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 02
Posted:
05/20/2002
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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.)
I cannot describe those first few moments in Diagon Alley amongst wizards and witches and surrounded by magic that tingled senses and tickled nerves. Imagine, if you can (dare I hope to presume you are capable?) what it is like for all of your life to be spent in a state of half-waking half-sleeping. You are never fully awake, you function only minimally, and nothing seems real. You feel as if everything you do is barely acceptable and any effort placed into the action would be a waste even if should you have the energy to summon effort.
Suddenly you go from that state of being half-asleep into a state of hyperawareness where your senses expand to humongous proportions just to take in a fraction of your surroundings, and you feel so absolutely alive and the universe stops spinning for just a moment so you may comprehend what is going on.
That is almost like what those first few moments were, and so much more. For the first time in all my remembered life, I felt safe and was finally home. Can you understand that? After living on the streets around dangers that would snuff my life out without a single thought, moving place to place to stay one step beyond those dangers, this feeling was the most wonderful thing I have ever known. Since then there have been but very few incidents in my life that come close to such a sensation.
The majority of the people did not seem to notice the dark shadow that hovered outside their midst. I floated around, awed with my surroundings. Everything was just so colourful and musical! The area was crammed with stalls, people, boxes, and little animals that ran underfoot. The scent of the human body’s natural odours filled the air along with the scent of all sorts of food.
Everything was a living, breathing entity. The street and the buildings seemed to breathe with a special spark of life. Everything exuded exorbitance and energy, drawing in harmony and casting away chaos. It all seemed so bright and wonderful. It was not as if I had found heaven; far from it. There were people who jostled against me and yelled at me for being in their way, ignorant or uncaring persons who trod on my bare feet.
I sensed something extraordinary of this place though. It was special in ways I could not understand at the time, but marginally do now.
Magic was calling to my blood, singing to my senses and waking awareness in me whom others my age showed an aptitude towards. In those instances, I unknowingly went from being a worthless gutter rat that would likely never amount to anything, to being a wizard. Magic was calling to blood and the blood was answering, as Pandora herself said.
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I have no idea how far I wandered in the area or how much time I spent doing such. After a great while, the wonder of the area finally wore off and I became aware of how human it still was. Not all the noise could be considered pleasant, as rude words and insults rarely can be. I did not have money to buy anything I saw but, at the time, it mattered not for I still drank in everything I saw, learning all that I could about this strange and wondrous place.
I tugged at shirts and sleeves to point at an area and ask the person whose attention I demanded what that was, or that, or that. I learned a great deal about brooms and familiars and wands, as people deigned to explain, in different ways, what exactly I was pointing at. Perhaps they thought this was my first time there and I was too excited at all things to stay with my parents and so had gotten separated from them. They tactfully refrained from saying anything of the rags I wore. Through the pieces of information I was given and the stray things I overheard, I pieced together enough to understand this was a wizard’s market called Diagon Alley. It was where one could buy any legal magical item, and quite a bit of illegal items as well (but only if one knew where to look and whom to ask).
I did not understand the concept of magic was a foreign perception to the majority of the world. Still, the very term magic itself would have been strange to me. I had never grown up with stories of dragons and witches and mystical powers. One never had time to tell such tales on the street, let alone learn them. It was all very bizarre to me, but a special bizarre, as if I had discovered a portion of the world everyone knew, but slum people never had a chance to see.
In the end, my bare feet could only take so much walking on cobbles and people stepping on them, so I finally slipped into a small outside café area where tables were shaded by blue and white checked umbrellas. I found a small corner where I would only be noticed through sheer chance and settled down to listen to what was being spoken around me. It was not until I took a look at the sparse amount of people seated about the tables did I realize the woman and her grandson from earlier were there.
I had no cause for alarm though I was curious about them, if only because they were among the very first “wizards” and “witches” I had ever knowingly seen. James was seated with his back towards me and his grandmother sat directly across from him. Were James not sitting where he was, I would have been in his grandmother’s direct line of vision.
At the moment, James, along with two boys his age (a quiet one with light-coloured hair with one finger pressed uncertainly against his upper lip, and the other a brawny fellow with dark hair and rumpled clothes), was pleading with the woman.
