Disclaimer: Wasn't me. I didn't do it. Rowling did it. Blame her. The Harry Potter universe and all of its characters? That's all her fault; not mine. I had nothing to do with it. Heck, I don't even get paid for doing this. Can't pin it on me. (whistles innocently; looks shifty)
A/N: If you didn't grow up watching the television show "Dr. Who", then you probably won't understand the "Exterminate! Exterminate!" reference - but I did, and I couldn't resist. Also, I have been informed by those who actually live in Britain that the mill in Spinner's End must have been a cotton mill, rather than the steel mill I envisioned. My bad.
This story was originally posted at Sycophant Hex's Occlumency archive, where other of my stories can be found under the penname "mouse".
Eileen and Tobias: Part One
"Daddy?"
"Go back to your mother."
"Daddy?" said the boy again, and Tobias' heart twisted a little at the quaver in the six-year-old's voice. "Please, we were having such a good day. Don't be mad at Mummy; it's my fault that she's in a bad mood. I've been misbehaving too much lately."
"No, you haven't been, Severus," said Tobias wearily, putting the magazine back on the rack and looking down at his small son. The boy's enormous dark eyes stood out starkly in his thin, pale face. It was no wonder that every time Tobias took the boy to the doctor's office with him, the doctor would insist - yet again - on testing Severus for anaemia. "This is all between your mum and me," said Tobias. "Stop blaming yourself, Severus. And where is your mother? She's going to be having kittens that you've run off on her."
In fact, Tobias thought he could hear Eileen's voice, calling. She sounded angry, like she had already guessed that the boy had gone to find his father, rather than staying with her.
"She's just around the corner," said Severus quietly. Tobias gave the boy a stern look, leaned over to snatch up his son's hand, and then pulled Severus away from the magazine stand and toward his mother's voice.
"There you are!" snapped Eileen as they came into sight, although Tobias could see relief in her eyes. "Where did you run off to?"
"I just wanted to find Daddy," said Severus, staring at the ground.
"Daddy said he wanted be alone," said Eileen, straightening up and crossing her arms, glaring at Tobias as only Eileen could glare. "Daddy said he wanted an hour's worth of normalcy." She said the last word as if nothing could be more pathetic.
"Don't be mad, Mummy," said Severus, raising his face suddenly. "It's all my fault. I'm sorry I ran away from you. I won't do it again. Can we go back to the reptile house? We were all having fun there."
Tobias saw Eileen's face soften as she looked down at Severus. She glanced back up, and in one of those increasingly rare moments when they seemed to understand one another without speaking, Tobias almost heard her voice in his head, saying Truce.
Tobias looked down at Severus. "I don't want to look at the snakes anymore," he said. "How about we get ice cream instead?"
Severus' head twitched jerkily as he snapped his eyes around to look at his father. The boy gave him one of those very rare, very tiny smiles - the ones that looked like they hurt.
What kind of monsters are we, Tobias thought miserably, staring at the boy, to turn our own son into a bundle of nerves like this? We have to find a way to stop putting him in the middle.
"Ice cream," said Eileen, with tension still in her voice but her face now schooled into that well-honed mask of calm, "would be smashing. What a good idea."
They found a small shop, and sat at a table by the window, bathed in afternoon sunshine and licking their dripping cones. The truce wasn't much warmer than the ice cream, in Tobias' opinion, but he kept it up gamely with Eileen, responding to both her dry comments and Severus' brittle-voiced chattering with a rather forced good humour. After a while, it almost began to feel genuine. He looked out the window at the sinking sun, and wondered glumly if there was any hope that he and Eileen could keep from snapping at one another on the drive home. Long car rides always seem to irritate Eileen to the point of rage; he'd never been able to figure out why. Tobias looked over at his wife and son again.
"Florean Fortescue," Eileen was saying to Severus, "opened a shop in the street where I grew up when I was in, um, Secondary school, and he made the best ice cream sundaes you have ever tasted." She smiled faintly. "I shall take you there someday," she said, and stroked Severus' hair just once, but tenderly.
