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Why did it come to this?!
Why did things turn out this way?!
Why was Lily’s child born at the end of July?!
It was all Potter’s fault.
That self-righteous fool, led around by his baser instincts.
His greed and selfishness hadn’t just ruined his own life, he’d dragged Lily down into the abyss with him.
Snape’s anguish was like a dark serpent coiling around his heart, squeezing, leaving him no way to break free.
He had thought the Prophecy he’d overheard would bring him some kind of advantage.
He had never anticipated it would cast him into misery this deep.
He’d believed he was simply using the Prophecy to get something he wanted.
He had never imagined the Prophecy would cost him the most precious thing he had.
Lily.
Snape stood in the dim room, anxiety churning through him like black smoke.
He paced, back and forth, back and forth, each step heavier than the last, as though invisible shackles were bolted to the floor beneath his feet.
His brow was knotted, and an unsettled light flickered in his eyes, searching, always searching, for some way out.
He told himself, over and over: it would be fine.
It would be fine.
The Master only wanted to know about the child’s life.
Lily wouldn’t be in too much danger.
But the words were hollow.
Powerless.
They couldn’t touch the terror churning inside him.
He thought of Lily, the way she had always placed herself between her friends and whatever threatened them, fearless, unyielding.
Her eyes full of courage and resolve.
As though nothing in the world could bring her down.
Snape acknowledged it in anguish: Lily would never surrender her child just to save herself.
She would hold to her principles.
She would protect her child with her own life.
I am useful to the Master.
I can beg him.
As long as Lily lives, even if she hates me, it doesn’t matter.
Living is enough.
Living is enough.
But the odds were too low.
Far too low.
The Master had agreed to his request on the surface.
But his eyes had told a different story: distracted, indifferent, his gaze drifting like mist, as if Snape’s words might simply float away at any moment.
Snape’s perceptiveness had always been a keen-edged thing.
He could read the truth in the smallest details, and that same gift made it impossible for him to lie to himself.
In the dim basement, he suddenly lost his footing.
He went down hard, hitting the cold stone floor with a heavy thud.
As he fell, his legs swept into several bottles.
They shattered.
Wine spread across the floor in thin rivulets, catching the faint light, filling the cold air with the smell of alcohol.
Snape sat there, hands hanging limp at his sides, complex emotions moving through his eyes.
His face was pale.
A bitter smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, mocking himself, his helplessness, his failure.
A crushing sense of defeat settled over him.
The whole world had collapsed in that single moment.
It was all his fault.
If he hadn’t crept into that corridor corner to eavesdrop on the Prophecy about the Chosen One.
If he hadn’t shouted that word, Mudblood.
If he had been more careful, hidden his use of Dark Magic deeper, kept it from Lily’s eyes.
Maybe things would have been different…
But there was no room for “if.” Hair like fire.
A captivating smile.
Lily’s face, the face from years ago, surfaced before his bleary, drink-soaked eyes.
In those days before either of them had set foot in Hogwarts, Spinner’s End had felt like a dark swamp, thick with gloom and suffocation.
Lily — that girl warm as sunlight — had been the only redemption in his life.
The only light.
Life at Spinner’s End had been too painful.
His world was filled with his father’s drunken rages, his mother’s quiet sighs, the cold mockery of the neighbors.
Every night his father staggered home drunk, the house would go taut with tension.
His mother’s face settled into its familiar look: helpless, worried, enduring without a word.
And the neighbors were worse.
Watching like wolves, always ready to sneer and provoke.
Every morning, when the first thin light filtered through the gap in the curtains and fell in scattered patches across his face, he would open his eyes.
Not because a new day had called him awake.
Because he had simply survived another night, and now he had to grind through another one just like it.
He felt trapped in an endless loop.
Each day an exact copy of the one before.
Stale.
Suffocating.
He yearned to grow up.
To break free of this life and go somewhere wider, somewhere else.
He dreamed of standing at the very top of the world one day, looking down at everything, feeling what freedom and power actually felt like.
He wanted strength, enough to protect himself and the people he loved.
He was done being the weakling who could only watch things happen beyond his reach.
He burned to become someone who could change his fate, seize hold of his own future.
He longed to find his own kind: people who, like him, carried something special.
People who could use magic.
He was sick of his mother’s surrender.
She had given up magic and become a Muggle, and that filled him with nothing but bitter disappointment.
Muggles.
As a species, they were contemptible, cunning, hypocritical, their hearts full of malice.
Toward wizards who wielded real power, they were eaten up by envy and fear.
Lily was nothing like those detestable Muggles.
To Snape, she had appeared like an angel.
That day, he had stood quietly to one side, watching as she descended slowly from the highest point of the swing.
It turned out he didn’t need to wait for his Hogwarts letter to find someone of his own kind.
Lily was his companion.
His kindred spirit.
Her hair was so beautiful.
Her smile so captivating.
Snape, who had always prided himself on his learning, discovered for the first time that words failed him entirely.
He could find no language — none at all, to describe Lily’s beauty.
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