Disclaimer:
All things not Allosia or Gabriel belong to JKR.
Thank you to everyone who is following along with this and have been reviewing.
This is very much Snape's voice as it has been in my head since I started this. I hope I have done a good enough job with the series so far that this internal, private, considered voice, meshes with what we have see externally thus far.
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Dearest Sia,
I told you, some time ago, that I do not keep a diary, and because I wish to remain as honest of a man as I might, I put these words down addressed to you. I don't imagine I will ever show them to you. It is as likely that I will burn this as it is written as an offering to you in secret.
What compels me to write, is of course the things I find I cannot say to you, not because you wouldn't understand, but because you are far more understanding than I, or perhaps any man, deserves. It wounds me deeply to see how you allow the realities of my life, which have infected your own, to wash over you. And I admire it. But mostly I wonder, how it is, that you are not as angry as myself.
The secret, I suspect, is that you are not a Slytherin. What you see of our House, what you hear, especially from me and my rantings, are notions of entitlement. This is the exception, rather than the rule. I will not deny the genius peculiar to my house. I know you wouldn't either, I catch how you look at me when I am at my worst, at my most possessed.
Slytherins are, at their root, merely insecure Ravenclaws, and occasionally, embarrassed Hufflepuffs. Loyalty and intelligence are not enough for us. Being the odd sorts that intelligence creates, is a notion too horrifying to bear. And so we warp ourselves. That is the nature of ambition. That is the nature of what I am, and what you almost were. Gryffindors I do not understand, but I'll confess to you here that they frighten me, even now, even the students, because they know, they know on an absolute cellular level how different they are from people like me. And if they were not afraid of me, they would tell me with a precision I can not tolerate thinking about, just how utterly impossible it would be for me to ever be like them. Everyone speaks about their bravery, but they can afford to be brave, because where people like me hear I told you so upon failure, they hear good try, every single time. I will never understand why. I hesitate to ask you to explain it to me, because if you could, I don't know how I would be ever able to face you again.
I wish I believed you could be surprised at my weaknesses.
Our son is beautiful, by the way. Our son. You have given me the use of so many words I had thought never to have cause for. My debt to you for that, as a man who loves languages, can never be repaid.
I can't believe, I am sitting down here writing to you, when you are no doubt sitting in your chair, staring at the fire not wondering when I'll come home, but if. Voldemort gave me a gift tonight. The muggle wife of some wizard he had Goyle kill. You have learned to let me bathe before touching me and I thank you for that. I will not insult you by apologizing for the rest of it.
Yours always,
Severus