In which Severus Snape meets Lord Voldemort and gets a broom ride. Both of these are far more impressing than James Potter.


"Leave off!" I cried, throwing myself beyond his reach. I crashed into James' brawny friend who had come up from behind. I kicked him in the shin as he dropped a hand down on my shoulder. As I fled once more, I saw the third boy, the quiet one. Both hands hung limply at his side, but I saw his gold-rimmed eyes. They did not condemn as James had, but held pity. Remus was never the type to condemn, but he understood, more than either James or especially Sirius, what it was like to be judged despite circumstances beyond the control of any mere mortal. Pity he lost that when he grew older…

I know all about pity and how easy it inspires within anyone who hurts at seeing us slum people live the way we do. I know I inspired pity with my too-large rags draped over a runty, skeletal body. I did not hate or despise those who pitied me, for it meant they felt bad for my situation – and feeling bad meant food given without the expectation of receiving something in exchange.

I did not look back as I ran. My heart pounded in rage at your father. I could not imagine why anyone who had the sort of grandmother as his could so easily judge and dismiss me for how I appeared. How selfish!

I judged people then, and now, for their unguarded actions. It is through their motions do I see the thoughts and emotions that mirror them and I understand, far more easily than what many would suspect, what sort of personality and character is revealed in those few unguarded moments. This allowed me to survive as long as I did; sensing others through animalistic instincts.

But in the end, how much different are we from animals?

There was always a sharp distinction between the slums people and everyone. Always a direct line drawn between us (the slums people) and them (the upper classes). There were common myths for us and them, and one of the myths of us is we brought our fate upon ourselves and one of the myths of them is they were happy and did not hurt like us. One thing for certain though, is that our worlds do not parallel one another. "Them" did not have the extremity of man's worst as "us" did. One could not afford kindness nor could one afford trust, if at all, to anyone but one's own clan. Even then, treachery was a common thing. It was not a rare sight to see gang members killing each other, or a gutter rat selling out its clan to a drug dealer searching for child prostitutes.

I cannot despise your father for the look in his eyes – but that hand? That unguarded moment, a tell-tale flag of the unconscious feeling and opinion, will always haunt me.

Perhaps I had been too hasty to judge, but on the streets one's first impression was usually what saved one from certain disaster. My overall impression of mankind was already a fragile thing. I thought everyone to be as selfish as myself (especially those who were fortunate enough not to live on the streets), and yet had no ambition to aspire to being anything greater than a gang leader or a drug dealer. I thought everyone to be cruel and desperate, looking out for their selves only, even if they pretended otherwise (like your great-grandmother). Although I merely loathed James, I hated, and still hate, Sirius.

So I fled the area, wanting to get as far away from those eyes as blue as the woman's, and yet unable to see me as she had seen me. I ran in random directions, not caring if I found the doorway or not, but only desiring to escape James and that hand. Through sheer luck, I saw the same pair of women who had inadvertently shown me how to enter through the brick wall standing again before another section of the wall. The blonde woman had her hand upraised and, as she finished the sequence and the bricks parted, I scrambled after them.

They noticed the darting figure that barrelled between them out of Diagon Alley and beyond. I heard one of them call out in surprise, but I ignored the sound. I scrambled through the ally, taking twisting turn after another twisting turn, ducking through holes in the walls and climbing over piles of rubble, until I at last reach the trashed-out alley where Phillip and the others were sleeping amongst the wooden boxes.

No one asked where I was, and no one asked why I remained quiet so long afterwards. I refused to go back to Diagon Alley or that area which lay closest. I told no one of what I witnessed, for none of them shared any sense of kindred with me. For the following few weeks, though the actual time is unknown to me, we lived within Outer Diagon Alley. I stuck close to Phillip, taking comfort in his rock-steady reality.

When I was with him I learned he had several contacts among other gutter rats; those who kept him informed of the more important slums politics. Phillip knew where gangs did not feud so much, which drug dealers should be avoided more than others, and where the dark man who killed with green light was last seen or was rumoured to strike next. I learned all this with him. We found out the dark man did not just attack the slums, but the upper classes as well, though rarely. However, it was strange the other classes would not acknowledge that the dark man killed with green light.

I later learned from Muggles that the idea was simply too ludicrous to be taken seriously. As Voldemort was too powerful and too evil to not be taken seriously, any mention of green light was played down. The Muggles believed the man to be a mad serial killer who held no pattern in his killings. We of the slums had no way of playing down the green light though. It is commonly said most of us are slightly crazy anyway. We did believe that, though the green light probably did not kill anyone, it undoubtedly had a lot to do with the identity of the dark man.

