Around 1964, or perhaps 1965, a new family moved into Spinner's End. Camelia could no longer remember the exact time, only that it was winter.
Her mother Emma's eyesight had been failing rapidly around then as well. Her father was addicted to gambling, and his only useful function was ensuring the three of them did not starve to death; there was nothing else to expect from him. Fortunately, however, this gambling-addict father of hers did not take out his violence and frustrations on the women and children in the home, unlike the master of the house next door.
Another winter came. While helping her blind mother with household chores, Camelia would occasionally hear the shouting, the crashing of furniture, and the pleading of a woman coming from the neighboring house.
By this time, they were no longer new neighbors, for the Snapes had already lived in Spinner's End—a filthy alleyway choked with abandoned factories—for several years.
Sometimes, after the chaos next door had subsided, Camelia would peer through the grime-covered window of her family's second-floor room and see the dark, battered curtains shaking behind the second-floor window of the Snape house. He must have been beaten again, that boy, Camelia thought with cold detachment.
At just four or five years old, Camelia was uncommonly quiet for a child her age. When Emma was not having a frenzy brought on by the pain in her eyes, Camelia spent most of her time by the river—a sluggish stream choked with debris that barely qualified as a river—watching things drift by from a distance, occasionally fishing out something she found interesting to play with.
Sometimes Camelia would walk upstream along the river, wishing to see where it began. But it was a difficult journey for a four- or five-year-old child. Besides, this was an alleyway rife with crime and filth; if she strayed beyond this tiny, hard-won patch of safety, there was no telling what might happen. This little safe zone was measured by the distance her mother, sitting in the dilapidated courtyard doing handiwork to subsidize the household, could perceive.
Now, as Emma's blindness grew worse, it was accompanied by increasingly erratic and frantic behavior. Compelled by Emma's intimidating grip on her, Camelia was forced to stay indoors. Her sole pastime, snatched in the gaps between helping Emma, was peeking through the ground-floor window to secretly observe the boy from the Snape house.
The burden of housework fell almost entirely on Camelia's shoulders. The poverty and squalor of their life weighed heavily upon young Camelia's heart like a dull, smoldering fire. Back then, she did not yet understand what the damp, cotton-like feeling lurking in her chest was; she simply learned, quite naturally, to suppress her emotions.
Camelia's childish face had never worn the innocent smile and carefree expression of a little child. Neither had the boy across the way, and that often made her feel a little better.
There was no spare money in the house to treat her mother Emma's eyes. Although there was a tiny stipend, after the first attempt to cure her mother's eyes yielded no results whatsoever, the gambling-addict father's last shred of conscience vanished entirely. All the subsidy money was swallowed up by his addiction, leaving only enough to keep the mother and daughter from starving.
Thus Camelia struggled her way up to the age of eight. With both parents alive, she lived like a street urchin, with tangled hair as dry as weeds, infested with lice, an ash-gray face, and a thin body with protruding bones.
Her once timid mother Emma, sinking completely into the anxiety of absolute darkness, grew increasingly timid and neurotic. Like a madwoman, she refused to let Camelia—her "eyes"—out of her perceptual range, demanding that Camelia respond to her calls at every single moment. The gambling father occasionally returned only to remain utterly indifferent to all of this; his neglect and inaction only exacerbated the mother's madness.
Quarrels and curses were hardly rare in this dilapidated alley. There were no quarrels in this house, yet it was precisely this absence that drove the mother deeper into madness and oppression.
The father's calm and apathy made Camelia realize what a devastatingly sharp blade indifference and detachment could be, and what an invincible defense they offered.
As her mother frantically smashed the few remaining pieces of furniture in the house, Camelia would stand quietly by the window, gazing across at the Snape house, though she had no idea what she was actually looking at, or what she hoped to see.
Perhaps it was because standing here allowed her to pretend to accidentally make eye contact with the boy named Severus in that house. Though after their glances met and instantly broke apart, he would scowl in disgust and yank the curtains shut to block her view, she never tired of looking in that direction once more the next time.
Severus frowned fiercely and pulled the curtains closed. Stupid Muggle, he thought with disgust. He had no idea what there was to look at over here; did she want to watch how that alcoholic man beat people? he sneered sarcastically to himself. Still, this Muggle's situation seemed rather poor as well, and his mood eased slightly, tinged with a sense of untimely schadenfreude.
