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Chapter Text

Severus woke up.

This was in itself a most confusing occurrence, because the last thing he was aware of was slowly choking on his own blood and the burning of Nagini’s venom scorching through his veins on the floor of the Shrieking Shack.

He supposed he might be in the afterlife, what with having died and whatnot. But Severus had hoped that the afterlife would be far less painful than it was proving to be. Perhaps he had been such a terrible person in life that he was undeserving a peaceful rest and was damned to suffer for eternity. If that was the case, however, he would have expected more pain than he was in. Don’t misunderstand him, he was hurting, but not to the extent of a crucio or the fires of hell his father used to rave about.

Despite his desire to simply lay where he was forevermore, long habit had Severus opening his eyes to survey his surroundings. He had to blink several times to focus his vision and clear the grey spots that were dancing around, but succeeding only brought him even more confusion.

It seemed like he was looking at his bedroom ceiling in Spinner’s End, as it was before he had taken to the house with magic to make it somewhat habitable. There was the water stain in the far corner caused by the leak in the attic. And the bed was beside the window. He’d moved to the other wall as soon as he was big enough to manage it, to get away from the chill which came through the broken window. Which was, yes, broken, not fixed with magic as it was last he saw it, when he was forced to accommodate Peter bloody fucking Petteigrew in this room.

A dying hallucination maybe?

Severus sits up to take a better look at this rather disturbing facsimile of his childhood bedroom. He did not think his memories of childhood were preserved well enough with his occlumency to produce such a vivid hallucination, but he seemed to be wrong about that. When he moved his body - why did he still have a body? - protested rather vehemently. His vision swam and he had to shut his eyes and lean heavily on his elbows to keep his balance.

Severus breathed - why was he breathing? - through the dizziness and tried to take stock of the pain as was his habit of a lifetime. His neck and throat were in agony. This was to be expected, having been bitten in the throat by a highly venomous maledictus. His face hurt like he’d taken a blow to the cheek, but Voldemort didn’t hit him, such muggle ways of doing things were beneath him, and he hadn’t been hit by anyone else during the battle at the school. His arm was injured as well, but it didn’t feel like Nagini had bitten it. It was possible he sustained another injury during his flight from the castle that he hadn’t noticed with the adrenaline of the situation. But that did not explain why his back and backside felt on fire, like he’d taken a lashing, a feeling Severus remembered all too well thanks to his bastard father.

Severus was struggling to make sense of his situation, but his mind felt sluggish, unwilling to work on processing his surroundings or what was happening.

When he felt steady enough Severus pushed himself upright and opened his eyes. He was faced with a near perfect replica of his childhood room. The wrought iron bed frame, the lumpy thin mattress, threadbare sheets and blankets, the dingy hardly holding itself together wardrobe, the incredibly dirty and creaky floor, the bare brick walls. The only things wrong were that the wardrobe seemed bigger than it should be, and the bed higher off the ground. It was highly disturbing, to say the least.

When Severus struggled out of the bed everything seemed higher up than it should, from the bed to the broken window, to the water stained ceiling. He looked around even more confused than he was at waking up in the first place. This was a very odd hallucination/punishment. Whatever higher being was in charge of meeting out his punishment for his multitude of sins, they seemed to be something of an oddball.

Not another one, Severus thought despairingly.

He had, after all, only just finished playing marionette for the greatest oddball of them all. If Albus fucking Dumbledore, or anything remotely like him, was about to appear or make him dance yet another tune, Severus would absolutely loose whatever was left of his sanity.

Regardless of whatever hallucination or devine punishment he was currently being subjected to, Severus decided to go through the motions of taking stock of himself.
Though he saw little point in doing so posthumously, he had little else to be getting on with at that moment, so there was no reason not to.

In doing so he realised, belatedly, that it wasn’t the room and the furniture that were too big.

He was too small.

He was tiny.

He was wearing an old tattered t-shirt which, judging by the way it was more like a dress on him, had once belonged to an adult and a pair of tattered shorts underneath that were barely clinging to his emaciated hips. He was skeletally thin. He was dirty and clearly hadn’t washed anytime recently. There was a hand shaped bruise wrapping around his forearm. His skin was sickly coloured and dry enough to flake. His hands, while still thin and long fingered, were absolutely miniscule, and without the scars that potions creation, experimental spells, and two wars had left them riddled with. His left pinky finger didn’t crook out oddly from the time his father broke his hand and that finger didn’t heal correctly.

Severus lifted his hands to his face. He flinched in pain when he touched his right cheek, which felt tender like he’d been slapped hard enough to bruise. Despite that, from what he could feel of his face, his cheekbones and jaw were even, his nose was large as always, but not crooked or bumpy. Like they’d never been broken by Tobias Snape’s fists.

The first time Tobias had broken his nose Severus had been seven years old.

For an indeterminate amount of time, Severus simply stood in place, shock and dread slowly dawning on him, building up into an inescapable tide of horror which threatened to consume him.

Now far more determined to figure out in the ever loving hell was happening to him, Severus limped his way to the bedroom door, growing steadily more panicked. Holding back tears and sniffles, he opened the door slowly and carefully to prevent it creaking out of a long forgotten habit. Why was he crying over being hurt? Yes, he was in pain, but he’d been through far worse in his thirty-eight years. Aside from that, he’d broken himself of the habit before he’d even started Hogwarts. So why was he whimpering like a child?

Creeping out onto the landing, Severus saw that there were only two rooms upstairs, no indoor bathroom like he’d added to the house after inheriting it. And peeking into his parents’ bedroom, the room he occupied after the house became his as it was larger, it was exactly as it had been in his childhood. It even smelled exactly as he remembered it once had, Severus found himself trying not to wretch at the stench of stale alcohol and body odour within.

Nevertheless, Severus persevered through the stench. He had to know.

So he crept up to Eileen Snape’s dressing table, just as old and dusty as he remembered, with the wobbly front left leg, and opened the first drawer on the left. From within he quickly snatched up the old tarnished silver hand mirror, which was one of the few mundane possessions from her life as a pureblood heiress she had managed to keep from her husband’s notice, he’d pawned the rest for drinking money at some point after their marriage when Severus was too young to remember, and crept back across the hall and into the relative safety of his bedroom.

With the door shut behind him Severus held up the mirror and looked at himself.

He couldn’t believe what he saw.

It couldn't possibly be real.

The bruise from a slap forming on his cheek was expected based on the pain. But his hair was cut to just brushing his jaw like his mother always kept it when he was young, and it was greasier and dirtier than it’d been since he started making his own money and could afford hair products. Almost stiff with the dirt and oil accumulated in it. The skin of his face was as bad as what he had seen of the rest of his body, pale as an inferius but sickly yellow and flaking off like a leper’s. He was right about his jaw still being even, and his right cheekbone not being wonky from healing poorly. His teeth, when he looked, weren’t perfectly straight, but they weren’t snarled and off-putting as they were after his jaw was broken. Though they were in horrid condition, yellow and unclean and clearly never seen to by a dentist.

His nose was what tripped Severus up the most. The nose that he had been so widely ridiculed over almost his entire life looked completely different. Was this what it really looked like before it was broken? He hardly remembered, he was so young when his father first broke it. It’d never healed right the first time, and each subsequent break whether courtesy of his father or his bullies only made it worse. The nose he was looking at was large on his face, yes. But it wasn’t crooked, bent, hooked or bumpy. It didn’t look both smeared across and overly protruding from his face. It could actually be called roman.

It was actually quite a normal looking nose.

How odd.

Then, his eyes slid down to his neck.  The neck that Nagini had torn open to kill him.  There was a wound there.  Given how much pain he was in, that in itself wasn't surprising.  But it wasn't bleeding profusely like it should be.  As it had been?  It still looked fresh, and raw, and a bit oozy, but it looked like a wound that was healing.  

He didn't have such a wound as a child, so why would it be present in whatever this was? 

If he was properly dead, why did the wound appear to be healing? 

Why would he be in a child's body rather than an adult's?  

While transfixed upon looking upon the neck wound in the mirror Severus could feel his breaths becoming rapid and shallow, his heart beating far too quickly with panic. The wound was the exact shape of Nagini's fangs.  He had seen it far too many times in his life to be mistaken, although inflicted on others rather than himself.  Why was it on his tiny childish throat?  He couldn't make sense of it.  None of this made any sense at all. 

The tears and whimpers he had been trying so hard to hold back were escaping freely, and he couldn’t control his breathing enough to stop bloody crying.

Because this couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. As much as it felt real, sounded real from the noises coming through the broken window, smelled real, it couldn’t be. This had to be a dying fever dream. He couldn’t actually be back in Spinner’s End. He couldn’t actually be a child. It simply was not possible.

He was imagining this. He had to be. This was nothing more than his dying brain's last efforts at self-flagellation. Or the beginnings of a hell orchestrated by some deity of the afterlife who wished to see him suffer.

Severus’s legs stopped supporting him and he fell to the floor by the bed, the searing jolt of pain which shot through him reminded him of the welts on his backside. The welts that were a near constant in his childhood under the thumb of Tobias Snape. The mirror clattered from his hand and dark spots started swimming before his eyes. He was hardly able to breathe. He was sobbing.

He vaguely registered the sound of light footsteps beyond the door, but he couldn’t think enough for it to matter to him. Because as they stopped outside the door, Severus lost the fight to remain conscious and slipped away into oblivion.

Chapter Text

Despite his fervent wishes Severus did, in fact, regain consciousness.  

When he did, he was once again confused.  Because he was on his childhood bed; he could feel his thin, lumpy mattress beneath him and his equally thin, threadbare pillow squishing his nose and pressing into his sore cheek.  

Didn’t he pass out after his pathetic panic attack on the floor beside his bed? 

In the midst of trying to get his bearings, Severus heard the rustle of sheets and the creak of a floorboard.  There was someone else in the room.  His body began to tense, but Severus viciously fought down the instinct.  He tried to stay perfectly still and not make a sound, playing dead.  Because if it was Tobias in the room, a rare occurrence to his memory but it was possible nonetheless, the last thing he wanted was for the man to know he was awake. 

However, he flinched when unseen hands grasped his enormous t-shirt and pulled it back down to cover his back.  Stupid.  He’d trained himself out of that reflex by the time he was eight, what was he doing ?  

“Severus, are you awake?” 

He relaxed instantly. 

Mum. 

Merlin and Morgana, how he had missed her.  

It was indescribably good to hear her voice; he had almost forgotten it.  Severus felt tears welling in his eyes at the sound of the plummy tones of her posh accent which was so ill suited to Spinner’s End.  Emotions were threatening to overwhelm him again but Severus pushed them down with determination, though admittedly with far more difficulty than he had in many years.  When he believed he had mastered himself as well as he could Severus turned his head to face Eileen Snape for the first time since she died when he was fifteen.  There she was, exactly as Severus remembered her.  

Her big round blue eyes, aquiline nose, strong cheekbones and jaw, her thick eyebrows and her long pitch black hair.  They looked so much alike was Severus’s most prominent thought as he greedily took in the sight of his mother.  He really didn’t take much after Tobias aside from his eye colour.  He wondered if that was why his father was so very eager to target his face.  

The flickering light of the candle she’d lit to see by had softened the sharpness of her features but she still bore all the same markers of neglect and poorly kept hygiene as Severus.  Her hair was past her waist, the ends were broken and unevenly cut; additionally it was thin, greasy, and stringy.  Her skin had the same sickly pallor and flaking dryness as his.  She was just as skeletally thin with bones prominent through her skin and seeming to drown in her old, faded, heavily patched and mended clothes.  

However the vacant far-off look that was so often in her eyes was absent. This was a rarity in and of itself but that her focus was so wholly on Severus was even stranger.  

Based on the slight tackiness to his skin and the bandage around his neck she had been taking care of the injuries caused by his father while Severus slept.  Taking care of him after the terror of a man was through with him using what meager resources they had available, as she always did for him.  Like he had always done for her in return as soon as he'd grown up enough to be able to open a jar by himself.  

Actually, in this instance, Severus supposed he should say the injuries caused by his father and Nagini considering the shape of the wound on his neck.  Although he really was in no state of mind to even try to figure out how a wound inflicted on his adult body in 1998 was present on this child’s body that was in the presence of his - dead? - mother.  So Severus resolved not to think about it at that moment. 

Severus had a lot of reasons to be angry, resentful, and bitter towards his mother.  Not just the fact that she refused to leave Tobias and therefore kept them both under his brutal petty dictatorship in Spinner’s End.  There was a long list of things she had kept from him, purposefully, which he didn’t discover until after she died and he was left to pick up the pieces alone.  But he loved her.  He loved her dearly, more dearly than anyone.  She was one of the only people in his life who had ever actually cared for him.  So it was safe to say his feelings for his mother were complicated.  But in that moment the sheer joy of seeing her again and the love he held for her won out over any bitterness he’d held onto those long years without her.  

“Yes Mum,” he rasped out through his injured throat. 

“Good,” Eileen replied, “We need to talk, Severus.”

“Mum?”

“That crying fit I heard before I came in here, Severus.  I know we’ve spoken about this before.” Eileen began sounding tired and looked away from Severus to start putting the lids back on the jars of - likely expired - ointments she had been using on him, “You mustn’t do that, you know you mustn’t.  You know your father doesn’t like it.  You know it makes him angry.”

She stopped what she was doing to look once more at Severus.  He had forgotten how piercing her eyes could be when they were actually focused on reality instead of vacantly gazing into the middle distance.  It was quite disconcerting and a bit too reminiscent of standing before his two former masters while they were displeased with him for his comfort. 

She was waiting for an answer. 

“Sorry Mum,” he said as clearly as he could manage, “it was my neck, it was bad and I got scared.” 

“I know Severus but you’ll be fine.  You have to do better about this, promise me now.”

“Promise.”

Severus pushed himself upright with some difficulty and once he was sitting looked at his mother.  Really looked at her and observed.  What was happening didn’t fit with his memories of his mother, not really.  Yes, she was tending to his wounds and actually paying attention to him.  That much was the same.  But in his memories of Eileen looking after him like this there was a warmth, comfort, and care that was missing from the woman sitting in front of him. 

