Saturday's Child
It happened in the early morning, on a Saturday, in the back room of the house that always smelled faintly of coal dust and damp.
There was no midwife. No healer. No wand.
Just a girl too young, too tired, too bruised by the weight of her own name to remember who she’d once been.
And Tobias—bleary-eyed, half-dressed, panicked but present—fetching towels, boiling water, cursing the gods under his breath as she clenched her teeth and bore down through agony so ancient it needed no magic to complete itself.
The girl was born silent.
Half of Eileen expected it. The baby should have been born in March.
It was January.
She was too soon. Far too soon.
Darkness almost claimed her.
Then—the baby shrieked. And Eileen collapsed back onto the mattress, tears streaking her temples, hair plastered to her neck, the old rhyme, half-forgotten, surfacing unbidden:
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
A hard life, then. But a life. And the only thought in her head—becoming inexplicably, irrevocably:
'It’s done now.'
Tobias held the child first.
Not because he wanted to. Because Eileen didn’t reach for her. She stared at the ceiling, unmoving. Her tears didn’t rise to sobs. Didn’t transform to laughter. Only silence.
Tobias looked down at the red-faced, furious creature in his arms and muttered:
“...Welcome to it, then.”
Hours later, she named her. “Severina.”
Not from any story.
Not from any ancestor.
But because the name felt like iron.
Like something that would survive.
----------------------------------------------
No letters were sent that day.
Callista would find out, of course—because Eileen would tell her. Because she still believed someone, somewhere, was listening.
But no owls arrived at Prince Manor. No Head of House paused to toast a prodigy born.
The world did not stir.
Only the child did—in restless little kicks. In the soft, animal sounds of sleep. And Eileen, finally, held her.
Her arms didn’t tremble. Her breath didn’t catch. She simply looked at the babe and thought:
You’re here.
Severina Snape.