Snape's pure-blood friend

In this alternate timeline, Lord Voldemort killed Albus Dumbledore at the Battle of the Hogwarts Express in early September 1979.

Many of his closest followers including Bellatrix Lestrange, Severus Snape, Regulus Black, and Evan Rosier were captured by the Order of the Phoenix and sent to Azkaban. Yet, the Dark Lord emerged victorious. Now he uses the death of Dumbledore to create his final Horcrux.

Full story: ”Lord Voldemort and the Lost Decades, ” by Birger, ao3

September 1st, 1979

A cold wind whipped across the cliffs of the Irish coast as Voldemort's remaining followers gathered inside the ancient stone keep known only to them as Slytherin's Fortress. Everyone was still in shock of had just happened.

Even Voldemort, who stood at the front of the hall, seemed frozen not in fear, but in the strange, heady disbelief of a long-awaited dream made real too suddenly.

Albus Dumbledore was dead. Killed by his wand. Killed by his hand. Killed in a flash of green that still burned behind his eyes.

Dolohov stood slightly apart from the others, still unable to fully comprehend what he had just done.

Lucius stood beside Narcissa, almost shaking from the adrenaline of the battle. Greyback paced restlessly near the door. The Carrows, Rodolphus, and Macnair lingered uneasily. Their victory felt unreal.

Finally, Voldemort spoke.

"You doubt what you have seen."

The Death Eaters bowed instantly.

"You wonder," he continued, "how it happened so swiftly. You wonder whether it was truly possible."

His red eyes gleamed, feverish with triumph.

"I have dreamed of this moment since Slytherin's lineage first stirred in me. And now the greatest obstacle to our ascent has fallen."

A murmur of awe rippled through the hall.

"But hear this," Voldemort said, lifting one long finger. "I did not kill Albus Dumbledore alone."

He turned toward Dolohov.

"Antonin. Step forward."

The Russian wizard obeyed, startled.

"You," Voldemort said, his voice reverent and deadly at once, "struck the blow that unbalanced a legend. You enabled what no witch or wizard in this age believed possible. Without your spell, Dumbledore would have crushed us."

Dolohov felt honored for the first time in years.

"You have earned my gratitude," Voldemort continued, "and the gratitude of all who stand here."

The followers clapped, some more fearfully than others. Dolohov bowed his head.

Voldemort's expression hardened.

"Do not mistake this victory for the end," he hissed. "Most of our forces have been captured. Bellatrix. Severus. Karkaroff. Regulus. Rosier, Mulciber. Avery. They rot in Azkaban this very moment. Even though they will endure... it weakens us. We cannot afford such losses again."

Lucius shifted nervously. Narcissa held his hand in comfort.

Voldemort turned away from them, pacing slowly before the long stone table.

"The Ministry will never fear us until we spread our influence through its very veins. Power cannot be seized from outside alone. It must be undermined from within. The next step is clear. Our next target is the Ministry of Magic."

Gasps filled the hall.

"We will infiltrate it. We will tempt its weak, corrupt its ambitious, intimidate its fearful. Millicent Bagnold trusts her Aurors. Barty Crouch clings to his law. Dawlish thinks himself unbreakable."

A smile curled his lip.

"They have seen nothing."

He raised the Dark Mark high above his head. It glowed green against his skin.

"Tonight," he declared, "we celebrate the fall of Albus Dumbledore. Tomorrow, tomorrow we begin the fall of the Ministry itself."

The hall erupted in shouts, cheers, and twisted laughter. For the first time in decades, Voldemort's followers felt something they had never felt before. They felt victory. The real war could finally begin.

The celebration inside Slytherin's Fortress echoed like a storm. Shouts of triumph and the manic laughter of those who had finally tasted victory after years of humiliation, filled its ancient halls. Bottles opened and glasses clashed. Drinks were spilled on the floor as the Death Eaters celebrated their victory. However, Voldemort drifted away from it all.

