Chapter Text
Severus Snape was not a nice man. He could hardly be considered vile, as most of his students affirmed, but he was not what one would call nice either.
He had taken some bad decisions in youth, as most human beings are bound to. He had had a good friend; an honest and loving friend with whom he had shared some of the worst and best moments of his early life. They had been inseparable― for a while. Severus liked to blame their falling apart on one James Potter.
James Potter had been Severus’ school nemesis. Severus thought that James disliked him because he was smarter. The truth was, Severus (at eleven years of age) had been easy to rile up and James and his cronies had found his on-the-verge-of-tears rages hilarious. However, by their third school year, Severus was so skilled in mind magic, he no longer fell for their baiting at all, and started ignoring the school gang altogether. But far from stopping their bullying when it lost its fun, James’ gang changed their strategy with more crude, meaner pranks that were not meant no anger Severus, but to humiliate him. And that was when what had been an annoyance in the young Slytherin’s life became pure hell. With the recent death of his mother and his father’s physical and verbal abuse at home, and finding the relative peace of Hogwarts lost, Severus fell into depression. His only source of solace at the time had been spending time with his long-loved friend, Lily Evans.
Lily was a sweet teen with a good heart, but she had led a happy, careless childhood that made it impossible for her to understand darker emotions at such a tender age; and as Severus became even more withdrawn and began talking about vengeance, destruction and even death, she felt the connection they shared begin to weaken.
As Lily (who was his only light) and him grew apart, Severus developed new depths in his ability to hate, and his purpose of vengeance became his only aim. He approached his Slytherin year-mates, whom he knew would introduce him to dark magic (it was all they whispered about, during those years). And Severus, who had always been drawn to knowledge and power, found it opened a whole new world of undiscovered possibilities and dove into it eagerly. His findings and creations gave him something to focus on, something he was passionate about.
He had been practicing increasingly darker arts for over a year by the time Lily finally found out about his new obsession. She was repulsed by it, feeling something akin to betrayal at discovering a side of Severus she would never had believed possible. She made the mistake of going to her Head of House with the knowledge, thinking that she was somehow helping him out of it, but of course Severus was severely punished; all the more because, at the time, Lord Voldemort had been gaining power and followers, and Dumbledore, who had already lived through a war because of a Dark Lord, was more than willing to do anything he thought would help diminish Voldemort’s rising force.
Lily’s decision, naturally, had the opposite effect: resentful, full of hatred and hurt, Severus let his new friends bring him to the Dark Lord.
Severus and Lily stopped speaking altogether, but what really broke their friendship beyond repair was her beginning to date Potter. Reflecting back, she would realize that she did not even know when Severus took the dark mark.
Severus’ becoming a Death Eater meant that he could explore the dark arts at his leisure, poor substitute for Lily’s company as they were. Still, he enjoyed the forbidden ingredients the Dark Lord provided for him, as well as being given complicated tasks to achieve and even, why not admit it? The chance to be able to try his new concoctions in test-subjects that Lord Voldemort let him experiment with. All the while, Severus was finally able to step out of his miserable poverty by selling off the illegal potions he brewed in the black market.
After completing his Hogwarts education, Severus placed his old, shitty excuse for a father under Imperius, got licence from the Dark Lord and travelled to Germany, where he obtained his Potions Mastery in less than a year. Upon his return to England, he made several adjustments to his parent’s old muggle house and spent the time between his renewed brewings for the Dark Lord and his own illicit business filling up journals with his ideas, spells and potions, many of them dark.
Knowing Lily had married the man, Severus was reluctant to go knocking at their door looking for him. There was also the option of abducting him; stupid twat that Potter was, Severus was confident that he was no match for himself, but the memory of Lily’s love-struck eyes whenever he spied her in the arsehole’s company gave him pause every time. Finally, he decided to wait instead, telling himself the right time would presented itself. That time, however, did not come. Severus himself was the one who faithfully delivered the prophecy to Lord Voldemort, not knowing that Lily had recently given birth to a new Potter.
Faster that he cared to recall, the Potters had gone into hiding, that rat Pettigrew turned cloak and gave the Dark Lord their location, and the fearsome Lord Voldemort was somehow dead for good.
The Death Eaters were dismantled, hunted and tried before the Wizengamot. Severus was found guilty of allegiance to Lord Voldemort because of his marked forearm, but due to his less noticeable Death Eater role as potioneer and his discretion to always use the mask, there were virtually no witnesses against him (except for those closest to the Dark Lord, who had been as subtle as himself and were the most trusted for a reason), and he was freed until a ‘suitable’ punishment was found for him (which, Severus knew, was a promise of being put in Azkaban as soon as they had proof of his crimes).
Severus remembered well the rainy afternoon in which Albus Dumbledore, recently made Hogwarts’ Headmaster, came knocking at the door of his muggle house, asking amiably if Severus was willing to talk. The old man expressed regret at supposedly having pushed Severus into the Death Eater life by his harsh punishment when he knew of Severus’ practicing of the Dark Arts during his student years. Dumbledore said he felt he was redeemable, and Severus knew it was because of the lack of evidence against him, paired with foolish Gryffindor trustfulness. Apparently, the headmaster felt guilty enough that he had spoken in his favour before the Wizengamot and had offered them (as he did Severus now) the possibility of hiring Severus to be Potions Master at Hogwarts now that Slughorn wanted to retire. He said that it was an opportunity for Severus to make his living comfortably and for the Wizengamot to set the case knowing that Severus was under the Supreme Mugwump’s watch. Severus had said he needed to think it over, thanked the man and bid him farewell.
That night, Severus quietly disposed of his father, who was miraculously still alive and worked under Imperius preparing potion ingredients in one of Severus’ magically-added cellars. Severus packed what he felt he could safely take with him to a school and wrote to the headmaster accepting the offer.