Severus Snape had been a spy for decades.  He had fooled a veritable army of Death Eaters and Voldemort himself.  Not to mention the entire Order of the Phoenix who had bought his staged treachery as authentic without question.  He knew how to read people even when using legilimency was too risky.  It had been a necessary skill for his survival.  However muggle the practice of simple observation and deduction may be Severus would rank it equally essential as his mastery of occlumency in the endeavour of keeping himself alive as long as he had lasted.  Observing Eileen Snape now she appeared to be impatient, irritated, annoyed, but not caring.  Although she was paying attention to her surroundings, more particularly paying attention to him, she was still detached.  

Was something wrong?  Well, more wrong than was typical in the Snape household.  

“I hope you’ll keep that promise this time,” she huffed, “and I know we’ve spoken about magic Severus, haven’t we?” 

“Yes Mum,”  Severus mumbled, ducking his head to break eye contact. 

Eileen had crossed the line from annoyed to angry. 

“Your father doesn’t like magic.  So you mustn’t use it, especially around your father.  You know it makes him angry.  You know I’ve told you not to use it around him, so many times now Severus.  Yet you did.  You need to cut it out young man,” Eileen said.  

Unlike in his memories, those golden fuzzy ones from his early childhood which he started occlumency too late to preserve as well as he wanted, there wasn’t any sympathy in his mother’s voice.  

“It won’t happen again Mum.  I’m sorry,” Severus replied, still confused as to what was making his mother act so differently. 

“It had better not,” Eileen said with a nod and gathered the jars of ointment, the few spare bandages as well as her candle in its tarnished copper holder and headed out of the room quite abruptly. 

Severus simply stared in her wake for a few moments, the room now lit only by the moon and stars.  It’s likely he would have remained in that position and state of confusion for quite a while if his bladder did not make itself known in a quite insistent fashion.  

If he and his mother were both dead and in the afterlife, surely he wouldn’t need to pee so badly?  Could this really mean he was alive?  As a child? 

He was drawn out of this musing by the urgency of his bladder.  It reminded him rather forcibly that dead or not he was in the body of a child, and that needed to be taken care of in a hurry if he didn’t want to make a mess.  Quickly as he could in his battered state, Severus climbed out of the bed and dressed himself in the threadbare rags from the broken wardrobe that were all he had for clothes.  He pulled on two pairs of ratty socks because each pair was too thin to be worth wearing on its own then stuffed his feet into the shoes that were so worn at the soles, they were hardly better than no shoes at all.  This was necessary despite his urgency as the privy was outside and from the feel of the frigid air and the look of Cokeworth out the window it was wintertime.  He would be utterly miserable if he tried to dash out to it in a t-shirt and shorts. 

Once he wrapped himself up as much as he could be with the dirty, stained, and threadbare rags that were more patch than clothing Severus dashed out of the house, past his mother in the kitchen where she was putting the ointments away, and down to the bottom of the long garden, where the privy was built into the back wall.  

With that pressing need taken care of, Severus could think. 

He was still very sore but his mother’s ointments were starting to work on the bruises and welts, so that was good.  But he wished for some pain potions or a proper bruise balm that would take the sting out of his injuries right away because it hurt .  

Severus caught himself sniffling.  

Why was he sniffling over some bruises?  He’d been through the cruciatus curse more than enough times and this was nothing to that.  So why did his aches and bruises feel so bad ?  He had promised his mother he wouldn’t cry over them anymore.  So he couldn’t.  He had to stop.  He should be able to stop.  He shouldn’t be sniffling at all.  He was a master occlumens for Merlin’s sake!  He had far better control over himself than this, otherwise he would have been slaughtered by Voldemort the second he considered switching sides in the war. 

He could control his emotions.

He had to. 

He tried to distract himself to stop the tears from falling.  Severus finally took in the garden, which confirmed for him again that this was Spinner’s End as it was before ownership fell to him.  The garden beds were full of weeds and brittle yellow grass.  The old garden shed was as dilapidated as it had been then.  The privy was still outside, obviously.  

There were no window boxes of herbs, the garden beds were not bountiful with potions ingredients and there was no greenhouse for his more delicate or expensive specimens.  Since the door was hanging half open, Severus could see that the shed was just a shed and not the magnificent laboratory he spent so much effort designing and creating for himself.  

It was definitely winter time.  His breath puffed in white clouds around his face and the bitter sting of the wind cut through his tattered rags.  There was frost on the ground and small mounds of hailstones piled up in the corners of the yard where the sun never hit during the day.  With Tobias seemingly not around the house it had to be time for him to lumber his - more likely than not -  hungover arse to the Mill for work but it was still dark out.  The sun probably wouldn’t rise for a few hours yet.  

It was extremely odd for his mother to be up and about this early in the day.  She’d been out of her room when Severus went in to grab the mirror when usually, as far as he remembered, it was a good day for Eileen when she was up before noon.  

Something must have happened with Tobias before he left to go to work.  

Thoughts of Tobias were probably the worst thing Severus could do himself at this juncture because they brought his mind straight back to the predicament he was in.  

His efforts at a distraction did not abate the sniffles as he had hoped it would.  If anything it made them worse.  His bottom lip started trembling along with the sniffles.  

His mother.  The house.  The garden.  His father, though he had thankfully not laid eyes on him yet.  He couldn’t handle it.  He couldn’t handle being here in this place, in the destitution and neglect and abuse he had thought was over forever and the deaths of his parents.  He couldn’t do it.  He thought it was over.  He had died, horrifically and painfully, but he had finally died.  He had done his part to end the war and he could be free.  He was supposed to get a peaceful rest or some sort of oblivion so why was he seeing and feeling all of this again?  

He had suffered and sacrificed so much, was that not enough to make up for all the wrongs he had committed and earn an eternal rest?  Were his wrongs really so terrible for him to be sentenced to his purgatory?  Or, Merlin forbid, actually have to go through it all again?  

Severus tried desperately to get a grip on himself but he couldn’t manage to do it.  He started to sob again.  He swiftly slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound and turned his back on the kitchen window so his mother wouldn’t see.  

He needed to leave.  He needed to get away from this house, from his mother, all of it.  So that’s exactly what he did.  With one hand still covering his nose and mouth to try to quieten himself Severus used the other to carefully open the rusted back gate, which thankfully didn’t squeal and give away his flight.  His mother typically never minded when he ran off for hours on end but with how odd she was behaving currently he couldn’t be certain that would remain true now.  

Out in the alley between their row of dilapidated worker’s houses and the next, Severus felt a little less like the walls were closing in on him but he was still a mess.  He needed to get himself in order.  He needed to get somewhere quiet because his neighbours would be out and about soon.  He couldn’t stand in the alleyway sobbing for them all to see because that would be utterly mortifying.  

He needed to get somewhere safe, somewhere secluded.  

The woods. 

Yes, perfect.  The woods. 

The woods where he had played with Lily when they were children and he told her all about magic and the wizarding world before they started Hogwarts when they were both so innocent and hopeful.  Where neither his father nor his mother had ever thought to look for him before.  Where no one had ever hurt him.    

As soon as he’d thought of it his feet took him down to the end of the alley on the river’s side and to the right from there, with the pungent scent of the polluted river in his nose all the while.  The woods beyond the slums were the closest thing he had to a truly safe space or a place of untainted happiness in Cokeworth.  It would be a good place to hide for a while until he’d sorted himself out.  Severus hurried past the last two rows of houses and there the meadow dreary, covered in frost and half dead, opened up before him. 

On the other side of it, Spinner’s Wood. 

Chapter Text

Severus took care while cutting through the meadow to the woods because he was already injured enough and slipping on the frost and spraining an ankle was the last thing he needed at the moment.  He made it to the edge of the woods without further injury, which was excellent as far as Severus was concerned. 

He was just as careful picking his way through the underbrush of the woods which was brittle, dead and leafless as it always was in the middle of winter.  Now that Severus had the experience of traveling to see woods and forests outside of Cokeworth he could see the clear signs of the impact the factories' pollution had on the wilderness surrounding the town.  It made him a bit melancholy to look at. 

One thing that Severus would forever deny if anyone aside from Pomona were to ask him, because it would have utterly ruined his carefully cultivated grumpy greasy dungeon bat persona, was just how much he loved nature.  Plants, animals, the rivers and hills, forests and meadows, all of it.  His favourite part of Hogwarts was not contrary to popular belief his gloomy dungeon office where he could hunch over a cauldron brewing.  Though that was a close third if he were to be perfectly candid.  It was actually the Forbidden Forest.  He had been allowed to wander it as a professor, not that he ever paid much mind to the 'Forbidden' part of the name as a student either, and it had always been his favourite part of the school. 

He made his way to his favourite spot in Spinner's Wood.  He had stopped going to this particular spot completely after his friendship with Lily had imploded so spectacularly at the end of their fifth year.  It was a clearing around a giant old walnut tree, close enough to the river bank to hear the flow of the water and catch glimpses of the river through the bare underbrush.  It was where he and Lily used to sit when he would tell her everything he knew about the wizarding world and magic.  Where they would play with sticks for wands or swords, skip, chase butterflies and laugh until they couldn't breathe.  He couldn't bear to go back to that clearing after their friendship ended. 

Throughout the walk to this favoured spot Severus had been trying as hard as he could to control the sobs that wanted to escape him, but he simply couldn't stop them.  So when he sat on the frosted, dying grass between two of the roots of the massive walnut, he gave up on the endeavour.   

He had himself a proper breakdown worthy of what appears to be his physical age.  He cried.  He sobbed.  He screamed.  He wailed. 

He cried for everything he went through in his miserable life, everyone he lost, all the people he couldn't save, the horrors he witnessed, the atrocities he couldn't stop, the ones he helped commit.  The fact that when he died, it was as a messenger to a seventeen year old boy to tell him he was nothing but a pig for slaughter for the sake of the world.  He cried for all of it. 

For the fact that when he thought it was finally, blessedly over some cruel twist of fate seems to have put him back to the start of it all - if that's what was happening to him.  He still didn't want to believe it.  

Eventually, Severus calmed. 

He hadn't a notion of how long exactly he was sitting in the woods crying but the sun had risen in the sky and the cold was starting to dissipate just a little.  So it was safe to say it was quite a while.  Despite being an absolute mess of snot and tears, Severus did feel a bit better after having a good cry for the first time in literally decades. 

With his little breakdown ticked off the to do list, apparently, Severus's brain seemed to have started working properly once again.  And it focused, of course, on the predicament he'd found himself in.  

His mind started racing through the hows and whys and was this even possible or what was actually happening, or was he actually dead/hallucinating/insane of the situation he found himself in.  Eventually Severus had to concede that what appeared to be reality was, in fact, reality.  Unfortunately.  

He had, somehow, returned to his childhood. 

Once he had conceded on this point his mind whirled on and on about the hows and whys of his accidental and very much unwanted incident of time travel, useless as it was to consider.   He had never studied temporal magics and knew nothing of the subject beyond the basics of time turners.  He knew enough to be aware that time turners were utterly inapplicable to this situation as they could only take a person back eight hours maximum.  And when they did the person in question lived out the rewound time as a duplicate of themself.  Because he had absolutely no knowledge of the matter and no way of obtaining such knowledge to attempt to rectify it, or if such rectification was even possible, Severus eventually decided the how and why were useless to consider.  

Well, there was no way to rectify the situation bar the obvious avenue of self annihilation.  However ever since he had found his mother's body after her own suicide just before his fifth year Severus was never able to bring himself to seriously consider that as an option.  No matter how hopeless and horrific his life had become. 

All he could do was attempt to live through it. 

All of it. 

Again. 

The prospect was far from a happy one for Severus. 

Nonetheless, he firmly turned this thoughts to other aspects of the issue.  Namely the timeline.  If he were to change one single thing, who knew what would happen to events going forward?  

What would happen if the Ministry found out about his situation?  

Severus shuddered at the thought and immediately decided that he would do everything in his power to prevent that from ever happening.  This meant keeping his head down and staying as far away from the Department of Mysteries as humanly possible.  The last thing he wanted was to end up like Eloise Mintumble, the Unspeakable who travelled back some several centuries and irreparably altered the timeline before she was fished back out.  Based on what Severus remembered of the story, about twenty people ceased to exist because of that little experiment. 

What was more important to Severus at that moment were the rumours about what happened to Eloise Mintumble after the other Unspeakables eventually pulled her back to her original time.  They were rather ... disturbing ... and that was not at all how Severus wanted to end up.  He would rather be a snack for Nagini a second time.  

But again, again, and again what about the timeline?  His mind circled around and around to that same issue once he had reluctantly accepted his fate.  

Could or would or should Severus change anything? 

Was what he lived through, all the terrible things that happened, what was supposed to happen?  Was it inevitable and was he supposed to simply allow it to happen again? 

Then again, no one knew he had been returned to his childhood.  So, no one would know if he changed anything would they? 

In his life - well, in his former life Severus supposed - he had suffered, sacrificed and risked so much only to fail at the only goal he had given himself.  To ensure the safety of his dearest former friend's child.  In return for all his efforts he received nothing but misery and disdain.  He had died alone, hated by everyone he had once held dear.  In the Shrieking fucking Shack of all miserable places.  In the very same room that Remus bloody Lupin almost killed him in their fifth year thanks to Sirius fucking Black's oh so funny 'prank'.  He had been abused and ridiculed, used and humiliated, tossed away like rubbish by everyone and anyone once he was no longer useful to them. 

He would not do it again. 

No. 

Severus simply refused. 

Severus Tobias Snape decided then and there as he sat on the cold wet grass by the walnut tree with his face stained with snot and tears.  He would be the selfish, uncaring bastard that everyone had always accused him of being.  His main goal from this moment forward would be to claw out for himself a better lot in life.  A lot in life that didn't involve being under the thumb of either Tom Riddle or Albus Dumbledore.  That didn't involve a job he hated - neither spying nor teaching would be in his future this time. 

