Once he was assured by Draco that Harry was sleeping soundly, Severus breathed easier. It was only eight o'clock, but it felt like much later. After hearing the source of Harry's nightmares, Severus badly needed a drink, but he stubbornly refused to indulge in summerdew when Draco and Harry were present. He did not want to look like a bad role model, and besides, the summerdew tended to either make him fall asleep instantly, or make him recall things in his past that were best left buried. A blood link! Dear sweet Merlin! And none of us, not me, not Albus, ever thought to look. We were so bloody stupid! The scar was right there for the world to see, but the real wound was underneath, raw and open and oozing poison into his mind for all those years. Oh, Harry. How many times now have I failed you?
He retreated to his study, he needed the haven of his books and the comforting smell of parchment and ink, which always seemed to soothe him for some reason. He felt terribly guilty for not questioning his son further about the dreams, for not getting help for him immediately, for being such a temperamental bastard to him during school. All the time I was harping on him for not brewing potions correctly or playing Quidditch, he had a fragment of Voldemort inside him, whispering thoughts of despair and hopelessness. The Potions Master put his head in his hands. How could I have been so blind? I know, better than anyone, what bloody Riddle is capable of. And yet I ignored the signs right under my nose. Stupid, Severus!
But before he could flagellate his already raw and hurting soul even more, he heard a soft voice in his mind. :Wizard Severus? May I come in?:
"Yes, of course, Smidgen." He waved a hand, and the door to his study swung open to admit the shimmerling.
She flew directly to him, he was seated in his very comfortable desk chair, and perched upon his shoulder. :Severus, I could not help but overhear your thoughts a moment ago, your shields were down.: she began, somewhat apologetically.
He flushed. "I apologize. The news my son just told me has . . .has upset me . . ." He shut his eyes, and began to raise his shields so the shimmerling need not be bombarded by his self-recriminations.
:Don't. I did not come here to remind you of that fact, professor. I came because you, like your sons, are in need of my help.: Smidgen stared directly into his dark eyes, and there was no judgement or condemnation in them. :The only question I have is will you allow it?:
"I . . .Harry was the one who needed you most, Smidgen. What you did for him . . .it cancels the lifedebt between us. You did what I could not, what no wizard could have. You made my son whole, when none of us knew he was even wounded so badly. I never even suspected a blood link." His tone was sharp with disgust.
:Was there any reason you should have? Severus, the blood link was well hidden, it took me, a master dreamweaver, four sessions to probe deeply enough to discover it. And I am over five centuries old and have dealt with possession and memory wiping and such before. You should not blame yourself for this.: she chided gently.
"No? Then who shall I blame? I'm his father, damn it all! I should have known, I should have seen. I failed him badly, Smidgen. He's my son, the most important thing in the world to me, and I failed him in the worst way."
:Severus, you are being too hard on yourself. Is this the first time you have ever failed anyone, Potions Master?:
"No. I failed his mother too, and she paid for it with her life."
:You did not. You could not know that she would be betrayed, or that the dark necromancer would come for her that night, of all nights, when you yourself were injured from the Cruciatus Curse. You were a victim as much as Lily and Harry, Severus Snape. That is the truth, and you know I cannot lie.:
Yes, he knew. "Perhaps . . . perhaps it wasn't my fault that Lily died, but what about Harry? I'm supposed to protect him and keep him safe, and look what happened. He was being eaten alive by that . . .that thing and all I was doing was giving him Dreamless Sleep!"
:And are you omniscient now, Wizard Severus? Can you see all and know all, like your Almighty God?: demanded Smidgen sharply. :No one is perfect, you know that, you have told your sons that. So why then do you hold yourself to an impossible standard, and doom yourself to failure?:
"Because if I don't hold myself accountable, who will?"
:That is not holding yourself to account, Severus, it is setting yourself up for failure. Why are you punishing yourself this way, Potions Master? Because of the way you treated Harry over the past three years? Because you once walked part of the way down the lefthand path? Severus, that is foolish. We are all of us light and dark, there are none who walk the realms who are purely one or the other, not fae or human. But we all have a choice, to do good or evil. And you chose to do good.:
"But I don't know if it will ever be enough." Severus admitted heavily. "The sins of the past . . ."
