Disclaimer: All characters are owned by JKRowling.
Summary: AU - after a brief reign, Voldemort and the Death Eaters are beaten and 16-year-old Severus goes to Azkaban. 28 years later he is released and starts trying to rebuild his life.
Chapter 1
The sun beats down unexpectedly into Severus' slightly upturned face, forcing him to wrinkle his cool, obsidian eyes against its glare. It glints across his greasy hair, sending lightening bolts down the strands clumsily scraped back and tied with an elastic band, which are by now far too long for his liking. His pale skin, almost translucent in the delicate, haggard circles around his eyes, warms quickly. His tongue darts out to moisten his lips, allowing us a brief glance at his straight but yellowing teeth, before his lips are once again pressed together into a thin line.
Slowly, his own clothes (the ones he hasn't been allowed in almost thirty years) begin to fall comfortably into the dips and creases of his lean frame, until finally they start to create their familiar protective casing. His tailored, pinstriped suit fits his long limbs in a way he is unused to after so long wearing boiler suits either too short or too baggy for him. Although he is unaware of it happening, we can see his back beginning to straighten, his shoulders relax, his jaw unclench, and the staunch dignity of his younger years fills his older frame with renewed authority. His slender hands, usually working so deftly, lie dumbly at his sides.
Behind him, the grey stone walls of the prison block loom, seething now he is finally on the other side of the locked door. He looks around the small courtyard warily, jumping when a bird caws, instinctively clenching his hands into fists. Outside the wrought iron gates there is a vibrant, bustling world, so far changed from that polluted, fear-stained life he left behind. He aches to be a part of it, to try again, to do it right this time.
He has no one, nothing. The feeling is intoxicating. He has a blank canvas, onto which he can paint whatever he chooses, the dark, amateur paintings of his early attempts carefully locked away behind experience and age. All he needs is one person, an intrepid collector of unprecedented art, to give him his second chance.