The houses on Weaver’s Row were bigger than the ones on Spinner’s Row, or maybe he just imagined it was so, because he had been smaller when he lived on the former. It hadn’t been an easy life before his father died, but looking back on it, it seemed like paradise. Father went to work all day, leaving him to trail after his mother. She taught him to read and to write. More importantly to him, she allowed him to assist her in making potions. He remembered her holding her hand over his, teaching him to stir the cauldron with perfect strokes. He learned the proper way to hold a knife and to cut roots into precisely equal pieces. He learned weights and measures, and he learned how to read a recipe.

They hardly ever went out, but when they did, they’d always visit the apothecary in Diagon Alley with a load of vials and bottles of Mother’s potions to sell. She would take the boy to Florian Fortescue’s for ice cream and butterbeer after visiting the shops. Occasionally she’d buy him a toy, and very occasionally, new robes.

His father worked long hours, so when he came home his mother was always sure to have something good to eat. Father was always tired, it seemed. He’d sit and read the Muggle papers after dinner and say nothing. Mother always advised young Severus to play quietly and not to disturb him.

His father had a terrible cough from the bad air in the mill. His mother made potions to clear his lungs, but it wasn’t enough. Mother stopped buying ice cream, toys, and robes in order to save money for a Healer; neither his mother nor his father trusted Muggle doctors. She knew she was too late when he started coughing up blood. It was a particularly cold winter that year, and Father refused to stop working. The consumption took him quickly.

They had been ordered to move out. The boy remembered his mother taking him to the mill and ordering him to stay outside on the landing while she talked to the boss. As the boy looked over the factory floor, the tiny specks and filaments floating in the air mesmerized him. They sparkled with every color of the rainbow as they passed through the rays of sunlight that filtered through the dirty windows. He didn’t notice when his mother returned to his side.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” she asked the boy, her voice bitter.

“Yes, Mum,” he answered simply.

She replied, “That stuff in the air is what killed your father.”

That was the first time Severus could remember, in a quite literal sense, not trusting the light.