A Harry Potter Fanfiction:

SUMMARY: Snape reminisces about the true reason he hates Harry Potter.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter characters. I'm just borrowing them.

RATING: M for extreme violence and torture. If you are easily offended, don't read this! You have been warned.

I Am Severus Snape

By

Princess Angelita

I walk down the damp dungeon corridor, trying not to slip on the slimy surface of the granite floors. Generations of slime, ugly green-brown slime . . . a mixture of rank moisture, dirt, mold, centuries-old blood and sweat from thousands of people. Slime . . . just like Harry Potter, like James Potter, going back thousands of years to the first Potter who has ever lived. Slime in human form.

I was not able to destroy the Potter I hated most . . . James Potter . . . although I was a crucial instrument in his downfall. But I will destroy his son, whom I hate almost as much.

The Boy who Lived. The Chosen One.

I come to a stop in front of the worst cells. It is tiny, no larger than five feet by five feet, with a low ceiling that prevents even the shortest man from standing, and a floor made from cement with broken glass mixed in.

I look at the thin, ragged figure inside, a smile on my lips. I nod to the two men who have accompanied me, and they open the door and drag the limp figure out.

"Harry Potter," I say my voice triumphant.

He looks up at me with loathing, the blazing prideful hatred in his eyes the same as his fathers. I hit him across the face with all the force I can muster. I order my men to take him to The Room.

The Room . . . the room of torture. Never have I thought I would be so happy.

Only once before . . . but not now. First Potter must be taken care of.

The men strap him onto a long, wooden table. They bind his hands and feet with thick leather straps. I motion for them to leave. I draw my wand.

"Crucio!" I scream.

Potter erupts into an agony of screeches. I find myself laughing with the utmost amusement.

He is still screaming.

The screaming . . .

It has been so long ago, yet I will always remember as if it were yesterday.

My time at Hogwarts . . .

From the moment I was Sorted into Slytherin, they made my life hell . . . James Potter and Sirius Black. Their other friends, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin . . . well . . . I hate them because they were there. Pettigrew, now known as Wormtail, I hate because he laughed. Lupin . . . he watched, but didn't stop them.

But I hated no one more than I hated Black and Potter.

They tortured me from the beginning, cruelly and without qualm. At first, the torture was childish . . . pushing me into the lake, locking me in broom closets, tripping me as I walked by . . . then it grew worse. By their fourth year, Potter and Black were using hexes, jinxes, even some curses that would have led to their expulsion if they had been caught. They delighted in my humiliation, my screams of pain, the constant, never ending anxiety and nervousness they caused me. I was always looking behind my back, always waiting for that next . . . but that is of no consequence now.

I wanted to kill myself. And after my mother died, beaten to death by my Muggle father . . . yes, I admit I am half-blood! . . . after my mother died, I cared for nothing.

Back at Hogwarts, with the torture continually increasing in venom, never ceasing for even a brief moment . . . I stole a steak knife from the dinner table and snuck out of the castle. I went down to the lake, stood in front of the cold water and slit my wrists deeply. I fell to my knees, watching the beautiful scarlet blood making patterns in the cold, clear water.

And there she was.

I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder, a soft voice whispered a few words, and a white light bathed my wrists in its gleam. I looked up. I saw creamy skin glowing in the moonlight, black-blue curls tumbling around the oval face of an angel. She looked down at me with almond-shaped gray eyes; eyes filled with tears . . . tears for me. Her pale lips trembled and she knelt beside me, throwing her arms around me and holding me close to her. She was crying. Crying for me, crying my pain, shedding the tears that I could not.

We were hardly ever separated after that.

Her name was Neveah. Neveah Astrid Bulgakov. Her name meant butterfly, and that is what I called her. My butterfly. My angel. Perfection.

She endured ridicule for being my girlfriend, yet she ignored it. She stayed by my side throughout all Potter and Black's torture of me, she fought with me as I defended myself. I loved her more than I had ever loved anything.

