Chapter Text
The water is dark as it rushes beneath the bridge.
Severus watches it with a growing fascination, a growing horror, that clutches at his heart with every splash of the frigid water upon the rocks below. Will he end up down there, himself? It isn’t very far to fall, but the water is very cold. He was once told that someone falling into it would sink and never come up again. He was always told to stay away from this river, away from this bridge.
Now, there is the very real possibility that this could become his final resting place.
“Look sharp, boy!” The reprimand is accompanied by a tug on the rope around his neck, and he nearly stumbles as he tries to follow his father. He’d been dragged from the house without any chance to put on his ragged shoes, and his bare feet have long been numb from the cold. The man pulls him back against the low wall lining the bridge, and for one terrifying moment, Severus thinks that this is it, this is the end of him.
Rather than throwing him over, his father simply pushes him aside, forcing him to his knees while he himself kneels on the filthy cobblestones.
A moment later, Severus sees why. A splash of color catches his sight like a butterfly landing on bracken, something brilliant against all of the brown and gray of his world.
The color – red and purple and gold – belongs to a long robe that seems so out of place in their poor little village of Cokeworth. In fact, everything about the man wearing the robe seems out of place. He’s dressed in so many jewel-like tones that he seems to sparkle. His beard is about a yard long, and his eyes gleam beneath a pair of half-moon spectacles. Nobody in the village could afford any sort of corrective eyewear. Severus wouldn’t even know what they were if it wasn’t for the doctor who came by now and then to tend the sick as a charity.
The man is accompanied by two soldiers, and Severus bows his head immediately upon noticing them. Someone like this must be important, and his father has warned him about embarrassing him in front of others.
The boy’s stomach sinks as the man halts; he can see his polished boots just below the hem of his fine clothes.
“What have we here?” inquires a rich, soft voice, and Severus trembles, terrified that he’ll have to answer.
Fortunately, it seems that the man is addressing his father. “Pardon me,” Tobias says in a voice only half as gruff as usual. Severus can tell by the tone that he isn’t pleased to be addressed by such a person as this; his disdain for the rich is rivaled only by his disdain for his son.
Severus feels his back prickle, as if the man’s gaze is on him. He doesn’t dare to look up when the man speaks again. “What do you mean by leading a child around on a rope as if he’s livestock?”
“I’m sellin’ him,” Tobias says. “I can’t afford to feed him, and he’s turned up omega.” Severus can feel the disgust in his father’s voice, and he burns with shame. He wishes he could simply leap over the bridge and give himself to the icy water below, but his survival instincts are as sharp as anyone’s. He doesn’t want to die, tempting as the thought might be.
“I see.” The man’s voice is even quieter now, and something dangerous lingers at the edge of it – something his father obviously can’t detect.
“He’ll do whatever work he’s asked,” Tobias says, sensing the potential of a sale. “Ain’t much in the way of looks, but he’s untouched. I’m askin’ a pittance for him. I only want ‘im situated somewhere he can earn a good living.” It’s a lie. He really just wants the boy gone, and if he can get something out of the bargain, all the better. Were it not for his son’s potential value, he would have turned him out on the street already.
The man steps closer, and Severus’ heart leaps into his throat when he says, “What is your name, child?”
His voice is kind, but Severus knows better than to trust. He fights back a shiver as he answers, “Severus, sir.”
“And how old are you, Severus?”
“T- twelve.”
“How much are you asking?” the man says, and Severus can hear the delight in Tobias’ voice when he gives the price.
“300 galleons, negotiable.”
To Severus’ shock, he can hear coins jingling as the man unbuckles his purse without any attempt at haggling. “I believe this is the right amount.”
“Well, blow me down!” Tobias laughs, the first sign of mirth Severus has heard from him in weeks. The rope pulls him to his feet, and he looks up to see the end of it handed to the man in the fine robes. “You mind what he says, now,” his father tells him, looking only at the money in his hand. “Make yourself useful.”
“I’m sure we’ll get along just fine,” the man says, and Tobias walks away without a backward glance, disappearing around the corner of a dilapidated house.
It feels unreal to Severus. He understands that this is probably the last time he’ll ever see his father again, that walking out the door that morning had been the last he’d ever see of his mother. He knows that this man has just bought him and will probably do all sorts of horrible things to him. But he’s unable to react to any of it. He can’t move, even as the man asks one of his armored companions to untie the rope from Severus’ neck. He can’t speak even as that same attendant, at his master’s behest, picks Severus up off of the cold ground and wraps him in his cloak.
“We’ll turn back here,” the rich man says to his attendants. “I’m sure Rosier will understand, once I’ve sent him a message.” Rosier – Severus recognizes the name of the lord of Cokeworth. This man is powerful, indeed, to be visiting a lord.
Through his shock, he recognizes the man patting his knee atop the cloak, and he looks him in the eye for the first time. What he sees there is unexpected – warmth, and concern. “I do hope you’re well enough to travel,” he says. “This is all happening very fast for you. But we must be on our way, quickly. Best not to linger in the road.”
He learns, as he’s carried to a parked coach, that the man’s name is Albus Dumbledore. He learns that he had been on a visit to Castle Thornton before taking this unscheduled detour. And he learns that the man is the king.
That was the day Severus began to believe in fate.