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kelly_chamblissChapter 1: Tobias is here
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Chapter Two -- Eileen
She'd never intended to hurt anyone. Well, except maybe Sybill. Just a little bit, to make her sorry. But she hadn't intended to hurt Tobias, not at first. She'd meant it when she said she'd be a good wife to him.
And she'd tried. No one could say she hadn't tried. Hadn't she lived in his grim little house and given up her magic? Hadn't she done her wifely duty by him as long as he'd wanted her? That's what her gran had called it, "wifely duty." And Eileen had done it, every week without fail, even though Tobias never gave a thought to whether she got any pleasure from the act.
She'd kept the house well, too -- still did, and on virtually nothing. No matter how worn, everything was clean. Even Severus -- no matter how old or unsuitable his clothing, she always made sure it was clean.
But did those things ever matter to Tobias? No, he never noticed what she did do, only what she didn't. Always after her to use her magic to get them something for nothing, even though she had told him over and over again that magic didn't work that way. Anything you conjured didn't last; you could only use it temporarily.
Like poor Severus's clothes -- Tobias was always complaining about Severus's clothes, as if it was her fault that the lad had to wear his father's cast-offs. But she couldn't be constantly changing them into something better. They were already so old that the make-up of the fabric had weakened; even if she'd re-transfigured them every day, they wouldn't have held their shape, and the lad would have found his things leaping back to their original form in the middle of the day.
She'd told Tobias this. Told him and told him, but he didn't listen. Just grumbled and drank and glared daggers at her, when he came home at all.
He hated her. That was the long and short of it. He hated her, had done ever since the day of Sybill's first visit, when Severus had been just a wee mewling babe. Tobias had seen Eileen in Sybill's arms, and life had never been the same.
But Eileen and Sybill hadn't been doing anything wrong. Not really. Oh, Tobias always ranted about perversion and adultery, but it wasn't true. Each time he told the story it got worse, until to hear him tell it, she and Sybill had been naked in Tobias's bed, their hands buried in each other's quims.
It hadn't happened that way at all, of course. Yes, it was true that when Tobias had come into the sitting room on that long-ago afternoon, Eileen had been locked in Sybill's embrace. And yes, it was true that they had been kissing, that Eileen had felt those soft lips on hers for the first time since that glorious agonising summer of 1957, had felt those gentle fingers curl round her breast.
But they both had been fully clothed and would have remained so, no matter what Tobias thought. Sybill had already begun to pull away even before Tobias opened the street door. If he'd only been a quarter of an hour later, Sybill would have been gone, and he'd have been none the wiser.
They'd have still been a family, she and Tobias and Severus, or as much of a family as Tobias would have let them be, for Eileen didn't doubt that he'd have managed to spoil everything sooner or later. He might not have hated her, though, might not have judged her for something that was never her fault. She couldn't help that she still loved Sybill. She had never done anything about it, just kept it as her own secret, something to hug to herself and take refuge in when times got bad.
Still, it had been a hard life for her, never to be touched in love since she was eighteen, and if she'd turned bitter with the gall of it, who would say she didn't have cause?
Even Severus had turned against her, withdrawing into himself more and more, spending all his time with that Muggle girl. Part of Eileen was glad that Severus would soon be going to Hogwarts -- he'd got his letter yesterday -- because she thought he might be happier among his own magical kind. Yet another part of her dreaded losing him, and she'd spent a painful hour in tears today as she thought what life would be like with him gone.
Then, out of nowhere, Sybill had arrived. People could say what they would about Sybill Trelawney, call her a fraud or a loony, the way even her Hufflepuff housemates had done in school. They could say she didn't really have the Sight. But today, when Eileen had most needed her, Sybill had known and had come to her.
At least Tobias hadn't walked in on them this time. If only he hadn't done so that first time.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It was a game Eileen played often -- "if only." If only Tobias hadn't come just then, on that almost-spring day over a decade ago. Or if only he hadn't kept holding things against her, no matter how much she explained, no matter how much she showed him, over and over again, that she'd lived up to her part of the bargain about being a good wife.
No, she would never have loved him, but he hadn't wanted her to, hadn't loved her himself. But she'd kept his house and raised his boy, and you'd think that would have counted for something.
Or if only Sybill had been braver. The Sorting Hat had known what it was about, when it didn't put Sybill into Gryffindor. If only she had stood up to her family on that dreadful autumn afternoon after their seventh year, when Sybill's father had come upon them in her bed.
The day had started so blissfully, with the owl bearing the letter saying that Eileen had been accepted into a Potions apprentice program. She'd Apparated over to share the news with Sybill, who had been entirely happy for her and for once hadn't predicted a single catastrophe.
"We can get a flat of our own, together," Eileen had said, whereupon Sybill had burst into tears.
"It's too perfect," she'd said, proving her prescience once again. It had been too perfect, and Eileen should have known it would never last, but she'd been young then, and had still occasionally -- foolishly -- allowed herself to believe that things might work out well for her.
She and Sybill had been alone in the house, and they'd let their excitement carry them into bed, and then Mr Trelawney had walked in, much as Tobias would do a few years later. He hadn't even done his daughter the courtesy of knocking first; he'd just opened the door, saying, "Sybill, your mother wishes. . ." before he'd seen them.
At least he hadn't raged and shouted the way Tobias had, not that things had been any different in the end. He's just said, in a dangerous low voice, "You will put your clothing on, Miss Prince, and then you will leave this house and you will not return."
They'd kept Sybill away from her after that. When three days went by with no word, Eileen had sent a frantic owl, only to have it return with a note from Mr Trelawney: "Do not attempt to communicate with Sybill. She will not reply."
Eileen had burned the parchment in a flash of fire from her wand and had waited for Sybill to find a way to reach her.
She never had. Whether it was because she was too cowardly to defy her parents or because she hadn't really wanted Eileen after all, Eileen didn't know, but October had turned to November, and November to December, and it had been time for Eileen to visit Aunt Ida. And still she heard nothing.
That's why she had decided to accept Tobias Snape. To show Sybill that Eileen was wanted by others, that she wouldn't wait forever. She'd sent a letter, charmed to be legible only to Sybill and disguised to look like a sales circular, saying, "I've received an offer of marriage," and she'd hoped, even prayed, that the idea would shock Sybill, would force her to take a stand against her family.
She heard nothing. Not even after she'd sent a second owl with the time and date of ceremony.
She'd gone to the registry office with Tobias, and when noon came and went, with no Sybill, Eileen had straightened her spine, said "yes" to the clerk, and signed the marriage certificate with a flourish.
And hoped Sybill would be very, very sorry.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
But if she was sorry, she didn't say so. Sybill never replied to the owl, and Eileen had not seen or heard from her again until that ill-fated afternoon over two years later, when she'd shown up without warning, saying she'd come to see baby Severus.
That's when Eileen learnt that despite her careful charms and enchantments, the owls had never reached Sybill. She'd had to find out about the marriage through a tiny notice in The Daily Prophet, and she'd assumed that Eileen had no longer wanted her, had wanted a man and a family instead.