Phillip finally decided to move us again. We separated and followed each other through various alleys, spotting one another in crowds but never making contact. We penetrated deeper into inner London, into territories of violence and classes where the police rarely patrolled and the scars of the War's bombing existed still. When we finally established ourselves, I once more drifted away from my clan of gutter rats in search of learning.

I discovered a beggar who readily taught me to read if I gave him alcohol. I did (through means which I will certainly not share with you), and spent a great deal of my time with him. I would walk block after block, venturing into territories of class to snatch books and magazines and then manage to somehow carry them safely to the man. He expanded my knowledge on letters and sounds. His voice was soft and cultured and I forced my gutter accent to give way to his own.

I knew if I were ever to escape the slums, I could not be traced back to them (I would deny writing this to you, but I fear I shall not have the chance). I stressed my accent, forcing myself to speak slowly and pronounce the words fully lest I drop or slur sounds. I spoke softly to hide any accent I was unable to extinguish. I later learned there is a certain power in speaking slowly and softly. The idea behind a soft and slow-spoken person is a highly intelligent and educated being, one who holds himself in utmost control. It is an image I have spent many years cultivating.

I admit I am proud of such behaviour. My bitterness and sarcasm may be the result from living in the slums during the most impressionable part of my life, but I used such an attitude to my advantage by plying it with my cultivated appearance.

I am what I made myself.

I had no help in it any more than what I have allowed, shaping myself with what I was given and how I wanted to become. Pandora Potter, James Potter, Albus Dumbledore, and Minerva McGonagall did not influence me in any way you may see. They may have, in a slight degree, guided my thinking and my attitude through suggestions and example, but most of what I am I created through my own efforts and ideas of what I wanted to become.

Oddball I was; oddball I remain. My accent, vastly superior to my current peers, led me into a lonely life for the remaining time I existed in the slums. My clan knew I would leave the first chance I could and so any dependability I possessed dissipated. They knew they could not depend on me for help or steadiness. I did not care. I did not want to be tied to them, owing them favours and having to be responsible. Learning suited me well.

The rumours of the dark man who killed with green light was going to appear in the streets again filtered everywhere and Phillip warned us to be careful and to hurry directly to the Area of Supernatural should something happen. I was supposed to stay with my partner, but I preferred to be with the beggar who was teaching me how to read and my partner much preferred everyone else to me.

My last day in the slums began as usual, my partner and I rummaging through garbage. After finding an unopened can of beans, we bashed it open with a broken brick, ate our fill, and my partner scampered off to proudly share the remains with others. I had also found a bottle of whisky still half-full, and this I took straightway to my beggar.

As I scuttled to where my beggar camped out on a doorstop of a rundown building another clan of gutter rats lived in, I felt a prickling along my skin. I was instantly alert at it for it was a boding of some deadly danger. It was a sense of menace that choked me, filling me with confusion and panic. I could not withstand the feeling and I fled from the area, dropping the bottle of whiskey behind me.

I ran back to the area where Phillip and my clan stayed at nights and directly into a black-robed figure whose face was hooded. I tried to duck past and beyond the figure, but its hand grabbed my shoulder and jerked me back into its arms, which clamped tightly around my form. I tried to yell, and one hand covered my mouth to mute the sound. Green light flashed and I heard a horrid scream, filled with pain and terror.

Out of the green light emerged a man dressed in dark robes, and what a horrible man he was.

Harry, you have never seen Voldemort while he was at the height of his power. Any memory you might have had of him when he attacked and killed your family would have been him stripped of the majority of his power.

Personally, I have always found the way Voldemort fought against your family and always beaten one way or another bitterly amusing. It seems that, no matter what he does, there is a Potter to thwart him. Still and all, it is ironic that the family who would outwit him every time would also be the family he destroys so absolutely. Your parents and grandparents were slaughtered, your great-grandfather vanished with only blood to tell of his demise, your great-grandmother poisoned and disappeared without a trace, and you now constantly terrorized and threatened. But at any time you have seen him, Voldemort was never at his height.

He was called the dark man not only because of the black robes he wore at all times, but also for his black hair, his swarthy and twisted facial features, and his eyes. Those eyes which were liquid midnight: mysterious, iniquitous, and endless in their depths.

Pandora Potter's eyes were unusual, and not because her gaze was piercing. It was more than just that. When she saw things, she did more than just see at the physical level of any object she peered at. She was the sort of person who saw the mental and spiritual aspects of the physical object as well. She saw me not only for what I was, but also what I desired to be, everything of my past, and the potential of I would become in my lifetime.