At that moment, the sound of messy, unsteady footsteps came from outside the dilapidated wooden door. Then the door was shoved open violently, slamming hard against the wall and shaking a thick layer of dust from the mottled plaster.
A black-haired man with a large hooked nose walked into the house reeking of alcohol, his eyes squinting against the dimness.
He swept his gaze around the room and locked eyes with Severus standing near the curtain. He saw the hatred and wolf-like viciousness in Severus's eyes and was startled for a fraction of a second. Realizing this, a surge of fierce anger rose within him: how dare this damned little monster look at him with a gaze like that!
He strode over and dealt Severus a vicious slap across the face. The impact against the boy's prominent cheekbones made his own hand sting. His fury flared higher, and he lashed out, kicking the boy hard as he crumpled to the floor.
Severus curled into a ball, holding his head as he endured the man's violence. In the midst of the searing pain, he felt a profound hatred for his own weakness and for the man currently inflicting violence upon him. Deep within his heart also lurked a festering resentment toward Eileen Prince Snape—his mother, a witch.
Through things Eileen had hidden away, Severus had discovered her concealed past and that magical world.
He could not understand his mother: as a witch with magic, when faced with the violence of an ugly, despicable Muggle man, she did not use magical power to fight back and protect herself and her child. Instead, she knew only how to plead blindly, trying to awaken the Muggle's conscience and his love for her.
A laughable love. Perhaps in the past, that man had loved his mother and him; after all, Severus had enjoyed a happy period when he was very small, back before Tobias lost his job, before he discovered that both mother and son were wizards, and before they had moved to Spinner's End.
Back then, the household had a gentle, strong father, a tender mother, and a quiet, well-behaved son. Unlike now, when his father Tobias had turned into an alcoholic, violent drunkard, and his mother Eileen had become a cowardly, exhausted woman clinging desperately to past happiness.
A pile of burned-out ashes smoldered in his chest; the flame that had once burned there had transformed into a craving, entrenched in his heart like weeds, its dense roots burrowing deep into his soul, bringing a sharp, fine pain and a slight struggle for breath.
Having vented his fury for a while, the alcohol-hollowed man soon grew tired. His hooked nose let out a harsh snort, and he quickly fell fast asleep on the shabby, filthy sofa.
Leaving only the bruised and battered boy sitting there in silence. Severus had long since stopped caring for his unwashed black hair, which hung down like a curtain to hide his thin, malnourished face.
He struggled to his feet, his pitch-black eyes staring straight through the dimness at the sleeping man.
At that moment, a cowering figure appeared in the wide-open doorway. It was Severus's mother, Eileen; she must have seen her husband return home while she was doing odd jobs in the street and had hurried after him.
Eileen had a long, pale face with heavy eyebrows that were tightly furrowed from the weariness of life. She could hardly be called beautiful.
The very first thing Eileen did upon seeing them was to anxiously check the bruising on Tobias's face. The drunkard stumbled about, and having bruises on his face was hardly an unusual occurrence.
"Tobias, wake up. You're hurt. There might still be some medicine in the house, wake up..."
Severus watched with cold detachment as Eileen spoke gentle words of concern to the sleeping drunkard. Even though Eileen herself bore bruises on her face, and her expression held the wary caution of someone terrified that Tobias might wake up in a rage, she stubbornly persisted in trying to wake her husband, driven by her care and so-called affection for him.
Sure enough, Tobias woke at Eileen's call, but not with the smile she had imagined from the past, nor with an affectionate murmur of her name. Now, Tobias's face held only intense irritation and disgust upon seeing Eileen.
"You damned bitch! Are you staying here to try and kill me with your monstrous tricks?!"
Severus could clearly see that the moment Tobias caught sight of Eileen, fear flashed across his muddled face, instantly followed by deep disgust and anger.
As if remembering something, Tobias reached out straight from the sofa and grabbed Eileen by the throat as she crouched beside it. "You brought all this bad luck upon me, you damned monsters, you damned witch! Why don't you just die? Why don't you take this little monster and die?! It's all your fault I lost everything!"
