Walking on a Broken Past

Words: 8,756

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Severus Snape, or any of JKR's creations in general. I do not own the theory of time travel, the multiverse, or the "oh noes, the second war lasts forever!" plot device for that matter. What I do own (I think...) is the precise twist this story has, as I have never seen anything of the sort before. I do not own nuclear winter, weapons, or the cold war.

Warnings: Character death. Gory descriptions. Child abuse. Spouse abuse. Suicide. Murder. Not completely canon, even discounting the AU it starts in. Mostly canon through books six and parts of seven (main exceptions being the very end and epilogue). Weasley bashing. Dumbledore bashing. Potter bashing. Order bashing. Hogwarts Professor bashing. Glorifying of evil and Voldemort. Nerdy moments. Fake spells created on a Latin translator are also included. Occasional religious comments (but I'm an atheist, so they're kinda widespread and not from the religious perspective). Lots of angst. Coarse language. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Slash pairings. Oedipal undertones. Sexual innuendo. Mentions of sex (but the actual act thereof will not be described in this story).

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Chapter 1: Remind Me Why I Live

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." Tom Stoppard

Eyes darting left to right, right to left, he kept his adrenaline high, waiting. Where was that bastard?

It was dark, three minutes to midnight before July the thirty-first, and just a moment ago, he'd been fighting the man who turned his life into living hell. His green eyes continued scanning the battle field, over smoking craters and torn turf. Somehow, he'd never imagined the fight would be like this, just him and the Dark Lord. It was always that Voldemort would storm the castle, literally, with all his Death Eaters in tow, and the Chosen One would come out, wand blazing, with the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army in his wake.

That, however, wasn't what had happened at all. He imagined a stormy battle, with lightning bursts in the distance and rain spattering his face, friends and foe alike falling, but that he would come out on top...

Oh how wrong he was! Now it was just the two of them who were left to the war at all. Harry Potter was a single man, all his friends and family long since dead, fighting Tom Riddle, better known as the Dark Lord Voldemort, who was very recently left bereft of followers. This marked the pair as the last wizards in all of Britain, excepting perhaps a few young muggleborns who might have escaped the Great Muggle Purge of June sixth of the year two-thousand and six, if any of them hadn't been killed at times after that either.

Neither may live while the other survives... it was a damning line in an equally damning prophecy. So long as they both were alive, physically speaking, neither could so much as think of doing anything more than kill the other. They couldn't physically leave the Isles either, so long as the other wished it. When Harry had found this out, he had tried to make the British wizarding world flee, told them that if they left, Voldemort couldn't kill anyone else, and Harry could at the very least contain the threat. The problem was that wizards are a proud lot, and the old British Society wizards were the most stubborn of them all. No one would leave, because they didn't want to admit defeat. Three months later, Voldemort had killed every muggle in the country except for the very few he meant to keep as slaves and set up wards to lock out any foreign aid, taking wizarding Britain off the map, both radar and visibly.

From there, it was all the Americans and Russians' job. With the sudden obliteration of a country right between the two, each assumed the other was the culprit. Warheads flew, and it was nuclear winter. England was untouched by this except to know that something was wrong with the world. Too few were alive to care about anything but survival.

A whisper of incorporeal energy whizzed by his ear, and the Chosen Savior of the Wizarding World turned on his heel. There was the one who had caused it all; a tall man, almost seven feet (daunting to Harry's own short stature), skin a shining alabaster under the full moon, and eyes literally glowing a stunning red to combat the deathly green on the Dark Lord's foe. Having long since gotten over irony of the Slytherin with Gryffindor eyes against a Gryffindor's of Slytherin green, Harry did not dawdle. He merely incanted.

Tectum spiritus! He thought furiously, slashing his wand forward in a jagged pattern. The blazing green light of the Killing curse was caught, as usual, by his "Shield of Life" that had been invented by one Ronald Weasley based on the blood protection that had been instilled in Harry from birth. Every time someone died on his behalf, he could use the shield ten times. Needless to say, he didn't need to keep track anymore. Reducto! Sectumsempra! Avada Kadavera! Avada Kadavera! With each spell, he couldn't help but to become more enraged, more desperate. He had to end this, and end it now! The least he could do in honor of the thirty-seventh birthday that was fast approaching would be to kill the murderer, wouldn't it? It was too long, too bloody long! He'd spent years doing this until every Death Eater was gone, every Order member or DA student avenged... except those killed by Voldemort personally.

He remembered that, just before his fifth year, Alastor Moody had shown him a picture of the Old Order. The first casualty he knew of by name from Voldemort's own wand had been a rather portly witch by the name of Dorcas Meadows, then he knew of his parents, Bertha Jorkins, the old man from Little Hangleton... the list went on to include most of his friends who survived the first year of Horcrux hunting. Any who didn't had been killed in the new Hogwarts regime, when he told them to stay in school, be safe. They were dead because Harry Potter was a Grade A idiot.

