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It's Severus' first time at King's Cross Station, and he's shaking. The tremors are near-invisible, but his mum, of course, eventually notices. Platform 9 and 3/4 is a loud and chaotic bustle of activity, but she finds a quiet spot somehow and pulls him aside.
"Don't be nervous," Eileen says kindly, almost-but-not-quite kneeling before him. The years have not been kind to his mother, and the weathered lines on her pale face make her look decades older than she is. There's a weariness about her that's contagious, and Severus is afraid that he's caught it—that he caught it for years too long and that it's been years too late, and that now he's fated to mirror the frown lines of his mother for good, never able to escape feeling pulled apart in two directions. Forever stuck between feeling fifty years old and like a helpless, too-young child. No amount of kindness from his mother could change that.
"I don't belong here," Severus mutters, looking around at the horde of cheerful students skipping around them with disdain. Flicks his gaze away from the sappy reunions to the reserved and quiet aura of his mother. "You need me more."
Something breaks a bit in Eileen's eyes. Severus may be young, but he's seen that look often enough to recognise it on sight. "Oh, darling," she whispers, placing a tentative hand on the curve of his shoulder. He flinches at the word. Endearments have been rare in his life. "It shouldn't be this way. I'm not supposed to need you this much. I'm so sorry."
Severus purses his lips. He never wants to hear his mother apologise; he's already seen her do it far too much in the decade he's been alive. "He'll hurt you if you go back," he says in monotone, a last-ditch, reluctant attempt at a plea. It won't be of any use. He already knows her answer. "Don't go back, Mum."
"Oh, Severus, I'll be fine," she murmurs, squeezing his arm oh-so-lightly. A cautionary display of public affection that sets them both on edge. "Your father… he loves us, he does; he's just bad at showing it sometimes. You don't have to protect me. Just write to me every week; that's all I need."
The dejection shouldn't sting, but it does. Severus loves his mother, but he can predict her faults before she even displays them; despite everything the two of them had been through in that house, Eileen had chosen her path with him, and Severus has always known that even he is not enough of a reason to make her choose a path that does not include his monster of a father. Not for the first time, Severus wishes he could be more than he is.
"Sev!" comes a familiar squeal from behind him, bursting their bubble of shared misery. Severus' spine stiffens as he turns around.
"Hello, Lily," he says, tucking a lanky lock of dark hair behind his ear so that she can see the wan curve of his smile. Her whole family trails behind her, mother and father and sister and both sets of grandparents, all bustling with excitement and so, so alive, barring Petunia's storm-cloud detachment lingering in the back of the clan. Severus dislikes Lily's condescending older sister greatly on a good day, but today—which is certainly not a good day—he feels a sense of kinship with her. Two lone clouds of misery casting specks of imperfection in an otherwise sunny blue sky.
Behind him, he can sense his mother straighten up and recompose herself. "Hello," she says curiously to the vibrating red-headed girl. "Do you know my boy?"
Severus turns to her with reluctance. "Mum, this is Lily. She's my friend from the park." In the eleven months in which Lily had befriended him, Severus hadn't breathed her name to anyone. Not even his mother—the only one he tells anything to. Lily was special and Lily was his, and he'd always had the inkling that inviting someone into their bubble would ruin the precious, delicate friendship they'd created. Eileen hadn't cared that he'd been keeping secrets; she was only relieved that her son hadn't been wandering around Cokeworth alone.
Now the secrecy is lost, and Eileen knows. Severus, for reasons he does not care to explore, feels a pang of shame seeing his friend wave to his mother. Now Lily knows too.
There's a stark difference between Lily's family and his; one full and vibrant and full of life, staring with flickering smiles at the droopy-mouthed mother and son in worn dark clothing. He can see each of these differences catalogued in the wide-eyed curiosity of Lily's bright green eyes. Severus knows all too well that his family of two seems depressing, and the guilt he feels at that thought is horrid, because despite everything, he loves his mother and is proud of the way they both have survived. And yet… and yet. Will Lily still want to be his friend now that she's seen so much more of this side he's always tried to hide?