If he was able to provide assistance to someone else or change something generally for the better without compromising himself then he would do so.  Because no matter what everyone said about him he wasn't an utterly heartless bastard.  He was self-aware enough to know his flaws and while he could be cruel, petty, and callous he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he walked away from someone in need who he could help and who deserved it.  He knew that he had immense difficulty living with himself for not being able to save people during the wars.  

He may be a bastard for the 'who deserved it' caveat but Severus had lines he wouldn't cross.  He would not be going out of his way to help Mulciber or Potter or either of their ilk just because they needed help.  He wouldn't be thanked for it.  He would likely end up being blamed for whatever mess they'd gotten themselves into to need help in the first place. 

Yes that had in fact happened in his former life. 

Yes, Severus was bitter. 

This lifetime Severus would prioritise himself, his own safety, happiness, and success over the grand greater good.  

Decision made, Severus had to make a plan.  He needed a strategy to survive Spinner's End and Hogwarts.  No.  Not just survive, but to succeed and try to be happy. 

First things first if he was going to be stuck here like this, as a child, he needed to get a grip on himself.  Because the irritated scolding his mother gave him was absolutely right.  Tobias hated crying and he hated magic.  Both would make him furious.  Both would earn him another beating like the one he was currently recovering from. 

Eileen may have been a bit harsh with him but she was just reminding him of what he needed to do to stay safe with that monstrous man around. 

He needed to fix his occlumency shields to try and manage all of the miserable memories assaulting him, all of the blasted emotions that were roiling within him, as that was far from ideal.  Surely something being wrong with his occlumency shields was the cause of all of this blubbering  and once they were fixed Severus would be able to return to his stoic apathetic self with ease.  

Surely.

Hopefully. 

Severus began to clear his mind of everything.  No thoughts.  No worries.  Just floating and existing.  He fell into the meditative state that had become so familiar to him through his rigorous practice of the mind arts.  He had no concept of how long it took him to reach his mind palace for he had no longer any concept of time. But he did reach it.  

What he found when he retreated within its familiar protection was in utter shambles.  That was a very bad sign.  The result of dying violently and coming back to life over three decades in the past he supposed.  No wonder he had been so uncontrollably emotional.  

This was going to be a lot of work to fix.  

His mind palace had once been a spectacular laboratory with attached library, office space and living quarters.  Somewhat similar to his quarters at Hogwarts as a professor but not within Hogwarts Castle as he would have preferred to never return there after his graduation, alas, he had sold his soul to Albus Dumbledore for a life the old coot couldn't even protect in the end.  It was different enough that he was able to feel like it was a space entirely separate from the school.  With dark stone walls and flagstone floors, arrow slit windows and outside a moat almost completely hidden by fog and filled with all manner of traps for those who would attempt to breach his shields.  All perfectly organised.  Not a thing out of place.  

As he looked around his mind palace as it was at present it was in a right state with furniture overturned and broken, smashed to bits in some cases.  The walls were crumbling and falling down, the floor uneven and cracked.  Books were scattered over every surface, the pages ripped out and floating down to land desolately on the shattered remnants potions vials, jars of ingredients, and equipment all over the floor.  

Well all of that definitely needed to be fixed.  It was going to be an awful lot of work.  

Once Severus had assessed the damage, he set about trying to repair it.  He rigthed the upturned furniture, fixed broken objects, sorted ingredients back into jars, pieced pages back into books.  As he worked he noticed some things about his mind palace were different.  Different aside from looking like it had been ransacked by incompetent burglars.  

It was lighter.  Not just the stone of the walls and floors; everything within the his mind palace was of a lighter shade as well.  The windows were larger more like the narrow sash windows of Spinner's End than an ancient castle's arrow slits.  There were ornaments and nick-nacks scattered here and there among the detritus of potions ingredients and textbooks that he had placed within the mind palace deliberately.  The bed in the sleeping quarters more closely resembled the wrought iron bed frame of his room in Spinner's End than the wooden bedframe he was sure was there before he died.  There were, dare he even admit it to himself, toys littered around.  A carved wooden horse.  Marbles.  Gobstones.  A few rather desolate and dented tin soldiers.  

It was a little disturbing if Severus were to be honest. 

He avoided touching the new additions and focused instead on what he could identify as being his creations.  Until, that is, curiosity got the better of him as it so often did.  

You see, in a mind palace no object is ever just an object.  Each and every one of them was a memory.  

Severus's habit from when he first began learning occlumency was to preserve, catalogue, place and secure all of his memories then never touch them again unless they may be of use.  So he tended not to go through them for the sake of it.  Why would he, honestly?  The majority were unpleasant.  

But it was a good exercise to gain clarity on certain matters.  And it was necessary.  

Regardless, back to the ... toys ... and such.  

When Severus could resist investigating the additional objects no longer he picked up one of the regiment of tin soldiers on the floor.  When he did he was absolutely gobsmacked.  It was a duplicate of the memory held within the vial of veritaserum that lay beside it.  Only it was sharper, more vivid than the version held within the veritaserum.  That was highly unexpected.  After this discovery Severus was far more eager to investigate the other childish trinkets mixed in among the familiar objects while he continued tidying up.  In doing so he confirmed that all those he found thus far were clearer duplicates of other memories.  

He hadn't the foggiest as to the implications of this other than to think it was potentially troubling.  As there was nothing at all he could do about it Severus made the executive decision not to worry about it unless it became a larger issue.  

This rather uncharacteristically blasé approach to what could possibly be something of a rather large problem for him in the near future could be blamed on the fact that Severus was tired and he simply couldn't deal with it right at that moment.  He shouldn't be as tired as he was considering he'd hardly made a dent in cleaning up his mind palace.  He was fully willing to put the lack of productivity down to having recently died and come back to life.  

His fatigue led Severus to abandon his occlumency practice. 

He did not leave his meditative state, instead he changed his focus.  He fell back from his mind into his body; feeling his breathing, his muscles, his blood pumping through his veins until he could feel more than that.  Until he could feel the magic flowing through his veins, muscles, his very bone marrow.  Severus felt the magic within him - tired, young and fragile - and traced it down, down, down to its core.  

It was difficult to describe examining one’s magical core.  It was almost like seeing it, but not with your eyes.  The technique was often called using the ‘inner eye’.  Something which divination professors always tried and mostly failed to get students of the subject to utilise.  Severus had discounted divination as a subject entirely in his youth, because no one had ever taught him how to try and engage this ‘inner eye’ the professor was talking about.  To the point, Severus’s magical core was very different to what he had become used to ‘seeing’.  It was the small and delicate core of a very young child, which should have been rather obvious considering his situation. 

Whatever had happened to put him back into his childhood it had returned his magic back to the state it was in at this age.  There were both good and bad points to this.  On the one hand, he wouldn’t be able to do even a fraction of the magic he was accustomed to being able to accomplish.  Certainly not with the same effectiveness or power.  He wouldn’t be able to perform the same level of magic as he was used to using in his daily life.  This did explain why working on his occlumency for such a short period wore him out so easily.  It was an incredibly advanced branch of magic which required a great deal of effort for an adult witch or wizard, which he no longer was.  

That was a frustrating limitation to be dealt but there were ways to work on it.  It would require time and effort, but Severus had never shied away from hard work. 

On the other hand, as he ‘looked’ at his magical core it was far healthier than he had ever seen it.  By the time he had learned how to examine his magic like this in his former life Severus was an adult and what he was faced with was a snarled, malformed, painful mass within him.  The state of his magical core had been caused by Tobias’s frequent punishments for using magic and not helped by his mother’s insistence that he not use it.  The only reason Severus hadn’t ended up an obscurial was because he embraced and loved his magic to spite his horrid father. 

Young witches and wizards that came from situations like Severus not becoming an obscurial didn’t mean there was no damage done to them.  The prevalent theory was that one’s magical core was either healthy or it wasn’t and if it wasn’t then it formed an obscurus.  This was untrue from Severus’s own experience.  But the damage he had to manage on a daily basis was his best kept secret of his former life, not a single other soul knew about it.  Given the stigma around such imperfections in the wizarding world he found it likely that anyone else who may have been in a similar state to him took the same secretive approach and managed their condition in secret. 

He could ‘see’ that there was some damage to his magical core as it was now but it was nothing compared to the chronic condition he had discovered in his adulthood the last time.  The edges of the core were a little marred, but like the bruises and welts currently littering his physical body that damage would heal with time and a bit of treatment.  

Like in his previous life Severus had no intention of listening to his mother and eschewing magic entirely to appease his father.  But he could be smart about it, use all of the knowledge and training he had to prevent Tobias catching him in the act of performing magic.  Then perhaps he wouldn't suffer the same injury to his core.  He might grow up with a healthy magical core this lifetime. 

He may have the magical core of a child, which were by nature prone to accidental magic, but he had the theoretical magical knowledge of a grown wizard and his ability with occlumency.  Even if he could not practice the latter to the extent he would prefer it would still be incredibly helpful to him.  Using his knowledge would hopefully give him better control of his magic this time around and if his father didn’t see it then he wouldn’t beat Severus or his mother for it. 

Don’t mistake him, Severus was suffering under no delusions that he could stop his father being an abuser.  He knew that no matter what he did Tobias would get roaring drunk and latch onto any excuse to harm Severus and his mother.  It was what he did.  The simple fact was that avoiding letting the man use Severus’s magic as his favourite excuse might prevent him suffering from a chronic health condition in the future, so appease Tobias by hiding his magic use from him was what Severus would do. 

He gave his magic a nudge towards the harmed areas, and watched it flow toward them.  His core would heal itself of these minor things naturally as long as there was no more damage but giving it a push in that direction couldn't hurt.  

With that done Severus brought himself back out of the meditative state and looked around him.  It seemed several hours had passed while he was meditating.  He would have to be back at the house before dark but Severus judged that he had plenty of time before that deadline.  Until then he would try to relax and enjoy the woods.  

Most importantly, he would make a plan. 

Chapter Text

Sitting down to dinner with both of his parents was, in a word, terrible.

His father was quite for most of the meal, but scowling down into the bowl of thin stew in a way that Severus knew meant this was the calm before a storm. Luckily he didn't seem to have started drinking yet.

Tobias Snape was an enormous man, well over six feet tall. Though he was a trim figure due to the lack of food in the Snape household he was strongly built from a lifetime of manual labour. He towered like Goliath over his petite wife and young son both in Severus' memories and in the present. The kitchen table and chairs seemed comically small while he was sitting there.

Severus kept quite himself and stared down into his own bowl of stew as it was the safest option when Tobias was in this kind of mood.  He focused on keeping his breathing steady through the fear and dread creeping through him, and finishing his stew as quickly as he could without making himself sick.  Watery as it was, with so little meat or vegetables that it hardly counted as stew, Severus knew dinner was the only meal his mother was guaranteed to cook and he wouldn't be getting anything else, so wasting it by vomiting it up wasn't an option. 

It seemed his mother as of a mind with Severus on how to handle her husband this evening.  Because she kept her silence he her eyes on her own bowl as well.  The quiet was better than a screaming match or Tobias flying into a rage, but the tension was almost unbearable.  He could hardly contain his flinch every time his father moved.  Tobias hated when Severus did that so it was lucky the man was too busy glaring at his food to notice. 

The instant Severus finished eating he fled the ground floor in a tactical retreat to the comparative safety of his bedroom.  Call him a coward for leaving his mother to deal with Tobias alone if you like.  The simple facts were: she was a grown woman and there wasn't much of anything he could do for her in this body. 

He had tried to intervene to protect his mother the first time around.  If looking back through his memories made one thing clear it was this: him getting involved only made things worse for the both of them. 

Considering the talk his mother had with him that morning about his magic, the strapping he was recovering from was probably because of some bit of accidental magic he'd performed.  So it would be in the best interests of them both if he were to stay as much out of Tobias' way as possible until he had better control of his magic. 

And yes, he was scared.  He honestly felt no shame in admitting that, at least to himself.  He was an accomplished wizard who had lied to Voldemort's face without hesitation on countless occasions but, Merlin help him, he was once more a tiny child and just as scared of Tobias as he had been the last time he had laid eyes on the man. 

Before he went upstairs Severus grabbed and lit the same candle his mother had used earlier in the day so he wouldn't get in trouble for wasting electricity by turning on the lights.  He also nicked the paper off the coffee table in the living room and stuffed it under his jacket.  He didn't particularly care about what was going on in the muggle news but he did need to know the date. 

He had a vague guess as to when he was based on the duplicate memories he had found in his mind palace combined with his physical appearance, but Severus wasn't willing to bet on that guess being accurate.  Firstly, considering how little progress he had managed to make in fixing his mind palace, Severus was certain he hadn't found all of the duplicates.  Secondly, due to living on essentially a starvation diet much of his life he hadn't grown very much before he started Hogwarts and gained access to a guaranteed three good meals a day. 

The free lunch programme at his primary school had helped quite a bit, and was certainly nothing to turn his nose up at.  Two meals a day was far better than one.  It had kept him alive and from feeling constantly starving.  Nonetheless, it simply wasn't comparable to the sheer abundance of food available at Hogwarts.  

Regardless, all his physical appearance could tell him for certain was that this was before Tobias had broken his nose for the first time, so before June 1967.  

Severus would prefer to be a bit more accurate than that.  Hence, nicking the paper.  

Severus shut the door to his bedroom and scurred over to hoist himself up on the bed.  There he pulled out the copy of the Cokeworth Daily Herald and searched for the date. 

23rd January 1965. 

Alright then. 

Well, it seemed he was five years old. 

This could be both good and bad. 

Good, because he hadn't started muggle primary school until that September and he therefore didn't have to deal with a classroom full of children in two days time.  His time attending muggle primary school was hardly any better than his experience at Hogwarts.  Magical or muggle, children were terrible. 

With parents like his, Severus' time would be his own until September and he could use that time to make some headway on his plans.  Additionally he had six years before he had to enter the wizarding world.  That was more than half a decade to try and put himself in a better position. 

This was bad because it meant he had to wait until September before he could rely on the school lunches.  And it would be six years before he could escape Spinner's End for the majority of the year. 