A spell of violent fuchsia was speeding toward him, and Harry held his wand and waved it in the lightning pattern of the rune "Eiwahz" and shouting his spell in his mind once more. Tectum Spiritus! It could stop any spell Voldemort had ever tried on it in the past. The fuchsia clashed with his pale pink shield rimmed in green, and Harry paled. Voldemort had gotten him. The roiling light broke the Shield of Life and struck his infamous lightning bolt scar; the Mark of Eiwahz that prophecy had dictated must be untouched.

Everything went black.

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The sound of two voices reached Harry's ears just as he woke up. What had happened to Voldemort? Had he perhaps rigged up a fortress of sorts and tossed him in with the muggle slaves while he was unconscious? No, the old snake was just as cruel as Harry himself. Somehow, he'd managed to get himself away after that mystery spell hit him, it was the only explanation. But, then, what fool in the Isles didn't know well enough to stay away from Harry Potter? He was a veritable Voldemort magnet after all; who would want to bring his wrath down upon them that badly? There were plenty of easier, less painful ways to commit suicide, he was sure.

He moved to get up, but found that his arms had very limited mobility, never mind that everything about himself seemed... smaller. The voices were rather muffled, as if the speakers had a low-powered ward up to prevent the conversation being heard, though he could still place the voices. One man and one woman. There weren't many couples in Britain any more, they only people remaining were those who were too weak to make the journey or with small children too young to swim the distance between Wales and France. By now, all young adults had migrated for easier places to survive (France being the ideal since no one could accuse them of instigating any nuclear war, being France, though being near to Germany only the Western and Southern parts of the country were entirely safe) and the old deceased. Most orphaned children were dead as well, so who was mad enough to remain?

"Tobias, just look at him!" the woman's voice had come into focus then. "He's completely helpless, and you know as well as I that the chances of him being magic are very low. My father said no family's have been reported missing or dead in a while since the War. Muggleborns are an anomaly among themselves; one is born per every ten generations in a family tops. He's normal, I'm sure." Who hadn't heard of him? Harry Potter, the Man of a Thousand Broken Mirrors? The Black Cat Crusader? (He had a feeling that one had to do with Batman in some way.) He had even been called "the salt spiller" once. What few people remained were guaranteed to have heard of Britain's bad luck charm, weren't they? It made no sense to his ears.

"And what do you think that stupid ritual of yours would do to it? That's magic to, isn't it?" The man had a bitter voice, low and cruel. Harry categorized it under the level of snappishness that he usually listed only the worst cases in, having labeled that file as "Snape-ish" a long time ago. Needless to say, he was in that category as well. But what muggles could do a magic ritual, anyway?

"I already told you, it's just an adoption ritual," the woman had a less than happy overall tone to her voice, and sounded a bit mannish. Already Harry was reminded of Millicent Bulstrode. By now he realized they couldn't be talking about him, anyway; adoption rituals only worked on children below the age of seven. He liked to classify being freshly thirty-seven as "well above seven". "It doesn't transfer the magic of either party involved, just some genetic structure. You may be impotent, but I do want a child, and I don't see why we can't just pick up a boy who's been abandoned so obviously on our doorstep. The spell placed him at a year old today, the perfect time to take him in." How odd. Why was there a one-year-old child in Britain? Who was fool enough to reproduce with Voldemort waiting around the bend to kill everyone?

"And how do we explain him away, Eileen? The neighbors –" But the man was cut off.

"We're moving tomorrow anyway," she snapped roughly. "He won't be noticed. If I tell my parents we've had a child, they will no doubt set aside a fund for us take care of him with until he starts school so I don't have to worry about finding a job in Nottingham just yet. Please, Tobias?"

An annoyed huff escaped the man before he acquiesced. "Alright, but I'll pick his name. He's going to be... Severus. Severus Tobias Snape." Harry opened his eyes in horror. What sort of fool would name their child after the infamous traitor? Didn't they realize that Voldemort still had the taboo up? Blurred vision caught two figures and he opened his mouth to warn them.

All that came out was an infant's unhappy cry. It was that ambiguous noise that a small child makes that no one but a mother can discern between. Is the baby hungry? Is the baby tired? Did he wet himself? Is he frightened? No one but the baby knows. Harry was the baby.

"Oh, look what you've done," The woman was cooing now, cooing over Harry Potter. He was being lifted up... how could he be lifted up? He was thirty-seven years old, not one! One year old children weren't cognizant! One year old children didn't fight Dark Lords or exert their will to keep that same Dark Lord out of what remained of the free world! "You've made him cry. Why would you pick a name like that? Severus means to sever – hardly a name for a child, Tobias."