We consummated our love the August before our sixth year. It was perfect, as I thought it would be. Her white skin . . .

We returned to Hogwarts, enduring the same humiliations as the year before.

Then one November night, Neveah came to me and whispered four words into my ear.

"I am with child."

I was awash with love, happiness, and plans for our future. We would marry, I told her, as soon as the Christmas holidays came. Her mother, the only relation she had left, would not mind. In her mother's country, young marriage and childbirth were common. Neveah laughed with me as I lifted her up, spun her around, kissed her deeply.

"I will be Mrs. Severus Snape," she whispered with pride.

Her pregnancy progressed normally. We were married secretly in a small ceremony at her mother's home. We planned on keeping our marriage a secret from the other students at first, until the pregnancy was too noticeable to hide under school robes. Only the headmaster Albus Dumbledore and the school nurse knew of it.

It was February, a few days before St. Valentine's Day.

I overheard some Gryffindors talking about how Potter and Black were sneaking off that night. I decided to follow them, to catch them unawares and make them pay for all they had done to me.

If only I knew . . .

If only . . .

I snuck out of the castle early that night, waited for them by the Great Hall. I followed them down to the Whomping Willow, watched them press a knob on the side of the tree to still it. They slipped into a hole at the bottom of the tree. I followed them as quietly as I could. I followed them down a tunnel, up some stairs, and into an ancient house.

Without warning, they turned around and grabbed me, tied me up with Muggle rope.

I realized it had all been a trap.

I couldn't move. I couldn't even struggle.

I heard screaming from the room next to us. Horrible, painful screams.

With a wink at Potter, Black lifted me up and tossed me into the next room. Lupin was there . . . but it wasn't Lupin. He was changing, transforming. I heard terrified shrieks coming from my own mouth as I realized he was changing into a werewolf.

I could hear Black's laughter coming from behind me.

"That's enough," I heard Potter say.

I felt a hand grasp me on the back of my robes and pull me from the room. Still laughing, Black closed the door on the werewolf.

"Let's have a little fun," he said.

"We'd better go," Potter said, "what if Moony gets out?"

Black shrugged. "He won't." He drew his wand and aimed it at me.

"Expelliarmus!" I heard a female voice scream.

I knew that voice. I shouted at Neveah, told her to run. She didn't listen, advanced into the room with her wand drawn.

"Let him go!" she cried.

Potter cut my ropes in silence. Black glared at her, a smirk on his face.

"Saved by a girl, eh, Snivellus?" he said spitefully.

Then it happened.

The werewolf burst out of the door, fully changed and snarling. It looked at each of us with its ugly yellow eyes, sniffing with a hungry look in its eye. Potter and Black edged towards the entrance to the tunnel. It stared at them, growling, then without warning it turned and leaped.

I tried. I tried to shove her out of the way.

I tried . . .

It knocked Neveah down and without hesitation, ripped at her stomach with its long fangs. She screamed and screamed, but I could do nothing. Potter had come up behind me and grabbed my arms.

"There's nothing you can do," he said, terror in his voice. "We have to get out of here."

I watched in horror as her stomach was ripped apart, as blood and intestines and pieces of skin were devoured by the monster. I watched it tear my child from her womb and eat it whole, snapping it up in its jaws and chewing with contentment on its face.

Hunger satisfied, a growling stomach satiated with the flesh of my love and my child.

I stared. I couldn't help but watch.

I screamed.

Neveah was still alive.

She had watched the monster tear at her flesh, had felt the child she so lovingly carried be ripped from her body and consumed. Tears flowed from her eyes and she turned her head to look at me.

She mouthed the words 'I love you', before the werewolf ripped out her throat.

So much blood, so much horror.

Potter yanked me backwards and pulled me screaming down into the tunnel, out into the darkness surrounding Hogwarts.

Black ran for Dumbledore.

Dumbledore hurried down, told us curtly to stay where we were. He went into the tunnel himself.

