Severus Snape was a gutter rat rescued from the London slums by Harry Potter's great-grandmother. Years later, he writes a letter to Harry explaining not only his past, but also of Harry's family history and heritage.
Chapter 01
Posted:
05/14/2002
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2,688
Author's Note:
Author's notes: I would like to say this follows the canon, but sometimes it meshes, so it would be safer for me to say this is an Alternative Universe of Severus Snape's past. Due to the obscurity of Snape's past, I took a great deal of artisical liberty, but I still like to think that Snape is canonly in-character. If not, I blame it entirely on his past. Or something. (To be read thinking that everything you ever learned in OotP does not exist.)
Those who live on the streets, sheltered by overhangs, in doorways, cardboard boxes, and heaps of garbage, are often thought to be the dredges of life. When someone says, “street urchin,” the term commonly brings to mind a ragged and thin child, dressed is torn, dirty clothes. “Beggars” are those who sit on a street corner, wearing rags with their faces caked with dirt, and their skin drawn tight over protruding bones because flesh is too sparse. There are, too, “gangs” of hooligans who vandalize property, mug, murder, and participate in drugs.
Such people of the street are thought to be the filth of mankind because they cannot cope in the real world, cannot allow society to accept them, because life, though hard, could be coped with in the streets as it is very simple. These people of the streets are selfish and stubborn, but their harsh fate was wrought through their own fault. They made the choice to exist in these conditions.
In large cities, there are societies within societies. Everything has an order and rules. The common worker has the union; the rich and the elite have their cliques in which they are well established. Children of schools soon realize that their world is in contained in this single area, for school is their social, cultural, and educational worlds. These schools may be divided within, but they arise together in kinship against a rival school.
Even the streets have their own societies, much like a school. In a single run-down block, you will find separate gangs of hooligans, packs of street urchins and gutter rats, street whores and hookers of both sexes who sell their bodies and molest children to gain whatever perverted pleasure they find, and those individual beggars who refuse to take part in a group. All of these groups function by themselves, yet they are apart of a single community in and of themselves.
I imagine you would not understand the vast complexity of such a place. After all, you, with your comfortable home, friends, and family, would not understand how precious and beautiful a single nook against a wall behind a pair of trashcans would be. Why is it beautiful? Because it is a shelter from the chill wind and drizzling moisture. It makes all the difference in the world when the only protection one otherwise has from the weather are the thin rags upon one's back.
Oh yes, often there are those who blame us for living in the streets like vermin! After all, we as humans chose our fates and thus we have only ourselves to blame for our pitiful existence within the street gutter amongst the rest of the trash. Indeed, we are the street trash, but we never personally referred to one another as such. In essence, we are the society of the slums. It may not have been much, but it belonged to us. It was all we understood, so therefore it was all we were willing to exist within. Those from the upper classes think the streets are our escape from the "harsher" reality.
Not so. Not all of the children you see scuttling along in the poor, run-down areas of the huge metropolitan cities of the world, their eyes trained on the ground lest they catch the gaze of someone who has an attitude and the need to prove how strong they are in a dog-eat-dog world, are runaways. Not all of the beggars who live on the street are those who no longer wish to pay their taxes or live their mundane lives within offices or broken homes. Not all the gang members are rebellious teenagers. Not all hookers and whores are those people who are broke or bankrupt. The slums are not an escape.
Believe me, the slums are the harshest places to live in the world. Once trapped, there is no escaping from the slums. I am the voice of experience (and perhaps reason) in this subject.
My earliest memory is that of standing outside a restaurant’s front glass window with its name scrawled across the top before the green background of half-drapes. I was bunched side by side with by three other children, all of who were older than me, as we stared into the window at the people eating. I cannot say what I thought of at the time. I do remember seeing tall stacks of golden pancakes, drowning in rich-brown syrup with melting pads of light-yellow butter slices, with crisp pieces of bacon to the side.