"You'd said once that you would like a baby, do you remember?" Sybill asked, her eyes large and sad behind her spectacles.
Of course Eileen remembered; they'd been walking hand-in-hand just inside the Forbidden Forest on a warm afternoon of that seventh-year spring, talking of their hopes and dreams.
"I said I wanted a flying carpet, too. We were just larking." A baby had just been a fantasy then, not a real option, although of course now she wouldn't part with Severus for anything.
"I know, but directly you said it, I knew you would have one someday. And this morning, when I awoke, I could sense that he had come. I felt that I had to see him today."
"The Inner Eye told you?" Eileen asked, teasing. It was an old joke between them.
"Oh, yes, partly -- that and corrective lenses," Sybill said, with her gentle smile. "But I also just wanted to see you."
By the time Eileen had rescued one of Sybill's trailing scarves and smoothed it lightly onto her shoulder, by the time Sybill had caught her hand and kissed it and they had fallen into each other's arms, by the time Eileen had realised that Sybill still loved her, still wanted her, Tobias had come home.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
When she'd seen Tobias standing in the door, the thought of Obliviating him had flashed through Eileen's mind, but of course she hadn't. The taboo against self-serving Obliviation was strong. And even had she been willing, she doubted her skills were up to the task. Obliviation was a precise and difficult art, and like so many gifts, was not one she possessed.
So there had been nothing for it but to face Tobias as he had stepped into the room and seen her and Sybill together.
"What the bloody hell is going on?" he had demanded, looking from one to the other of them.
Eileen had tried to make the best of things. "What do you mean?" she'd asked, cursing herself for being unable to resist smoothing her hair and blouse. "I'm having tea with a former schoolmate; she's called to see the baby. Sybill, this is my --"
But Tobias was having none of it. "I don't care if she's the former Queen of Sheba" he snarled. "I saw what you two was up to. I know perversion when I see it, and you have the bloody cheek to do it in a man's own house! With his baby a-laying right there in its cot!"
The moment stayed with Eileen like a photograph, all of them standing in pained tableau in the cramped front room of Spinner's End -- Tobias, rigid with anger, his hands balled into fists as he stared at them, his mouth working as though he were trying and discarding words, finding none of them strong enough to express his outrage. Sybill, her eyes huge behind her spectacles, her hands clutching futilely at her throat. Eileen herself, watching her own hands twist together, feeling as if they belonged to someone else.
Then time began again, with Tobias turning on Sybill. "Dyke! Whore!" he'd thundered. "Get out of my house. I never want to see you near my wife again."
He'd sounded like the patriarch in a bad Victorian melodrama, and Eileen had, in fact, felt something like a spectator, watching her own tragedy play out as Sybill had hurried to the door without a word, pausing at the threshold long enough to mouth "I'm sorry" before she slipped into the road and disappeared from Eileen's life for over ten years.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Three times so far in Eileen's marriage, her husband had hit her. The aftermath of Sybill's visit was the first time, and it was the only time that had frightened her.
The other episodes happened in the heat of arguments, when they'd both been shouting, each giving as good as they got, when drink and too many hard words had driven Tobias momentarily over the edge. The blows hadn't been hard, more like shoves than anything else, as if he'd wanted to repudiate her more than hurt her. "Repudiate" wasn't even a word he would know -- it was something he could only enact.
But the first time had been different. Tobias hadn't shouted, and he certainly hadn't been drunk. He'd just been so tightly-wound that he could barely force words through his clenched teeth.
"Is that what you are, then? One o' them lezzies? Have you been taking that bitch into my bed?"
She'd known it would be useless, but she tried to explain. "Tobias, nothing happened here. Not in this house, ever. Sybill just came to see the baby --"
"Is that what they taught you in that freak school of yours? Perversion? And now you plan to do the same thing in my house?"
"Nothing happened! She --"
"'Not in this house'. Then where?"
Eileen had been confused. "What?"
"You said nothing happened in this house. Then where? Have you been sneaking out when my back is turned? You've been meeting your fancy woman, spending filthy days in her bed, while I'm working in the mill all hours?"
"No! This is the first time I've even seen Sybill since I met you!"
"I won't have that dyke's name spoken in this house! You tell me the truth, now. You owe me that much. Have you ever had. . .unnatural relations with that. . .that --?"
She hadn't been able to stop herself; his words cut too deep, and she shouted, "It's not unnatural! It's not!"
She'd been loud, insistent, talking to Sybill and to Sybill's family as well as to Tobias, because she knew it was what Sybill had once thought, too. To Eileen, her feelings for women had only ever seemed normal and good, but she knew that Sybill had initially feared that she and Eileen were unnatural, that they were sick or wrong, and that the world would respond to their love just the way Tobias was responding now.
And yet every time they had been together, it had felt right. It still felt right, and Eileen had to fight down a wave of desire for Sybill so strong that for a moment she could scarcely breathe.
"It's not unnatural," she said again, whispering this time, knowing that Tobias had his answer.
He'd hit her then, twice, deliberately and methodically, his face expressionless. She'd have minded less, she thought, if his features had been twisted in anger, if he'd seemed to be acting out of pain or hurt.
But instead, he simply smote her, indifferent and untouched, as if he were an instrument of impersonal cosmic justice, and it was that notion, not the pain, that made her burst into tears as poor infant Severus began screaming and Tobias put his cap back on his head as he opened the street door once more.
"A boy needs his parents, both of 'em," he said. "So you'll go on living here, and you'll mind the lad and keep this house. And I'll provide for my boy and for his mam. But from today, you're no wife of mine."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
In her more cynical moments, Eileen called that exit "Tobias's finest hour." Vengeance is mine, sayeth Tobias. Strong words, they'd been, and hard.
But they were words he hadn't kept. In the end, he hadn't provided for them, though she had to admit that the fault was not completely his. He'd not been lying, though, when he'd cast her off. From that afternoon forward, he never touched her as a man touched a woman; the days of her "wifely duties" were over.
She didn't care. Lying under a grunting Tobias had never been her idea of a good time. No, she didn't miss his attentions, and when he'd bought two second-hand single beds, wrestled them by himself up the narrow stairs and into their bedroom, she had neither helped nor objected.
He hadn't left her alone in other ways, though. Always whinging, carping, grumbling, sniping -- when he was home at all, that was, and not out knocking back lagers with the lads. Truth be told, she preferred him being gone. When he was home, he shouted, and she shouted back, and when he was little, Severus would cry, until Tobias would start shouting at him.
Eileen could have taken her boy and left, of course. In theory. She didn't have to stay with a man who hated her. But where else could she have gone? She had no money -- the bit left to her by Aunt Ida was long spent, and she'd never done any training beyond Hogwarts; she'd given up her potions apprenticeship to marry. In any case, her few N.E.W.T.s hadn't been spectacular -- just the one "Outstanding" in Potions; it's not as if employment would be easy to find even if she returned to the wizarding world.
