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Small Comforts by noodle [Reviews - 9]


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This one-shot is the result of e-mail exchanges in which Severus’ chocolate consumption statistics were discussed at speculative length. Thanks to TeaOli and linlawless for the opportunity to think chocolate and indulge.

I’m flying solo without a beta read, so any mistakes b’longa me.

Canon characters are the property of J.K. Rowling. I make no money from them.





Severus tugged his thin jacket closer to his body and turned up his collar against the drizzle and the wind. Skulking close to a corner, he paused to listen. His frown deepened as he picked up the sound of rough, childish laughter. The sound of a fight being fuelled with sing-song teasing and scuffling shoves.

The voices of his classmates – or so they were when they decided to show up at the shrine of grey misery otherwise known as a school – rose to the animal treble screams that only feral eight-year-old boys could manage. A rubbish bin clanged over cobble stones, dogs barked and snarled, and a window was thrown open to permit a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse to pour down into the narrow street.

Severus scarpered. He didn’t want to find himself in the path of the boys who had been sent on their way with curses and the threat of a walloping – and would no doubt be looking for a scapegoat to wear their desire for retribution.

Ducking down a lane and scrambling over the fence at its rear, Severus quietly dropped to the ground at the rear of the motor garage. It was Saturday morning, and the dog would be in the front of the shop – guarding the cash register while the mechanics, who eternally grumbled about bolts that hadn’t been touched “since Noah were lad”, wiped their grimy hands on even grimier rags, noisily slurping tea while shaking their heads at the wireless news broadcasts.

Severus escaped the danger of the dog’s inevitable attention by squeezing through a haphazardly boarded gap in the brick wall flanking one side of the garage premises – it was said that the breach had been the result of a real German bomb! He checked up and down a long street leading down to the river. Seeing no prowling gangs, he shivered as the drizzle intensified to dull rain. Checking once more, he travelled along the street at a steady trot while keeping close enough to the house fronts to take advantage of any shelter they might offer from weather and people.

He shuffled to a halt near a shop front. Wide windows barred with homemade fortifications. There was no warm glow from inside – everything seemed cold and dark on a rainy day in Manchester – but it was lit with several dingy light bulbs. Severus’ stomach rumbled. Next to the counter stood a hot box with glass sides, cruelly taunting him with the steaming pies he could see within. “Pie an’ mushy peas,” he breathed rapturously. How long had it been since he’d had a stomach full of hot food? He was close to swooning as his mind bombarded him with helpings of mashed potatoes, fish and chips soused in brown vinegar, and juicily smoking chops with glistening fatty rinds. Tearing his eyes away from the hot box, he eyed the other merchandise on offer. The bread and the cakes and sweets were too far away, but…

Sliding close to the door, Severus concentrated on a small pyramid of apples piled on a box in a near corner and opened his hand expectantly. Sometimes it worked, and the thing he wanted would come to him…

And sometimes it wouldn’t. Sighing, he dropped his hand and scowled in disappointment. Today was, evidently, a “wouldn’t” day.

“Garn! Gerrout ev it, ye mucky bugger! Bloody t’ief!”

The shopkeeper’s coarse shout sent Severus running to save his hide.

“Ye’ll none catch me, ye fuckin’ mutton ’ead,” Severus snarled as he sped over the rough road, his jacket billowing behind him, and his eyes tuned for the sight of a policeman’s uniform. Taking several dubious alleyways, he soon found himself wriggling under the fence that had been constructed around the deserted mill. If the fence had been put in place to keep people out, it had been a dismal failure. Severus stood still and listened, willing himself to breathe quietly. It would not do for anyone to find him here.

Eventually satisfied that he had the place to himself – aside from the stray cats that glared at him from various vantage points – Severus picked up a lump of crumbling brick and searched the building for an unbroken window. His eyes latched onto a few boxes hurled carelessly against a wall. Dropping the intended missile, he gave each of the boxes a shove with his foot, turning them over and spilling their contents into muddy, oil-streaked puddles. Nothing but rags, empty picture frames, broken crockery, a dented saucepan…

“Ey-up, wha’s this?” Severus scooped up a book from the midst of the rubbish. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” he read out loud. Turning to the front pages, he found out that the book had been published in America in 1964, and sent as a birthday gift to “Dulcie” from an Auntie Jessie, who lived in a place called Des Moines. He did some quick calculations. The book itself was only four years old – but it was obviously well used. Why had it been discarded if it was reasonably new, and enjoyed? He imagined several scenarios, which included murder, smallpox, a train crash, drowning in the river, and the much more boring option of yet another family packing up whatever they could carry and leaving.

