Prelude: 1968, Spinner's End Council Estate, Kensington, Liverpool.

The dirtiest part of the great and muddy Mersey practically ran right through the tiny, crowded-in backyard of a ramshackle house. The crumbling ruin was surrounded by other houses just as sloping, ancient, and untidy.

The Spinner's End estate wasn't just a neighbourhood of the working class or the even the poor. It was a real low down sort of place, the kind of place that nice middle-class people who thought their taxes were too high frequently got the horrors about.

It's citizens were the kind of people that middle class people get the horrors about. Drunks, junkies, criminals, prostitutes and the like, living eternally on the dole, on the fiddle, and on the fringes of society in wretched half bombed-out slums un-repaired since World War II or before. Endless teeming generations living in drunken, drug-addled squalor, producing, ignoring and abusing their unfortunate offspring, who, if they were not beaten to death or succumbed to disease grew up to be just like them.

But it was the only home the stringy-haired, dirty little boy of about seven or eight in trainers held together with tape, dressed in a tatty wizard's robe that was too big for him and a stained pair of old jeans knew, and he was well-adapted to it.

There was a fence between the back garden and the river, but it was easy enough for a little boy to climb over. He made his way over the fence, took off his shoes and his robe, rolled up his cuffs and waded into the thick black muck that was riverbed when the river was at high tide.

He had a sack in his hand, and he picked through the mire, occasionally dropping things into the sack.

Every once in awahile he wiped his muddy hand on his pants, and brushed the hair out of his eyes, or pushed his National Health round specs, which were held together with tape, up his long hawk-like nose.

One eye was purple and swollen shut, and every once in awhile, his nose would drip blood a little and he would wipe it.

The boy jumped when the back door of the house slammed shut.

Tobias Snape strode into the sunlight, squinting. His furry barrel chest was bare, and his red hair was unkempt. He had a split lip and two of his fingers were taped together, but the great oxlike slab of a Scotsman seemed none the worse for wear, striding into his back garden dressed in only one of three threadbare kilts that he owned, with a sackful of cans of beer tucked under his arm.

It was the middle of the day, and a workday, but Tobias was one the dole, and worked only piecemeal, as a labourer down at the docks. He and his wife were both degenerate alcoholics, but of the two Tobias was more functional, and it was up to him, in that capacity, to do what he could to look after his young son, and, sometimes his wife, as well.

He picked up an overturned patio chair, and another which didn't match, and sat down in one of them.

"Sev! There ye are lad! Quit pickin through that mud and come up and sit wi' yer old man."

"You ain't mad at me, are ye, Da?" his son called back, warily.

"Sure I ain't! Dinna worry! I ain't off on a tear. C'mon."

That was good enough for the boy. Tobias was only violent when he was on a drunk. He was always drunk, but only dangerous when on a weeklong bender kind of drunk. Which was more than young Severus could say for his mother. Eileen Snape was usually drunk, as well, but she was also a junkie, and a bit mad. You never knew when she was going to be nice or go off. And whether she hit you or hexed you, it was no fun.

Covered in mud, Snape made his way up the bank, and climbed over the fence with his sack.

"Look at all this stuff, Da." He chirped.

"Put that dirty sack o shite down, boy! Look at ye, ye're all covered in filth! Haven't you any clean clothes? I gave yer mother money for food and to go to the laundrette last night before I left."

Severus shook his head.

"Just one more shirt. Mum went out right after you done. When she come back, she went in the kitchen and fixed. I guess she spent all the money on smack. I'm hungry, Da." The boy reported.

"Fuckin' whore! You stay here a minute, Sev." Tobias thundered

Severus sat on the ground, going through his treasures, oblivious to the sounds of fighting and screaming in the house. He also paid no attention to the crash of a body falling to the ground, or the flash of blue light.

Young Sev was used to it.

His parents' life was an endless rotation of drinking, fighting and shagging; they were always doing one or the other or some combination, usually with rock records blaring all the while. They were a bit mad, both if them, and he supposed, so he would be, too, when he grew up. Sev tried his best to get out of the way so that he caught as little of the fallout as he could. And when they were reasonably sane and sober, his parents appeared to, in some crazy way, love him, and each other.

He considered himself more fortunate than some of the other neighbourhood kids; at least his violent parents didn't hate him, and hate each other, and his Da worked some of the time.

Tobias strode out again, burning leeches off his chest with the end of his fag and swearing.

His split lip had been re-opened.

"Woman, the next time I gi' you money for food an' such, don't you fuckin' shoot it up yer arm!" Tobias yelled as he sat down in the chair.