Outside, the fortress grounds were quiet. This part of Ireland was barren, forgotten, yet rich in serpents from Salazar Slytherin’s retreat. Riddle had always sensed them here, hiding in the rocks and heather.

A cluster of snakes stirred at the sound of his steps. A lone adder, lifted its head to regard the intruder.

Voldemort raised the Elder Wand.

"Come," he whispered in Parseltongue.

The adder obeyed instantly, gliding forward with reverent hesitation. Voldemort knelt, allowing the snake's small tongue to flick against the cold air inches from his hand.

"You will be more than you are," he murmured.

Magic burst from the Elder Wand, silent, sickly green. The adder shuddered, body twisting as its bones elongated, scales stretching and darkening. It grew thicker, longer, coiling upon itself as its fangs lengthened into pale ivory knives. When it finally stilled, the creature was enormous, larger than an anaconda but carrying the deadly venom of a viper. Her eyes glowed an unnatural yellow.

Voldemort placed a hand over her head.

"You shall be Nagini," he declared softly. "My companion. My sentinel. My vessel."

The Elder Wand hovered over his chest as his lips formed the incantation he had invented long ago,

Pain surged through him. His soul tore once more. The sky darkened.

Nagini's body spasmed, and Voldemort pressed his hand harder against her scales. A fragment of what he was, what he had chosen to become, forced itself into the serpent. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.

Then it was done. The snake rose in the grass, towering, coiling protectively around him.

Voldemort breathed out slowly.

"The final step," he whispered.

With Nagini at his side, his last anchor, his final horcrux, he was now truly unkillable.

Anyone wanna share their ideas on how Sev survives the second war? Bc i know most of you have one ;3

After Severus was appointed headmaster, Sybil thought of trying to ask him to make the centaur(not sure how his name was spelled) leave the school entirely instead of splitting classes with her, especially that death eaters in general don't like half breeds(I always imagine that some teachers' relationship with Severus was still a bit academic even after what he did). Severus is like OMG I'm not doing this now I don't have the energy for this so he dismisses her and is rude. She gets angry and starts to bring up Dumbledore's death and tells him bad things would happen, like usual. But as he's getting her out, she suddenly gets a real prophecy about his death. After she returns to consciousness, he acts like nothing has happened despite being internally horrified and then prepares a potion that limits blood loss to just enough to sell the act of his death (he really thought people thinking he died would be a great way to avoid highly possible imprisonment in Azkaban.)

It astounds me how people sometimes brush over the social ramifications of SWM. The sexual assault took place publically. People were laughing. He was suspended in the air, so even people at the back of the crowd had a good view. Hell, people in the castle could glance out a window and perfectly see what was happening in the courtyard. And if you didn't manage to catch the live show, you can bet everyone at school will describe it to you in explicit, embellished detail.

It's a nightmare. A living, horrific nightmare. Worse than The Prank. Fifteen year olds are already insecure about their bodies. Imagine being violated and exposed in such a way, your body used against you, each scar and pimple displayed, genitals and arse and belly seen and mocked by everyone for two years.

And already Severus' social standing was iffy because he's a low-class boy in a bigotted school. If he had had any respect before this, James and Sirius good as killed and buried it with SWM. The studious kids who might've been neutral about him won't touch him with a six foot pole now because he has become an eyesore and a joke. Those studious kids are the future Healers, Aurors, lawyers, etc, and they will always remember how back when they were in school that Snivellus kid was "pathetic" and "flashed" the whole school. It's horrible and sick, but this is how these things are regarded in life.

And I can guarantee you Severus was getting no invitations to the Slug Club after this. Which means no connections in the Potioneer community, no future sponsors. Nothing but exclusion and vicious ridicule by people he had to sit next to and share meals with every day.

You know what's the worse part? Lily was one of the people who mocked him when he was at his lowest.

Lily, whose furious expression had twitched for an instant as though she was going to smile

“I won’t bother in future. And I’d wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus.”

“I don’t want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You’re as bad as [Snape] is.”

