Author's note:

I apologise for my use of original characters. Although I have frequently used original characters in my previous fanfiction, they have never been the most satisfactory of my works and more to the point, I've never thought original characters to be particularly necessary. Anyway, I vowed to myself never to use any for this fanfic. But, well, the ones present here appeared natural enough, and seemed to give the fanfiction a certain something that I quite liked.

'And as God and vengeance would have it..."

-The Bride, Kill Bill Vol 1 (original script)

Prologue

They have placed me in one of the cells nearest the foundations of Azkaban. There are no more Dementors left anymore to drive one insane - clearly, they are hoping that a mere century or so lying against a stone wall with the sound of the sea continuously pounding against the other side is enough to drive anyone insane. And so it should be. But I am no one, after all, so it isn't really having much of an effect on me.

It's been two years since Voldemort fell. Time does certainly fly. I can't even remember when I first came here.

The wizarding world had been awaiting a public trial, so that they could express their contempt for the murderer of their beloved Dumbledore and joint-murderer of their saviour, Harry Potter. The Ministry, however, knew better than to treat one of their best spies and Dark Arts experts (incognito, though, so to speak) in such a fashion. After all, give it another two centuries and Severus Prince Snape would be hailed as an unsung hero by future generations of naive (though perhaps not too naive) wizards and witches.

I have been very fortunate. Every so often, since I first requested it, my guards have brought me wads of paper and an ordinary quill and ink so that I may have some privacy in my writing. They are very confused. I know that they search my cell when I have gone to be exercised or simply been taken elsewhere for reasons not entirely unbeknownst to me and yet they find no paper. Just imagine: they have been giving me all this paper and what for? Nothing? Nothing! Surely not!

But it's true. I either eat what I have written (swallow my words, so to speak, ha ha) or simply stuff it into an article of clothing to release to the North Sea winds as I am exercised. Because to begin with, I had no intention to write for others to read my words. I wrote selfishly, partly to prevent my own insanity, partly to occupy myself and partly for the poetic irony. To begin with, I was almost comfortable to die with the words 'Traitor' scrawled in blood over my unmarked grave. To die with the knowledge that I am universally hated by the people I once called my colleagues and allies... At first I thought that it would not affect me, but then I realised that to be foolishness: I may not have liked them or even respected them, but I had grown to know them - their silly quirks and ways of speaking and concerns and fears and goodness knows what other nonsense. So of course it did affect me after all, but I suppressed such emotion and thought to myself, that such is the way of things. Such is the way things must be.

Then another of my memories returned.

And I was reminded, quite abruptly, that there was a reason. I may not care for a great deal many people but I am not as most think of me. I am a murderer, true, but I am also a man and perhaps most importantly in light of everything that has happened, a son as well.

So I began to write and keep. No longer swallowing my words. Write and keep, using only my wits to make sure the manuscript was well hidden enough to be found whenever I shall die but not before then.

Write and keep. History in the making.

'Any corpse that is not destroyed, gets up and kills. Then what it kills gets up and kills and kills' - Japanese proverb (adapted)

Chapter One

I think it will be best to start with my parents, and perhaps their parents as well, and so on. I may as well do this properly. I have nearly a century of my lifetime left to while away.

The Prince family are what one would call 'Old Blood' rather than 'Pure Blood'. My great great grandfather once told me that they had records going back to Roman times, when a Briton slave girl had been freed and married her Roman master, thus ensuring the magical line in our family, of the Prince family. Rather like the Dumbledores, in some respects, but I think they originate from Wales. As it is, the Prince family is spectacularly old and has always placed an emphasis on marrying their offspring to the best of the best, rather than insisting their in-laws be pure-blood for at least nine generations. Apparently, the desire for Pure Blood was something introduced by the Normans, which seems likely, because they introduced a lot of customs which the Anglo-Saxons didn't have. For instance, the tradition of a man's estate only going to his eldest son is a Norman custom, which I find quite interesting.

This is why such families are called 'Old Blood'. Whilst some, like the Dumbledores and Princes, have remained pure simply by way of chance, others, like the Malfoys and Lestranges (French, the lot of them), have insisted on it.