His only other option to this house was to run away and try to live on the streets without so much as a ha'penny to his name.  A prospect Severus found even less appealing than living in Spinner's End.  Having a roof over your head was infinitely better than sleeping rough.  So he was stuck where he was until he was eleven. 

However, he would not live in the appalling conditions that the Snape house and he himself was currently in.  He didn't know any better when he was a child for the first time, but now he does know what it's like to be clean, live in a decent place, and have enough to eat.  Severus simply wouldn't put up with backsliding to the state of his first childhood. 

He had plans to improve his living conditions, starting with that damned broken window. 

Reparo was quite a simple spell which most trained witches and wizards could preform with hardly a thought on most simple objects.  Unfortunately, Severus no longer had the magical capacity of a trained wizard which made fixing the window a much more difficult process.  The fact that he was attempting to do so without a wand, and nonverbally, certainly didn't help matters. 

Alas, there was no wand to be had other than his mother's which she kept in the same drawer as her hairbrush and would certainly notice if it went missing.  Not to mention saying the incantations aloud in a house with such thin walls would be conspicuous.  Since not being caught was quite important, nonverbally and wandlessly was how Severus was going to have to do things.  

He had been well above average ability with nonverbal and wandless magic in his past adulthood, so he was confident he would be able to manage it with enough effort. 

It took Severus a frankly embarrassing number of attempts to perform reparo correctly.  

This was only partially due to the fact that his magic was unused to being directed deliberately at this age.  The rest of the fault lay with the fact that five year old Severus was evidently highly uncoordinated - something he had apparently decided to forget over time.  Therefore, getting the very simple movements for the spell right was something which had taken him a full half hour's practice.  And that was without him even trying to channel his magic yet. 

The whole undertaking was an exercise in patience and unsuccessfully railing against his body's limitations.  It was worth it in the end, because by the time he heard his parents turn on the radio to hear the evening news he had successfully fixed the window.  He had completely exhausted his magic to do it, since the damned thing was barely holding itself together and he was but a tiny child.  As the wind was no longer howling in through cracks and gaps in the glass Severus considered the frustration and effort worth it.  

The radio being on was an excellent cover for another part of Severus' plans.  This part of the plan didn't necessarily need the use of magic so he decided to take advantage of the cover and slipped back out of his bedroom. 

Because electricity was expensive the radio in the Snape house was only ever turned on for the evening news and a couple of popular radio dramas that he couldn't recall the names of.  Since it was Saturday it was likely one of those dramas would be on that evening and would give Severus extra time to make noise without being heard. 

Even with the sound of the radio to help disguise what he was up to, Severus was still careful opening the door to the stairwell and creeping into the attic.  His mother had told him not to go up there and in his previous life he had never defied that order.  He had never set foot in there until he inherited the house, at that point he had been so eaten up with anger and bitterness that he had binned just about everything that was up there. 

He still felt some of that anger when he went into the attic now.  But this time he knew about it all in time to make use of it.  

You see, Eileen Snape was something of a hoarder.  She hardly ever threw anything away.  Even if it was broken or she never intended to use it again she kept it.  Thus the attic of their house was filled with Eileen's old things from her former life in the wizarding world, things that his father had drunkenly broken, as well as the vast majority of his late grandmother's worldly possessions and various things from Tobias and his siblings' childhood.  The latter were kept either for sentimental reasons or because they were considered in good enough condition to be passed onto the next generation - something Tobias clearly never bothered to do.  

Did Severus suspect Eileen of placing an expansion charm on the attic for it to fit all of this stuff inside?  Yes.  Was he going to complain about it?  Not currently. 

Once he entered the attic Severus made a beeline for the corner where he remembered finding the trunks of his mother's old magical belongings.  

Most of what was within them probably wouldn't be of much use to Severus at the present time, but some of it certainly would be.  He remembered that what stood out to him the most the first time he could the trunks were the old school books, uniform robes, potions equipment, telescope, and so many other school essentials that were so much better quality than what he had been able to scrounge up from second hand shops.  They'd stood out to him because decent supplies for school could have saved him from being mocked quite so much by his classmates. 

This time he was after something else. 

When he found them again, part of Severus wanted to shrink down the five trunks in front of him, stuff them in his pockets and hide them under the loose floorboard in his bedroom right away.  But his magic was tired and he didn't want to faint up there and get caught by his parents, so that would be something to do another day. 

As far as remembered neither of his parents ever came up to the attic except to toss something broken up here out of the way.  So it was safe to leave some things where they were and take what he needed or wanted more slowly and subtly.  Tobias worked from dawn until dinnertime Monday through Friday, and until three in the afternoon on Saturdays.  Eileen was rarely awake or out of her bedroom before noon.  He had time to work with between now and when he would start school in September, so he would limit himself to taking what he could safely now.  

It was something of a novelty, having time to enact a plan to its greatest effect while ensuring his safety.  It was a bit of a novelty to have a plan at all. 

Dumbledore did, of course, have his own plans.  Plans within plans.  But those plans were rarely shared with anyone else, and when they were he gave the bare minimum information for Severus to play his part in it without letting Severus know the details of what the old bastard was hoping to achieve.  

His whole assisted suicide plan, for instance. 

Dumbledore had very conveniently left out the fact that his wand was none other than the bloody fucking Elder Wand, and his intent was to leave Severus, not Draco Malfoy, its master. 

Had Severus known this, he would have flatly refused any part in the scheme.  Which was likely why Dumbledore had kept that information from him.  If Voldemort wanted the Elder Wand then he would kill whoever he needed to in order to be its master without a second thought. 

Killing Dumbledore to spare the old man being tortured and to spare Draco Malfoy becoming a murderer had been signing his own death warrant and Severus hadn't known until it was far too late. 

Dumbledore had known it, however.  But just like he hadn't given a damn about Severus not wanting to be a killer, or his objections to using a seventeen year old boy as a sacrificial lamb, Dumbledore hadn't seemed to be bothered in the slightest about sentencing him to death.  

After going through all of that having his own plans, his own objectives, without any judgemental or insane old men to answer was liberating.

In the first trunk he found his mother's old school bag, a handsome leather satchel that although it was showing some signs of age and neglect was still in good condition.  Like most of the belongings in these trunks it had the Prince family coat of arms emblazoned on the front, but removing that would be an easy enough fix.  He wouldn't even have to use magic; all he would need is a seam ripper.  He took a quill he found in good condition as well as some unused parchment, and two empty journals from the truck and put them into the satchel to take with him for now.  He took some bottles of ink as well.  Despite the fact that the ink had dried out by now the bottles would still be useful and he could make ink himself.  

What he was mainly looking for in Eileen's old things were the books.  He found them in the third trunk which, like all the others, was one of the expensive magically expanded models.  This one was essentially a portable book room that Severus was most definitely going to steal in its entirety at some point. 

For the time being Severus only took a few which would be immediately useful for him.  A book on housekeeping called 'Keeping House Without a House Elf', a book about personal grooming called 'Must Have Beautification Charms for Young Witches', 'Everyday Essential Potions', and 'Flora & Fungi of Great Britain'.  He did feel somewhat judgemental of himself for taking a book on beautification charms, but the simple fact was Severus was poor and any magical assistance he could get to keep himself clean and decent was necessary. 

Nearby he found an old footlocker which was empty.  The hinges and clasp were broken but that was fixable and he didn't see any other damage.  Since it looked very muggle, likely having once belonged to his father or one of his grandparents or uncles, it would be far less suspicious for him to have in his room than a wizarding trunk would be. 

He also found an old, dusty, broken wooden box which he had no idea as to its intended use, but it was a good size and would easily fit underneath his bed so no one would see it looking into the room.  With some effort he placed it into the footlocker.  Hopefully his magic would be up to a levitation charm in the near future because there was no way he would be able to physically carry either object downstairs. 

He placed his mother's school potions kit into the footlocker as well.  He didn't have the supplies to make use of it right away but he intended to rectify that as soon as he could get some money together and get himself to Pendle Row - the magical quarter of Manchester. 

He dove into the other trunks to look for a cloak.  Severus knew full well that he couldn't wear a cloak around Cokeworth without raising some eyebrows and earning his father's ire.  He wasn't looking for one to wear.  He was looking to nick one of the cloaks from his mother's early adulthood to use as a blanket.  The blankets he had in his bedroom were thin and pretty useless for the middle of January, but a big cloak of good quality wool would be an excellent substitute for a decent blanket. 

There was also the fact that his mother had been a child of an incredibly wealthy aristocratic family.  Her winter gear from before she was disowned could very well have warming charms enmeshed in the fabric, or it could be woven or embroidered into the embellishments.  If he could find something with charms like that his life in Spinner's End would be a hundred times more comfortable. 

There was an enormous amount of clothing and robes within Eileen's trunks.  The sheer volume of silk and brocade was a bit ridiculous, but was probably typical of a pureblood heiress as she once was.  His main point of comparison was Narcissa Malfoy.  While Severus had never seen the true extent of her wardrobe he had also never seen her wear the same outfit more than twice - aside from her Hogwarts uniform.  When compared to that, Severus supposed Eileen's collection was actually somewhat reasonable. 

He did eventually find a thick wool cloak lined in a soft linen that would work well for his purposes. 

On inspecting it further Severus identified some subtle embroidery along the hem and the edges of the cloak.  The fabric of the cloak was quite lovely diamond twill in black and a dark grey, so it was a bit difficult to make out the thin black silk embroidery along its edges.  Severus was far from an expert in the ancient magics of fibre craft so he couldn't confidently say if the pattern was just pretty, or if it was an enchantment of some sort. 

Regardless, it was his now. 

Severus moved onto the muggle things in the attic left behind by his Snape relatives.  He was searching in particular for where the things that were saved from his father and uncles' childhood were kept.  Find them he did.  

Among the things saved he was very happy to find old clothes.  While they were outdated and well worn, they were far and away better than the rags Severus walked around in during his original childhood.  He also found old shoes, winter gear and knitwear that might fit him, as well as old school supplies. 

Some unused notebooks and some of the dip pens that they learned to write with and a bunch of spare nibs, which were not in great shape but he could repair them with magic.  As well as being useful to Severus now, he would need them for primary school in September. 

Severus was quite enraged that he spent his original childhood walking around without a winter coat or a hat when there were several sitting up here he could have used.  But since she had them now and that childhood no longer existed outside of his memories that anger was useless and Severus did his best to let it go. 

He also found an old rucksack that could be very useful, particularly for using around his mother so she wouldn't recognise her old satchel.  

He even found some old toys that would be useful to practice spells on. 

Some further searching over by the old singer treadle sewing machine in the opposite corner revealed the old wooden sewing box he remembered seeing.  He hadn't paid much mind to it, or much else, when he was dragging things out of the attic to toss away in his last life.  But based on the initials carved into the lid, 'CD', it must have been his grandmother's.  Moving it to beside the footlocker he'd decided was his possession now proved to be quite difficult for his little body.  It was worth it, however, because if he stole the sewing kit from the cupboard in the living room his mother would notice and Severus doubted she would be happy about it. 

Severus needed the sewing supplies because of the limitations he was currently experiencing with his magic.  With his magical capacity being so restricted he would need to carefully consider how he used it.  Magical exhaustion was not a pleasant experience and he would rather avoid it.  Because of that, doing some of the repairs and maintenance of the clothes, both his own and what he was taking from the attic, by hand the muggle way may well end up being a quicker or better approach. 

He did know how to sew by hand although that knowledge was likely all theoretical now.  Severus had taught himself from library books when he was nine for the same purpose as he was intending to use the skill now. 

The difference being, the last time he started to learn because he was embarrassed for Lily to see him dressed in such a horrible state.  As opposed to this time around, where he wanted to improve his clothes for his own comfort and wellbeing. 

Whether he would be able to manage to sew properly with his recently proven very poor coordination was questionable.  But the only way he would be able to do it properly at any point was to practice.  Severus consoled himself by deciding to practice on his rattiest clothes first before attempting to mend the better clothes he had just found himself. 

Severus stuffed as much of his loot into the rucksack and satchel as he could fit and left the rest behind in the footlocker for the moment.  He shrugged on the rucksack, which bloody well hurt, shouldered the strap of the satchel, and gathered up the cloak and candle to quickly and carefully make his way back down to his bedroom. 

Luck was on his side, because he could hear the radio drama still playing as he crept down the stairs. 

He tossed the cloak onto the bed, and set the candle holder down on the bare wood floor so he could stash the two bags under the bed where they wouldn't be easily found.  That done, he blew out the candle and crawled into bed to curl up under his tatty blankets and the thick, wonderful cloak to sleep.  

Chapter Text

The next morning Severus was woken up by a thump against his bedroom door, which was followed by a muffled cursing in a deep voice.  Severus felt the almost overpowering urge to leap out of bed and hide in the wardrobe.  Thankfully Tobias stomped off downstairs, likely heading to the loo, instead of coming into his room and Severus was able to relax. 

He wasn't as cold as he had been the last time he woke up in this room to Eileen tending to his injuries.  Between fixing the window and stealing the cloak from Eileen's old things his bedroom in Spinner's End was already more liveable.  So Severus considered yesterday's work a success.  

At present, Severus could hear the rain pelting against the window above him and sat up to try and get a proper look at how bad the weather was.  It was still a ways away until sunrise with clouds the moon and stars were hidden so it was very difficult to make out anything at all outside.  From what he could see though, it looked very bad out. 

Going to the loo was not going to be pleasant, Severus thought with a grimace. 

He would have to wait for Tobias to return before he could try to sprint through the rain in any case. 

In the meantime Severus decided to meditate.  He didn't practice his occlumency as he didn't want to wear himself out completely.  He would continue his habit of practising occlumency before going to sleep as it was practical to wait to expend such efforts until the day was done and organising and clearing one's mind before sleep did help provide better sleep. 

Having such limitations on his magic was incredibly irritating. 

While Severus was no seer, he had a feeling that this second life was going to be an exercise in patience.  This didn't deter him, however, it only made him more determined to train up his magic.  Having so little power and energy at his disposal was an annoying hindrance that he would very much like to rectify. 

He performed the same meditation he did towards the end of his jaunt to the woods the day before where he traced his magic through his body and down to his magical core. 

