The birds twittered irritatingly in the trees, the sunlight caught the ripples of the lake with agonising beauty and the young wizards ran around on the grass with peals of painful and unpleasant happy laughter. The dewdrops on the grass sparkled with aggravating appeal, to be blasted out of the way with a silent hot air charm from a boy whose own appearance was particularly unappealing in the eyes of most of the exultant teenagers populating the Hogwarts grounds.
He swung the satchel off his shoulder and on to the now dry grass before following it, leaning his back against the gnarled bark of the tree. He glared at all the other students dotted around the grass in their groups, wishing that he had the delights of similar companionship, coal-black eyes searching for a certain face who could draw him out of his miserable reverie. She did not appear. Had Severus' face sported any sort of content expression, it would have vanished, but instead it simply portrayed the same look of complete inanition as it almost always did.
Opening his bag and taking out the exam paper, the raven-haired youth leafed through the questions that he had spent the past hour answering. Defence Against the Dark Arts was Severus' speciality and he didn't want to think he had made any mistakes on the test; he needed as many good results as he could get to impress Lily, who was always top of the class. At the thought of Lily, he glanced up once more, trying to catch a glimpse of her token fiery red hair amongst the mill of students.
There! She was sitting alone by the lake, gazing into the water. Severus resolved to go and speak to her, as he had been meaning to for weeks. It was so difficult to find her at a moment when Potter wasn't dogging her footsteps or she didn't have an entourage of Gryffindor girls who would automatically reject him. He got up, putting the parchment back into his satchel as he began to walk towards her.
"All right, Snivellus?" came a loud, arrogant voice.
Snape recognised it immediately and flung his bag to one side, plunging his hand deep into his robes and withdrawing his wand, which was half-raised by the time Potter had shouted "Expelliarmus!" and it flew back out of his grasp and landed behind him several feet away in the dewy grass. He dove backwards to reach his wand, only to be caught off-guard by a jinx from Potter's trusty sidekick Black. The expression on Severus' face was murderous as he lay on the ground, trying to catch his breath from his fall.
"How'd the exam go Snivelly?" said the voice of James Potter, complete git and Snape-torturer extraordinaire.
Severus, angry at himself for not managing to cast a spell on either of the other boys in return, but still more angry at his aggressors, opened his thin mouth in preparation to give a heavily sarcastic retort when he was interrupted by a snide comment from Black.
"I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment, there'll be great grease marks all over it, they won't be able to read a word."
Severus' lip curled and he struggled to get up, his body still bound by the jinx, which had evidently been stronger than he had expected. Lifting his eyes towards Potter, he gave the offending boy a look so deadly that it must have appeared ridiculous from a weak teenager writhing helplessly on the floor.
"You – wait," he said, between wrenches to try and release himself from the spell, "You – wait."
"Wait for what?" came the reply from Black, "What're you going to do, Snivelly, wipe your nose on us?"
Severus could not ignore this dig at his abilities and a mixture of curses (which were unfortunately of no effect since his wand was too far away to respond) and profanities was promptly issued from his lips. He immediately realised that this outburst had been a mistake, but didn't even have time to grimace in preparation before the next attack from his assailants.
"Wash out your mouth," came the command from Potter, "Scourgify!"
The victim's mouth was filled with soap; he gagged on the cascades of spumous pink bubbles that threatened to completely choke him. Coughing and spluttering until his eyes streamed, he noticed an absence of laughter from the surrounding students and lifted his eyes to see a dazzling redhead looking angrily at Potter and Black. Severus would have smiled at his rescuer, had he not been preoccupied with the soap bubbles threatening to asphyxiate him; all he managed was a frown as he spat out as much of the foam as he could, before espying his wand but a short way away.
A glint in his melanoid eyes, the scorned Slytherin edged his way towards his wand, taking advantage of the diverted attention of the crowd of pupils. Soapsuds being spat out with vigour as he slid along the ground, Severus' mouth twitched up at one side at the retort from Lily that she would rather go out with the giant squid than with James. In the stunned silence, he grabbed his wand from off the floor, just as Black turned and noticed him.
"OI!"
Too late. Severus had made a gash on James' face in a flash of light, the spurt of blood splattering his antagonist's robes and drops hitting the nearest of the other students, who recoiled in disgust. Unfortunately, it didn't have the same effect on the messy-haired Potter, however, and Severus found himself upside-down and suspended in mid-air by his ankle. Hardly an improvement on his previous position, particularly as his robes had fallen around his head, meaning that he could only just see what was going on… and that the gathered crowd (and for that matter everyone else in the grounds) had a perfect view of his greying underwear. A fabulous turn of events for the crowd, who erupted with laughter and cheering, but not for the unfortunate victim.
"Let him down!"
Lily to the rescue once again. Severus took the moment to observe how beautiful she looked when she was angry. Or indeed any time at all. Then his daydreaming turned to white fury at Potter and his pals for humiliating him in such a fashion in front of the fiery goddess that he had worshipped since he was a small boy.
"Certainly," James replied, giving Lily an angelic smile and, twitching his wand, brought Severus to the ground with a painful thump.
Severus nearly cursed again, but held it in, for fear – no, not fear, for the Gryffindors would not make a coward of him, whatever else they were capable of – and promptly got to his feet, only to be catapulted back down with a "Petrificus Totalus!" from Black. He should have known it was too much to ask to be allowed to stand up and face his opponents like a man; they were masters of underhand tricks.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" yelled Lily Evans, the pure choler in her face making her emerald eyes blaze, although Severus (being face down in the grass and stiff as a plank) did not get the pleasure of seeing how antagonised she was at his treatment, nor how stunning she looked, though he could well imagine.
Mentally tuning out as James again turned his hand at trying to impress Lily, Severus went over his options once he was free of the curse. There was no option of running, for that would make him a coward; if he tried to get up, he was sure to be hexed by Black, who was not under Lily's spell (excuse the pun!), so that was out of the question also. His only plan would be to curse Black as soon as he was released, then in the aftermath of this catch Potter off-guard… the curse was lifted with a mutter from Potter.
"There you go. You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus –"
"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!" Severus shouted, forgetting in the heat of the moment who he had just referred to as a Mudblood, and recalling only that he had as good as been called an inept coward.
And then came the worst hit of them all, and it wasn't from either Potter or Black.
"Fine," said Lily, blankly, "I won't bother in future. And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus."
Severus' world fell to pieces.
Thanks for reading; please review because I am unsure of my abilities.
Should I continue writing more of Snape's worst memories? I promise I
will make some of my own up as well as using what J.K.R. has given me,
otherwise I'm sure everyone would get bored.
Much love,
xXsavemysoulXx