This is a challenge from Potions and Snitches. The challenge was for Snape to be an Auror, I accepted the challenge and wrote this. It's a W.I.P. for now.
Being a spy was not glamour and glitz if you can believe me at this point, where lies have swollen me up and I can barely believe myself.
Instead, it's fake smiles and manipulation...and loneliness.
'Oh, the big bad spy is feeling lonely, how sad' you might say, and I wouldn't blame you, I'm a horrible person. Lately, certain individuals I work with had tried to dissuade me from such notions, pointing out me rescuing muggle-born children from abusive homes as a sort of sign of redemption.
I drank their coffee in return and enjoyed it.
I should start from the beginning, I was born in Spinners End, the year of our Lord 1960, just kidding I won't begin the story that far away.
Suffice to say that I had a kind witch mother and a drunk, boorish, muggle father who took his anger out on us. The bastard, the sperm donor, the stubborn half-illiterate, for he could barely read and refused to learn further from ma saying it was not proper for women to teach men. The sexist.
Why my bibliophile mother married him, I will never know.
When I was nine, I met a girl and she became my whole world. Cliche, I know. She was my cure, my joy, my best friend. I also met her jealous older sister, but I don't like talking about gorgon-like women with the IQ of a crayon, so I shan't describe her...much.
We both got our Hogwarts letters, got on the Hogwarts Express where I made enemies who hated me on sight. Jimmy Pottery, the reckless school clown, Sirius pain in the arse Black, the almost homicidal maniac, Remus Lupin, the quiet, sensitive doormat, and Peter Pettigrew, the sadistic, weak, simple-minded one. Notice how he sorta has the term petty in his name? Yeah, he was also petty. One time I accidentally bumped into him and he told his jolly mates I attacked him, he even injured himself to make it believable. Got to hand it to the scum, he had determination.
Their revenge was cruel and humiliating, and it involved a ruined potion, headaches, detentions with Filch, and a biased headmaster.
I fell in with the wrong crowd. They were friendly and amiable and said how much of a berk my birth father was and how good at potions I was. Some of them had abusive family members too and we bonded over that. I saw myself in them and often made excuses for them.
I tried to bring them to the light, telling them how talented Lily was regardless of her roots, but they were immature, indoctrinated teenagers and in the end, they dragged me to darkness.
Now, I don't blame them for my forays to the 'Dark Side', it was my choice, but they certainly helped me make that choice, and the bullying and the abuse didn't help. I wanted to be powerful, to never be hurt again.
After the most horrid, asinine moment of my entire life, I called Lily a mudblood and of course, she had cut all ties with me, and I deserved it although I would have rather she stoned me to death, it would have hurt less than to live in a world without her.
That was not a wake-up call, I leaned on my other friends even more and in the end, I took the wretched mark, and joined Moldy Voldy. At least in my thoughts, I can insult him, the monster terrified me.
I overheard half of a prophecy, Lily and her idiot husband died because of me. In another life, I would have gone to Dumbledore for help, but I loathed him because of the Werewolf incident and his favoring the Gryffindors. Had I died, I am sure he would have looked the other way and probably would have told the student body something like "Oh, your schoolmate seems to have vanished, my children, no worries he's probably looking for potions in the Forbidden Forest or being eaten alive by an Acromontula. Blubber, Hat, Blip, I spoke."
Nobody would have truly mourned me, except for maybe Regulus, as he had dubbed me his "true brother" in fourth year thanks to another incident where Sirius the almost homicidal maniac was his usual charming self. Urgh. I'm glad that twit is in Azkaban. Karma's a bitch, Black!
Instead of Dumbledore, I the 'Useless death eater'( for that is how Bellabitch The Strange liked to call me because I did not participate in torture, raping, or pillaging preferring to make healing potions for the DE's instead), went and spoke to an acquaintance/friend of mine, who became an Auror. I remember that conversation well. I ran to Michael the Auror, out of breath and shaking.
"Severus, are you alright? Did someone hurt you? Take a seat, I will get you some tea" he offered.
I eyed him up, knowing that it was now or never, I took a deep breath, pulled my sleeve down, and showed him my dark mark.
He dropped the teacup and said with pain in his voice " Or we could get right down to business. By order of the Minister, you are under arrest..."
"Cease the dramatic Auror procedure, for but a second, I can't stand it. I will not play innocent sheep and say I was Imperioed, however I have pertinent information regarding the Dark Lord, the lives of Lily Ev-Potter, her husband and her baby depend on it"
He looked hard at me and said " Talk"
So I poured down my soul ending the discourse with an even more dramatic statement" So lock me in Azkaban, throw away the key but help Lily survive, I implore you!" The last three words tasted like ash in my mouth.
"If we save Mrs. Potter and her family, what would you give us Severus?"
"Everything"
And from that moment on, I became a sort of Auror and a spy, a thankless job which I was dreadful at when I first started it. I mean, what do you expect, first time I tried to listen at the door for the prophecy I was discovered by the gamekeeper, Hagrid, not even two minutes after. At that time I thought " I must be the worst spy on the planet" and it wouldn't have surprised me if I were right. This reminds of a proverb that somehow described my spying "skills", "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive".
