Into the Fold

Winter 1980

The Knight Bus must have sensed Severus's need, for it banged! into the road in front of him as soon as the gates of Malfoy Manor clanged shut behind him. The desire to get back home, to the quiet little flat where he could be alone, utterly free and completely himself, must have blazed from his mind.

The Knight Bus's leaps toward London were less jarring than usual that morning. Severus stared out the window, watching countryside, then suburb fly past, until at his request the driver deposited him in the park across from his block. He bought a roll at a nearby bakery for breakfast and tramped the park until the wind, like an early spring-cleaning broom, swept the last of the cobwebby mists from his mind. Then he returned to his tiny, spotless flat, very like the flat he had lived in before Mother had come to him in London and they had moved to Linden Lane.

He fell on his bed and slept the afternoon away, through the night and into the dawn of the next morning, when he rose and returned to work.

****

The next few days passed in a frenzied whirlwind of work. St Mungo's was bursting at the seams with patients, and an avalanche of orders fell upon the Potions and Physics Department. Hurrying from ward to ward to make his deliveries, Severus had no time to linger in any one spot. But he spent long enough in A&E, restocking their depleted Potions cabinet, to see the ambulance arrive carrying a young wizard whose mind had been ground to powder by the Cruciatus Curse. As a grim and pale Sage consigned the sobbing, gibbering wizard to the Psychic Healers, Severus caught the fragments of Crandall and Everett's mutterings: "...Must-Not-Be-Named...Death Eaters...poor sod wouldn't join them...sign me up, I'd have said, the minute they threatened to curse me...."

They couldn't have been more right. Severus snapped the cabinet doors shut and pushed the trolley toward the corridor. The Ministry were panicked. The Aurors were killing now, but not fast enough. They were too late, and besides they couldn't beat the Dark Lord at that game. The Dark Lord was winning, and it was better, as Severus had learned long ago, to be on the winning side.

Lily was out of it, safe at home with the complications of pregnancy. The thought surprised Severus, nearly as much as its accompanying notion, that there was something than which pregnancy complications could be safer.

****

Severus's next day off was a Monday. He spent the evening eating dinner with his mother, at her flat in a tiny wizarding close not far from his own (thoroughly Muggle) neighbourhood.

Her flat was the tidiest place he could ever remember her living in: it positively sparkled with cleanliness. Even in the earliest days Severus could remember, when Mother had tried her hardest, the family had lived surrounded by clutter. As a child, Severus had generated his share of messes, and the slovenly Tobias, whether he was laid off or not, had never lifted a finger around the house.

But Mother had none of those obstacles to worry about now. Severus was all grown up and Tobias was dead.

On the gleaming table in the modern dining nook, Mother set a chop, vegetables and wine before Severus, then sat down across from him to the same meal.

With the feeling that the frustrations of the Potions and Physics Department were better left there, Severus avoided conversation about his work. Knowing that Mother liked to hear that he was comfortable, he talked up his new neighbourhood instead: the park, the bakery, the bright shops, the clean and tree-lined streets. He even spoke of visiting Malfoy Manor, since Mother had enjoyed hearing how the influential Lucius Malfoy favoured him--although he left out the details of what had happened to him there.

"Oh, you went to the Malfoys?" said Mother, smiling pleasantly. "And did you see Narcissa?"

"Briefly," said Severus.

"Did she look well? How is she feeling?"

Severus wasn't prepared to be interrogated about Narcissa Malfoy, or anybody else at Malfoy Manor, for that matter. "She seemed well enough." He forced a smile. "But you must know more than I do, since you see her more often."

"Well, actually I don't. I haven't seen Narcissa or her family since I moved into the flat. The Blacks and Malfoys have dropped me, I'm afraid." Mother gave a small laugh.

"Nonsense--!"

Mother raised a hand. "No, really, Severus, it's all right. I'm surprised they stood by us as long as they did--letting us stay at Malfoy Manor after we were evicted from Linden Lane. And when your father died, Druella and Narcissa were so incredibly good. But you couldn't expect them to keep up the connection after I'd left the Manor, after I was on my feet again."

"Why not? You're every bit as good as they are--"

Again Mother raised her hand. "Of course, Severus. We both are."

"Well, not really. I'm a half-blood."

"As are most witches and wizards, if they're not Muggle-borns. As were many of my friends, when I had friends, at school."

"You had half-blood friends?"

"And Muggle-born friends. Just like you. I remember that pretty little red-haired girl who used to come round--Lily Evans, that was her name. Her family were Muggles."

Severus gazed at his mother, trying to imagine her young once, a schoolgirl with friends. He tried to remember himself, younger still, bringing Lily to the house in Spinner's End. He'd only done that once or twice at the holidays, before he'd grown into a teenager and the rows with Tobias had got truly fierce.

"I've found an old school friend of mine lives right here in the close. Doris Hitchens. We've had lunch together, gone shopping a few times. Should I avoid her company just because she's a Muggle-born? I, who married a Muggle?"

"Have you heard from the Blacks or Malfoys at all since you moved in?" Severus asked.

"No."

So they had dropped her, as quickly as they'd befriended her.

"No, Severus," Mother repeated. "And I don't want you saying anything to Lucius and Narcissa about it." As if there were any chance he would! "I've been enough trouble to them. I won't trouble them any more."

Before, Mother would have spoken those words tremulously, hunching her shoulders as she did so. Now her voice was firm, her back straight, and it occurred to Severus that she wanted no more to do with the Malfoys than they wanted to do with her.

Why, when they'd been "so incredibly good?" Narcissa had comforted Mother, Lucius had protected her when Tobias's antics had led Mrs Watkins to evict Mother and Severus from Linden Lane, when a drunken row with Will Paxton had ended in Tobias's death.

"It's odd...I told Auror Scrimgeour Tobias would have quarrelled with anybody, because he would. But I never did know him to row with Will Paxton...."

Until Rabastan Lestrange, Bellatrix's brother-in-law, Lucius and Narcissa's friend, had egged Paxton on with an Imperius Curse. But no one would have told Mother that. No one would have wanted to disturb her hard-won peace.

"Old-fashioned, pure-blood society...it's limited, to be honest," Mother was saying. "You understand, working at St Mungo's as you do, rubbing shoulders with all kinds of people...and Doris, she's still in touch with some of my old Gobstones teammates, Ruth Leary, Josiah Crawley...."

Severus looked away. The Malfoys would have looked upon Tobias as a grievous offence. More so than Mother would have done, since they had never loved him. The traditional pure-blood families believed they had the right to dispose of Muggle offences as they saw fit. Mother was acquainted with that over-arching principle, however ignorant of certain details she might have been. So she didn't want to associate with the Malfoys any longer.

What better way to escape the Malfoys than to return to your old Muggle-born and half-blood school friends?

"Your old Gobstones teammates. How nice for you." Severus lied, for he couldn't think it nice, couldn't believe it good in any way that Mother should return to the same kind of associates who might have brought her to Tobias Snape. But she was his mother and she wanted, not Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, but Doris Hitchens, Ruth Leary and Josiah Crawley as her friends. So Severus listened politely to Mother talk about the Muggle-borns and half-bloods with whom she had decided to renew her acquaintance.

They finished dinner. Mother tried to press coffee on Severus after the washing-up was done, but he demurred, saying he had to make an early night of it. That much was the truth. He had work the next day, and after work he'd go to the Malfoys', for they hadn't dropped him. On the contrary, Severus would be their honoured guest at Malfoy Manor for his first meeting with the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters.