"Fucking cold" muttered a boy who looked to be around eight years old as he trudged through the cold light snow of the forest he had found himself deaged after his death.
"Bloody Dumbledore and Voldemort" he cursed as he walked through the small trails made clearly due to people travelling.
Severus Snape cursed the fate for thousandth time as he walked to the huge castle walls he could see at the distance. The castle was huge even from a distance as he finally reached there after twenty five minutes of walking. He for some reason had awakened in his childish body with a coat of fur wrapped around him for which he had been a little thankful.
The last thing he remembered was dying after giving the Potter boy his memories and after that he just found himself here in this world without wand. His magic was there inside him and he even his blood charmed pouch with him.
He had charmed a pouch with blood magic done and imbibed with it. The pouch contained nearly every potions plant seed or cuttings which he had started as a simple hobby when he joined the Death Eaters. The pouch contained nearly 3 to 4 million galleons which he had inherited from the will of his grandfather as well his savings and earnings. The old man had given him a part of his wealth to make up to him as he had already passed on the Prince Lordship to his cousin. His Grandfather had been one of the Dark Lord's supporters and had met him during that time. Severus had agreed afterall it was nice to have some extra money, apart from that he also got his grandfather's personal vault filled with Prince Family Books on many subjects as well as some some goblin made daggers and swords collected by him over the years. Septimus Prince was a collector of unique and classic things and was one of the most popular clients of Borgin and Burkes. He had placed the contents of the vault in his pouch as he didn't wanted it to be stuck incase of a goblin rebellion. The greedy vermins never left a chance to exploit in their favor afterall.
The castle had high walls and he could see the outskirts of a small town and settlement in the daylight. He walked to the town and saw people selling some wares otherwise the town was nearly empty. He looked to see some guards roaming there with swords strapped to their waists.
'Oh no' he groaned inwardly. Why a medieval world of all places? he thought bitterly as he saw a shop where a man was cutting a sheep for selling meat. Looking around he could spot some houses which were mostly empty.
As he continued venturing into the town he could see more of the empty houses. Nearly four fifth of the houses were empty with noone living inside them. Guess he didn't have to find a medieval hotel to live somewhere, he thought inwardly with a frown.
Four Months Later...
Wintertown was deserted as usual in summer as the people of the town were away for mostly farming the lands. The refugees who arrived during winter had already went back to their places except some of the natives of Wintertown. Even then there were around seven hundred people in Winterfell comprised of men, women, young boys and girls, old men and women, whores, bastards. However a boy who arrived in the town four months earlier had garnered quite a reputation among them and was a frequent topic of their gossips, the famous shopkeeper and the owner of Snow's Stalls which he referred to his stalls, Severus Snow.
Severus Snape or Snow which he claimed as now his name looked at the amount of people who were waiting in line to purchase pies and other things such as baked or boiled potatoes or simple raw ones for themselves.
People here loved potatoes, a crop that could produce a new food for them was always welcome. Besides a little blood magic and the potatoes grew in large amount as well as in a time of only one and half months to two.
Severus had been highly versed in both magical and muggle knowledge, he was not like his fellow wizards who thought muggles were beneath them. No, Severus Snape kept tracks of their findings and their discoveries in various fields carefully. Muggle Science had grasped his attention when he saw and heard about the completion of Apollo mission. The pureblood wizards could brag their lineage no matter what but they hardly had reached moon unlike the muggles who did it with sheer indegionous knowledge. During his summers after the completion of first wizarding war, he had taken tours and visited many cities throughout the world both muggle and magical. He had learnt many things such as engineering, higher advanced mathematics and other stuffs like that with the help of a little legillimency on some rather unsettled Professors during their sleeping time and then obliviating them. He had visited many cities and studied there developments and cultures which always gave him an edge. He had studied about the various developments, inventions throughout both magical and muggle civilization. On one such ruins on venturing deeper and using extremely dark spells to uncover anything of value, he had found stone tablets of magical runes which could perform the desired act if they were put in a specific sequence and a little magic is pushed to them. He had theorized that they were perhaps the predecessors of modern wands. Unlike modern runes which were only used for learning or decoding languages, this ones were magical and Severus was very much pleased with his discovery.
He had hidden it and worked on them during the years, it was during 1994 that he was finally successful in decoding them. He had hoped to publish the work after the defeat of dark lord but unfortunately he died before doing so. Thankfully they could be used in place of a wand but he was very much in content with it. Wands could do things easier but it would have bored him easily to no end. Runes was fun and time consuming which actually helped him in passing his time in this new world.
"Hey you it is two copper pennies for the amount of food you are taking" a voice of a beautiful redhead girl of around 8 spoke up from the stall.
"Aye" the man who seemed to be wearing a chain of different metals and was wearing a grey wool robe with sleeves. He took out two copper pennies and gave it to his employee Ros who was checking the payments. Well Severus could do it too but he didn't wanted to count copper coins as he overlooked over the boiling pots of potatoes. Besides one could say that he had many employees who did most of his work while he paid them all. His employees consisted of mainly street urchin children of Winterfell who had arrived after he had made his stall and started selling some potatoes.
He had spotted some wild potatoes in the Wolfswood during his third day and decided to use them, a little runic sequence and little bit of 'engorgio' charm which he used with blood magic made the potatoes and its incoming future generations permanently edible, bigger in size and extremely fast in growth if they were grown from the ones he had performed in the ritual. He had been confused about whether he should use them or not. Finally after a minute of thinking, he had used his magic and now the potatoes enhanced with the help of his magic became one of the favourite food of the Wintertown with the ease at which they could eat it with simply boiling it.
