Deus, liberate me ex ipse.

September 1, 1991

The first day. The first of many, many days.

The summer holidays fly by quickly, and all too soon I find myself back to face another dreaded year. I don't know how much more of this I can take. Then again, it may well be that I don't have a choice, that the matter is out of my hands. We shall see.

The Sorting took place today. Dumbledore required me to be there, yet another obligation that comes with my status as Head of House. A dubious honor, if anything, and a burden more often than not. Yet what would become of my Slytherin flock if given to the hands of one such as Sinistra? Slytherin, to be sure, yet there are times she would be more suited to the Badger House. She would never hold them together, never keep control the way I can, the way I must. But to what end? Will I see them off to wear the same brand that mars my own flesh? I have always appreciated irony, yet even this is bitter to my tongue. Every day, every year, I send another off towards the skeletal hands of the one I called Lord, and yet every night I work to undermine that same man. Perhaps, one day I will die at the hands of the very child I once nurtured in this cold egg I call home.

The Ceremony itself was, as always, a bore. Never a surprise. Except...that Potter boy. It seems he has come to Hogwarts at last. Gryffindor, of course. Following his beloved father and mother. I can almost pity the poor boy, inheriting a vendetta that was begun long before his time. He may never understand why I must hate him so, why every move I make will be to bring him closer to the edge of pain and despair. But such is life.

My own House was a disappointment. Names and faces I can't be bothered to remember, no one that strikes me as anything but more fodder for the Dark Arts. Muscle and grunts whose only function lies in taking orders from someone with more brains than a rat. But wait, I tell a lie. That one boy...make that three, stand out from the rest.

Malfoy. That name would shake me from the sleep of the Draught. Lucius' son, treading oh-so-carefully the footsteps of his father, flanked already by the two hulking lumps that must be Crabbe and Goyle. Funny, isn't it, how time can rewind itself and play back again, as if it had a memory of its own and idled itself away by calling up old images in reminiscence of the past. He looks so like a young Lucius, right down to the two stocky bodyguards at his side.

Another disappointing year, unless young Malfoy can find it in himself to outdo his father in his expertise in the acts of torment that come so naturally to those born to join our Lord. Doubtful, of course. It is even more doubtful that he will even break from the shadow of his father's prowess in...other fields. Either way, I will not be the one to know.

It does not appear that the other Houses fared any better, to my eyes, at least. Sprout will be happy, of course. "Send us your daft, your drones, your foolish and your weak," such is the motto of the Badger House. Ravenclaw. Let Flitwick deal with his students as he sees fit, I have no use for knowledge without power.

And Gryffindor, valiant Gryffindor. Potter. Another Weasley, it seems by the look of it. All of them as bland as milk. Nothing to discern them from the myriad of faces that pass me by year after year. And yet, I lie again. At the end of the table, a boy. At least, I thought it was a boy. Whomever it was, they were doing a commendable imitation of a sodden sparrow. Hiding behind his larger Housemates, he was puny, timorous. A pale shadow of the rest of his table, another runt to be added to the Lion House.

Another day to be added to the coils of a serpent's eternity.

December 15, 1991

How I hate this time of the year. Down here in the dungeon, the cold seeps through my robes and into my very bones. I know if I were to but set foot outside my office, to walk those few steps upwards, I could immerse myself in their laughter, their warmth. But that is simply not my way. Holidays mean little to me, time off from the constant nagging of child brats, that is all. It was the same at Halloween, and it will be the same at Christmas, as it has been for countless years.

At least this means I will be, for all intensive purposes, alone for the remainder of the holiday. A blissful hiatus from classes and the students that occupy them. I feel as though they get just a small bit worse every year, just that much thicker, that much slower. Still, any student will be hard pressed to top this year's alumnus pensus, a neatly package bundle of nerves and tics that has the gall to refer to itself as a student by the name of Neville Longbottom.

Gods, my head hurts at the merest thought of the boy.