:Are over and done with.: Smidgen stated firmly. :And should remain that way. As for Harry, I helped him as part of the debt owed to me, but also because he needed me, and there is no fae of the Seelie Court who will ever stand by and watch a child in pain and not aid them. And my account with you both is not settled yet.:
"But I don't consider you indebted to me any longer," protested the master wizard faintly.
:It is not your place to declare a debt canceled, wizard. That is for me to do, and I say you are still owed. I have helped Harry, true. But I still need to help you. And one of the ways I may do that is by alleviating this feeling of guilt you have. Will you permit me access to your dreams, Potions Master? For the guilt you bear has its roots somewhere in your past, beyond even the time of Voldemort and the prophecy.:
Severus hesitated a very long time. He was wary of letting anyone access into his mind, having endured some horrific mind probes from Voldemort in the course of his duties as a spy. Voldemort had never been able to penetrate his Occlumency shields, but just having the beast inside his head had made him feel tainted. Still, Smidgen was no Voldemort, and she asked only out of concern, as a friend would, he reminded himself.
You trusted Sarai. Trust this one as well. She is a dreamweaver, under geas to help you, Sev. Let her do what she is bound to do, and be free.
"I . . .all right, Smidgen. You may enter my mind. Though I warn you, you won't like what you will find."
The shimmerling gazed at him, and twitched her whiskers. :I assure you, Wizard Severus, you are not the worst I have faced, though you are one of the most stubborn. Now, take three deep breaths and look into my eyes.:
He obeyed, and allowed the shimmerling's violet gaze to send him to sleep, so that she could probe the shadows of his past, and hopefully help him banish them once and for all.
* * * * * *
Severus and Smidgen stood at the entrance to Prince Manor, for this was the neutral ground where Severus felt safe and secure. Smidgen promptly grew from her normal three inches high to five and a half feet in an eyeblink.
:In the Realm of Dreams, I may be whatever size I choose,: she said at his raised eyebrow. :Here, my power rules. Come along, Severus, and let us see where this sense of insecurity and fear of failure comes from.:
The Potions Master reluctantly followed the winged cat into the misty realm of memory, back to a time when he was a child, barely six, and subjected to the lash of his father's temper. . ."If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, boy, sweep the porch before you hose it down! Look at all the mud on the damn stairs, you bloody imbecile! And now it's on my new boots too!" Tobias gestured angrily to his new work boots, which were splattered with mud from Severus's impromptu cleaning spree.
The little boy hung his head. "I'm sorry, sir. I-I just wanted to help you."
"Help? You call this helping?" sneered his father. "You've just created twice the work with your "help", you dumb brat! Don't you ever listen when I tell you anything?"
"I-I forgot," Severus said miserably.
"You forgot! You're not allowed to forget my instructions, young man. You're supposed to remember them, because a kid who forgets what he's told is worthless and nothing but a failure. And I don't tolerate failures for sons." The big man leaned down and glowered at the cringing child. "Maybe this will teach you to remember what I tell you in the future, mister."
Then he dragged his son off the porch and marched over to a small willow tree on the side of the house. Sev's eyes grew wide and he started to cry, even though he knew his father hated crybabies.
"Stop that sniveling, boy! You shut yer trap and take your punishment like a man before I give you something to really cry about." Tobias growled, then he cut a switch from the tree and switched his son until he could hardly walk, repeating as he did so, "This is what happens to failures, Severus Snape!"
Then he threw down the switch and dumped his son onto the ground. Severus had a hand over his mouth to muffle his sobs. "Get up and scrub the mud off the porch, smart guy. And then you can scrub my boots too. Then maybe you'll learn to remember what I tell you, little boy. Got me?"
"Y-yes, s-sir," he managed to gasp inbetween sobs.
Then Tobias stomped off into the house, leaving his muddy boots for Severus to clean as best he could, along with the porch. As the little boy worked, hosing off the steps, his backside throbbed and stung, reminding him pointedly of the price of failure.
* * * * * *
"You see? I learned long ago that failure brought only pain and suffering. And that was not the only "lesson" my father gave me like that," said Severus bitterly.