“Please?” James asked continuously as the boy with the finger pressed against his upper lip remained silent, and the brawny boy rambling continuously about how the puppets were an educational factor in manipulating inorganic material with simple spells and beginner charms. The woman, for the most part, ignored the boys as she ate a bowl of peaches smothered in cream and sugar. My stomach clenched at the sight, but I ignored it. I was used to being hungry and watching other people eat before me.
After several minutes of the “Please, grandmother?” and the incessant rambling, the woman looked up from her peaches. She pulled a large watch from her pocket and peered at it.
“I expect you to be back within an hour,” she said. “Do not make me come looking for you.” James nodded his head vigorously in agreement, threw his arms around her for a brief hug, then scampered off with the other two boys as the brawny boy called out, “Thanks Gramma Pandora!” The woman leaned back against her chair and sighed. She tucked her watch back into her pocket then looked directly at me.
There was no denying she saw me, and in that moment when her blue eyes, bright with awareness and a sharp cunning, settled upon me, I was filled with the urge to flee. It was a natural response a gutter rat has to being spotted by someone who posed a danger. The woman was, undoubtedly, a danger, for I knew anyone with her strength and confidence had to be a danger. Yet her eyes drew me inward. They pierced me to my soul and saw everything that I was, from being a gutter rat to being ambitious. It was as if my life was layers that surrounded me, and she stripped away and analysed every layer.
She lifted her arm, smooth and deliberate enough for me to realize she moved so as not to alarm me further. She gave me a ‘come-hither’ gesture and pointed at the seat James had occupied earlier. I hesitated, wanting to run from this powerful woman, but I was also curious as to why she deigned to grant notice to one such as myself.
I told myself if she were to attack, I would duck beneath her and run. By promising myself this, I summoned the courage to walk over to her table and climb into the seat. I warily peered at her across the table surface. She shoved a bowl over to me. I glanced quickly at it and saw it was a bowl of fruit like the one she was eating earlier. I eyed it for a moment then shot her a suspicious look. She sighed.
“My grandson,” she said slowly, “has left me all alone. I ordered a perfectly good dessert for him and I have no intention whatsoever to see it wasted. You look as if you might appreciate it.” I still looked at her suspiciously, but when she withdrew a book from a pack sitting at her feet and began to read it, I decided she meant me no harm.
I slowly reached across the table to the bowl of peaches and cream, still watching her. I was ready to bolt should she have stirred from what she was reading, but to her credit the only movement she made was to turn pages.
I ate my peaches slowly, savouring the tangy flavour of peaches, cream, and sugar. I had never had anything so sweet in my life, and with my first bite I knew I could not bolt the food down. This was the food of the angels, meant to be eaten slowly and savoured to the fullest. Under the guise of the sweetness and the woman’s indifference towards my presence, I felt myself relax.
I had not realized how soon I had finished the rich dessert until my spoon hit the glassware. I glared at it accusingly, still hungry. I dropped the spoon in the bowl, curled my arms around my stomach, and studied the woman before me. I did not believe she would appreciate my running away from her after she had just given me a gift, but I had to wonder why she would do anything for me. I had to know what she wanted. Why this kindness? Why this offering?
As she flipped another page of her book, I leaned close and squinted at the letters on the cover. My reading was still poor and I could not recognize most of the words. I mouthed each letter and the sounds they were capable of producing, but struggled against the hope of knowing what they meant.
“Everyday Charm,” the woman said absently. I jumped at the sound of her voice, then crouched down and tensed warily. She did not look at me as she lifted her head from her reading. Instead, she held a hand up and waved. An instant later and someone wearing an apron of the same colours the café was decked in hurried to her side. He bowed to her, shot me a look of malice, and then straightened up.
“Orange-spice tea,” the woman said, “for myself, and one of your bacon sandwiches for my little friend here.” She went back to her reading as the man scribbled her order down on a pad of paper. With one last look at me, he hurried away. I knew why he expressed such dislike towards me. I was a skinny and filthy child, barely large enough to look over the edge of the table seated as I was, and dressed in grimy rags. I glanced at the woman, wondering again what it was that she wanted from me.