So she was stuck, and she knew she shouldn't be surprised. In fact, she could almost have laughed, if it hadn't been so pathetic. What had ever happened in her life to make her think that the world would ever do better by Eileen Prince than the soot-blackened wasteland of Spinner's End?
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Well, there had been one thing -- just one, but for a time, it had seemed as if it might be enough.
There had been Sybill Trelawney.
The first time she had really talked with Sybill had been near Christmas of their sixth year at Hogwarts. She'd never spoken with her previously, although Eileen had known who Sybill was, of course, the way one recognised the people in one's own year, no matter what their House. And even if Sybill hadn't been in the same year, she was hard to miss, so tall and skinny, with her wild hair and her giant glasses and her many haphazard shawls. Eileen supposed she needed the shawls to keep her warm, as painfully thin as she was -- like a broomstick with arms.
Sybill was a loner, the way Eileen was. Neither of them had been popular, but at least Eileen had been mostly ignored. Sybill, on the other hand, was the sort of obvious oddity who seemed to invite persecution. Not only her looks, but her distinctive voice and her sometimes hysterical insistence on predicting disaster -- all these combined to make her a figure of fun among the students.
Girls would sometimes imitate the breathy, near-tears way that she answered questions in class. Or they would make pointed remarks about people with the gift of Sight who couldn't see how pitifully hopeless they were. Snickering boys would use hook charms to snatch her shawls away.
Sybill hadn't seemed all that bothered, though. Most of the time, she managed to head off the hook charms before they succeeded in catching anything. As for the girls' remarks, she just never quite seemed to hear them.
For her part, Eileen had paid little attention to the mockery. She had enough miseries of her own, so beyond simply being glad that it was someone else and not herself who was the target of the tormentors, she'd given no real thought to Sybill.
Until that night in sixth-year, when Eileen had ended up sitting with her at the Three Broomsticks. It had been a Hogsmeade Saturday, the last before the long Yule holiday, and nearly every eligible student had come into town -- to shop, to eat, just to enjoy the sense of imminent freedom.
Eileen had planned to spend the day with Rachel Bloom, one of her friends -- oh, face it, her only friend -- the only other Slytherin from the upper-years gobstones team. But in those last few months, Rachel had gone off gobstones and gone off Eileen, too. She'd taken up with some boy, a Slytherin fifth-year whose name Eileen simply refused to remember. Rachel had cancelled their Hogsmeade afternoon at the last minute, making up some excuse, but the truth was that she wanted to spend the time with him.
So Eileen had gone by herself, to show Rachel that she could have fun without her. If Rachel thought she was going to sit around moping because her friend had better things to do -- well, Eileen had better things to do, too. She'd go to the Broomsticks, she decided, and treat herself to a butterbeer and a hot lunch with all the trimmings.
The pub had been jammed, of course, and if a little part of her had hoped that someone would notice her, hail her, invite her to sit with them -- well, she'd have been disappointed. But luckily, she hadn't had any such hopes. She didn't need or even like her schoolmates; she preferred to be left alone. She managed to get the last table, a tiny one for two near the door.
The food menu was written magically in the air above the bar, and Eileen had just decided on "plaice/chips" when the words shimmered and disappeared, indicating that the selection was sold out.
Typical. She was on the verge of giving the whole afternoon up as a bad job and going back to the castle when a wispy voice had asked, "Is this seat taken?"
It had been Sybill, a floaty length of fabric wrapped round her head and the inevitable shawls slipping off her shoulders. Eileen had been irritated -- the last thing she wanted was to be seen in the Broomsticks with the school oddball. But there didn't seem to be any way out of it, so she had said, rather grudgingly, "No. You can sit down."
Sybill had smiled, and Eileen noticed that she didn't look so unfocused and confused when she did. Her cheeks had been flushed a delicate pink from the cold, and her frizzy hair, seen close, was actually a riot of tight, golden-brown curls. She'd not been exactly pretty, but she'd seemed more appealing than odd at that moment, and Eileen had offered a half-smile in return.
Sybill's brows gathered in a concerned frown, and she startled Eileen by taking one of her hands in both of her own and squeezing it.
"Your aura is unhappy," she said. "Won't you tell me what's troubling you?"
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Eileen ought to have found the question absurd, or intrusive, but Sybill had seemed so genuinely interested and sympathetic that to her own surprise, Eileen didn't brush her off, the way she did most overtures from students. Instead, she found herself telling a shortened, deliberately humourous version of Rachel and the boyfriend.
Sybill had laughed with apparently real pleasure and then said, "I wonder what Rachel will do when she finds out that her beau steals kisses from Betty Meadowes next to the Greenhouse Three compost heap?"
"What, you saw this in your morning tea or something?" Eileen snapped. Rachel was a touchy subject for her, and she wasn't really in the mood for crackpot divinations.
"No, I saw this in my evening walk back from checking on my Herbology project," Sybill said. She tapped her temple under her glasses. "Sometimes the Inner Eye gets channelled through the Literal Eye. Helped out by corrective lenses, of course."
And she had grinned.
Eileen had laughed aloud. There might be more to this Sybill Trelawney than. . .er. . .met the eye.
They'd continued to talk over lunch, more and more comfortably as time went on, and an hour had flown by before Eileen had realised it. They'd walked back to Hogwarts together, talking about classes and N.E.W.T.s. By the time they reached the entry hall, they'd agreed to study Potions and Divination together in the library twice a week.
By the end of their sixth year, Eileen Prince and Sybill Trelawney had been fast friends, accepted as such by the other students, and mostly left to themselves. Eileen hadn't minded; Sybill was all she needed.
By the end of their seventh year, they had become lovers.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It had happened unexpectedly, just as their entire friendship had.
They'd been working in the library with a lot of the other seventh-years, N.E.W.T exams being almost upon them, but the evening had been so unseasonably warm that even Sybill had divested herself of all but one shawl, a diaphanous silver cloud that floated about her, alternately concealing and revealing her light summer robe and the lithe, graceful figure that Eileen had been noticing more and more.
Eileen had always found women appealing; she was attracted by their looks and their scents and their moves much more than she'd even been attracted by any male. And she knew that it was possible for women to love women the way husbands could love wives -- that's the way her gran had explained the relationship between two middle-aged witches who had lived down the road from them when Eileen had been a girl. Miss Bertram and Miss Warren, they were called, and Eileen had once asked her gran why they had not married.
Gran had pursed her lips and said, "They're different. They're husband and wife to each other, which won't mean anything to you now, but it will when you're older."
"But -- " Eileen had begun, but Gran had cut her off.
"No more questions. You'll understand when you're grown."
And with that Eileen had had to be content. But she'd thought about Miss Bertram and Miss Warren many times over the years, and when she was fourteen, she'd chanced upon an article on "sapphism" in a Muggle encyclopedia at the library near Gran's. Then she had understood at least some of it: women could love women with their bodies.
The way she was realising she would like to love Sybill.
On that hot Hogwarts night, she finally decided to do something about it.
