Chapter Text
Summer break kicked off with a heatwave which, for the dreary town of Cokeworth, meant nothing good.
It was tolerable enough for now, standing in the magically built stop of Kings Cross Station. But Severus knew it would only get worse. He can already feel sweat beading under his collar, and he's only been leaning on a brick pillar for five minutes.
In previous years, he would step off the train and straight into his mother's short but tight hug. He’d answer all her customary questions with the answers she likes to hear before joining up with Lily and her family for one last goodbye before they assimilate back into their home lives for a short time. He’d pull faces at Petunia from behind the adults back and accept short and sweet hugs from both Janet and Clyde before they exchanged pleasantries with his own mum.
But this year, his fifth year over and done with, his mother was absent. He had left the train as quickly as possible to avoid the bulk of the student body but no matter where he swung his head, he couldn’t find her tall and slim figure anywhere about. He had settled against a lone pillar to wait for her and entertained himself by observing the crowd.
He saw the younger students run to embrace their families. Apathetic teens turning cheek to their parents' affections. He saw the marauders parade out of the train and into the arms of a wealthy looking couple. The Potters, if he were to hazard a guess, who took them all away via apparition. The minutes ticked by with no sign of her.
A few minutes later he caught sight of Lily strolling out of a train car not too far from him. She waved goodbye to her girlfriends and ran to her parents, hugging them tightly around the waist in turn before facing Petunia, who gave her a stiff hug and paper smile.
The quartet was gearing up to leave, a good idea in Severus’s mind as the heat swelled with the crowd's energy, when Lilys parents looked his way. Severus quickly looked away, becoming sparingly interested in his shabby watch. He knew that Lily must have written to her parents. It was not small news to cut off a friendship of nearly seven years. But he hoped deep down it wouldn’t affect his relationship with her parents.
Janet was kind. Always making more food than the family of four could eat and extending an open invite to Severus whenever he may need it. Clyde was made of sterner stuff, but even he was not immune to the charms of the neglected boy his daughter dragged home.
In the same strange way that Lily had grown to be like a sister to him, Clyde Evans was much like a father figure. Teaching him things his old man wouldn't be bothered with like how to change a tire or shave with a straight edge razor.
And it was Clyde who approached him now, doing an amusing little half jog to close the couple meters distance between them.
“Hey kiddo,” he said upon arrival, exhaling heavily in the way adults do when broaching a subject they know your defensive of. “I, uh- I know you and Lily had some issues this year, but I want you to know that our door is still open, should you need it.” He paused and searched Severus’s expression.
Hitching a thumb over his shoulder he added “Janet will say the same, but she didn’t want to leave the girls alone so soon. You know how they get.”
Severus did know, and it shot a brief bolt of hurt across his chest.
“Thank you, Sir.” Severus nodded once, because if there's anything his old man's heavy hand taught him, it was respecting his elders.
Clyde pressed his lips together and his brows furrowed but he smartly did not continue further. The older man was very aware of Severus’s tried and true method of shutting the fuck up when asked about anything being wrong, so he veered off course with a returning nod.
“Alright. Eileen not here yet?” He looked about the thinning crowd, but it was fruitless. “You need a ride home?”
Severus considered for only a brief second. His house on Spinner's End was only a few streets from the Evans home, but the idea of being boxed into the back seat, pressed from shoulder to knee with Lily yet still feeling the valley between them was too painful at present. He would rather brave the heat.
“No Sir.” He leant himself back against the pillar he had unknowingly righted from. “I’m sure she's just picked up an extra shift.” He assured. Or maybe she didn't have the money for the bus ride. Maybe Pa beat her so bad she couldn't go out.
He didn't voice these possibilities, instead giving a small but genuine smile to the man for his offer. More a twitch of his lips than anything.
Clyde nodded, but his worried expression remained. He and Eileen only interacted out of necessity, but even he knew of her punctuality.