She did not feel dangerous. On the streets, one’s senses for danger are acute and I felt nothing more from the woman than the need to curl up against her and let her hold me. I wondered if it had something to do with the area I was within. Perhaps it was playing around with my feelings. She was not like the other older women I often crossed in the slums, the hookers and whores who would leer at a child and curl fingers eager to paw and grope naked flesh. They just wanted to capture what pleasure they could as a customer rather than as the client they usually were. I knew this woman was capable of a great deal of damage. Yet this knowledge comforted me instead of making me run in terror.
As I swung my feet and looked at her, the woman closed her book and set it on the table between us. She leaned back against her chair, crossed one leg over the other, and folded her hands in her lap. Her blue eyes studied me again. I wiggled uncomfortably in my chair, wanting to run from her but also wanting to stay and bask in her attention.
She tilted her head to one side. “Where are you from?” she asked me suddenly. I felt myself wilt at the words. I looked away, unable to meet her searching eyes. Could she not tell I was a gutter rat just from my clothes and health? She sighed, as if understanding how difficult it was for me to explain I was from the slums. “Do you have a name?”
I wilted further down my seat. No name, unless “Hey! You!” could be considered a name. I was distinguished amongst the other children as the oddball, but beyond that there was nothing I ever called myself.
I heard her sigh and then mumble something beneath her breath as if to convince herself, “I’ll not ask about your parents.”
The peaches in my stomach turned into a sodden lump. I knew then it was time for me to run; in those words alone it seemed she knew everything about me. Ashamed, I jumped out of my chair and dashed across the café’s little yard. I ran into the waiter who carried the woman’s order, tripped him up as I dodged around his legs, and easily slipped into the crowd of people that filled the street outside the café.
Behind me, I heard the woman yelling at me. “Boy! Boy! Come back!” She did not sound enraged, as if I had foiled her plan of getting what she wanted, but instead worried that I may hurt myself. Well, forget it, lady, I thought as I dashed through the crowds of people, slipping between legs and around small children. You was nice and all, but you scared me.
I finally stopped running after so many twists and turns down separate little waysides, at the front of a small building where dummies wearing multi-coloured robes stood in the front window. I looked at them and then was filled with hate for everyone. Did they realize what it was like to live in the slums, nothing stable or dependable, not even having a name? What would they know about terror and dark men who killed with green light and drug dealers and people who snatched one off the street to play with one’s body for their own pleasure?
The happiness I had known at being in Diagon Alley disappeared beneath the tidal wave of revulsion I had for every person I saw. It choked me, sending my senses spiralling higher in their awareness. I felt the body heat of every person who passed me, heard their happy words, and saw their bright cheerfulness. And then I became aware of something I had not noticed when I first entered the area.
This façade of cheerfulness hid something. My hate wavered somewhat as I felt a steady undercurrent of fear and terror, a reminder of whatever horrid thing that lay out there and would have to be acknowledged when the people left this refuge. I suddenly realized how forced the smiles were and how false the laughter was. What was it that held these people in such a state of terror that they would be so worried? I was filled with confusion and cared no longer to be around these people. I did not want to believe these people, living in their homes, tucked away from the horrors of the streets, with their steady lives and their names and their food, would be scared like us slums people.
I turned and dashed through the area again. I hurried about, trying to find the wall I had come through. I realized I did not know how to exit, and I wondered if I would be trapped forever in this place. I did not know what was worse: knowing that people were cheerful to cover their fright, or living in a place where the people did not know how to hide their terror.
As I ran blindly through the streets, I began to panic about ever being able to leave. Through my panic, I ran directly into someone. We both fell over and, as I tried to regain my lost balance, I heard someone say, “Are you all right?” The woman’s grandchild, James, hauled me to my feet and thrust his face into mine. “Are you hurt?”
I saw my reflection in his eyes; greasy, dirty black hair standing on end and black eyes wide with surprise. In his eyes, I also saw him judge me by my appearance, and condemn me in a single moment. I saw disgust and loathing, and he released me and scrubbed his hand against his shirt as if trying to rid himself of any disease he might have suspected me having.
From that moment onward, I despised your father, James Potter.