Author's Note: I have always been a huge fan of Snape and since "Deathly Hallows" came out on July 21st, I have found myself even more preoccupied with him than ever before. How could one life have been so tragically overlooked and unappreciated? So this afternoon, I decided that Snape needed to tell his story. I hope you enjoy it. :)
Disclaimer: All characters and quoted text belong to J.K. Rowling.
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Looking Back: Memoirs of a Tragic Hero
"Slytherin!"
At the time, that was the word I was desperate to hear that old sorting hat say. I had craved to be part of Slytherin house, where the truly powerful and impressive wizards had been, since the first moment I heard about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That house represented everything I desired: ambition, cunning, and bravery. Not just the brash, foolhardy shows that the Gryffindor house paraded as bravery. No. Slytherin bravery was true bravery. Or so I thought at the time.
I know this is rather cliché, but if only I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have been quite so eager to be in Slytherin house. It truly changed my life, and not in the way I had wanted. You see, there was this girl. Yeah, yeah, I know. The last thing you'd expect to hear from me is a love story. But this doesn't have one of those happy Hollywood endings anyway, so just follow along...
"How are things at your house?"
"Fine."
"They're not arguing anymore?"
"Oh yes, they're arguing. But it won't be that long and I'll be gone."
"Doesn't your dad like magic?"
"He doesn't like anything, much."
"Severus?"
"Yeah?"
"Tell me about the dementors again."
Her name was Lily Evans. Looking back at memories of her is always a bittersweet experience. Lily was my hope. My inspiration. My friend. She was everything that was good in my miserable, wasted life. She was the one thing that kept me from sinking under the pressures that were constantly threatening to swallow me whole. And then I had to go and mess it up, just like I messed up what was left of my life.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"
"Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you."
"Take the curse off him, then!"
"There you go. You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus."
"I don't need help from filthy little mudbloods like her!"
And there it is. The pivotal moment that changed everything. I hadn't meant to say it. I know it's no excuse, but having just been choked and depantsed in front of my classmates, I was humiliated and infuriated. So when Lily, a girl, came to my defense, I lashed out. Anger has always been the one emotion that I find nearly impossible to control. I suppose I get that from my father, which makes me loathe myself even more.
I tried, repeatedly, to apologize to Lily afterwards. To tell her that I hadn't meant what I had said. But being the stubborn Gryffindor that she was, she wouldn't listen...
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not interested."
"I'm sorry!"
"Save your breath."
I lost more than my friend that day. I lost my reason. My reason to live, my reason to care about anything or anyone, my reason to care what anyone thought of me. Except for her, of course. Lily had always been the one exception to everything.
No one can possibly imagine how much it hurt to watch from afar as Lily started to befriend Potter and his friends, the very people who had spent so much of their time tormenting me, just as my father had done before I had escaped home. It also angered me. It made me want to be the very thing that Lily despised, just to get back at her. Just to show her that I didn't need her. But a part of me, a rather large part, also hoped it would impress her. It would show her that I was strong. I was willing and able to fight back. To join in with something so powerful and important, something that would eventually cleanse the world of those horrible muggles who, like my father and her sister, treated us so horribly and had kept the wizards oppressed for so long.
Lily married Potter, and I...I married Voldemort. Figuratively speaking, of course. I vowed my eternal devotion to the man who had known what I had gone through. The Dark Lord, too, had been born to a muggle father. One who didn't love him or his mother, much like my father. Voldemort had lived in an orphanage, and while I hadn't done that, I may as well have with all the love and attention my parents withheld from me. That was the draw for me, the thing that pulled me in. Here was this amazingly powerful wizard who had had essentially the same upbringing that I had, yet had risen above it all to be the one that everyone in the wizarding world respected. Oh, if only I had known the difference between respect and fear back then.
So there I was, a teenage boy with the stamp of the Dark Lord on my left arm. I thought I was the shit. That I, too, had risen above my background to be a powerful wizard who would help set the wizarding world free. The Dark Lord was the father I had never had, and the one person I could finally look up to. I would have done anything to please him, to put myself in his favor so that one day, he and I could bring light to all those wizards who had been looked down upon by muggles. And then one day, I got my chance...
Voldemort had always wanted to take over Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He said that it was yet another way to purify our world, by teaching only those with good, strong wizarding backgrounds. To exclude those who had been born to muggle families. So he sent me to apply for a job. The job he himself had been denied: Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. And so I obeyed.
