias was practically incapable of keeping a steady job.
Severus didn't know if the drinking was the cause or the effect of his father's joblessness, and he didn't much care. It changed practically nothing, really, and only served to make Severus' stay in the house less bearable. Back in his earliest childhood, when his father had still been working at the big factory uptown, things had been better in many ways, the biggest of which was the fact that his father hadn't been a regular drunkard, and had barely even been a functioning alcoholic. He'd been rough with both Severus and Eileen, verbally and physically, even then – that had probably started when Severus had first begun exhibiting accidental magic and Eileen had been forced to disclose their heritage to Tobias – but compared to today, that had been milk and honey, and it didn't matter that Severus hadn't seen it that way when he'd been eight or nine and heartbroken over his father's growing displeasure towards him.
One thing was for certain – given the current state of affairs in their family, Severus was more than certain that his father knew little to nothing about where their money was coming from, besides his own odd jobs, but that also meant that Severus himself didn't know just how informed his mother was about the Wizarding Britain's state of affairs, either.
"Things will only be getting worse," she noted with a detached sort of distance in her voice. "Voldemort is no Grindelwald, and Britain is no Europe. You would be wise to keep your distance."
The snort that escaped Severus was mostly unintentional, because there was little truly amusing in his mother's suggestion. Keeping his distance had stopped being a possibility the moment he'd shown his Slytherin friends his capabilities in potioneering and spell invention. Perhaps it had stopped being a possibility the moment he'd seen Lily on that swing.
"I see," Eileen said coldly, nodding her head, and the change in her tone made his head snap towards her.
"See what?" Severus asked sharply, putting the plate down a bit more forcefully than was necessary.
"Do not break my dishes, Son," she barked, giving him a searing look before she handed him the final plate, that Severus took in fuming silence. "What do I see? I see a boy being led by his big, hooked nose. I see a foolish, blind boy who's already been pulled in too deeply to escape. I see that my opinion is of no consequence to you, so I see no reason for this conversation to continue."
"Being led by my nose, am I?" he threw her words back at her, setting the plate and the dish rag on the working area because he'd have broken it otherwise. "Do you even care which side is leading me by my big, hooked nose, then, Mother?"
"It doesn't matter to me," Eileen answered, her posture turning rigid, though she didn't pull her hands out of the sudsy water in the sink. "There is no difference between them whatsoever; they will destroy you for their own ends just the same."
Blood began pounding in Severus' temple, and he clenched his hands on the countertop.
"It was my choice!" he spat. "One that I spent months deciding on. No one has led me anywhere, by my nose or otherwise."
"Blind is what you are, Son," his mother said cuttingly. "You are so blind that you do not see any option other than to be involved with the war."
"And what else am I supposed to do?! Cower away in the Muggle world like you've been doing for fifteen years? Espouse pride in my magic to my child while not daring to show my wand in my own home? Spend the rest of my life hiding my magic in the basement of my house and pretending I'm happy for it?"
His mother's slap took him by surprise, making him stumble a step back. Sudsy water immediately drenched the left shoulder and the collar of his shirt as it dripped past his jaw. Eileen's eyes were hard and furious, locked onto Severus' own.
"You will not question my decisions," she said, her voice ice cold, "not so long as you live under this roof without contributing a single Knut. And how you choose to ruin your life, Severus, is no concern of mine. Now go to your room and put away your school supplies, before Tobias gets back."
Furious, humiliated, (hurt), Severus spun on his heel and marched out of the kitchen. He yanked his things from where he'd rested them in the hallway with far too much force, and with a sharp tug, his possessions spilled out of his trunk. They were too light from the Featherweight Charm still to cause much noise, though that didn't stop the ink bottles from opening or his scales from falling to pieces.
"Fucking hell!" Severus snarled, so thoroughly fed up with everything that he pulled his wand out of his jacket pocket, not giving the least fuck if his father might open their front door this very moment, and sent all the things sharply back into the trunk with mostly uncontrolled hand motions.
"Do not make a mess of my hallway, boy!" his mother called out, and the words 'fuck your hallway' were on the tip of his tongue.
They burned going down, but Severus swallowed them; swearing at his parents was something he knew better than to do, no matter to which edges of insanity they pushed him. Instead, he chose a subtler way of protest and used magic to send his things up to his room, before stomping his way back into the kitchen and finishing up his mother's cleaning with several overpowered household spells.
As the dishes, cookware and other eating utensils flew to their designated cupboards and shelves, Eileen stared at Severus in disapproving silence, her forehead wrinkled from the force of her frown. She also said nothing about the cleaning spells, or the garbage bag that flew through the back door to their little dumpster in the back yard, and did not in any way attempt to stop the magic being performed, either.
"Have you proven your childish point?" she asked coolly when Severus was done.
"Isn't that my whole purpose in this household, Mother," he sneered back, "to be the object of your scorn and Father's drunken venting over the misery of his own life? To clean and brew potions for you that don't count in the least towards my contributing money into this house? I bet I've inconvenienced you so terribly, by depraving you of free workforce for three weeks out of nine this summer, because that's the only thing I seem to be good to you for!"
"When you understand the difference between taking unnecessary risks and asserting your own individuality, boy, then you will be good to me for more than earning your keep in this house," she replied, and her words gave as powerful a slap as her hand did. Stunned, Severus stared at her in silence with almost absolute disbelief, before making his second exit of the night and this time actually managing to reach his room without further incident.
There, he threw himself on his bed and dug his thumb and finger into the corners of his eyes to block his tear ducts, as he desperately reached for the Occlumency Dumbledore had taught him in the last few weeks to push away the anger into the corner of his mind and regulate his breathing.