Tobias smiled down at his chocolate-smeared boy. "But you'll have to wipe the competition's product off your face before you go," he said, and Severus gave him that bright-eyed look that wasn't quite a smile, but which managed to convey happiness all the same - to those who knew the boy well enough to recognise the expression. "Your mother tells me you got another perfect score on your maths homework?"
Severus nodded, looking smug. "And in science, too," said the boy. "No one else did; the teacher said that specially." Tobias grinned, and rubbed Severus' back.
"Good work!" he said, genuinely pleased. "You're not going wind up just a mill worker like your poor dad did!"
Severus shook his head, and had another slurp of his ice cream. "I want to be a professor at a university," he said brightly. "I'll teach physics."
Tobias' grin widened. "You're only saying that because I read physics books when no one's looking, aren't you?" he teased. He glanced up at Eileen, and saw that strange closed expression she got whenever Severus' future was mentioned. "Nothing wrong with that for a profession, is there?" he said to her, his voice sharper than he had intended it to be.
Eileen smiled coldly, her eyes perfectly blank. "Of course not," she said. She glanced down at Severus. "I don't know about being a teacher though," she said. "Somehow that just doesn't seem...prestigious enough for someone with a brain like yours, Severus."
"He's not talking about being a teacher, Eileen," said Tobias testily, but quickly softened his tone when he saw Severus' face go very still. "He said he wants to be a professor, at a university. There's plenty of prestige in a job like that."
Eileen's face was still expertly bland. "All right," she said evenly, "but he's still very young. There will be all kinds of opportunities open to him, and he doesn't need to choose what he wants to do with his life at six years of age."
Tobias shrugged, feeling irritated. It seemed to him that it didn't matter whether he suggested Severus become an astronaut or a street-sweeper; Eileen always acted as if there was something a thousand times better out there and she couldn't believe Tobias' lack of regard for their son's potential.
"Physics, you say?" said Eileen, smiling at Severus with a bit of real warmth. "Maybe you could make me understand it; your father never could."
"It's at least as fascinating as potions," said Tobias, and gave Eileen a smirk. Her smile slid away instantly, and the glare came back.
Tobias met her eye for a moment, and then glanced pointedly at Severus, who had just shrunk down in his seat and was now licking at his ice cream mechanically, head bowed. "I'm just teasing your mother a little, Severus," he said gruffly, putting a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder. Severus' head remained lowered. "You know all that crazy witchcraft stuff she believes in. I just found a book on potions in the closet the other day, and thought it was a laugh. Advanced Potion Making." Tobias couldn't help smirking again. He'd read through some of the recipes, and it really had been a laugh.
"Yes, Severus," said Eileen, touching the boy's other shoulder. "Your dad and I make little jokes about each other's hobbies - he kids me about believing in witchcraft, and I kid him about believing in science. It's all right. It's like when boys scuffle with their friends; they don't really mean it. Neither do we."
Severus looked up and gave his mother a piercing look. He knows we're lying, thought Tobias, his heart twisting again. He watched Severus give his mother one of those tiny, false smiles. But it was that way, once... Tobias looked up at Eileen, feeling a faint echo of the passion he had once felt for this hard-faced, unyielding woman. Things were easier before we had Severus, he thought guiltily. We could talk about crazy things, and agree to disagree. Now it's like we're always in a tug-of-war, trying to make the boy see the world our own way. Tobias felt his face tighten in spite of the nostalgia. Well, I won't have him believing insanity. he thought. There's a real world, and she has no right to fill that brilliant little head of his with nonsense. He can believe in steelwork or in physics, but I won't let her make him believe in magic.
Eileen eased the sleeping boy out of the car, her face tight with the irritation that driving always seemed to cause her. Tobias didn't say anything as he watched her. They had - to his surprise - made the entire trip back to Spinner's End without fighting once, but by the look on Eileen's face right now, it would only take a word out of place to have them back at each other's throats.
