Chapter Text
Summer 1975, Cokeworth
Severus was done. Tired of Potter and his gang of insufferable bullies. Frustrated—and doubly wounded—by Lily’s latest rejection of his apology. And furious with himself for letting Potter’s antics unravel him so completely.
He hadn’t meant to say it. The word had torn free before he’d even realized—ugly, jagged, laced with all the fury he’d failed to silence. His anger had been volcanic: at Potter and his insufferable entourage, at his own housemates’ hypocritical jeering, and, most corrosively, at himself. The shame was suffocating. To have let it slip in such a public, pathetic display—humiliating didn’t even begin to cover it.
And so here he stood, dressed in threadbare muggle clothes, wand gleaming like a knife in his hand. He wasn’t naïve. He knew Lily wouldn’t speak to him again. Without him in the way, she’d run straight to Potter, blind to his arrogance, and fall victim to his clutches.
The thought alone made Severus ill.
He couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t bear it. To watch it unfold in real time was impossible.
At first, he’d considered Amortentia. A crude solution—morally repugnant—but academically tempting. Severus was no fool: if anyone his age could brew it flawlessly, it was him. But drugging Lily? Even he had limits.
Then he considered severing ties with Slytherin. But that would backfire eventually, that he knew for certain.
Now, the need to forget twisted through his gut like acid. The humiliation, the grief, the loss—it overwhelmed every sense.
His stomach was hollow with dread, yet each bite he forced down made him unbearably full. His eyes had burned for days, but in solitude there were no tears left to spill. And his chest—Merlin, his chest—ached like a curse poorly cast. A pain one tried to walk off, like some idiot Muggle, pretending it didn’t hurt.
It did. Especially now, when Lily didn’t even glance his way—not even here in the comforting quiet of Cokeworth. To be discarded so easily, even with everything he’d done… it stung deeper than his magic could reach.
So he chose pain’s only cure.
“ Obliviate ,” he whispered. A word laced with guilt, shame, regret—and something else. A need to preserve the last shred of himself untarnished by an unrequited love or inexplicable failure.
But a flash of red hair. Bright green eyes. Her smile and laughter.
He hesitated.
And that was all it took for magic to twist—to fracture—not quite forgetting, though not quite remembering either.
On that day, Severus Snape The Death Eater and servant of both Dark and Light would forever cease to exist.
Lost in the throes of love, a painful loss and everything else in between.
Later that day, a young boy with black hair and dazed brown eyes awoke—not within the chaotic ward for malevolent magical maladies at St Mungo’s, but amid the crisp, sterile confines of a Muggle hospital.
His eyes snapped open, darting left and right with frantic urgency. Everything around him was stark white, saturated with the sharp tang of disinfectant. To his left sat a sullen-looking woman, her eyes watery and rimmed red with unshed tears.
“Morghan, my sweet boy…!” she breathed—a quiet, disbelieving laugh tumbling from her lips. Yet the name felt alien in her mouth, slipping out with reluctant unease. On his right loomed a man of imposing stature, arms folded and a firm scowl etched across his face.
“Cost us a great deal of money, you did,” the man muttered. “Sneakin’ off, gettin’ up to no good, were you?”
His voice was gravelly, devoid of affection, though behind those unpleasant eyes flickered something not quite indifference.
“Where… am I?”
The question rasped from his throat, and the woman—his mother?—hurried to lift a glass of water to his dry lips.
“The hospital, love…” she whispered, one hand trembling as she cupped his cheek. “The heal—…the doctors said you might never wake…”
That explained their careful expressions. Although from the man’s sour look, his worry seemed more about the mounting costs than the state of his son.
The door rattled open. A woman in green scrubs stepped in, followed by a younger man who looked to be an intern of sorts.
“Morghan Snape?” she asked, clipboard in hand as she gave the boy a once-over.
He blinked owlishly. At his confused expression, the nurse let out a faint sound of displeasure.
The man threw him a glance.
From this day forward, the Snape family would be markedly different. Tobias Snape had yet to decide whether that change would be for better or worse.
Still, a change was necessary. He knew it. Eileen knew it. Severus pulling this stunt had been, in Tobias’s eyes, a stroke of luck.
He hadn’t expected it—certainly not this soon, and perhaps not ever.
But the opportunity had arrived. And he intended to take it.
Weeks passed without so much as a word about what had happened to him. “Running amok with mates” was the explanation he received each time he asked.
During his time convalescing in hospital, Morghan picked up the basics: his name, his age, his birthday—simple things, really. Though his so-called mates had yet to make an appearance.
His mother remained by his side most of the day—feeding him, sharing snippets of a childhood he couldn’t remember, and showing him how to tie a shoelace when she wasn’t busy frettin’ over him.
With her she brought photos; usually of himself at different stages of life. Though she’d occasionally bring with her a photo of herself and his father.
They looked happy, much more pleased with life than they appearer now. But he made an effort not to bring that thought up.
Yet another thing that bothered him.
His odd, innate ability to forget certain things when he really really wanted to.
A bloody useful skill when he called upon it, though a concerning one when things he didn’t want to forget would suddenly slip from his mind entirely.
He’d be sure to look into it once he got the chance.
”…-and that, my dear, is how your father and I met.”
Eileen chirped, a wistful look on her face that made her look younger than her age and softened her sullen features into something a tad more lively.
He grinned, “I like it when you talk like this. You sound… different.” The soft tone in his voice sounds unfamiliar to the both of them, though it seems to spark a look of confused happiness in his mothers brown eyes.
“Oh, do I?” Eileen murmurs, brushing her fingers across the worn, threadbare quilt that lay atop his covers. “Perhaps it’s because I’m not used to hearing you speak like that either.”
She paused, searching his own face, then added—voice quieter and laced with something bittersweet, “You used to have my eyes and your father’s temper. Now you’ve got your gran’s softness and someone else’ smile…”
She looked away just for a moment, a hint of both sadness and fragile a hope flashing over her features.
“It’s strange. But not bad. I believe I quite like it too.”
From there on out, the mother-son duo would sit together in a contented silence; Eileen would tell her boy stories about the past, gently running lithe fingers through his soft locks of black—now a healthier texture thanks to his frequent baths—and Sev—no, Morghan—would sit idly beside her, watching with a quiet smile on his face.
Her boy hadn’t looked at her with such love and affection since he was just that—a boy.
It warmed both her heart and her mind. Thus, she wholly came to terms with her husbands demand that they treat this as an opportunity to completely forget about magic.
She hadn’t agreed at first. Her son had a right to it—his heritage. It ran deep in their veins, for Merlin’s sake! She had chosen this life, but her Severus had not.
Yet now, seeing how much better he was without it… she wasn’t sure she could put and end to this. It felt as though one of her quietest fantasies had crept out of her mind and taken root within the real world.
Besides, Toby had been gentler with her lately. She hadn’t been smacked about or struck in weeks, and he’d even begun to wean himself off the bottle. Her Sev. Her Morghan had been brighter, much more happier lately too.
And Eileen wasn’t ready to give that up—not again. Not if she had anything to say about it.
Magic was a small price to pay for their happiness. It wasn’t as though the Prince line would ever accept her back into the family—let alone her son.
The magical world had nothing more to offer her boy. Nothing at all. Especially with things going so pleasantly smooth with Tobias.
Yes. Eileen could very well get used to this life. Very well indeed.
END