I have only known three other persons whose eyes commanded the same quality of looking beyond the normal levels of the physical attributes of any object. These three are Albus Dumbledore, Voldemort, and you (on rare occasion only, and never when in Potions when it certainly would have been most useful!).

Yes, I admit you look beyond just the physical level of anything. It may be attributed from your great-grandmother's ability to, or the constant friction between you and Voldemort, or maybe the influence of Dumbledore. Perhaps it is all three of these. I do not say you look at something the way as Pandora Potter does merely to flatter you, as no Potter will ever amount to anything like the woman who accepted the name through marriage. Were I standing directly before you, I would not be telling this to you at all.

I only write this with the intent of it to be given to you upon my death (as you surely know by now as you read this), for it is your right to your heritage. That dimwit godfather of yours is incapable of telling you all that I know. It was I who followed the incidents of the Potter family for many years. I who stood as silent witness to even that which happened before my time. And now I pass it on to you, because I want to entrust the memory of the others to someone.

Even if it is just you. Especially, perhaps, you, for you are the new generation.

In that instant I gazed upon Voldemort, I knew this man was far more dangerous than anything I had ever seen before. He exuded confidence, strength, arrogance, and power beyond anything I have ever seen or perhaps ever will see again. Neither Albus nor Pandora could compare, but they had one thing Voldemort was never able to possess, and that was dignity. This man sold his soul to the Darker Powers That Be and, even to the untrained eye such as mine, I knew there was nothing natural about him.

He glanced at me with those penetrating, all-knowing eyes, and then looked away, uninterested in who and what I was. He sauntered gracefully about the alley, killing those slums people who desperately tried to hide from him. Had I been there earlier instead of going to my beggar, I would have undoubtedly been killed as the others were. Voldemort ignored me though, as if I were an insignificant little bug he meant to squash later. As he and other robed figures that surrounded him slowly began to walk down the alley rooting out those in hiding, I glanced down at the arms that circled around and held me close and still.

My eyes fell upon the black mark on the left arm of the person. It was a skull with a snake for a tongue, black and hideous and, to me, absolutely terrible. Gang members often scared themselves in a likely fashion, packing dye into carved lines and cuts for distinguishing colours and designs. I knew from my experiences on the street that this mark was a habit used to distinguish individuals to one another as mutual members.

I also knew then that whatever I did in the future depended on my escape. Well and all, since I was quite skilled with doing so as a gutter rat, but I was frozen in terror, my mind numb from the onslaught of black magic and sadistic joy at the death of innocents.

I used to wonder why I was kept alive, caught in the confusion by a single Death Eater, instead of killed immediately. They had no way of telling whether I would be a good wizard or not, or even if I was one. But after I joined the Death Eaters, I learned why.

If a single Death Eater spoke out for a likely target, everyone would then and there accept that target for a later time. A later time, that is, for play.

Harry, if you think the Death Eaters' methods of killing are gruesome, then hope a group that wishes to play with you never takes you alive. They do not kill their playthings and by doing so that makes what they have inflicted upon their plaything so much worse. There are fates worse than death, and psychological torture has always done greater damage than physical torture. It is not the pain that is inflicted; it is the wait and the knowledge of what will be done, what is being done, and what has been done. The experience can compare, but the human mind contains cruel capabilities beyond your imagination.

The Death Eater who held me lingered behind the others, so when Voldemort and his lackeys had gone so far into the alley, I took a chance to escape.

Here's a helpful little tidbit for you, Harry. The human jaw is the strongest joint in the entire body. The pressure you can apply with your molars may easily reach up to 136 kilograms while your incisors and canines have a pressure of about 77 kilograms.In a fight, one of the best ways to win or escape is to bite as hard and as fast as one can. This is something every slums person knows (not the mathematics, but the use biting has in a fight, since the exerted pressure is generally substantially more than you personally weigh).

I bit the hand covering my mouth and tasted blood as the skin broke. Just as I knew it would, the hand released me and I heard the Death Eater curse viciously. I slipped past the person and ran as fast as I ever had before in my life as far away from the alley as I could. After a moment, I heard the person whom I had bitten take chase after me and felt the magic sizzle over my head as spells whizzed past.

I was desperate and frightened; anyone in my position would have been, and many perhaps were frozen in their fear. We of the slums are not religious people. What sort of loving god would leave us to our harsh worlds in the slums, trapped by human wickedness? But as I ran, I found myself praying to whatever deity who was listening, be it evil or good. I would have sold my soul to get out of that terrifying situation had I known a way to do it. Perhaps I did. And perhaps the days in which my soul is collected is fast approaching me.