He examined his core as he did the previous day and was glad to see it appeared a trifle better.  He painstakingly felt every inch of his magic to familiarise himself with this different, less damaged, version of it.  As he gave his magic another nudge toward the physical and magical injuries he was currently suffering he was once again grateful that if he had to life his life all over again he was sent to a time when this damage to his magic was minor and therefore fixable.  His magic would heal both sets of injuries on its own eventually, more quickly than a muggle would heal physically, but there was no harm in encouraging it.  

He had through a great deal of effort managed to handle the condition of his magic and restore it to a decent enough state before the second war began.  But the terribly damaged state of his magic had been a massive obstacle in his former life.  Not only had it left him vulnerable to the self styled 'Marauders' and his housemates as a teenager, it had been a chronic condition that he had to manage and attempt to treat by himself his entire adult life. 

Severus had managed to become known as a quite formidable wizard and duellist in his previous life even with the damage to his magic.  But that had been due to his vast and varied knowledge and skills, to the impeccable control he had developed, and his exceptional efforts in mastering both nonverbal and wandless magic. 

He had developed the last two techniques far more than most witches and wizards ever bothered with.  When it came to nonverbal magic, most learned enough to get through their N.E.W.T.s and didn't bother further.  Most European witches and wizards never bothered with wandless magic at all once they had purchased their first wand. 

His reputation had been hard earned but had nothing to do with the raw power he possessed.  He had been nowhere near the league of the likes of Dumbledore, Voldemort, or Grindelwald.  Minerva had outstripped him in that respect as well, however, she had never beaten him in a sparring match.  

Feeling his magic now was so completely different to what he had to work with in the past, Severus idly wondered how things would turn out if he succeeded in mending this damage and preventing more occurring.  If his magic were to develop healthily this time. 

An idle through passed his mind of sharing a high-five with Lily as he stood victorious over Potter and Black, but he dismissed it quickly.  It was ridiculous.  Even if he did emerge victorious from an encounter with the two, Lily had never approved of him defending himself or retaliating.  She had always told him some variation of 'turn the other cheek' when they targeted him. 

He felt his magic inside of himself flowing through his body, felt how it brushed against the world around him.  Though as far as he knew from his past life there was little to no magic in Cokeworth to feel, he still continued with the rest of the exercise as it would be useful for detecting magic when he came into contact with it in future.  He stretched his own magic outward to touch his surroundings, made it sink into the earth and spread out through the air.  

So you can imagine his surprise when he did feel magic other than his own.  Just the smallest little trickle of magic within the earth.  He reached out toward it to investigate, and it appeared to be a ley line.  One that was so dried up there was hardly any energy flowing through it anymore, but a ley line nonetheless.  He hadn't thought there would have been such a thing anywhere near Cokeworth.  There certainly wasn't when he took over the house as an adult.  Given that the one he could feel was barely hanging on now it was likely it had simply dried up by that point. 

Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, the Ministry, other important sites like Stonehenge were all built on ley lines.  As were most of the aristocratic and genteel pureblood's estates if they could possibly manage it.  And for good reason.  Building a magical settlement on a ley line had many great advantages.  One in Cokeworth could be incredibly useful, but Severus honestly had no idea how to prevent it fading from existence and no clue where to start searching for that knowledge if it was even recorded anywhere. 

The magic of the land feebly reached out from its flow to brush against his own and continued to trickle on its way. 

What to do about this was something Severus would have to consider carefully.  For the moment Severus concentrated on feeling his magic and the magic of the land, the flow between the two and how the magic of the ley line moved through the ground. 

After a time Severus brought himself out of his meditative state and turned his focus in a different direction, toward the little games Draco Malfoy and his other little pureblood playmates accidentally taught him while they were showing off for their future Head of House.  The dreadful oohing and awing over the brats had paid off from these little games alone.  Because they weren't really games.  They were exercises for training and developing a person's magic disguised as childish games which were taught to the children of pureblood families, and other established wizarding families who were in the know, by their parents as soon as they showed their first sign of accidental magic. 

Pureblood parents taught their children these 'games' to try and make sure they had a leg up on their muggle born and half-blood peers when they started school.  And to try and ensure they had enough magic to qualify for Hogwarts by the time they turned eleven, or if not Hogwarts at least Fairbanks or Mayweather.  The thinking being that the earlier they started training their children's magic the more quickly and more powerfully it would develop. 

Whether this truly made wizarding raised children more powerful or skilled than their muggle raised peers on average was up for debate.  What it certainly did, however, was give them an initial advantage in respect of their control of their magic.  Plenty of muggle-raised witches and wizards did catch up with or outstrip their wizarding raised peers in time, but it was an advantage in the early years of magical schooling.  And it did make accidental magic less of an issue, which Severus thought was all the encouragement most parents in the know would need to teach their children these 'games'. 

Unless you were Eileen Snape, who certainly would have been taught them as a child but never bothered to teach her son.  

But he digresses. 

These games were infinitely useful to Severus.  Though most who knew them stopped 'playing' when they reached the age for magical schooling Severus had used them throughout his adult life to help treat the damage to his magic. 

Severus began by conjuring a little ball of light.  He made the ball bigger, then smaller, again and again - which was delightful and caused the occasional giggle to escape him.  Then he brought the light back to a pinkie nail's size and focused on changing its colour, going through each colour of the rainbow before he, sadly, let it fade from existence.  

There were more of these games which were more advanced, moving the ball of light in different patterns of increasing complexity, increasing the size while doing so, or changing colours while doing so, eventually doing it all with multiple balls of light ideally of all different colours.  Severus was resigned to having to build himself up to those, especially if he wanted to have enough energy left to work on improving his living conditions and making himself more comfortable and presentable. 

His malnourishment was likely a strong contributing factor to his lack of magical energy, just as it was to his lack of physical strength and energy at this age.  And the fact that, so far as he remembered, he was the shortest child in his class at school until around his fourth year of Hogwarts.  Lily had delighted in towering over him until he experienced a significant growth spurt that spring, and the tables had turned. 

Severus decided to take a break from working on his magic to give himself some time to recover his energy.  Far from ideal, but Severus would have to learn to pace himself to accommodate the restrictions he was operating under.  He reminded himself that however irritating his current limitations were, working himself into a state of magical exhaustion would be far worse. 

He could see that the rain had let up a bit, so Severus slipped on a coat and shoes to duck outside to the loo. 

Unfortunately, when he reached the kitchen Tobias was there.  Oddly enough the man was standing at the range with the oven door open and a tongs in one hand.  He didn't acknowledge Severus' arrival so he said nothing, just quickly went outside to take care of his ablutions. 

When he returned, now wet and cold - Merlin he hated having to deal with an outside toilet again - Tobias was sitting at the kitchen table.  It was set with two plates of toast and a quarter-full far of blackberry jam.  His stomach rumbled but Severus knew better than to presume to second plate was meant for him.  So instead of approaching the table he waited impatiently for his father to acknowledge him.  Eventually, Tobias did look up from his own food.  

"Sit." 

Severus carefully hoisted himself into the chair being mindful of his still smarting backside.  He wanted to reach for the jam, while plain toast was better than nothing it was awful, but he hadn't been told he could.  So he looked at his father and waited until the man nodded at him before he took the open jar and happily spread a thin layer over his slice of toast.  Severus couldn't stop himself kicking his feet as he ate.  A habit from his early childhood that was evidently making a comeback. 

Tobias stood from the table to dump his dirty plate in the sink which was already piled with unwashed dishes.  That was quite normal, Severus did not think Tobias had washed a dish since his marriage, if he had ever done so before.  His grandmother died when Severus was a baby, so he didn't know what the house might have been like while she was acting as matriarch. 

But Tobias didn't stomp off immediately after doing so, which was a little bit abnormal as far as Severus remembered.  Instead he leaned against the countertop with his arms crossed, watching Severus.  This was quite nerve wracking.  When Tobias was in a decent enough mood to make Severus something to eat he was unlikely to hit him but it wasn't an impossibility, so he was still wary of the man. 

Severus kept his breathing steady as he could and tried to keep his eyes on his plate to stop himself gawking at his father as the man definitely wouldn't like that.  When Tobias moved away from the counter Severus assumed his was leaving, so it took him by surprise when instead his father stepped over to him and reached for his face.  Severus froze with his slice of toast halfway to his mouth as his father took his chin in hand and turned his face so that the bruise on his cheek was facing him. 

Watching his father taking in the bruise he inflicted on Severus the man looked deeply regretful.  But then, he always did.  When Tobias was sober, when his anger abated, or when he was faced with the aftermath of his actions he was always sorry. 

That was the worst part as far as Severus was concerned. 

If Tobias was only ever that drunken, angry, and violent man who beat his wife and child then Severus wouldn't have felt anything other than joy at his death, would have celebrated the event.  It was moments like this when Tobias handled him gently, when he looked at him with genuine regret, that made Severus unable to hate him entirely during his last life. 

Tobias let go of Severus' chin to smooth a hand over his dirty hair, then turned away to leave Severus alone in the kitchen.  

"Get yourself ready for Mass when you're done eating," commanded Tobias as he left. 

"Yes sir," Severus replied meekly as Tobias disappeared up the stairs. 

Mass. 

Oh Merlin damnit. 

Severus had forgotten, purposefully, just how damned Catholic his father was.  During his occlumency practice he had, in fact, deliberately discarded or shoved under the floorboards any and all memories related to sitting on an uncomfortable pew in a cold church while a decrepit old man droned on.  Often about the multiple ways Severus was an abomination and destined for the fires of hell.  Thus he hadn't even considered factoring in Mass when making his plans for this new life. 

Evidently, he was not destined for said hellfire on his death but regardless he would rather not have to sit through it all again.  Severus groaned and grumpily took a bite of his toast.  Like it or not, he was going to have to deal with it.  Because his father was the kind of Catholic that refused to separate or divorce from his wife after it became legal in 1969, despite the fact that by the time Severus started Hogwarts they despised each other.  There was no way on earth Severus would get out of being dragged to Mass every Sunday morning. 

He was going to have to go through the whole first holy communion fiasco all over again in three years. 

Tobias was going to make him go to confession. 

While it could be entertaining to tell old Father Culloty the truth in the confessional just to fuck with him, the man was bound to keep everything said to himself after all, there was a distinct possibility doing so could land him in an asylum.  Wonderful.  Severus was going to have to lie to the priest.  As much as he had abandoned the Catholic faith when he entered the wizarding world, that good old Catholic guild did occasionally rear its head.  And it did so again at the thought of lying in the confessional.  

Wary of angering his father, Severus finished his toast quickly.  As far as efforts not to anger the man were concerned it may have been better to run directly back to his room to change.  Instead of doing that Severus stood by the range for a few moments to attempt to warm up and dry off from his excursion to the loo. 

While doing so Severus considered the state of himself.  The wound on his neck would need to be checked, and the bandages changed.  So he had better nick some from the medicine press before he went upstairs.  He was also still filthy, greasy, and not at all fit to be seen - or smelled - by the general public.  He had two options to rectify the situation. 

Firstly, he could get the washbasin, a jug of water, the soap from the kitchen and a washcloth and try to clean himself up.  But they didn't have a hot tap and it would take too long to heat a kettle on the range so the water would be cold.  And he did not have a way to dry his hair quickly because although the house had electricity by this point in time, they did not have a hairdryer.  It being January, that was not an ideal situation to be in. 

Secondly, he could retrieve the book of beautification spells from his mother's old satchel and attempt to get some of those spells to work for him.  Last night's experience with the window did prove that doing so would not exactly be easy.  It also proved that using the spells may well take equally as long as washing with the basin of water and washcloth.  On the positive side for his course of action was the fact that he would not be left cold and wet afterwards, regardless of how effective or not it ended up being. 

Decision made, a far less damp Severus grabbed a bandage and a jar of ointment from the press then trotted upstairs to his bedroom where he rooted out 'Must have Beautification Charms for Young Witches' and the hand mirror his mother still hadn't taken back. 

It was a far more substantial volume than Severus would have expected before finding it last night.  Fortunately, it was very thoroughly indexed which allowed Severus to find the spells he needed without delay, and they were very specific.  One to clean teeth, for hair, one for the face, and another for cleaning your body - and those were just the basic ones.  There were many, many more that were far more specific in their use. 

Actually performing the spells did, as he expected, cause a significant delay.  Getting his awkward five-year-old body to perform the movements correctly, and getting his mouth unused to Latin to pronounce the spells properly was the main source of delay.  With much trial and effort Severus did eventually succeed in cleaning himself magically.  None of the spells ended up being as effective as the book indicated they should be, but they worked decently well.  He didn't have enough power yet to put the proper amount of magic behind them to achieve the intended results.  Perhaps if he had been less conservative with the amount of power he was putting into the spells they may have worked better but his magic was feeling quite tired after performing them all, so Severus wasn't certain he would have been able to do more than one or two if he had put as much power behind them as they needed to be properly successful. 

Looking at himself in the hand mirror Severus decided he was clean enough to be seen in public, certainly cleaner than he had been able to keep himself at this age in his last life.  He didn't look like a very well kept child, if he ran into Petunia Evans she would certainly still turn her nose up at him, but he no longer looked like a filthy street urchin which was good enough he supposed. 

However he would have to figure out something better to deal with his hair.  It could well be the result of him not performing the spell quite right, Severus sincerely hoped that was the issue.  His hair had come out of the endeavour looking ... fluffy ... for lack of a better word. 

Although he was not entirely satisfied, Severus acknowledged that this level of sort-of effectiveness was likely for the best.  It would appear odd to his father if Severus went downstairs suddenly sparkling clean the way the book described the charms effects, when to his memory no one and nothing in the Snape house had been that clean until he inherited it.  As not getting caught using magic was rather important to his continued well being this more subtle improvement was better in that respect. 

He then went about examining the neck wound.  He was glad to see it was healing decently well, not as quickly as it would be if he had access to decent healing salves but he would take what he could get.  He carefully wiped the area clean with his washcloth, then spread a thin layer of the antibacterial ointment over it and re-wrapped the bandage. 