I had heard that Dumbledore, the current Hogwarts headmaster, would be at the Hog's Head, so I went there to speak with him. As I expected, he was there. But he was already speaking with someone. I put my ear to the door to hear the voices more clearly. Imagine my surprise when I heard the voice speaking about my master, the Dark Lord. The voice said that someone would come who would vanquish the Dark Lord. I was so engrossed in listening to what the voice was saying that I hadn't noticed the old, gray-haired man approaching until he grabbed me and practically threw me into the room. As soon as I was free, I immediately ran to the Dark Lord and told him everything I had heard, that some child would be born at the end of the seventh month and that the child would have the power to vanquish him. Naturally, Voldemort then made it his mission to find and destroy the child. And then...then he made a decision that I'll never forget.
Voldemort decided that the prophecy spoke of Lily. My Lily. I asked him to spare her. I pleaded with him and tried to influence him to go after someone else. Anyone else. But he wouldn't listen. My Lily meant nothing to him. The one person who had ever cared about me, who had ever treated me as a human being. Voldemort was going to kill her. So I did the only thing that I could do. I went back to Dumbledore. I cowered before him, just as my mother had cowered before my father during my childhood, and I begged him to please save Lily. I knew he was the only one who could. Rightfully, he told me how low he thought of me, how I disgusted him, and I knew Lily would think the same. But even still, I couldn't let her be murdered. Dumbledore asked me what I would give him in return and so I told him.
"Anything."
Unfortunately, my pleading and defection from the Dark Lord's services did no good. Lily was murdered anyway. Though, in a rather ironic twist of fate, the child that the prophecy spoke of survived. The one who could vanquish the Dark Lord, and had. The reason that Lily had been targeted in the first place. Now he, as his father before him, was being honored for being 'great.' Just because he existed. Dumbledore told me that the child had Lily's eyes. The brilliant green eyes that I always loved looking into. The eyes I'd never see again.
Ten years later, however, I would see those eyes again. Though this time, they wouldn't be surrounded by the fire-red tresses of my Lily. No, this time, they would be set in the face of the boy who took her away from me. James Potter. The black, disheveled hair, the wispy little wire glasses. Harry Potter was the spitting image of his father. Except for those eyes.
As though he had inherited his father's loathing of me, Harry Potter disliked me from the moment he saw me. I could tell. It was incredibly odd seeing such dislike coming from the green eyes that had always been the reason for my existence. Odd seeing this perfect little mix of the love between James and my Lily. Odd and infuriating. The boy was a constant reminder that Lily had chosen James over me. A constant reminder of the mistake I had made that drove her to him. A constant reminder that she was gone and that it was all my fault. If only I had've been able to control my anger. If only.
Potter turned out to be exactly like his father. Arrogant, reckless, and completely disrespectful of authority. He and his little friends were always out running around after curfew, sneaking into and stealing from people's private stores, pointing fingers at those who simply looked the part of the bad guy. Shouldn't have been a surprise, though. James Potter had done the exact same things. After all, those were the kinds of things that Gryffindors claimed as bravery. Always had and, obviously, always would.
Every year, something would happen and rather than staying put and letting the professors handle the situation, like a student should, Potter always ran around trying to get glory for himself by solving the 'mystery.' More often than not, he somehow found a way to link me to the crime. Like in his first year, when he was determined that I was the one trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone. Just like his father, he couldn't see past his own prejudices to see what was really going on. And only when he nearly got himself killed by that stuttering excuse for a man, Quirrell, did Harry finally realize it wasn't me. But even then, his loathing of me remained.
Regardless, I did what I could to protect his reckless ass. Like in his third year when he went running out to the Shrieking Shack and, once again, nearly got himself killed. This time, by the man who had betrayed my Lily. Of course, it turned out that Sirius Black hadn't betrayed the Potters. He was innocent. More innocent than I was, even. But at the time, not even Dumbledore knew of Black's innocence. So had I not followed Potter and his friends, they very well could have gotten themselves killed. Running away from the protection of the school with an alleged murderer, and a werewolf, as though three children would be smart enough and tough enough to confront Black on their own.