Less than an hour, that was how long it had taken his mother to properly remind him why he hated summers. Less than an hour, to make him realise that he'd forgotten just how bad it was, being here. Less than an hour, to make his sternum hurt in ways that it hadn't for years, that he'd half-convinced himself couldn't have been as sharp a sensation as he'd remembered.
Damn Dumbledore and his anger management to seven hells! Damn him for making Severus remember those few precious good memories he had of his mother and father, damn him to eternity for making Severus confuse how things had once been with how things were now, because at least before, he could suffer these spats with his mother and his father's violence and hatred with a numbed heart and angry mind. And Albus fucking Dumbledore had taken that ability away from him so thoroughly that, for the first time in years, Severus found himself on the verge of tears that his home life was horrible.
She'd not even said that she was happy to have him back home.
There was a time, barely in Peter's memories any longer, when it had not been only him and his mother. When they'd had a home, small but beloved, and his father had been there for them both. It felt almost like a dream, sometimes, when he tried his hardest to remember Edward Pettigrew. There was a face, foggy in his mind, and a figure, tall and large, that had seemed as immovable as a mountain to a three-year-old boy.
Sometimes, Peter thought it was better that he didn't remember any more than that. Sometimes, he thought that his resentment and anger would make him do something unforgiveable if he ever recognised the man in a stranger passing him on the street.
Edward Pettigrew was a coward, who'd abandoned his family without ever looking back, and Peter wished he could say that they were better off without him. The truth was, ever since Peter was four years old, home life had stopped being a joy, and become a chore. The day Peter's father had left him and his mother, Peter had stopped being a child, and become a survivor, because that day, his mother had stopped being a mother, and become an addict.
Old familiarity, tears of frustration and despair began stinging Peter's eyes, and he clenched his teeth against them. He'd learned long ago that crying never helped anything, not really, and as much as the sight of his mother, sprawled on the couch and high off her mind, made him want to curl up in a little ball of pain and hide from the world, Peter didn't. Instead, he fell into the familiar ritual of cleaning up his mother's drug paraphernalia. He picked up the syringe from the floor and carefully laid it on the coffee table, removed the rubber tube and checked his mother's usual injection spots for possible collapsed veins – her elbow insides were relatively intact, considering, which meant she'd only recently started back up on intravenous use – and then puttered about the apartment in search of her other needles and syringes to dump them in ethanol for sterilisation along with the one she'd used today.
He'd have to clean the flat, too, but he was too tired from the trip to do it today. Instead, he slapped her lightly on the cheek until she came back to consciousness enough to peek at him through her eyelashes.
"Petey, y... home."
"Yeah, Ma," Peter answered, containing a sigh. "Come on, let's get you to bed."
"'M sorry. Didn... pick... you up."
What he wanted to say was: 'Can't you be sober for just one sodding day, Ma? One day, so that my homecoming doesn't have to be cleaning you up?'. What he actually said was: "Never mind, Ma. It's not important."
"I'mma... make it up... to ya."
"Sure." She always tried, at least, and Peter had learned to take what he could get, because otherwise the weight of betrayal and disappointment would have crushed him long ago. He just hoped he could get her to make it up to him by toning it down, at least for the duration of the summer.
Holding most of her weight with her arm around his shoulder, Peter managed to stumble his way out of the living room and towards the one bedroom in their current apartment. Lauris was not a large woman – he'd gotten his short stature from her – but she was nearly dead weight, and it was a struggle that left Peter sweaty and feeling even more disgusting than he had only minutes before.
When they reached the bedroom, Lauris spotted her wand, tossed almost haphazardly on the commode by the door. With a burst of energy Peter hadn't expected, she moved towards it, nearly knocking them both down.
"Ma, no."
"Need ta clean up, Petey. Shoulda done it... Let me just–"
"No, Ma, you know you can't use magic around me!" he exclaimed, far too sharply for his own taste, and his heart twisted in his chest when his mother flinched and jerked away from him at the noise.
"Merlin, I always mess everything up, Petey."
And now she was close to tears.
Peter's skin itched, his magic trying to respond to the stress by turning him small and animalistic. He pushed aside the desperate ache of wanting to be away from here, and instead focused on what was always needed of him.
"Come on; we're almost to the bed."
Finally, after a bit more finagling, he had his mother situated, and she was back to near-unconsciousness. Leaving her there, Peter closed the door to the bedroom and, his knees finally giving out, he slid down the door until he was sitting crumpled on the filthy carpet, tears sliding down his cheeks to join the sweat soaking up his shirt.
He'd hoped, damn him; he'd allowed himself to hope, when he'd known better. He was such an idiot, such a colossal idiot, as much of an idiot as Sirius always insisted that he was. He should have known this would happen, shouldn't have given so much weight to Enid's letter...
The thought of his aunt had him jumping to his feet and wiping hastily at his cheeks, because if his mother was relapsing so badly, he should have heard something from Enid. Torn between anger and worry, Peter dug around the flat until he found his mother's purse and thus her wallet. As he'd expected, it was empty of any large bills – it usually was, when she was on a binge – but he did find a bit of coin money, enough to use on the payphone down the street.
There was no answer, though, which only had him even more worried. His aunt worked as a private teacher, and she rarely had any classes after eight in the evening that he knew. Still, he wouldn't have worried, had her absence not been so conspicuous given that she'd known when Hogwarts was letting out.
Scurrying back into the flat, Peter dove back into the mess in search of his mother's stash; the fact that he found it so easily meant that she'd most likely truly forgotten that he was coming back, because she often tried to hide her drug use from him when he was home in spite of the ridiculousness of such a thing. But shame was an excellent fuel for illogical actions, Peter knew that perfectly well, and he'd stopped being surprised by his mother years and years ago.