Eileen stood for a moment by the open car door, staring down at their son with an oddly open expression on her face. Severus hung limply in her arms, his head lolling against her shoulder and his mouth slightly open. His black eyelashes against the white of his skin looked like slain crows on snow. He looked impossibly sweet and perfect to Tobias, but also somehow otherworldly. Tobias stepped forward and laid a hand on the boy's silky head, feeling like his chest might implode. He didn't know why, but he often had this sense of premonition when he looked at Severus - a feeling that disaster lay on the horizon, and that this strange, brilliant little boy of his was going to be made an alien to him; well-loved perhaps, but placed forever beyond his reach.
Eileen looked up at Tobias, and smiled - that hard, slightly condescending smile of hers that was nevertheless genuine. "He's the one thing we agree on, at least," she said softly.
Tobias blinked, and without thinking said, "What are you talking about? He's the one thing we always fight about."
He knew the words were a mistake even as they left his mouth. Eileen's eyes flashed with anger, and she took a step back from him, pulling Severus' head sharply away from his hand.
"Don't!" hissed Tobias angrily. "You'll wake him!"
"Trust you to think up the wrong thing to say, and then say it!" Eileen spat. Severus moved slightly in her arms, and made a noise of weak protest. Eileen looked down at him, and then up at Tobias again. He blinked in surprise as he saw her hard face suddenly twist with grief, her eyes growing shiny as he watched.
"He's losing weight again," she said miserably, jerking her head to indicate Severus. Tobias heard something in her voice that sounded like an echo of his own anxiety about losing the boy. "He's too smart to be fooled by anything we say to the contrary; he knows the marriage is in trouble, and he's tying himself in knots over it. Toby, we need to fix us. We need to find a way to make this work, for Severus' sake."
"I know, Eileen," said Tobias, staring down at his sleeping son. His chest still felt like it was being squeezed, like something was trying to crush his heart. "But I don't know how."
Eileen stepped forward again, her eyes searching his intently, as if she were trying to read his mind. "Why did you fall in love with me in the first place?" she asked, her voice hard and demanding.
Tobias blinked. "You were...ferocious," he said, "and brilliant, and you didn't put up with idiots. I thought you were amazing - you didn't give a damn what anyone thought of you." He rubbed his nose a little self-consciously. "And you seemed to fancy me too, which - frankly - was a bit of a novelty."
Eileen smiled at him a little. "Do you know what it was for me?" she said, her voice almost gentle. "You told me what you got on your A-levels, and I could tell from how you talked about the books you read what a passion you had for knowledge - and yet you became a mill worker instead of going to university, so that you could support your sick dad. I couldn't believe that - that you would sacrifice years and years of your life, and maybe your whole future, out of a sense of loyalty to one man. I'd never seen such fidelity before. You blew my mind, Toby."
Tobias blinked twice, willing his emotions to become manageable again. "I do love you, Eileen," he said quietly. "No matter how rough things get, that never changes. I always still find that I love you."
"I love you too," she said, with such a ferocity that he stopped breathing - just for a moment - just like old times. "No matter how loyal you are," said Eileen, "I'm willing to match it. You don't know how much I've ... how much I would give up, to be your wife. I can be that loyal too, Toby. For you."
Tobias put his hands on each side of Eileen's plain, hard-featured face, and kissed her with all the warmth he could find inside an admittedly battered heart. She kissed back, for the first time in a long time, and Tobias felt something red and raw stir inside him - also for the first time in a long time.
He pulled back and looked at her.
"Let's get Severus to bed," Eileen said softly.
"So we can go to bed," he said, letting some heat seep into his voice.
Eileen only smiled, and kissed him again.
"Good morning, Severus," said Tobias, looking over his shoulder at the small figure in Spiderman pyjamas that was currently climbing up onto one of the kitchen chairs. "I'll get your cereal just as soon I finish making my lunch."
"Yes, Daddy," said Severus, staring intently at the vase of slightly wilting daisies sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. "Daddy, how come we can see water?"