:He was wrong to treat you thus. It is unreasonable to expect a child to behave like an adult, to hold you to an impossible standard of perfection, and then punish you harshly when you fail, as fail you almost certainly will.: Smidgen hissed angrily. :Growing up is all about learning, and the learning should never be painful or cruel, Wizard Severus. Never will I understand you humans and your need to dominate others with physical force, or to hurt your offspring in an effort to make them "better". The best teacher is one who shows, by example, and corrects with understanding and firmness.:
"Would that I had one of those teachers you speak of when I was growing up," Severus said quietly.
The shimmerling's eyes gleamed. :Your mother, she did not teach you that way?:
"Yes, but her influence was not enough. She died too soon, before my seventeenth birthday, and then I was left in the care of my maternal grandfather, since the courts declared my father unfit because he was in and out of jail for being drunk and disturbing the peace," Snape told her.
:And your grandfather, he was a Prince, was he not? What sort of man was he?:
"Strict and hard and disapproving of the half-blood heir the manor had chosen. He thought a pureblood should have inherited, but the manor chose me, and he was very annoyed at its decision. I lived with him and my grandmother, who wasn't much better, for a month before my seventeenth birthday. I had been hoping to find solace and comfort there, the way I couldn't at Spinner's End. But instead I found more impossible expectations."
:Indeed? Let us take a look at one of those memories, shall we?: She flipped her tail insolently at him, and he commenced walking, following her into another trip down memory lane.
* * * * * * *
Micah Prince stood before his grandson, hands on his hips, scowling in disapproval. They were in his study, a room that Severus would become intimately familiar with in later years, but was right then a new experience for him. "The curriculum at Hogwarts must have gone downhill since I attended, if this is all the Charms you've learned, Severus. Why don't they teach Binding Charms any more? Or Illusions and Glamours? Think they're too good for the likes of Concealment, do they?"
Severus was careful to keep his gaze on the blue carpet between his feet, for his grandfather, like Tobias, did not like disrespectful teenagers, though Micah never struck him, he preferred the sharp sting of his tongue to a switch. "I don't know, sir. Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, never really told us why we don't learn Illusions and Glamours, and the Ministry declared Binding Charms illegal last year, sir."
His grandfather snorted loudly. "The Ministry! Bunch of idiotic addlepated fools who couldn't find their backsides with both hands and a map. Binding Charms aren't dark magic, the fae have been using them for centuries, and I'm not speaking of the Unseelie, either. Used properly, a Binding Charm could be just as effective as an Imperius Curse, but without the darkness the Imperius carries. A Binding Charm does not harm the spirit."
"Yes, sir. I don't know why they forbid us to learn them, Grandfather."
"Because they fear what they cannot comprehend, boy." Micah lectured. He was tall and had the night black hair of the Prince line, as well as the dark eyes. He was handsome, the blood of the fae gave him fine features and a slim nose and a slightly pointed jaw, which was presently clenched in anger upon discovering how woefully lacking his grandson's education had been. "Your Charms teacher should've been sacked, though, for not covering Glamours." Micah shook his head in disgust. "Unbelievable! Nearly seventeen and don't know spit about Glamours or Bindings, and you the heir to the manor when I die. Bad enough you're a half-blood, boy, but to add colossal ignorance on top of it . . .what kind of guardian will you make?"
Severus felt himself flush with shame. "Grandfather, I'll learn what you want me to know. If you would just show me a few basics, I would be happy to learn them on my own. I'm sorry you think I'm a disappointment, sir. I'll try not to be, sir."
"Do more than try, Severus Snape!" growled the older man, frowning down upon the skinny underfed stripling with a raptor's intense glare. "Succeed. I believe the manor made a mistake in choosing you to be heir, I think a better choice would have been Lucius Malfoy, who has been raised as befits a proper master of my estate, unlike you, who was raised by a Muggle in a shack."
Severus felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck at his grandfather's sneering assessment. But then he also felt a flash of anger. "Sir, my house was not a shack, it was just a normal Muggle establishment," Severus tried to explain. Granted it was one of the smallest, but it certainly was not the derelict hovel his grandfather assumed it was.
Micah looked down his aristocratic nose at his grandson and said coldly, "You would not have been living there at all had your mother obeyed my dictates and married as I directed. Instead, she defied me for love-ha!-and married a scheming Muggle who took her money and drank it all away year after year. Oh, and had you, of course. Great achievement there, a half-blood child, who is forever caught between two worlds."
"I manage just fine, sir," retorted Severus, stung to the quick by the elder wizard's piercing comments.