I can't believe this girl is treated like the paragon of empathy and good morality. Her old friend is being publically humiliated and sexually harassed and she:

1) Almost cracks a smile.

2) Tells him oh what a great bother it is to be constantly helping him and how she won't do it anymore.

3) Calls him the same name his bullies use to break down his confidence and sense of self. A name Severus himself has probably gone to Lily to complain about before, when they were 12 or 13 and comforting your friend over their bullies' namecalling was things friends do.

4) Tells him to wash his underwear before leaving him there. He's poor. He wears his mother's and father's hand-me-downs. He probably has had the same three pairs of underwear for years and he has to rotate between them, and laundry day would render him naked. There's nothing shameful about this. Lily knows these things. She knows the living conditions of his house. His rich bullies have mocked him for years over his hygiene and clothes. And Lily uses the same insults when Severus is a kicked-down cornered animal, lashing out.

5) Tells Severus he is as bad as James. Severus is as bad as his sexual harasser? Severus is as bad as the rich boy who bullies his peers for no reason?

that elbow will never be the same, dislocating again and again far too easily, but it would have been worse if the girl hadn't helped. a decade later, the girl woman girl walks out of her school straight into a war, and spends the rest of her short life fighting and hiding but above all, healing.

the girl has her parents and (at least for now) her sister and later she will have mary and marlene and alice and the boy has nobody but her. perhaps, that's where the problems start: when the girl staggers under the weight of holding up the boy's soul alone and the boy puts the girl on a pedestal she can't possible stay on and the girl forgives and forgives when she shouldn't, when she should put her foot down and tell the boy you cannot see me as an exception to the rest of my kind; you cannot hurt those like me then turn around and say "but not you!"; you cannot truly love me if you hate my blood but she doesn't because they've been friends for years and he has no-one else and they have been lily and sev for so long she doesn't think she remembers how to be anything else and the boy does not understand that he is not her entire world when she is his.

maybe it's because she bandaged his cuts and smeared bruise ointment onto his skin after every time tobias snape came home drunk. maybe it's because he'd taught her all the wizarding ways— the manners, the clothing, the history, how to act, what to say— so when she finally went to hogwarts, she managed to fit in, said well met instead of hi, did not seem to be an outsider like the other muggleborns. maybe it's because she was so talented that nobody could say she was inherently worse at magic. maybe it's because she was the only good thing in his life for years and years and so he lifted her onto a pedestal so high he couldn't see the mud anymore. maybe it's because she was his first friend. maybe it's because he loved her.

but whatever the reason, severus snape saw lily evans as an exception. an exception to everyone he hissed mudblood at in the halls, an exception to the dirt the plagued the rest of her kind, an exception to his hatred. she was one of the good ones, she was not like other mudbloods, she was different.

and it was always going to end this way. it didn't have to end this way. they were doomed from the start. they could have prevented this. it was written in the stars. they could have rewritten the stars, shot up arrows and felled a hundred then flown burning kites until there were a hundred more in new places. it was fate. fate isn't real.

but a man has a doe patronus and a woman is a healer and a man has a bad elbow and a woman crushes her sopophorus beans every time and a boy and a girl walked into a scary new world side by side at eleven years old. what could touch that? what couldn't?

severus snape is not a good man. severus snape is a hero. severus snape is bitter and petty and cruel. severus snape slept in a dormitory for seven years with boys who would have killed him if he did not suffocate half of himself. severus snape is a bigot. severus snape is a little boy in a mining town for whom muggle meant beatings and hunger and helplessness and for whom magic meant warmth and food and safety. severus snape is a cruel teacher. severus snape never wanted to teach in the first place.

severus snape did good things, in the end. and maybe he did them because he wanted to make the world kinder, even if he could not come to care for the boy who lived. maybe he did it only for the memory of a woman he did not truly respect while she was alive.

do you think the orphans will care why you build the orphanage? a rabbi asked, long ago. after all this time? an old man asks, now.

how could it matter? how could it not?

