Life Lessons

First Lesson:  Soren is five

Spring had arrived, but the air in Scotland was still cold.  Small green shoots were starting to push up through the bare soil and the first crocus bulbs had bloomed under the large tree in the garden behind the house.  The birds had returned and were nesting in the trees and the bushes.

It was the bird song which had Soren Snape anxious to explore the trees for nests.  A steady rain had kept him indoors for days and he was anxious to see if the eggs had hatched.

"Come outside with me, Daddy!  We have to find the nests before Mrs. Tolliver's cat does!  Come on!"  Soren pulled at his father's sleeve.  Severus looked up from his books and frowned at his son over his reading glasses.
 
"You go ahead, Soren.  I still have some work to do here.  If I don't finish these lesson plans there will be no lessons this week.  Not that the students would notice--they seem to get stupider each year," he muttered as he scratched out a complex formula for his Advanced Potions class.

"Please, Daddy, you promised!" Soren begged.  He hated when his father had extra work on the weekends.
 
"I know, Soren, but I must finish this first.  Why don't you start looking for the nests?  Then you can show me where they are.   I'll cast a protective spell and the hatchlings will be safe."  Soren nodded and bounded out of the house.

"Remember not to disturb the eggs if you find any nests!  Don't forget your jacket and wear your Wellies!  Stay away from the pond--your mother will give us no peace if you track mud into the house!"
 
Severus' wife, Evelyn had an aversion to mud and dirt which her husband and son could not comprehend.  They had given up trying to understand, but had become more vigilant about wiping their feet and putting away their things after being subject to her cleaning frenzies.

Soren breathed in deeply.  The seasons had different smells.  Spring was wet and green, summer was warm and soft, autumn crisp and smoky and winter was sharply cold and pleasantly biting, like peppermint.
 
The earth was damp and black beneath his yellow boots.  The garden lawn was littered with twigs that the rain had knocked out of the trees.  Soren bent to pick them up.  They twirled in his hands and tiny buds began to sprout on the ends.

"Oooh..." the boy's delight in his budding magical skills momentarily made him forget the bird nests.
 
Severus continued to work on his lesson plans when he was interrupted by a shriek from the yard.

"The pond--he's fallen into it!"

Not bothering with a coat or shoes Severus ran out into the garden.  His heart calmed when he saw that there was no one in or near the pond, but clutched up again when he noticed the bent figure of his son crouched near the wall of the house, cradling something in his hands.

"Soren, are you all right?"  Severus gently knelt down and placed his arm around his son's shoulders.  Soren looked up, his face streaked with tears.  In his hands was a dead bird, prostrate on its back with its clawed feet curled up.

"It's dead!  The cat must have gotten to it!  Oh, Daddy, please bring it back--PLEASE!" Soren sobbed.

Severus gently took the bird from his son's hands and examined it.

"The cat didn't get this one--it is still intact.  It must have flown into the kitchen window glass."

"Daddy, please bring it back to life!  Give it a potion, Daddy, please!  Please make it better!"

Severus put his arm around his son.  This was Soren's first experience with death, and the fact that it was a wild animal and not a beloved relative or pet did not make it any easier.  Soren was also learning to control his first magical impulses and was at the age where he thought that magic could cure any and all of the problems in the world.
 
"Soren, the bird is dead.   I am afraid that there is nothing that I can do for it."

"You're magic, Daddy!  You can make it a healing potion or use your wand!"

"I'm afraid not, Soren.  You see, magic has no power over the cycle of life.  It cannot create organic material like food or living creatures and it cannot restore life once it has ended."

"But Daddy, Aunt Minerva turned a computer mouse into a real mouse!  You made a flower grow out of Uncle Paulo's nose when you were both drinking!"

"Yes, Soren, but those were not true living things.  They were what we would call temporary alterations, things that will not last long before they return to their original state.  If I tried to revive this bird, I would not only be breaking magical law, but if I were successful it would not be truly alive.  It would simply be a reanimated dead body without any life inside."

"That would be bad," Soren said slowly.  He sniffled and stroked the bird's wing.  "I hate death.  I wish that nothing would die."