True to his experimentation, the potatoes matured in a month and half time after he planted them all over in his field. People had seen the rate at which it grew and asked for the process. He had shown about how to grow them with the help of cutting and planting. The villagers had learned and now he was like a 'Messiah' to them, when he had just simply given an advise and little knowledge to them.
He had to thank the Potter brat for this knowledge, when he had learned about the Room Of Requirements from the boy's mind during Legillimency sessions. He had sneaked to the room during the time when Umbridge was the Headmistress, the room had allowed him entry and Severus had ravaged the room for knowledge.
He had theorized eaelier that the Founders would have stored their books and wealth somewhere because Gringotts was not present that time which meant that they would have hidden their knowledge and wealth somewhere safe, and what better place than a castle they had built together.
Ofcourse he had taken every single book of founders which he learned from during his free time and when he became the Headmaster. Most of the magic were common but once in a while he learned some family spell or ritual from their books and journals.
From Slytherin's journal he had learned more about the blood curses and how it were casted. Noone had ever undid a blood curse so the cure was never known for them, which Severus had taken as a personal challenge and was going to take it as a personal project. Besides Dumbledore's library was also open for him as a headmaster and he learnt completely about alchemy from Dumbledore's notes and Nicholas Flamel's which the latter had given to former after his death in a will.
He was pretty close in formulating a cure for the blood curse before his death, his works in blood curse were the ones which gave him the idea about using its principles to use in the potatoes so that the ones grown from the original ones would always remain bigger and healthy as the spell effects needed to be inherited down the line.
Besides after he became a little older could also make 'vodka' with it to sell to other people.
Two months ago, the bells of the castle had rung in celebration of the birth of the second son of Lord Stark. Well atleast he was in a place with a good Lord over the common people. Medieval Lords hardly cared for anyone other than their glory unlike this Lord Stark which was the reason Severus had settled in Wintertown and learnt more about this world.
"Snow, what are you thinking?" came the sound of the first girl he had came across in his time in Winterfell. A fellow orphan like him after her mother perished due to sickness, Ros was also living alone in Winterfell with the aspiration to become a whore someday to earn money before his arrival.
Severus didn't knew what caused him to accept the young girl as his fellow friend or employee, was it the fact that she reminded him of Lily with her red hair and blue eyes or was it the fact that he wanted some sort of friendship? he didn't knew.
Lily had been a friend whose death was partially on him, he knew that even without the prophecy she would have died due to being in the Order of Phoenix. Besides one could say that the Prophecy gave her some extra days, Pettigrew had ratted the names of Order members to Dark Lord during the First War. Lily's name had been too in the list of the names. Besides he knew that he had always placed Lily on a too high pedestal which she never deserved. He had risked his entire life to avenge her where she would hardly have done the same for him. A fool, he had been to pin over her. Narcissa had been right, it was no good to go after her he remembered during his time as Headmaster. Still he had done too much for her just because she had been his first friend and crush.
"Nothing, the line is pretty much over now. The customers will return during the time of dusk" he said looking at the finished line.
"Aye, they love potatoes" came the voice of Ros who spoke up it in an amused tone as she looked at him.
"So how much we have now?" he asked looking at her curiously.
"Around 100 copper stars granting nearly one penny of food is enough for men to feed their families or they prefer the second option" she said looking over at him with a giddy expression.
"Hnn" he simply said as he looked over at the people standing around his stall and eating some slices of pie or baked or boiled potatoes. The people who could not pay had to give their service with work. The work in their case was planting the cuttings of potatoes or cutting down some trees alongside the empty area of Winterfell in which he had planted his potatoes. The area was large and manual labour was always welcomed as people removed snow or help in digging some more ground to grow potatoes. Till now no one from Winterfell had protested as they hardly were blocking or causing mayhem around. Besides he had frequent soldier customers such as Desmond and Porther who loved to eat a slice of pies and potatoes. It was summer time and they could hardly prevent him from farming in an abandoned and waste land.
"Though most of it will be used to buy flour to make pies and breads" she muttered a little angrily. Flour was a little costly here but Severus had a plan to tackle the problem. He could make the wheat the same as potatoes with some blood magic but doing it will need time and Severus needed time and large area to farm in that amount which was no joke.
There were towns near Wintertown but the snow and the cold ground was hard to dig. He could make them tools but there was need of labour and area, besides the only Blacksmith was inside the castle and the man worked for Lord Stark.
"We could grow them but it will need time and area to do so" he said as he felt her sitting besides him.
"You are right though" she said a little dejectedly.
"We could sell the cream" she said from her place suddenly.
"A little later we don't have enough of cattle to make them in large amount" he replied back, the idea was nice but they needed more cattle.
"A shame though it tasted good last night" she spoke up from her place as she huffed slightly.
Ros and him were neighbours, honestly the girl spent much of her time in his house. They ate dinner together as she too was a fellow orphan, most of the time it was him who cooked the food as Ros cooking was fair at the best at the moment and he didn't wanted to be ill suddenly due to subpar cooking. Hell she even had sleepovers as she took the second bed most of the time which he had made for her after she became a regular visitor to his house. It could be said with the increased time that they both spent was that she practically lived in his house with him.
"Hmm" he replied simply as he saw the old man with chain coming towards them with a curious look in his face. With him were Desmond and Porther too as they made their way with the old man. Their faces were calm and Severus had a guess that their might be something going on. He really needed a sword and skill to wield it, he thought with a frown as he looked at the two guards and the old man who approached them.