When I look back on those days, I feel only a simple loss. It is not as if I actually liked being on the outside, staring in and thinking that, just once, I would have liked to eat tall stacks of golden pancakes not rescued from the garbage amongst muck and gore. But if anyone had ever taken pity upon the four hungry faces that gazed longingly at their food, I never knew.
That is where the feeling of loss comes from. Does anyone ever think what a blessing that barely-touched plate of pancakes one could have finished eating but did not because one was on a diet would have been to starving gutter rats going days and days without a mouthful of food?
I did not ask for the street life, and yet there I was, staring into the restaurant’s window with my three companions. For all the spells and all the potions I have tried throughout the years, I can recover not a single memory older than that. I do not know how I winded up on the streets; I do not know who my parents were.
Just my luck, really, if I am a child born of rape to some female gang member and was abandoned or orphaned. Actually, I do suspect my life began as an unwanted bastard to someone too scared to have a back-alley abortion. On the other hand, perhaps I am a wizard’s child, left in the care of some gutter rat or beggar in fear of my bloodlines. I have no idea, but I harbour no such ludicrous fantasy, merely guesses.
Still and all, I do regret not knowing. It is not as if I want to find out if I was abandoned out of maliciousness or spitefulness, but there will always be those questions of what if? and why?
I must admit that, from the beginning, I was not like the other gutter rats. I was far too ambitious to remain one for the rest of my life. You see, the gutter rats are the lowest of low in the society of the slums. The street urchins are the packrats and cutpurses, often rising to becoming gang members and/or drug dealers. We gutter rats never grow out of what we were, providing we actually survived into our teens. We are the timid runts, too scared of the upper classes to steal from them, too cowed by the gangs and the violence the gangs care to participate in them, and too apprehensive to beg for food. Some of us would sell our bodies to the whores and hookers, allowing hands to roam over our bodies and being subjected to perverted and dirty sexual acts for food or money. There are those who are forced into said acts by gang members against their will.
Rape is a common enough circumstance.
If you have ever seen a child rutting through garbage, hungrily gulping down anything edible, be it rotten or dirty from other sorts of trash? The gutter rats are the only ones who ever stoop to such a low thing. The gangs steal their food and share it with one another--grudgingly, with those who are of the lower areas of the membership--and the street urchins could afford to buy cheap foods from corner groceries with their stolen money.
We are the scruffy, skinny, and dirty children who hover at the edges of churches for the free charity dinners and potlucks. We are the ones who disappear with a single word of warning. We know more about hiding spots and escape routes than any of the other groupies of the slums’ society. We render ourselves invisible amongst crowds of any sizes by exuding the sense of being unimportant and worthless, for that is what gutter rats truly believe they are.
One would never know we existed, if one’s conscience did not give one’s self a swift kick in the shin to force one’s attention on those poor souls who, for no other reason than being born helpless in a world full of cruel and selfish persons. Because of this result of birth, we are trapped within a ruthless world where hope forever remains something that does not exist.
We never amount to much, we gutter rats. None can read or write and are lucky to count to ten without mixing numbers up in between. Harsh weather, diseases, lack of food, and the misfortune of being caught in one of the many gang wars for turf, all these tended to wipe us out before we can grow up. Those gutter rats who manage to reach their teens are considered the elders and often teach the younger generation of gutter rats the ways of survival.
Sooner or later though, a gang member would catch sight of a teenaged gutter rat and force that gutter rat to take sides. It was a death warrant, for if one chose one gang for allies, one makes enemies of more than a dozen others.
I was not like the other gutter rats. They did not have ambition; they would be of a higher slums ranking, such as a street urchin, should they possessed ambition. I had the ambition, and it was to be greater than just a street urchin. I had no desire to exist in the streets forever, ducking and dodging stronger forces than myself, rutting for scraps of food out of garbage.