She never knew where she got the courage -- or foolish daring -- to act. She wasn't a risk-taker by nature, and she usually stopped herself before trying things; she knew they were unlikely to work out, so what was the use? Gobstones had been an exception, but by the time she'd got to Hogwarts, she'd already known she was good at the game, for she and her gran had always played.
No, there was no knowing just why she decided to take Sybill's arm that night and urge her to her feet, unless she'd been taken over by one of that Lovegood boy's weird creatures. That was the laughing explanation she'd offered Sybill later, during that brief and wonderful time when it seemed that things might work out.
"Come on," she said. "Let's get some air, I'm perishing."
They'd gone to the Astronomy Tower, as had so many amorous Hogwarts students before and since, and there Eileen had pulled Sybill to her and kissed her, had run her hands down the thin back, feeling the delicious arc of her spine as they held each other, had even felt the breathtaking softness of Sybill's small breasts as they pressed against her own chest.
At that time, Eileen had not really understood all that loving Sybill might mean. She knew that she could make herself feel hot and shivery at the thought of Sybill's fair skin and expressive thin hands. She knew she could conjure a throb of pleasure between her legs when she lay in bed at night and called to mind the rise of Sybill's breasts under her robe or the length of her lean thigh.
But not until she stood with Sybill in her arms did she think consciously of what she might actually want to do with her -- how she wanted to unbutton her robes, pushing each button slowly through its buttonhole, touching her lips to each bit of fair skin as it was revealed, until she could push the fabric of robe and camisole off Sybill's shoulders to finally bare her breasts.
From out of nowhere, it seemed, Eileen's mind was crowded with images -- of Sybill naked on a bed, her hair spread on the pillow, her legs spread to Eileen's touch. The other girls in her Slytherin dormitory had sometimes giggled about touching themselves down there, but Eileen had never tried it before. She wanted to now, though, more than she thought she'd ever wanted anything. She wanted to touch Sybill, and the sudden thought that Sybill might someday touch her. . .
The notion hit Eileen like a slap; she gasped and pulled away from Sybill, who assumed she was upset or horrified.
"I'm sorry!" she'd cried as she tried to straighten her spectacles, her eyes wide behind them. "I didn't mean. . ."
"But I did," Eileen heard herself say. "I wanted to, and I want to again."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
To Eileen's inexpressible delight, Sybill had wanted to, too. They had experimented more and more as their seventh year had rushed to its close, and finally, just a week before the Leaving Feast, they had taken a blanket and pillows (discreetly shrunken) with them into the grounds, had hidden themselves on the far side of the lake, and had lain naked in each other's arms for the first time.
They'd started by undressing each other slowly, getting to know each line and curve of each other's bodies, touching and tasting. Sybill had been shy at first, blushing furiously under Eileen's gaze, and they had both been nervous. A bit of tentative exploring was all they managed, but it had been enough for the moment.
Yet when they'd finally dressed quickly, neither looking at the other, and hurried back to their Houses, Eileen was already wanting more. She could hardly wait for their next encounter.
Since their night on the Astronomy Tower, she'd been practicing in her bed at night, the curtains firmly closed. She would think about how Sybill looked and felt and how her lips had tasted, and then when she'd feel that telltale throb between her legs, she would reach her hand down, to stroke and pull and rub until finally she could make herself shudder with a pleasure that she hadn't the words to describe.
She wanted to give that pleasure to Sybill, and to have Sybill give it to her.
When it finally happened, on the very night of their very last Leaving Feast, Eileen had felt shaken to her core; her hips had arched off the ground of their own volition, her fingers had dug into the blanket as she looked to keep some grasp on a world that was rapidly sliding out from under her, so much pleasure and love at once that she thought she would come apart from the force of it.
When her vision had finally cleared, she'd looked up to see Sybill gazing at her with a troubled, teary expression, her eyes without their glasses seeming almost as if they belonged to a stranger.
"What's wrong?" Eileen had asked.
"Are you. . ." Sybill whispered, pulling her robe around her shoulders, "Do you. . . I mean, are you ever afraid that this is wrong, what we're doing? Not wrong like it would be with a man you're not married to, but. . .should girls do this? Is it normal?"
"Yes," Eileen had said firmly, reaching over to wind her fingers into Sybill's curly hair. "Yes, it's perfectly normal; it's even mentioned in books. It's not wrong at all, and someday we'll have a flat together, and we can do it all the time, in a proper bed."
Sybill had given a sort of sobbing, hiccuppy giggle. "I thought I was supposed to be the Seer. What else do you find in your crystal ball?"
Eileen felt relieved, almost giddy. "Well, madam, you are the Seer. Why don't you tell me?"
"No." Sybill was suddenly solemn. "I want you to do it. Tell me our future."
And so Eileen had spun the tale that had already taken root in her mind, how they would share a flat and study, she with a Potions apprenticeship and Sybill under the tutelage of some elderly Divinations mistress. Then someday Eileen would own her own Potions shop, and Sybill would offer consultations in their parlour to troubled souls who needed the consolation of visions into other worlds.
They would live together and love each other and be happy.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Except that things hadn't worked out that way, of course, and she should have known they wouldn't. What right had she to believe in fantasy stories? What right had Eileen Prince to happiness? Wasn't she the girl whose teachers had written reports saying she "was awkward in dealing with others" and "prefers to blame the situation and her classmates rather than take responsibility for herself"? Hadn't her gran's neighbor been overheard to call Eileen "that pitiful, sullen Prince child"? Hadn't Professor Slughorn, her own Head of House, chosen to deny her his mentorship even though he knew her ability with Potions?
No, in reality, her future had turned out to be as bleak as the streets of Spinner's End, and by the time Severus had been born, Eileen had been resigned to it. Even after she'd seen Sybill again and had learnt just how badly Fate, in the shape of misdirected letters and tyrannical fathers and husbands, had done her wrong, Eileen had accepted her lot.
What else was there to do? She'd let her mind toy with suicide, but even as she'd thought about the potions she'd mix, she'd known she wouldn't go through with it. Severus needed her, and besides, she wasn't about to give Tobias the satisfaction.
She and Sybill had loved each other and still did, but when had love ever been enough in this world?
Sybill's visit to the baby had renewed their love, but then just like that, Eileen had lost it again. She had tried not to let herself repine. She'd told herself she'd get over it. People did; no one ever actually died of a broken heart. She had a home, and she had her baby, and she had once known love, and that would have to be enough.
And she thought she had got over it. She'd raised her boy and stood up to Tobias when she needed to and told herself that if her heart was bitter, it was no more than she ought to have expected out of life. When had anything ever lasted for her? Her parents blown to bits before she had ever known them, her gran gone, her aunt gone. Her one love gone.
Still, she'd pressed on. She'd sealed her heart, except to spare a little for Severus, and she'd pressed on.
