Disclaimer: so not mine, don't kill/sue me.

Severus is 3. Every night his father reads to him. Severus wishes he wouldn't, though. The book he always reads, one of the few books his poor family owns, is a scary book, even though he would die before letting anyone know he is afraid. Severus often wishes he wasn't so smart, then father wouldn't read these books to him, and even if he did, Severus wouldn't understand the horrible words.

"I am the way into the City of Woe.

I am the way to a forsaken people.

I am the way into eternal sorrow."

Tobias's own parents had loved this book and the story of its author. They'd read it to him as a child himself, not much older than his own son. He had also come to love it, be fascinated by the scope of the world of Dante's Inferno, even if it was an awful one. He knew, and Severus should know, he thought to himself, that he would never see it in this life or the next.

"Sacred Justice moved my architect

I was raised here by divine omnipotence

Primordial love and ultimate intellect."

Maybe, his father thought, if the boy learned young enough, he would turn out better than his mother. God knew Eileen was a good woman, a kind woman who loved both her husband and child; but also a witch. She hadn't been raised right and that was why Tobias was taking such interest in Severus's upbringing. He would be an upstanding member of the community, maybe get the family out of this hellhole as Tobias had failed to do. Severus would get a better education than his father, that was sure, and Tobias would make sure he did it. That Snape family hardheadedness would serve him well in the long run.

"Only those elements time cannot wear

Were made before me and beyond time I stand

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

His father looks out at the sky, turns to Severus, says, "Perhaps this is a good stopping point for tonight." He kisses his son goodnight. "You get to sleep. I promise we'll finish this part tomorrow night," he says and Severus just nods. Tobias takes the candle he's been reading by and closes the door, leaving Severus in darkness. He can't sleep. He knows what lives in the darkness, black, scaly, creeping and slimy, with claws that will get him if he sleeps too deeply. He doesn't want to go to hell.

NOTE: All quotes are from John Ciardi's 1954 English Translation of the Inferno, the only version I can picture Tobias owning.