Chapter Text
Many fantasy stories begin with "Once upon a time..." and this one had every reason to be a beautiful tale of a rich girl who marries her less wealthy true love, against her family's wishes, but in the end, it all ends happily ever after.
Unfortunately, reality and fantasy have very different rules.
Eileen Aurea Prince was born on May 16, 1930, the daughter of Lord Claudius Dominicus Prince and Lady Agatha Floridia Prince née Pyrites. Eileen was a very fortunate child born into one of the wealthiest pureblood families known for producing genius potioneers and spell inventors. The baby soon began to display the physical characteristics of the Prince lineage, such as black hair and light blue eyes.
From an early age, she was taught pureblood customs and how to be a respected lady. Her mother was a loving and polite woman, everything a Lord could want for a wife, and spent all her time looking after the house, the house elves, and the upbringing and education of little Eileen. Lord Claudius was a member of the prestigious Supreme Court and a renowned potioneer in the International Potions Guild, being a cold and calculating man, always keeping a distant personality even with his family. Still, the Lord Prince was very proud of his little daughter, even if she cannot be the heir, as she showed signs of magical power worthy of the family lineage while growing up.
Eileen's childhood was pretty much the same as all other daughters of pureblood families, which involved etiquette sessions, learning foreign languages, socializing with other children of the same social status, and basic magical knowledge, "a pureblood cannot enter Hogwarts unprepared", family rules and traditions, everything that a future pureblood wife has to know to be considered a good marriage choice and thus allow the family to force alliances.
She was a happy child, with a great talent for Gobstone, a very close relationship with her mother, and a cold but proud father. Of course, all good things must come to an end, sooner or later.
A few months after Eileen's sixth birthday, her mother gave birth to Tiberius Claudius Prince, the future heir of the family.
As heir, the youngest son was the main focus of Lord and Lady Prince for the next five years, and Eileen saw her cold father increasingly unreachable and her loving mother more distant. The house elves became her main carers and apart from social engagements and formal family dinners, her only time with her parents was sparse, until her eleventh birthday when she received her letter from Hogwarts.
The whole family gathered at the dinner table at six in the morning to await the owl. At exactly 9.30 am the sound of wings was heard and everyone looked at the brown bird. He landed in front of the birthday girl who quickly withdrew the letter. Lord Prince complained about his lack of etiquette but fell on deaf ears because all that mattered to the child was that she could finally go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
On September 1, 1941, Eileen was selected into the house of founder Salazar Slytherin like her father many years before.
Throughout her years at school, she was an exemplary student, with pureblood friends in Ravenclaw and her own house, as well as a good muggle-born friend from Hufflepuff.
By her fifth year, she was the captain of the Gobstones Team and President of the Gobstones club at Hogwarts, a prodigy in potions and herbology, having several proposals from Lords who want to reunite their children with Eileen.
Unfortunately for Miss Prince, Lord Prince had signed a marriage contract a year after the birth of her daughter with the Heir to the Yaxley Family, the only problem was that this heir was almost thirty years older than her and famous for his horrible looks and even more terrible personality.
She did not want to marry her father’s choice, but Lord Prince did not want to cancel a contract with one of the families of the Sacred 28, no matter how much the rumours were not positive about his daughter's future husband. In this case, the connections he could make, money, and family prestige weighed far more heavily than ensuring a healthy marriage union for his only female descendant.
When Eileen turned 17, she found herself backed into a corner. With just over a year to go before she graduated and the wedding scheduled for a month after her graduation, she was depressed and completely hopeless.
Her best friend Orva Francis, a muggle-born Hufflepuff, suggested showing the muggle world, to lift her friend’s spirits.
One weekend the friends escaped from boarding school and spent Saturday exploring all that the non-magical world had to offer. Eileen was shocked by several things she saw, even if she had heard of them before.
During the summer between sixth and seventh, Eileen managed to trick her parents into believing she was staying at the home of one of her Slytherin classmates and spent a month at Orva's house to learn about the muggle world.
A few days before her month of freedom ended, she met a boy three years older than her in a pub.
He was quite tall, with light brown hair, mesmerizing brown eyes, and a slightly larger, than the normal, nose. He was a gentleman and had a very sharp silver tongue for flattery. Eileen who rarely found herself at the attention of a man other than for his status was delighted.
Little did she know that Tobias Snape was able to recognize Eileen as a daughter of a wealthy family and was looking to trick her into getting her money.
The farce was well set up, the innocent teenager fell into the trap and fell in love with Tobias.
They spent Eileen's seventh year writing love letters, sent with the help of the muggle service mail created for students with non-magical families.
Tobias never knew about the magic of the pureblood and Eileen never knew that he was just a factory worker and was after her money.