Who would have thought someone was listening to my prayers?

I was a mysterious agenda to your great-grandmother, and if there was one thing that Pandora could not stand, it was something for which she had no explanation. I, a little wretch from off the streets, dressed in my rags and looking (rightly so) as if I had never had a proper meal in my life, had shown up out of nowhere. Obviously, I was not a wizard's child as I did not recognize anything and because wizards knew simple charms to keep clothes clean and in fairly good shape. Diagon Alley was not a place that contained slums or where people lived in the back alleys, homeless and poor. So how did I enter the wizards' market and where did I come from?

There could only have been one answer, and that was I was a wizard — Muggle-born perhaps, or a wizard's get abandoned out of fear because of Voldemort's rise in as a dark lord — drawn to Diagon Alley by its magic. Faced with that conclusion, Pandora very well could not leave me behind, abandoned still. She had a soft spot for children, and a great weakness for those greatly abused by the Fates.

In my haste to get away from Voldemort, I quite literally ran into Pandora without realizing it. To my credit, she was using her husband's invisibility cloak (the very same one that she later gave James, which has since passed on to you – just where hell did you get it, by the way? Oh, I know you've been up to no good with it. Typical of you to misuse it for your nefarious misadventures). The Death Eater who had been chasing after skidded to a halt as Pandora drew me into the cloak's hidden folds and shushed me with a gentle hand over my mouth and quiet words of warning.

I remember thinking how sweet she smelled, so unlike the rotten filth of the gutters and back alleys where garbage and refuse heaped. I also remember wondering if I had gotten myself into a worse situation. However, when she next spoke, her husky voice rising from deep in her chest as she extended a hand from the depths of invisibility, I recognized her.

"Go back," she said loudly, "go back to Riddle and tell him I have sought this child and will not easily give him up." The words should have frightened me; I do not take kindly to someone claiming possession over what is mine, especially when it is me.

But she smelled sweet, and she had shown me a moment's kindness. For that, I would follow her long enough to learn what she wished to do with me. You should note your great-grandmother spoke not of Voldemort, but of Riddle. The Death Eaters accepted it as a nickname, assuming, I imagine, that Pandora believed Voldemort to be a mystery. There is a reason behind this, but one that will be explained within due time. I stray enough from the current subject by trying to explain certain points that otherwise elude your base understanding.

Also beneath her invisible cloak was a broom. I shall not say anything about my first ride on it other than it being a rather humiliating memory of my being terrified of floating off the ground and how Pandora reluctantly cast a body-binding spell on me to prevent any panic-induced aerodynamic accident.

A witch or a wizard who flies over a Muggle-populated region will be fined by the Ministry of Magic should he or she be caught. However, flying over the city at night while wearing the invisible cloak assured there were no witnesses to Pandora's transgression. The city areas I had known and lived in looked only beautiful from a far off distance in the sky, when everything is too dark and too shapeless for one to see the actual filth.

And before I write anything else let me just warn you here, Harry: If you ever, and I do stress ever, fly in the city in full view of Muggles, even if it is night and even if you are wearing your invisibility cloak, I shall gut you with that Firebolt broomstick of yours and then feed your entrails to Hedwig. Understand?

As we flew over the city, the movement stirring our clothes and hair, Pandora spoke casually of how she sought for me in the slums, knowing my dress and manner being that of a gutter rat or a street urchin. At the time I felt insulted. I may have been the lowest of the low, but I had always prided myself in avoiding the life of a cutpurse. Remember, no matter how bad life treats you, there is never the need to take what belongs to another person's belongings to ease your own suffering as that person may not afford the loss.

If I did not like it when someone took what belongs to me, then I certainly would not inflict it on another. (Food being an exception to the rule here, of course. In that, it's every man, woman, or child for him- or herself.)

But I felt safe in Pandora's arms. It was as if I had found my mother at long last, who was taking me away from the slums to a world of nice things. Indeed, that was exactly what happened. From the definite way she spoke, I knew Pandora Potter had absolutely no intention whatsoever of releasing me from her grasp. I was right where she wanted me to be and, even should I not have been a wizard, she still decided I was in need of a good home. She did not directly ask me any questions so I volunteered nothing of myself.

Please make sure to keep your mouth closed in your incoming surprise with this next earth-shattering revelation, as I do not enjoy the thought of your drooling upon my careful writing.

And thus did I become, in essence and through Pandora's deeds, your uncle.

It is not something I readily brag about.