Mend Me

Seventeen

As if it weren't enough to babysit the girl all summer, he must now babysit her cat as well. The disgusting beast is present week after week, glaring at him with those yellow eyes and leaving its hair scattered throughout every surface of the room.

Severus hates cats.

He didn't always hate them, there was once a time where he would try and save every stray kitten he found. Severus would bring them all home, parade them around the house, proud of his findings, desperate for his mother to congratulate him. She would always stiffen up at the sight of them, beg him to get rid of it before Tobias came home. At the time, he didn't understand; wouldn't Tobias be proud of him, too? Aren't fathers supposed to be proud of their sons when they do the right thing? That's what the television always showed; a black and white image of a father taking his hat off at the front door, clapping his son on the back and letting out a deep belly laugh when the mother made him sow his father the frog, snake, or lizard in his pocket.

It wasn't until he watched his father kill four kittens in front of his very eyes in a drunken rage one summer that he stopped announcing their presence. Instead, he would sneak them in, hide them in his bedroom closet and swipe scraps from his measly dinner to feed them; but they always grew louder the emptier their stomach got. They were as hungry as he was, but he didn't go screaming about it, not anymore, anyway.

That was when Tobias would find them. Sometimes Severus could sneak them out and toss them out the back door before he heard his father's boots come crashing through the kitchen and a hand grab him by the back of the neck. A few times, he wasn't quick enough, and he would have to bury yet another tiny, lifeless body beneath his mother's scraggly rose bushes. Just as Tobias did with his mother many years later, when she finally died. Severus didn't know how she died, still didn't, in fact. It happened during his seventh year; the bastard didn't even bother to let him know. He simply came home at the end of term, and she was no longer there. Tobias had her buried beneath the rose bushes, a small flat stone with a crudely carved E sits atop her resting place; he liked to think she was somewhere, watching over his kittens. Tobias followed her not long after, finally drinking himself to death. Severus didn't know or care where the town decided to bury him. He never even went to claim his body.

The night he threw the girl and the cat from his office, he reminded himself of his father; except, he had the strength to stop himself from going further. His father would have broken the cats neck in front of her, then watched as she buried the pitiful thing, and beat her black and blue for the inconvenience. Holding her cheek between just two of his fingers the night he called her to his office to accuse her of stealing from him, he realized how much smaller she is than him. How frail, how easily he could bruise her body. He had to push her away from him. Images of Tobias beating his mother flashed through his mind, he could hear her screams, see the bruises on her face and arms the next morning. A shiver ran through his body. Severus was not, could not become, Tobias Snape.

Those big blue eyes just stared up at him, trustingly? How could she trust him, when he has scared her to tears? Those eyes, the part of her that was undeniably Sirius Black, filled him with rage, made him want to pummel her to the ground. He watched as a single tear crept from her eye, spread down her face, and dripped from the cupids bow of her upper lip. That part of her, the Lily portion, made him want to throw his arms around her and protect her from any injustice, including his own wrath and fury.

Severus had lost count of the number of times he would turn towards her while they were brewing a potion together, see her from behind, and have to stop himself from calling her Lily. He did not want to admit that the girl made his days less dull; she often brought a smile to his lips, a genuine laugh to the back of his throat. Having her near was dangerous, having her away from him was boring; both were downright torturous.
At the time of discovering the missing potions ingredients, he fully blamed the girl. No one else came into his private stores, no one else had unsupervised access. She had a point though, if she had wanted to steal from him, she would have done so much sooner. Perhaps, he had been too hasty with his allegations. Perhaps he should have scoped out some other alternatives; Potter and his slew of misfits, or Karkaroff.