Chapter Text
For the rest of the week, Severus accompanies Tobias to work.
The days are... fine.
Predictable. Calm. The routine settles into something almost comfortable: morning walk to the college, hours spent in the back of the classroom with his paper and pencils, watching his father teach. Lunch in the small staffroom where the other professors have learned to accept his presence. More lectures in the afternoon. The walk home as evening descends.
Fine.
Severus observes the students with an attention they don't deserve and certainly don't notice. Young adults, most of them fresh from secondary school, seeking certification that might lead somewhere better. They struggle with concepts Severus could explain in his sleep. Make elementary errors. Ask questions that reveal fundamental gaps in their understanding.
He can't help comparing them to the idiots he once taught.
Potter and his gang, swaggering through Potions with unearned confidence. Longbottom melting cauldrons with alarming regularity. The endless parade of Gryffindors who thought enthusiasm could substitute for precision. Even the Slytherins, his own house, often disappointed, more interested in politics than mastery.
But the difference here is stark.
Tobias has *patience*.
Genuine, inexhaustible patience. When a student struggles, he doesn't sneer or belittle. He breaks the problem down further. Finds another angle of approach. Uses analogies and demonstrations until comprehension clicks. He celebrates small victories, a correctly balanced equation, a properly identified compound with warm encouragement.
He makes them feel capable.
Severus watches and wonders: where did that patience go?
When did it vanish? What ground it down until nothing remained but bitterness and the kind of frustrated anger that lashes out at anything vulnerable?
The thought circles back to magic, as it always does.
Tobias hated it. Feared it, maybe, more than he'd ever admit. And Severus *was* magic, undeniably, irrevocably. Every accidental levitation, every burst of emotion-driven power, every reminder that his son belonged to a world that had stolen his wife away.
A dangerous conclusion threatens to form: that Severus himself was the poison. That his existence as a magical child corrupted his father's better nature, turned patience into cruelty, love into loathing.
Severus stops himself.
Forces the thought apart before it can solidify into conviction.
There were many variables. The layoff that destroyed Tobias's identity. The financial strain. The slow suffocation of dreams deferred. The drinking that started as escape and became addiction. The way poverty and disappointment calcify into rage that needs somewhere to land.
Magic was the first fracture, the initial betrayal that made Tobias question everything about his marriage, his choices, his life. But it wasn't the only one. Wasn't sufficient on its own to explain the complete collapse.
He refuses to let that thought harden into blame.
Refuses to accept that he, by virtue of being born what he was, doomed everything from the start.
(But the doubt remains, quiet and persistent, in the back of his mind where all his worst fears live.)
...
Saturday approaches faster than Severus wants.
Time has a cruel way of accelerating toward the moments you'd prefer to avoid. The week collapses, days bleeding together until suddenly it's Friday night and Tobias is talking enthusiastically about tomorrow's plans over dinner.
"The park at ten," his father says, cheerful and hopeful. "Iris mentioned that's when most families gather. Good weather forecast too, should be pleasant."
Eileen's fork scrapes against her plate. The sound is sharp, discordant.
"We don't need to go," she says. Her voice is carefully controlled. Too controlled. "Severus is fine without... without parading him around."
"It's not parading, *láska*. It's socializing. Children need friends."
"He's *three*."
"Exactly." Tobias reaches for her hand across the table. "Perfect age for making friends. Better now than later, when he's set in his ways."
Eileen pulls her hand back. "He's fine as he is."
Severus watches this exchange with growing understanding. His mother is upset, beyond what the situation seems to warrant. Her anxiety is palpable, radiating off her in waves that she's trying desperately to mask as irritation.
He realizes why.
This is the age of accidental magic.
Between three and seven, when control is nonexistent and emotions run hot, magical children are *volatile*. Objects levitate. Glass shatters. Impossible things happen with alarming regularity. The Statute of Secrecy exists partly because of this exact problem, magical children accidentally exposing themselves, requiring Memory Charms and cover stories and constant vigilance from their parents.
Taking Severus to a public park full of Muggle children and their observant parents is, from Eileen's perspective, an unacceptable risk.
But she cannot *say* that.
Cannot explain her real fear without destroying the carefully constructed image of normalcy she's built. Cannot tell her Muggle husband that their son might suddenly make something float or burst into accidental apparition or display any of a hundred other impossible abilities.
So the anxiety curdles into anger. The only emotion she can safely express.
