You'll see the Weasleys enough. They may be a bit different, however. The following has not passed the Alfheimwanderer Seal of Approval yet.
The Renegade
“Oh no, no, no, no, no…”
A litany of denials spilled from my lips as I wept softly, my hands stained red by the fluids dripping from the snake guts covering my hands. It was disgusting, as the pungent smell of fear and death wafted to my nostrils, and I wanted to deny that my friend was dead.
But I couldn't, because that was reality.
I couldn't - wouldn't - even clean my hands, if only by wiping them on my oversized jeans. There was no use, when that would just move the taint of guilt elsewhere. This...this wasn’t the first time that I had been disappointed, not even close. And wasn’t going to be the last; I knew this much even at that young age.
My tiny hands just clenched into fists, causing the gooey snake flesh to ooze out of my grip.
The misery, a purer, more refined version of the only emotion I knew at the age, tore at me, causing my mind to reel. My forehead throbbed with pain as the oily smell of hot asphalt entangled with the scents of slaughter, bringing the image of my friend being crushed, kicked, trampled, stepped on, beaten to death to my eyes - killed as I looked on powerlessly, a coward.
I felt dizzy, nauseous, with the whole world spinning too quickly for me to catch up.
I could hear the boys jeering at me, but their voices were distant - they didn't even seem entirely real - as they turned their backs and shuffled away, having lost interest after seeing me break down in tears.
I retched, feeling the burn of bile rising my throat. I tried to stop it, to push back this sense of disgust, but it was more than I could keep down.
I was overwhelmed.
Stomach acid burned my throat, though as a small mercy, I was at least able to hold in my humiliation until the moment they left, when the watery contents of my breakfast and lunch were expelled from my body in retching, heaving chunks.
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks, and I asked no one in particular, “Why…?”
“…Why whywhywhywhy?” I wondered.
Why had this senseless act of violence happened?
The Dursleys, being such a normal and upright family, had raised me to be a Christian like them. They had taught me to believe in a supreme power, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that governed the universe. It was something to thank for all our fortunes and blame for all our misfortunes.
...but could I even blame this on that deity?
“Why…?”
The skin of my knees hurt from the roughness of all the tiny pebbles that pushed against me. Under the scorching sun, the vital liquids of my first friend, that simple garden snake, dried up quickly. My mind felt broken, with a single unanswered question that tempted me.
Why? Why had this happened? My jaw twitched and flexed without my control. Why?
Why?
Everything began to hurt as the darkness closed in, yet my question went unanswered. I knelt in the heat for hours, weeping, raging until the sun set and the cold moon rose, but nothing came to me. Those few hours, so fleeting to most, were an eternity to me, lost as I was in my thoughts.
I don't know what I did. I don't know what was on my mind. I don't even know how I managed to walk home that day.
Blood, half-digested food, and a veritable mix of bodily liquids dripped from my lips. The sticky, mostly dried blood on my hands irritated my skin, but I did not wipe it off. I…
Disappointment descended. No answer came to me that day. No miraculous solution appeared before my eyes. What was I suffering for?
I didn’t know.
“Harry… Potter,” A shadowy figure drawled from the doorway, his piercing gaze causing me to fidget in my seat. “...the new celebrity of the castle. You are an interesting exception to the rules... aren’t you, Mister Potter?”
I'd been separated from the other students and brought to this... office of sorts... earlier by a stern-looking woman who looked old enough to be my grandmother. And here I'd waited, since she had told me to stay in this room until someone came to pick me up.
I didn't exactly mind, since it was a large (but then any room larger than a cubic meter was large to me) and interesting office, lined with bookshelves filled a neat assortment of thick files, an air of something malevolent and old lingering about, with a smell of exotic spices and old leather. The desk before me was too tall for me to stare over completely, and the comfortable, leather-padded chair I was sitting in was too tall for me to peer all the way around to see the man at the door.
Still, before this stranger arrived, I had been fidgeting in my seat.
Life had taught me to be afraid of being different from the crowd, but at the same time, I wanted to explore what this new world offered to me. And added to that...well, my body wasn't used to wearing something tailored for me - with blazer and trousers that fit my thin body just right, since I'd worn oversized hand-me-downs all my life.
I didn't know whether to straighten or to hunch over as the man approached me, his footsteps echoing sharply against the granite floor. He circled me like a vulture, glaring down a distinctively large nose as cold, dark eyes sized me up like a slab of meat at the butcher's. Or perhaps I should say like a crow? HIs features were rather hidden by his mop of long, black hair.
To this day, I have no idea whether I passed or failed, only that he seemed to have found what he was looking for as he nodded slowly and moved to sit across from me.