Then today, the day after Severus had received his long-awaited Hogwarts letter, Sybill had appeared again on the doorstep, and at the sight of her, Eileen had felt her heart come to pieces once more.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 3: Sybill is here
Chapter Two -- Eileen
She'd never intended to hurt anyone. Well, except maybe Sybill. Just a little bit, to make her sorry. But she hadn't intended to hurt Tobias, not at first. She'd meant it when she said she'd be a good wife to him.
And she'd tried. No one could say she hadn't tried. Hadn't she lived in his grim little house and given up her magic? Hadn't she done her wifely duty by him as long as he'd wanted her? That's what her gran had called it, "wifely duty." And Eileen had done it, every week without fail, even though Tobias never gave a thought to whether she got any pleasure from the act.
She'd kept the house well, too -- still did, and on virtually nothing. No matter how worn, everything was clean. Even Severus -- no matter how old or unsuitable his clothing, she always made sure it was clean.
But did those things ever matter to Tobias? No, he never noticed what she did do, only what she didn't. Always after her to use her magic to get them something for nothing, even though she had told him over and over again that magic didn't work that way. Anything you conjured didn't last; you could only use it temporarily.
Like poor Severus's clothes -- Tobias was always complaining about Severus's clothes, as if it was her fault that the lad had to wear his father's cast-offs. But she couldn't be constantly changing them into something better. They were already so old that the make-up of the fabric had weakened; even if she'd re-transfigured them every day, they wouldn't have held their shape, and the lad would have found his things leaping back to their original form in the middle of the day.
She'd told Tobias this. Told him and told him, but he didn't listen. Just grumbled and drank and glared daggers at her, when he came home at all.
He hated her. That was the long and short of it. He hated her, had done ever since the day of Sybill's first visit, when Severus had been just a wee mewling babe. Tobias had seen Eileen in Sybill's arms, and life had never been the same.
But Eileen and Sybill hadn't been doing anything wrong. Not really. Oh, Tobias always ranted about perversion and adultery, but it wasn't true. Each time he told the story it got worse, until to hear him tell it, she and Sybill had been naked in Tobias's bed, their hands buried in each other's quims.
It hadn't happened that way at all, of course. Yes, it was true that when Tobias had come into the sitting room on that long-ago afternoon, Eileen had been locked in Sybill's embrace. And yes, it was true that they had been kissing, that Eileen had felt those soft lips on hers for the first time since that glorious agonising summer of 1957, had felt those gentle fingers curl round her breast.
But they both had been fully clothed and would have remained so, no matter what Tobias thought. Sybill had already begun to pull away even before Tobias opened the street door. If he'd only been a quarter of an hour later, Sybill would have been gone, and he'd have been none the wiser.
They'd have still been a family, she and Tobias and Severus, or as much of a family as Tobias would have let them be, for Eileen didn't doubt that he'd have managed to spoil everything sooner or later. He might not have hated her, though, might not have judged her for something that was never her fault. She couldn't help that she still loved Sybill. She had never done anything about it, just kept it as her own secret, something to hug to herself and take refuge in when times got bad.
Still, it had been a hard life for her, never to be touched in love since she was eighteen, and if she'd turned bitter with the gall of it, who would say she didn't have cause?
Even Severus had turned against her, withdrawing into himself more and more, spending all his time with that Muggle girl. Part of Eileen was glad that Severus would soon be going to Hogwarts -- he'd got his letter yesterday -- because she thought he might be happier among his own magical kind. Yet another part of her dreaded losing him, and she'd spent a painful hour in tears today as she thought what life would be like with him gone.
Then, out of nowhere, Sybill had arrived. People could say what they would about Sybill Trelawney, call her a fraud or a loony, the way even her Hufflepuff housemates had done in school. They could say she didn't really have the Sight. But today, when Eileen had most needed her, Sybill had known and had come to her.
At least Tobias hadn't walked in on them this time. If only he hadn't done so that first time.
It was a game Eileen played often -- "if only." If only Tobias hadn't come just then, on that almost-spring day over a decade ago. Or if only he hadn't kept holding things against her, no matter how much she explained, no matter how much she showed him, over and over again, that she'd lived up to her part of the bargain about being a good wife.
No, she would never have loved him, but he hadn't wanted her to, hadn't loved her himself. But she'd kept his house and raised his boy, and you'd think that would have counted for something.
Or if only Sybill had been braver. The Sorting Hat had known what it was about, when it didn't put Sybill into Gryffindor. If only she had stood up to her family on that dreadful autumn afternoon after their seventh year, when Sybill's father had come upon them in her bed.
The day had started so blissfully, with the owl bearing the letter saying that Eileen had been accepted into a Potions apprentice program. She'd Apparated over to share the news with Sybill, who had been entirely happy for her and for once hadn't predicted a single catastrophe.
"We can get a flat of our own, together," Eileen had said, whereupon Sybill had burst into tears.
"It's too perfect," she'd said, proving her prescience once again. It had been too perfect, and Eileen should have known it would never last, but she'd been young then, and had still occasionally -- foolishly -- allowed herself to believe that things might work out well for her.
She and Sybill had been alone in the house, and they'd let their excitement carry them into bed, and then Mr Trelawney had walked in, much as Tobias would do a few years later. He hadn't even done his daughter the courtesy of knocking first; he'd just opened the door, saying, "Sybill, your mother wishes. . ." before he'd seen them.
At least he hadn't raged and shouted the way Tobias had, not that things had been any different in the end. He's just said, in a dangerous low voice, "You will put your clothing on, Miss Prince, and then you will leave this house and you will not return."
They'd kept Sybill away from her after that. When three days went by with no word, Eileen had sent a frantic owl, only to have it return with a note from Mr Trelawney: "Do not attempt to communicate with Sybill. She will not reply."
Eileen had burned the parchment in a flash of fire from her wand and had waited for Sybill to find a way to reach her.
She never had. Whether it was because she was too cowardly to defy her parents or because she hadn't really wanted Eileen after all, Eileen didn't know, but October had turned to November, and November to December, and it had been time for Eileen to visit Aunt Ida. And still she heard nothing.
That's why she had decided to accept Tobias Snape. To show Sybill that Eileen was wanted by others, that she wouldn't wait forever. She'd sent a letter, charmed to be legible only to Sybill and disguised to look like a sales circular, saying, "I've received an offer of marriage," and she'd hoped, even prayed, that the idea would shock Sybill, would force her to take a stand against her family.
She heard nothing. Not even after she'd sent a second owl with the time and date of ceremony.
She'd gone to the registry office with Tobias, and when noon came and went, with no Sybill, Eileen had straightened her spine, said "yes" to the clerk, and signed the marriage certificate with a flourish.
And hoped Sybill would be very, very sorry.
But if she was sorry, she didn't say so. Sybill never replied to the owl, and Eileen had not seen or heard from her again until that ill-fated afternoon over two years later, when she'd shown up without warning, saying she'd come to see baby Severus.
That's when Eileen learnt that despite her careful charms and enchantments, the owls had never reached Sybill. She'd had to find out about the marriage through a tiny notice in The Daily Prophet, and she'd assumed that Eileen had no longer wanted her, had wanted a man and a family instead.
