Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except the plot.

A/N: Just a short little one-shot that I wrote a while ago, sometime last summer and well before Sherlock Snape, but I just never posted it. It's not that bad, I don't think, kind of bitter sweet. It reflects on the TRUE Severus Snape, and what he's really like. It starts out telling how he is, and how he acts, but then it goes into WHY he's like that and so on.

Read & Review, but NO FLAMES! Thanks.

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The Different Sides of Severus Snape

Foreboding- A smudge amongst the shadows of hate.
Lank- In his hair and his self.
Cruel- Lashing out at the unexpected.
Spiteful- Constantly sarcastic.
Bitter- A seeming hate to the world.
Greasy- The slick silkiness of his dreaded voice.
Dangerous- Untoward to all that is known, untrustworthy.
Dark- A looming figure unseen in the dead of night, waiting to pounce it's prey.

Caught up in the trials of War, he never gave too much time of day to others then whom he was focused on. Others like the two oldest rivals he knew, locked in battle 'til they die. Two beings corresponding in Light and Dark. Unable to outwit each other.

Albus Dumbledore and Tom Marvolo Riddle; Voldemort and the Watcher of the Light.

The Flight of Death.

He sighed and collapsed on the worn down arm chair resting on the threadbare rug in his bleak and dreary living room. His entire quarters, as everyone knew, were located in the dungeons. He had chosen the Dungeons not for the solitude but for the way it reflected his soul…his being. Bleak, cold, and empty. What ever is spoken is unheard, simply shouted back.

Just like his living space. He never bothered trying to cheer it up. He couldn't stand bright colours; always mocking him with happiness. That's why he stuck to harsh tones; charcoal grey and black. It represented him. Alone, dead but alive.

Decadence and Decay.

Since childhood he had built the stones around himself until he was guarded by a solid impenetrable wall. The day his mother died, leaving him alone with his hateful father in the large Snape Manor, was the day he added the first stone. His father and been a result of the whole left side, in a sense. So many times he had beat him, looked down upon him. Endless tirades of physical and emotional abuse was all he could remember of Christian Snape.

Christian. He snorted. What an inappropriate name for a sick sadistic bastard. He, unfortunately, was a bare-bone reminder of his vengeful parentage. The long nose, the black hair, pale skin, cold demeanor; all his father's. But also a reminder of it was his bitterness, his resentfulness, and his utter dislike of anything around him that was….enjoyable.

He felt a sort of temperament towards those he saw having fun. He guessed that was why he was always stopping anything gleeful or blissful. He couldn't bear it. It was, in his selfish sense, unfair, that anyone could have a good life. He had always longed for one, but instead was presented with the life he bore upon his slouching shoulders as a burden.

A life of secrecy, hatefulness, bitter resent, lies, deceit, pain and torture. And loneliness.

Oh he was lonely. He was thirty-eight and truth be told was unawares of the so called 'pleasure' of a woman's flesh. Of just a woman in general. Even the whores wouldn't have him. Then again, he couldn't really say he wanted the whores….but desperate times call for desperate measures.

He wore a foreboding façade that practically screamed 'Piss Off!'. His greasy hair (he knew of a simple charm that would cause the oiliness of his cursed hair to dwindle, but he couldn't bring himself to do it), dark clothes, tall and towering structure, and his plain attitude made him 'untouchable' as it were.

But he never wanted this. Dear sweet Merlin no. He wore the outer mask as a means of disguising his true self. His true, haunted, lonely self.

Poor, poor Severus Snape was merely misunderstood…in his own way. He was foreboding so people would never guess. Cruel so they'd leave him alone and never question. Spiteful and bitter because there really was no other way to treat the world around you when it had shown you nothing but grief. Showed a dangerous attitude as if it would help to chase away his sorrows. And dark to reflect the bleak emptiness inside.

Why him? Why was it he that was chosen to be looked down upon, constantly tormented by those he never wanted to be? Deprived of sweetness. Deprived of love.

Deprived of Life.

Tortured- By those who were allies, but all along enemies.
Lonely- Cast down from sociability and alone.
Empty- A broken man, soul nothing left but a hole to be filled.
Bleak- Nothing to look forward to.
Starved- Ripped from happiness and wants.
Sorrowful- Plunged into the dark by all his misery.
Longing- Wishing for things he knows he cannot have.
Misunderstood- As simple as that.

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A/N: Thanks for Reading, and Please Review! NO FLAMES! Thanks!