"It's a name for a man, Eileen," The man had the Snape sneer to his voice. Then Harry understood; he was going to be Severus Snape, the grumpy git of the dungeons and overgrown bat. "It's a name to remind him that his mother is unnatural, and to show what'll happen if he doesn't grow up to be a normal man. It ought to remind you, too. We'll do that ritual of yours, and I hope my normal blood can counteract that magic nonsense in yours. The world doesn't need another freak."

Harry had stopped crying, horrified, but at the same time filled with his first hope in almost twenty years. He was Severus Snape. That meant it was January in 1961, and he could know his real parents. He could change the world now; he could save Sirius, Dumbledore, and even Cedric. Voldemort wouldn't get to terrorize the world, because he would save the world. It was perfect, even if he did have to live in the home of Snape's parents. With the soft heartbeat of Eileen Prince-Snape as his lullaby, Harry fell asleep, dreaming of a brighter tomorrow.

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It was three years later, and Harry, now Severus (just Russy as his new mother had come to call him), was weeding the garden in some ill-fitting jeans and a too-snug t-shirt, but they kept him warm in the nippy January air. Black hair that had lost its life and more natural sheen fell into his eyes, clumpy, greasy, and badly cut. The water in the new hovel had been turned off two weeks ago, and there was no more "baby fund" for Eileen to dip into to make sure that they had running water. Dark brown eyes, so dark they appeared near black, were glaring at a weed that his four-year-old body couldn't pull. Tobias was at work, Eileen trying to find a job, and Severus was left home alone everyday to pull weeds.

He couldn't remember a time when he'd had a roof and been treated worse. True, Eileen adored him, tried to protect him from Tobias, and he had a proper room to himself, but the head of the Snape family was a drunken brute. If he had been about six times heavier, most of that being fat and a beer belly, and had a thick mustache, Severus might have almost called him Uncle Vernon, but he didn't. Vernon didn't beat the woman he'd sworn to love forever. These were people giving him the name of a boy who would grow up to be instrumental in the war, weren't they? He should respect them... but he couldn't bring himself to dredge up any emotion more light-hearted than contempt for Tobias.

With one final tug, Severus managed to free the last offending weed from the deplorable tyranny of the flowerbed nation and tossed it into the small pile he had made to put in the compost heap later. As it was the last one in the family's small front yard (which was about large enough for the vegetable garden and a bit extra in the form of a walkway), he pulled off the overlarge gardening gloves from his small, long-fingered hands and wiped sweat from his small brow. He had done worse for the Dursleys: mowing the lawn (this one had no grass to begin with), washing the car (a rundown little thing from the forties), cooking (he only had to make himself lunch, so far), and pretending not to exist (he wished) were but a few of such duties. Here, Severus just had to make sure that the vegetables weren't being killed and tidy in the main room of the house, the family room/dining room/kitchen. Even at four, it would have been a break for Harry Potter. The violence and turmoil of the house more than made up for the lack of duties, however.

He put the gloves back on his tiny hands, with the rubber-padded fingers flopped over, empty, so that he could pick up his baby-compost heap. He walked around back to the bare dirt patch that was the Snape backyard, and tossed the remains of plant-life into the compost heap. He didn't know why they bothered doing something for their future, like growing vegetables they couldn't water (or they couldn't if Eileen weren't filling the water tank every morning with magic, though barely as her magic weakened from lack of use) considering they would probably move again soon anyway. He'd lived in ten houses in three years. Not the best track records for the parents.

Opening the back door of the house, he took off his shoes (really an old pair several sizes too large from a second hand shop) and smacked them as hard as he could against the cement stoop to dislodge dirt before putting them back on. Severus always got in trouble if he tracked dirt in the house, even as a cute little four-year-old (going on forty, he reminded himself) child, but he couldn't walk around the house barefoot either. Tobias liked to throw his beer bottles at the wall when he was done, and sometimes Eileen couldn't pick all of the shards up. More often, she didn't have the time between Tobias giving her time alone in the rumpus room and him returning to get her wand from where she hid it under a loose floorboard and vanish the shards. It tended to travel about with her shoes as well, so Severus was careful to keep his on.

He crept out of the laundry room, which was where the back door led, and into the hall. Walking swiftly down the hall (for his diminutive form) he opened the door to his room and closed it... most of the way, at least. It had swollen due to a misfire from Eileen's wand, so it couldn't shut completely. Severus' was a small room, big enough for a toddler bed and dresser with play space near the door.

Three toys sat neatly in the corner about two feet from a rusty baseboard heater. A ring-stacker that, instead of arranging in size and rainbow order, he had used to calculate the intents of spell by color. Blue spells were (generally) light, yellow light-neutral, orange and green were neutral, red dark-neutral, and purples dark. Sadly, the rings didn't have white (Dark spells), black (Neutral), or silver (Light), but it hardly factored in. Ever since the set had been purchased, he had tried to use them to find the intent of the fuchsia spell, but to no avail.

