Chapter 5
Severus was startled awake by shouting. He could hear his mum and da yelling about some pot and how it's too loud to be banging around at seven in the morning and groaned. He knew getting in the middle of his mum and his da would only get him hurt. His mum would do something to fill his da's minuscule emotional range, and he would start hollering then she would start screaming right back and they wouldn't stop until a door slammed or Severus took the ire of both of them and they got tired. They never hit but the words somehow hurt more in his mind. Bruises go away, being told you're a mistake every day, for some reason, doesn't.
Severus stared at the ceiling and contemplates his future. He knows he's not going back to Hogwarts. He can't tell his mother which means he can't tell his father. He also needs to go to the closest library that had a magical section and a computer section. He calculated that if he worked every day until Hogwarts was set to start he would have 100 pounds to add to his travel money. After adding the money he got from Madam Pomfrey he had £156.84 total. He had no idea how much an aeroplane ticket cost but he knew a boat would take way too long to keep him on his planned timeline. He knew of the other wizarding schools, but Ilvermorny was the only other school that spoke primarily English. There was the Uagadou School of Magic but Severus didn't know Swahili and definitely did not have the resources to learn it.
Severus looked out his dingy window at the gloomy sky and hauled himself off the creaky, stiff bed. He twisted his back until he heard a series of pops then bent over and touched his toes until his legs started to ache. He knew his hair care was shit but he made sure to shower and brush his teeth every morning at Hogwarts. Number 14 had hot water, had ever since the Hot Water Initiative was launched by the Queens Road upper class, but it was limited and he knew that his da would wring his neck if he used even a drop of it before da got the chance. So he popped the hatch on his trunk, gathered his clean clothes, towel, toiletries, wand, and money pouch, and stuffed them into a beaten-up draw bag. He closed his trunk and straightened up his room and grabbed his bag before exiting and making his way downstairs.
He could still hear his parents bickering when he made it downstairs but it was much quieter. He put his bag down in front of the door before walking into the kitchen. He saw his parents sitting across from each other with scowls situated on their faces, bowls of porridge long forgotten in front of them. "Hey ma, da" he greeted his parents as he passed behind his da, "Mornin" they both replied then somehow scowled harder at each other. Severus grabbed a bowl and scooped the lukewarm porridge into it, then took the free chair. He looked at both of them still scowling but silent and took a page out of their book from when he used to cross his eyes and said "if you keep scowling like that, your face is going to freeze in a scowl forever." They both whipped their heads to him and would you guess it, scowled harder. He smiled innocently and dug into his breakfast.
Breakfast was tense and silent, his parent still scowling at each other unheeding Severus' previous warning, but it could have been worse so Severus was proud of himself. He finished quickly and washed his bowl and utensils before walking behind his mum, placing a kiss on her hair, and making his way to the door. "Where you goin' boy" he heard his da call before he could make it out the door. He lied through the gaps of his teeth when he called back "Lily's." His da made a grunting noise and hollered back "You better not be coming back with her one-day talkin' bout' some babies boy ya' hear." Fat chance. "Alright, da" he called back and hurried out of the house and shut the door before his da started up again.
He walked along the back trails of Cokeworth less he see anyone from work while walking the sidewalks. He hurried through the spaces in between the spinner's end houses into the forest trail and made his way to the 'Welcome to Cokeworth' sign. He arrived just as a blue bus turned the corner out of spinners end and hoped that wasn't the one he wanted to catch as he walked over to the bus stop. He looked at the bus routes and saw the green line went into Birmingham, which is where he remembered Lily telling him she and her family went to research when they found out she was a witch. He had read the very same book they had when lily gave him an updated copy as a spontaneous gift, yet he still wondered if they how they consciously let their daughter go after the things they read.
As he was lost in his thoughts, blankly 'studying' the map, he thought he saw a flash of a strikingly familiar face. He looked again, realized it wasn't a figure of his twisted imagination, and turned his face away as fast as he could, hoping to every deity known to man that it wasn't who he'd seen it was, but to no avail, he still heard his name being called by a warm, feminine voice.
Shit.