You Can Call Me Severus

disclaimer: not mine, all the characters belong to jkrowling


They often ask me if I am afraid of my husband. I say ‘no’ and they calm down. But they don’t know that in fact I am terrified of him. Each day I wake up with a feeling of dread long ago settled in the pit of my stomach that today I might do something to displease him. That’s why I need to stop thinking at the moment and make sure that his breakfast is perfect. It is perfect but he is never satisfied. I think the only place he is satisfied with me is bedroom. There he never complains. There I am perfect. There I am just like how he wants me to see and just like he wants me to be.
But now that his breakfast and coffee are ready and he is still not downstairs I can’t help but waste my remaining free of hurt and humiliation time recalling our first night together, our wedding night and its stupid bathwater ritual. It was Dumbledore’s fault from the start. He told tht wat was for my own safety, my own protection and of course for my own good. Of course marrying Snape was a thing to keep me safe. But I had no say in it. As I never had throughout my whole fucked up life. The only thing I asked for was to keep my last name. There was no way I was going to take the name of that b … my husband. I think I’m slowly turning into a little obedient house-elf. I even can’t call him names anymore. Pathetic really but what can I do? For all I know he listens to me in the back of my mind and if he hears a wrong word I will get the beating of my life. No thank you very much. I’ve had those before and I pray every day to never repeat that experience at the hands of my husband. He wasn’t a Death Eater for nothing after all. And now I am his little housewife at daytime and his whore at night. That’s how he likes it and that’s what I do to keep him happy and satisfied and myself relatively unharmed. I can’t say that it’s all so bad. Sometimes he is really very gentle and nice. But only sometimes. He is usually that way when Shahinaze is around us. Haven’t I told you that we have a daughter? Shahinaze. I remember how terrified I was to tell him that I was pregnant. But it went well. Better than I expected. Though I still was punished. As if it was my fault but hey some things don’t change. Everything was, is and always will be my fault with Snape. Though now it’s not as easy as getting a detention and after four hours of exhausting scrubbing of filthy cauldrons I am free to go and do whatever I wish. No, now it is so much more…painful and humiliating. I hate him. I really do. But he trained me so well for these past four years that now I can’t imagine a life without him and the terror he makes me feel. I think if he ever decides to throw me out of his life I will simply lie and die. I won’t know what to do with me and my life.
So yes our wedding night. He was already in the bathtub when I entered. I couldn’t make myself look at him. But he had no scruples whatsoever. He looked and looked and looked with that unbearably smug expression on his ever-sneering face. I bet it was the happiest day in his miserable life to get the bane of his existence, the son of his worst enemy on a silver platter to do whatever he pleased with. He might not have looked it in Dumbledore’s office during the ceremony wearing that sour face and showing with all his rigid scowling posture that he rather handed me over to the Dark Lord than marry me but he damn sure loved the idea of total control of my life on his part and total obedience on my part. Ans wis wish was granted. That night. It took me some time to calm down my breathing and to pull of my robes before facing him. I slid into the tub and my first thought was to drown myself but the look on his face showed me that I better start on with the ritual and so I started. I washed his hair once and then twice and then for the third time because the b … my husband liked to feel my sleek naked body positioned just like that in between his legs as I washed his greasy hair. On second thought it’s not that greasy it is more of silky I suppose. I remember his hands around my waist (my heart almost stopped) when they slid down to rest on my buttocks never leaving them. Then was worse I actually had to wash him from head to toe and then he ordered me to suck him off. It wasn’t the part of a ritual. I had to wash him not to pleasure him. I think that was one of my last attempts to point out to him that I wouldn’t do it. The remembrance of the slap he grante wit with is enough to quench any wish of mine to retort or to back talk to him even now. It is he who is right here not me. He is right because he has all the rights consequently I am wrong because I have no rights at all. He took them from me. He and Dumbledore. So I did as he told me. I will never forget when he pulled me afterwards by my fringe and said with a terrible smirk “You would make an excellent whore, Potter. Your dear old dead godfather taught you well.” It was the most hurting and the most humiliating thing he ever did or said to me. He had no right to say it like that. He had no right to use it against me so brutally and so uncaringly. Before our marriage I had to list out all the boyfriends and lovers I ever had. There weren’t much but there were a couple and Siri was one of them. He was a special person to me. I loved him dearly. He loved me back and cared for me as much as he could. And I wanted him to be my first and to teach me everything he knew. He was my godfather after all. And so he did. I will always love and remember him. “You have no right to talk neither about Siri nor about me like that, Snape.” That was my last attempt to point out to him that he was wrong as he seized my throat and hissed that he had all the rights in the world to talk and to do to me whatever his body and soul desired. And he did. That was the last part of the ritual. His part. To make me his. It hurt. A lot. I had trouble walking the next day and the day after next and for a whole week then. Though it might be because he kept fucking me as brutally and as uncaringly all through the week that followed.