It looked like she'd be fine for another couple of days at least, if she was at her usual binge dosage and not over it, he decided after assessing the little bag of white powder with a critical eye. She must have just relapsed recently, then; perhaps it was connected to whatever was wrong with Enid. His mother tended to fall back on harder drugs when she couldn't deal with negative emotions, and given the way their lives had been since Peter was four, those emotions were usually in the self-blame spectrum.
Putting it back where he'd found it, Peter instead found a clean shirt among his things and took a hasty shower, feeling just a bit better after washing off the grime and sweat of the day's travel and dealing with his drugged mother. He checked on Lauris one last time, but she seemed quite deeply asleep now, her breathing acceptable given the effect that heroin normally had on it. Then he pocketed all the money he could find in the flat and, making sure to lock the door behind him, hurried to the bus stop, intent on tracking his aunt down.
Knocking on his door woke Sirius up from his fitful slumber; he knew immediately that it was Regulus – only his brother knocked loudly enough to wake him up yet not so loudly that anyone downstairs would hear, a bit sneakily.
"Siri, get up; we're expected downstairs," Regulus called through the door.
"I'm up, I'm up," Sirius growled back, knowing better than to laze about in bed, even if he felt less than rested. His mother had had a go at his room at some point in the last nine months, which meant he'd had to clean up half of his scorched posters and torn banners, and go through the hassle of fixing what he could and replacing what he couldn't. It was a familiar enough ritual that he'd made sure to stock up on new material to hang up – his latest obsession were Muggle motorbikes, to which he'd been introduced by some of the upper-year Muggle-born Gryffindors. In the months since, he'd read up anything and everything available on them, and had decided that a motorbike was the first thing he was going to get when he got a hold of his inheritance. An older model, that didn't have as much electronics, so that he could figure out a way to charm it to fly. He knew just whom to ask for help in that, too; Remus was–
Sirius threw his sleeping pants forcefully at the window, growling under his breath, and dug into his chest for a clean pair of robes. There were more important things to think about than that bloody traitor anyway.
Sticking his wand in his robe pocket, Sirius slipped into the bathroom he shared with Regulus to wash his crusty eyes and his teeth. Then he bounded down the stairs as loudly as he could, making sure to stomp on every creaky step on each of the stairwells.
"Do stop that racket this instant, boy!" came the hoarse holler from the dining room. "Some of us are trying to have a quiet morning!"
"Don't know what you're doing living with us then, Pops," Sirius retorted to the old wizard as he grabbed a hold of one of the plates on the dining table and hurried to the buffet table by the wall to pile up his breakfast.
"This is my house, you insolent child! I will not be forced from my home by you or anyone!"
"When Mother Dearest hasn't been able to drive you out, I certainly wouldn't even presume to try," Sirius sneered back.
"No wonder I've gone half-deaf with you and that wretch always raising up unholy rackets," Arcturus grumbled under his breath as he peered through his glasses at the Daily Prophet open on the table in front of him, making Sirius snort under his breath.
Grey-haired and goateed, with the sharp Black features and hawkish grey eyes, the de iure Head of the House of Black, Arcturus-bought-Order-of-Merlin-First-Class-Black III, had been a permanent fixture in the 12 Grimmauld Place for going on seventy-six years. In truth, he'd never really been much of a de facto Head in his life. Sirius' great-grandfather and namesake, Sirius Black II, the first son of the illustrious (and last) Slytherin Headmaster of Hogwarts, Phineas Nigellus Black, had been the one who's downright trebled the Black family fortune with some rather shrewd investments on the continent, and had had a very firm hold of his position practically until his death in 1952. By then, the twenty-three-year-old Orion, Sirius II's grandson and Arcturus III's son, had been inducted into the running of the family by his grandfather, and so Arcturus had been effectively cut out of the line of succession even though he'd inherited the title as the eldest male in the main line of the family.
As a matter of fact, Arcturus had done little of anything in his seventy-five years on this planet, as far as Sirius knew. His greatest accomplishment in life had been throwing the family name around and, as the derogatory in-family name suggested, gaining an Order of Merlin commendation for 'services to the Ministry', which everyone knew he'd bought just to be able to say that he wasn't a lame duck. These days, he spent most of his time reading the newspapers so that he could make scathing remarks about the incompetency of the government, ordering the house-elves about, and generally going on his daughter-in-law's nerves. It was the one thing that endeared him just a smidgeon to Sirius, though honestly, to the teen, it would have been neither here nor there if his grandfather were to hurry up and finally die – usually Blacks died young by wizarding standards, so it was right about time for him.
"This new Minister for Magic is a complete buffoon," Arcturus muttered to himself – given his weak hearing, that 'muttering to himself' translated into 'for everyone at the table and probably half of the house to hear' – and Sirius made a long-suffering face at Regulus across from him, who seemed as if trying to suppress a smile of his own. He dug into his food, using his fingers with relish instead of the provided eating utensils. "What is all this nonsense about Lord Voldemort being a threat?! Threat to whom? To those Muggle-loving namby-pambies who want to lick arses of Mudbloods?! What's next, are we to pander to Squibs and werewolves and those disgusting little goblin creatures too?"
"Those disgusting goblin creatures, as you put it, Grandfather, happen to hold all of our money," Regulus butted in.
"Your father's complete failure! I would have removed all of our assets from their shifty, stealing hands a long time ago!"
"And that is why Grandfather knew better than to leave you in charge of this estate," Orion Black said as he entered the dining room, and Sirius felt his spine straighten immediately, even as his hands practically dropped the little sandwich he'd made for himself back onto the plate. From the corner of his eye, he saw Regulus sit up properly as well and try his damned hardest to force his face into an expressionless mask, with little true success. "You would have run us into the ground."