Once he was clean enough to be getting on with and the neck wound was seen to, he retrieved his Sunday best from the wardrobe.  'Best' in this case meant the only decent set of clothes that he owned before his foray into the attic.  They were somewhat worn, as well as being short at the ankles and wrists, but they were clean and remained in far better condition than his two other sets of clothes. 

After dressing hastily Severus pulled on one of the coats he had taken from the attic, they were far better than his old one and it was still miserable out.  Then he sped downstairs to wait for his father by the front door as he knew the man would expect of him. 

Eileen wouldn't be joining them.  Generally speaking, she never did.  The only times Severus could remember her stepping foot into any church were at his First Confession and First Holy Communion.  He never knew how or why she got away with never attending Mass with Tobias, but he had long been jealous over it. 

Once Tobias came down to the living room, washed, clean shaven and umbrella in hand, the two Snapes were off to Mass.

Ugh. 

Chapter Text

The walk to the Catholic church in their part of Cokeworth luckily wasn't too long from Spinner's End, because Severus had to basically jog to keep up with Tobias and stay out of the rain underneath the umbrella.  The Sacred Heart Church on Mill Road was a relatively small stone building, small as far as churches went at least. 

The congregation was rather small as well, compared to many parishes.  The vast majority of the population of Cokeworth were Anglican, which left the three Catholic churches in the town a bit sparse of parishioners. 

Severus would have preferred if there was a larger congregation than Sacred Heart usually turned out, because it was impossible to go unnoticed among the small crowd of working families that typically turned up at Sunday mass.  Especially when you were walking beside a man who towered over them all like Tobias did.  Although Tobias didn't just draw attention because of his stature.  He was pretty much infamous in Cokeworth.  Severus never really knew the details of how or why Tobias achieved such infamy, the best he had gotten out of his neighbours or his father's friends were some vague references to his career as a boxer before his marriage. 

Severus' complete lack of awareness of how it came to pass didn't spare him from feeling the effects of it.  People stared at them and whispered among themselves as Tobias led him to the pew he preferred to sit at, third from the altar on the left.  His friend Mr. Weston from the mill and his family were already sitting at the pew. 

Mr. and Mrs. Weston greeted Tobias warmly. 

That was the strange thing about Tobias Snape.  He was infamous, harsh, and he could be cruel and violent.  But at the same time he maintained these warm, incredibly close friendships with several men he had known since he was Severus' current physical age. 

Unlike other cruel, violent men he had come to know these relationships weren't transactional or imbalanced.  They seemed to be about nothing more than shared history and enjoying each other's company, not what they could do for Tobias or how he could leverage the relationship.  The group of them had no issue with being known around Cokeworth as friends of Tobias Snape, despite presumably knowing far more about his journey to infamy than Severus ever managed to find out. 

It was somewhat baffling to Severus, if he were to be honest. 

Then Mrs. Weston turned her attention to Severus. 

A note worthy of being mentioned: Eileen Snape absolutely hated Mrs. Weston.  Like with his father's reputation, Severus had no earthly idea where this animosity stemmed from, but he knew it was mutual. 

There was a good while during his childhood where Mrs. Weston was as warm to Severus as she was to Tobias.  He similarly had no clue what happened to change that, and resulted in Mrs. Weston treating him with the same hostility she did Eileen.  He had always presumed it was some argument between her and Eileen that had somehow gotten onto the topic of him, but he had no confirmation of that. 

As that argument, or whatever it was, had yet to happen so when Mrs. Weston turned to Severus she did so with warmth in her smile.  When she took in the state of him, the obvious bruise on his cheek and the bandage around his neck, that smile fell.  Her lips pursed and brows furrowed in concern but she said nothing about it, simply greeted Severus as though nothing was wrong. 

Severus returned the hellos politely.  He allowed Mrs. Weston to sweep him from the aisle into the pew under her arm, settling him among her own children who were too young to get communion.  It was easier to have all the children too young on the inside of the bench rather than having their elders shuffle around them when the time came, but Severus was a tad wary of the older children.  The Westons' children who were closest to him in age, Emma and Adam, were two and three years older than Severus and therefore too grown up to put up with a little baby like him tagging along.  Their three elder siblings generally paid even less attention to Severus. 

The youngest was just about two years old if Severus remembered correctly and still held in Mrs. Weston's arms during mass.  Though he couldn't recall her name for the life of him, he could recall her being rather enamoured with him for a brief period when he was round eight, much to the consternation of her elder siblings.  

The times he can remember having been foisted upon the Weston children were at best awkward, at worst disastrous. 

Despite his reservations they all get through the mass without disaster occurring.  Severus could not tell you anything about the mass or the readings, however, as he spent most of it preoccupied with his own thoughts and plans for surviving intact until he turned eleven. 

It was possible to do that without being noticed because the responses and actions involved in mass were always the same, they had been so thoroughly drilled into him that Severus could perform all the appropriate actions and say the right things by rote.  All of it came back to Severus as though it were really only last week that he had attended mass, not decades ago. 

He sincerely doubted he was the only one in the congregation not paying attention and acting on muscle memory.  After all, Father Culloty was not known for being an engaging speaker. 

He was only brought out of his reverie toward the end of the eucharistic prayer when Father Culloty proclaimed, 

"Remember also, Lord, your servants Alexander and Julia Snape, who have gone before us with the sign of faith and rest in the sleep of peace."

It took quite a lot of effort for Severus not to jolt where he sat, and considering the glance Emma shot his way he doesn't think he was entirely successful in preventing himself having any reaction.  He shouldn't have been surprised by it.  The anniversary would be this coming Wednesday.  He should have realised something would be said by the priest.  More would likely be said by their neighbours once the mass was done. 

Severus suppressed a wince at the thought. 

He had always felt so awkward about receiving sympathies for people he didn't remember, but if he wasn't always perfectly polite about it he would certainly be in for a lashing. 

They had died when he was only three years old, any memories of them he might have had were long-faded by the time he met Lily in his last life.  He did find a few memories of them during his attempts before bed to tidy up his mind palace, somewhat faded and a little fuzzy around the edges.  Since he knew how to preserve them now, Severus did so, and hid them away where they couldn't be disturbed by anyone attempting legilimency. 

Severus got through the rest of the mass and all of the sympathising neighbours afterwards without incident, thankfully.  The ritual of the day wasn't over, however.  Instead of turning for Spinner's End as they usually would have after mass was over Tobias led Severus to the old graveyard next to the church.  The graveyard was a bare, stark looking plot of land covered in yellowing grass with uniform grey slabs of stone sticking out of the ground at precise intervals. 

Sacred Heart Cemetery was a desolate place on the best of days but, cliched as it was, the miserable weather made the graveyard an even more depressing place to be.  Huddling under the umbrella while trotting alongside Tobias to avoid the rain, with the clouds so low in the sky overhead they seemed almost close enough to touch made the atmosphere incredibly oppressive. 

When they stopped at the right headstone Severus read the brief epithets carved into the stone for residents of the Snape family plot. 

Gregory Snape 07/11/1883 - 13/07/1949

Cordelia Snape 25/07/1891 - 22/07/1961

Alexander Snape 14/12/1953 - 27/01/1963

Julia Snape 18/02/1956 - 27/01/1963

He and Tobias stared at the grave in silence. 

Severus was feeling quite overwhelmed but was doing his best to keep his composure.  Tobias hated crying.  Severus knew well enough to know this would not be considered an exceptional circumstance by him.  Because as far as Severus could tell nothing was an exceptional circumstance. 

This felt ... different to to the many times Severus remembered standing exactly like this with Tobias in his past life.  Trying to process this difference with Tobias standing right next to him wasn't ideal, but need's must. 

Before, in the future-past, Severus didn't feel the same grief for them as he did later in life for Regulus, Lily, or Charity.  What he felt for his lost relatives had always been more of a wistfulness, a longing for what might have been.  The feelings about them as he recalled from his previous life were ... distant.  Now they were far more present.  Grief was something Severus was well versed in, but it never became any easier.  Yes, with time the loss of a person became less an open wound and more of a scar.  But each new loss was always a new wound, and the immediate aftermath was never easier than the last one.  His brother, sister, and grandmother had been scars in his last life for as long as he could remember.   Now, his brother and sister at least, felt like fresh wounds. 

He had rescued a few precious memories of his siblings this time, golden and fuzzy because of his age when they died, but real and tangible nonetheless.  He remembered what they looked like, the sound of their voices, their laughter.  That made things different.  This wasn't a longing or a wistfulness for some names on a headstone he was feeling, it was his old companion grief, for real tangible people.  People who, based on the memories he found, he loved and who loved him in return. 

At least, that was the case if these memories could be relied upon.  Severus was still somewhat perturbed by his mother's odd behaviour the previous day, how different it was to what he remembered.  He was currently putting it down to the incident with Tobias, but as he had been unconscious until she woke him he couldn't be certain of the cause. 

Severus typically wasn't one to whinge about the unfairness of life.  Life had never been fair to him, it was something he had resigned himself to at around this age in his last life.  The fact that it likely never would be fair to him something he remembered accepting a little later on.  Thus, he was more the type to grit his teeth, carry on, and claw his way tooth and nail toward what he wanted despite his manifold disadvantages.  But looking at the headstone, thinking about Alex and Julie, he couldn't help it.  

If he was going to be forced to relive his miserable life, why was he sent back to January 1965?  Why couldn't he have woken up in January 1963 or sometime in 1962?  Why was he denied his brother and sister in this life as well as the last?  He was only a toddler when they died but this time, if only he had been sent back further, he might have been able to do something.  He might have been able to save them.  Even if it was only by doing something naughty to sabotage them leaving for the outing that led to their deaths.  

Why couldn't he have been sent back in time to keep them alive? 

Why?

He had been sent back decades, what difference did two years really make to anything aside from this? 

Severus bit his lip to try and stop its trembling.  He blinked rapidly to try to stop the tears gathering in his eyes from falling.  It didn't work terribly well, so discreetly as possible Severus wiped his eyes with his sleeve, hoping Tobias was too distracted to notice. 

Preoccupied by his thoughts as he was, Severus lost track of how long they stood staring at the gravestone before Tobias decided they were done, turned sharply away from the grave and stalked back to the gates.  The abruptness of the departure took Severus by surprise so he had to scramble to get back under the protection of the umbrella.  

The two Snapes walked back through the dreary morning in silence.  Well, Tobias walked, Severus jogged to try and keep up.  Initiating any sort of conversation with Tobias was a dangerous prospect even when he was in a good mood - for those could quickly turn sour.  The man was very clearly not in a good mood, but still Severus found himself biting his tongue to keep quiet.  Internally he was bursting with questions.  While he remembered some snatches of memories with Julie and Alex, Severus found himself desperate for more.  He was dying to ask about them.  

What were they like?

He remembered them trying to teach him to play marbles - was that either of their favourite game?  Or did they prefer hopscotch or gobstones (Which they wouldn't have been able to play around Tobias anyway, so the man wouldn't know) 

What were their favourite colours? 

Did they love midsummer and the solstice like Severus did?  Or did they prefer yule and midwinter?  (Again, something he could never ask Tobias.  The man would hit the roof if anyone celebrated a holiday that wasn't Catholic in his household)

His parents never, ever spoke about his older siblings, leaving Severus with no answers to any of these questions.  Asking either of them about Julie or Alex was just asking for trouble, so Severus doubted he would ever get those answers.  He didn't know how that made him feel.  He had gone through the whole of his last life without knowing any of it, and while it bothered him occasionally, the feeling wasn't like this riot of emotions inside of him now.  

When they reached the house on Spinner's End and Tobias sent him up to his room, Severus was even more eager than usual to get away from the man.  He retreated to his bedroom, and from there retreated to his mind palace, desperate to try and find any more memories of his siblings that this trip through time may have returned to him.  

Chapter Text

The next morning Severus woke when it was still dark enough that dawn was a distant dream.  It would be several hours yet before the work bell for the mill would toll, meaning both Tobias and Eileen would still be deeply asleep.  For the second morning in a row Severus woke dry and relatively warm, a true miracle for life on Spinner's End, truly. 

When Severus slipped quietly out of bed he was able to slip into decent, if a bit old and slightly musty, clothes and put on good woollen socks and decent shoes, neither of which had holes in them.  Another miracle compared to his last life in Spinner's End. 

The downside to this, because there was always a downside, was that Severus was a lot more sore than he was yesterday.  When he took stock of himself his face and his neck felt somewhat better, but the rest of him really wasn't.  His legs, his back, his arse, were all stiff and screaming in protest at the idea of movement.  His injuries from a few days ago were terribly aggravated from running to keep up with Tobias all the way from Spinner's End to the church and back yesterday.  

Another reason to hate Sunday mass. 

At least it didn't feel like any wounds had re-opened, but he would have to take a more thorough look at himself later to make sure. 

That was highly inconvenient, Severus grumbled to himself, because there was a good deal more walking in store for him this morning.  That was certainly going to make the state of his injuries worsen further, but it was necessary.  It would be worth it, was what Severus mentally repeated to convince himself to push through it and get going.  

Because while this situation was a vast improvement over his previous life, there were other problems with his living conditions raising their heads.  The room was still in a sorry, dirty, disgustingly dilapidated state.  There were water stains on the ceiling.  Mould in the moulding.  Damp surrounding the window.  The floors were loose in places, splintering and creaking.  Even with better clothes there was still a damp chill in the room because the heating was poorly maintained and the range only lit for cooking to save on coal. 

He would have to see if there was anything in the housekeeping book he'd found in Eileen's things that could improve that, but there was a different issue Severus needed to attend to that morning. 

Severus was hungry. 

This was not surprising, food had been scarce in the Snape house as long as Severus had been alive the last time around.  Dinner was the only meal that Eileen could ever be relied on to cook, and a watery stew or soup was the extent of her accomplishments in the art.  Which was, frankly, due to disinterest and lack of effort.  She had taught him potion making, a far more difficult and precise art than cooking so surely she would be able to do better if she tried. 

Alas, Severus doubted she ever would. 

Tobias making him toast for breakfast the previous morning was an incredibly unusual occurrence, likely because of it being the day of his siblings anniversary mass or out of guilt for the beating he was still trying to recover from. 