"You'd said once that you would like a baby, do you remember?" Sybill asked, her eyes large and sad behind her spectacles.
Of course Eileen remembered; they'd been walking hand-in-hand just inside the Forbidden Forest on a warm afternoon of that seventh-year spring, talking of their hopes and dreams.
"I said I wanted a flying carpet, too. We were just larking." A baby had just been a fantasy then, not a real option, although of course now she wouldn't part with Severus for anything.
"I know, but directly you said it, I knew you would have one someday. And this morning, when I awoke, I could sense that he had come. I felt that I had to see him today."
"The Inner Eye told you?" Eileen asked, teasing. It was an old joke between them.
"Oh, yes, partly -- that and corrective lenses," Sybill said, with her gentle smile. "But I also just wanted to see you."
By the time Eileen had rescued one of Sybill's trailing scarves and smoothed it lightly onto her shoulder, by the time Sybill had caught her hand and kissed it and they had fallen into each other's arms, by the time Eileen had realised that Sybill still loved her, still wanted her, Tobias had come home.
When she'd seen Tobias standing in the door, the thought of Obliviating him had flashed through Eileen's mind, but of course she hadn't. The taboo against self-serving Obliviation was strong. And even had she been willing, she doubted her skills were up to the task. Obliviation was a precise and difficult art, and like so many gifts, was not one she possessed.
So there had been nothing for it but to face Tobias as he had stepped into the room and seen her and Sybill together.
"What the bloody hell is going on?" he had demanded, looking from one to the other of them.
Eileen had tried to make the best of things. "What do you mean?" she'd asked, cursing herself for being unable to resist smoothing her hair and blouse. "I'm having tea with a former schoolmate; she's called to see the baby. Sybill, this is my --"
But Tobias was having none of it. "I don't care if she's the former Queen of Sheba" he snarled. "I saw what you two was up to. I know perversion when I see it, and you have the bloody cheek to do it in a man's own house! With his baby a-laying right there in its cot!"
The moment stayed with Eileen like a photograph, all of them standing in pained tableau in the cramped front room of Spinner's End -- Tobias, rigid with anger, his hands balled into fists as he stared at them, his mouth working as though he were trying and discarding words, finding none of them strong enough to express his outrage. Sybill, her eyes huge behind her spectacles, her hands clutching futilely at her throat. Eileen herself, watching her own hands twist together, feeling as if they belonged to someone else.
Then time began again, with Tobias turning on Sybill. "Dyke! Whore!" he'd thundered. "Get out of my house. I never want to see you near my wife again."
He'd sounded like the patriarch in a bad Victorian melodrama, and Eileen had, in fact, felt something like a spectator, watching her own tragedy play out as Sybill had hurried to the door without a word, pausing at the threshold long enough to mouth "I'm sorry" before she slipped into the road and disappeared from Eileen's life for over ten years.
Three times so far in Eileen's marriage, her husband had hit her. The aftermath of Sybill's visit was the first time, and it was the only time that had frightened her.
The other episodes happened in the heat of arguments, when they'd both been shouting, each giving as good as they got, when drink and too many hard words had driven Tobias momentarily over the edge. The blows hadn't been hard, more like shoves than anything else, as if he'd wanted to repudiate her more than hurt her. "Repudiate" wasn't even a word he would know -- it was something he could only enact.
But the first time had been different. Tobias hadn't shouted, and he certainly hadn't been drunk. He'd just been so tightly-wound that he could barely force words through his clenched teeth.
"Is that what you are, then? One o' them lezzies? Have you been taking that bitch into my bed?"
She'd known it would be useless, but she tried to explain. "Tobias, nothing happened here. Not in this house, ever. Sybill just came to see the baby --"
"Is that what they taught you in that freak school of yours? Perversion? And now you plan to do the same thing in my house?"
"Nothing happened! She --"
"'Not in this house'. Then where?"
Eileen had been confused. "What?"
"You said nothing happened in this house. Then where? Have you been sneaking out when my back is turned? You've been meeting your fancy woman, spending filthy days in her bed, while I'm working in the mill all hours?"
"No! This is the first time I've even seen Sybill since I met you!"
"I won't have that dyke's name spoken in this house! You tell me the truth, now. You owe me that much. Have you ever had. . .unnatural relations with that. . .that --?"
She hadn't been able to stop herself; his words cut too deep, and she shouted, "It's not unnatural! It's not!"
She'd been loud, insistent, talking to Sybill and to Sybill's family as well as to Tobias, because she knew it was what Sybill had once thought, too. To Eileen, her feelings for women had only ever seemed normal and good, but she knew that Sybill had initially feared that she and Eileen were unnatural, that they were sick or wrong, and that the world would respond to their love just the way Tobias was responding now.
And yet every time they had been together, it had felt right. It still felt right, and Eileen had to fight down a wave of desire for Sybill so strong that for a moment she could scarcely breathe.
"It's not unnatural," she said again, whispering this time, knowing that Tobias had his answer.
He'd hit her then, twice, deliberately and methodically, his face expressionless. She'd have minded less, she thought, if his features had been twisted in anger, if he'd seemed to be acting out of pain or hurt.
But instead, he simply smote her, indifferent and untouched, as if he were an instrument of impersonal cosmic justice, and it was that notion, not the pain, that made her burst into tears as poor infant Severus began screaming and Tobias put his cap back on his head as he opened the street door once more.
"A boy needs his parents, both of 'em," he said. "So you'll go on living here, and you'll mind the lad and keep this house. And I'll provide for my boy and for his mam. But from today, you're no wife of mine."
In her more cynical moments, Eileen called that exit "Tobias's finest hour." Vengeance is mine, sayeth Tobias. Strong words, they'd been, and hard.
But they were words he hadn't kept. In the end, he hadn't provided for them, though she had to admit that the fault was not completely his. He'd not been lying, though, when he'd cast her off. From that afternoon forward, he never touched her as a man touched a woman; the days of her "wifely duties" were over.
She didn't care. Lying under a grunting Tobias had never been her idea of a good time. No, she didn't miss his attentions, and when he'd bought two second-hand single beds, wrestled them by himself up the narrow stairs and into their bedroom, she had neither helped nor objected.
He hadn't left her alone in other ways, though. Always whinging, carping, grumbling, sniping -- when he was home at all, that was, and not out knocking back lagers with the lads. Truth be told, she preferred him being gone. When he was home, he shouted, and she shouted back, and when he was little, Severus would cry, until Tobias would start shouting at him.
Eileen could have taken her boy and left, of course. In theory. She didn't have to stay with a man who hated her. But where else could she have gone? She had no money -- the bit left to her by Aunt Ida was long spent, and she'd never done any training beyond Hogwarts; she'd given up her potions apprenticeship to marry. In any case, her few N.E.W.T.s hadn't been spectacular -- just the one "Outstanding" in Potions; it's not as if employment would be easy to find even if she returned to the wizarding world.