a boy from a mining town answers. always.

most of the time quora answers about snape absolutely suck, but this time they were great

and i mean it. a fandom knitted out of canonically classist characters who were bullies, instead of the teenagers who sacrificed everything they shouldn't have had to for the sake of rebellion and resistance. the teenagers we've read about over the course of seven books. their losses, their grief, their struggles, their deteriorating mental health. and somehow, a huge chunk of hp readers decided that was not appealing enough for them to deal with. they would rather escape to the blank canvas of the 70s and make up happy fanon content surrounding a bunch of carefree, privileged upper class kids. they are not intellectually driven enough to face the harsher canon.

we often tend to make up excuses for people's inexcusable deeds if they're pretty and rich right ? we see that in today's headlines, pop culture and politics alike, all the time. well, the fandom's approach towards james potter and sirius black should hold up a mirror for you as to what exactly keeps things like the met gala and celebrity worship culture relevant in today's world amidst numerous human rights crises.

snape's bullying is primarily excused and defended for the mere fact that he was not good looking and belonged from a poorer, marginalized class of the wizarding society. if they claim it was because he joined an extremist group, there is a high chance its coming from barty crouch jr stan or a regulus black stan. so its basically disguised hypocrisy.

fetishization of the queer community in the name of inclusiveness, perpetrated largely by the wolfstar fandom, is glaring signal that people who claim to be allies often end up repeating the same cycles queer people work tirelessly to break.

treating women characters as wombs for their gay ships' children, using sapphic narratives as nothing more than mere tools to get rid of said women characters and not meaningful themes, defending sexual humiliation, having this odd sense of moral superiority because they have brainwashed themselves into believing that they're a "seperate" fandom, even though they piggyback off of canon characters and the story itself, no ocs, no original work.

they are everything they claim to be fighting against. they will destroy your safe space while claiming they are the safest spaces in the fandom, they will destroy you emotionally for liking or engaging with canon content when they are doing the exact same thing, they will claim to be morally justified and even different while having zero moral grounds themselves. they are blatantly classist, sexist, and disrespectful to the queer community all while claiming to be the opposite.

I believe making them a quasi aristocratic pureblood family who would adopt Severus in a heartbeat and surrounds him with riches diminishes his story greatly.

It turns him from “brilliant half-blood poor kid who fought for every scrap of knowledge against a society that already set him for failure from his conception” into “disgraced heir who could have had it all.”

Making his maternal family rich and powerful subtly (or not so much) reinforces the idea that worth and talent are backed by old money and blood, even when the narrative of the books and the fandom pretend to critique the blood supremacy culture established in the books.

Many people create lists of synonyms for the word 'said,' but what about the word 'look'? Here are some synonyms that I enjoy using in my writing, along with their meanings for your reference. While all these words relate to 'look,' they each carry distinct meanings and nuances, so I thought it would be helpful to provide meanings for each one.

Gaze - To look steadily and intently, especially in admiration or thought.

Glance - A brief or hurried look.

Peek - A quick and typically secretive look.

Peer - To look with difficulty or concentration.

Scan - To look over quickly but thoroughly.

Observe - To watch carefully and attentively.

Inspect - To look at closely in order to assess condition or quality.

Stare - To look fixedly or vacantly at someone or something.

Glimpse - To see or perceive briefly or partially.

Eye - To look or stare at intently.

Peruse - To read or examine something with great care.

Scrutinize - To examine or inspect closely and thoroughly.

Behold - To see or observe a thing or person, especially a remarkable one.

Witness - To see something happen, typically a significant event.

Spot - To see, notice, or recognize someone or something.

Contemplate - To look thoughtfully for a long time at.

Sight - To suddenly or unexpectedly see something or someone.

Ogle - To stare at in a lecherous manner.

Leer - To look or gaze in an unpleasant, malicious way.

Gawk - To stare openly and stupidly.

Gape - To stare with one's mouth open wide, in amazement.

Squint - To look with eyes partially closed.