Ten minutes later, he was back, his face white and lined with sadness and anger.

"She is dead, Severus," he said. "The werewolf is confined," he told Black and Potter.

"Why didn't you kill it?" I screamed.

Dumbledore Silenced me. He looked hard at Potter and Black. "What you have done is . . ." Dumbledore shook his head and broke off. "It doesn't matter. What matters is two innocent lives were lost tonight. You, James, and you, Sirius, are responsible for the deaths of a young girl and an unborn child. You have killed Severus' wife and baby."

They stared at me in utter horror.

"Given the . . . method . . . in which Neveah has died . . ." Dumbledore sighed and looked up at the moon. He was crying. "Two lives are gone. Two souls torn from this earth in terror and pain. There is no reason for four more to be destroyed."

"What . . . do you mean, Professor?" Potter asked, his voice torn apart with remorse and shame.

"What you have seen, no one in this world deserves to have seen," Dumbledore continued. He drew his wand.

"I will Obliterate this memory from your minds. You will believe that Neveah died by being attacked in the Forbidden Forest, which is what her mother will be told."

I stared at Dumbledore, not believing what I was hearing.

"I . . . it wasn't supposed to be like this," Potter stammered, his face white.

"No, it never is," Dumbledore said, in a cold tone I had never heard him use when speaking to Potter.

Dumbledore raised his wand.

"Obliterate," he said clearly.

Dumbledore was a stupid, meddling man. He should have let Potter and Black be punished, sent to Azkaban for the rest of their lives. Lupin should have been killed. But his mind was Obliterated as well, in case he would remember killing Neveah.

But I, Severus Snape, never forgot what happened.

Dumbledore and his belief in the power of love . . . he underestimated my love for Neveah.

I loved her beyond all reason. I would never forget her.

That is why the spell did not work on me.

But I pretended that it did.

What happened afterward is of no importance. Being told the next morning that Neveah had an 'accident' in the Forbidden Forest, meeting with her weeping mother, her funeral . . . all these things were fake and therefore not to be remembered. Especially since no one, not any of the students, teachers, or even Neveah's own mother was smart enough to wonder what Neveah was supposedly doing in the Forbidden Forest in the first place. So the hole in Dumbledore's plan . . .

Like I said it is of no importance anymore.

I joined the Dark Lord, with revenge in mind. I was taught patience, as well as ways of torture that would make my Neveah's death look . . .

I didn't get my revenge on Potter himself, or on Black. I was not the one to destroy them . . . although like I said before, I was instrumental in bringing about their demise. But I killed Dumbledore. Not painfully, as I had wished, but quickly. As it had to be. And Lupin . . . his day will come soon.

But I have Potter's son.

His child . . .

His child that will die painfully, as mine did.

I look down at Harry Potter, so helpless, so like his father.

I rip off his ragged robes, exposing his skin. I cast the Dark spell that will keep his heart beating and his body alive no matter what happens to him.

I have exactly one hour.

I take up my knife.

I begin by chopping his fingers off, one by one. I revel in his screams. I slice open his belly, Transfigure a stool into a dog, rip out his intestines and let the dog chew on them as Potter's screams echo through the room. I tear out each vital part from his body, excepting his heart, and force him to eat them. I make his blood boil in his veins and cook his flesh.

His screams are like music to me.

The hour is almost up.

I stab out his eyes, cut out his tongue, and let him choke to death on it.

I stare at Potter's lifeless body, and for a second I see Neveah.

I laugh and laugh, so hard and loud that Bella and Lucius come down to see what is going on.

Bella stares at Potter and begins to laugh with me.

Lucius looks disgusted, and stares at me with a glint of fear in his eyes.

Do you think I'm horrible?

Do you think I should have forgiven and forgotten?

I know that taking this boy's life isn't going to bring her back.

I don't forgive. I don't forget.

I am power, I am revenge.

I am horrible, terrible, vengeful . . . and I am still in love.

I am Severus Snape.