So she was stuck, and she knew she shouldn't be surprised. In fact, she could almost have laughed, if it hadn't been so pathetic. What had ever happened in her life to make her think that the world would ever do better by Eileen Prince than the soot-blackened wasteland of Spinner's End?
Well, there had been one thing -- just one, but for a time, it had seemed as if it might be enough.
There had been Sybill Trelawney.
The first time she had really talked with Sybill had been near Christmas of their sixth year at Hogwarts. She'd never spoken with her previously, although Eileen had known who Sybill was, of course, the way one recognised the people in one's own year, no matter what their House. And even if Sybill hadn't been in the same year, she was hard to miss, so tall and skinny, with her wild hair and her giant glasses and her many haphazard shawls. Eileen supposed she needed the shawls to keep her warm, as painfully thin as she was -- like a broomstick with arms.
Sybill was a loner, the way Eileen was. Neither of them had been popular, but at least Eileen had been mostly ignored. Sybill, on the other hand, was the sort of obvious oddity who seemed to invite persecution. Not only her looks, but her distinctive voice and her sometimes hysterical insistence on predicting disaster -- all these combined to make her a figure of fun among the students.
Girls would sometimes imitate the breathy, near-tears way that she answered questions in class. Or they would make pointed remarks about people with the gift of Sight who couldn't see how pitifully hopeless they were. Snickering boys would use hook charms to snatch her shawls away.
Sybill hadn't seemed all that bothered, though. Most of the time, she managed to head off the hook charms before they succeeded in catching anything. As for the girls' remarks, she just never quite seemed to hear them.
For her part, Eileen had paid little attention to the mockery. She had enough miseries of her own, so beyond simply being glad that it was someone else and not herself who was the target of the tormentors, she'd given no real thought to Sybill.
Until that night in sixth-year, when Eileen had ended up sitting with her at the Three Broomsticks. It had been a Hogsmeade Saturday, the last before the long Yule holiday, and nearly every eligible student had come into town -- to shop, to eat, just to enjoy the sense of imminent freedom.
Eileen had planned to spend the day with Rachel Bloom, one of her friends -- oh, face it, her only friend -- the only other Slytherin from the upper-years gobstones team. But in those last few months, Rachel had gone off gobstones and gone off Eileen, too. She'd taken up with some boy, a Slytherin fifth-year whose name Eileen simply refused to remember. Rachel had cancelled their Hogsmeade afternoon at the last minute, making up some excuse, but the truth was that she wanted to spend the time with him.
So Eileen had gone by herself, to show Rachel that she could have fun without her. If Rachel thought she was going to sit around moping because her friend had better things to do -- well, Eileen had better things to do, too. She'd go to the Broomsticks, she decided, and treat herself to a butterbeer and a hot lunch with all the trimmings.
The pub had been jammed, of course, and if a little part of her had hoped that someone would notice her, hail her, invite her to sit with them -- well, she'd have been disappointed. But luckily, she hadn't had any such hopes. She didn't need or even like her schoolmates; she preferred to be left alone. She managed to get the last table, a tiny one for two near the door.
The food menu was written magically in the air above the bar, and Eileen had just decided on "plaice/chips" when the words shimmered and disappeared, indicating that the selection was sold out.
Typical. She was on the verge of giving the whole afternoon up as a bad job and going back to the castle when a wispy voice had asked, "Is this seat taken?"
It had been Sybill, a floaty length of fabric wrapped round her head and the inevitable shawls slipping off her shoulders. Eileen had been irritated -- the last thing she wanted was to be seen in the Broomsticks with the school oddball. But there didn't seem to be any way out of it, so she had said, rather grudgingly, "No. You can sit down."
Sybill had smiled, and Eileen noticed that she didn't look so unfocused and confused when she did. Her cheeks had been flushed a delicate pink from the cold, and her frizzy hair, seen close, was actually a riot of tight, golden-brown curls. She'd not been exactly pretty, but she'd seemed more appealing than odd at that moment, and Eileen had offered a half-smile in return.
Sybill's brows gathered in a concerned frown, and she startled Eileen by taking one of her hands in both of her own and squeezing it.
"Your aura is unhappy," she said. "Won't you tell me what's troubling you?"
Eileen ought to have found the question absurd, or intrusive, but Sybill had seemed so genuinely interested and sympathetic that to her own surprise, Eileen didn't brush her off, the way she did most overtures from students. Instead, she found herself telling a shortened, deliberately humourous version of Rachel and the boyfriend.
Sybill had laughed with apparently real pleasure and then said, "I wonder what Rachel will do when she finds out that her beau steals kisses from Betty Meadowes next to the Greenhouse Three compost heap?"
"What, you saw this in your morning tea or something?" Eileen snapped. Rachel was a touchy subject for her, and she wasn't really in the mood for crackpot divinations.
"No, I saw this in my evening walk back from checking on my Herbology project," Sybill said. She tapped her temple under her glasses. "Sometimes the Inner Eye gets channelled through the Literal Eye. Helped out by corrective lenses, of course."
And she had grinned.
Eileen had laughed aloud. There might be more to this Sybill Trelawney than. . .er. . .met the eye.
They'd continued to talk over lunch, more and more comfortably as time went on, and an hour had flown by before Eileen had realised it. They'd walked back to Hogwarts together, talking about classes and N.E.W.T.s. By the time they reached the entry hall, they'd agreed to study Potions and Divination together in the library twice a week.
By the end of their sixth year, Eileen Prince and Sybill Trelawney had been fast friends, accepted as such by the other students, and mostly left to themselves. Eileen hadn't minded; Sybill was all she needed.
By the end of their seventh year, they had become lovers.
It had happened unexpectedly, just as their entire friendship had.
They'd been working in the library with a lot of the other seventh-years, N.E.W.T exams being almost upon them, but the evening had been so unseasonably warm that even Sybill had divested herself of all but one shawl, a diaphanous silver cloud that floated about her, alternately concealing and revealing her light summer robe and the lithe, graceful figure that Eileen had been noticing more and more.
Eileen had always found women appealing; she was attracted by their looks and their scents and their moves much more than she'd even been attracted by any male. And she knew that it was possible for women to love women the way husbands could love wives -- that's the way her gran had explained the relationship between two middle-aged witches who had lived down the road from them when Eileen had been a girl. Miss Bertram and Miss Warren, they were called, and Eileen had once asked her gran why they had not married.
Gran had pursed her lips and said, "They're different. They're husband and wife to each other, which won't mean anything to you now, but it will when you're older."
"But -- " Eileen had begun, but Gran had cut her off.
"No more questions. You'll understand when you're grown."
And with that Eileen had had to be content. But she'd thought about Miss Bertram and Miss Warren many times over the years, and when she was fourteen, she'd chanced upon an article on "sapphism" in a Muggle encyclopedia at the library near Gran's. Then she had understood at least some of it: women could love women with their bodies.
The way she was realising she would like to love Sybill.
On that hot Hogwarts night, she finally decided to do something about it.