Shrugging his thin shoulders, Severus shoved the book into one of his voluminous pockets, scaled a rusting downpipe which gurgled with its traffic of rainwater, and delicately eased his body through a window framed with jagged shards of soot-blackened glass. He looked around and shuddered, partly from the cold, and partly from the haunting desolation of the place. The machines on this floor had been removed, leaving only rusting steel mountings and tracks to mourn the dead pulse of lost purpose. His black eyes flitted nervously from shadowed corner to shadowed corner. He had heard that boys of his age had once been set to work in the mills. From dawn until dusk, they had worked under and between the huge machines that had, quite often, crushed them to death – or sliced off their fingers, legs, and arms. What if parts of them were still here? Severus gulped. Small, thin, nimble boys were particularly sought after. He could have easily been one of them.

Staring down the haunting sensation with a fierce scowl, Severus selected a spot on the floor out of the wind, but still light enough to read, and opened the book to see what it was about. He enjoyed books of any kind – except stories written for girls. The simple act of reading was a comfort and an escape. He could almost imagine nestling in his mother’s arms while she taught him how… Fireside evenings when he proudly read parts of the newspaper aloud to his father… When home was a good place…

He was soon lost in a world of mysterious factories, stolen secrets, Golden Tickets – he nodded and muttered, “Typical!” when at first it appeared that the undeserving had got all the tickets – forgeries and amazing twists of fate, eccentric chocolatiers, fascinating machinery, and lots and lots of chocolate.

He stopped reading for a moment to scold himself for the tears that welled in his eyes at the distant memory of chocolate icing on his fourth birthday, and chocolate eggs at a long gone Easter. He had held the confection in his hands until it was a sticky, smearing mess, then lay on the hearth rug to lick it all off while enjoying the warmth of the fire. He suddenly longed for chocolate almost as much as the fictitious Charlie – possibly more so. He wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve, grimaced at the resulting snail trail, and rubbed it off on his trousers. To cry was to ask for trouble. Painful trouble.

As the rainy day drew to a lingering end with the promise of a rainy night, Severus finished the book and pondered the prospect of happy endings. Did such things happen? Really? Could an amazing twist of fate turn his life around as well? For a moment, he chose to believe so. He stood up. “This’d make a grand choc’late fact’ry,” he said out loud, looking around with his hands on his hips. “An’ Gloop’s got nuffin’!” He pressed his concave stomach, making it growl in earnest. “Aye, room for twice as much chocolate as what ’e can eat!”




“So that’s why!” Hermione said, gently emerging from a permitted use of Legilimency on her wizard. It had been a deeply intimate act to experience the world as Severus had once seen it – and it made her heart ache. The memories which explained his very occasional, uncharacteristic overindulgence clung to her thoughts and made her want to comfort the little boy he had been. That being impossible, she settled for showing the man he had become how much she loved him with a careful embrace – so as not to pressure his very full stomach – and numerous kisses which left her lips daubed with chocolaty goodness.

“Are you sure you didn’t accidentally curse yourself when you said you could eat twice as much chocolate as Augustus Gloop?” she asked, licking chocolate off her lower lip.

Still experiencing the effects of having “seriously overdone it”, Severus was not inclined to move for at least another hour. He gave Hermione a cat-who-got-the-cream grin and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think so, but it’s a distant possibility.” He eyed the empty Honeydukes boxes with the satisfaction of a triumphant martyr and reached for her hand.

Hermione wandlessly cast a cleansing charm over him to remove all residual stickiness before accepting the invitation to snuggle.

Sensing her thoughtful melancholy, Severus looked into her eyes, forcing himself to think through a weighty fog of ninety percent cocoa hedonism. “I’d convinced myself that such a thing as a fortunate twist of fate was never destined for me. You managed to change my mind – which is not an easy thing to do. You changed it many times.” At her small, comforting smile, he rested his hand on the slight but growing evidence of their first child’s existence. “And now, beyond all of my expectations, we have a new beginning.” And future opportunities for chocolate consumption! No, your name won’t be Augustus if I have any say in this – and I shall. Or Augusta. Or Augustinian. Or Augustine. Or…





Small Comforts by noodle [Reviews - 9]


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