AN: I don't own anything about Harry Potter.
A Prologue of Sorts
Alone.
He knew alone.
Alone was sitting in his room playing with brave kings and vicious dragons cut from cardboard as the tissue paper citizens watched unblinkingly from the sideline. Alone was being crouched in the closet trying to drown out the screams and hoping his father would forget him for just one night. Alone was watching other mothers, fathers and children laugh with each other and him suffering the pangs of some strange emotion that could only be described as longing.
Alone was sitting on a swing in the park with no one to push you.
Severus never thought much about his circumstance. He was born and raised in an environment as oppressive as growing up in a basement with no light. His clothes were old. The food was always lacking. His parents argued. They always argued. The house was falling apart. But that was normal. Spinner's End was a no-man's land. So, it was normal.
Severus never thought about anything. Things hurt less when they were pushed to the back of the mind, forever forgotten. It was safer that way. He tried not to think about anything. He never thought about the lack of food. He never counted the beer bottles on the porch. But he thought about magic. Days were filled with daydreams of castles and monsters only heard of in fairy tales. Nights - he did not want to think of nights. Nighttime was when father came home.
That anyone would want to be his friend - him with his unkempt appearance and jaded outlook of the world - was magic to him.
Alone was listening and never talking. Alone was trying and failing. Alone was never being more than an acquaintance and a peer. Alone being so different that everyone was out to get you for reasons that they even did not understand.
Alone was always always always longing, but never asking.
Severus grasped at her friendship and held it close to his heart. She was like him but very different all the same. She - with her bright green eyes and shiny buckle-shoes - smiled at him, laughed with him, promised they would always be friends.
He was a dog. A filthy feral dog. Good for nothing and a menace to all. That was what he was. All he knew was to snarl and snap and bite. It was not as if the ones on the receiving end of his ire did not deserve it. Everyone deserved it.
But not her. Despite the subtle signs that she did not need the nasty mutt anymore - despite the way the words of her golden friends trumped his - they were still friends. She kept him calm and placated. He would never bite her.
But he did.
She had smiled and it had infuriated him. Hereditary madness had taken over his rage-filled mind, and like a rabid dog, mad with disease, he lashed out trying to make her hurt like he was.
Mudblood
Snivellus
Alone was being naive enough to put his trust in the promises of children.