The First Enochian Key

A/N...This chapter contains mild insinuations to incest. Don\'t like, don\'t read.

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\"I still recall the taste of my tears.
Echoing your voice just like the ringing my ears,
My favorite dreams of you still wash ashore,
Scraping through my head ‘till I don’t want to sleep anymore.”- T.Reznor

~*~

Severus Snape bolted upright in bed, his heaacinacing, his body coated in sweat, his rapid breathing the only sound to reach his ears in the dim light of the dungeons at Hogwarts. Closing his eyes he tried to calm himself by reassuring his imagination that he was safe and nothing was out of place in his rooms. He couldn’t though because there was something else. Something out of place. His acute olfactory sense detected a familiar perfume in his presence and he was momentarily confused. Gradually he reclined back at peace as the reason for the intrusion entered his conscience. He looked over at the shadowed angel laying by his side and again reminisced on the turn of events that had led her to him, and drawn him to her.

~*~

To say that Severus’ childhood had been unpleasant would be a gentle understatement at best. He was born to a totalitarian father and a compulsive mother, into a long line of aristocratic purebloods who could trace their ancestry to the very emergence of both time and magDespDespite his family’s vast wealth, and their social facade as a proportionate and devoted unit, Severus was denied the small luxuries that some of his peers took for granted and more importantly the affection that he, as an impressionable youth craved.

Severus, not as a baby, not as a child nor a teen had more than an hours contact a week with his father. Their weekly bonding used for the elder Snape’s poorly disguised efforts of debriefing and reiterating his family’s stance on the political storm that was forever brewing, but never quite unleashed within the magical world. These moments, notwithstanding the complete disinterest he had in such superfluous interests, redundant at his tender age, Severus cherished. In his mind he was able to study the enigmatic man, whom despite his indifference to his son, other than his correct political allegiances and Severus’ ability to maintain the Snape family public image, Severus admired.

They would sit opposite each other in his father’s study, illuminated by the fire forever burning in the black granite fireplace, Snape coddling a tumbler of the most expensive brandy money could buy and Severus staring behind a curtain of raven hair at the man at these times he so much wanted to emulate. His father’s deep baritone would soothe him, despite the harshness of the words he expressed. Snape’s hostility was never directed pointedly at Severus though. His father never addressed him by person at all in facnapenape preferred to talk through or at his son, never to him, as though merely musing vociferously, with no intention of recognizing Severus’ presence other than an intermittent glare in the boy’s direction. Although he craved affection he knew would never be forthcoming from the man, Sunday afternoons in the study with his father was the opportunity Severus had available to him to remember the great and admirable man his father could be. He loved these times and gave him a brief occasion to forget the man is father actually was. The remainder of the week Snape was invisible to Severus. Invisible but not absent. The constant abuse he heard, but never witnessed against his mother by his father, was the other side of the man.

The aspect Severus hated.

His father was a drunk. A violent egocentric drunk. Severus discovered from what his personal house elf relayed to him, that at least twice a week his father was in the habit of ‘entertaining’ young witches in his study, occasionally in Severus’ mother’s presence. At least one of these would be, as his father described them, a piece of ‘Mudblood trash’. After taking what he desired from her Snape would, as the gentleman he liked to portray, invite the unsuspecting individual to accompany him on a guided tour of the most historic rooms of the Snape family mansion. Naturally the tour would always end up with the two entering the dungeon rooms, and only the Master Snape returning. The entire staff of house elves would be conspicuously absent for usually the next 12 hours, making sure, as were their Masters orders, that any indication of the activities of these conferences were eradicated.

The ritual of his fathers’ blood lust would not however be complete without the generic beating of Severus’ mother. Unlike the tortures in the dungeon rooms, Severus was not deaf to the goings on between his parents. He was certain that his father’s regular ‘oversight’ in not using a silencing spell, was his attempt to scare and intimidate the boy into submission. The reasons for his physical attacks against his mother were always vocalized around the same issues. That Severus was an embarrassment to their family, that his mother had failed in her duties both to Severus and as a wife, that without him Severus and his mother would both be poverty stricken and living on the street and she would need to prosti her herself like the whore he knew she was. That he was Grand Master and that Severus and his mother were present to do his bidding and fulfill the Snape dynasty obligation of continuity. Nothing else.