Beside the ring-stacker was a plushy lion, worn when he had received it and hardly touched after that. Harry had learned just how treacherous lions could be, and Severus would be a serpent when he was old enough to be Sorted. The fact that the thing looked like it had been mauled by one of its own hadn't helped.

The third and last was Severus' favorite; a child's potion set that he kept hidden from Tobias at all costs, because who knew what the mad muggle would do to it? Harry Potter had been better-than-average at Potions when he knew what he was doing. Severus Snape, however, was to be considered a genius, inventing several important potions, and the new Severus would live up to that reputation. (These included the Draught of Peace, the latest version of skele-gro which, sadly, tasted better than the ones around in his current time, and an obscure potion that cleared the body of impurities before rituals.) That one small potion kit that he used to mix things like dandelion juices and chopped tomato leaves (which, oddly, actually did something if he could find something to set on fire) was his key to the future. The knowledge of Dark Arts was already taken care of.

Severus turned his attention from the toys, shaking the cobwebs free of his head. He was four now, and Tobias was likely not to let him play with the toys anymore, because "only girls play; men work". Newsflash for Mr. Snape; Severus was still very much a child, in appearance anyways. Were he properly clothed and cleaned, people would still be pinching his cheeks on the street, which was something classified only for children and people with very odd grandmothers.

He sat down on the small toddler bed, touching the rough cotton sheets with small, callused fingers. Crossing his legs in the "criss cross applesauce" manner he had learned in Kindergarten, and would again when he started school in two years, he started focusing inward, on his mind and being. Children weren't supposed to experience their first major magical growth spurt until they turned seven years old, the next at eleven, then thirteen, when they came of age at seventeen, and they would reach their peak at forty-nine (being seven seven times). But Harry had been very different; why should Severus be anything less?

The magical mind is a strange thing. A wizard's mind is not organized in a way someone could really imagine. A muggle, when think of clearing their mind, might imagine a library, and having all the books on shelves or perhaps a house with various rooms. Severus knew of many ways that muggles thought because he had once thought himself a muggle, and he knew that no muggle could truly grasp the intricacies of the mind. When Severus closed his eyes, he saw a lot of darkness, but there was always that red light shining through. Then, when he ignored the red light, he could see a lot of other colors; green worms of color, blue spots, small, white specks falling like snow, but infinitely slower. Even when he cleared his vision of these lights, there were always more.

That was what he had based his occlumancy walls on: light. While the art was praised as being hard to master at best, and a mark of a true master of one's magic, Severus was only four and had impenetrable occlumancy skills. His philosophy was that there was always some small amount of light if one knew where to look. True, he had no clue where to look, and he'd rarely caught so much as a glimpse, but he still knew it to be true. If there was no light, then there was no darkness, and therefore nothing existed to begin with. So anyone penetrating his mind would see light, and if they took away that light there would still be more, because as pessimistic and disillusioned as he was, Severus was an optimist in a round-about fashion. It's what had gotten him into Gryffindor as Harry Potter. He'd always hoped he could save the world from Voldemort after all, and by keeping him in Britain, he had, even if the trigger-happy Russians and Americans and screwed it up.

Every day, since Eileen and Tobias had decided he was old enough to take care of himself (he was four! What was wrong with these people?) Severus had sat in his room after all of his chores were done and worked on occlumancy until he had sorted through everything to put them into layers of light. This in and of its self had been a strain on his magical core, as he was only just at the age where some children started having accidental magic, but after occlumancy he would move onto more strenuous tasks. The beginnings of wandless magical training. It was difficult, and it made him want to pass out sometimes, but he was learning. He wouldn't be helpless to protect his new mother from the barbarian she had married as he had been himself against his Uncle. Severus Snape grew to be a bitter man, but since Harry had been before the change, it would be no problem to grow adjusted to the role even as he grew up.

It never occurred to him to wonder why he couldn't imagine changing who Severus Snape would be.

"Severus!" Eileen's voice rang through the house, a bit higher than it had been a few years ago, a bit more old and crackly despite the fact that she was only just thirty years old. The boy in question stood from his toddler bed and exited the room, making sure to lower the lion as he did. It wouldn't do for anyone to see the lion floating in his room. "Oh, Severus, I have good news for you. I got a job as a maid for a nice family on the other side of town. We'll have the water back on before Tobias knows what's happened at all." She reached down and scooped the small boy up, kissing him on the cheek. "Let's get you cleaned up, dear; I think I can actually make the water hot this time."