She never knew where she got the courage -- or foolish daring -- to act. She wasn't a risk-taker by nature, and she usually stopped herself before trying things; she knew they were unlikely to work out, so what was the use? Gobstones had been an exception, but by the time she'd got to Hogwarts, she'd already known she was good at the game, for she and her gran had always played.
No, there was no knowing just why she decided to take Sybill's arm that night and urge her to her feet, unless she'd been taken over by one of that Lovegood boy's weird creatures. That was the laughing explanation she'd offered Sybill later, during that brief and wonderful time when it seemed that things might work out.
"Come on," she said. "Let's get some air, I'm perishing."
They'd gone to the Astronomy Tower, as had so many amorous Hogwarts students before and since, and there Eileen had pulled Sybill to her and kissed her, had run her hands down the thin back, feeling the delicious arc of her spine as they held each other, had even felt the breathtaking softness of Sybill's small breasts as they pressed against her own chest.
At that time, Eileen had not really understood all that loving Sybill might mean. She knew that she could make herself feel hot and shivery at the thought of Sybill's fair skin and expressive thin hands. She knew she could conjure a throb of pleasure between her legs when she lay in bed at night and called to mind the rise of Sybill's breasts under her robe or the length of her lean thigh.
But not until she stood with Sybill in her arms did she think consciously of what she might actually want to do with her -- how she wanted to unbutton her robes, pushing each button slowly through its buttonhole, touching her lips to each bit of fair skin as it was revealed, until she could push the fabric of robe and camisole off Sybill's shoulders to finally bare her breasts.
From out of nowhere, it seemed, Eileen's mind was crowded with images -- of Sybill naked on a bed, her hair spread on the pillow, her legs spread to Eileen's touch. The other girls in her Slytherin dormitory had sometimes giggled about touching themselves down there, but Eileen had never tried it before. She wanted to now, though, more than she thought she'd ever wanted anything. She wanted to touch Sybill, and the sudden thought that Sybill might someday touch her. . .
The notion hit Eileen like a slap; she gasped and pulled away from Sybill, who assumed she was upset or horrified.
"I'm sorry!" she'd cried as she tried to straighten her spectacles, her eyes wide behind them. "I didn't mean. . ."
"But I did," Eileen heard herself say. "I wanted to, and I want to again."
To Eileen's inexpressible delight, Sybill had wanted to, too. They had experimented more and more as their seventh year had rushed to its close, and finally, just a week before the Leaving Feast, they had taken a blanket and pillows (discreetly shrunken) with them into the grounds, had hidden themselves on the far side of the lake, and had lain naked in each other's arms for the first time.
They'd started by undressing each other slowly, getting to know each line and curve of each other's bodies, touching and tasting. Sybill had been shy at first, blushing furiously under Eileen's gaze, and they had both been nervous. A bit of tentative exploring was all they managed, but it had been enough for the moment.
Yet when they'd finally dressed quickly, neither looking at the other, and hurried back to their Houses, Eileen was already wanting more. She could hardly wait for their next encounter.
Since their night on the Astronomy Tower, she'd been practicing in her bed at night, the curtains firmly closed. She would think about how Sybill looked and felt and how her lips had tasted, and then when she'd feel that telltale throb between her legs, she would reach her hand down, to stroke and pull and rub until finally she could make herself shudder with a pleasure that she hadn't the words to describe.
She wanted to give that pleasure to Sybill, and to have Sybill give it to her.
When it finally happened, on the very night of their very last Leaving Feast, Eileen had felt shaken to her core; her hips had arched off the ground of their own volition, her fingers had dug into the blanket as she looked to keep some grasp on a world that was rapidly sliding out from under her, so much pleasure and love at once that she thought she would come apart from the force of it.
When her vision had finally cleared, she'd looked up to see Sybill gazing at her with a troubled, teary expression, her eyes without their glasses seeming almost as if they belonged to a stranger.
"What's wrong?" Eileen had asked.
"Are you. . ." Sybill whispered, pulling her robe around her shoulders, "Do you. . . I mean, are you ever afraid that this is wrong, what we're doing? Not wrong like it would be with a man you're not married to, but. . .should girls do this? Is it normal?"
"Yes," Eileen had said firmly, reaching over to wind her fingers into Sybill's curly hair. "Yes, it's perfectly normal; it's even mentioned in books. It's not wrong at all, and someday we'll have a flat together, and we can do it all the time, in a proper bed."
Sybill had given a sort of sobbing, hiccuppy giggle. "I thought I was supposed to be the Seer. What else do you find in your crystal ball?"
Eileen felt relieved, almost giddy. "Well, madam, you are the Seer. Why don't you tell me?"
"No." Sybill was suddenly solemn. "I want you to do it. Tell me our future."
And so Eileen had spun the tale that had already taken root in her mind, how they would share a flat and study, she with a Potions apprenticeship and Sybill under the tutelage of some elderly Divinations mistress. Then someday Eileen would own her own Potions shop, and Sybill would offer consultations in their parlour to troubled souls who needed the consolation of visions into other worlds.
They would live together and love each other and be happy.
Except that things hadn't worked out that way, of course, and she should have known they wouldn't. What right had she to believe in fantasy stories? What right had Eileen Prince to happiness? Wasn't she the girl whose teachers had written reports saying she "was awkward in dealing with others" and "prefers to blame the situation and her classmates rather than take responsibility for herself"? Hadn't her gran's neighbor been overheard to call Eileen "that pitiful, sullen Prince child"? Hadn't Professor Slughorn, her own Head of House, chosen to deny her his mentorship even though he knew her ability with Potions?
No, in reality, her future had turned out to be as bleak as the streets of Spinner's End, and by the time Severus had been born, Eileen had been resigned to it. Even after she'd seen Sybill again and had learnt just how badly Fate, in the shape of misdirected letters and tyrannical fathers and husbands, had done her wrong, Eileen had accepted her lot.
What else was there to do? She'd let her mind toy with suicide, but even as she'd thought about the potions she'd mix, she'd known she wouldn't go through with it. Severus needed her, and besides, she wasn't about to give Tobias the satisfaction.
She and Sybill had loved each other and still did, but when had love ever been enough in this world?
Sybill's visit to the baby had renewed their love, but then just like that, Eileen had lost it again. She had tried not to let herself repine. She'd told herself she'd get over it. People did; no one ever actually died of a broken heart. She had a home, and she had her baby, and she had once known love, and that would have to be enough.
And she thought she had got over it. She'd raised her boy and stood up to Tobias when she needed to and told herself that if her heart was bitter, it was no more than she ought to have expected out of life. When had anything ever lasted for her? Her parents blown to bits before she had ever known them, her gran gone, her aunt gone. Her one love gone.
Still, she'd pressed on. She'd sealed her heart, except to spare a little for Severus, and she'd pressed on.
Then today, the day after Severus had received his long-awaited Hogwarts letter, Sybill had appeared again on the doorstep, and at the sight of her, Eileen had felt her heart come to pieces once more.
Chapter 3: Sybill is here