The Truth Behind Severus Snape

Prologue ~A Trip Down Memory Lane

A dark room, where the only light source was a small candle. A loud, harsh, drunken male voice filled the chamber. A woman's petrified talking, followed with a scream. Nothing took notice to the boy of no more than 11 years old, crying in the corner. The harsh voice left the room, slamming the door behind him. The woman broke into horrible wrenching sobs, echoing about the dark space.

As her cries subsided, the woman lit a handful of candles on a table, illuminating the room. The table was the main attraction, on which the candles were held in brackets. Ancient and imposing, this table had once held important dinners and around it sat many important people, but that was no more what the table served for. Covered in a thick layer of dust, this room had been in disuse for many years now, and it barely held a memory of anything important being held there. The entire house barely held any good memories.

The woman's tear-streaked face and red eyes turned towards the corner where the little boy was curled, and all the woman had to say was, "Go to bed, Severus."

Severus Snape awoke to find tears running down his face at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, twenty-five years later. It took him a moment to realize that he was safe and alone in his bedchambers, not being shouted at by his father, or ignored by his mother. Memories are dangerous things when faced with a Legilimens, and even more so when they trap you inside your own head.

Damned Potter, he thought. Why did he have to go and disturb my memories? Of course, he's the Boy Who Lived. He has to stir up trouble when things are best left alone, in peace...

Snape rose from his large bed and walked into the bathroom, where he stood looking into the mirror for a long time. He took in his large hooked nose, an inheritance from his father, and his black hair, an inheritance from his mother. Eventually, he stopped seeing anything at all in the mirror; instead his thoughts turned inwards, where his true self was.

When Snape had come to Hogwarts, he was overjoyed to escape the horrible hell that he had lived through at home. He had very few friends up until that point, and his father kept it that way, scaring them off before they became too familiar. His joy at Hogwarts was short-lived, however, owing to one raven-haired, hazel-eyed boy, James Potter, and the rest of his little friends.

Severus was not particularly popular, he had a few friends here and there, most of them in Slytherin, like himself. His life at Hogwarts was interrupted one Potions class, when James Potter made one comment, one snide comment, and Severus rose to the occasion. From that point on, James knew that he could always go and poke a little fun at Severus and get a good show. After a few years of magical training, James could now pick on Snape in a purely magical form, testing out new hexes and jinxes on him. When Harry had been nosy and looked into his Pensieve, it was all Snape could do not to ring the younger Potter's neck right then and there. In the deepest, darkest part of his consciousness, he knew that it wasn't Harry's fault that he was treated the way he was at school, but he couldn't help but blame the boy for his father's behavior.

The treatment of Snape combined with James's skills on the Quidditch pitch and in the classroom made James quite a popular boy in the school, as well as drive Snape to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. He was made fun of, insulted, a generally mistreated and abused, much like his home life.

After seventeen years of hell, Severus Snape was pushed off the edge, into Voldemort's world of horror. Within the ranks of Death Eaters, Severus discovered a new kind of hell. After witnessing torturing upon torturing and killing upon killing, he decided that Voldemort's world wasn't the way he wanted to spend his life. He went back to Dumbledore, begging for forgiveness that the old wizard was only too happy to grant him. To this day, no one other than Dumbledore knows why he decided to turn from the ranks of the Death Eaters.

Why I must be getting quite delusional to be taking trips down memory lane, Snape thought as an owl swooped through the bedroom window, bringing him back to reality.