Unfortunately for them both, they didn't hear the car pulling into the driveway or the door opening up front, because Eileen was too concerned with "her little man having some fun" in the tub. They didn't hear as Tobias entered the house, heavy work boots clunking on the floor. Neither heard him as he stalked into the kitchen, boots echoing on the fake tiling, to pick up a wash rag and wipe away the dirt that had accumulated over the day from his brow. What they did hear, however, was a very angry Tobias Snape blowing up when he turned the faucet to find that the water was not running.

Eileen had immediately stopped washing Severus' hair (she seemed to think him incapable) and rushed over the plastic flooring, the same fake tiles as in the kitchen, to answer her husband, despite knowing what it meant for her physical health. Severus rinsed his hair quickly and was half dry before his mother had even gotten into the main room of the house. There was shouting – there had always been shouting – while Severus pulled on the clean jeans and sweater that had been laid out for him. He slipped his shoes back over bare feet, knowing better than to try to find socks. This was his chance, he was sure of it. He'd rather not do it while naked though.

Judging my the shouts, nothing really bad was happening yet. The words "freak," "heathen," and "witch" were being thrown around a lot. Harry would have run in there, wand blazing, and fought off the mad man who dared try to make himself Severus' role model. The problem was that Severus, unlike Harry, did not have a wand or any sort of control over his magic beyond inciting certain types of emotion-based wandless magic.

"You promised that you would stop all that magic shit years ago!" Tobias raged, stalking closer to his wife as she backed away. "I should have known, you heathen!" It seemed that whenever Tobias was home only shouts and religious doctrine had filled the air. Severus almost preferred the Dursleys to him, because at least they used their one ideals rather than that of the church – a family of rather lax Anglicans was a normal occurrence, because the very devout families were viewed as mad and the not-at-all devout were not well liked in Little Whinging – and they had the decency not to shout when others could hear. Tobias Snape was on the verge of revealing magic to the muggles, or else making the neighbors believe that Eileen was a practitioner of Wicca or some sort of Pagan religion. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! Give me one good reason you demon, you harpy, and I'll –"

This was his moment. With Eileen standing backed up to the false-wood paneled walls and Tobias slowly closing in, this was Severus' chance. He left his cover from the hallway and darted into the room, overlarge shoes slapping at his feet with every step. His small body stood between the imposing form of his false father and the meek one of his new mother. How dare he do this! Severus was ready to fight, no matter what it took, even magic. He didn't ever come up to Tobias' impressive beer belly, but there was no backing down. Hitting a man was one thing, doing the same to a woman was another. Even if Severus had the body of a child, he was a man at heart and wouldn't stand to watch a woman be abused.

"Out of my way brat!" A meaty fist lashed out and cuffed Severus lightly, knocking him over. It was light for the man who was doing the hitting, but to a four year old child it felt like he'd been bowled over by a semi truck. With Severus' body screaming "danger!" to his brain, even as he consciously ignored it, his magic didn't.

The unearthly force that had been ineptly named with something so small and unimpressive sounding as "magic" lashed out in retaliation towards the being who dared damage its wielder. It was a power to be reckoned with, and Severus desperately wished to control it, to reign it in. But he knew that wasn't about to happen, either. No, instead the strange waver in the air, like steam rising off of hot tar, reached forward and knocked back the muscled man that was known as Tobias Snape. It was no love tap.

Tobias Snape was not a small man, nor did he much resemble what Severus remembered he would look like when he was older. No, this pathetic excuse for a man was over six feet tall, taller than the impressive figure of Professor Snape, his hair was dark brown and cut in a military issue buzz cut. Sharp blue-gray eyes had a certain focus to them, even when drunk, and his jaw was strong, covered in gritty stubble. Being a construction worker had given him strong limbs; he was fast, no slouch in a real fight, and had lost any chance at having fashion sense as he wore a lumber-jack style flannel shirt, sans sleeves, and plain jeans. And this was the strong muggle man that Severus' magic, frightened that its charge should be harmed, struck down with ease.

With Tobias out of the picture (though Severus was highly tempted to simply refer to him as "Snape"), the man in children's clothing (which sounded much more awkward than it was) shoved himself off the ground, nursing a bruised jaw. Eileen was still staring at the man on the ground, knocked out by her adopted son's magic, hardly noticing as the boy led her to the ratty old couch. What had just happened? She had been so sure that the abandoned child she'd found in a London park would be a muggle, a little boy that would fulfill her wishes of having a son (it wasn't her fault she'd married an impotent muggle!) and her husband's to have that child be "normal."

Severus, however, was not the least bit troubled by all of this. He sat his mother down on the couch and made tea, wishing he didn't have to move around his little step-stool to do so. Exhaustion was threatening to take over as he had already done too much magic for his developing body before Eileen came home, let alone the little lashing he gave Tobias. But he had a job to do; his nap could wait.

