Characters not mine (althoughI took the liberty of deciding the name, age, and personality of some people only mentioned in the first five books so far.). Story based on Severus Snape's childhood. Chapter 1 is up, review if you'd like me to add more. Enjoy.
How does one know for sure if life itsself isn't only a dream that traps the desperate and delivers the pained? How does one explain with certainty the reality, the facts of the events that took place only a few moments before being left to one's mangled thoughts? I'd had my eyes shut since the beginning, afraid I might want to keep from the truth if I'd allowed myself to see.
I'd have liked to tell you I, along with both my parents and my cousin were enjoying a perfectly normal meal, having a perfectly normal conversation on a perfectly normal day. The truth was rather different, however. The truth was I wanted them dead. Lying on the floor motionless, color drained from their faces, a most satisfying horrified expression that sent chills crawling down peoples spines. But not mine : I'm not like the others. I'd remain untouched by this sight, I'd remain strong.
A quite morbid boy sat cross-legged on the bare floor, imagining the scene, his back to the wall, ink bottle to his left, and a quill and a diary in his lap. He snickered as his eyes blinked open to keep writing. He'd just remembered something.
Like that time where a rat was found beheaded below the cupboard where the flour is stored in the kitchen. I don't know why I was blamed for it; I'd explained to the parents that rats were vicious creatures. Cannibals. I think I might've over-done it on the laughing. You would've laughed to, if you'd seen the look on their faces; eyes round, ripples on their foreheads, bottom jaw practically scraping the floor… They were dead for an instant. Well, you know what they say: "Time flies when you're having too much fun."…Something like that.
He scanned the page top to bottom and nodded in satisfaction. Flawless print. Not that he hadn't had time to practice. He rarely left his room, a place he'd taken to reffering to as 'The Hollow'. It was a place he considered almost holy, an abode where emotions and secrets were whispered, and the sound waves flooded the creases in the walls, in the aging layers of paint, and remained there forever.
If walls could talk, they'd tell a tale of a deepest suffering, one that devours from the inside out, leaving nothing but a rotting carcass that envelops a harsh reality : life is shit. Literally. It reeks, and it looks bad. I suppose it's the only smell that covers the one of the decomposing body that lays there, day after day, spilling out his anger in one silly little book.
I might've had a clue to what was going to happen, had I listened to what the parents were trying to explain. They said I wouldn't cooperate. Heck, I never did. What on Earth did they think could make me change my mind this time?
"We have to visit some relatives. They have a boy your age you might actually get along with." Heck, I never got along with anyone. What on Earth were they thinking?
"I'm not going." Wrong answer. Come to think of it, stupidest answer I'd ever given. Except maybe for that time at school when I told the teacher to open her drawer instead of wasting time trying to get an answer to "Where did you put the snake?" I think the parents broke my arm afterward, but I can't really remember. I must say I don't hold a grudge against them for that, though. I wish they'd killed me. At least it would've kept me from visiting the Blacks.
The house, as I recall, was situated between two run-down buildings, itsself looking like quite a mess. How welcoming. Broken glass littered the front steps and a blanket was stuffed in the hole of the muddy window above. There was hardly paint left on the wooden planks that held these ruins in one piece, but it being a wizard home, I doubted the interior looked as bad. Don't judge a book by its cover.
It took a good few seconds for the Blacks to unlock their door. The paranoid father finally opened up leaving only an inch between the frame and the actual door, enough for some odd metal wand to fit through. A shotgun. Great, we'd come all this way only to be blown to smithereens. When he finally realised we weren't spies or agents of some sort, he reluctantly let us inside, still unconvinced. "Don't worry, our son over-reacts a bit sometimes, we're used to it." he explained when he saw the parents and the cousin staring down at the clear shards scattered about in front of the door. I sensed a connection was created between them just then. Great, they also had a rebel for a son. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. Wrong answer again.
Sirius Black stood his face a few inches from my own. He was my age, my height. For a few minutes, we eyed each other from head to toe. He had dark hair too bright to be black but too dark to be brown just reaching the top of his armpits while as mine were jet-black but just skimming my shoulders. Although his eyes had an almost impenetrable icy blue color to them, I saw the exhaustion seeping out of them where tears of frustration, of helplessness had so often flowed. No one else took the time to notice it, and even if they did, they wouldn't have seen it. Sometimes, to see some things, you have to have lived through the same.
The quill hesitantly slowed down before halting. The smell of freshly baked meat was in the air. He'd have to go eat soon. As if on cue, the door was slammed open by a growing female. Throwing an accusing glance around the room, she snorted, as if there wasn't a more pitiful place in the world and opened her mouth, announcing supper was ready. "Not hungry." The boy answered, hiding the book and quill under his mite infested bed with one swift movement.
"Sevvy, you can't go on like this." "Don't call me Sevvy, Morgan." "I can call you whatever the fuck I like, Sev-kins." She replied with a smirk. "Besides, there's not much else you can do. Just stop eating, starve to death, and the world will be a much happier place to live in." "Get out!" Severus sprung up, his clenched fists resting on each side of his thin, pale body. His fingernails had dug into the pams of his hands, and blood was slowly dripping down to the floor. Morgan sighed and rolled her eyes exaggeratingly. " Is there nothing I can do to gain your affection?" "Go away!" The boy repeated. "Fine, fine. Do whatever you want." She slammed the door shut and stumbled back downstairs, too tired to keep the argument going.
Morgan was an adopted cousin who'd lost her parents to a Death-Eater's curse. They were never important enough to live on, although Morgan liked to embellish the story a little…too much. She'd happily explain to anyone that her mother and father were on a special Death-Eater mission and were caught off guard after a heart-skipping duel with an entire horde of what everyone had acceptingly referred to as 'the Good Guys'. Add a few details and varying expressions, and there you have it.
Since moving in with the Snape family, Morgan had been treated as far more important than their own son. They said and affection because she'd lived a real-life trauma she was more sensible, therefore she needed more love. And she had it. And she had more than that.
Severus's once-steady hand shook a bit, due to a sudden excess of stress, anger and pain alltogether. He hated his so-called family, his cousin, this house he lived in. He'd hate the entire remaining world as well if it wasn't for this speck of hope that anything was better than where he was now, than what he had become himself.
One day he'd run as far as possible and never look back. One day, he'd feel like a normal person. He dreampt of love, of happiness, without ever knowing for sure if he'd ever find it. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks, and he ignored them, merely blinking in order to see clearly.
Severus reached under the furniture and flipped open the diary again.
I took an immediate dislike to the boy. He reminded me too much of… well… me.
Nomatter how similar we looked, he said something I'd never consider in a million years. "I guess… since you're here… maybe we could… do stuff…" He mumbled, suddenly dropping his gaze to the floor. He looked back up, an idea in mind. "You like wizard chess?" he asked. If I was him, I'd have turned my back and gone my own way: I'm not the most friendly of people, but since this was him… I shrugged, and followed him up the creaking stairs to his room, to his own little 'Hollow'. I noticed the broken window, the one I could see from outside, and I grinned. Just like that, for no reason.
End of chapter 1.