Micah's eyes narrowed. "You mind your tone with me, boy. Insolence is not tolerated by me, and if you don't mend your ways quick, you'll find yourself pickling rat spleens and extracting bubotuber pus for a fortnight in the lab, am I clear?"
"Yes, sir," replied Severus in a much more respectful tone, though he longed to sneer at the old man that preparing potion ingredients wasn't much of a punishment, since he loved potion-making.
"Humph! It would seem that I have a great deal of work to do before you are fit to be my heir, the manor's choice notwithstanding," Micah stated brusquely. "You have a long way to go to improve yourself, Severus, I can't have the heir to Prince Manor embarrassing me during Council meetings with the Queen of Faerie sounding like an ill-bred urchin from the London backstreets, or looking like a refugee either in those clothes. Where did you get them, some ragpicker's bin?"
Severus was very aware that his clothes were secondhand, he barely had money to pay for his school supplies, much less clothes, though he did manage to scrimp for a new set of school robes each year. "I felt that school supplies were more important, sir," he said stiffly.
"What happened to your mother's money, young man? Your father piss it all away?" Micah demanded scathingly.
"Yeah, he did! What did you expect, huh?" snapped his grandson, his temper slipping his leash at the way the other was sneering at him. "I have to go to work to eat, otherwise I'd starve."
"Where? As some third-rate window-washer?"
"I'm an apprentice potion-maker with Mr. Santorini the apothecary in Diagon Alley," Severus declared angrily. "He doesn't pay much, but I'm learning a lot from him." He tossed his hair from his eyes and glared at his grandfather. "If you're so concerned about me disgracing the family, how come you haven't sent me money before now? God knows, we could've used it before Mum died to pay the Healer's fees."
"Eileen turned her back on this family when she married that trash Muggle, so I was under no obligation to give her any money. Although she could have requested it and I would have sent some," he added grudgingly.
"You wanted her to beg your forgiveness and she wouldn't, you sanctimonious bastard!" Severus shouted. "So instead you let her die alone."
"She chose her path long ago, boy. I warned her what waited at the end of it. Nothing good comes of mingling with those not of our kind. A lesson you would do well to learn from, grandson. As for my money, you'll not see a Knut of it until you prove to me you are worthy to be the Prince heir."
"How? The manor has already given me the medallion. What more do you want?"
"I want you to become something more than half-blood trash. You cannot change what you were born as, but by Sun and Stars, you can learn to be a proper scion in appearance and manner and bearing. Quit scowling and slouching like a six-year-old! Cut that mop of hair and go buy decent clothes and then perhaps we can start working on making you into a relation I can be proud of, instead of my daughter's half-breed whelp. You'll learn everything I know about Glamours and Bindings, young man, I don't care what your school or the Ministry say. I'll have a proper heir, if I have to stand over you every minute of the day, because nobody is going to ever say Micah Prince has an ignorant imperfect heir apparent." He stabbed a finger into Severus's chest. "You'll meet my standards, boy, or you can kiss your inheritance goodbye."
"What . . .what do you mean? I'm the heir apparent, the manor chose me, you can't change that."
"True, but the manor is only brick and stone and magic. You may have inherited it, but everything else inside it belongs to me. And if you want to live in more than an ancient pile of rock when I die, you'll do what I tell you. Are we all clear on that?"
And Severus dropped his gaze and nodded. "Yes, sir." He had always known that his grandfather despised his half-blood status and resented his mother for marrying Tobias, but even he had never known just how deep and bitter that resentment ran, nor how cold the other man was. There was little doubt in the young wizard's mind that he would do just as he had said, and leave Severus an empty shell and nothing more when he died, unless Severus became his so-called "proper" heir.
I have to be perfect. I can't afford to make mistakes. Otherwise I'll lose everything, he vowed then. And I've lost too much already, I can't lose this too. Not when being the heir is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Suddenly the white mist appeared and the memory dissolved, returning Severus and Smidgen to the safety of the lawn outside Prince Manor.
