Actions

Work Header

Occlusion - February 1st, 1976

Summary:

In one universe, Severus spends weeks, months, years trying to apologize to Lily after the incident in their fifth year. Every failed attempt just forces him deeper into an anguished pool of anger, regret, and fear, which leads to an escalating series of bad decisions. In another universe, Severus obliviates Lily's sister.

Sequel to Oblivion! (The premise and the characterizations will probably be more compelling after reading the previous part.)

-------------------

There's cover art now! : https://at.tumblr.com/theordinalrabbit/i-just-had-the-oddest-sense-that-i-knew-you/6epao7pz4p2j

thank you so much for 100 kudos on Oblivion! <3

Notes:

Trigger warnings for violence against a minor and reference to domestic abuse - there's nothing graphic or super bloody, but it's a sensitive subject, so be warned anyway.

Chapter Text

Severus holds Petunia at arm's length as she falls, grabbing her arm to prevent her from crashing into the cold concrete. It is a clinical, impersonal touch more than anything else - his hand is just like that of a nurse grasping an arm to administer a vaccine. This is not in any way the friendly, soft brush of feeling that Lily used to joyfully endow him with when they were children. The nerves on his fingertips scream anyway, his wrist longs to jerk back, and he almost accidentally lets Petunia break her skull on the hard ground. With slow, jerky movements, Severus guides her to lie down, trying to not accidentally dump her in a snowbank. As he sets her down, he abruptly realizes that she has very little body heat. Her skin is alarmingly cold, even through the sleeves of her shirt. Still, his fingertips burn even after he lets her go, and he jams them into the ice, exhaling with relief as his skin turns numb and the electric, burning pain slowly ebbs away. After a few moments, Severus examines his hand. The blister is still there from earlier today when he was finishing that stupid Felix Felicis for Lily's birthday gift. It was a silly mistake, every first-year schoolboy knows that a cauldron retains heat for a period of time even after the flame is extinguished. A stupid mistake. Sometimes, he's so, so stupid.

 

Speaking of him being stupid, he just obliviated Lily’s sister, while drunk, for no other reason than the fact that she, while drunk, asked him to. Severus wants to laugh or scream or maybe burst into sobs. Merlin, what the hell did he just do? He just used mind magic on a muggle. Despite what he said to Petunia, that is very, very illegal, and would be incredibly difficult for him to talk his way out of, as a Slytherin. If anyone ever finds out, if they were somehow a couple of feet too far from his house and the trace caught him for underage magic, if Professor Dumbledore were to run a spell-detect on his wand - well. He’d be expelled, surely. Probably, also forced to stand in front of the Wizegamot for a trial, a process that he still doesn’t fully understand or know how to defend himself in (which he would have to because no way in hell can he afford a lawyer). Sent to Azkaban even, maybe, if someone figured out he was from the Prince line. They didn’t usually send half-bloods or muggle-borns to the prison, typically reserving a sentence there for purebloods, for the purposes of political machinations. Part of him admits that it’s a pretty elegant solution, neatly publicly disgracing, likely disinheriting, and condemning someone to an inevitable state of mental unfitness that would forever bar them from any future in politics, all in one fell swoop. If they figure his blood makes him enough of a threat, those most ancient and noble lords and ladies won't hesitate. There's no time to try and undo the spell, though, because suddenly it's midnight and he can see the headlights of Petunia’s bus down the road.

 

Carefully Severus stands up, propping Petunia up on his shoulder in a way that he hopes doesn’t look too suspicious. The bus driver raises an eyebrow but says nothing when Severus pays for a one-way ticket to London for Petunia (he hopes that school of hers is in London, he remembers it was from back when they were kids, but he didn't exactly ask) and murmurs something about helping his friend onto the bus. He leans her against one of the window seats, standing her suitcase on the floor next to her shoe, a place that will hopefully be immediately within her field of vision when she wakes up. As a finishing touch, he pushes his handkerchief into the girl's hand and cushions her head on it. Severus leaves the bus self-consciously, decisively avoiding the scrutinizing glare he gets from the bus driver.

Severus keeps walking after exiting the bus, not turning back as he hears the engine puff and the crunch of wheels on the asphalt. He walks over the concrete that is part the bus station and part the front yard of his childhood home. Suddenly, he is in front of the door. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and yet, as though he were in a dream where he can’t quite control his actions, he produces a key from his pocket and unlocks the door. Severus steps inside the entranceway, not bothering to take off his shoes, not bothering to shut the door. Suddenly, he’s in the living room, looking at his father, drunk, passed out on the couch. A muted baking show is playing on the television.