I remember the words “Knowledge is power,” though I do not know from where I first heard them. My earliest memories echo that philosophy though. I was filled with the burning need to become powerful. I wanted to become too strong for anyone to ever push me around. I would not be hated, judged and condemned for living how I did. I would not have others take things from me.
I really hated it when my things are taken from me; privacy did not exist on the streets anymore than one owning a single thing. One does not even have rights to the clothes upon one’s back for even someone larger could strip the clothes from one’s back.
Do you have any idea what it is like to be stripped naked by a leering bully, pawing clumsily at the entire time, then left to freeze on the street corner?
No, obviously not.
And it is because of these memories of never having anything, of the idea of being trapped forever in a world such as this, did I aspire to become greater than my fellow slum wretches. The key to getting out of the slums’ society is through education. But the lock of that is where to find the education. After all, how may one learn to read, write, and count without a teaching guidance?
I would be vain if I said I did everything myself. You see, I had help along the way. But had I had been like those others on the streets, I would have been too blind to see the help and grasp at it like a lifeline, and I would not be where I am today.
More’s the pity, I’m sure, you would say from time to time.
And that is the irony of the situation. Harry, I owe your bloodline more than just the debt of my life from being saved by your father. That is not why I helped you those times throughout the years, and you better not dare to presume otherwise. James only saved me from being killed after his friends nearly led me to my death. The idea I would help you because of such a debt is ridiculous. I help because it is my duty and for the many debts I owe the Potter family. It was through your great-grandmother I was rescued from the slums, out of the grasp of death itself.
Through her I know a great deal of the Potter family and, because I know so much, do I tell you now. However, a tale to be told must be started from the beginning, and my beginning shaped the events that led me to her and ties me so closely to your family.
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An uncommonly shrewd teenaged gutter rat led the little clan of gutter rats that my daily existence revolved around; one who knew that hiding and invisibility was essential to surviving on the streets. I still remember that rat’s name. Everyone called him Phillip after some member of the Royal Family. We of the slums rarely kept up with the worldly events since our world, the slums, rarely changed because of them. Phillip had taken the name for his own and he was the only one in our clan who had a name. He was a lean little fellow, barely taller than the rest of us so he easily passed off as a child.
Phillip taught us that to look directly at anyone was to initiate a challenge. The confidence and power it would have taken to hold one’s head up in the slums, as if one mattered or was important, was a direct challenge to gang members and anyone looking for a reputation of being strong. He taught us how to blend into the shadows of the streets, to appear nonchalant and unimportant. Indeed, everything he taught us all lent emphasis on the thing he believed would keep us alive the longest.
Never attract attention.
Drilled into me further back than I can possibly remember was the notion a person who never gained notice would see the longest years. To this day, even when I know there are times a person must attract attention and must look another directly in the eye, I despise attention-seekers. I utterly loathe anyone who marvels, revels, or basks in the glow of the perpetual spotlight. From my years of the street I saw this most often in the cocky and vain, those who were all talk and show with little to truly account for. If one was truly great, one did something and did it because it had to be done. There is no need to brag or deliberately attract the notice of others because of it; that made one a pompous windbag. That is just begging for someone to come along and stab the pompous windbag in the back within some dark alley.
Anyone who draws deliberate attention--whether it be through silly antics, a display of intelligence, or some significant physical feat, for the deliberate reason of coaxing an already-bloated ego--should be hung from the Whomping Willow’s treetop by his or her toes, and left there to rot for all of time. I would have done just that to Lockhart if I had known Albus would not have been sorely upset with me.
If being taught never attracting attention was the single most important thing I ever learned from the slums, then the second most important thing I was never take kindness, generosity, or favours for granted. One did not trust any of these, especially from one of the slums’ own. If someone gave one something, it was because it was not worth the trouble of having, they would take it back some day whether through inquiry or force or theft, or because they wanted something else in return.
Something one usually could not afford to give.
