Disclaimer – I do not own the characters, world or franchise of Harry Potter. This fanfic is a non-profit-making enterprise.
Author's note – I'm not sure what my Snape kick is, he's hardly my favourite character, but here's my take on the 'Snape lives' idea.
Peace at last.
John Ramsbotham surveyed his tiny, unkempt house with the small front garden crammed with herbs, back garden chock full of vegetables (herbology was coming in handy) and reflected that it had taken a long time to get here. John Ramsbotham had been a long time in the creation, especially considering he had only been brought to life some eight months ago.
He had begun as a birth certificate, P.O box and bank account way back in the year 1980. Severus had used his shady contacts in the muggle world to discover how to get another birth certificate. The real John Ramsbotham had died aged six months, but there was a problem at the registry and he'd never been officially declared dead. The certificate had been enough to start an account, the statements and papers going to an anonymous P.O box he'd set up in Hull. Later he was registered in the records of a large city primary school, his filed records spoke of a rather thick boy, but well-behaved, with no major incidents on his records. It was enough.
After the end of the first war some might have thought John wasn't needed any more. Severus had known better and John had been delighted to discover that the local Polytechnic did distance learning courses and had signed up for GCSE courses. Severus had got himself six muggle GCSEs over the years, having read that most jobs asked for at least five, with maths and english a must.
It wasn't until Voldemort's return that the final stage came into play. John became a man of substance, using his meagre savings (what Severus could afford to siphon off his less than generous wages over the years) to buy up a dilapidated abandoned farm-worker's cottage in an unfashionable village in the least touristy part of the Yorkshire Moors. It had no electrics, no heating or running water. But it was cheap, the garden was small, but enough for his purposes and there was at least a perfectly good pump in the back garden.
John checked his watch and headed in to change into his work uniform, hurrying down to the Co-op to start his shelf-stacking shift. No one could find him here. Living as a muggle, his wand snapped as he fought to live through Nagini's bite he used his limited wandless magic sparingly. He had been careful to give no hint of John's existance and now he lived a simple life, beholden to no one and known only as 'the strange lad down the way' who was a bit odd, but harmless. It was better than he'd ever hoped this could end.