Chapter 4

Haunted Memories

Severus awoke in a flood of tears, his skin was prickled with goose bumps. He was freezing but damp from a cold sweet. He wondered how he ever survived his terrible ordeals. But now, he lay back cold and shuddering. He held his head in his hands sobbing over his excruciating past and lack of love.

He flung himself back down for a second before pulling himself out of the bed.

The mirror showed him something he always didn't want to see. He scowled at the reflection of himself. The pale waxy skin, scruffy black hair plastered his face and neck. Puffy red bloodshot eyes. The delicate skin beneath them was swollen with dark rings, the lack of a befitting sleep.

"You look terrible," said the mirror.

"Shut up," he yelled back slamming his fist against the unbreakable glass and sending the frame wobbling precariously against it's moorings. He wrung his hand from the pain, cursing oaths that would make even the most open minded wizard or witch blush.

He ran his hands through his hair in an attempt to loosen coiled knots before heading off to the bathroom.

Severus Snape was fifty one years old, alone, friendless, but he had once loved Lilly Evans before her untimely death at the hands of Voldemort. She was a proud Gryffindor, he was a Slytherin. A relationship destined for failure he reasoned in later years. And she was the mother of Harry Potter who he resented perhaps because he long wished he was his father and not James, the man who stole Lilly's heart and left Severus' frozen.

While as students, he and Lilly became unlikely close friends despite the disagreements between himself and The Marauders. In his last year she became more to him than he previously thought or expected. A deep burning passion and love for her had left a heavy burden pressing on his chest that he could no longer keep locked up inside.

That was the time his heart was shattered forever and drove Severus Snape down the dark harrowing road of despair and to the Death Eaters.

He had prepared to admit his feelings freely only to be told that Lily had accepted marrage to James Potter. He never told her his unspoken heart's desire.

Severus stood alone in his classroom awaiting the group of second year Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students. No doubt they would be along shortly. Students never turned up early to his classes, and they dared not be late. If they were they would be met with a most enraged potions master. People didn't like to cross him when he was annoyed, only to be lashed out at by what some children called, 'The Devil's tongue.'

He thrummed his fingers rhythmically down on the wooden desk.

Something flickered through his mind and he opened a secret drawer in his desk. He took out a tiny ruffled piece of paper. It's edges dog eared and warn. There was a faded black and white image printed on one side, on the other was written 'Alana Snape with Severus, aged two days.

He had never known his parents, he whole heatedly disbelieved what Lorsekruker had said to him about his mother. He'd seen a few photographs of Alana Snape, but this one was the only one he owned, faded and worn, but the image was still crisp and clear.

He gazed at the moving image of his mother. He thought she was beautiful with the pale creamy skin, and the same almost black eyes as he. Her thick silky hair was long and black falling almost to her waist judging from the photograph. To him she looked as beautiful as a statue of Aphrodite. Her murder at the age of twenty eight, Severus being just over twelve months old had pretty much near destroyed him from the start, as a baby. He had to be strong, had to survive, living a desolate life in the orphanage. But the thought that he had, had a mother, owned a picture of her and knew she had loved him, it kept him going. Some of the others weren't so fortunate.

He couldn't, wouldn't believe with a passion that she had some kind of relationship with Lorsekruker.

He was an only child. From the few images Severus had seen of his father he was tall with dark reddish brown hair, and his eyes were blue. Clearly he'd inherited his father's nose, but nothing more. Perhaps if it hadn't been broken he may have resembled him more. This was perhaps a mixed blessing. He despised his father for leaving him, neither caring whether he lived or had died.

He placed the tiny passport sized photograph into the palm of his hand and gazed at a tiny but moving image of his mother almost longingly. She was smiling at him. Her dark eyes full of love and meaning. In her arms she held a tiny bundle. A tiny sleeping baby boy with thick black fluffy hair, was wrapped in a soft blanket and she was rocking him gently.

A slight smile touched the corners of his lips for a brief moment, but his subtle expression of happiness was abruptly replaced with a definite scowl when the group of bumbling second year students finally came tumbling into the classroom.

He quickly slipped the tiny moving photograph back into the drawer of his desk then continued to glower as the last of the class slumped into his lesson. He gazed down at all of them with definite disdain etched across his features