I often say the world is completely filled with morons, imbeciles, and selfish or ruthless persons. I would not lie and say the slums have none of that. The slums are, indeed, some of the best places in the world for prime examples of human wickedness. We show no kindness, for there is none to give. Gifts were traps meant to choke their victims to death. Favours were broken and promises never kept. I used to think if one ever gave someone else anything--affection, kindness, favours, or gifts--it was because one expected something back.
I still believe this.
Pandora Potter did the same as everyone else, giving one something and, naturally, expecting something back in return. Her selfishness was a class unto its own, however. She would give one generosity and affection and, though she claimed she never expected anything from it, one could clearly see in her eyes that one would have to repay her by passing on her gifts of generosity and affection to someone else. Albus has the exact philosophy, and I often wonder which one of them got it from whom.
Whenever someone either gave Phillip attention or a gift or a favour, he would immediately pack up his tiny clan of gutter rats and haul us off to some unnamed area of London, usually an unknown alley that had neither name nor unique features. If we moved and it was not for any reason of a gift or favour, it was because of a threat. It is often said we do not distinguish between gifts, favours, and threats. It was through this moving did we come across Outer Diagon Alley, that area which surrounded Diagon Alley itself. It was not, however, known as Outer Diagon Alley to those of us of the slums. It was known as the Area of Supernatural; the title being droll, boring, unoriginal, and absolutely Muggle-like.
The rumours of a dark man and his gang of persons with hooded faces had entered our area. A few years earlier the man had first appeared. He was dreadful and deadly, so the rumours said, because he killed with flashes of green wherever he was seen. No one understood how such a thing was possible, but the dark man had a terrible reputation for being a killer and such a reputation could not be ignored. No one knew his name at the time, but you and I both know this person as Voldemort.
No one ever hung around Outer Diagon Alley. The dark man refused to come near it so it made sense it was the safest place for Phillip to take his little clan. However, it was too strange, too odd, because things none could explain happened, such as people disappearing, voices coming from out of nowhere, objects moving when they should not. We were the only ones to occupy the area and others felt we were foolish to.
I, personally, thought the place to be simply fascinating, though it terrified just about every other slums’ person. They may all be stupid Muggles but their life is hard enough due to hope not being harboured and illusions shattered constantly. Reality did not need to be deformed further without an explanation. Odd things happened in Outer Diagon Alley because of too much magic in one area. Magic tends to slightly warp reality, and the more magic there is in an area, the more reality is warped and distorted.
But I was always the strange one of the group, and even referred to as such. None of us had any names, only a distinct “You!” to tell us apart from one another or some horrid nickname gained only through a malicious prank or tease.
I begged, borrowed, and stole anything to learn how to read, for I felt that by reading I would escape the slums. Many of the beggars, poor souls who were usually mentally unstable through genetics or too many drugs, were educated. They were the ones who chose their street lives because the world drifted past them and ignored them. They had not wanted to fall into the rigid schedule the rest of the upper classes so vigorously followed. Life on the streets was monotonous, when one got used to trying to stay live. My first reading lessons were from a man who complained constantly about the voices he heard that told him of the end of the world.
Because of my ambition to escape the world I grew up in my little clan believed me to be strange. After all, what would I find out there in the great big world? Who would welcome scum like me? What was the use of learning when it only made one yearn for more? Such greedy behaviour; it was dangerous, and learning often attracted drug dealers interested in a slum citizen who could possibly become a business contract.
Drug dealers meant gangs, gangs meant trouble, and trouble meant abrupt ends to gutter rats like myself.
Phillip did not try to discourage me. He would look at me with oddly wise eyes and say, “Ambition’s a fuckin’ bitch. It’ll kill ye iffen ye go t’ fer. Jus’ be keen t’ danger.”
I think there was a bit of wizard in that gutter rat. It would explain his uncanny ability of disappearing in any way and at any place with more than half a dozen children on tow. He kept us clothed, fed, and generally safe. He was also not frightened of Outer Diagon Alley. At least not as much as others. If he was, he never showed the fear. Our safety was always his primary goal.