Dressed in a witch's robe with nothing on under it, Eileen Snape followed him out the door. She was tall, black-haired and painfully thin where she had once been willowy, and had regained only the ghost of her beauty under the ravages of booze and cheap street skag cut with strychnine and baking soda.

Sporting a fresh black eye, she pulled up another chair.

"I knew I was going to sell some potions later on today, I would have made the money up, Toby. But you're right, I suppose." She agreed.

"Still, next time you'd better ask me a bit more nicely, or I'll hex you into the next decade!" Eilleen finished.

Tobias was having some difficulty with the leeches; every time he burned one off another one grew back in a different place.

"Goddamnit, Ellie, this is worse than a bit of a shiner!" he cried.

Eileen handed her wand to her son, chuckling.

"Do you remember how to stop the leech hex, Sev?" she asked.

"I think so." Severus replied.

"Good. Fix Daddy." Eileen encouraged.

Sev gave his mother back her wand, and slyly drew one out of the robe he'd been wearing, pointed the wand at his father and said something in a language Tobias didn't understand, and the leeches disappeared.

"Where did you get that, Sev?" Eileen asked.

"I found it in the river. Lookit this, Da. Fink it's a toy truck. It's all busted up, though."

"So it is. Give that here, lad. I'll fix it up for yer, make it go. Awright, then, urf wi' those Levis."

"But Da…"

"No buts!"

Sev stripped down to his greying y-fronts and Tobias sprayed the garden hose over him.

He giggled and Tobias laughed his booming laugh.

Eileen went into the house and came up with a disreputable towel, with which young Snape dried himself.

"Lemme see yer eye."

"S'not so bad."

"Aww, shite! My old man, Sev, he used to get drunk and beat the shite out of me. He were a wicked old bastard, and I was glad to see the back of 'im. We was lucky, Mum and I that the Nazis got him. She dinna think so, though. Bastard got 'imself killed and took Mum with him. He hated me an' I felt tha same. But I dinna hate ye, lad. Ellie, I don't hate you, neither. But I go mad when I'm on a bender. It's like I ain't meself. I'm sorry, I am. I ought ter go back to sea, gi' away from the both of you." Tobias said, ruefully.

"No, Da! Don't go!" Sev cried.

"It's alright, Sev. Da's not going anywhere. Toby, stay here with Sev and I. We need each other. All three of us. You know I understand you." Eileen volunteered, reaching for Tobias' hand.

They both looked worriedly at their son, who was too young to understand.

He was pointing his wand and some broken things in his sack.

"Reparo! Reparo! Reparo!"

Tobias opened up two beers and handed one to his wife.

"Have a sip, lad. Did yer nose stop gushing from yer Mum's nosebleed hex?"

"Mostly."

Tobias took the can back from his son.

"Good."

He pulled something out from under the chair.

It was a brown paper bag.

"Here ye are, Sev. I bought these for yer."

Snape opened the bag.

It had a stack of records in it. The Beatles, Cream, the Who, Small Faces, Rolling Stones, there had to be about twenty records in it. LP's too.

"Fuck me! Where did you get these, Da?" young Snape squeaked.

"Won 'em last night. You go take a bath and Mum will find you some clean clothes. Play them records good an' loud an piss off that old cunt Jim Richmond next door. When ye're all ready to go, we'll go to the shops and the laundrette. Okay?"

Severus carefully scourgified his sack and his repaired treasures and put them away.

"Okay." He said.

Eileen found her son some clean clothes, and he took a bath, got dressed and came out in some clean but still tatty-looking clothes, carrying a portable record player.

He felt around in the pockets of his jacket.

"Lose your smokes?" Tobias asked his son.

"Yeah." Snape piped.

"'Ave one of Dad's."

Tobias cracked open three more beers. He handed one to his son as the sounds of "Disraeli Gears" filled the air.

"Don't let him have a whole beer, Toby! Sev, you only drink half of that. I'll put some tinfoil on it and you can have the rest later. Did you see him do his spells, Toby? He does spells at a third year level and he hasn't even been to school. He's a genius." Eileen bragged.

"Takes after you, Ellie." Tobias agreed.

The cosy family moment was interrupted by a cry from the house next door.

"Turn that shit off you little prick!"

"Shut tha fuck up, Richmond, ya lousy cunt! Or I'll come over there an bust wot teeth ya got left outa yer fuckin' raddled old junkie head!" Tobias thundered.

The voice fell silent.

"An' fuck you!" Little Snape yelled.

He puffed on his fag and had another sip of beer.

Big Snape ruffled his hair, affectionately.

"That's me boy!" he said.