"Is that how you speak with your father, you miserable boy?!" Arcturus exploded, even as Orion's grey eyes fixated, laser-like, on Sirius' hands. The sixteen-year-old barely contained his instinctive urge to hide his greasy fingers under the table.
"In this house, you will conduct yourself as appropriate to a young man of your station, Sirius. I believe I made myself clear on this a long time ago," his father stated in a quiet, imperious tone, completely ignoring the background noise of Acturus' rant. Swallowing with difficulty, Sirius began to nod his head, before stopping himself and forcing words out of his mouth instead.
"Yes, sir."
Orion did not move his gaze away as Sirius reached for the napkin by his plate, wiped his hands, and then began almost mechanically eating his eggs with a fork and a knife. They tasted like ashes in his mouth, but he forced himself to chew them as unnoticeably as possible and swallow.
Only then did Orion turn back towards his own father, who seemed to have started running out of steam. "On this matter, Father, I will speak as I see fit, seeing how I am, in fact, the one who makes the decisions in this family, and you will not question those decisions anywhere but in the privacy of my study."
"Like you ever listen to me in any case," Arcturus replied, not in the least bit cowed the way that Sirius felt. "What respect have you ever shown me, boy? In my own house!"
"What respect you have earned," Orion replied calmly, seating himself at the head of the table. Wilty, one of the female house-elves, instantly Apparated next to him with a full plate that she levitated in front of him, before bowing and scurrying away. "Sirius, Regulus, your lessons will begin this afternoon. You are to be prompt and prepared for them. Cygnus and Druella will be frequent guests in the coming month, and you are to be of assistance to your mother at her discretion if you are not with me."
"Yes, Father," both teens murmured as clockwork, but where Sirius fell silent, Regulus continued speaking in a forcibly calm, slightly worried tone.
"You are well, Father?" he asked.
"I am perfectly healthy," Orion replied. "Your mother exaggerates."
Blinking, Sirius studied his father for the first time since arriving home and found himself thinking that in this case, and no doubt to everyone's eternal surprise, that didn't actually seem to be true. This time last year, Orion had looked fit and not in the least bit weathered, his skin with a healthy tan. Today, though, the forty-seven-year-old Black patriarch appeared pale and somewhat worn down. He'd most definitely lost weight, so that his sharp facial features appeared in even starker relief, and his formerly black hair was now liberally peppered with greys. Like this, he bore an even stronger resemblance to Arcturus, whose face had become craggy from years of frowning and pinching expressions, and whose dark grey hair had turned stringy and brittle. Sirius wasn't looking forward to that in his old age in the least.
Regulus had never been very specific about what had happened to their father, beyond the fact that he'd had a heart attack. Sirius wasn't quite sure what that entailed, whether it could have aged his father in this way, but he had a sneaking suspicion that there was more going on behind it. And he wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, because that reputation that the Blacks had, of dying young, it wasn't something unearned. Arcturus' brother Regulus, after whom their Reggie was named, had died at the age of fifty-three, and Walburga's grandfather Cygnus had managed only a year longer than him. Sirius' favourite uncle Alphard was the same age as Orion, and he was seemingly sick enough that he probably wasn't going to come to the wedding. Even those who did manage to reach old age rarely lived past eighty, which, for the magicals who often survived to the middle of their second century, was quite young. Whatever it was, though, it appeared not to have impacted Orion's personality and behaviour any, and that was perhaps the most important thing Sirius had needed to ascertain on arrival home.
All of Sirius' friends believed his mother to be the worse of his two parents, and on the surface, Sirius couldn't but agree with them, what with her short temper and her love for using Dark spells to exact punishment. However, of the two, he felt far more afraid of his father, because the fact was that he understood the way Walburga Black's brain worked far better than he'd ever understood Orion's. The man was the epitome of unreadable, an expressionless, commanding figure that loomed over the whole family, and over Sirius and Regulus especially.
Walburga was a hothead, a witch who had her way of viewing the world, and anything that bent out of that worldview, she brought back into line by physical force; given that the thing most often standing out was her elder son, it was probably of little surprise to anyone who knew her that she ascribed to the olden ways of punishment. She was loud in voice and gestures, telegraphing her emotions wide and early enough that Sirius knew to prepare himself for whatever was coming. And, ultimately, it was mostly just physical pain, something Sirius had learned to contend with a long, long time ago – in his mind, he didn't have a mother, and Walburga was a usurper of the title who'd gotten it through the most fucking hilarious cosmic joke played on Sirius. Mothers loved their children unconditionally, they protected them and cared for them always, the way that Euphemia Potter did for James. Walburga? Sirius couldn't remember an instance in his life when she had shown any positive emotion towards him – not pride, or joy, or love – and so he'd long ago taught himself how not to care about her and her actions.
By comparison, Orion's main tool for this same purpose were mind games, and against those, Sirius rarely had proper defences. Unlike Walburga, Orion's emotions were carefully concealed, used only with utmost precision and purpose, and where Sirius had long since stopped thinking of Walburga as his mother, he couldn't do the same thing with his other parent, because, pathetic though it sounded, there were still moments when Orion's actions towards him echoed Fleamont Potter's towards James, distantly though it was, depriving him of the one tool he'd successfully used to insulate himself against Walburga. Sirius wasn't stupid, of course; Orion was every bit as cold and supercilious as his wife, so his actions couldn't have been anything but manipulation, and the knowledge that he was powerless against that pull made Sirius' situation at home all the more difficult, especially when he did do something to piss his father off. The only thing he could do was go out of his way to stay below the man's radar, and for the most part, he succeeded in it as well as he did in provoking his mother. Orion was often far too busy with business ventures and political alliances to worry about his sons, considering the job of raising children to be the woman's, and had only begun tutoring both Sirius and Regulus on the finer points of estate holdings, banking and market investment after they'd turned fourteen, the aforementioned lessons they were to attend. Sirius hated those, too – they were at the same time mind-numbingly boring, him being a man of action and not numbers, and some of the tensest times of the day, given that he had his father's practically undivided attention.