We scattered as usual, having reached a temporary safe coven, especially one in such a high upper-class area. We were off to scrounge for food, paired up one with another. I wanted to explore the area further, to learn why such odd phenomena happened. My partner, a boy with a long face missing half his teeth, refused.
I sent him off to join another pair and began my search of the Area of Supernatural. I fell in love with the place almost instantly. The way things shifted constantly as if they had a life of their own, the alleys sometimes warping shapes and even twisting about, voices that spoke of things ripe with wonder and information, all appealed to me.
I felt as if I truly belonged. This area begged to be explored and, if not reasoned with, understood.
Everything else was drab and ugly in comparison of the Area of Supernatural. The other streets, filled with sinister people and nightmares of cruel weather and wild animals were simply places I could not bring myself to ever go back; not after the wonderful world I had found. I knew, by the end of that first day of exploring, I had found an area I could use as a stepping-stone out of the slums.
But the Area of Supernatural was more than just that. I was filled with the need to know and to realize why these things happened, what made this place so wonderful. It was like a single piece of music that floats just beyond the reach, a tantalizing hint of a melody so sweet and so beautiful no one may fully comprehend its wonder. The burning, wanton desire I possessed begged and demanded to understand what was so special about this area.
Phillip must have understood how I was drawn to the area, hypnotized by its mystery if you would. Perhaps not why, but only that I was. He would shush the other children as they complained about my wandering off or never being about to help them look for food. He often gave me his share of what food the others managed to hoard, knowing I was too caught up in the Area of Supernatural to find my own.
On the fifth day of our stay, I saw something that, above all other things, changed my life. Had I not been there to witness a pair of young witches opening the wall to the inside of Diagon Alley, had my mind not burned the image of their sequence of taps, I probably would have remained in Outer Diagon Alley, pining away to my death for the answers I so desperately sought.
And yet I was there. A nagging buzz in my mind drew me to the spot, a faint tug that held a promise I could not guess at. So it was that I saw the two women, one in her early adulthood with dark chestnut hair and the other about as young with her hair a light blonde. They chattered cheerfully, speaking of something called “Quidditch” and how Canada had a very promising team that would likely as not make it to the World Cup.
They did not notice me, tucked away in the shadows and projected silent signals of insignificance. I saw the one with light blonde hair tap out a complex sequence on the bricks and, before my quite stunned eyes, the bricks rearranged themselves into a doorway. The women slipped through the door and the bricks rearranged back into their right place. The sequence since has changed, as it no longer needs to be complicated. The surge of slums people though had caused the sequence to be changed and the only reason there was a surge of us was because we were running from Voldemort.
In the moment they had stepped over to the other side of the wall, I saw a whole different world waiting. It was filled with a bustling crowd of people, cheerful and buoyant, dressed in all sorts of different colours and styles. The noise--the wonderful, magnificent noise of voices calling out the words that had attracted me from the very beginning--was almost drowned out by the bursting melody I had been searching for.
I did not move, too surprised and stunned to react in any other way but stare. After several long moments I crawled away from my corner and stood up. My legs were weak and my head was light, but I was too giddy with delight to notice. The sight and the noise only fuelled my desire and need to know and understand what was going on.
I knew the answer to the Area of Supernatural lay beyond the wall. I did not dare try to open the wall for that concept frightened me. What if I did it wrong? What if it only answered to those two women? Instead, I silently piled junk against the wall; boxes and broken crates and bricks and garbage cans and anything else sturdy enough to hold my undernourished weight. It took me almost an entire day and none of my clan asked me why I was dragging a heavy wooden crate or rolling a barrel, only rolled their eyes and grumbled about how I was being stranger than usual.
There was nothing on the other side of the wall but more alleys, much like the one I stood in. My disappointment was bitter and sharp. I did not like the feeling though I was well used to it. One had to be in order to remain sane while living in the slums. I jumped down from my pile of rubbish and sat forlornly in its shadow. I wondered briefly if it was all just a worthless hoax.