She shared one night, when she escaped from Hogwarts, in the pub that her father had arranged a marriage to a man 30 years older and horrible. Seeing her desperation Tobias took the opportunity to convince her to marry him, because according to him " If you're already married, they can't offer you to that man".
Naive as she was, she immediately said yes. On May 18, 1948, Tobias Snape and Eileen Prince were married in the Protestant church near Tobias’s home.
Eileen, now, Snape had a big problem, tell her family. But she hoped they would understand that she was in love.
As I said at the beginning, fantasy and reality follow different rules. Her father was furious and tried to kill her for dishonouring the family by marrying a muggle and worse saying that she fell in love with him.
Her mother and brother stopped Lord Prince from murdering her in time, but they couldn't stop the arrest warrant for Eileen in her chambers. The union was non-magical and did not count in the eyes of the pureblood. If necessary, he would use the Imperius curse to force her to marry the Yaxley Heir.
She was under house arrest for the month leading up to the wedding, all the while trying unsuccessfully to escape.
The day before the big day, she lost hope, until her mother appeared in her chambers for the first time.
They embraced and Eileen cried in her lap as she did as a child.
Lady Prince learned of her husband's plan to curse her daughter and for the first time decided it was time to be proactive. She gave Eileen a bag with some money, jewellery, food, and most importantly her wand. And separately an old diary passed down from generation to generation among the women of the Prince family.
With help from her mother and a house elf from the Pyrites family, Eileen grabbed as many things as she could and ran away from home.
Before she left her mother asked:
- "You're going to go to the muggle?"
- "Yes mum, I love him"
- "Does he know about magic?"
- “Not yet, but I'm sure everything will be fine.”
Her mother looked at her pityingly but said no more. In the end, she knew that both of her daughter's fates would be horrible, but it was her choice now and it was completely out of her ability to help her.
- "May Lady Magic pity you, my child, may she remove the veils of passion from your eyes and bring you to reality before it is too late."
However, Eileen followed her wish, passed through Gringotts, exchanged the galleons her mother gave her for pounds, and caught a bus to Spinner's End where she knocked on Tobias's door.
Tobias being woken up in the middle of the night, was furious until he saw who it was.
Eileen jumped into the arms of her husband who was shocked to see the girl and froze.
- "My father locked me in my room for this whole month, I tried to escape but only now have I managed with my mother's help, I'm sorry I disappeared."
Tobias dropped his embrace and asked Eileen to explain everything and she did.
Knowing that she had just enough money to last a few years and now she couldn't even appear in front of her family without being killed, Tobias was furious and finally revealed his true personality. Eileen was shocked that she had been slapped and looked at her husband with watery eyes.
Realizing his mistake Tobias apologized and she accepted it considering the high level of emotions that occurred that day. "It was only once she thought"
However, it wasn't just once, with his education at Hogwarts getting lucrative jobs in the muggle world was difficult and Tobias with his factory worker's salary struggled to cover the expenses of married life.
After 5 years, after all, Eileen’s money had been spent and she finally got a job in a school library, Tobias finally told her why he had married her, as he came home from the pub drunk after a day at work.
Eileen was heartbroken and thought about running away, but except for some of her mother's jewellery and clothes, everything she owned was magic that had no value in the muggle world and with the prospect of having to live without a roof over her head or support she just couldn't do that. Tobias would get drunk a few times a week, and he would yell at Eileen, about how useless she was, how she should have gotten more money from her parents, and how she couldn't even give him a child.
Like many pure-bloods, Eileen found it difficult to get pregnant, given her financial situation it was something she didn't mind. She would rather wait, but the social pressure was mounting. In a land with lower-class people, a couple married for so long would have children even if they didn't want to. Contraception measures are not exactly talked about in a town of Protestant belief.
Nine years after their marriage Eileen discovered that she was finally pregnant. With her job at the library and Tobias' steady income at the textile factory, she felt that economically speaking it was the best time. She wanted to have this child and during her pregnancy, Tobias seemed to have returned to being the man he was when they first met. She was for the first time, happy again, but deep down she was afraid.
Tobias was religious and when drunk, violent and rude. He didn't like people of different skin colour or foreigners, homosexuals, or people with careers like arts or music. Eileen never told him about his magic because of it, she didn't stop using it but it was always discreetly and when he wasn't home.
The child could be born a Squib but she knew better. The fetus in her womb had strong magic, she could feel and while that would be fine if she was in a magical society, in the muggle world strong magic means more accidental magic, which leads to being more easily discovered by muggles, especially by a tall, strong muggle named Tobias.
With all her doubts at the age of 29, Eileen Aurea Snape gave birth in the early hours of January 9, 1960, to Severus Tobias Snape, her son, and the only family she would give her life for.