That guilt would not last long.  Severus wouldn't be surprised if it had already passed. 

So, Severus was hungry. 

It was unlikely that either of his parents would be providing any food for him, but he knew from his previous life that taking any food from the kitchen which hadn't been given to him would result in a punishment.  Whether it was his mother or father who caught him - though his mother would only give him a slap on the wrist as opposed to what his father would do.  His father would punish him for the sake of having an excuse to hit someone.  His mother would punish him and put away the food for fear of what his father would do if she didn't.  

Severus, however, had gotten used to being properly fed during his former adulthood.  He had no intention of returning to living with, essentially, a starvation diet and the malnutrition of his previous childhood. 

Once he started in primary school in September he would be on the governmental free school lunch programme and that would certainly make things easier for him.  But that was half a year away. 

Thus, Severus needed another way to feed himself. 

He actually had more than one option available to him.  For one, he had a whole woodland at his disposal along with his extensive knowledge of herbology and botany.  In his previous life he had been too proud to stoop to foraging from Spinner's Wood or the meadow.  He suffered for his pride in his last life, and he had no intention of suffering for it this time around.  

It was, however, currently January.  It was cold.  It was wet.  It was muddy.  Foraging would be miserable at the moment.  There wasn't even that much edible plant life to harvest at the moment to make it worth it.  If, perhaps, there was a dry spell soon it would be worth it.  

This was not a day where it would be worth it. 

But there was a second option which would help him supplement his food access without being too much of a risk.  The local bakeries.  He had no money to buy anything from any of them, but they did toss away their day-old, or two-day-old if they were particularly struggling, but still perfectly edible confections while they were preparing the new inventory in the very early mornings. 

So he slipped on a coat and grabbed the now empty rucksack and padded out of the house on silent feet and into the darkness to do something which in his previous life he had been far too proud to attempt until Tobias developed the habit of kicking him out of the house for a week or two at a time when he was fourteen.  He just hoped that the cranky old baker kept the same schedule now as he did back then - in future? - whatever.  The man was so resistant to change that Severus was willing to bet on him keeping the same schedule down to the minute since he opened the damned bakery. 

The streets of Spinner's End were deserted and eerie as Severus crept through the night toward the closest shopping street, ducking down familiar disgusting alleys as shortcuts.  It was somewhat dangerous to be wandering around Cokeworth's alleys at this time of the early morning, particularly so as Severus was not in a great state physically nor did he have access to the level of magic he was used to.  As an adult, Severus wouldn't have thought twice about doing this.  As a five year old, he was being far more cautious and making sure to avid certain alleys or wandering too close to any of the local pubs. 

As he walked Severus kept glancing up to the dark cloud choked sky, hoping the rain would hold off until he got back to the house.  He wasn't looking forward to trudging through the rain for a second day in a row, or getting soaked to the skin.  

It was from the cover of one of these alleys that Severus arrived to lurk around the back door of his destination.  O'Malley's Family Bakery. 

Now all he had to do was wait. 

Not too long later Mr. O'Malley and one of his sons lumbered out of the back door with arms full with trays of bread, buns, scones, tarts, and all sorts of baked goods.  The bakery's 'day olds' that were slightly too stale to sell, and because of that were destined for the bins despite still being perfectly edible.  Severus waited until the two men had settled the trays down on an old metal table by the door and went back inside for the rest before he acted.  

Why the table?  Why were they going in and out instead of just throwing their first arm full into the bin?  Why the big production? 

Because old Mr. O'Malley, the bastard, chained and pad locked the bins to stop desperate children like Severus, poor people, and homeless individuals scavenging his unsellable merchandise from the bins. 

Was this an utterly insane thing to do?  Yes.  Did old Mr. O'Malley continue to do this until his largely unlamented death?  Yes. 

Because of these odd habits of old Mr. O'Malley's, O'Malley's bakery wasn't the ideal place to try this.  There were three other bakeries in Cokeworth where it would be far easier to nick the days old from, Adam's bakery for instance.  Severus knew they donated their day olds to the local homeless shelter, and Ronnie who worked there when Severus was a teenager would actually just give him some of the day olds if he showed up and she was on day old duty.  But they were farther away from Spinner's End and honestly Severus just couldn't walk that distance the state he was currently in.

Once the door swung shut Severus performed a summoning charm, hoping it would work, and work quickly.  Thankfully, the inordinate amount of practice he had engaged in the previous evening paid off and a section of baked goods came flying towards him.  They came towards him a little more quicky than Severus was expecting, to be honest. 

The trickiest part, as it turned out, wasn't actually the summoning charm however.  It was actually directing the food towards the rucksack, or failing that, using the rucksack to catch it. 

Was this strategy by any stretch of the imagination dignified?  Not even close. 

Was it effective though?  Yes, actually.  No food ended up on the damp, wet ground of the alley.  So, success. 

Was it fun?  Also yes.  

His foray into interpretive dance lasted less than a minute.  By the time the two O'Malleys were coming back out the back door Severus had his rucksack full of food thrown over his shoulders and was skulking away into the poorly lit Cokeworth streets. 

His work, such as it was, for the morning wasn't done yet.  Severus was limping off to his next destination, which was luckily on the route back to the Snape out in Spinner's End.  

Smith's Greengrocers, as far as Severus remembered, got their new inventory delivered in the very early morning on a Monday.  He was hoping that, similarly to O'Malley's, this schedule was something well established by the point of his previous adolescence and would be the same at the current point in time.  

As it happened, Severus was having an unusually lucky morning because when he crept up the alley to the back entrance of the grocers, they were unloading a delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables.  It was more difficult to summon away some fruit while there were half a dozen men running around with crates of merchandise.  The were certainly more attentive than the O'Malleys had been. 

That was alright, Severus could be patient. 

It would be nice to take a break to rest his very sore self. 

It took a while before Severus saw an opportunity to strike.  Eventually all the worker's backs were turned and Severus was able to quickly flick a summoning spell towards a group of unsupervised crates.  He had been hoping this time around his summoning charm would be at least a little bit more controlled. 

It was not. 

So despite how tired and sore he was, Severus once more delved into his newfound hobby of interpretive dance.  With the welts on his back being quite painful from lugging around the rucksack this time wasn't as fun for him as the song and dance of stealing pastries.  He did get a decent number of apples and pears out of the endeavour, as well as a couple of carrots, so it was worth it in the end.  

Once all of his loot was safely tucked away in his rucksack Severus slipped back down the dark alley he was hiding in and began making his way back towards Spinner's End.  

When he made it back to the Snape house Severus was incredibly careful opening the door and closing it behind him, trying not to make any noise.  He stood just inside the doorway, listening intently for any sign of movement from upstairs.  The continued silence indicated that his parents were still asleep, undisturbed by his return to the house.

On silent feet he crept through the house, making sure to avoid the creaky floorboards, to the kitchen.  He rooted through the rucksack to retrieve one of the loaves of bread he had liberated.  With a delicately cast levitation charm Severus placed the loaf into the almost empty breadbin.  All that was in there was the bare heel of a very, very stale loaf of bread.  Stale bread in the Snape house was far from unusual, and a day-old loaf appearing in the breadbin wouldn't raise any eyebrows from his parents.  Neither would question it, but Severus would get more to eat with dinner in the evening.  

He tip-toed over to the cupboard where Eileen kept the meagre offering of vegetables in the house and snuck the two carrots he'd accidentally summoned in amongst what was already there.  Two extra carrots wasn't exactly a dramatic change, even in their house, so with a bit of luck she wouldn't notice there was any difference from the day before.  Even if she did, it wasn't likely that Eileen would bother to mention it.  But, like with the bread, Severus could hope to get a slightly more substantial dinner out of it.  

He crept back to his bedroom with the rest of his loot to take a proper look at what he'd gotten.  He had a second loaf of bread, a dozen scones, and a half dozen each of crumpets and hot cross buns.  Three of the scones were fruit scones.  He wasn't a big fan of raisins, but beggars couldn't be choosers and Severus had learned not to be picky about food from the time he was a toddler the first time around. 

What he was most excited about were the three ham and cheese scones.  They were his favourite since he was a child and up until his dying day.  Well, past his dying day evidently. 

The rest of the scones were plain, but that was quite alright by Severus. 

That was as much as his rucksack could carry without squishing everything inside of it.  He made a mental note to work on undetectable expansion charms as soon as his magic was up to the task once more. 

This certainly wasn't the makings of the most balanced or healthiest diet, but it was better than what he'd made do with eating during his last childhood so Severus was pleased enough for the time being.  

Severus happily ate one of his ham and cheese scones, tasty and filling.  Despite being deemed fit for the bin by the bakery, it was far more palatable than any food his parents would ever provide him.  He had to exert serious effort to restrain himself from eating everything in front of him.  He had learned the hard way after his first feast at Hogwarts not to gorge himself after a period of starvation.  Even with the memory of spending his first night at school vomiting in the dorm bathroom vivid in his mind, Severus was sorely tempted to stuff every crumb of food into his mouth and damn the consequences. 

Instead of scarfing everything down he contended himself with munching on an apple.  He tried to savour it, eating slowly like he did with the scone, but all too soon he was looking at a bare apple core that he was going to have to dispose of without his parents noticing.  

Before Severus could figure out how he was going to do so, however, he had to quicky as humanly possible pack all of it away and dive back into his bed, making sure the tattered blankets were covering any signs of his new cloak blanket.  He curled up as though he was cold and huddling for warmth, not a stretch of a performance, and feigned sleep.  Because he heard the faint sound of an alarm clock from his parents' bedroom.  Tobias was waking up to get ready for work.  

On a normal day it would be unlikely for Tobias to come into Severus's room unless he'd done something to anger the man.  But with the anniversary coming up, and Tobias potentially still in his 'guilt' phase of his outbursts, it was a possibility he would if he heard anything even vaguely suspicious.  

So all of Severus's instincts were screaming at him to play dead until Tobias left for work.  Or, well, play asleep as it were.  This may well have been a paranoid overreaction, Severus was well aware of that possibility.  But through decades of acting a spy, double, and triple agent Severus had learned to rely on his instincts, and that it was far better to be a tad too paranoid than not paranoid enough.  Constant vigilance was, after all, one of the only things he and Alastor Moody ever fully agreed on. 

Thinking of Mad-Eye was surprisingly nostalgic, considering the man never liked him and made no secret of the fact.  But he was one of the few people from the Order that Severus genuinely respected and appreciated. 

Perhaps this time around he could manage to cultivate a better relationship with the brilliant madman.  He had no intention of allowing himself to be cornered into signing his life away to the Death Eaters, and after all that was what initiated Moody's intense dislike and distrust of Severus.  The man was absolutely insane, but he was undoubtedly brilliant, pragmatic, and ruthlessly efficient as well as being one of the most highly respected and feared aurors in the Ministry's history.  

Overall, he would be an excellent person to have an at least amicable relationship if Severus could manage it.  

Ruminating on the state of his previous and potentially future relationship with Mad-Eye Moody was a pleasant enough distraction from Tobias thumping around downstairs.  Until, that is, the man's heavy footsteps started to come back up the creaky stairs.  Severus flinched when he heard them coming down the hallway. 

Calm down, Severus thought to himself, the arsehole probably just forgot something in his bedroom. 

He forced himself to stay curled up exactly the same and kept his breathing even through sheer force of will.  This was made even more difficult when the footsteps stopped and Tobias lingered in the hallway for seemingly no reason.  Then, the bedroom door opened and Severus had to restrain himself from leaping out of his bed and jumping out the window to escape. 

Despite how much he wanted to flee Severus stayed put playing dead while Tobias came into the room and stood over him. 

He didn't do anything.  He didn't say anything.  He just stood there. 

It was terrifying. 

Severus had no idea for how long, or why, he was too preoccupied trying not to have a very loud and obvious panic attack.  What by Merlin's saggy left ball was he doing?  Would he just leave already? 

After far too long Tobias abruptly turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.  

Severus remained frozen like a scared deer until he heard the front door slam behind Tobias. 

That was when the panic attack truly set in. 

He shoved his head under the pillow in an attempt to muffle the sounds of his panicking so as not to wake his mother. 

What the actual fuck was Tobias doing?  Why did he just stand there staring at Severus while he 'slept'?  Had he done this in his last time around and Severus just didn't notice? 

What and why swirled through his head on an endless loop as he desperately gasped for breath. 

A muggle repelling charm on his doorway was a top priority, he shakily decided.  Severus was of a mind to get up and apply the charms right away, but apparently fate disagreed with this course of immediate action.  Because Severus lost the struggle to breathe and also lost consciousness.  

Chapter Text

The last days of January, the month of February, and the beginning of March were, in a word, a slog.  He had so many plans and so much he needed to do but making any sort of decent, by his standards, progress in a timely manner required magic a lot stronger and more advanced than he was currently capable of.  This was an incredibly frustrating state of affairs for Severus who, while not being the most powerful wizard wandering around Britain, was used to being a skilled, effective, and formidable wizard in his own right.  A hard won state of being for him, and every reminder that he was back to square one hit like a punch to the mouth. 

Playing the light games - er, exercising his magic to help it develop healthily every morning and continuing to practice his occlumency to restore his mind palace at night were both very important for his health, mental and magical stability.  Using the cleansing charms he was learning from the book of beautification spells was necessary for his personal hygiene and wellbeing.  

They were necessary daily tasks. 

They were important daily tasks. 

It was important to increase the difficulty of the games - exercises gradually instead of rushing on ahead for them to be effective. 

It was important to take his time with his occlumency and do the work carefully and correctly. 

It was important to maintain his personal hygiene.  Severus liked being clean.  The spells were necessary for that until he could obtain money to buy proper toiletries.  

This was a mantra Severus had to repeat to himself constantly.  Because while they were important they were also very magically intensive for a five year old, occlumency practice in particular, leaving him little strength to tackle the other tasks he wished complete during his days.  Thus, he hadn't made nearly as much progress on them as he had wanted by the end of February.  