"Oh, Russy," Eileen moaned when the clunky mug bearing a harried-looking cartoon penguin holding a coffee mug and yelling "stress?! What stress?!" was stuffed into her hands. Her hands were trembling as she held the mug, clutching it like a life-line. "My little boy... you're so young. You shouldn't be... you can't..." She burst into tears, and all Severus could do was pull himself onto the couch beside her and cuddle up like the small child he was supposed to be. "My baby is a wizard..." she whispered finally, tucking an arm around the child.

Little did he know as he drifted into dream land, Severus had just made his life as a Snape harder. Much harder.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

Severus was now six years old, cowering in his room in a new house. Liverpool was generally a nice area, and Tobias Snape's skill in carpentry had been overtly requested by his contracting company for the making of a mansion on the outskirts of town that would take six months. Naturally, he had taken his wife and adopted son (who hadn't actually be told that he was found in a park yet, and his parents assumed he'd forgotten the yelling match after his "first" burst of accidental magic) and moved into a nice little townhouse on the outskirts of town as soon as he had received word. It was four months into that period of time, and the Snape patriarch was not at all happy.

That day, Severus had been exploring the area and been caught by a truant officer when he wandered outside of his neighborhood. When he had tried to explain that he didn't attend school, claiming that he was home schooled, the officer hadn't believed him; apparently, no child wearing secondhand clothes that were too large could possibly be home schooled. In truth, Eileen had "taught" him to read when he was five. Whenever she was off doing her waitress job at a local restaurant, he was left home with various secondhand and library books on mathematics, history, and other basic subjects to read on. So, technically, he was taught at home. But he couldn't tell the officer that he was being left home alone for hours at a time unless he wanted his mother and Tobias placed on trial for neglect. While Severus wouldn't mind the latter, Eileen had done too much for him to betray her like that.

So, Severus had claimed that he'd given his mother the slip when they were at the restaurant that she worked at. Problem: she worked on the other side of town and the restaurant manager wouldn't even know what Severus looked like. But it was too late, as the truant officer had put him in the back of her car and driven him to where he said he had been, only to find that Eileen had gone home already. Problem: if Severus had been with her, why had she just left and not searched for him when he vanished?

The truant officer had then driven back to Severus' neighborhood, looking thoroughly miffed, and banged her hand on the dark mahogany door that led to the Snape house. With Severus cowering behind her in his too-large flannel shirt and mesh sport shorts on a chilly November day, Tobias Snape had opened the door. Of course, he had been all smiles and apologies, but the rage was well hidden.

"Thank you for finding him, Officer! My wife has been looking for him for hours – poor kid gets lost a lot I'm afraid – and I've been holding down the fort in case he managed to wander home or someone found him and called," Tobias had explained in his best "I've done nothing wrong" voice, which was surprisingly well done.

Naturally, the Officer (Ms. Kunkle) had decided to impress the importance of a good education, because obviously no child attending a proper school would have wandered off, or else they would think to bring along a map if they did. "Standardized education is the foundation of our society!" She had said, spilling her doctrine. "Why, it's been proven that children who don't go to school can't get any proper jobs and are very awkward when dealing with other people." Severus could see the imaginary wheels in his "father's" mind turning, could tell his thought patterns even without his burgeoning skills with legilimancy (which, while weak, were enough to tell truth from lies and determine internal monologue).

"Yes, I do see where you're coming from," Tobias had acquiesced. "Severus is a bright boy, we thought perhaps being pressed to learn at another pace wouldn't be good for him until he was old enough to manage his time... but..." With Ms. Kunkle satisfied that Severus' parents would be at the very least considering that he attend school, she left.

Even Severus was impressed with his father's acting skill, because as soon as the sound of the stylish 1964 Volkswagon retreating up the gravel driveway had faded, the man had turned into a flying rage and grabbed the "child" by the front of his shirt. Just as the front door was opened to admit Eileen (who took the bus to and from work), Severus was thrown into his room, head smacking against the nearest corner of his box spring mattress.

That brings everything to the present, as Tobias turned around to leave Severus crawling into a corner to prevent any kicks to his back. The older man marched into the hall and stormed down the stairs that led directly to the front door. There was shouting, always shouting, fighting, and screaming. What Tobias didn't know was that Eileen had warded the house to prevent any neighbors from hearing anything beyond a standard fight between a husband and wife.

Severus got up from the floor, approaching the stairs. He was dizzy, very dizzy, but he clutched the railing for dear life and staggered down the stairs to stop them. Anything to stop the pounding in his head!

The small boy managed to stand without wavering too badly when he was on level ground and kept his eyes straight as he looked for the source of the noise. His mother was standing on one end of their new, secondhand couch that they had purchased after the latest move. With a small mental giggle, he thought that the dark green color would go perfectly in the Slytherin dungeons, and the pale gray carpet made everything distinctly fitting in with the house of his own future and mother's past. Then he noticed a splash of red across his mother's cream blouse. It wasn't Tobias Snape's blood, that much was obvious.