When my mother married my father, there was a great commotion in the family because it was the first time that a Prince had married a Muggle. At the time (this being the late fifties after all), they were all struck by the sheer novelty of it and during that period of time, a good deal of my mother's cousins and so on got themselves Muggle sweethearts and followed suit. It seems silly now, but these things happened, just as once upon a time, the Dark Arts received the respect they deserved rather than simply being avoided and smuggled away under lock and key.

Anyway, both families were very pleased: the Snapes because their son had married a family as equally old and (even better) with magic and gold attached and the Princes because their daughter had married into a family as equally old and (even better) with status and gold attatched. As it remains, the Snapes (the Princes decided to amalgamate) are the only family of Muggles and wizards alike who work co-operatively and frequently jump on to both sides of the fence. Their very existence makes a mockery of the Secrecy Act. It is rather eccentric, I'll admit, and I had the damn hardest time trying to cover this up from my fellow Slytherins.

But a lot of the commotion was made by the Pure-blooded faction. This was the time in which Lord Voldemort was on the rise, and the elitist tyranny slowly found a voice to heckle the progressive Wizarding society. A hundred years ago, and the average wizard would have dismissed them as cranks, but in such uncertain and difficult times (or did you think rationing and the necessity of regeneration after the horrendous world war only affected the Muggles?) a previously liberal minded, easy going wizard would find himself actually listening to such people and the dying cries of l'ancien regime.

A Prince, to marry a Muggle? The Princes would have been relegated to the status of blood-traitors like the Weasleys (how I pity them) if not for the considerable political clout of my great-great-grandfather and our considerable collective wealth (which was far greater than that of theirs), which they needed in the form of donations for their country manors. Even when I started school, twelve years after my parents' marriage, three years after their deaths, I would hear, when the girls had run out of gossip, the topic being revisited (all of them unaware that the only son of that woman was sitting right there in their midst): how it had been such a disgrace and how she had got herself killed ten years later, serves her right.

You can imagine how much that would hurt a twelve year old who had a hard enough time fitting into a school he was only in due to some favour exchanged by his elders and who had managed to make himself so unpopular, only to hear the young snobs conversing about his mother in such horrible, harsh tones. For all that they supposedly came from such pure families, their language wasn't exactly to their credit, either.

But all this proved very useful.

It seems that espionage runs in the family. My great-great grandfather, for instance, is in fact Head of the Department of Mysteries as well as the WSS (Wizarding Secret Services), though to the public, he is simply another Albus Dumbledore: a very gifted but eccentric, terribly old, wizard. I believe his was the vote that tipped the verdict of that hearing to Harry Potter's favour, those years ago. As it stood, my mother followed his example and became a spy, one of those tracking down the last remains of Grindlewald and ensuring that various Dark Arts rings were at least disbanded if not destroyed. My father too, was an excellent link to the Muggle world, because in those days, Muggle-baiting was far more dangerous than a simple matter of regurgitating toilets and shrinking shoes. It would not be uncommon to find a Muggle who was literally a slave in their own house or who was terrorised out of their wits by wizards. Like I said, those were desperate times and I'm sure that in some perverse way, the Wizarding world must have seen this as rightful punishment to the Muggles for having brought them into (and barely out of) a war that they hadn't had a clue about.

So there you have it. My parents were both spies and I grew up speaking five languages and reading and writing another six, though after the attack, I could barely remember three. I grew up sometimes calling my parents my uncle and aunt in public and sometimes being called by my Muggle name instead of Severus. It was not an ideal upbringing, but I do not think that I was truly unhappy. I loved my parents. In some of my recurring memories, I see myself crying as they argued with each other, but in others laughing as hard as anything (which is very strange for me to watch) whilst they teased one another affectionately. I think it was probably like most childhood's: a strange mix of the sweet and sour.

Which leads me to a certain day (a Wednesday I believe) when I was nine years old and having an early tea with my parents.

Early tea, so it was maybe four o'clock in the evening.

The three of us were seated around the large oak table that was in the kitchen. They say I had a half eaten sandwich near me on the floor when they found us, so it was obvious that the attack took us entirely by surprise.

Before Harry Potter and I managed to kill the Dark Lord, I could never remember the exact details of the attack. All I could see, for decades afterwards, was his face, white and blurred and disfigured, looking over me, with curious satisfaction. I knew that look well having been his most trusted Death Eater. For years afterwards, I could see it in my dreams and how I managed to survive those years as his slave leave me baffled and amazed to this day: having to see that face, that expression at such close quarters and for so long? I am impressed by myself, which is a very rare thing indeed.

