My first impression of my mother was one of distance. She was a beautiful creature, proud and cold, with aristocratic features that remained permanently frozen in a mask of indifference. Her silky black hair was always coiled in a thick plate at the nape of her neck. As a child, I was often wary that it might at once spring to life and strike at me with the fangs I imagined hid just out of view. When I tried with childish tears to attract her attention, she cloaked herself with impenetrable silence. I heard her voice so infrequently that when I try to recall it, I am always met with a deaf ringing in my ears. If she ever touched me, I cannot remember the occasion.

My father's touch, however is seared upon my mind. Sharp, quick, and brutal, his hand meted out punishment for all sorts of real and imagined transgressions. When I stained the living room wall with a child's artistic wanderings, I remember my father's hands prying open my mouth and forcing the broken crayon down my throat. The waxy residue stained my milk teeth crimson, and left a queasy taste at the back of my tongue. When my first attempts at potions failed miserably, he broke all ten of my fingers, then healed them with a flick of his wand. And then, he broke all ten again. My joints still ache fiercely when cruelest winter slips in under doorjamb and loose foundation stone. I have potions to dull the physical pain; I dismiss them as the crutch of a weak constitution. Pain has made me who I am. Without it, I might forget myself.

Though my childhood vacillated between the apathetic disinterest of my mother, and the overbearing discipline of my father, I was not entirely without love. Her name was Valeria, and she was the true mother of my youth. She was my nanny, hired on to alleviate my birth mother from the need to interact with the child of her womb. A beautiful woman, young and soft, with auburn hair that I loved to curl my fingers about and hold. Her hands were smooth, and her touch as gentle as a summer breeze. She never once raised a hand to me, even when in my childish clumsiness I brushed against her painful bruises. She merely winced and hugged me all the harder. She loved me as her own child. She loved me as the child she had been denied. She loved me, because she had loved my father.

The house of Snape has a long and proud past, and one of the purest bloodlines to ever grace the wizarding world. Magic runs strong in our veins, but so do less unsavory qualities. There is a cruelty there that can rule a man if he gives it half a chance. My father did, and thus lost himself. He lost the chance for happiness. He lost the chance for love. In the end, he lost even more. But it all started with a woman, and that woman was Valeria. They met in their youth, He a young lordling on a vast and rambling country estate, and she a poor beauty from the village below. The first time he saw her, she was sitting in a field, braiding daises into a crown with a simple spell. He rode up to her on a black charger and flashed her a dashing smile. Perhaps it was love at first site. Perhaps it was only two foolish young people who let their emotions get in the way of better judgment. But whatever transpired between them, it was ill-fated. You see, my father was the only son of a great pure-blood house. And she was a mudblood.

He had talked of marriage, but his parents refused him. A fleeting fancy was no excuse to sully the liquid gold that flowed in his veins. No child of the house of Snape would be such a monstrosity. Valeria, it seemed was not worthy. I do not know the details of what fell out between them. Valeria would never tell me of his rejection, and the years she spent alone in mourning. My grandparents, disheartened by their wayward son, endeavored to find him a suitable match. My mother, with her uncanny Slytherin cunning, calculated the wealth and prestige that accompanied my father's hand in marriage. She would produce an heir of untainted blood, and she would live like a queen. There was no love lost between my parents, but at the very least, they understood themselves. They bred true, to produce me. Pure as my conception might be, mine was an ill-gotten birth. There is something missing in a child gotten without any thought to love. If any part of me is still capable of love, I owe my thanks to Valeria, and her emergence in my life.

When I was still a babe, she came to live with us. My mother preferred to spend her time lost in spell work and absinthe, and requested a caretaker to keep me out of her hair. Why my father chose to bring Valeria I cannot fathom. He must have known it would only end badly. He must have known that he could not control his anger and frustration. I can only assume that he knew - and did not care. It is possible, that he had never truly given her up, but continued to see her secretly in the village below our manor. If my mother knew she was his mistress, I don't believe the notion troubled her. But my father brought her into our house and kept her. He loved her in the most shameful and cowardly ways imaginable. Beneath the noses of his family and friends. And when he realized the cruelty and weakness of his actions, he punished her for being a filthy little mudblood. And so it continued. A kiss one moment, a slap the next. After all, she had made him love her when she was not worthy of him. His unhappiness was all her fault. If she had been of pureblood, they might have been happy. The pathetic lies he fed himself were poison in the wound. He festered like a mad dog.

We shared our little pains, Valeria and I. I would lie beside her after my father had savaged her, and put my small hands on her cheek. She would smile through her tears and sing me lullabies. She was not a skilled witch, but she would practice little healing charms to knit the cuts and bruises my father visited upon me. I endeavored to mix her elixirs to heal and comfort, but when her marks faded quickly, my father was only more vicious with her. I have often thought on why she stayed with the family as long as she did, that first time. Perhaps, because she knew she could never just "leave". My father would hunt her down and bring her back, no doubt. It would not be so simple as just giving notice. But deep down in my heart, I know why she had not attempted to escape. She stayed because she loved me, and she couldn't bear to leave me alone in that cold, heartless home. She paid for my safety with all her pain and suffering. I think, truly, that I owe her my life. The day I left for my first year at Hogwarts, she took me to the train station, tucked a handkerchief she had embroidered with my name into my pocket, and kissed me goodbye. The first letter from my father that I received by owl informed me that Valeria had never returned home. I hoped she had found a good place to hide.