"What?" said Tobias. He stopped buttering the bread for his sandwich and looked over at the boy again.
"How come we can see water?" said Severus, still frowning at the daisies - or rather, at the water in the glass jug that the daisies sat in. "And glass too," he added distractedly. "Water doesn't have any colour, and the light goes straight through it, so how come I can see it? Why isn't water just...invisible?"
Tobias blinked at the boy. "I don't know," he said after a moment. "Let me think about it a minute."
Tobias finished packing his lunch and then fetched the carton of milk and the boy's favourite cereal. He'd never considered the question himself, and he didn't want to not be able to answer Severus - that would be a poor reward for the boy having asked something so subtle and clever.
"Things look all distorted when you look at them through water," said Severus thoughtfully. He had his chin resting on the table as he continued to stare at the vase.
"Index of refraction!" said Tobias suddenly. Severus looked up at him, and he grinned at the boy. "The light doesn't go straight through water, it bends when it enters and leaves it. That's why you can see water - you're really seeing the distortion of the light, rather than the water itself."
"So why does the light bend?" said Severus.
"I have to go to work, Severus," said Tobias apologetically. "You take a look in my physics books today, and see if you can figure it out yourself, and then we'll talk about it tonight, all right?"
The boy sat up and nodded. "Can I have chocolate milk on my cereal?" he said. Tobias grimaced, and then remembered what Eileen had said about Severus losing weight.
"Have you tried that before?" he said sceptically. "You know what it tastes like?" Severus nodded. "All right, then," said Tobias reluctantly. The boy's face brightened a little, and he slipped off his chair and padded over to the fridge.
"Did you think up that question yourself, Severus?" asked Tobias curiously. "About seeing water?"
The boy nodded as he rummaged in the door of the fridge and extracted a bottle of chocolate syrup. "I woke up thinking about it," he said, and frowned, shaking the bottle. "It's empty," said Severus, holding up the brown plastic syrup bottle to show Tobias.
"No chocolate milk for you then," said Tobias, shrugging. He stared at the six-year-old for a moment.
"Mommy always finds me more," said Severus, frowning into the fridge carefully.
"Has she got a stash of it in the cupboard?" said Tobias, checking his watch.
"No," said Severus, "she always finds more in the fridge." The boy was staring at the syrup bottle in his hand, looking like he was again trying to work out the answer to a problem.
"Well, I'm going to get your mother up," said Tobias, "so I can leave for work. Eat your breakfast, Severus."
"Yes, Daddy," said Severus distractedly, still frowning at the syrup bottle. "Will you get my crayons down for me?"
Tobias retrieved the box of crayons from the top of the fridge and put them on the table, then headed upstairs.
Eileen was still sleeping, curled under the blankets. Tobias sat down next to her, and woke her by stroking her hair. Eileen cracked one eye open and made a whining, annoyed noise at him. Tobias smiled, and leaned down to kiss her. "Thank you for last night," he said. Eileen closed her eye again, but he saw her face crinkle with the smile that was hidden under the blankets. "Severus is in the kitchen," he said. "I've got to leave."
"I'll get up," said Eileen croakily, and began to slowly stretch out from under her covers.
"Good morning, Mummy," said Severus as Eileen padded into the kitchen sleepily. He was drawing a snake in white crayon on a piece of dark green paper.
"Good morning, Severus," she said, reaching for her own box of favoured cereal.
"Daddy said there's no more chocolate syrup," said Severus, looking up at her with a thoughtful expression. "I really wanted some with my milk." He had a glass of milk already poured and sitting beside his half-emptied bowl of cereal on the table.
"There's no more?" said Eileen, giving him a smile. "Let me have a look and see if I can find another bottle."
Severus nodded, and turned back to his drawing. Eileen opened the refrigerator and leaned in. The empty syrup bottle had, very typically, been put back in the door of the fridge rather than in the garbage. She grabbed the bottle, concentrated hard on the appropriate incantation, and smiled as she felt the bottle slowly grow heavier. I'd knock old Flitwick off his feet now, she thought. Wandless and non-verbal. Living as a Muggle has done wonders for my control.
