Note: Hello, everyone, this is obviously not one of my usual stories, but a new one, which was requested of me by AngelColdHeart. It will be Severitus, and will also contain slash eventually. Pairings will begin with Severus/Tom!Voldemort. This story is also going to have Dumbledore!Bashing and Weasley!Bashing, so be prepared. I think this is a good start, but feel free to let you know if you see any problems or got any ideas.

Chapter One

From: Lily Evans Snape

To: Severus Snape

Severus read the envelope several times, trying and failing to understand who in their obviously mad state of mind could have deigned to write him a letter from... Lily Evans Snape? Who would do such a thing? Why would they do this to him?

The pulsing pain going through what he knew was a non-existent heart was the obvious choice, but he was unsure if that was indeed the case. The penmanship itself was leaving him off-kilter. That was her hand, he could see it so clearly. They had studied and written notes together for years, he knew her writing, but then, how...?

He would have to open it to find out, he would have to read the letter to understand. There was nothing for it, but that did not mean he needed to be particularly dense. He waved his wand to check for curses and dark magic before exhausting the possibilities of sabotage. Somehow, that confirmation did nothing for his increasingly frazzled nerves and his near fear of the envelope.

"Stop being such a coward, Snape," he sneered at himself.

Who was he to fall to his fears like some snivelling Hufflepuff?

"Blast it!"

He ripped the opening more delicately then his yell would suggest. He was precise in his tears, trying to preserve the envelope with the writing of the one person he had ever truly loved. He growled at his sentimentality and yanked the parchment from the confines. He looked to the page as it unrolled, and as he read the first word in bold letters, his world went black.

"Harry!"

Severus jerked awake, the scream of his... He snapped a hand up to his aching head, his eyes squinting at the light of his quarters. His quarters in Hogwarts, where he lived and taught... No, that... He lived with his wife, Lily... His wife? He had no wife... Because she was dead... Lily was dead! Harry was...

"Oh, Merlin, no... What have I done?"

He grasped his hair in frustration and groaned aloud into the empty quarters. Everything seemed to be settling, and the very telling blank spots that had been his memory were being filled and assimilated with memories of another time, a time taken from him. Dumbledore...

He remembered everything. Dumbledore had taken his memories, had forced Lily away from him, had taken Harry away from him, had forced him to spy on Tom... Voldemort, no, Tom! His friend, Tom...

He grasped his head in frustration as the memories tried to burn through the gaps in his psyche. He would obviously need to meditate on this. Still, he was confident that everything he knew and had thought were true had been lies fed to him by a manipulative, deranged Headmaster.

He stood from where he had collapsed by his desk and heaved himself into a chair. He got himself comfortable, taking care to allow himself to relax, which was no small feat with his mind so chaotic. He drowned out the sounds around him and collapsed into his own mind.

The holes that his tampered memories had not allowed him to see were filled. Memories of his time with Lily, their flourishing love, filled most of the time stolen from him, but another chunk seemed to have been spent with the Death Eaters. No, not Death Eaters. They had never been called that. Why had he thought...

Dumbledore, that was why he was missing memories. The man had come to him at his home... Potter and Black took his wife and son from him under the man's orders. The man had made these false memories and left him as this shell of a man to get closer to his friends. Dumbledore had done this to all of them and then had fed the lies to thousands. Tom and Lucius were his friends.

"What have I done? Lily, dead... Tom was never evil... Dumbledore, he lied, everything is a lie... Harry... Oh, Harry, my son."

His heart lurched inside of his chest, thinking of the baby he had held in his arms. The child he watched be born to him and his loving wife, Lily. The child he had treated as if he hung the moon and the stars. All of it, taken from him.

The child he had belittled and demeaned... What had he done?

The child he had put down without fail in every class... What had he done?

The child he had seen nearly have his death just this past year... What had he done?

He slipped from his mind as the pieces of his former life and his present assimilated to a picture that caused tears to form in his eyes. He was unsure of all of the details, not knowing how Lily had died as well as Potter, but he knew three things: one, Harry was his son; two, there was no such thing as Voldemort; and three, Dumbledore was the man behind all of this.

Dumbledore had used him to frame Tom and Lucius and all the others. Dumbledore had used him! What was he supposed to do now? What was he to do?

Severus looked to the heavens, wishing he could ask his wife for help. She had been so wise for her years, so intelligent. He needed her help. He needed answers.

He looked down to see the letter still sitting on the floor where he had dropped it, but unlike the first time Severus saw the parchment, he could now see more paragraphs on the page. He snatched the page from the ground and nearly inhaled the words on the page:

My love,

It has been many years I fear since I was taken from you. If I know you and I do, you blame yourself for this. Please, love, do not. You could not have stopped that mad man from taking Harry and me from you. I know it must be hard to understand everything once he took your memories and changed them for his purposes. I fear he may have tampered with them further as time went on, but I can only hope my spell has helped restore what was taken from you.

Spells, of course, cannot take away from an explanation, so I have contained within this letter the facts that may help assimilate those memories better. As you can recall now, we married two years after graduating from Hogwarts, and soon after, I was pregnant with Harry. The lies Dumbledore told you of a Prophecy were only half-truths. Dumbledore is the Dark Lord, the one working to get power over all of the wizarding world, but there is no such thing as Voldemort, at least not the one known to everyone. Tom was and has always been a brilliant wizard. As he gained favour away from Dumbledore, the power-hungry man started a ruse. Dumbledore created Voldemort and had some of his more crazed followers carry out his deeds. With the spells to take your memories of Harry and myself, he used you to get to Tom. He could not make Tom's memories as he did yours, so he separated him from his body and trapped him away. The rest of his supporters were given the same falsified story as you.

I shudder to think what the world now looks like under that old codger's manipulations, but, Severus, you must find Harry. James has been my jailer, but I have been convincing him to our side of this war. I fear for our lives. Black is not as loyal to James as we thought, and I fear we may have less time on this Earth. I am trying to find a way to protect Harry, and I hope it will be enough to save him. If I didn't make it, this letter would appear to you, but I could not be sure when. Please, Severus, save Harry from that mad man. If I never see you again, just know that I loved you with all my heart and that I have never blamed you for anything and would not want you to blame yourself. Be strong for our son, Severus.

Severus dropped the letter to his desk and used his free hand to stem the tears, trying to escape from his eyes. He took a shuddered breath and pulled himself together as he needed to be strong for his son, just as Lily had said. Severus needed to find Tom, he needed to set this world to rights, but he also selfishly wanted to have his son. He needed to make up for all he had done. He needed to show the boy he could be the father Harry deserved, but while he did that, he had to do something about Dumbledore, but where should he start?

Maybe he could use the letter on others? Who would know the most? He smirked as he thought of the blonde-haired man who once had been a great friend to him. Lucius had been as close to Tom as Severus. He would write to the man to set-up a meeting, somewhere private where the Headmaster would be unable to find them. If the man was so dangerous as to have manipulated the entire wizarding world, then they would need to be cautious in their dealings as to not arouse suspicion. Severus would have to be the utmost Slytherin in his dealings with the scum named Albus Dumbledore while he freed his friends and built an army against the manipulative fool.

And, while he and Lucius worked behind the scenes, Severus would find a way to show his son he was worthy of being a father to him, even if he was unsure how to tell the boy of this fact as of yet.