A more worthless excuse for a wizard has never existed. This is what they are letting into Gryffindor now? If that is the case, it should be no great feat to take the House in competition. Perhaps that will keep the masses satisfied until next year. Then again, perhaps not. I mistook them at the beginning of the year for fools and bumblers unsuited to be anything but common soldiers, but I see now that I was possibly mistaken. The young Malfoy, at least, has shown quite some promise. Maybe he will surpass his father after all...

January 4, 1992

Quite the welcome into the new year. Not only have they forgotten already what little they have learned, but they seem to have made it a point lose as well that small grain of common sense that may have redeemed them.

The Potter boy managed to earn himself detention already after picking a fight with young Malfoy while Weasley successfully blew up his cauldron. The Granger girl...her very existence sets my teeth on edge and it is all I can do not to grind them when she speaks. I fear my actions will turn drastic before the year is out. Longbottom. I swear he is sent by the gods to test my patience. If I don't run out of control before he graduates, surely his family will run out of money replacing his supplies once every week or so. I can only hope. Ah, my head hurts too much to concentrate. To bed.

February 20, 1992

They are so young....they are all so young.

April 4th, 1992

Thank you, Albus. Somehow, that man knows exactly when I am right at the point of breaking and knows exactly what needs to be done in order to pull me back. So now I find myself saddled with a challenge. "Right up your alley," Albus says to me. Knockturn, perhaps, but that is another matter. I'd have said so to his face, but it takes so much out of me to even hint at flippancy now.

Challenged to create a challenge. I'm not quite sure why Albus wishes to put so much time into creating such precautions. The chances of anyone getting past that wretched beast Hagrid calls "Fluffy" are slim. I myself have no desire to revisit the thing after my first disastrous encounter. Fluffy indeed.

Regardless, Albus has set me to a task that I believe may test my own creativity. If ever I wished to learn the limits of my cunning, I suppose now would be the time. He wishes for something that would incorporate not only my skill and knowledge of potions, but pure mind work as well. It calls to memory the quill and parchment logic puzzles from when I myself was a child, lengthy processes of careful consideration and elimination until at last the answer is arrived at. It is off those that I believe I will base my own ward.

Distasteful as any task may be, I have never, will never settle for anything less than perfection. This is no exception. What was it you wanted, Albus? Possible, yet not probable. Three options: success, neutralization, death. Perhaps...poison? Scattered among harmless potions. Yet what requires the subject to drink at all? An antidote among the bottles. Antidote to what? A barrier of some sort...a wall and a potion of permeability? Water, and a potion of freezing? The details shall come later. Hmm, now would be the ideal time to rid myself of that awful nettle wine Sprout sent last Christmas. So now I either kill them, send them forward, or get them drunk. I wonder if Albus would notice if I filled all the bottles with poison. Would that I were so lucky...

Now, to work.

June 21, 1992

Another year gone by, so similar to all the others I must stop and remind myself I have not become caught in a never-ending loop of time. That will wait until I no longer reside in the land of the living...it will be my own private hell. Hell on earth and nothing more to look forward to but the same. How have I managed to trap myself like this? Who would have thought that I, Severus Snape, once a Death Eater with capabilities second only to the Dark Lord himself, could ever end up as I am now? Time...too much time.

Exams are over, Merlin be thanked. Although, I hadn't thought it possible, but I now have even less hope for any of these pathetic creatures I have as students. Few have shown themselves to be even remotely competent in the realm of Potions, and the majority of those few owe their achievements to dumb luck. I can't ever recall a year in which I have had to clean up after so many explosions or stayed behind so long scraping slugs from the floor. Any other time, I would have ordered them to stay behind and take care of their own mess, but what with exams going on, Minerva "suggested" that I let them off. Meddlesome woman. I must remember to pay her back in kind someday.

Now to home. Everything else packed, just one last book and quill to be added to the trunks and boxes of parchment and leather already waiting for my departure. Perhaps this year I will actually get some rest instead of lurking about my own home, waiting for the vultures I call family to descend. What must I do for a brief moment, a rare moment during which I am not fleeing from something? If not the students, the teachers, if not the teachers, my own blood, if not them, then this damn Mark on my arm. And, when all else relinquishes pursuit, I run from myself.