She turned back to Severus, still smiling. "Found another bottle in the back," she said, handing it to him. Severus took the bottle, and held it for a moment, looking at it with an almost carefully blank expression. He turned and tipped the bottle toward his cup. Eileen noticed a white mark on the bottom of the bottle, an "S" so jagged that it almost looked like a lightening bolt.
Eileen sat down and poured herself some cereal. It was only when she reached for the milk that her eye fell on the white crayon again.
Her scalp prickled as all the hair on it tried to stand up. Eileen stared at the crayon, her hand still clutching the milk. He initialled the bottom of the old bottle, she thought, feeling heat rush into her face. She glanced at Severus, who was now stirring his chocolate milk with an expression of determined concentration.
The boy removed the spoon and licked it clean, then set it down on the table fastidiously. He looked up at his mother. For a moment, his dark eyes bored into hers as if in accusation, and then he said in a perfectly ordinary voice, "I'm going to go watch television while I finish eating."
"All right, Severus," said Eileen weakly.
The boy slid off his chair, picked up his cereal bowl in one hand and his glass of milk in the other, and padded out of the kitchen.
Eileen let go of the milk carton and buried her face in her hands.
"Suuuuuuh -" began the hunting cry of Ian Fowles, "- VEEEEE-ruuuus! Suh-verus, Suh-verus, Sucker-vussss..."
Severus looked up from the afternoon's experiment: an application of table salt to a slug that had - up until he found it - been oozing peacefully along beside the sewer grating. He scowled at the larger boy. Ian had a fresh bruise on his forehead and a look of determined nastiness in his bulging blue eyes.
"How'd you wind up with such a stupid name, huh?" said Ian. "Are your parents stupid, so they gave you a stupid name so everyone would know you were theirs?" Two of the three boys standing behind Ian snickered. The third one - a boy named Bryan Peason who was almost as weedy as Severus - took advantage of his friends' momentary distraction to pick his nose in relative privacy, gazing at Severus with only mild interest.
"I'm named after a Roman emperor," said Severus. "What're you named after, Dr. Who's best mate?" He pinched the skin over his Adam's apple and waggled it back and forth to make his voice into a chilling vibrato. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"
Severus dodged the kick easily; Ian was predictable, if nothing else.
"Think you're smart, do you?" snarled Ian, making a grab for Severus' arm and missing. "Are you trying to smart me, Sucker-vus?"
"Well, God didn't 'smart' you, so someone has to make the attempt," said Severus nastily. Ian's face went slightly blank as he tried to figure out exactly how he'd been insulted, and Severus took the opportunity to throw the handful of table salt he was holding into the other boy's eyes.
Ian screamed shrilly, smacking his fists against his own eyes in pain, and Severus went sprinting off as fast as he could away from the gang.
The escape route was well-memorised by now. Down the cobbled streets, into Mrs. Fieldings' yard, between the tiny gap that separated two blocks of row housing, and then into the back alley through the hydrangea bush. Severus burst out of the shrubbery and skidded to a halt in the alley. A cat with a tail like a used bottle brush hissed in alarm, and then streaked away. He quickly climbed up on the dustbins behind Mrs. Fieldings', and then clambered up on top of the tiny shed - raised up on stilts to protect it from stray dogs - that had once held someone's real live chicken.
Severus lay down on his stomach on the chicken coop's roof, resting his cheek against the back of his hand. The other boys came bursting out of the hydrangea bush a moment later, and skidded to a halt in the alleyway.
"You two go that way!" shouted Ian. "We'll go this way! Look for him; he's hiding!"
Severus smirked. He was getting too tall - and Ian was also getting too tall - for Severus to continue hiding on top of the chicken coop for much longer, but it was always oddly satisfying to fool them like this. Ian and his gang would go tearing off all over the alley looking for him, and Severus would always be hiding almost literally on top of where they had started out. There was something about being right in their midst and completely unknown to them that was a perverse thrill. Severus popped his head up a little, to enjoy the sight of them scurrying around madly.
