Pairing: none as yet
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in Harry Potter, books or movie.
Notes: These are my own 'theories' about how Snape's younger days might have been like, and what happened to make him what he was. As one who has been sorted into Slytherin as well :p I feel that the books, brilliant though they are, are told from the POV of the other 3 Houses, mainly Gryffindor. The following prologue, as well as the chapters that may come (hopefully) are my own conjectures about how the people of Slytherin might have been like. I have taken liberty with the characters and possibly some events in the story, because that is how I see them in the context of this fic, and also cuz my memory's not so good when it comes to recalling stuff from the book :p This story was a challenge and joy to write. I do hope you enjoy it!
P/S: Thanks to all the kind souls who gave me feedback on my previous HP fic, 'An Acquired Taste'. You really made my day ^_^
I think I was born cynical. Of course, that doesn't seem likely – everyone's a blank slate when they're born. So there must have been a period of time in my early life when I viewed the world with wonder and hope – when double agendas and hidden motives were the farthest thing from my mind.
But I can't remember those times, if they were ever there. All I have are memories of a world, a society – 2 societies – that, each in their own way, are harsh and unforgiving. Pushing, prodding, moulding, forming each of their members into something that fits their expectations.
Those who don't conform, if not outcast, are at the very least, treated with suspicion and reserve. It's like allowing an unwelcome relative into the house. Please come in, but don't make yourself at home.
I've never been one to fit into others' expectations. Everything about me has always seemed… off, in some way or another, in comparison to those around me.
For one thing, I'm a Mudblood, little known but true, born of two Muggle parents, descended from a long line of Muggles before them. Or at least that's what they told me. One could never be too sure about them when it came to volunteering information. They were too hyped up on the latest psychedelic drug or other to be truly in touch with reality and its dregs.
Maybe I developed my cynicism as a counter to the grand delusions my parents held. I was born during the beginnings of the 'Flower Power' revolution. My mother and father had definite illusions about what the world was going to be like – how wonderful, how beautiful, how… *utopian*. God, how I despise that word, and the idiot who coined it. There's no such thing as an utopia, at least for people like me.
There's only so much one can take of hollow hope and empty hallucinations before something breaks. My faith in the world was shattered. When you're very young, you don't understand what it means to deceive, be it yourself or others. They kept telling me things would change, something wonderful would happen. But days, weeks, months, years passed. And it was still the same. Just more communing, more drugs and alcohol, more drunken rages and drug-induced proclamations of how they were going to change the world.
Maybe if I were older, maybe if I had understood that common illusion they had desperately pulled around themselves, I could have immersed myself in lies and preserved myself too.
***
My parents were delighted when I got accepted into Hogwarts. They took it as a sign of greater thing to come. They announced it to anyone who would listen that their son was a wizard, but thankfully for the Wizarding world, others merely looked upon them as the demented ravings of two washed-up hippies.
As for myself, I felt the slightest stirrings of this little thing called hope. Perhaps that was why I had always felt out of sync with the rest of the world. The Muggle world was not where I really belonged. My place was with other witches and wizards.
That fantasy lasted until the first time I heard and understood what the word 'Mudblood' meant. Perhaps it would have been different if the Sorting Hat had placed me in one of the Houses other than Slytherin. The other Houses were used to having individuals of all sorts. But Slytherin… well, Slytherin was a House of tradition.
Nearly all the students in Slytherin came from a long line of prestigious wizarding families. Their great-grandparents had been in Slytherin, as had their great-grandparents before them. They viewed any newcomer into their select, elite group with distrust and contempt – one of the uncouth lower class who happened to get lucky.
It's a cruel House to be in, Slytherin, if you know no one and nothing at all about the world of magic and wizardry. Yet, that did not mean you could not gain respect and standing if you weren't from one from the prominent fold. The half-blood Tom Riddle was still well-remembered then for his talent and outstanding ability.
And for all its callousness, Slytherin WAS known as the House for brilliance and great things. Yes, the Gryffindors were courageous, the Ravenclaws were known for their academic excellence, and mayhap Hufflepuff for their industriousness.
But the genius… the genius lay in Slytherin.
There was a time, long ago it now seems, when the name Slytherin did not equate to evil and treachery. The idea that only wizards and witches from Slytherin would go bad is absurd. Every House had its fair share of rule-breakers and misbehaviour. They still do. It's only how the world views these transgressions now, through the lens shaped by Voldemort, that makes the actions of all those associated with the House of the Serpent to be the more criminal.
I had two paths to choose. To leave and return to the Muggle world where I'd always been a misfit, or forge a niche for myself in this new place where I was already beginning to be seen as an loner. But better a loner known for greatness than an eccentric who lived in obscurity. So I stayed.
It was not easy, but my shield of cynicism and caution served me well, aiding me in my navigation of the dangerous waters that was interaction with these convention-bound individuals, and I got along well enough. Enough that the fact that I was actually a Mudblood soon sank into murky depths, laying forgotten.
***
The years passed. I did not truly become 'brilliant', though I did well enough; such that when the time came, I was courted more than once by Lucius Malfoy and his ilk, to become one of the Death Eaters serving the Dark Lord Voldemort.
But apart from that, nothing much else about them endeared themselves to me, and the feeling was mutual. There wasn't really anything in Hogwarts that touched me, really, much like my childhood had been. It was as if I viewed the world from behind a permanent veil, reaching out but never quite connecting.
Only a few people ever pierced that veil, much too few. Dumbledore, for one, and Voldemort, who forever left his indelible mark upon me.
And a boy – a boy whose touch scalded me, and left me wanting. A boy named Remus Lupin.
owari