Heiress of Prince

Julianna was in the atrium, seated at a small table with a stunning view of the lake and an impressive variety of plants growing therein. She looked very young in a pale blue morning dress, her inky black hair spilling down her back. Severus had not yet seen her with her hair down and found the effect oddly disarming. She offered him her characteristic half smile and gestured for him to join her. A light breakfast was spread out on the table, tea with fruits and crepes, “You’re looking much better,” she sounded genuinely pleased.

“I am feeling better, thank you. I’d like to pick your brain about the elixir you made for me. St. Mungo’s struggled for weeks to come up with a draught that worked half as well when Arthur Weasley was attacked,” Snape’s default topic of conversation, when pressed, was always potions. It was a sterile subject, painfully boring to many, which he could discuss for hours if he had to. Which he rather wouldn’t, in general, “I confess I was quite impressed. You don’t immediately strike me as the potions type,”

“I wouldn’t say I’m really the type either, it runs in the family, but I’m really more of a dabbler,” she admitted with a nonchalant wave of the hand.

“A dabbler?” Snape sputtered derisively, “one does not dabble in potions. It’s the subtlest of arts, requiring years of training and no small amount of intuition. It’s not a game of croquet you simply waltz in and away from as the mood suits you, it’s a way of life. Achievement in the laboratory requires devotion and patience which no affectation of false modesty can belittle. You do the profession insult!”

Julianna endured his tirade placidly, “Stepped on a few toes, did I? I apologize if I affronted your pride, I hear you are quite the authority in the field. Let us be friends again?” she offered him a plate of lemon tarts, her face solemn, but her eyes danced merrily. Snape felt she was laughing on the inside.

“What?” he glared at her.

“Oh, nothing,” she insisted. He continued to frown. With a slight chuckle she explained, “When you rant, you remind me so much of my great uncle Atticus, your great grandfather. He was nothing but fuss and bluster. I’ll show you the portrait hall after breakfast.”

Snape felt all the fight go out of him like a deflated balloon. This woman knew everything about where he came from, while he knew nothing, it gave him the strangest sensation. And the way she weathered his outbursts confused him as well, he’d never met anyone who was so unperturbed by his temper, but she just smiled and let him run out of steam. He felt foolish, and had no idea how to respond. Quickly, he shoved a tart in his mouth. It was heavenly.


* * * *


The meal passed in companionable silence, Julianna seemed no more eager to strike up a new conversation than Snape. He was getting the impression that she was naturally quiet as well, very articulate when the time came, but just as comfortable saying nothing. It suited him, for nothing irritated Severus Snape more than a woman who prattled. After their meal, she led him to the portrait hall as promised, pointing out the rooms along the way. Finally, they stopped before the second floor entrance to the West wing, “Most of them sleep all the time, but please don’t be offended by those who aren’t. We Princes have always been a queer lot, and some of the ancestors just stare at you without saying anything for hours. Those who do talk, don’t expect them to say much. It’s not personal, they’re just not very outspoken. Shall we?”


Severus nodded curtly, and Julianna led him in. The hall was very long, ending in an enormous sheet of window. Portraits lined both sides of the hall, oldest pictures closest, and newest at the end. The subjects of the majority of paintings—particularly the eldest were all sleeping. Julianna rattled off the names of dozens of wizards and witches, most boasting familiar features such as dark hair, thick brows, or thin faces. As they neared the middle of the hall, more and more subjects sat awake and watching. A few of them greeted Julianna and nodded to Severus, but most just stared eerily, as she’d warned. A pair of portraits, a witch and a wizard of obviously dark persuasions sneered down on them from the wall, Julianna introduced Miklos Yvgeny and Elena Prince, a notorious pair from the 18th century. Miklos darted into Elena’s frame as they passed, producing a dead rat from beneath his robes to present to his bride. She cackled happily at the present and cradled it like a baby, “Every family’s got them,” Julianna whispered to him, “happily, they did not reproduce.”


