19/11/2012
People don't expect me to act the way I do anymore. They think that since I made it out of the War that I must be able to move on from my ways. I did not leave the Hogwarts grounds unscathed. I left only part of a man, half of the partial person I used to be. I cannot speak any longer, I cannot see much out of my right eye on even my better days. I cannot have children, even if I had the ability to find a woman who would bear them. I owe my life to three people who made my life a hell for seven long years, but it is a life I'd rather not have on most days.
I turn my back on others now, without the words I wish I could. My glare has not lost its touch but instead has become more of a monster's haunt. There is no pounding at my door by women who want a man who has won a glorious battle, risked his life. There is no "hurrah" for me these days. I was awarded a low class Order of Merlin for my work, no ceremony to produce it. It does not hang proudly above my mantle nor sit in a frame beside my most prized Most Potente Potions.
If I am to be honest, truthful in this missive, I must retract an earlier statement. People expect I died the way I lived. My Order of Merlin was awarded posthumously. I have never seen it, only heard of it in passing. I haven't been around another witch or wizard in nearly eleven years.
22/11/2012
I have lived in a small hovel of a place outside an even smaller village than Spinner's End for the past decade. It is too small to have even a Muggle grocer or a doctor within its limits. It suits me. I know the name of every Muggle within the village and the names of most of its meager visitors. With the exception of one young man, I am the youngest in the village by nearly thirty years.
I am also the only without family. I am alone. In a world of teaching and treachery, being alone is difficult. In a world of family and companionship, of love and affection, I am ever more aware of how lonely and painful a life apart can be. My solitude was once my shield, but is now my bitter affliction.
I cannot say that I regret my past actions as a whole, though some I wish erased. My actions saved the child of the woman I was closest to, and despite the catastrophe of a man he had as a father, I am content in knowing that.
28/11/2012
I have never been a nice man. Since childhood I have lived my life apart. Only one soul ever cared to inspire me to live my life closer to the rest of the world, but in the end her fate was not with me. The final battle was a harsh one, one I don't like to think about. It started on the top of the Astronomy Tower at the end of the Spring Term of 1997 when by my hands my patriarchal puppet-master took his final breath.
He wasn't sick, wasn't dying. I know the official party line. "A Horcrux stole his strength and withered his arm."
The truth of the matter is that Albus Dumbledore was not the man he pretended to be. I know many expect that. They have read that insipid woman's horrendous biography and seen many of the terrible facets of Dumbledore's visage. Everything that woman had penned was true, but she had not known the most important pieces; she had never finished his story.
I won't get in to every piece of the man's past, but one important missing piece affected more than just me.
When Tom Riddle was in his fifth year, Minerva McGonagall was in her sixth. The events that occurred were never spoken of, but the sixth year gave up her daughter in order to return to school at all, and Albus never told her of the infant's fate.
I had learned of Minerva's plight one night after the Dark Lord had fallen for the first time. I had begun to think of a life in potions research when she spoke to me of it. We hadn't yet formed any sort of bond, pseudo-friendship or otherwise. I didn't understand the significance until Harry Potter entered Hogwarts and my mark, once again, began to burn.
I had chosen to remain a professor, stay within the confines that remained, for me, closest to home.
But without meaning to I stayed under the thumb of my patriarchal puppet-master.
She had tried to warn me, to convince me to leave. Her story did not make sense to me until that very moment, almost fifteen years later when I was charged with the task of killing Albus Dumbledore at the risk of my very soul.
17/01/2013
I have not written in this journal in almost two months. The pain has been intense. The village elder offered me a handful of something called Vioxx, but the Potions master in me refuses to take a concoction made by a Muggle without knowing what is contained within.
My hands were ruined by a curse that had been designed to destroy my ability to cast a spell. A fallen Portkey, a small round marble that had at some point rolled to my nearly unconscious body, brought me to the entrance hall of Black's decrepit house minutes before I would have passed on. The sudden landing tripped an aging curse that Mad-Eye had placed before his death. A second curse expelled me from the property and into the street. If not for some concerned Muggle calling a hospital, I would have died on a street. I would have died the way I lived—totally alone.
I have been writing, putting the thoughts I never before wanted to string together, in order to calm the violent quivering in my hands. I wish nothing more than to brew a potion again, even if it be the last thing I do. I don't have any other purpose in life. I have nothing more to live for. Except for the potion I always wanted to brew, to create, to bring to life. Sano a animus. To heal a soul.
Written for PotterPlace's Alternate Universe Challenge. Winner of Best WIP and Most Interesting Premise.
Prompts used:
# 18. Write a story with Snape as he is in canon. He has lived through the final battle and played a big part in it. What part did he play? What does he do with his life now that he's free?
# 2. A canon character discovers something important about himself.