The Exception To The Rule

Severus Snape hated his father. How could he not? His parents fought and they quarrelled, and they spat taunts at each other, and one night his father took his wand to his mother and cursed her. That was when Severus realised that this wasn't just a cover for their affections, as he had hoped, but a sign that they really did hate each other. That last curse was what made him hate his father. He hated his father for abusing his mother, and he felt a strange contempt for his mother for never daring to take up her wand against her husband. There were spells, though, on the marriage contract, and they could not be broken until the death parted them. Divorce was not an option. There were no exceptions to the law.

Severus started learning the Dark Arts that night. In his immature mind, he knew that the only way to happiness was to destroy the contract, or kill his father. Books on the subject weren't hard to come by, not when their shop front faced on to Nocturne Alley, and the shelves were stacked with books bound in black leather and written, so his father told his customers, on the hides of dead Muggles. Patter for the credulous, said his father to him, but they were powerful tomes nonetheless.

And he studied, through the long nights of the winter before he came to Hogwarts, and he stayed out of the sun in the summer, and he knew that his studies had only just begun. But oath-breaking, promise-destroying, those spells eluded him. At school the knowledge gleaned fresh from the pages of his father's bookshop put him in high standing with various girls and boys in the years above. He learnt new spells, but it was not until his fifth year that he learnt three curses, unforgivable when used, and the greatest of the three was the Killing Curse.

Empiricism took control of him. To find a single flaw in the equation would give him a meaning to life. He was sure of it.

He was summoned to Dumbledore's chambers later that term. His mother was dead. In perfect health, of course, though she bore a black eye, and a number of scars and bruises. They weren't the cause of death, though. Severus hadn't noticed any hurt done to her when he had returned home in the Christmas holidays. He had been too busy working in the shop, and reading at night, desperate to save her. He never told her what he was doing. He had no doubt that if he did, his father would use Imperius to extract his plans from his mother. He was a loyal son, and his mother knew it.

His father was found guilty and sent to Azkaban. Severus had other worries on his mind. The boys in his year hated him. The students in the years above helped him, sometimes, but not enough, and he knew it was only because he was useful to them.

At the end of the summer holidays, his father died in prison. Severus sold the shop and its contents, and rented out a room in the Leaky Cauldron.

Over the years he learned more, and after he left the school he found a vocation for his skills. Now he could cast those curses with impunity, safe behind his new master. He wanted to learn more. If there were exceptions to the rules, he could speak to his mother one last time. That was his mantra, find the exception, find the exception, find the exception.

One night, at the beginning of a summer, he realised that he had learnt all he could. He had enjoyed himself, and he had protection. There were no exceptions from the rule, he had found. None. What point was there in sentencing more to death, he felt, with such grim certainty?

That Halloween, he found an exception to the rule.