At The Beginning
I started out simply enough. A cave, a girl just into her teens, and I, the product of her and a fellow whom I always thought of as Joe the Canadian. I've always had a good memory; good enough to warrant being born as my first memory. I once came across a book that stated people never remembered being born because it was so traumatic that their mind just snapped, like an elastic band, and started anew.
Being born was not quite traumatic as the that specific book mentioned. It just was not something I would've wanted to repeat. But, through the strange proceedings that brought my memory around to that point, I recall things from when I was a baby. My poor mother, whom I've mentioned, was thirteen when I was born- born on her own birthday, in March.
When I was born, she carved the day, date, and year firmly into a wall of the cave, and threw the calendar she'd been keeping to record and understand her pregnancy out into the slush puddles. She also must have written 'Joseph Severus Snape Riddle' on the wall for our benefit, as I found this on the wall some years later.
Both of us lived and grew up in that cave. The cave was surrounded by what was surely a hunting wood with a brook and meadow rolled up in a neat package. The meadow consisted of much grass and wild horses. When I learned to walk, I also learned to ride bareback, swim, hunt, and fish. Exactly how Mother knew these skills to begin with was always a curiousity with me.
The only way she kept track of the days was the language she'd speak to me. She knew most European languages, having, as I learned later, grown up with them. Although her mother tongue was English, she also knew German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. Every day she'd choose one of the languages to speak to me, in the hopes I would learn them too, I suppose. She passed down just about everything she knew to me, although I never quite understood how she'd manage to cram all those skills into thirteen years.
The life I lived then would have been idyllic to a hunter, and absolute hell for a prince. The way my mother would sometimes attempt to distract me from something and entertain me was disastrous enough. "Look, Sev!" she'd say, "See what I can do!" Then she'd pull out her wand, and blast something to smithereens, or make it twitch with pain, or a Dark curse. I supposed she thought I was at a stage of life where anything gruesome would make me exclaim, "Wow! Gross! How'd you do that?"
I did memorize the curses for future reference, but I never did give her the aforementioned reaction.
So that was my life- while people were caught up in love, drugs and war, I'd be sleeping in the night on dirt or rock, with raw meat in my stomach.
Reading this over, it really does sound boring. Maybe it's just because I was the one living that life. I think I'm probably chronically incorrect, someone like me.
After all, in looks I'm in another galaxy from the clichéed hero. Yes, I'm very tall with a slightly muscular build. Unromantically, I have greasy, long black hair which I've never washed because I don't know how, and am too ashamed to ask help with. I have eyes that resemble the eyes of some beetles I've had to eat- they're such a dark brown. My teeth are slightly pointy and stained yellow. My nose looks like I've transplanted it with a hark's beak. And I look like a gawd-awful vampire because my skin has turned so pale.
I know I could take the effort to remedy several of these things, but why bother? Not looking nice always makes it easier for people to hate you, and many people love to hate me.
Maybe that's a bit pessimistic. I've never had a way with words anyway; never tried. Education is what really erodes innocence.
But being a simple, indigenous heathen was my happy first decade of life; oddly innocent for a man who became so corrupted.
Then I went to Hogwarts- my mother hoped it would be my salvation.
I found it to be my greatest damnation.
I started out simply enough. A cave, a girl just into her teens, and I, the product of her and a fellow whom I always thought of as Joe the Canadian. I've always had a good memory; good enough to warrant being born as my first memory. I once came across a book that stated people never remembered being born because it was so traumatic that their mind just snapped, like an elastic band, and started anew.
Being born was not quite traumatic as the that specific book mentioned. It just was not something I would've wanted to repeat. But, through the strange proceedings that brought my memory around to that point, I recall things from when I was a baby. My poor mother, whom I've mentioned, was thirteen when I was born- born on her own birthday, in March.
When I was born, she carved the day, date, and year firmly into a wall of the cave, and threw the calendar she'd been keeping to record and understand her pregnancy out into the slush puddles. She also must have written 'Joseph Severus Snape Riddle' on the wall for our benefit, as I found this on the wall some years later.
Both of us lived and grew up in that cave. The cave was surrounded by what was surely a hunting wood with a brook and meadow rolled up in a neat package. The meadow consisted of much grass and wild horses. When I learned to walk, I also learned to ride bareback, swim, hunt, and fish. Exactly how Mother knew these skills to begin with was always a curiousity with me.
The only way she kept track of the days was the language she'd speak to me. She knew most European languages, having, as I learned later, grown up with them. Although her mother tongue was English, she also knew German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. Every day she'd choose one of the languages to speak to me, in the hopes I would learn them too, I suppose. She passed down just about everything she knew to me, although I never quite understood how she'd manage to cram all those skills into thirteen years.
The life I lived then would have been idyllic to a hunter, and absolute hell for a prince. The way my mother would sometimes attempt to distract me from something and entertain me was disastrous enough. "Look, Sev!" she'd say, "See what I can do!" Then she'd pull out her wand, and blast something to smithereens, or make it twitch with pain, or a Dark curse. I supposed she thought I was at a stage of life where anything gruesome would make me exclaim, "Wow! Gross! How'd you do that?"
I did memorize the curses for future reference, but I never did give her the aforementioned reaction.
So that was my life- while people were caught up in love, drugs and war, I'd be sleeping in the night on dirt or rock, with raw meat in my stomach.
Reading this over, it really does sound boring. Maybe it's just because I was the one living that life. I think I'm probably chronically incorrect, someone like me.
After all, in looks I'm in another galaxy from the clichéed hero. Yes, I'm very tall with a slightly muscular build. Unromantically, I have greasy, long black hair which I've never washed because I don't know how, and am too ashamed to ask help with. I have eyes that resemble the eyes of some beetles I've had to eat- they're such a dark brown. My teeth are slightly pointy and stained yellow. My nose looks like I've transplanted it with a hark's beak. And I look like a gawd-awful vampire because my skin has turned so pale.
I know I could take the effort to remedy several of these things, but why bother? Not looking nice always makes it easier for people to hate you, and many people love to hate me.
Maybe that's a bit pessimistic. I've never had a way with words anyway; never tried. Education is what really erodes innocence.
But being a simple, indigenous heathen was my happy first decade of life; oddly innocent for a man who became so corrupted.
Then I went to Hogwarts- my mother hoped it would be my salvation.
I found it to be my greatest damnation.