The Boy's Story

The Boy's Story

Twenty years ago, at 19 Spinner's End, there stood an ordinary brick house where a pale ten-year-old boy lived.

The surroundings were cold and gloomy, but they could not compare to the darkness of the boy's childhood.

Because of his family, because of his bloodline.

His father was an alcoholic with a violent temper and a tendency toward domestic abuse. He often mistreated the boy and his mother.

His father was an ordinary Muggle, while his mother was descended from a pure-blood family.

Domestic violence, crying, and darkness were the themes of his childhood.

His fragile heart was stained black.

He became cold, insecure, introverted, and gloomy.

He began to like hiding in the darkness.

He began to have a special fondness for black...

Then, he encountered the demon that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

It was a bright, sunny afternoon. He saw that dancing girl, and her smile.

It was warm.

He remembered it clearly, and he would never forget it.

There was a very large tree, lush and green.

The little girl made flowers bloom, and he saw petals swirling around her.

He and she were the same kind of people...

But he did not dare go out. He could only hide in the grass, where it concealed his overly pale face as he silently watched the girl...

Because he was so introverted and timid...

He prepared for many days. When the girl came to swing there once again, he stood up from the grass...

No one but him knew how much courage it took at that moment, or how nervous he was inside...

He wanted to get close to that brightly smiling girl, but he was afraid...

He was afraid of being hurt... like a moth flying into a flame...

Fortunately, the girl did not run away because of his appearance.

But when the girl's sister learned that he was a wizard, the terror on her face seemed to show extreme disgust toward him. She wanted to pull her sister away, and in anger, the boy called her a "Mudblood"...

Then they left, and the boy sat on the grass in a daze...

But to his immense delight, the girl appeared again later...

They talked, played, frolicked, and laughed...

After learning about the boy's family, the girl looked at him with the most beautiful eyes in the world and comforted him...

He was intoxicated by those gentle green eyes. At the time, he did not understand what love was...

But he fell in love with green...

This was a world that belonged only to the two of them.

They spent half a year together.

That time was long, and that time was short.

That time was the most wonderful memory of the boy's life.

If the boy's life was a stretch of darkness, then within that darkness was a small meadow blooming with flowers. There was a towering tree, a swaying swing, and two small figures lying side by side on the soft grass. Innocent smiles hung on their faces as they looked up at the azure sky...

He was eleven years old when he received his acceptance letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

But he did not want to go, even though he had wanted to leave that family countless times before...

Yet to his wild delight, the girl had received a letter too. They held hands and skipped about together...

They entered Hogwarts together.

But to his disappointment, he was sorted into Slytherin while the girl was sorted into Gryffindor.

Only after entering Slytherin did he learn how terrible Slytherin's reputation was. No one wanted to associate with Slytherin students.

But the girl did not care at all. No matter what others thought of her, she remained friends with him.

Their friendship did not fade in the slightest.

The boy wanted to tell her that she could stay farther away from him, but he could not say it. What if it truly became that way? He could not imagine such a scene.

The girl was outstanding and charming. Her grades in every subject were excellent, and every teacher in the school liked her.

The boy had expected this long ago.

Especially in Potions class, she won the teacher's praise countless times, and Potions was also the girl's favorite subject.

But no one knew that the boy's talent for Potions was truly the greatest. He did not show off, both because his personality made him unwilling to attract attention and because he did not want to steal the girl's spotlight.

In his first year, the boy had already mastered magic that seventh-year students learned.

At the same time, he invented many interesting prank spells.

Those spells spread through the school, but no one knew they had been invented by the boy.

The boy began to dislike someone named James. James was the school's star student, and the two of them were as different as heaven and earth.

But that was not why he disliked him. It was because the girl had become friends with him.

The boy told the girl that James was an arrogant fool. The girl advised the boy to stay away from certain Slytherin students. Although they argued, it did not harm their relationship.

In his third year, he saw the girl's Patronus. It was an elegant, noble silver doe, and its dazzling light was imprinted on the boy's heart.

He fell in love with silver, because that was the girl's color.

Three years had passed, and they were both fourth-year students.

The boy came to hate James and his group more and more: Sirius Black and Lupin.

He wanted to uncover their secret. Sirius Black deceived him, telling him to go to the Shrieking Shack in order to scare him.

On that full-moon night, he went. Lupin turned into a wolf, and he nearly lost his life. James, whom he hated most, saved him.

But that only made him angry.

They were in their fifth year, and they had to take the OWLs exams.

James and the others actually humiliated him in public.

He was hung upside down in the air, utterly helpless, his hands flailing wildly.

The people around him watched his wretched appearance and burst into laughter.

The girl appeared and saved the boy.

The boy hated James to death, because James not only used a spell he had invented to humiliate him, but did so in front of the girl he loved most.

When the girl tried to comfort him, he was so ashamed and furious that, in a moment of impulsiveness, he said, "Mudblood."

The two of them broke apart!

He was afraid and regretful.

Why had he said something like that?

An apology was no longer enough. The boy had truly hurt the girl too deeply.

The two of them drifted farther and farther apart.

He worshipped Voldemort and joined the Death Eaters' preparatory group.

In his seventh year, he was eighteen and graduated, officially becoming one of Voldemort's Death Eaters.

At the age of twenty, he went to Hogwarts seeking a job and overheard Sybill Trelawney's prophecy. He told Voldemort about it.

Yet he never expected that the woman in the prophecy would be the one he loved most.

The boy knelt at Voldemort's feet and begged him to spare the girl's life, but Voldemort refused.

Headmaster Dumbledore's office.

The boy begged him to save the girl.

The wise old man asked him, "What can you do for me?"

"Anything," he replied without hesitation.

But that did not save the girl.

When he heard the news that the girl had been killed, he wept bitterly and said in inconsolable grief, "I wish it had been me..."

For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in guilt and self-blame, unable to free himself.

Because he had caused the death of the person he loved most...

When the old man asked the boy to protect the girl's child, he agreed, only because that child belonged to the woman he loved most, because of those beautiful eyes...

He merged with the darkness, bearing every stain of infamy as he lonely guarded that devout love...

Until... forever...

This was the story of a boy. This was the story of a man.

That boy was Severus Snape. That girl was Lily Evans.

Luo Bei: Who did Rowling put the most care into writing in Harry Potter?

Harry? Get out of here, extra.

Dumbledore? Screw off.

Voldemort? Eat shit.

It was Severus Snape, a demon for six years who became an angel in a single day.

For the person he loved most, he betrayed Voldemort, became a double agent, and silently protected Harry in the darkness...

No one knew of all his sacrifices, yet he had no regrets.

Everyone knew about Snape: he was a good man and had actually been protecting Harry all along.

But that was all.

No one knew the specific details. This chapter was not made up; it was written to help everyone better understand and appreciate the professor.

Twenty years ago was true, because he was born in 1960 and died at the age of thirty-eight.

It was true that he met Lily when he was ten.

The swing was real.

Under the tree was real.

It was true that Lily used magic to make flowers bloom.

It was true that he hid in the grass and watched Lily for several days.

It was true that his talent for Potions far surpassed Lily's.

It was true that he learned all magic in his first year. Sirius Black said so.

The color he liked was real.

Everything was true.

Damn it, I checked Tieba, forums, Tianya, encyclopedias...

I thought this chapter would be the easiest, but it turned out to be the hardest. I did not even write many of the details. What a pain.

There were originally even more touching parts during Harry's seven years at school, but I will not write them. I will only write up to Harry's birth.

I want bookmarks, I want recommendation votes.

o(∩∩)o Thank you.