Finally they came to the portrait of a man painted in the prime of his life. Robust and strong, the man looked arrogant and ready to slay any dragon that came his way. His long black hair swept his shoulders, slashed with white in a way that could only be described as dashing, and his prominent nose only added to his character, it fit his face completely. He beamed down at Julianna, who returned his grin, “Grandfather,” she chimed affectionately, “this is Severus Snape, Eugenia’s grandson, come home at last! Severus, this is our common ancestor, August Prince!”


“Capital!” the portrait, August, boomed, “proud to have you, lad, proud indeed! Get the bad leg of a fight lately, have you? That’s alright, there’s always round two! Prince men never lose the same fight twice, unless it’s to our wives, you know!” he guffawed before collapsing all at once into great rumbling snores. Snape blinked hard. Julianna merely smiled, “He does that. Without a doubt, the most loquacious member of our family ever,” she paused, “Ever. Now this is where it gets really interesting for you. August and his wife, Odette,” she nodded to the sweet looking woman in the next frame, “had four children. The eldest, Atticus, is your great grandfather. Temperamental and domineering with a touch of agoraphobia, he was the archetypal Prince. Next came Amaranth, whose children Isobel and Abelard yielded no further generations. Abelard mysteriously disappeared on some quest of his and Isobel proved infertile. Next came great uncle Thurston who was a magnificent homosexual—very fun to be around, died in a boating accident of all things. Youngest was my own great grandmother, Sylviana, August’s favorite child, who lived out her entire life here. Confused yet?” They moved to meet Atticus.


Snape felt as if he were looking at a picture of himself in twenty or thirty years. The man was positively grizzly. Thick, greasy hair covered much of the man’s face, black, hawk-like eyes observed the world with disdain. His eyebrows grew wild and his mouth was drawn thin, his nose did not have the beaklike quality Severus inherited from his father, but all the Prince men seemed to have large noses as well. Snape briefly wondered what that said about his mother.


“Uncle Atticus, I’d like you to meet Severus Snape. He’s Eileen’s son,” Julianna introduced him. The old man glowered at them, “Julianna, Severus,” he acknowledged them tersely.


“That’s all we’ll get from him, best move on,” Julianna next introduced him to Atticus’s wife, Honoria, who seemed just as humorless, if more cordial. The next portrait was of a woman in the twilight of her life. Her once ebony hair was mostly snowy white, and piled atop her head in an archaic fashion. Her dark eyes looked sad and far away. Though never beautiful, Severus recognized something comforting in her long face.


“Hello Aunt Eugenia,” Julianna said softly. The portrait’s gaze focused, and the woman offered a tender, reluctant smile to the young woman. When she turned her eyes to Severus, however, she froze, “Julianna, who is this man?” Eugenia’s voice quivered.


“This is Severus Snape, aunt, Eileen’s boy,” Julianna stepped back, allowed the woman to have her moment. Snape was at a loss, no one had ever looked at him the way Eugenia Prince’s portrait was staring at that moment, as if he were her salvation, or the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Tears welled in her eyes, “Oh my, Severus, I never thought I’d lay eyes on you. You poor little boy, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”


Snape knew better than to ask what the woman was sorry for. He’d lived his life. He already knew, now he only wished he knew how to comfort women, “There, there, it’s alright,” he began awkwardly, “I’m here now. Very little harm done…it’s good to meet you at last…” he trailed off.


“I tried so hard, you know,” Eugenia offered sadly, “but my daughter just wouldn’t…look at me, weeping like a little girl, I’m afraid I’ve gone soft in my old age. I’m very pleased you’re here, Severus, I’m only sorry I never got the chance to really get to know you. Get on with you and leave an old woman to her thoughts, but promise you’ll come back and talk with me later.”


Snape assured her that he would and turned to Julianna, who wore the oddest expression, “What?” he demanded. She shook her head slowly and then hooked her arm through his, wrapping her fingers around his shoulder as naturally as breathing. It shook him, the easy way she touched him, “Shall we look in on your mum?” she asked.


A torrent of emotions surged through him. Eileen Snape had always been a difficult mother, particularly distant, as if she had no idea what to make of him. As a child, he made himself sick trying to win her love, but they seemed mutually incapable of communicating. Even more hurtful was her inability to protect him from his father’s violent rages, but being in this place, the home where she’d belonged, softened his heart toward the woman who bore him. Severus allowed Julianna to lead him to the last painting on the wall, Eileen at seventeen. She looked alien and childlike to him, her sunken eyes enormous and empty, her hair dangling lifelessly around her face. She looked sick and confused and lost. She was a stranger to him. The painting blinked back at them without emotion, or even recognition that they were there.


“What was wrong with her?” Snape wondered aloud.


“Well…she was probably autistic,” Julianna replied plainly, Snape turned to her in horror, “You didn’t know? Oh, Severus…but everyone described her behavior as so…different. Even as a child, she couldn’t seem to think of things the same way other people did, and certainly never learned to interact with others in a fully developed way. And considering her single minded obsession with Gobstones…you never even considered that she may have been…impaired?”


Snape read the pity in her eyes and lashed out, “Do most children you know make a habit of analyzing their parents’ mental anomalies?”


“I’m only suggesting a common theory, Severus, which accounts for Eileen’s differences, but it adds up. When she was a child, her parents were unable to understand what they saw as queerness. If she was autistic, imagine how difficult that must have made her school years, there was no empathy for children like her at the time. You’re not a child any more; you’re a grown man who has the capacity to examine his own life through a more objective, educated eye. You can either go on believing that she simply never loved you, or try to accept that she never knew how to show you. It’s up to you. I’m sorry that your life has been so difficult, but it’s time to start controlling your own emotions. Work it out,” Julianna stormed out, showing a hint of temper for the first time; a crack in the perfect composure that somehow pleased Severus, despite his irritation. She made a point though, he admitted as he remembered the precisely ordered cabinets of goods in an otherwise squalid house. He recalled a thousand situations which supported her argument while he stared into the unseeing eyes of his mother’s portrait, knowing he owed Julianna one large apology.


He found Julianna on the rear lawn practicing archery. Her porcelain brow was furrowed in deep concentration as she drew back another arrow and carefully sited her distant target. She made an impressive figure, her arm a poised extension of the arrow, and she seemed to sigh with contentment when she loosed it. The arrow cut through the air soundlessly, soaring in a perfect arc to impale the very center of her mark.


“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” he inquired politely.


“Centaurs,” she curtly refused to look at him, inspecting the next arrow.


“No better way,” he stood far out of her way, remaining silent as she fired her next shot at a new target. It fell as perfectly as the first.


“Was there something you wanted?” she turned on him, bow loaded, though pointed at the ground. Snape took an inadvertent step back. Dark Lord with a wand? No sweat. Angry woman with an arrow? Abject terror.


“I’m afraid,” he began slowly, finding the words distasteful.


“I’m not going to shoot you,” she said evenly, turning back to her targets.


“Not of you,” though that wasn’t exactly true, “I’m afraid of what I don’t understand. I thought I understood why my life had been as it was, but coming here has changed all of that. It’s rewritten my history utterly and I’m not a very transient man. I keep attacking you because you challenge everything I think I know, and I don’t know how to adapt very well. I suddenly find myself without a purpose for the first time since I was a teenager, and I wasn’t very good at that either. I beg you, cousin, be patient with me,” insomuch as Severus Snape was able, he pleaded.


Julianna turned to him again, the afternoon sun catching the sheen of her dark curls, gray eyes flashing with emotion. Severus swallowed deeply, “Very well,” she replied, casting aside her gear and taking his arm “I think I heard an apology in there somewhere, let’s see about dinner.”


* * * *


Author’s Note:
Writing the portraits was really difficult, I’m so sorry if it shows!
Please don’t be upset with me if you don’t like/agree with my decision to write Eileen Prince as autistic. Rowling barely gave us any descriptions of her behavior or character, so for the purposes of this story and allowing Snape to deal and heal, rather than just be super angry for eternity, it was the direction I chose and the direction I stand by. I tried to word that section as carefully and considerately as possible, as one of the most important people in my life was autistic and I could never imagine disrespecting him. It’s a topic I hope that everyone addresses with dignity and compassion. Thanks for reading.


Love and snuggles,
Ellie