It was odd, because while Severus was certain he had a mild concussion, everything seemed strangely clear. He saw the bloody lump that was his mother's nose, obviously broken, and the crimson flow that extended from it to her chin where it oozed down her neck and onto her blouse. When he stepped forward, it was no longer in a swaying stagger, but the start of a swift sprint. However, he didn't really notice. Once again, he found himself between his parents, ready to protect Eileen as Tobias crept forward.

"What do you want whelp?" Tobias growled. Severus just did his level best to stare him down with his most practiced Snape-glare (which was pretty good considering his age). Not that it stopped Tobias or anything; he simply drew his belt from his pants, ready to dish out some punishment to the seemingly impetuous child before him. Not for the first time in his new life, Severus cursed his Gryffindor stupidity.

"You will not touch him," the voice was low and powerful. A deadly tone came from beside Severus, and he looked to find his mother, Eileen, standing with her wand arm extended. A blast of red light escaped it as she glared at the man she had married, professed to love 'til death did they part.

Not ten minutes later there was a whip crack outside, which was just long enough for Eileen to fix her nose and explain properly about the magical world. (She had always said magic was real, buying him the potions set as proof when he was small, and in the past two years claimed Severus a wizard, but until now, Severus had not been told of the world he knew he was to join.) A weedy man in a tweed suit admitted himself to the house just as Eileen was finishing her explanation about Azkaban and Dementors, but he was ignored until he cleared his voice.

"Ma'am, I'm here on the behalf of the Department for the Misuse of Magic. We received an alert that there was a stunner fired at a muggle, is that accurate?" He asked, not giving a care that, perhaps, the child in the room was a muggle. Eileen nodded without any hesitation. "May I assume that you are Eileen Snape nee Prince?" Again, a nod. "And you hexed your husband? On what grounds?"

"Tobias Snape is a very devoutly religious man, Mr...?" Eileen didn't get a reply regarding the inquiry for his name. "He found out that our son, Severus, is a wizard, and reacted in a manner that was shameful and violent. I thought to neutralize him long enough to explain what was happening to dear Severus and get the boy away before my husband awoke." The fact that her nose was a still coated with sticky, drying blood and her blouse drenched in her own, at least, made for good evidence that the attack had been deserved.

"I see," nodded the Ministry representative. "Regardless, you will be required to attend a Ministerial Hearing on November the thirty-second –" he paused and blinked, looking down at the parchment in his hand before shaking his head in exasperation. "I mean, the twenty-third and you are to bring your husband. Until then, your wand will be held by the Ministry. If you do not attend, you will be placed in Azkaban for one year, without bail. Have a good day, Mrs. Snape."

There was a trial three days later, and Eileen lost. She spent the next two months, until the end of Tobias' contract in Liverpool, in the Dementors' lair, and Severus was left to the wrath of his "father."

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

Life in the past two and a half years had not been good for the Snape family. Eileen had spent two months in prison, Severus had been picked up by truant officers twice more in various towns they lived in before his mother agreed to place him in muggle school, and Tobias had not been able to hold down a proper job. Everyday Severus was forced to endure going to school with a nearly empty lunchbox and in secondhand cloths; once there, he was forced to deal with schoolyard bullies who could beat him to a pulp. Sure, he was better fed than Harry had been, but the "child" was naturally small. Complete bully bait.

Perhaps it was a lucky thing that his parents had decided to move next to a suburb of Manchester. There was a new housing development going up, and Tobias had been hired to work on it. They were moving to a street called "Spinner's End," near a rather brownish river, in the suburb that held both a sort of slummish area (Spinner's End) and a more high class neighborhood around the nearest park. For some reason, it seemed familiar. He assumed that, at some point, he might have slept in the wreckage of one of the houses here; it made sense as he'd spent so long on the run and just living in the no-man's land of Great Britain. He also theorized that, perhaps living in Manchester could help build his persona as a surly, mean person. Surliness and rudeness were supposedly thought of as admirable and honest around the area. Or so he'd heard.

Nine year old Severus Snape had just finished putting his furniture away in the oddly spacious (and cheap) house that Tobias was renting-to-own. He had been upgraded to a normal-sized twin bed from the little plastic-covered toddler bed recently, and he hid his beginners' potions kit underneath it. His magic had stopped responding to manufactured emotions by then, and all his toys (especially the lion) were long gone anyway. Nine was far too old for toys.