Regard - To consider or think of in a specified way.

Admire - To regard with pleasure, wonder, and approval.

Skim - To look through quickly to gain superficial knowledge.

Reconnoiter - To make a military observation of a region.

Flick - To look or move the eyes quickly.

Rake - To look through something rapidly and unsystematically.

Glare - To look angrily or fiercely.

Peep - To look quickly and secretly through an opening.

Focus - To concentrate one's visual effort on.

Discover - To find or realize something not clear before.

Spot-check - To examine something briefly or at random.

Devour - To look over with eager enthusiasm.

Examine - To inspect in detail to determine condition.

Feast one's eyes - To look at something with great enjoyment.

Catch sight of - To suddenly or unexpectedly see.

Clap eyes on - To suddenly see someone or something.

Set eyes on - To look at, especially for the first time.

Take a dekko - Colloquial for taking a look.

Leer at - To look or gaze in a suggestive manner.

Rubberneck - To stare at something in a foolish way.

Make out - To manage to see or read with difficulty.

Lay eyes on - To see or look at.

Pore over - To look at or read something intently.

Ogle at - To look at in a lecherous or predatory way.

Pry - To look or inquire into something in a determined manner.

Dart - To look quickly or furtively.

Drink in - To look at with great enjoyment or fascination.

Bask in - To look at or enjoy something for a period of time.

Snape says anything critical about Neville, he's the devil incarnate. McGonagall publicly ridicules Neville and leaves him stranded with a murderer on the loose. *crickets*

Snape makes a bitchy comment about Hermione's teeth, grab your torch and pitchfork. Trelawney insults Hermione repeatedly. *Crickets*

Barty turns 14yo Draco into an animal and physically beats him against the stone floor, making Draco scream in pain. Barty performs the torture and killing spells in front of children who lost their families to those spells. *Barty fans invent a fanon that has Barty being a sweet lost lamb*

Hagrid performs body modification on an 11yo Dudley, who he doesn't know and certainly has no jurisdiction over, resulting in Dudley needing corrective surgery. Fans; *Good old Hagrid*

So bullying and child endangerment is acceptable if it's by a popular character or comic relief? Physical child abuse is acceptable if it's towards a child you don't like?

So, is Snape bitchy? Yes. But the monster they like to make him out to be? Hell no. In fact, compared to what the others do, he's a freaking delight.

Imagine someone like Petunia poking at every raw nerve: mocking your looks, poverty, and family—relentlessly pressing your deepest insecurities. Be honest how many of you would actually keep your cool?? Yeah, thought so. But sure, let’s hold nine-year-old Snape to standards most adults struggle to meet.

Sorry—not sorry—that Severus Snape was nine. Sorry that he was neglected and surrounded by violence. Sorry he felt so insecure after being humiliated for wearing his mother’s clothes, passed down out of poverty, in front of his peers. Sorry he didn’t have years of therapy to regulate his emotions and meet your impossibly high standards for 'acceptable reactions.'

But sure, keep judging a child just trying to survive in a world that offered him nothing but pain. If labeling a traumatized kid a 'Nazi' or 'terrorist' makes you feel superior, go ahead.

Meanwhile, he takes *2* points from Gryffindor for backtalk and a fucked-up potion *that was potent enough to melt a cauldron and send Neville to the Hospital Wing*.

Whilst Minerva takes *150* points from Gryffindor for her students being out of bed and having "lied" to Draco about a dragon (BIG NOTE HERE: SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE THEY HAD A DRAGON. SHE JUST THINKS THEY ARE OUT OF BED, AND MADE-UP A STORY TO GET DRACO OUT OF BED TOO).

(This also doesn't take into account the *5* points Minerva took from Hermione after the troll incident at Halloween. Which imo, the 150 point deduction would have been more appropriate for THAT situation!!)

How y'all gonna sit here and say Sev is biased when in the entirity of just the first book - where he is heavily implied to be this awful, nasty teacher - HE TAKES 2* WHOLE POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR??