AN: Day 8 was Emptiness and I knew from the beginning that I absolutely didn't want to write sadness or angst for this one. I hope it turned out well. Also, for anyone wondering, I'm a little less than half way done with the next chapter of As Potter is to Snape.

Day 8- Emptiness

Emptiness.

It was a feeling that Severus Snape had become accustomed to since his childhood. A feeling that he had accepted as just being the way things were.

Tobias Snape had been a hard, cruel man. He took his anger for the world out on those around him, and more often than not, it was Severus and his mother who was around.

When Eileen Snape died, the abuse from his father intensified until not even Severus's best attempts at denying it could keep it hidden any longer.

Then stepped in Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall.

When the abuse was brought to light, the two of them who were secretly married, brought him into their home and adopted him. They cared for Severus as only a mother and father could.

They loved him, and a little of that emptiness disappeared.

The next year, another boy lost his parents as well. Though he had never known the sort of emptiness that Severus had felt, he had known an emptiness of a different kind. The kind that came from being different & and cast aside because of something out of your control. His name was Remus Lupin, and Albus and Minerva adopted him as well.

Severus had a brother and a bit more of that oh so present emptiness fled.

Severus knew many more hardships in his life. He had given more to war than most people knew. He loved and lost those closest to him.

He became bitter and angry. Severus had given up on filling the remaining holes in his heart.

Then last year, Harry Potter entered his life in an unexpected way.

The abuse and emptiness that had for so long been a part of Severus, was in Harry. He, too, felt that desperate need to be loved and cared for by someone.

So Severus became that someone. He became the sort of person that he had needed all those years before. He became for Harry what Albus and Minerva had been for him.

A parent.

And just like that, whatever emptiness that remained was gone. Chased away by love.