 

“Wha- who’sere?” his father mumbles, slurring his syllables. His eyes open tiredly, and his gaze drifts around the room, squinting in the dim light of the lamp. “Boy, is that you?”

 

“No, it really isn’t,” Severus answers easily. The tone sounds aloof in the stuffy house, frigidly cutting through the stagnant air. The words burn like gasoline in his mouth. He abruptly becomes aware of how ghostly he must look, standing rigid in the corner of a darkly lit room. On the television, a woman drops her oven tray on the floor and stands blankly frozen for a moment, unsure of what to do.

 

“No?”

 

“No, you’re dreaming,” Severus steps closer, kicking his father's feet off the cushions, sitting down, and crossing his legs. Knee over knee, not like his father. Real men cross their legs ankle over knee, boy. Severus thinks that real men can go fuck themselves. “Drunk yourself into a right stupor, you have.”

 

“Oh yeah?” his father is a real man, and he talks like one, voice curiously tilting into a half-mocking, half-amused, half-downright furious tone. On the baking show, somebody elbows a bag of flour onto the floor. It bursts into a cloud of white dust that covers the camera lens for a moment. “Why’m I dreaming of you, then?”

 

“Maybe you feel guilty,” Severus can taste the bitter, resentful smirk on his lips, coloring his voice with an undertone of malicious glee that he doesn’t feel. He feels burnt out, dissociated from the present. “-and I’m a representation of your inner conscience. A hallucination conjured up by your own mind to torment itself. I mean, you do deserve it.”

 

“Heh, well, dream or not, you sure talk like the posh bastard,” his father says under his breath, but not quietly enough for Severus to pretend he didn’t hear it. He remembers being a child and bursting into tears whenever his father called him that - a bastard. If taken literally, it’s almost disownment from the lips of a parent. Slowly, he’s grown to learn that bastard in the voice of a father is one of those odd phrases that one has to employ significant mental gymnastics so as to be properly insulted by. It requires a careful balance of adequately understanding the meaning of the word, and why its use is hurtful, while also willfully ignoring its implication about the insulter. A man silently howls on the television, grasping his hand after accidentally brushing his knuckles on a still-hot saucepan. Severus fights a wince. His father pushes himself up slightly. “Tell me, boy - do dreams usually smell like alcohol?”

 

“No, but maybe you’re projecting. Would make sense right? They say alcoholism is genetic, so you’d probably imagine that I’d be a drunk just like you, though you wouldn’t respect me for it. You probably think I wouldn’t be enough man to take whiskey or vodka or any of the ghastly shit you drink,” Severus is rambling now, lightly kicking an empty glass on the floor, and feeling so curiously disconnected from the present. He hears his voice in the air and it sounds manic, slightly desperate, and horribly bitter. God, was he always this bitter? “You smell white wine on me, a kind of alcohol you immediately associate with the feminine - and because of your internalized misogyny, you associate the female sex, in turn, with weakness, and hence with me. So you see, this actually lines up perfectly with your social perception of reality.”

 

“Jesus fucking christ,” his father whispers under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger as though he could simply pluck away the headache threatening to pull him back into unconsciousness like a nasty little tick. “That’s actually you innit, boy?”

 

“Yeah, fucking guilty,” Severus huffs, rolling his eyes. “How’d you ever know?”

 

“What do you want here?” his father straightens himself a bit more, propping himself up by levering his elbow on the armrest of the couch, and honestly, it's a damn good question. Why the fuck is Severus here? “Aren’t you supposed to be at that magic school a’yours?"

 

“A fight, maybe,” Severus says after a moment, thinking about it, watching with mild morbid fascination the slowly devolving scene on the television. There’s smoke coming out of one of the ovens, and the camera zooms in to focus on it.

 

“Eh?”

 

“I want a fight, maybe,” he repeats, slightly louder, still studiously avoiding looking at his father. “I’m still thinking about it.”

 

“Hm. Why?” and again, it’s a damn good question. His father, good old Tobias Snape, is really on a roll tonight.

 

“Well,” Severus begins, drawing out the syllable as he tries to collect into his tired, foggy mind the chain of events that brought him here. It all feels so distant, shielded behind a cloud of smoke that makes his eyes water. The wounds burn indiscriminately, disinfected by lighter fluid, and it’s hard to untangle them into a neat little narrative that doesn’t sound just so, so silly. Severus tries anyway. “I called the girl I have a crush on a slur, burned my hand to shit in a long convoluted ploy to apologize to her, didn’t have the balls to actually apologize to her, and got drunk with her sister, to whom I just gave an incredible case of retrograde amnesia and maybe aphasia ‘cause I did it while drunk and I probably screwed up - oh! And I have a quiz tomorrow - fuck - today that I didn’t study for at all.”