An unusual panic numbs his throat—Severus has never experienced these fears before, never shed the armour that was his spiky, prickly demeanor for long enough to let someone, anyone, in his life whom he'd be concerned about disappointing. Until his first friend. He doesn't like it, this panic, doesn't like how it freezes him in place and clouds his mind with fears and obscures his carefully-cultivated talent for ever-present alertness, but luckily, he doesn't have to experience it for long, because with his next jolt of awareness, he feels a small hand slip into his and tug him towards the Hogwarts Express.
"Hurry up, Sev, the train might get full!" Lily exclaims with a brilliant smile tinged only slightly with its ever present mischief. "Then again, the train's magic. I wonder if it's the size of a palace on the inside. Magic can do that, right?"
Uncertainly, Severus nods. Her smile grows wider, and it makes him happy.
He looks back and sees that his mother is engaged in stilted, but pleasant-looking, conversation with the Evanses. Petunia is quietly sulking three feet away. And Lily is looking at him with sparkling green eyes so bright that Severus feels like they should be glowing. Not an ounce of reservation in them at all.
And for the first time, Severus realises that there may be a slight, miniscule, impossible-but-not-improbable chance that he won't have to navigate his new Hogwarts life alone. That Lily, crazy as it seems, might actually decide to stick around.
This is his chance to be free.
He blinks once in quiet shock at his revelation. Lily doesn't notice. He looks back and sees his mother standing there with the Evanses, looking strange and out of place among the well-to-do clan, so clearly struggling to hold the tattered remains of her social mask in place and make an effort to look like she belongs. Severus might be free, but his mum is still trapped. And looking at her, he feels sorry for her.
"Go on ahead," he tells Lily, reluctantly slipping his hand out from hers and giving her a light push towards the train. "I would like to say goodbye to my mum again."
Lily shrugs and does as he says, waving him off with a cheery smile. Seeing their daughter head for the carriages, the Evans clan politely end their conversation with Eileen and follow after her to say their final goodbyes, leaving Severus and his mum alone once more.
"I want you to keep this," he tells his mother without fanfare as he approaches her, pulling his lucky stone from his pocket. It's nothing more than a common grey pebble Severus had found at the dirty riverbank at the edge of their town, polished till smooth by Severus himself, but it was embedded in a iron ring created by Eileen with the final essence of her magic—the last time she had ever wielded sparks from her fingertips before Severus' father had beaten the will for magic out of her. Severus had been seven. In the years since, this stone had been all the magic they'd had left.
But now, Severus has a shiny wand and a school full of spells to look forward to, and Eileen will have nothing. He can't let that happen.
Eileen stares at the offering in his outstretched palm for a long moment, unblinking. Severus thinks that her eyes are starting to get shiny, but dismisses it eventually as a trick of the light. His mother hasn't cried in years.
"Take it," he says again, thrusting his hand towards her more aggressively. "Keep it. To… to remember your magic."
"It's your ring, Sevvie," she whispers, looking sad again. "Your lucky stone. You need to keep it so that it can keep you safe."
Severus shakes his head. "You need it more than I do."
And maybe it's the determination in his gaze that does it, or the insistent way he shoves it into her palm, but she takes the ring with an air of bewilderment and without a hint of struggle, and Severus can only feel relief.
She pulls him into a tight hug, the tightest he's ever felt, and for a moment, Severus is a child, a regular child with childish fears and a false sense of safety and an unbearable need to cling to his mum's robes and never ever let go. He marvels at how this makes him feel, brimming so curiously with affection and sadness and joy when all his life, he's only ever felt empty. But the moment is fleeting and then it's gone, and when Eileen pulls back, Severus is fifty years old again with the weight of his life on his shoulders, and he's never been more glad to know that he has an escape.
Maybe Hogwarts will be kinder to him than Cokeworth has been. As an eleven-year-old boy with a broken sense of idealism, Severus can only hope.
But as he looks at Lily waving from the train window and pictures the new life waiting for him in a magic castle, Severus finds that he's cautiously optimistic.