The charred remains of a slip of parchment lay half concealed under a pile of ashes. The writer was long gone; having fled in a desperate attempt to stay one step ahead of his enemies, but the parchment remained as a window into the mind of a traitor.
Flashback
Severus Snape hunkered down over his last scrap of parchment. His quill flew across the yellowed page as his brain worked furiously to write in coherent sentences. The full moon was his only source of light out in the forbidden forest, but it was bright enough to make each new word glimmer eerily on the page.
He wrote in a rage, pouring onto the piece of paper his pain and misery. Painful memories and long forgotten secrets glistened in wet ink as Snape wrote faster and faster, unleashing his agony and rage at the cruelness of the world. He cursed fate for allotting him this wretched existence, forcing him to hide in the shadows and betray those he considered friends.
Finally, it was done.
Alone in the darkened forest Snape built a small magical fire and cast the parchment into it. He watched it burn in the emerald flames and felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. All of the pain he had suffered, the merciless taunting, and the betrayals, everything that kept him awake at night, burned to ashes before his eyes. Gone, it was all gone. All but the last line, but Snape fled before he realized that the fire had gone out, and the most dreadful line had survived his attempt to destroy the pain…
All my life, always I've felt alone.