No matter (even though it is). In they came, the Dark Lord and six of his Death Eaters. Malfoy (Abraxas that is), Nott, Rosier, Mulciber. Old Lestrange and an even older Dolohov. In they came.

It wasn't easy for them though. My mother had the fastest reflexes that I had ever seen (she always joked that it was her practice at Gobstones that she owed it to. I don't doubt that) and goodness knows she defended herself and her family damn well. My father, too, must not go without credit. The Dark Lord - to his dying day - had a scar in his shoulder that pained him when the cold of winter arrived (despite, for some reason, the newly generated body he had created for himself) and that was from one of my father's throwing knives. However, with no magic... it was a slaughter. They didn't even kill him neatly, rather, they cut at his belly and let him die clenching his jaw and writhing on the floor, surrounded by his own intestines. Of course, they made sure that my mother saw this.

But she kept on going. I can still see her now, the last image I really have of her, pushing me backwards to escape through a secret passage with tears flowing down her cheeks, cursing her murderers for all she was worth as she sent hex after hex and spell and even - eventually - curse after curse at them.

Then they got me.

I struggled, truly I did. But before I turned fifteen (and endured all of the wonders that came with it) I was actually quite small for my age. Anyway, I could only do wandless magic and even that only in the right circumstance.

But I tried.

My experience with the Dark Lord has taught me that perhaps I struggled a little too much for his liking. I have rarely seen him kill children, but usually he prefers his infamous two-step: Crutacius and then Avada Kedavra. And always let the parents watch.

Always.

His was the spell that brought me zooming towards him, and his that shook me up and down as if I were an unwanted toy before (when he realised that he would not be able to do much with a child that struggled so) hurling me backwards against the cupboards (badly damaging two of the neck vertebrae; knocking a hole into the back of my skull) and letting me fall painfully, breaking a leg against the counter and smashing the left side of my skull against the floor.

I remember no more after that, but my later activities informed me that they killed my mother soon afterwards, then left, leaving my half-dead father choking on his own vomit and drowning in his own blood. He would have been the last of us to die, if not for the fact that I was such an obstinate child that my heart just kept on beating.

How I managed to hang on for so long remains a mystery to everyone involved. The elders of my wizard family and the younger, fitter Muggles burst in, they said, about half an hour later. By then, my father had just died. They thought I was dead too, until one of my aunts had the clarity of thought to check my pulse.

As it happened, I survived but I was in a coma for the next eighteen months.

Apparently I woke up screaming, but my Muggle grandfather (who had been, to tell the truth, my favourite) a Doctor, always said that I was probably dreaming and it was just the commotion made by the nurses that woke me up. I trust his judgement: he was a very rational man and if he was unsure of something, he would always say so, rather than force himself to form one opinion or another. He wouldn't say such a thing without good reason, so I believe him. Regardless, I woke up with three metal plates in my head and what would turn into chronic migraines for the rest of my life (though I suffer them only occasionally now).

It was there that it was decided that I was to forget - for my own safety - my family. I was no longer a Prince (which is the name that I and my father had been placed under, oddly enough, for security reasons) but a fully-fledged Snape. Severus Snape to be precise. My muggle name was to be forgotten. Never to be used again. Except of course in private, by my muggle grandparents, who were as stubborn as I was. To them, I was Francis.

Recovery did not take too long. After I had got over the initial grief, I put as much of my focus into learning to walk again. It was painful and frustrating. I would frequently suffer spasm attacks, evidence of a body grown accustomed to lack of use. Sometimes I would collapse for no apparent reason, lying there, looking around me and blinking so hard it was as if I thought that that would help somehow, only to be hauled up by those beautiful, patient nurses who assisted me night and day. Other times, usually in the middle of a meal, I would black out mysteriously, again, only to be righted and mopped by the usual patient angels. There were many such things as well that I had to gain control of, ranging from the most basic (I could not control my fingers well enough to write and so frequently, my hand would whizz across the paper and off the table, hanging from my shoulder and refusing to do anything more) to the most embarrassing. Those nurses. It was always the same ones who helped me, the same faces, the same voices. I grew to love them all.