* * * * * *
:Ah. And so you made yourself into the perfect heir, to please a man who would never be satisfied.: Smidgen observed sadly. :Poor Severus, was there ever a time in your life that people accepted you for yourself?:
Snape shook his head. "Once I thought Lucius did. But that proved to be a lie too, since all he wanted was another willing recruit for the Death Eaters. And I trusted Dumbledore and he betrayed me as well, costing me the woman I loved in order to become the perfect spy. All of my life, people have sought to make me into their own image of perfect, and I have tried to fit myself into their grand design, only to find that no matter how hard I try, it doesn't work."
:So why bother?:
"Because that is all I have. My mother is gone and so is Lily, the only two people who ever accepted me as a person and didn't try and change me." He paused, then added after a moment, "Wait. Sarai has always accepted me, flaws and all. Three people, Smidgen. That's all.:
:No.: the shimmerling disagreed. :That's no longer so. You have two sons now who adore you, Severus, and I count myself a friend as well, and not just because of a lifedebt either. In my eyes, you are more than worthy to be the heir to Prince Manor, far better than your grandfather, for all he was a pureblood with court connections. Far better than Lucius Malfoy, who was seduced into darkness. I far prefer you, Wizard Snape, who fails sometimes but learns from his mistakes and tries again, than a perfect arrogant idiot who assumes he's the be-all and end-all of creation."
Her words touched him profoundly, and for a moment he could not find his voice. At last he said, in a voice that quivered with emotion, "You really m-mean that."
:Yes. Now stop trying to beat yourself senseless because you made a mistake over Harry and just acknowledge it and move on, won't you? Do you think you're the only person to ever overlook something? I've seen over five centuries, and have generally managed to muck up something or someone every century at least.:"Have you really?"
:Oh, yes. Perfect and shimmerlings don't do well together, I'm afraid,: she admitted. :But we prefer it that way. As we do our friends. Perfect is boring. We don't care about it, for we love you just as you are.: She eyed him sharply. :Well, Wizard Severus? Are you ready to let go of your guilt, or do we need to find another memory?:
Severus mulled it over for what seemed like forever, though in fact it was only thirty minutes. He could not refute the shimmerling's assessment, for she could not lie. So he had no choice but to accept it, and as soon as he did, he felt an immense weight fall from his shoulders.
Smidgen purred in satisfaction, and then she took the weary Potions Master back and woke him from his trance.
The first thing Severus noticed when he awoke was that he was a bit stiff from sleeping with his head tilted on the back of his chair. But when he straightened, he found Smidgen hovering before him, her iridescent wings beating gently. :How do you feel, Severus?:
"I'm a bit stiff, but otherwise I feel quite well." He answered, somewhat shyly, for it had been a long while since he had allowed another being access into his innermost thoughts and feelings. Not since Sarai had come to him as his kin-sa-dor master and ended up being a friend as well as a mentor.
:And have you put aside your guilt over things that you cannot change, my friend?:
"For now."
The violet eyes glittered with suppressed annoyance. :For now? What does that mean?:
"It means that I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, and agree that perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself, as you suggested," he answered honestly.
:It's a start. And do you still feel the need to be perfect, Severus Snape?:
"Somewhat. It will take more than one session to fix me, I'm afraid."
:Like your son,: Smidgen observed. :But then, no one is perfect, right, Wizard Snape?:
"Right." Then he added, with a mischievous smirk, "Though I do try."
:Severus Snape!: the shimmerling chided, laughing.
"Am I hopeless then, Smidgen?" he teased, his dark eyes sparkling.
:No, Potions Master. You are many things, but never that, my friend.:"If I am your friend, as you say, then will you do me a small courtesy?" he queried.
:But of course. What did you wish of me?:
"Call me Sev. The way my true friends do."
Smidgen purred ecstatically. :It would be my pleasure, Sev.:
And for the first time in a very long time, the Potions Master abandoned the stoic mask of spy and heir to Prince Manor and allowed himself to grin. He had not been addressed as Sev on a regular basis in over a year, and he had to admit, if only to himself, that he had missed it. Harry had occasionally called him by it in the beginning, but somehow it was different coming from a friend. It felt wonderful, to be able to be himself, he thought happily. The way he had been so long ago, with Lily Evans, when they were young, and with Sarai now, when she came to visit him.
He made a mental note to remind himself to speak with his sons about the lesson Smidgen had reminded him of tonight. I must remember to tell Harry and Draco that the most important thing is not what you do with your life, or how others see you, but to be true to yourself. Then and only then will you achieve true happiness.