 

“And you want me to beat you up, on top’ve all that.”

 

“Yeah, kind of,” Severus says, his voice oddly light, as though he were simply saying that the traffic is mediocre, that the weather looks cloudy, that he’s partial to the idea of having Italian food for dinner. Apparently, the people on the baking show were making creme brulee, and now a woman prepares a blowtorch and a bowl of sugar to finish off her creation in a blaze of glory. “Then I’d be able to just blame all my problems on you being an abusive asshole and I could just leave it at that.”

 

“Hm,” his father hums, blearily scrutinizing him. “Nah, ‘m too drunk right now.”

 

“Oh come on, you’re never too drunk to beat me up,” Severus’s words are colored by something between a snarl and an incredulous, high-pitched laugh. The woman on the television presses the switch on the blowtorch. “Don’t be like that! It’ll be just like the old times, real - fucking - downright nostalgic, it’ll be.”

 

“I’m trying to be better,” his father says quietly, and it’s suddenly as though the room becomes a vacuum, empty of noise not because there’s nothing to say, but because the very medium that would convey it is gone. The woman screams silently in shock when a flame suddenly bursts forth in her hand, accidently dropping the torch on the counter.

 

“To be better?” Severus repeats, pronouncing the syllables carefully, as if they were grenades. The counter is burning, and the camera flips towards the floor as people rush towards the panicked woman, in some scattered attempt to help her. Somebody elbows over a bottle of oil and the fire begins to spread. The woman keeps screaming, voice muted behind the screen of the television.

 

“Yeah,” his father mumbles, avoiding his gaze. “Not like your bitch of a mother appreciates it or anything, but I’m fucking trying.”

 

“Sure, I believe that,” Severus says, and the worst part is that he’s not lying. “I mean, look at you, watching a fucking baking show with the sound off, putting a coaster under your glass, not soaking the sofa with your vomit before one a.m. You’re doing a real bang-up job of it, this ‘trying’ business.”

 

Yeah, Severus fucking believes that his father is trying to be better, and some horrible, bitter part of him doesn’t care. Lily would be the opposite, she wouldn’t believe him, but if she did, she would care. Lily doesn’t understand why someone could possibly act like Severus does, because god damn her, she’s happy. She follows her emotions and they don’t lead her into paradoxes and a labyrinth of messy situations - no, Lily could never understand, but- But maybe Petunia could. Maybe, even though she was a muggle, she understood. That’s the problem with someone who’s an absolute dream, Severus, you can never quite manage to deserve them.

 

“Yeah, fuck you too, you right bastard,” his father sits up, glaring at him poisonously. “You know, I've half a mind ta-”

 

“Well, what are you waiting for, then?” Severus raises his voice, abruptly realizing that he is out of patience for this conversation. “Do it, hit me. I can tell you want to-”

 

“Boy-” his father’s voice is taught with warning, with tension promising violence if he isn’t careful.

 

“Be a fucking man, and hit me-”

 

Abruptly, his father stands up, grabs Severus’s arm, pulls him off the sofa, and backhands him hard across the face. Severus’s cheek burns, but all he can think of is the fact that his father isn’t wearing his wedding band anymore - if he were, Severus's lip would be busted for sure, and he can’t taste blood on his lips. He can’t taste, can't hear, can't feel anything except the burning of his nerves. Burning, burning, the woman is still screaming, oh God, he's going to burn. Severus jerks away, and his shoulder aches from stretching away from where his father is still holding him. His father’s grasp loosens quickly and he stumbles back as Severus raises a hand to his cheek. His father’s calf bumps the low coffee table, as though Severus had been the one to throw the slap. His eyes widen, and Severus can see that he’s horrified with himself.

 

“Darling?” the voice of Severus's mother calls out quietly upstairs, soft and sleepy, muffled by the bedroom door. “Is everything alright down there?”

 

Severus meets his father’s wide eyes, still half-hazy from alcohol. They're colored with fear, disappointment, the faintest tinge of desperation. His mother’s feet slowly shuffle through the hallway, and without another word, Severus is tearing his arm from his father’s already flimsy grasp and running out the door.

 

Severus stands outside at the bus stop, his cheek aching, his mother’s soft voice still ringing in his ears, feeling so curiously alone. He could still walk back to Lily's house now, could try and muster up the courage to apologize, but - But he smells of alcohol now, it's past midnight, his left arm aches something nasty, his lip is busted, and he has a charms quiz tomorrow - fuck, today. He thinks that maybe, he should just go, apparate back to school, back home. Maybe, he’ll even feel better.