There was only one straightforwardly good thing about his drastically differing interactions with his parents, and that was the fact that more often than not, this very discrepancy made his parents disagree about his prospective future position within the family, and those discussions were not only an added bonus in itself, considering they brought friction between the husband and wife, but were also wildly entertaining when he could sneak into an adjacent room and eavesdrop on them.
He managed to almost completely avoid Walburga throughout the morning, but she caught him while he was having a snack in the kitchen in late afternoon after his lesson with Orion, and he almost winced as she rounded on him.
"Where have you been this whole day?" she demanded to know, in her high-pitched, screechy voice. "You are not getting out of these wedding preparations, you wretch; you will pull your weight in this house, or else."
"Yeah, yeah," Sirius muttered, glaring hatefully at the tall, black-haired, pinched-faced woman who'd given birth to him. "As if I could ever forget with you screeching it constantly in my ears."
Her slap across his mouth was as expected as it was weak, because Sirius knew by now how to time it so that he pulled away enough for it to be only a light sting, yet not so close that he'd escaped pain altogether, because that would have just made her angry enough to reach for her wand, and Sirius wasn't in the mood for dealing with Dark magic just now.
"You disrespectful brat! Don't you dare run your mouth off like that in front of our guests."
"Got it," Sirius said in a stiff voice that concealed his hostility. "Only the best behaviour for the public." He wanted to add another zinger, or a snide remark, because this was his first fucking day back and she was already intolerable; he nearly bit through his tongue instead, and offered no more. Though his tone was starting to border on insolent by the end of the sentence, the words were exactly what she wanted to hear; the fact that she took them as such meant she was mostly in a good mood, or at least good enough mood that she wasn't feeling any need to vent on him.
Thank Merlin for small mercies. Sirius hadn't been looking forward to the full-Grimmauld-Place-treatment straight through the door, though there was always tomorrow.
"You are to go to Diagon Alley and get everything off this list, precisely," Walburga ordered, brandishing a piece of parchment into his face. Sirius accepted it with bad grace from her hand and scanned it briefly.
"Eight hundred sets of invitations?! What, are we inviting the whole Wizarding Britain to this shindig?"
He was less prepared for the stinging hex that hit him in the shoulder, and barely managed not to yelp in pain, his free hand flying to rub the spot as he fought to breathe through his suddenly galloping heart rhythm. He could deal with her when he saw her coming, but when she caught him unawares, he always felt like jumping out of his skin.
"I will not have that vile Muggle language spoken in my house!" she exclaimed, and Sirius reviewed his last sentence, wincing when he realised he'd said 'shindig' in his surprise. Damn, that was a beginner's mistake.
"Apologies," he muttered, suddenly more than eager to escape the building, even if it was for a stupid errand for his cousin's wedding that inexplicably had to be organised in his house. "Which elf is going to Apparate me, then? I should get this done immediately."
"Yes, you should," she agreed. "Take Kreacher."
Of course it'd be that wretch; she knew just how much the two of them detested each other. Kreacher had always been his mother's favourite, as nasty as she was, and Sirius couldn't stand to listen to his grumblings and under-breath beratings and the general vileness of his words and insults.
In this moment, though, even Kreacher was better than Walburga. He needed to get away from her, needed to collect himself before he revealed just how much she'd frightened him with that stinging hex.
"And don't you dare dawdle," Walburga warned. "I'll know if you do."
How wouldn't she know, when Kreacher would no doubt be trailing Sirius at a safe distance. It felt like prison leave, suddenly, and he itched to just transform and run away, as far as he could.
Instead, he gritted his teeth and went in search of the stupid house-elf, to get this stupid errand done for that stupid woman, all in the hopes of having enough peace and privacy tonight to crawl under the bed as Padfoot and try to get at least a bit of uninterrupted sleep.
And wasn't that pathetic, that the only place he could feel even a little bit safe was in his Animagus form, under his own bed, like a fucking four-year-old?
In extremely short silk pyjamas, leaning against the armrest of the couch with her legs drawn up and her feet tucked between the cushions, Lily sat in the living room of her home, writing her letters on a clipboard in her lap. Her father rested on the adjacent seat with a book in his hand, his unoccupied hand petting absentmindedly over Lily's shin and calf, while her mother sat on a sofa watching the telly, and her sister appeared enthralled by a home decorating magazine. It was a quiet evening, of the kind they'd often had in the past, and it should have inspired contentment.
Instead, Lily was distantly aware of a tension in the room, and, more importantly, in the family unit itself.
It wasn't anything she would have concerned herself with before the events of last month, and thinking it over as she scribbled a somewhat rambling letter to Mary, Lily came to the conclusion that she was probably overthinking it. She and Petunia had been at odds with each other more often than not ever since she'd left for Hogwarts, and it was always a bit of a shock to return into a world where she was almost completely cut off from a way of life that she'd adopted so well.
But perhaps that was an opportunity in itself, she mused. She'd been berating herself over her slow drift away from her Muggle heritage, and this was a very good time to reacquaint herself with the Muggle world – and with a little luck, she could figure out a way of using this to rebuild some sort of relationship with Petunia.
The sound of the weatherman's voice droning from the telly pulled her out of her thoughts, and she turned to watch as the put-together man predicted another week of high temperatures and no rain in sight. His account sparked a thought that made her turn to Petunia.