Then in Potter's fifth year, on Dumbledore's orders, I attempted to teach the little brat Occulumency. But as expected, he was once again too self involved to actually learn it. Too ready to play the hero, just like his father. He didn't need my help. And of course, he believed me to be trying to weaken his defenses. Just like his father, he refused to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, I might be smarter. I might know something that he needed to know. And then as soon as I stepped out of the room for a moment, he went nosing into things that weren't his and he saw the one memory I didn't want him, or anyone else, to see. The one where I called Lily a...that word. The word I would never again use. Little boy probably enjoyed seeing me humiliated in front of my classmates, just as his father had. I had never come as close to killing a child as I did in that moment. The anger that boiled up inside of me was incredible. It was all I could do to get him out of the room.
The following year, I actually gave Potter a solid reason to hate me. I killed Dumbledore. Killed, not murdered. Dumbledore had become my mentor, the father figure I had always longed for. He trusted me when no one else did. And then he asked me to kill him. I tried to get out of it. But because of that stupid Unbreakable Vow, it would be Dumbledore's life or mine. Dumbledore was already dying, however, and besides that, I had sworn to protect Lily's son. I had no choice. I had to kill the one person whose faith in me had never faltered.
The moment of Dumbledore's death at my hand, I hated myself. I hated him. I hated the situation I had put myself in. I was sickened by the choices I had made in life. I was no better than my father, abusing and neglecting those he supposedly loved. I knew that from that moment, I was on my own. I would have no one. Dumbledore could see the hesitation in my eyes, and pleaded. Pleaded for me to do what I had agreed to do, to end his life.
"Severus...please..."
And so I did.
Once again, Potter was on the scene and tried to play the hero. Trying to avenge Dumbledore's 'murder' by throwing curses at me as I fled to the prison of the Dark Lord's services once more. But that was what Dumbledore had wanted, for me to remain in Voldemort's good graces for as long as possible. To be the inside man, to help Potter save the world, even though Potter was simultaneously planning my death at his own hand.
I blocked each and every one of Potter's spells. The boy had obviously felt it beneath him to learn what I had tried to teach him during the Defense Against the Dark Arts class earlier that year. I blocked a spell from one of my "associates" as well, saving Potter from the pain of the Cruciatus Curse. Did he notice or care? Of course not. He was still so wrapped up in his hatred of me that he paid little or no notice to the Death Eaters who were all too eager to kill him right then.
And then he called me a coward.
After everything I had done to protect Potter, to prepare him to defeat the Dark Lord. After I had just killed the only man who had known me for who I really was, because of Potter and his fate of being the hero of the wizarding world. That was the last straw. In a moment of unbridled fury, I slapped Potter with a spell that threw him backward.
"DON'T CALL ME A COWARD!"
Oh, I could have done so much more to him in that moment. Part of me wanted to kill him, or at least torture him, to cause him pain like his father and his friends had done to me. I wanted to show Potter just how insignificant and unskilled he really was. Who did he think he was, this child who had always meddled in things he had no business meddling in, calling me a coward after I had spent years risking my life to save his ungrateful ass? Oh, yes. I could have done much more to him. But I didn't.
The next year, the last year of my life, went by so quickly. I spent my nights and days in the company of Voldemort. Giving him just the information that Dumbledore, through his portrait, had approved for me to give him. Information that would lead the Death Eaters to Harry Potter, but wouldn't actually permit them to hurt the boy. It sickened me, constantly being in such company. Watching them kill innocents for unjust reasons, and being unable to stop it. I was done with it all. But where could I go? The Order members hated me. And if I revealed my true loyalties to Voldemort and his real followers, I would be killed. I had no choice but to continue what I had started.
In the end, I had been just as dispensable to Voldemort as my Lily had been. Just another casualty on Voldemort's way to the top. He had killed such a beautiful, pure woman over a prophecy...and me over a wand. He had never viewed me as anything more than a servant to help him gain power. It was never about the good of the wizarding world. It was all about him. I had never meant anything to him. Not that I cared anymore. I had severed my ties with Voldemort the moment he decided to kill my Lily.
And there you have it. My life. What a horrible life to claim. So many mistakes made, so many people hurt. Some may call me a hero. Others may still hate me for despising Harry Potter. I don't blame them. But I was only human.
With my dying breath, I told Lily's son, Harry Potter, to look at me. To look at everything I had done and why I had done it. For some reason, it seemed important for someone to know the truth. For him to know the truth. And in the last moment of my life, I looked into the eyes of my Lily. The beautiful, bright green eyes that had been my everything.