Tobias's eyes were bloodshot like a beast's, the veins on his neck bulging, his face contorted with a fierce cruelty. Choked tightly, Eileen could only sit collapsed on the floor, trying to draw in a thin breath through her constricted throat.
"Please... no, don't..."
Eileen's face turned beet red from oxygen deprivation.
"Let her go!"
Like a wild animal, Severus lunged forward, sinking his teeth fiercely into the arm with which Tobias was choking Eileen!
Startled by the pain, Tobias instinctively threw the woman off, and Eileen sank helplessly to the floor, gasping in huge mouthfuls of air.
"Damn you, you little monster, you actually dare bite! I should have drowned you—this piece of bad luck—in the open gutter outside long ago!"
Cursing viciously, Tobias yanked Severus away from the protective stance Eileen tried to take, his hand clamping tightly around the boy's thin, fragile neck.
"Stop! Tobias, he's our child! You can't treat him like this! You can't treat us like this!"
Eileen tried to lunge forward, but Tobias swiped her down to the floor with a single wave of his hand.
"As long as we kill him, our life can go back to the way it was before. Don't you want to go back to the old days?!"
Tobias barked coldly.
Gasping for air as his vision blurred, Severus heard Tobias's words and saw Eileen's heartbroken yet hesitant expression.
An overwhelming, desolate despair welled up uncontrollably inside him. Even though his entire body was burning up with fever from the suffocation, he felt as though his consciousness and his physical body were separating, plunging down into an endless, lightless abyss.
Why? Why did she have power and yet refuse to fight back? Why, as a mother, did she not protect her child? Why would she shrink back in the face of her child's death, just to appease this man? Why did he have to flow with this man's blood? Power—he needed the power to break free from all of this!
Under Tobias's terrified gaze, the child whose face had been flushed and purple from suffocation suddenly widened his eyes, his complexion rapidly returning to normal as a massive surge of force knocked the man flat onto the floor!
A tremendous wave of energy shattered the ground-floor windows. To his horror, Tobias saw all the glass shards suspended in the air by a mysterious force, circling him with their razor-sharp edges pointing straight at his throat.
Perhaps he could kill this Muggle right now, the thought flashed through Severus's mind. Looking at Tobias's terrified, fearful expression, he felt an unprecedented sense of exhilaration: was this real magic? What a powerful and alluring force! He even had the feeling that he was omnipotent.
Look, these were the Muggles written about in those books: incompetent and cowardly, filthy and vile.
"Severus, stop! He is your father," Eileen instinctively reprimanded, looking at the child whose coldness made him seem like a stranger.
"I will never have a Muggle father! He's nothing more than a filthy Muggle!" Severus's childish face was twisted with viciousness and hatred, looking nothing like an eight-year-old child.
"Snap!" A slap cracked across Severus's face, wiping the vicious expression from it for a moment.
"Whether you acknowledge it or not, he is your father, Severus Snape," Eileen warned coldly.
On Eileen's face was a coldness and unquestionable authority Severus had never seen before, carrying the fierce tyranny of one whose will had been defied.
No matter how timid she was in front of Tobias, the coldness and harshness of Slytherin and the pure-blood families were still deeply embedded in her bones.
His matted hair obscured Severus's expression. His face remained turned to the side from the blow, and the red, swollen corner of his mouth showed that the slap was no empty threat.
"I will not allow you to hurt him—not if you still consider me your mother!"
After a long silence, under Tobias's emboldened gaze, the floating shards of glass dropped unceremoniously to the floor.
Severus's head never straightened back up. In silence, he stumbled away from the spot, fleeing out the door to huddle in the weeds by the riverside.
He was eight years old now. Once he turned eleven, he could go to Hogwarts; he would be able to leave very soon.
A voice inside Severus's heart kept repeating those words.
He hugged his knees, pressing close to a tree by the riverbank. This was the only place where he could catch his breath.
Those dark, purplish eyes. On a sudden impulse, the eyes of the Muggle girl he had seen not long ago drifted unbidden into Severus's mind.
Very purple, very close to black, he thought. You would only catch a hint of purple where the light hit them.
But that had nothing to do with him. He quickly cast the thought aside and stared numbly at the garbage-choked river drifting past not far away.