"I'm going to need new bathing suits, by all accounts," she voiced to the room at large. "And, actually, some new everyday clothes, too, I've outgrown a lot of mine."
"That is a good idea, honey," her mother said, turning away from the screen to look at her with a smile. "Perhaps you and Pet can plan a trip to Stoke-on-Trent for tomorrow or the day after?"
"I have plans," Petunia voiced in a bored tone, not even looking up from her magazine.
"Oh, I'm sure you can reschedule them; Lily's not going to be here for very long. You know all the newest trends, after all, Pet, and you've barely seen each other in a year."
Petunia's eyes flickered to glare at their mother for a moment before returning to her article, and Lily frowned, puzzled and a bit put out by her sister's behaviour. She understood how inconvenient it was to have to change plans in the last moment, especially if they involved someone else, but Petunia didn't need to take it out on their mother, when the woman was just trying to be helpful.
"It's ok, Mum, we can go next week. I'll survive for a few days."
"Well, in any case, dear, I honestly doubt that you'd find anything as nice as all the wizarding robes that you have; you should visit the magical section of Manchester first."
"Excellent; then she doesn't need me," Petunia replied waspishly, very pointedly turning a page and tucking a strand of blond hair back into her perfect bun.
"Come now, Petunia," their father stirred from his book, getting involved in the discussion, "Lily's been gone for months; I'm sure both of you are eager to spend time together."
"It's fine," Lily jumped in as Petunia met their father's gaze with a heated, quietly furious one of her own. A chill passed through her as that quiet tension suddenly ratcheted up a notch or few. "I have plenty of robes already, I need Muggle clothing. And there really is no rush; when Petunia can do it, that will work for me too."
Petunia turned her gaze on Lily, for a moment looking as if she was going to vibrate out of her seat. Instead, she sniffed and rustled the pages of her magazine as she resettled in her sofa chair.
"Perhaps next week," she said noncommittally. In the silence that followed her words, Lily took a moment to study her parents, still feeling the remnants of tension in the air between them. Stephen was already back in his book, and Monica was staring disapprovingly at Petunia, who Lily assumed knew of it and paid no mind. Licking her lips, Lily frowned, starting to quietly rethink her initial conclusion that she was imagining it.
It wasn't just Lily that Petunia was standoffish with, it was everyone. Her sister's nature had always been prickly, even when they were kids; back before Lily had become a target for it, she'd never really noticed, and after their big spat at the King's Cross station before Lily's first year, it had grown to be the only thing that stood out to her anymore. It was a cycle they went through every half-year, of Lily coming home to gradually increasing vailed hostilities that, depending on her own moods and emotions at the time, either progressed into vicious arguments or settled into weary acceptance of the status quo, and then of Lily leaving for school and sporadic letters that served to make her mostly forget what Petunia was like in person, because so long as her sister was willing to answer every single letter Lily wrote to her, it still felt like meaningful contact – and Petunia, for all the ways in which she showed her disapproval of Lily and her life, still answered every time, and with more than the simplest of sentences, too.
But she'd never really compared Petunia's behaviour towards her with Petunia's behaviour towards everyone else. She had no doubt this was because in her own mind, she was apart from everyone else, different in such an insurmountable way. As much as she'd shied away from the thought until now, Lily understood perfectly well that her magic would always be a point of contention between her and Petunia. It was simply something her sister wasn't capable of overcoming, and there wasn't much to be done on the topic, though what little could be done was something Lily had not yet given enough thought to, and she planned to do it post haste. The bigger issue at the moment, though, she felt, was the fact that by not comparing Petunia's actions towards her with those directed towards other Muggles, Lily had also stopped observing them in any meaningful way. Only now that Petunia was glaring at both of their parents and responding in controlled hostility to them did Lily realise just how little she truly understood her sister, on a level that was independent of Lily herself.
Licking her lips, she picked up her pen again and continued the letter, even as her mind remained mostly absorbed with her ruminations on her sister. The emotional rollercoaster she'd gone through in the last month gave Lily new hope that things, perhaps, could be improved between her and Petunia, and, to her surprise, she also rediscovered within herself a very old spark of want for that as well, one she'd thought she'd lost years ago. It was a remnant of her childhood, built out of memories of that bond she'd once shared with her elder sister, but she found herself holding it like candle flame in her chest – the smallest of flames, that she wanted to shield with her palm from the gale of negativity that threatened to blow it out, yet still remembering its burn, also hesitant to bring her hand too close to it.
Because the truth was that this wish had burned her so many times in the last five years, Lily had let go of it as much as she'd thought she'd let go of her former feelings for Severus.
Petunia had first used the term 'freak' to refer to Lily on the first of September, 1971, on the Platform 9¾, and it had seared itself into Lily's mind, until it became the second word she hated most in the whole of English language, after the word 'Mudblood'. In her mind, that was the turning point in the relationship between the two of them, that singular event in which Petunia's resentment for not being magical had boiled over for the first time, scalding Lily's heart in its wake.
The hurt had waned over those initial excitement-filled months at Hogwarts, when she'd thought so little of home, her mind so completely occupied by all things magical, that she'd mostly written off the whole fight as just the stress of that day, perhaps even justified Petunia in her mind to an extent over that damned letter she and Severus had dug up in the older girl's room. When she'd come home for the Christmas holidays that first year, she'd been excited to see her sister, had been yearning to share all her new experiences with her, the way that Tuney had done back when she'd first started school and Lily had had to stay at home.