Bryan Peason was standing in the middle of the alley, staring up at the chicken coop determinedly. Severus hissed in alarm as he met the other boy's eyes, and Bryan grinned at him.
"Found him!" yelled Bryan at the top of his lungs, pointing at Severus. "He's here!"
Severus scrambled off the roof of the chicken coop with his teeth gritted, wishing he could burn Bryan alive, and tore back through the hydrangea bush.
He still would have had a decent head start if it weren't for Bryan, who caught up to him just as he reached the street in front of Mrs. Fieldings'. Severus felt the other boy's arms clamp around his neck and start to drag him to a halt.
Bryan wouldn't fight him; he would just hold onto Severus until the bigger boys showed up. Severus decided to take advantage of the fact that - for once - he and his attacker were fairly evenly matched. He jerked around and bit Bryan Peason's nose as hard as he could.
Bryan screamed, and tried to jab Severus in the eye with his finger. Severus kept his teeth clamped on the other boy's nose for a second longer than he strictly needed to, and then opened his mouth and streaked off up the street again - just as Ian burst out from between the houses and let out an angry shout.
Unfortunately, the bigger boys could run a lot faster than Severus could, and he didn't have a head start anymore.
Twenty minutes later, Severus sat on the curb beside the sewer grate and the shrivelled remains of the slug, and tried to stopper his nosebleed with the sleeve of his Avengers t-shirt.
To his annoyance, Bryan came wandering over to him.
"Hi," said Bryan, as if he hadn't had anything to do with Severus getting beat up.
"Fuck off," said Severus, secretly glad of knowing at least one phrase that was proscribed enough to adequately express his annoyance at Bryan's gall.
"You know what you should do," said Bryan, rubbing his now-purple nose a little. "Go up to Ian sometime, and ask him if it's true that he's got an air-rifle. He does, you see - and he's really proud of it. So when he says yes, you tell him how brilliant you think an air-rifle is, and ask him to please, please show it to you. Ian won't pick on you, if you act like you think his stuff is cool."
"You're just one of his stupid toadies," said Severus, noting with some satisfaction that Bryan had small bloody tooth-marks on the top of his nose.
"I'm not like the others," said Bryan with a slightly wounded air. "I've never hit you, for example."
"You hold me down while they hit me!"
"Yeah, but I don't hit you myself," said Bryan calmly, "so that's all right." He sat down on the cobbles and poked at the dead slug with interest. "Ian used to pick on me too, you know, back when my family first moved here," said Bryan, "but he's not very smart, and I figured out how to make him to stop. I'm just telling you how to."
"You're just telling me how to be a little sneak like you," said Severus hotly.
Bryan scowled, and his face went a bit red. "I'm just trying to help," he said.
"I don't need your help," said Severus sullenly, rubbing his cheekbone - which was aching from being bashed against the cobblestones, and stinging from being scraped against them. "And I don't want to be a toady for some stupid bully like Ian."
Bryan shrugged. "I figure it's better to join up with a bully than have someone keep beating you up," he said. He stood, and dusted off the bum of his trousers with a vigorous two-handed sweeping motion. "I think you'd be more interesting to talk to than the others are, so I'd like it if you joined our gang, Severus. You should think about it. Is your mum going to be mad about all the blood on your shirt?"
"She'll be mad at Ian for all the blood on my shirt," said Severus darkly.
"Oh. That's all right, then," said Bryan, rubbing his nose again. "Well, I'll see you around, Severus."
He walked away down the street, and Severus scowled after the boy for a moment.
His nose had mostly stopped bleeding, but his head was beginning to ache. Severus felt a sudden despondent yearning for his mum. His eyes were beginning to prickle and his throat felt tight, something that only happened to him well after the actual fights were over. He got up and dusted off the bum of his trousers with a bit more decorum than Bryan had, then stepped on the dead slug and began trudging home.
