“Severus, I’ll come to pick you up after school,” the stern-looking woman said to the small boy.

“Can’t I just stay with you?” the boy asked, afraid of being away from his mother for the first time.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Severus," she answered, barely concealing her exhaustion beneath her severe façade.

The lady handed the child a sack lunch and sent him into the building. She watched, worried about what would happen to him there. ‘At least it’s better than sitting at home all day,’ she thought. There were so many things that were dangerous there; if he was left unsupervised, who knows what he might have done to himself.

As soon as she Apparated back home, she would fall asleep immediately. Yawning, the woman ducked back into the alley across the street. The passers-by thought they heard a car backfire when she disappeared.

She hated the look on her boy’s face each morning. He had found Muggle education even less to his liking than she’d feared. How much was he actually learning? She knew he wouldn’t have an easy time of it. Eileen thought young Muggle children could be swine, but she didn't really realize how mean they could be.

One day she was woken out of a deep sleep by that confounded Muggle contraption called a telephone. She swore that when Tobias died, she’d rip the thing out and perform a Vanishing Spell on it, but now she couldn’t. It was the headmistress of that school, telling her that Severus had beat up another boy, landing him in the hospital, and she was to come immediately to retrieve her expelled son.

---

“Your son is dangerous, Mrs. Snape. We can not have him at school. He threw a smaller boy and slammed him into a wall. We thought his back might have been broken. We cannot allow...”

Eileen looked Severus in the eyes. The boy knew that she had her wand out under her big coat and was casting Legilimens. The boy was afraid of what she would see and knew that he would be in trouble. The last thing he wanted was for her to punish him. Nevertheless, the memories surfaced. She saw Severus glaring and curling his fist. He saw the boy fly across the yard and hit the wall, untouched by her son. His mother nodded at him and turned back to the still-lecturing headmistress.

“How could my son possibly have done what you are claiming he did? It’s physically impossible."

“These teachers witnessed the event. They saw your son hit Brett Parker.”

“Severus,” she said. “Did you hit that boy?”

“No, Mum, I did not touch him.” Severus wasn’t afraid any longer. He knew that his mother believed him.

“But of course he’s going to say that,” said another teacher. “We are all eyewitnesses…”

“ARE YOU CALLING MY SON A LIAR?” Mrs. Snape shrieked, bringing a sudden silence to the room.

After a tense moment, the teacher said, “Mrs. Snape, calm down.”

“Don’t you tell me to calm down, Mr. Teacher,” she said in a perfectly audible whisper. “You are saying that he caused the boy to go flying half way across a schoolyard and to slam into a wall, which you know a child his size cannot do to another human being, even if the victim was slightly smaller. You are denying your own laws of physics just to blame my boy for a freak occurrence. You are the biggest idiots I have ever met.”

“There’s no need for insults, Mrs. Snape,” said the headmistress.

“Oh, IS there? I might think that it was a compliment after this debacle.”

“Madam, the boy’s parents are going to sue,” said Severus’s teacher.

“Severus, leave,” ordered Mrs. Snape.

“You can’t...“ said the Headmistress.

“Leave. Now.”

Severus went out of the office and shut the door. There were the sound of voices arguing, and then he heard nothing at all. A few minutes later, his mother opened the office door and came out. She grabbed her boy and said, “Let’s go.”

The next day, Severus was very unhappy when his mother made him return to school. However, he found that things weren't nearly as bad as he predicted them to be. It was like nothing had happened the day before, but the teacher did insist that the class make cards for Brett Parker, the boy who had the most unfortunate fall on the playground. Severus smiled to himself; his mother had come through for him.