"It is a hard thing," his father said.  "However it is not the most terrible thing.  Birth is the beginning, life the long middle, and death is the ending.  An ending with no pain.   Do you know the feeling that you get when you are tired and are falling asleep?"

Soren nodded.

"Well, death is like that.  Just a long, peaceful sleep," Severus said in a sober voice.  He had come very close to experiencing that feeling not too many years ago and had come to view death differently.  He rose to his feet and took his son's hand.

"I cannot bring the bird back to life, but I can give it a proper funeral.  Where shall we bury it?"

"Under the big tree--over there by the pond!"  The two of them walked over to the tree.  Severus waved his wand and the earth parted, making a small hole.  He wrapped the bird in his handkerchief and gently placed it in the hole.
 
"Cover it well, Soren."  Soren grabbed handfuls of soft earth and packed up the hole.

"Bye bye, pretty bird.  I am sorry that you died, but I wish you a long good sleep."

"One last thing," Severus raised his wand and chanted an incantation over the small grave.  A small engraving of a bird appeared on the tree bark above the spot.

"That spell will protect the grave so that other animals won't disturb it.  The marking will show you where it is.  Death is an ending, Soren, but the memories from life do not die."

"I don't understand, Daddy."

"That's all right.  You don't have to understand right away.  It took me years before I understood."

A cloud passed before the sun and a soft rain started to fall.

"No more rain!" Soren groaned.

"Come inside, Soren.  I'll make you some tea and we can watch the rain from inside.  My mother showed me a spell where you can make designs on the window with the raindrops.  I'll show it to you now."

The two of them hurried inside, leaving wet, black mudprints on the floor.

---

Second Lesson:  Soren is eight

"Map--check!  Cutlasses and eyepatches--check!  Rope--check!"

Evelyn glanced across the breakfast table at her son, Soren, who was going through the inventory in a canvas bag.  He pulled a yellowed piece of parchment out of the bag and began tracing a dotted line with his finger.

"X marks the spot--right here!" Soren said triumphantly as he jabbed his finger onto the map.  Severus glanced up from his paper.

"Since when have you been making maps, Soren?  Where is this treasure island?  Or is that a secret?"  Severus frowned inadvertently.  He did not approve of secret maps or the people who made them.

"I didn't make this map, Daddy, Maria did!  It's the inside of her father's store!  Lots of places to find treasure, but we think that it's buried here!"

Maria Wigglesworth was one of Soren's playmates.  Her father owned an emporium which sold various magical items.  Maria loved storytelling and making up games just as much as Soren did.  Her father's store was their favorite playground, full of wonderful places to hide and magical items to explore.

"Try not to bother Mr. Wigglesworth if he is busy working," Evelyn told Soren as he stood up to leave.

"You mean while he's pretending to work!  Honestly, I don't know how that man stays in business," Severus grunted as he returned to his paper.
 
"It wouldn't hurt you to say something nice about a person who has been very kind to our son," Evelyn said.  Her husband was often snide about people, but she didn't like him criticizing a playmate's parent in front of Soren.

"Something nice?  Let's see.  He does make pretty children, although I think that Anna gets most of the credit for that.  The Four Golden Gazelles!"  That was the nickname that Severus had given to the four leggy, blonde Wigglesworth girls.  Aside from Maria he could not remember the names of the three older ones.
 
"Let's hope that they take after their mother when it comes to intelligence as well.  How that dunderhead Wigglesworth was sorted into Ravenclaw is a question for the ages!"

"I believe that Robin was sorted into Ravenclaw for the same reason that you were sorted into Slytherin," Evelyn replied sweetly.  "You were both legacies!"

"Touché, my love," Severus replied sourly.

Evelyn smiled and headed out to the garden.  Severus had placed a wooden bench and table under the big tree near the pond so that she could work outdoors.
 
Evelyn had been working less than an hour when she heard the garden gate swing open and closed.  She looked up to see Soren walking towards her.

"Back so soon?  What's the matter, dear?  Did you and Maria have a fight?" Evelyn asked.  Although the two children were friends, they were both intelligent and headstrong, which sometimes led to disagreements.