"What happened to you?" his mother demanded when he walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were already widening in anger.
"Ian beat me up again," said Severus grumpily, climbing onto one of the kitchen chairs and then slumping down to rest his chin on the surface of the table.
"But I talked to his mum just last week!" said his mother furiously, already heading over to the sink to get a wet cloth.
Severus thought about it for a moment, and then said seriously, "I think Mrs. Fowles has enough to be going on with already."
Yelling could be heard from Ian's house just as often it could from Severus' house, except that Severus never heard Ian's mum do any of the shouting. And both Ian and Mrs. Fowles always seemed to have a lot of bruises. Severus was very glad that his mum and dad didn't hit him, or each other. The fact that they shouted was quite bad enough, in his opinion.
His mum was looking down at Severus with a funny expression on her face as she squeezed a clean dishcloth under the running water. "I suppose Mrs. Fowles does," she said quietly, turning off the tap. "It's very perceptive of you to notice that, Severus." She came over and squatted down beside him. "Where does it hurt?" she said, dabbing gently at the underside of his nose.
The prickly sensation came back into his eyes suddenly, and Severus blinked rapidly. "Here," he said, and pointed to his cheek - which was feeling hot and thick now, as if it were stuffed with felt. His voice sounded higher-pitched than normal. "Kiss it better?"
His mother leaned forward to kiss his cheek, and then stopped, the expression on her face even stranger than it had been a moment before. Severus blinked at her in confusion, and then she blinked also, and immediately leaned the rest of the way in to kiss his cheek. The ache went away immediately; it always did when his mum kissed a scrape better. It didn't do that when his dad tried to kiss his injuries better. Severus suddenly frowned, and looked up at his mum sharply, remembering the chocolate syrup bottle.
His mother had her blank face on, although she continued to carefully wipe the blood off his face. When she finished, she pulled out the kitchen chair behind her, and sat down on it, facing him.
"Severus," she said in a careful voice, "is there anything you'd like to ask me about?"
Severus looked up at his mother for a moment. There was no doubt as to what she was inviting a discussion of.
"There wasn't any more chocolate syrup this morning," he said simply. "I checked."
"No," said his mother slowly, "there wasn't. You marked the bottom of the old bottle, didn't you?"
Severus nodded. "Daddy says that when you have a theory, you have to test it to see if it's true, and I had this idea..." he stopped suddenly. "Mummy," he said, frowning a little, "Daddy's physics books say that matter is 'conserved'. That means you can't make it appear or disappear. So where did the syrup come from? And you always make my bruises stop hurting too. How do you do that?"
His mother still had her blank face on, but she was staring at him with that particularly intense gaze she sometimes wore when she was very angry at him - the one that made him feel like she could read minds. "Severus," she said finally, her voice very serious. "Mummy is a witch. Mummy can do magic." She bit her lip, still staring at him. "But you mustn't tell your father, because I've never told him that," she said quietly, "and if it's necessary to, then I want to be the one to do it."
Severus nodded. For some reason, he didn't feel surprised to find out that his mum was a proper witch. It was like he'd always sort of known. "Can you turn Ian into a frog for me?" he said seriously.
His mother smiled briefly; a thin unpleasant sort of smile. "Yes," she said carefully, "I could." Severus felt his eyes widen with glee. "But I'm not allowed to," she said. "Witches and wizards aren't allowed to use magic on - on people who can't do magic. It's against the law. We're not supposed to even let people like that know that magic exists."
Severus considered this. "So you're breaking the law by telling me?" he said.
His mother's mouth quirked in another small, thin smile. "No," she said. "We can tell family members, if they promise to keep the secret within the family."
"So Daddy's not a wizard then?" said Severus. "No - he can't be - or you would have told him."
"That's right," said his mother. Her expression darkened slightly. "He doesn't even believe that something like magic can exist."