He was getting increasingly impatient with himself.  So, Severus kept reminding himself that it was more important that he do things correctly than quickly.  He consoled himself with reminders that while he had not made as much progress as he wished, he had made progress. 

The hair cleansing spell in particular was proving troublesome.  He had yet to master it by the end of the month with results ranging from poofy, to still greasy, to both somehow.  With each failure of this spell Severus was forcefully reminded of why he'd utterly given up on his hair by the age of twenty. 

The most prominent bit of progress being that he could feel his magic, slowly and painstakingly, growing stronger over the last few weeks.  What he was doing was working.  Gradually, he was beginning to be able to perform more magic before he wore himself out. 

He was seeing slight improvements in his ability to cast wandlessly and wordlessly. 

Severus was, he reminded himself firmly many times, further along with his magic than he was at this age in his last life. 

Another difference from his past life that Severus was insisting to himself was progress and a good thing, rather than a waste of effort and energy, was regarding the ley line he discovered on his second morning back in Spinner's End.  He reached out to it every time he performed his meditations to connect with his core.  It was still very dried out, there still wasn't much energy within it.  But it still reached back out to his magic whenever he reached out, by the end of the month it did so more firmly than the feeble barely noticeable way it had at the beginning of all this. 

He still hadn't the foggiest idea what, if anything, he could do to help the ley line survive. 

But it seemed a bit ... happier ... if that made any sense.  

Unfortunately one thing holding him back had nothing to do with magical ability and there was nothing that could fix it but time.  

He'd allowed himself to forget just how much rest that children required.  Naps were a necessity rather than a silly indulgence.  With the amount of work he was attempting on a daily basis naps were something that he did have to factor into his schedule so he wouldn't start nodding off mid spell, or fall asleep while waiting for his parents to be too busy to hear what he was up to.  

He found himself desperate to crawl into bed before he'd finished the tasks he'd assigned himself for the evening more than once.  

Which is how he had to admit that bedtime was actually necessary, and quite a lot earlier than he would like.  He was used to running on four hours sleep at most and getting through a full workday and his second and third jobs as a death eater and spy without much of a break.  So having to give into the sleep schedule his young body demanded wasn't something he was particularly happy about.  

The fact that he was more effective when well rested was one of the only redeeming factors of it all. 

The fact that this sleeping more nonsense left him looking less like a wraith from a ghost story was incidental, but another reason he couldn't hate the situation entirely.  He had been hoping to make a better reputation among the neighbours this time around, after all, and looking less like an Oliver Twist orphan gone wrong could help with that. 

The many and various injuries Severus woke up with when he accidentally time travelled took some time to heal but they did heal.  Even if the bite wound on his neck took several weeks.  And when he was healed up Severus did find that he had more energy and strength both magically and physically.  Not as much as he would prefer, but it was better than no improvement at all he insisted to himself. 

He went through the food he'd nicked from the bakery and the grocers quite quickly regardless of how much he tried to pace himself, and several more excursions to restock his food stash were necessary over the month.  Doing so frequently was a risk, yes, but he was hoping to build himself up to be able to walk to the businesses further away from the house.  Targeting multiple places on a rotation would hopefully disguise his activities and reduce the risk of being caught. 

He was, frustratingly, not capable of it yet. 

Being better, if not quite healthily, fed did have a very apparent impact quite quickly.  He had more energy from the additional food, which he had expected based on is memories from when he was put on the free school lunch programme in his last life.  He was starting to look a little bit healthier.  He had gained a little weight, not enough to be considered normal for his age but better than he was when he first woke up in the past.  By the end of the month of eating more Severus was really starting to feel less like a fragile bag of bones.  

He did in fact place muggle repelling charms around his doorway after the incident of Tobias standing over him in the early morning - which thankfully hadn't been repeated.  They weren't exactly powerful wards.  More like muggle dissuading than repelling if he was honest.  Even though that less than ideal result left him without strength to do anything more than play the games - perform the exercises for the rest of the day it was an achievement that he was able to do that much at all. 

He did, under the cover of the evening news, return to the attic to retrieve the rest of the belongings he had decided to claim as his own using a levitation charm - which he managed to execute perfectly, though it was far more tiring than he had hoped. 

Actually, the evening news proved to be incredibly useful to Severus through the month of February and he took back every complaint he ever had about it in his previous life. 

It was excellent cover not only for return trips to the attic, but for any of his projects and spell attempts with the potential to get a bit loud as well.  Such as levitating his bed away from the uninsulated window and exterior wall. 

During his return trips to the attic he did take more of the clothing, shoes and toys - for practicing magic on - he'd found that looked to be about his size but that he couldn't fit into the satchel and rucksack the first time he'd sneaked up there. 

He also managed to repair the leak in the roof.  There was no point in fixing the water stains and damp in his bedroom if a leak from the roof would just cause the same problem to reoccur.  Though that was a taxing endeavour and therefore examining the piles of water damaged things underneath it to determine what was worth salvaging and how he would go about it was relegated to a different evening.  

It wasn't worth the effort for Severus in his current state when there were other things in better condition to sort through.  

On one of those trips he found a quite decent old rug and what he was fairly certain had been a tablecloth, if a rather horrid one, both of which were worn through in places and stained in others.  Since he was confident he would be able to salvage them, he took them.  

He took the rug for obvious reasons.  The bare wood floor in his bedroom was constantly cold and as quite as he tried to be, his steps on the hard floor were still noticeable while his parents were awake and in the house.  

The tablecloth was for a more ... off label purpose.  His bedroom had a curtain rod, but no curtain.  Hanging a tablecloth from the curtain rod wasn't a perfect or elegant solution by any means.  But it would help block the draft from the window which, while fixed, was old and poorly crafted enough that a draft consistently bled through.  

He would eventually be able to charm it into a colour other than the truly offensive tangerine. 

On another occasion Severus discovered a chest full of baby clothes and accessories.  One wouldn't think this would be a good find considering that despite his being smaller than a child his age should be Severus was, in fact, too large to make use of infant's clothes. 

The stack of baby blankets, however, made it worth the risky trip.  Multiple blankets of soft, warm wool in blues, greens, pinks and purples.  Individually they were too small to be of any use to him, obviously, but if he sewed them together they might make a good, soft, warm blanket for his bed.  Which would honestly be a luxury compared to his living conditions in his previous childhood.  

There was also an old secretary desk in one corner that Severus was eyeing. 

However, he left that in place for now.  It was rather too large for him to be confident he could get it downstairs without incident or making enough racket to draw his parents' attention.  Once he'd remastered shrinking charms though, it would be his. 

Over the month of February, stuck inside most of the time due to the horrible weather 'Keeping House Without a House Elf' proved itself to be an invaluable resource.  The cleaning and repairing spells within proved to be both more specific and more effective than the standard fare the witches and wizards he knew usually stuck to from 'The Standard Book of Spells'.  

Learning them was however, tricky. 

Even by the end of the month Severus couldn't cast them as effectively as the book indicated they should be.  Because of that he usually had to apply the cleaning spells more than once to an object or surface to get the desired result.  His results with the repairing spells were not quite perfect, and took several attempts to work each time, but they were actually quite good.  

Though it took him weeks to achieve in its entirety, Severus did by the second week in March have a bedroom that was properly clean with no dampness, water stains, mould or other distasteful health hazards.  The walls, floor and ceiling were clean and proper, no longer like the set of a muggle horror film.  His bedding and clothing were consistently clean and fresh.  He'd even managed a deep clean on the mattress and pillows.  

By the beginning of March his bedroom was without doubt the cleanest room in the house. 

Through similarly arduous effort he had managed to repair and clean the old iron bedframe, the decrepit old wardrobe, as well as the old footlocker and wooden box he had nicked from the attic on his first expedition. 

The footlocker was really excellent choice, even if getting it down to the bedroom had been a bit dicey at the time.  It fit quite perfectly at the foot of the bed and when placed there had the wonderful effect of concealing what was underneath the bed from the view of anyone standing in the doorway. 

The wooden box of unidentified purpose did in fact fit perfectly into the gap underneath the bedframe, and it very quickly gained a purpose for Severus's needs.  It became the home of Severus's food stash.  The addition of a series of rune work meant that his illicit food supply wouldn't spoil for quite a long time.  

The runes used for ingredient storage were something that any potions master worth their name could recall and produce with nary a thought - preservation, pest prevention, protection from damage, environmental stasis, etc. 

The slow, steady, precise and consistent work of runes was similar to potions in its requirements and had always suited Severus's abilities and temperament well.  It was therefore a nice change of pace from the charms and transfiguration he had been focusing on up until that point.  He didn't have proper carving equipment for the job, but with some very useful reinforcing charms from the household management book an awl from his grandmother's sewing box proved a very effective replacement.  Rune work also proved to be far easier to execute properly in his current condition.  Severus was actually quite happy with how they turned out.  

This did make perfect sense, a runemaster never used wandwork if it could possibly be avoided after all. 

If it weren't quite so obvious, Severus would have set himself to carving runes into the skirting boards, the window, the door frame, anything he could rather than relying on charms that had to be reapplied regularly. 

Severus hammered into his own head that this was a lot of progress for a five year old child.  This was an accomplishment.  Something to look back upon with pride for someone in his situation.  He should absolutely forget about the fact that this progress which took him over a month was something he could have achieved in a matter of minutes as an adult wizard.  This was a fact he tried very, very hard not to dwell on overmuch.  

He did his utmost to keep his head down and avoid Tobias.  His goal was not to end up in his father's line of sight for anything other than supper or Sunday mass.  He was successful in this more often than not.  Severus got through most of the month with little more than a few slaps and a couple of spankings, thankfully nothing approaching the violence of the day before Severus returned to the past so he could endure it.  

Tobias, thankfully, didn't repeat the terrifying morning where he stood over Severus's bed for no discernible reason.  The muggle repelling charm he placed on the doorway, though not as effectively done as he would like, seemed to have been working to some extent. 

The worst he suffered from Tobias was on what would have been his sister Julia's birthday.  That was a day where Tobias didn't arrive home in time for supper.  When he did eventually stumble home it was near midnight, he was roaring drunk, and incandescently furious.  

This is not to say he wasn't getting drunk and angry the rest of the month, because he was.  It is also not to say he kept his hands to himself for the rest of the month, because he didn't.  Severus did mention the other slaps and spankings he'd had to put up with.  

But the night of Julia's birthday was certainly the worst Tobias had been since Severus returned to the past.  Though it was much later than Severus had become accustomed to being awake, he had been woken by a nightmare - well, a memory, this was not uncommon in his previous life - and made the very poor decision to get a glass of water.  Because of this, he was in the kitchen when Tobias barged through the front door.  On hearing the man stomping into the house Severus attempted to quickly and quietly retreat upstairs, as had been his new habit regarding Tobias in general.  Due to Tobias standing in the way of the stairs, he wasn't quite successful.  What he ended up doing was stumbling in between Tobias and Eileen just as they were working up to having a proper barney. 

Luckily for him, Eileen decided to stay on the other side of the room by the fire and fling a book at Tobias instead of approaching to try to calm him down like she usually would.  Since Tobias couldn't target them both easily while they were on opposite sides of the room and had to commit to a direction, Severus was able to stumble up the stairs and hide himself in his wardrobe until the fight seemed to die down.  

He came out of that encounter with some new bruises and a minor concussion.  

While this wasn't great, it was far from the worst case scenario.  The worst case scenario was for him and/or his mother to be bleeding profusely or nursing broken bones when Tobias was done with them.  

Things with his mother were ... different during those few weeks.  

There were many days where Eileen had vacant eyes, where she stayed in her bedroom for most of the day and Severus didn't see her until it was time to start cooking supper.  On those days when she emerged she wasn't really present, she didn't seem fully aware of what was going on around her. 

But there were also days where she was present.  

The day after Julia's birthday, for instance.  When she came to check on Severus and the bump on his head Eileen was night and day different to the morning when he woke up in 1965.  She was warm, caring, worried, just like he remembered her in his old memories.  Eileen even came home from doing the grocery shopping later that day wit a slice of jam roly poly for them to share because it was Julia's favourite. 

Another day when Severus had been trying to practice colour changing charms and colour transfiguration  - the latter was more difficult, but more permanent - because that tangerine really had to go, on a collection of marbles he'd found in the attic.  Eileen came into the room because he was making too much noise.  How do you make too much noise with marbles?  By having a tiny five year old's hands, with a small child's terrible coordination, and a child's magical ability.  Apparently, marbles are incredibly loud when dropped onto a bare hardwood floor.  

In hindsight, marbles were a poor choice for his spell practice.  His initial choice was made because marbles were small and easy to conceal so any unintentional and weird magical results would be quickly and easily hidden away before anyone else could stumble upon them.  He did not take into account how loud they were. 

Whoops. 

He also really needed to get that rug mended enough to use.  

But Eileen didn't get angry or upset about him having the marbles, or waking her up with the noise.  She didn't even ask Severus what he was doing.  Instead she sat down to teach him how to play 'properly'. 

"We don't throw marbles silly boy," she said with a ruffle of his hair, "let mummy show you."

And Eileen did just that.  Although Severus was quite sure she taught him how to play gobstones, not marbles, considering the mention of goop at one stage.  Was there any difference between the rules of gobstones and marbles other than the goop?  He wasn't actually certain.  But that was beside the point. 

The point was that Eileen smiled that morning.  

A proper, actually happy seeming smile.  

This was such a rarity for Eileen, both in this life and his past one, that quite without his conscious intention Severus found himself determined to get his mother to smile again. 

Severus knew there was something going on with Eileen more deeply than a morning playing gobstones could fix.  But he wasn't a mind healer, a healer of any description really, nor a muggle psychologist.  Any and all attempts to force her to look at their situation, what it was doing to them both, and leave Tobias ended with nothing but an argument and building ever more resentment.  

There was, based on prior experience and lack of training as mind healer nor the funds to engage one, nothing he could do to fix the root of the issue.  But he had made her smile.  He had made the weight that seemed to drag her down deeper and deeper into inactivity and dissociation seem to lift from her for a few hours.  For a few days after that Eileen seemed, not well, but better than her typical state.  

Severus could, he would, make her smile again.