Remembering the continual little hurts of that first winter still left a bad taste in Lily's mouth, even five years later. It was the winter when she'd learned that her relationship with Petunia had irrevocably changed in some to her ungraspable way, the winter when she'd cried and raged from her own ignorance, not knowing what it was she'd done wrong, beyond being who she was. Really, in hindsight, those were not in any way big things that Petunia had done to demonstrate her intolerance with Lily. Certainly, compared to their fight of last summer, they were little more than throwaway lines said in the heat of temper, with a few sharply directed 'freak' exclamations thrown into the mix. And Lily had been smart enough to figure out by the summer between first and second year that if she wanted to have peace between them, she needed to steer clear of as much mention of magic as she could.
The problem had been – and still was, of course – the fact that her holidays had also slowly grown into the only true times when she could simply exist with Severus without all the baggage of Hogwarts hanging over them unseen, and Petunia despised Severus to the point of incredulity. Severus was the life Lily led for so many months out of the year, and they were to each other that invisible thread that helped bridge the long months when magic was out of their grasp – months that, as the years had passed, had started to feel more and more as if Lily was being deprived of a limb, or a sense.
So how could this unresolvable conflict be resolved to the best outcome possible? It was a different sort of depressing thought to the ones she'd had before her big meltdown the last week of Hogwarts, because no matter the similarities, there was one key factor that was different between Petunia and Severus – Petunia was family, and Severus was a friend. Looking back, Lily could quite clearly see how much she'd lost faith in Petunia over the years, yet to not forgive her was almost incomprehensible, because she was Tuney, Lily's big sister, and that was all the recommendation she needed. It felt patently unfair, that Lily was unable to judge her by the same standard she'd judged Severus for what boiled down to emotionally similar hurts that Petunia had caused her to those that Severus had, and yet she couldn't figure out what it was that made her smart about the unfairness inherent in it – now that she was actually constantly analysing her own emotional difficulties, Lily was starting to realise that it was so very easy to blind oneself to the deepest of motivations, and so very hard to parse them out from all those surface ones that easily presented themselves in any given situation.
There was something else, though, that began as an absent-minded annoyance and swiftly grew into great discomfort in the following week, something that, while not really resolving or explaining the tension that had arisen in their household, did in fact shed light on Petunia's mercurial treatment of Lily during the summer and winter holidays, and Lily was horrified to realise she'd never truly noticed it before, though it was so very grating now.
The morning after their aborted discussion about Lily and Petunia going shopping, the topic of conversation happened to be the big exams, Lily's O.W.L.s and Petunia's A-levels. Given how little Lily had volunteered of the information since arriving home, she'd expected some sort of question on the topic, and had thus prepared herself to answer in relatively vague terms. Her parents knew Severus, of course, and Lily had thought little of their approval or disapproval of the friendship growing up, a thought that had persisted even more as their relationship had become strained; both Stephen and Monica had always been quite kind and tolerant of the strange-looking, long-haired boy in oversized, mismatched clothes, but it had always felt to Lily like her father was the only one of the two who was capable of seeing Severus for the brilliant mind he possessed, and not just the self-conscious, hesitant demeanour he invariably projected when in the Evans home. Even so, trying to explain how the emotional turbulence of those two weeks had quite possibly let do Lily mucking up at least one of her O.W.L.s was not something she was eager to share with them.
"They went fine," she answered her father's question, shrugging with one shoulder as she put some egg into her mouth. "I'll know in August, so I can decide on what N.E.W.T.s I want to take."
That wasn't true, actually – they were expecting their results in the beginning of July. But a little white lie wasn't going to harm anyone, and it'd give her time to digest the disappointment before dealing with outsider reactions.
"Oh, darling, I don't doubt you'll get Outstandings on all of them," her mother said, patting her shoulder as she walked past the table towards the sink. "You are brilliant, after all; quite the brightest witch of your generation, your Head of House assures me constantly."
"My... You've spoken to Professor McGonagall about me?" Lily asked, nonplussed.
"Why, of course. She is always most kind to answer my inquiries, I do believe we've become great friends. She's told me how hard you must have worked for the O.W.L.s; they sound far more demanding than the regular exams that Pet took."
"I–"
"Yes," Petunia cut in, voice filled with disgust. "If it's magic, why, it must be harder than what I've taken!"
"Oh, don't get all snippy, dear," Monica admonished lightly. "No one is denying that you've worked hard for your O and A-levels. But there's little need for innate talent in most of the things taught in our schools, whereas at Hogwarts–"
"Actually," Lily cut in, feeling a cold, itchy tingling down her spine at where this was seemingly going, "most of the magic requires nothing more than memorisation. It's really not all that impressive."
Petunia gave her a strange look, almost surprised, and yet with a strong note of exasperation, while her mother waved a hand in the air in dismissal.
"Oh, no, Minerva's explained quite a bit to me about it, the various types of magic and such. She told me you have a marked aptitude for charms, though I have to admit I'm a bit unclear about what exactly those are."
"Perhaps you could have her show you some?" Petunia interjected. "Oh, I've forgotten; she's not allowed."
"Really, Mum, I'm sure it's not any harder than the O-levels. And, actually, I'm not sure I'll get that many Outstandings."
"Nonsense; what else would you get?"
"Anything else on the spectrum?" Petunia muttered into her magazine, low enough that their mother didn't seem to hear, though Lily, who was sitting close to her, had no such issue.
"I'm sure that whatever you get will be good enough to get you into any advanced classes of your choice," her father piped up with his usual Lily-smile, they one he always directed at her when she talked his ear off about whichever academic topic happened to catch her fancy.
"You cannot be doubting her, Stephen!"
"I have never doubted her, as you well know," he said calmly. "I am simply saying that I have no expectations that she will ever manage to fail."
"Oh? Is that all?"