"How does someone become a wizard?" said Severus, thinking that even if his mum couldn't turn Ian into a frog, Severus himself would be willing to give it a go. The Coppers couldn't put someone his age in jail, so it didn't matter if it was illegal.
"You have to be born one, Severus," said his mother. Her eyes suddenly looked very serious indeed. "Normally...someone who is born of a witch or wizard...like you...will be magic also."
"I'm a wizard?" said Severus. He stood up on his chair and planted his hands on top of the table, staring at his mother.
"Probably you will be," said his mother, still looking serious. "You're a little young yet - but as you get older, you should start showing signs of magic, particularly when you're very angry or afraid. If things like that start to happen, then we'll know for sure that you're going to be a wizard."
"Why didn't you ever tell me about this before, Mummy?" said Severus, feeling like his heart was jumping up and down with excitement.
"Well..." said his mother, frowning a little, "partly because I never told your father about the magic, but also because sometimes the child of a witch or a wizard doesn't turn out to be magic after all." Her frown deepened. "Those children are called Squibs," she said quietly. "It happened to my sister. She was a year younger than me, and she never became magic. Imagine how awful it would be, to grow up expecting to be a witch and then have it just not happen. Everyone treated her differently too, after it became apparent that she was a Squib. Even our parents acted like they just didn't want her anymore. It was a terrible experience for her, and she...well, you know what the word 'suicide' means, don't you?"
"It means killing yourself," said Severus, feeling uneasy. He sat back down on the chair.
"Yes, well, she committed suicide," said his mother, still frowning but also looking a little sad. "She was only fourteen. I still miss her terribly. She and I were a lot alike, and I always wondered whether I would have done any differently, if it had been me." His mother took a deep breath, and raised her eyebrows, so that the frown lines above her nose disappeared. "When you were born," she said, "I decided that I wouldn't say anything until I was sure that you were going to be a wizard. Just in case. I thought - if you turned out to be a Squib, I could just not tell you anything about magic, and then you'd never know the difference. I wanted to be sure that you grew up happy, no matter what."
Severus nodded. The logic made sense. "That was a smart thing to do, Mummy," he said.
"You probably will be magic, Severus," said his mother, gazing at him intently. "Squibs are very rare. But if you don't turn out to be magic, you can still have a wonderful life. You can still be a - a professor of 'physics', or whatever. I want you to understand that."
"I do," said Severus. "Can you do some magic for me, Mummy? I really want to see it! Please?"
His mother stared at him for a moment, and then smiled. She looked a little nervous. "All right," she said, "maybe just a bit. But you really cannot tell your father a thing about it."
"All right," said Severus, and then frowned in curiosity. "Why didn't you ever tell him that you're magic, Mummy?"
His mother sighed. "It's hard to explain," she said. "He doesn't just believe in science, Severus. He loves it. He finds it beautiful. Oh, what's that quote?" She pressed her hand to her forehead, frowning at the floor. "Something like...'the universe lies under order, and we can comprehend it'? I think it was said by Sir Edmund Halley."
"The man that the comet is named after," said Severus.
"Yes," said his mother, frowning a little, as if what he'd said worried her. "The point is...your father looks at these rules that science has discovered to be true, and he finds it amazing and beautiful that...that the universe lies under order, and he can comprehend it. For him, science is like a great work of art - one that portrays all of reality." His mother bit her lip for a moment before continuing, her eyes focused past Severus. "The existence of magic means that all those little rules that science has discovered are - not wrong, exactly - but kind of irrelevant. Magic can break those rules, so they really aren't as important as your father thinks they are. This whole wonderful facade of science that your father believes in would come crashing down for him, if he knew that magic was real. I don't know how he'd deal with losing something that he loves so well." Her gaze became a little fierce, and she focused on Severus again. "So you won't tell him about this, will you?" she said. "If he needs to find out, I want to be the one to explain it to him."
"Yes, Mummy," said Severus. "Now will you show me some magic?"
His mother smiled at him, and began to look nervous again. "All right," she said. "Let me go get my wand."