In spite of the pain I felt I woke up early. I woke up in bed. Of course it shouldn’t be so surprising as I make it sound but I honestly didn’t remember getting there. I woke up with him. I woke up in his arms. I untangled myself from his long arms wrapped around me as quickly and as silently as I could manage so as not to wake him up and not to have to face him and whatever his soul and body desired at the moment and instead went to prepare breakfast. I assumed that it was what I was expected to do now. For some reason he didn’t have house-elves at the time in his manor that was rather huge and very clean. I thought that the elves existed there somewhere but not at the moment. And they indeed appeared later on though it is still me who prepares his breakfast and coffee. At that time I didn’t know if he preferred tea or coffee so I made both just to be on the safer side.
Finally he was downstairs and I knew from the moment he entered that I was supposed to wait for him to wake up in his arms.
“I’m sorry, sir. I though you would be hungry and decided to make breakfast, but I didnnow now whether you preferred tea or coffee. And house-elves…they are not here at the moment…or maybe you don’t have them at all…” I knew I was babbling but I couldn’t stop myself as I arranged dishes on the table. Until I felt his strong arms possessively wrapped around my waist. Then one of his hands brought my face up to him by my chin rather forcibly and then he just looked. Looked and looked. And I just stared back. Then he kissed me on the lips and sat down placing me onto his lap.
“I never knew that as a husband you would become so thoughtful and considerate, Potter. If I had known better I wouldn’t give you all those detention so many times but instead would marry you.”
He took cup with coffee solving one of my many problems.
“Sir, as long as we are married…maybe you could stop calling me Potter. You know I have a name, after all. Harry.”
He started calling me Harry but he never gave me permission to call him by his given name. He is ‘sir’ to me. He said that I could call him ‘master’ if I wanted or simply ‘my husband’. But I think I will stick to ‘sir’.
He was very angry when I invited Ron and Hermione to visit me. It hurt. A lot. I haven’t seen much of them ever since. Sometimes he allows me to go to their apartment or to the Burrow but apart from that nothing. I write letters. But there’s really not much to write about.
A month after our wedding I found out that I was pregnant. My heart almost jumped out of my throat and then it kept beating painfully in my chest as I stood by the door of his study trying to decide on better way to let my husband know that we were going to have a child. From what I knew of the man he couldn’t stand children. I was afraid that he might tell me to terminate my pregnancy but most of all I was afraid that he would like to terminate it with his own hands that is his wand and a couple of well placed hexes. Thankfully he didn’t. Well he didn’t do nothing life threatening.
We named her Shahinaze. She is my only solace. She is my only shelter from him if he is in a bad mood. She is an angel. She’s got my eyes. She is very smart. Even wise. She is only four but she understands perfectly well that we are not exactly equal and that her father (he is ‘sir’ for her too. I took a really nasty bruise when she called him father for the first and the last time) can do whatever he wishes and whenever he wishes with her daddy. But she also knows that whatever and whenever will wait if I am with her. She always helps me out.
So all in all the only people I communicate with now are my daughter, my husband and Draco and Lucius Malfoy. They returned to England from hiding or whatever it was when Shahinaze was two. I don’t know where they lost Narcissa but no one heard of her for a very long time now.
I was playing with Shahinaze by the fireplace when they paid their first visit. I served them tea and was about to continue our game with Shahi when he told me to take her to bed.
“But it’s only eight, sir.”
“So?” storm was coming.
“It’s still early. She can stay and play here with me…”
“Come here, Harry.” Yep I was in trouble. And my mind was screaming “Please not here! Not in front of them! Not in front of them of all people!” My prayers were never heard before. And now was not an exception.
“Yes, sir?” I was standing in front of him.
“Did I tell you to take our daughter to bed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did I tell you to contradict me?”
“No, sir.”
There it was a very loud and very painful slap.
“You will take her to bed now even if it is still early and maybe she won’t grow up as hopeless, useless and as ill-bred as you.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned around and left to take ‘our daughter’ as he usually calls her to bed. Before I left he told to be back downstairs as soon as I attended to Shahinaze. I guess that was the hardest thing to do - to go downstairs and to face them. But I didn’t have to wait long. Draco Malfoy seemed to follow me.
“Malfoy.” I didn’t look him in the eyes. I just could not.
“Does he do it often?” he asked so suddenly that I just had to look at him. His fingers traced my bruised cheek. I shrugged with bitter half-smile on my lips before replying.
“Only when I do something wrong.”
He sighed and rubbed his forehead.
“Always.”
What could I say to that? He was right. Ever since that day he became sort of my companion and even friend. Today I couldn’t keep it any longer inside of me. I told him that I want ‘us’ to be normal. I don’t want him to love me but at least to like me just a bit. I carried and gave birth to his child after all! I do everything he says and in return all I get are constant reprimands and beatings. I am so tired of it and I don’t know how much longer I will be able to live a life like this. I don’t want that much after all. Just a bit of respect. I bit of my own way. A bit of freedom. I want to finally be able to leave this manor and have a bit of fresh air. I want to see my friends with him not hovering over me saying that I have wasted enough of his precious time. I want a bit of happiness of my own. I want to be able to call him by his name. I want my daughter to call him father. Can’t he be just a bit nicer? Is it so much to ask?