"Severus," Eileen called up the stairs, "your father and I are going to finish organizing the house. Why don't you take a look around the neighborhood?" Ever since her stint in Azkaban, Eileen had been hardly sane, but her medication (brewed by Severus himself) kept her calm and collected normally. She always referred to Tobias as his father, no matter who she spoke to. "Severus' father blah blah blah..." "You're his father and blah blah blah..." Never referring to him as her husband or by his given name. Ironic considering the man was only his blood relation through magic.

Regardless of all this, Severus obeyed without question. He made sure not to dirty the carpet with his shoes and retreated from the house to explore the area. It wasn't really a slum, now that he got a good look at the area, but after driving through the nicer part of town it certainly felt like it. Small lawns filled with dying grass, rundown cars, and peeling paint seemed the mode of decoration. He hopped over several potholes as he extended his walking radius.

Only six blocks away he found the local primary school, which looked nice enough. A concrete building with a fence around a wooden play structure and several murals painted on the side of the school itself gave the look that, while old, the school was well loved. Severus smiled slightly. He would be attending that school; hopefully there were fewer bullies, or more vigilant recess duties, at this school.

As he ventured further, Severus wandered into the nicer neighborhood where children whizzed by on bicycles (no helmets! It still amazed him how few safety precautions there were in the sixties), played with sidewalk chalk or some such thing. He smiled slightly, rather sad that he'd never really gotten to take part in such frivolities; he didn't even know how to ride a bike. The eyes of watchful parents looked down on him, not liking his secondhand look while those in his own physical age grouping were curious, yet put off by his surly look. In mere minutes he reached the local park.

It was rather rundown, more so than the wooden one at the primary school. A rusty swing set was off to one side next to a small patch of dark purple petunias while a jungle gym stood nearby. The rest was patchy grass, a small fenced in area for dogs, and a few picnic benches. Severus wandered through the jungle gym, small as it was, and finally stopped by the swings. By the time Harry had been old enough to wander on his own without suspicion or his guardians being angry, he was too tall for the Little Whinging swing set to do more than brood. Severus decided to make up for that a bit by sitting in the middle swing, which was just the right height for him, and pumping his legs as he had seen children do.

Amazed at how similar it was to flying, Severus let himself go, pretending he was Neil Armstrong who would land on the moon itself in the next month. His legs pumped him forward and back, forward and back. It was like he could touch the sky! Now he could see why muggle children enjoyed swings so much; this was as close to flying a broom as they could get.

"Excuse me!" Severus stopped moving as soon as that one voice called out and had to force himself not to blush even as he came back down the earth, feet dragging on the dirt beneath the swing. "Could you move over one? My big sister and I want to swing together." Severus acquiesced without complaint, keeping his eyes on his toes. He was so stupid! How could he have allowed himself to get distracted like that. "Thank you! Come on Tuney!"

Severus sighed slightly, knowing he couldn't let himself do that again. It removed his mind from his goal. He was 45, mentally, not nine as he appeared! A finger tapped his shoulder as he started to walk away, and he turned about. The sight that met him was far from what he had ever expected.

Brilliant green eyes that he had seen only on two people in his life and vivid red hair, a pale face with a cute smattering of freckles... He knew that face. It was his mother... no, Eileen was his mother. This was his mum. Lily Evans.

"You can swing with us if you like," her voice had a lilting tone to it. "We don't have cooties, I promise!"

Severus ran away before he even had time to consider the offer.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

A/n: I think this turned out well... but yeah, that's the first part of Walking on a Broken Past! Not what you expected, I'm sure... depending on what you expected, that may or may not be such a good thing though. Part two is currently under a small reconstruction and will be posted when I've fixed it.

This idea just sort of... popped into my head, and I rather liked it. I dunno how anyone else will, but it's... interesting. I've never come across such a story, but if another exists, please point me in its direction! I already know what I'm doing for this story (not chapter by chapter, but I do know what I intend to do, no worries), so I think it would be interesting to see if someone else had a different interpretation on what could happen if this were true.

As you no doubt figured, the Lily/Snape thing is where the Oedipal stuff comes in... but Sev isn't interested. Just want to make that clear. I have reasoning behind a lot of decisions in his life, so... yeah. Below you can find a timeline.

Timeline:

Harry leaves to hunt horcruxes (July 1997)
Discovery of Voldemort's inability to cross open water without Harry's say-so (March 2006)
Great muggle/mudblood purge and start of nuclear war (June 6, 2006) (Severus Snape died in the Purge)
Most wizards leave Britain (between June and September of 2006)
Harry goes back in time (July 31, 2017) (in canon, this is 1 month before the epilogue)
Severus adopted by Snapes (January 9, 1960)
Severus hurts Tobias Snape with magic (March 12, 1964)
Eileen attacks Tobias (November 12, 1966)
Severus meets Lily (July 7, 1969) (Lunar landing was July 20, 1969, but he already knew about all that anyway...)