"No, Mum.  She wasn't at the shop today."  Soren  sat down on the bench next to her.  He was uncharacteristically quiet.  He frowned and looked up at Evelyn.

"When I went to the shop Mr. Wigglesworth told me that Maria was ill.  He was cleaning up and asked if I could give him a hand dusting the hard to reach places.  He was guiding the feather duster with his wand but said that I could do a better job if I climbed up as high as I could.  So I climbed up the big bookcase to reach the chandeliers."

Evelyn smiled.  One of the ways to get her little monkey boy to help with chores was to make it seem like a game.  Climbing up furniture was not something that she and Severus would allow, but Robin gave her son more freedom in his shop.

"I asked Mr. Wigglesworth to give me the feather duster and he reached up to hand it to me.  The sleeve of his robe fell back when he reached his arm up and that's how I saw them." Soren looked at his mother with serious eyes.

"Mr. Wigglesworth has burn scars all over his right arm!  They're worse than yours!  I asked him if he was in an accident like you, but someone did that to him!  He got the scars when he fought in the Battle of Hogwarts.  A bad man hit him with a Dark Magic fire spell while he was trying to protect his friend and her sister.  The bad man was trying to kill the two ladies and Mr. Wigglesworth stepped in the way.  That's when the bad man burned him.  Just like that other bad man's snake bit Daddy."

"Mr. Wigglesworth didn't want to talk about it.  Why, Mum?  He was being brave!"

"It must be a very difficult memory for him, Soren.  Your father doesn't like to talk about things that happened during that time either."

"But he does, Mum!  Daddy is a hero!"

"Yes, Soren, he is.  He will answer questions that the newspapers and writers will ask him about that time because it is an important part of history and he was an active participant in the center of the action.  However your father never actively sought that type of fame.  He will acknowledge his achievements and his faults, but he will not boast.  Your father has handled all of the unwanted attention very well, certainly better than most people.  There were a lot of heroes that day, Soren.  People like Robin Wigglesworth who fought very bravely."

"Why don't people know about them?" Soren asked.

"Because they are people who would rather not seek fame for doing things which they considered to be right and just, not heroic.  They fought to preserve all that was good in the magical world, to ensure that it would not be corrupted and that all could live freely within it, regardless of their bloodlines.  Your father and Harry Potter were the two most famous heroes, but they could not have done it on their own."

"Don't those people also deserve fame, Mum?"

"Fame is not something that is deserved, Soren.  It is something that is achieved.  There are people who devote their entire lives seeking it, but often find that it is not what they had been led to expect.  Fame is difficult.  It can destroy a person as easily as it can lift him up."

"Is fame a bad thing?"

"No, Soren.  Fame and glory can be honorable if they are earned for admirable deeds and if the person who earns it has earned it through good accomplishments.  As a historian I can say that there are thousands of people who have achieved infamy, the exact opposite of fame, for horrible atrocities.  Beware of people who brag needlessly about their achievements and seek fame only for their own egos.  They are the ones who are most easily led down the path of corruption."

"You say that people don't deserve fame," Soren said slowly, "but shouldn't people like Mr. Wigglesworth be recognized for what they've done?"

"They should, and there are days which honor those who fought and in many cases died so that others would enjoy freedoms which should never be taken for granted.  That is all of the recognition that these people want, Soren.  They wish to live their lives in peace, knowing that they are able to do so because of their bravery."

"Robin Wigglesworth would be embarrassed if his past acts received too much public attention.  Respect his wishes, Soren.   He knows, his family and some close friends, including you, also know.  That is all of the recognition that he wants."

"I now know two heroes!" Soren said.  His mood had brightened.  He pulled a compass out of his pocket.

"Mr. Wigglesworth gave this to me for helping out in the shop.  He said that every good explorer needs a compass."

"He is correct!  Now you have three--this one and the ones here," Evelyn tapped on her son's forehead, "and here!" Evelyn tapped on Soren's chest.  She stood up and took her son's hand.

"Come, Soren.  Let's take a walk in the woods and see if the compass will lead us back home."