“Okay son.” Ouch. Clyde reached out to grasp Severus’s shoulder warmly. “You need anything, you call.” The elder man knew not to expect an answer, so Severus watched as he turned on his heel and joined his family. Lily looked over her father's shoulder and their eyes met for the barest of seconds before she turned away. In pairs they walked through the boundary into the muggle world. Severus would never admit to the dampness of his eyes.
He waited five minutes to cross the boundary himself. Just in case.
|||||
In total he lasted almost ninety whole minutes between leaning on the pillar on the magical side and then holding down a bench on the muggle end of the station.
By the time he threw in the towel, sweat was gliding down his back, and his scripted nonchalance had melted away to reveal worry. His mother was never late to anything. Much less picking him up after ten months apart.
He dug through his old leather canvas bag before he left the meager air conditioning, counting his change in both forms of money. He had never taken the night bus, but he sincerely doubted the couple knuts in his palm would get him so far.
His muggle change would be enough to board a train closer to home, but he would have to walk the distance from there to his house. It was an alright trade he supposed. Tying his hair in a bun at his nape he sets off.
The train ride was packed full of folks on their evening commute and Sev was relieved when he stepped out of the smaller station and into the sun where he wouldn't brush shoulders with any more people. The walk was another forty-five minutes, give or take, and he entertained himself by jogging through the sunlight and slowing down to enjoy patches of shade.
When he reached his dilapidated street, the sweltering heat urged him swiftly towards the door.
His father's car was missing from the street, so he forwent any caution and called into the house, “Mum?” As he swung the door open and stepped in.
But on his next inhale as he shut the door, he chokes so suddenly that he has to brace himself on the wall. With the entrance sealed tight and allowing no more fresh air in, a terrible smell nearly brings the teen to his knees. It was a rancid odor that almost feels heavy as Severus breathes it in once more, bringing the collar of his shirt up and over his airways for some semblance of relief.
He could already feel a dreadful pit in his stomach. A nagging feeling whispering that he already had the answer to his new burning question.
He and his mother exchanged monthly letters, and for a while things were going far better for Eileen than usual. Your fathers gone away for a short while dear. To find better work . She wrote. It will be good for us . But his letter in May was returned unopened by the same school issued owl. In June, the large bird refused to even take off from its ledge.
Severus coughed heavily and finally took in his dim surroundings, eyes scanning the living room entrance on his left, kitchen entrance on his right, and the thin hallway and stairs straight ahead. His house was normally shabby, yes, but his mother kept it clean. This place was in ruin.
He could see a lump of terribly rotted fruit on the kitchen counter. The window facing the street was covered in a mixture of flies and feces so thick hardly any light shown through. Dishes left to soak in the sink now sat in murky brown muck and mould that grew tendrils out of its confines and along the countertop's grooves.
Rat droppings littered every available surface. Stains in the outdated carpet suggested urine. Along the walls he could see growing black and green mould colonies in various stages. Flies careened about in double digits, resulting in an eerie buzzing. Scattered at his feet were letters; bill notices and unknowns from his mother's multiple jobs, the oldest of them not spared the rough treatment of the rest of the house. Dust was present in every nook and cranny, brushing up and drifting through the air as Severus angled himself towards the one room he couldn't see so clearly.
His heart beating madly in his chest, Severus forced himself to take several steps deeper into the house. His living room revealed to him as he rounded the corner.
His mothers' bookshelves, untouched for quite some time. An empty space where the family's old tv would normally reside. His favorite chair in the corner where he would sit when his father wasn't home. A series of deep stains on the carpet. Mould in thicker batches. Live rats clustered along the floor.
The arm of his couch. His mothers prized afghan, stained and moth bitten, laid across a pair of legs.
He rounds the corner fully.
His mother. Reclined across the couch. Sleek black hair artfully splayed across her pillow. Looking as though her last moments were a peaceful nap.