But I refused to give up. After all, I would not be where I am today were it not for my driving ambition and stubbornness. One little setback was not enough to destroy me and force me to my knees where other gutter rats existed with their meagre self-esteem. As I was trying to think of retaliation to this situation, I heard footsteps. Remembering the two women from earlier, I shrank back into the shade of the rubble, out of direct view of anyone who entered the area.
It was another pair of persons, but this time it was an older woman with a young boy. She was dressed in dark blue robes with a straw hat tied beneath her chin and appeared fairly old. Her hair, which had been black at one time, was iron grey then. Her hands were slightly twisted with age though her face was still smooth from wrinkles but for the fine lines around the corners of her mouth. Her body seemed compact still, shoulders not bent from time and life’s burdens and her steps were springy. She carried herself well too, and that was what alarmed me.
Phillip’s number one warning, first and foremost in importance, was do not attract attention. One of the ways to avoid this was not to look directly into another’s eyes or carry one’s self with confidence. This woman carried herself not only with confidence, but also with a strength that made me immediately envious. She exuded such a raw power that I felt no one would ever challenge her.
The young boy whose hand she grasped was somewhat taller than me. I would have said he was close to my age, but I never knew my true age, nor did I keep track of the years I spent on the streets. Suffice to say he looked seven years old. His frame was lean, yet well nourished from food high in both quality and quantity. His hair was as black as mine, and he wore a pair of wire-frame glasses. He was dressed in the same sort of robes as the woman's, but his were open to reveal trousers with patched knees. He carried himself well, but not with the dignity or strength the woman possessed.
The resemblance between the two was sharp enough even for myself to make the assumption they were related to one another. It was the slant of the head, the curve of the jaw, and the line in which hair grew. As they drew close, the woman spoke. Her voice was brash and rough, as if she was used to being blunt and cared not to ease the emotions she verbally expressed. Her voice was only like this when she was short of patience, as I would later learn.
“I’ll not say this again, James,” she said sharply. “I want you to actually learn how to open the door here. You can’t always use Floo Powder, and there are times when Apparating is out of the question.”
“Yes, Grandmother,” James humbly replied. I leaned back as the woman came to a halt before the doorway.
“You tap here,” thump “and here,” thump, “here, here, and here,” thump thump thump. “It doesn’t matter how slow or how quick you knock those bricks, but you need to keep a steady amount of time between them or they won’t open. The timing must be deliberately even.”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
I heard the rumbling as the bricks shifted and knew the doorway had opened. Again I heard that wonderful noise of voices beckoning me to join them. In that moment, my heart stopped. It was not a hoax! I could do just that as well! Feet shuffled past m, and the bricks slid back into their place once more.
I jumped out of my hiding place and ran to stand before the bricks. I stared at them with both a mix of apprehension and wonder. In my mind, I again saw the young woman with light blonde hair raise her hand and knock several areas on the wall. I eyed the spots. If I stood on a box or a crate I could surely reach them. I hurried over to my pile of rubble and began to tug a crate free, then stopped. Did I dare enter that mysterious and magical world, for such was what it had to be? I was only a gutter rat, never to become much nor worth anything to anyone, expect perhaps Phillip, but even then he may perhaps forget about me in a single week.
But I knew I had to enter it. I knew I would sooner die than leave without knowing what it was about this area that called out to me. With that resolve in mind, I pushed the crate over to the wall, stood on it, and stared at the bricks. I took a deep breath to still my shaking hands. I tapped on the bricks, but I hesitated on two, messing up the deliberately even beat the woman claimed was needed. The second time I hit the wrong brick. But they say the third time’s a charmer, and it was the third time I succeeded in hitting the right sequence with the exact timing.
I jumped from my crate and eagerly pushed it out of the way before hurrying into the magical world I had found.