Jennifer

Actual arc, by the way:

‘My mother was a witch, and my father was a muggle. My father abused me - I clung to my magical heritage as proof that I didn’t deserve to be mistreated. Lily my only friend.

When I went to Hogwarts, I was bullied by a group of popular boys - they never got in trouble for it, no matter how terrible they were. (I was a Slytherin, so therefore I didn’t deserve protection.)

I fell in with people who told me that I was right to hate the boys who bullied me, and right to believe my magical heritage meant I was better than people like my father. That the people who hurt me, and the people who let it happen, were the ones who were worthless, not me.

I clung to blood purity, the only belief system available that told me I deserved better than the cruelty I endured.

It cost me my friendship with Lily. But it was easier to blame James Potter, the boy who tormented me, than the beliefs which I needed to survive.

Lily stopped being my friend, but she never stopped being important to me. When I realized I had endangered Lily, I switched sides and became a spy.

I didn’t save her. She died, and it was my fault.

Then Dumbledore told me Voldemort wasn’t gone. That he needed me to maintain my persona, so I could continue to spy when he returned.

Dumbledore asked of me - be your worst self. Live in the mindset of the war. Do not grow beyond this. Or everything might fall apart.

It was easy - my persona required me to give in to my worst impulses, to lash out at vulnerable targets. Like Harry Potter, who looked just like the person who had hurt me so badly.

I protected him, because he was Lily’s son. I attacked him, because he was James’.

I was not a good person. I don’t think I could have been if I tried. I had been a bitter, vulnerable child, and every adult in my life failed me. That sort of damage lingers.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower has two wonderful universes that take this complex character so many seem to miss all the depth of, and makes him someone you can honestly like, without ignoring the aspects of his canon self that made you hate him. His relationship with Harry improves too, once he takes a step back and looks at the man he’s become, and whether he wants to be that man anymore.

Crucially, in one of those Snape has the tiniest bit of extra support over canon Snape, both when he is young and when he comes to teach at Hogwarts, while in the other he gets a sharp shock that makes him incapable of looking at Harry the same way he has been, the way Dumbledore pushed him in to.