His father’s ranting would echo through the walls for varying amounts of time, and all Severus could do to hide himself from the violence was curl up tightly under the covers of his bed and envision himself somewhere else. Anywhere else. Even in his fathers study on a Sunday afternoon. This was indeed his favorite escapism, forcing himself to remember the enigma of greatness his father exuded during their bonding sessions, and making excuses for the man’s current violent behavior.

That he understood why he was so stern.

Gradually, the sounds of flesh meeting flesh with force, his mother’s cries and pleading and his fathers anger would subside, and so would begin the time Severus dreaded above all others. His mother’s mandatory visits after her thrashing always left Severus himself bleeding, bruised, crying and ultimately rocking his mother in her beaten and opiate induced haze of grief and tears.

Severus’ mother had been a beautiful and vibrant spirit when she had married his father, or so his faithful house elf had told him. She had loved to read and learning was the inherent passion of her soul. She had possessed knowledge at Masters levels in Potions, Arithmancy, Magical History and the Dark Arts and had played with concert aptitude and graces the piano, cello and flute. She had been an accomplished artist and poet and was considered a natural genius. Snape had, during their forced courting, humored her interests with convincing interest lulling Severus’ mother into a false sense of companionship and security.

Once the formalities of their bonding had been completed however, Snape had let his true colors shine in all the radiance they possessed.

Snape smoothly and strategically alienated Severus’ mother from everything she held dear within months of their bonding. Her family was forbidden in his house, she was forbidden to leave. Her music and art were outlawed in his domain, her large collection of books burned in a dramatic bonfire and her propensity for learning beaten out of her. Her solace afterwards found in the endless supply of opiate medicinal potions she instructed her house elf to procure.

Severus regarded his mother with cautious respect and admiration. Despite her sometimes violent and other times intimate physical attention to him, he found he could not hate her. Other than holding her and stroking her hair when she broke down in his juvenile arms, he could not bring himself to show her how he felt. Her marriage to the Snape heir had eroded all previous competencies she had possessed. The very same she was punished for because of Severus’ desire and innate proclivity to follow in her genius. Hertinutinued thrashings occurring because she allowed her only son to partake in the pastimes she had once loved so much, albeit behind the closed doors of his room. He loved her because she tried to make him into the great patriarch his family demanded he be, and he knew his physical abuse was a part of his training.

To strengthen him.

To make him unstoppable.

To make him a leader of their race.

Severus’ life continued in the same downwards spiral for ten years. No real highlights of note to bring a smile to his face. Just the constant battle for dominance within his family home. The instruction of his father in the way of the pureblooded wizard, even though it was taught second handedly through his mothers attentions. The secretive passion for learning and the arts his mother tried to instill within him. He honesty never had considered his life could change at all. And he was continually morose at the thought.

The arrival of an owl one day however brought with it what Sus tus thought would be his passport to something better.

His invitation to Hogwarts.

His father had sent him a congratulatory note upon hearing of his acceptance and patted him on the shoulder the Sunday afternoon before he left. It was the first sign of approval and affection Severus could remember receiving from his father, and he felt for the first time he had done something Snape approved of. Even with the not so subtle threat that he had better make sure he was sorted into Slytherin, Severus felt hope and happiness, as he bordered the train to Hogwarts from platform 9 ¾, believing he would be entering into a change of fortune.

He would soon find out how wrong that thought had been.

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Acknowledgements...

l:- Thank you...I do try...I hope the remainder of the story has the same effect.

fervesco :- You should not offer yourself up so willingly to someone of my morals..you never know what position you may find yourself in...get up off your knees...it will not save you*evil grin*..thank you my dear...I hope you enjoy the continuation...

Rilla:- *smirk* Thems fightin\' words my dear...Let the war begin...ohh and thank you:D