~

“Harry.”
“Yes, sir?”
He never talked to me in bed before.
“I had an interesting talk with Draco today.”
Oh shit.
“Is it true?”
“What?”
“All those things you want.”
“Yes, sir.”
I take a deep breath my eyes are tightly shut waiting for a blow but instead I feel his arms tighten around me. I breathe again and venture.
“I just want us to be normal. That’s all, sir. I will be good, I promise. But then again I’ve always been good ever since we got married. I’ve been trying to make it work out as much as I could but you always stopped me in my tracks. I just wished you could like me just a bit. I don’t want to wake up afraid that I will do something wrong and you will throw me out on the street.”
“I would never do that.”
“How can I be sure, sir? There are no guarantees. You never promised me anything. All the promises and sacrifices were on my part.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I look at him incredulously.
“What? No punishment for my outburst?”
“Not today.”
He closes his eyes as I gulp. His hand is still around me and I am afraid to move. Anyone help me please. Let him forget that we ever had this conversation.

~
So here we are the morning after the conversation. I am not afraid of my husband I am simply terrified as I follow his every move through his breakfast praying that he doesn’t find fault with anything today. Not today. Please. I think gods are on my side today. He has already finished his breakfast and hasn’t drawn his wand out yet. That’s a good sign. Maybe he will just pretend that the conversation didn’t take place.
“Why you didn’t tell me, Harry?”
Nope. No such luck. Ok I will wake up my past Gryffindor courage.
“Would it change anything sir? Would you even listen to me?”
“I suppose not.”
He stands up and moves to hold me. He places me on the table as plates crash down with loud clatter on the floor. His arms are around my waist. His eyes are boring into mine. His lips are devouring mine. His hungry hands are roaming all over my body. I can hardly breathe.
“Sir?”
“Severus.”
“What?’
“You can call me Severus…”