"Of course it is. She needs nothing else. Do you, Lilyflower?"
"Er... I'm... fine?"
It was the only thing she could think to say, because the truth was, Lily felt utterly wrong-footed as she stared between her parents until they both nodded, said variations on 'yes, quite fine', and turned back to their previous tasks as the whole thing had not even happened. Biting her lip, she turned to look at Petunia, who seemed to be making a very sharp point of pretending that nothing was going on.
She excused herself from the table as quickly as she could, chased out of the room by the sense of oily discomfort that the conversation had left on her. She tried to dismiss it as a one-time thing, without any success, because as the days continued, the situations kept repeating themselves over and over – the conversation drifting to Lily's schooling or anything else related to magic in general, Petunia responding more or less overtly negatively to it, followed by their mother making some offhand remark that served to incense the situation rather than pacify it, and if their father happened to be there, either of the two would pull him into their passive-aggressive confrontation and the tension would immediately shift from Petunia to Stephen, until it was not so much resolved as simply allowed to disperse, leaving nasty aftertastes in Lily's mind.
It took her a week to finally grasp what, exactly, was so upsetting about it, and then she felt suddenly such disgust for the whole situation that it felt like she was being given whiplash – her mother was not only constantly finding ways of insinuating the topic of magic into everyday life at their home (and, for the first time in her life, it was wearing on Lily more than a bit, because right now, the very last thing she wanted was to think about Hogwarts and the exams and the house rivalry and the bloody conflict), but was doing so in such a way that she was also incidentally putting down practically everything Muggle – and thus important in Petunia's life – in the process, because the focus of her conversations always ended up something teenaged-appropriate, and thus included both Lily and Petunia in it. It was never negative, what she said about Petunia's life, her school and grades, her friends, her interests, her clothes, her natural abilities. In fact, she said plenty of positive things about it, and on its own, it sounded exactly as a proud mother was supposed to sound about her eldest child. She was simply using it as a reference to highlight how highly she thought of Lily's life, thereby finding it less praise-worthy, and apparently not even realising that this was causing such tension in Petunia and Lily's relationship that the two sister were barely communicating at all. And the worst part of it was that Monica truly seemed oblivious to what she was doing, at least on a conscious level.
How much of this was happening while Lily was at Hogwarts? How much did Petunia's bitterness get fed by it? And why was their father acting as if it wasn't happening most of the time? And now that she was seeing this, other memories were surfacing, too – Petunia, in the heat of the moment, during their more vicious fights, accusing Lily of hogging attention, claiming that her parents were playing favourites between them, insisting that Lily's very existence was a slight against Petunia.
It wasn't fair, none of it, not Petunia's bigoted judgment of Lily for something Lily couldn't help, not their parents' casual unawareness of what was bad parenting that was coming between the two sisters, not even Lily's own blindness in this whole situation, or her refusal to get to the root of her issue with Petunia, born out of emotional hurt and an even deeper fear of rejection. But feeling resentful for the unfairness of it all hadn't done anything for her thus far, just like it hadn't done anything for her when it came to her differences with Severus. Only hashing out all of these had led them to any sort of movement on that front.
It was then that she decided enough was enough – if there was to be any peace in this house, and in her own mind and heart, then she needed to use this summer to finally settle things with Petunia, one way or another. Even if it meant losing her sister forever.
A/N: Firstly, I have no experience with drug or alcohol addiction whatsoever, either direct or indirect, so if something blatantly stands out, let me know, since I want it to be as realistic as possible. Ditto for domestic abuse and violence against children - I've done my research, but it's still something that I've only read and watched about, rather than experienced, and my intent is not to be disrespectful to either of these very difficult and heavy topics.
I'm referencing to HP wikia for most of the background info on the characters, including their home lives (though anything not strictly canon is subject to change if it doesn't suit me). Most of the parents' names are known, so I just used them: James (Fleamont and Euphemia), Sirius and Regulus (Orion and Walburga), Remus (Lyall and Hope), and Severus (Tobias and Eileen). Enid Pettigrew is an early concept character of some sort that's only mentioned on HP wikia, so I reappropriated the name to my own purposes. We know nothing about Lily's home life, which is from what I can tell a usual JKR thing given she's the only relevant Muggle-born of the era (Hermione also has the dubious honor of being the only main character of the canon era whose parents apparently didn't deserve proper names), so that part is my invention. Lily is the main focus of Part II, therefore her home life will be the most explored. Others will get their share of the spotlight, either in Part II or in the future of the story, but if there's some specific event you want to know about, drop me a line and I'll see about writing a side one-shot if I'm not planning to use it in the main story already.
Sirius has by far the largest and most complex family tree of all characters, and I decided to keep to it, including most of the dates given (not all, though; Bellatrix's father according to Word-of-God had her at the age of 13, which is just JKR not knowing her basic math, or not caring, so that's been scrapped, because frankly I refuse to deal with child marriages and teen pregnancies on top of all other things Black). The line of inheritance goes like this: Phineas Nigellus (of DH fame, DOB 1847) - Sirius Black II (DOB 1877) - Arcturus Black (DOB 1901) - Orion Black (DOB 1929) - Sirius Black III (our Sirius, DOB 1959). Arcturus died by WoG in 1991, and given his place in the main line of the family, I thought it would be quite logical that he'd be living at Grimmauld Place. We don't know anything about his wife beyond her name (Melania Macmillan), but in my story she died in Orion and Lucretia's youth (Lucretia being Orion's older sister and Sirius' aunt). Blacks also seem to die alarmingly young, given that apparently most wizards easily reach 115 years of age without slowing down (Dumbledore certainly did and no one thought it strange), and that obviously will play a big role in the story as things unfold.