Later, Severus will cling to that detail above all, fighting to keep the reality of it from his mind.
Her skull is almost fully exposed; eye sockets eaten through and filled with wriggling maggots that almost resemble rolling eyes at a glance. The rest of her body is a grotesque black sludge melting over bones. Liquefied pieces of what once had been a nightgown exist only at the edges of her form, otherwise disintegrated. Glimpses of deep greens, reds, and purples stand out amongst her decomposing flesh as bacteria takes her. Severus’s eyes roam her remains helplessly, once, twice.
The entire couch around her middle along with a great expanse of the floor and wall are splattered in the same dark remains as the rest of her- like her body burst at some point. The ceiling above her is blackened, peeling and dipping slowly inward; as though the rot expanded out from her body like an ironically living thing, determined to take the house down around her.
Flies and maggots dot her entirely. Rats circle the floor, looking for more solid pieces to feed on.
It seems that, for a minute or two, Severus forgot how to breathe. His eyes unwittingly take her in from head to toe and back again, not breathing or blinking or batting an eye before air surges into his lungs and he heaves.
He vomits onto the floor in front of him, choking on air to recover and heaving again from the smell in a cruel cycle. He stumbles out of the living room, thinking only that he must get away from that place because that thing cannot be his mother. Slamming harshly into a wall his first sorrowful cries escape. Through the tears blurring his vision, he sees the landline on the entrance way wall. He tugs it off the mantle as fast as he is able with fingers entirely numb from the shock, punching in 9-9-9 without thought.
They cannot bring her back, but maybe they can tell him what to do. Tell him where his father is. Connect him with the wizarding authorities who he cannot yet contact. Where is his wand?
He realizes he's been holding a silent phone for too long. Hanging up and dialing again only to get the same pure silence. It makes him notice that there is no hum of the appliances, and the lights are not on. The bills have not been paid.
The revelation that he cannot sit here in a ball and wait for help makes him cry louder, hyperventilating in the too hot space. His stricken mind can only think of one solution. Lily’s house. Be it Lily, Clyde, or Janet, they can help.
He stands from his crouched position against the wall, uncaring of the mould and vomit and Merlin knows what kind of biohazards are now dusting his clothes.
Already at full speed, he rips open the front door and tears down the feeble lawn, body operating on the muscle memory of past summers when his dad got too rough and he needed reprieve. He cuts across streets and jumps fences to get there faster. His tears don't stop the entire way. His cries only quieted as he pants through the sprinting leading him across the class line in town until he is running past manicured lawns and picket fences.
When he gets to the Evans home he bangs against the door and rings the bell again and again, bag falling off his shoulder as he uses the back of his wrist to wipe his nose while gasping for breath.
The door opens with a snap to reveal Petunia, maturing face already pinched in annoyance but quickly cycling through about a dozen emotions before she is nudged aside by Clyde.
“Severus?” The man asks. He steps out of the doorway slowly; with the slow care one would take with a wounded animal. Severus sways where he stands. His bag thumps to the ground.
“She-” He chokes on one long strained wail. His hands shake where they now hang at his sides.
“She’s-” He’s sure this time he gets the word dead out, but it exits in a whisper.
He breathes in and out quickly a few short times, throat burning.
“She’s dead.” He says at last.
It’s like the floodgates opened then, because Severus doesn't remember his knees buckling, or Clyde catching him. Lowering the pair to the ground, squeezing him around the waist and cradling his head in the crook of the bearded man's neck. How Petunia, in a rare display of emotion, clutched her sister's arm when Lily emerged from the dining room pale and worried at the display of raw anguish from her deeply reserved ex friend.
But he does remember the boiling hot pain searing its way across the chest and shoulders. The hole carving its way under his sternum. The bone deep aches all throughout his body, shaking him roughly from the center outward. His mother. His rock. Rotting away while he was at Hogwarts.
He blacks out in Clyde's steady arms. It’s probably for the best.