Slapdash

"Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again…"

Severus was awoken, once again, by the noise his parents were making in the kitchen. He crept slowly from his bedroom and hid at his usual vantage point to see what was going on.

What he saw indicated that the fights were only getting worse. His parents had shouted enough to wake the entire house—and young Severus suspected that, by now, the entire household was up, awoken, like he, by the constant sound of his parents' fight. Jonathan, his younger foster brother, would be nearing six by now…his birthday would be tomorrow (today?) and so would his. His eyes moved briefly to look at the clock that hung on the kitchen wall.

It was half past one.

He was shocked to discover that his parents had seemed to have stopped fighting. His mother stalked across the kitchen to pour herself a glass of Fire whiskey.

"Severus?" he heard his Father call. He had been discovered. His mother walked up to him and shot Severus a furious look.

"Get back to bed. Now."

"Leave him alone, Miranda," his father replied, scowling, "Go back to bed, Severus."

His father was unusually strict in his tone. Severus retired to his room.

As he crept into bed, he heard the sound of his parents' continued fighting. He didn't know what they were fighting about, but he hoped that it would end soon. He hated it when the fights began…

Severus looked sleepily at the picture that hung framed upon his bedroom wall. It was a photograph taken of a picnic that he remembered enjoying a few years earlier, when he was nine. Like any other wizarding photo, the people in the picture weren't stationary, but moved constantly as if they were real.

Severus watched them. Like his real parents were doing now, the figures in the wizarding photo were involved in a fight. It didn't seem very serious…they were probably just arguing about the amount of butter on the ham sandwiches, thought Severus.

He listened to the sound of the breeze blowing against the window and noticed his parents' fight become angrier and more agitated outside the door of his bedroom.

"You're not my real father," he said softly to his father in the photo, "and you're not my real mother."

He glared at her shortly before closing his eyes. She glared back at him.

"If you're not my mother, then where is she?"

He waited for an answer, but was distracted when he heard the sound of someone being slapped—hard. He didn't know who it was, but was too sleepy to be shocked. He heard the sound of his father trudge outside in a huff, then slam the door hard.

As he closed his eyes again he heard the sound of the glass shatter as the picture fell and crashed to the cold, hard tiled floor.

Idiots,

"Err…

She looked shocked at first, but tried to hide her expression from the children.

"Yes ma'am," Snape heard, "He was involved in a car crash about an hour ago at Cardiff…"

Snape could not believe it—he would not believe it. His father—what was he doing in Cardiff?

"I'm sorry," he heard the man on the other end answer. He tried to move, but he couldn't. He seemed to be frozen. Was he in shock?

He heard his mother mumble, "Thank you…" before she put the phone down in a daze. She still seemed shocked, but had not bothered to hide it anymore. He looked closer at her face, and could see the beginnings of a mirthless smile beginning to creep around the edges of her mouth. Was she in shock as well?

"Right, children," she said, obviously trying to sound jovial, "breakfast time…"

Severus waited at the door for his Father, but he wouldn't come. He turned his eyes to the car, then after a long pause, he walked up to the car and stepped inside. No more than a few seconds after he had jumped into the car, his Father had started the engine. Severus clung onto the seat in front of him in anticipation as they left their quiet street.

Severus was barely awake by the time they had driven to the City. He didn't recognize it at all.

He eyed a watch on the seat beside him. Four forty-five, it read.

Suddenly, a massive force caused him to be thrown forward and he heard a loud

"Come on," he heard, "I dare you!"

It was, of course, the mocking voice of his younger brother, Jonathan. He had some sort of a toy that had been confiscated by his mother. Severus had no idea what it was, but knew that he wanted it. Jonathan had promised to let him have it if he could retrieve it before his mother would throw it out.

He glanced at the clock. It was half past four—before anyone would have even thought to get up.

Just as he ran up to the counter, he heard the sound of his mother's footsteps as she approached.

Damn, he thought, and hid himself under the kitchen table.

He watched as his mother walked over to the fridge and took out a bottle of scotch. She poured herself a glass and summoned something from her room. She had gotten quite good at summoning charms; he hadn't seen her use a wand to summon anything within the past few weeks. She didn't need to say the words, either. Severus was astounded when he saw the jar float from her room upstairs.

She retrieved it and opened the jar, then poured out some pills into her open hand. Severus turned around when he heard someone else come into the kitchen.

"Bruce," he heard his mother moan, then turned back to look at her when she slammed the glass down on the kitchen counter. He assumed she'd downed the capsules; the scotch couldn't possibly be good for her.

"Your father was always a drunkard," she had told him, "always getting drunk…"

He saw Bruce come up to her and embrace her in a loose hug. He brought the glass to the sink, then walked back up to her and kissed her gently on the lips. Severus, horrified, jumped back with a squeak and hit his head on the wall.

That had gotten his mother's attention. He could only look with terror as she walked up to the table and extracted him, almost throwing him to the floor.

She began to scream at him…he could never remember the words she'd said; they were so horrible. Finally, she slapped him hard across the face, provoking a protest from Bruce.

"Aww…don't hit the poor kid, Miranda. You don't want to warp him…"

Severus began to sob when his mother ignored Bruce and sent him back up to his room.

Then he remembered what had happened that night.

It was before midnight, and he had packed up all of his belongings. He was ready to leave. He tip-toed quietly down the stairs, then cautiously summoned Jonathan's broom, a brand new Cleansweep, the broom that his parents had bought him for his birthday. He felt a bit guilty about stealing his little brother's birthday present, but vowed later that it would only be for the best.

Dressed in winter Muggle clothing, he softly jogged up the driveway where he remembered his father's car being parked years before.

He had a sudden flashback to years before—before his father had died, the years when he was at least a little happy. They were at a picnic at Dover, the place that he now remembered his father had died. They were playing together, he and his father and Jonathan. The ball had rolled away into the woods, and he volunteered to go after it. He ran, following the ball into the forest until he wondered why it hadn't stopped rolling. It finally stopped, and he bent over to pick it up. then he looked around him. He screamed and dropped the ball to the ground. Where there was lush, green, thriving forest, now there was death. All around him, he saw blood, bones and ghosts. Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around. It was his father, except it wasn't…it was a mass of tangled blood and flesh from the wreckage of the car crash that took place here, at Dover. He would always remember that place as a place of death.

His father was gone.

His father was gone, and Severus was left with his mother and stepfather, Bruce. He had never particularly liked Bruce, and he wasn't close with his foster mother either. There were some times when he hated them more than anything else in the world… he would just with that they would go away and leave him all alone…

He would be alone. He mounted his brother's broomstick and took off with the briefcase he had packed.

"I've treacle and toffee…"