"You don't understand," she says tightly. "He's... he's shy. It'll be overwhelming for him."
"Then we'll stay close," Tobias responds with maddening reasonableness. "Let him warm up at his own pace. No pressure. Just... letting him see other children. Letting him have the *option* of friendship."
His father's patience, that same patience he displays with struggling students, only seems to make Eileen more agitated. She stands abruptly, begins clearing dishes with more force than necessary.
"Fine," she says. "We'll go. But don't expect miracles."
The word choice makes Severus flinch.
Tobias doesn't notice. He's too busy looking relieved, pleased that he's won this small domestic battle. "Thank you, Lin. You'll see, it'll be good for all of us."
Eileen says nothing. Just continues washing dishes with sharp, precise movements that speak volumes about her actual feelings.
...
Saturday morning arrives with cruel inevitability.
Tobias is enthusiastic, moving through the house with energetic purpose. He dresses Severus himself. Combs his hair with careful attention.
"There," his father says, stepping back to admire his work. "Very handsome. The other children won't know what hit them."
Severus manages a weak smile.
Eileen emerges from the bedroom dressed but unmistakably upset. Her movements are stiff, controlled. She doesn't meet Tobias's eyes when he tries to kiss her cheek.
"Ready?" Tobias asks, determinedly cheerful despite the obvious tension.
"As I'll ever be," Eileen mutters.
They leave. Tobias carries Severus on his shoulders, light, carefree, the picture of a happy father with his son. Severus clings to his father's head, watching the world sway with each step.
Eileen walks behind them.
Deliberately. Maintaining distance.
Severus recognizes the behavior immediately: a pureblood mannerism. Emotional punishment through physical separation. Walking apart to demonstrate displeasure without verbal confrontation. His mother had learned this from her family, the Princes, with their aristocratic pretensions and carefully calibrated displays of approval or disappointment.
The irony is sharp enough to cut.
She left that world. Rejected it entirely when she married Tobias and disappeared into Muggle anonymity. But it still lives in her gestures. In the unconscious ways she expresses emotion. In the patterns learned so young they became reflexive.
You can leave your family, but they never entirely leave you.
Tobias notices, glances back once, twice, his expression flickering with confusion and hurt but says nothing. Just adjusts Severus on his shoulders and keeps walking.
Severus pretends not to see. Keeps his gaze forward, fixed on the route ahead.
He has bigger things to worry about.
...
All week, he's been practicing.
Lying in bed at night, running through scenarios. Imagining conversations. Rehearsing responses that sound appropriately childish, appropriately normal.
*"Hello. I'm Severus."*
*"Do you want to play?"*
*"That's a nice doll."*
Simple phrases. The kind of thing any three-year-old might say. Nothing too advanced. Nothing that would reveal the thirty-eight-year-old spy inhabiting this small body.
He knows his limitations. Must not sound haunted. Must not let the weight of decades leak through his careful facade. Must be a child meeting another child for the first time, not a man who watched that child grow up, make mistakes, die young because of choices he influenced.
Must not remember that the last time he heard Lily's voice, it was screaming for her son's life.
All his preparation feels useless now.
The real thing is worse.
*Much* worse.
The park comes into view, a sprawling green space with swings and slides, a small pond, paths winding through patches of grass and garden beds. It's open. Loud. Full of children shrieking with joy or outrage, parents clustered in conversational groups, the general chaos of weekend recreation.
Severus's pulse spikes.
This is it. There is no more delay. No more preparation time. No way to avoid what's coming.
Somewhere in that crowd of children, Lily Evans is playing. Red hair and green eyes and all the terrible inevitability of fate disguised as chance encounter.
Severus has faced the Dark Lord without flinching.
Has stared down Voldemort and survived. Has walked the knife's edge of double agency for years, knowing discovery meant death. Has endured torture and suspicion and the constant threat of exposure.
But the park *terrifies* him.
Because he can't Occlude his way through this. Can't hide behind masks and careful lies. Can't be anything other than what he appears to be: a small, awkward child meeting another child for the first time.
And somehow, he has to do it without destroying everything before it begins.
"There's Iris," Tobias says, pointing. "And those must be her daughters."
Severus follows his father's gaze.
And sees her.
Red hair bright against the morning sun. Small hands gripping the chains of a swing. Head tipped back, laughing at something her older sister just said.
Three years old.
*Alive*.
Lily Evans.
Severus stops breathing.