First story and flames only boost my review count. R and R for Snape shaped cookies! ;)
Severus Snape was a simple boy. That much, at the very least, was true.
Severus never asked for much in life, probably due to the fact that life had failed to give him anything in the first place. A father who wouldn't come home drunk at four in the morning? Oh the very thought of it! Or maybe a mother who wouldn't smack him when he spoke out of term? The scandal! Merlin, even proper food and clothes would do wonders for him! Was that really so much to ask to be loved and valued? Apparently so.
So Severus went through the motions, not only hoping, but believing that Hogwarts would offer him something his shabby house and drunk father and sour mother would not. He practiced his potions, using his mum's old cauldron and book. He read theory books on things like Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms. He even tried non-verbal magic once, though it didn't really work properly. But what else could he do? The other children didn't really want play with him, though he wasn't really sure why. He bathed when he could, and tried to dress himself to the best of his capabilities, and he even worked on his social skills for a whole week! But they still stuck up their noses and refused to play with him, though he hadn't the faintest idea why not. On this particular day, Severus was gathering flobberworms in his potion's pail (which was really just an old bucket he'd found in the trash) on the pretense he would be brewing a particularly difficult potion, when he saw it.
A girl.
Two girls, in fact.
Playing on the swings.
And one was doing magic.
Severus stopped short and ducked in the bushes, his pail and shovel long since forgotten. He watched the girls swing with hungry eyes, and took them in best he could.
One was rather dull looking and lacked the pizazz the other did, what with her scowl and murky brown eyes and dirty blonde hair that hung limply in her face. But the other one, what a sight she was!
Her eyes were a striking emerald and possessed a distinctive almond shape. Her hair was like liquid fire and fell in waves down her back, and she had a cut bellow her left eye that he heard her swear came from a fist fight in the school yard. Her knees bore flesh tone Band-Aids, evidently scraped from all the running she did, and she had a spring in her step, a sparkle of childish playfulness that Severus had yet to see in his own onyx eyes. And she was like him...
Well, maybe not like like him. But she was different. She could make strange, terrible, wonderful things happen. She was enchanting, alluring, positively magical.
She was special.
Just like him.
And despite how impractical mother had always claimed friends to be, Severus thought that perhaps he could make an exception, just this once.
After all, Severus never really did ask for much, and even the most self sufficient of people needed a friend.