I do not know what happened to them and now I wish I had found out. They were very kind to me. No doubt they found the work unsatisfying, equally frustrating as I did the recovery and probably wearied of helping a none-too attractive boy child who spent most of his time in determined (or perhaps they saw it as sullen) silence. But they had the decency not to show such feelings to me during my recovery if they truly did find me so terrible a charge after all. That much I would always appreciate.

Three months later, and I was able to walk for perhaps an hour with no assistance and without fatally tiring myself. When that happy moment came, I was led by my grandparents (Muggle and Wizard), and my great-great grandparents to the grave of my mother and father.

One of the strange after effects of the attack was that I had no real memories. I would 'remember' things because I had heard them being told so often that they had simply become part of my knowledge, but I myself had no recollection of them. The only memory I really had was that of the attack and that was hazy and sketchy enough in itself. As I grew older, memories, violent and powerful, would surge from wherever they had been hiding and stun me (even as an adult) into complete silence. But these were brief and sometimes would dim away so that they were little more than badly remembered dreams. Disturbingly enough (though this I never shared with anyone) it seemed that this strange sort of amnesia would spread to cover more recent memories, after the attack. Who was that girl who laughed at me as I failed (repeatedly) to ride that broomstick? Why on earth had that Potter managed to get to it first, or was it just another of his powers, like speaking to snakes and charming not only the wizarding world itself, but also the cleverest wizard of the age? I do not know.

So there I was, standing at the grave of my parents, the grief that I had managed to put aside if only to recover properly, returning with all the tenacity as if I had first heard the news. And yet I was barely able to remember what they had looked like, what they had sounded like, who they were.

And that it was when I began to feel.

If people are meant to be happy (as if that were the basic state of mind, rather than the purely blank and detatched that so many enthuse, which, I feel, tells one a lot about the state of the world we live in today) then happiness cannot truly be described as an emotion. It is with this in mind that I consider hate to be a true feeling. So I began to feel.

I stood before them, over where their heads would be some five foot under, and I began to shake. Gently at first, but then violently enough for my muggle Grandfather to put his arms around me and hold me close to him.

"What's happening?" I asked. "What are they going to do about this?"

Pause.

"Nothing." That was my wizarding grandfather. He always reminded me of Barty Crouch Snr, but it was when I was older that I realised his stiffness was borne out of awkwardness and his desire to remain quiet and unseen.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"Why?" I asked.

That was when my muggle grandfather sighed. His shoulders were set in that way of his that meant he was not going to say anything. He was leaving this to the wizards, who would know what to say. It was their government after all. Knowing him as I did, I knew that that was not a good sign.

"Why?" My great-great grandfather breathed, long moustache and beard being ruffled by the wind. He always looked so silly compared to my clean shaven muggle grandfather, to this day I have not got over it. Perhaps that was why I trusted him (and this hurts to admit it) so little compared to the unquestioning trust I presented my muggle relatives. At times, I would look at my wizarding relatives and think 'damn it. To hell with you all,' so ridiculous and petty did they seem in comparison to the muggles that I knew, who had to put up with being thought of as inferior and mere objects to place spells on, to make them behave properly, as if they were annoying children or troublesome pets. Perhaps that explains my willingness to spill blood, particularly of wizards it seems, over the years. I hated them all.

And my years as a Slytherin helped no less because I ended up hating muggles too. I hated everyone, including myself. But then, as I have always reasoned, I have always had high standards.

"Why?" He repeated. "Because the Ministry don't want a panic, Severus. They want everyone to rest assured that all is well, that no one is being murdered and if it is, it's because they married muggles."

"You see?" My wizard grandfather sneered. "It's all their fault. They brought it onto themselves." I remember looking at him surprised. I had never heard him so bitter and sarcastic.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Your parents didn't die, murdered," my muggle grandfather informed me. "They died due to a tragic fire accident."

"A fire accident that mysteriously enough, left the house untouched," my other grandfather added. What followed was a very strange pause. Everything began to flash bright colours and I expected my vision to go dark as it usually did. The psychedelic colours were generally the unwanted heralds of a fainting fit.

"But--"

"It was in the Prophet," my great great grandfather interrupted me. "It's official."

So I learned how to feel. Not only that, but I swore my first oath. If my parents weren't going to get justice in this world from those in charge, then they were just going to make do with getting it from their son.