Despite me going to Michael, Lily died anyway, and I was blackmailed into continuing to be a spy and talked out of suicide with this haunting statement "Think of how many murders we could prevent from now on, how many children we could save. If they died, it would be on you for not helping us."
Not wanting to have even more blood on my hands I reluctantly accepted the position and began the road to spyhood.
I will divulge a few of my secrets of the trade.
As a spy, you have to be charming, creative, and intelligent (I had to learn to be charming, it was like pulling teeth), to keep people in the dark, and to discover and exploit their vulnerabilities.
For that, you must be good at lying and you must also know when other people lie to you.
The secret to being a good liar lies in a couple of rules, confidence, the ability to know your story and to stick with it, to make it believable (for example no one will believe you were late to a meeting if you say, you had to battle a giant hippogriff, but what sort of an idiot would believe in the first place? Not only are hippogriffs not giant, they will also ask how could you possibly have encountered one, as they live in the wild, not near your house , you are not a magizoologist and also they if they somehow partially swallow the lie, and believe you did encounter a hippogriff but in your fear and delusion, you thought it was gigantic, they might think you are braindead for attempting to attack it").
You must also, in order to hide the lie, or better said to omit the truth, to talk around it, revealing only partial truths that have nothing to do with what you're trying to hide.
After all, all good lies have a bit of truth in them. For example, If you were late for a boring meeting with a friend that you were trying to avoid, and prior to the meeting you had to visit your parents or grandparents. You can stay there for longer than necessary, in order to avoid it. When you finally arrive at said meeting, you excuse yourself, with a relaxed smile saying, you had to go to your old parents, and that they were in need of help to clean the house or that your grandparents needed help to go to the doctors for back problems or whatnot, or to get food for them, and since your parents were busy than you had to make them something to eat.
Chances are these are actual things that happen normally in your household, so you wouldn't actually lie, per se. You would hide the fact that you stayed at your parent's house longer than necessary because you wanted it, and your friend might be understanding. That, of course, I do not recommend in case the friend, has an actual crisis, or is in need of your help.
To recognize when someone is lying to you, here are a few indicators. When somebody lies their breathing may change, as in they will breathe heavily, they may use repetition very often, trying to validate the lie in their minds, they will stare at you without blinking much or they will blink rapidly.
I also read many psychology books...
Today was another busy day at the Auror office, where I worked at a black ops department, called MI7.
Only Andrew Peters and Anna Blackberry, a muggle-born and a pureblood aligned to the light believed that I was truly on their side, trying to make amends and help children survive.
Everyone else despised me. Of course, I despised them right back, with great vigor!
"Ignore them, Severus, they likely hadn't had their cup of coffee in the morning," Anna said, after watching the rest of the department throw dirty looks at me.
"I wonder whose fault is that?" Andrew asked jokingly, not forgiving me for taking his coffee a couple of days ago and naming me the " Caffeine stealer".
"Peters, where was the last time you drank coffee?" I asked bluntly.
"Uhm, today..." he answered.
"So you do admit you are among the potential list of suspects?" I asked, curling my lips up.
He put his hands up in surrender, not wanting to get into a verbal spat. Pity, for I so desired one, and had plenty of misplaced aggression.
I was about to head towards my potions lab, and work on a cure for the many victims that ended up on the wrong end of Bellatrix's wand when I, alongside my team, Blackberry and Peters, were called on another suspicion of abuse on muggleborn children. How I loathed those, for they hit close to home, and sometimes I encountered children (I refuse to call them cases) when it was already...too late.
I much preferred the times I had to work together with the muggle police, it usually had nothing to do with abuse just underage students having fun on the expanse of oblivious muggles. It was rarely a cause of fright, well, one time someone conjured chickens out of thin air and it landed on a president during an important audience.
Because the transfiguration had been done poorly, there was blood leaking out of it and everyone panicked. Some of the people fell on the blood and actually hurt themselves. Everybody believed aliens did it...they sent the Scotland Yard and I had to work with them but knowing that I couldn't divulge magic to everyone present, as only a certain two police members seemed to know about it, and the inspector, I opted for making chicken jokes until I found the underage culprits.
Those were days when I liked being an Auror...
Sure as sure is eggs we went to the place, number 4 Private Drive. I wasn't told the name of the kid, it hardly mattered. What mattered was getting the job done.
Blackberry did the honors and opened the door with magic. While they dealt with the annoying, abusive relatives, whom I did not get a chance to look at, as I was searching for the kid, I overheard a knock on the cupboard and a small sound of "Please, let me go"
Enraged at the situation, I opened the cupboard, and inside I was met with emerald eyes, that reminded me of everything I once held dear. The child was trembling and had purple bruises on his hands and feet. The animals!
"Please, Mr. Don't hurt me," the boy said, wide-eyed and vulnerable, putting his dirty blanket in front of him to protect himself.
"I won't hurt you, child," I said, trying to appear as quiet and nice as possible "I'm Severus Snape. And you are?"
"I'm Harry. Harry Potter" he said, and only then I noticed the famed, lightning bolt-like scar. Potter...and Lily's child!