“It’s... a pity that circumstances forced you to stand out so early,” the man sighed, leaning forward to better look at me as I shrunk away instinctively. Something sinister lurked behind his gaze, reminding me of something I couldn't quite place, so that even with him sneering at me, I feared him. “It’s a pity, Mister Potter.”
What scant illumination came through the tinted windows of the office served only to lengthen the shadows, obscuring the features of my watcher. He seemed to realize this, and so snapped his fingers, causing all the candles that lined his walls to light up one after the other, from those closest to him moving to the farthest from him.
Despite myself, I was rather stunned. I mean, intellectually, I could tell this wasn't much different from flipping a switch, but he hadn't flipped a switch. He'd just snapped his fingers...
I suppose he must have expected me to say something, since his frown only deepened as he regarded my expression.
"Are you mute, Mister Potter?" he asked acerbically. "Or perhaps this castle's wards simply struck you dumb?"
“Y-yes sir...I mean, no sir!" I answered, startled by the sudden question.
“Clearly,” he replied, managing to pack more derision into that word than most managed in an hour of invective as he looked down at me with an odd half-lidded glaze, “You have your father’s wit, Mr. Potter. I cannot say that it is an honor to meet you, but I will deduce that we will meet many times in the years to come. I,” he said imperiously, standing up with a swirl of his cloak, “am Severus Snape-Prince, Professor of the Art of Alchemy. You will find that I have little patience for fools… and neither does this Academy. Now… the wand that you have, I need to see it.”
I must have scrunched my face expression, because this Professor’s attitude was obviously hostile. The wand was one of the few things I had left from my parents, so why would he want to see it?
“Now, Mr. Potter,” Professor Snape added, his dark eyes focusing on me intently. “You will find that making me repeat myself will often result in... punishment.”
Something foreign prickled at my skin, sending a shiver down my spine. I didn't know what it was - only that I couldn't breathe. It was as if everything I feared and dreaded was lurking just beneath the surface of reality, that any movement I made, any word I said would cause them to emerge and swallow me up whole.
Except... except if I surrendered my wand.
As if moving by itself, my hand pulled my wand from its holster in the inner breast pocket of my jacket, laying it down on the desk before me, upon which the impending sense of death faded.
I blinked in surprise, barely keeping myself from collapsing in a heap as Professor Snape picked up my wand delicately, scrutinizing even detail of it.
After a moment of turning it around in his fingers, getting a good feel for it, he spoke up. But this time, his voice was almost...reverent.
“This... is of marvelous craftsmanship, Potter," he breathed, his words soft, almost kind in a way utterly unlike those of earlier. "This was made for you by your mother, then? I can see her work in the runes.”
“Yes, sir,” I nodded, though I hadn't known that my mother had made it, simply that it had been in my parents' locker when I was sent to claim their effects at the Clock Tower. By now, the foreign... stuff... that caressed my skin earlier was gone, and with its disappearance, I felt calm enough to ask the question on my mind. “Did… did you know my mother, sir?”
Without even glancing at me, he answered, “Yes, yes… we were close friends.”
He didn’t elaborate, but I could see from his expression that he was thinking of the past, of better times, his eyes glazing over as he looked into a scene out of memory and time.
Aunt Petunia often had that expression when she talked about her participation in sports before giving birth to Dudley. She would only talk about this with the neighborhood women when they had no other gossip to giggle over, though I would often overhear it as I sang in the choir.
Consciously, I don’t think I noticed any of this, but being curious and lacking answers, I followed up on my question with another, “Could you tell me about my mother, Professor?”
My voice snapped him back to the present and an unfriendly, stormy frown marred his features. Collecting himself, Snape sneered and handed me my wand.
“Perhaps another time, Mr. Potter," he said noncommittally, though I was pretty sure that meant "No." "For now, you are to join your schoolmates in the dormitories." He paused for a moment, before adding a parting remark. "I am certain they will be quite pleased to see you.”
His sarcasm was palpable...
…they were not pleased to see me.
In fact, my classmates from my year, or at least those who were sharing the dormitory with me, were all sprawled on their beds, groaning in agony. Of the two hundred or so students, or at least of the one hundred and fifty boys in my year, only twenty remained.
I knew this because we had to all share a room.
I tried to ask what was wrong, but no one answered; they were all in too much pain to do anything more than groan and lie there without moving a muscle.
I glanced at the only bed that was free, and as luck would have it, Amit occupied the bed next to mine.
'He looks...horrible...'
Blood trickled from his ears, his nose, the corner of his mouth...and I was pretty sure he was bleeding out of his eyes, but I couldn't tell, as the upper half of his face was covered by a thick layer of wrappings.
Still, Amit was in a better condition than perhaps half of our classmates.
I didn’t know what caused this, but I could guess it was something that I must have gone through already. Perhaps one of the books would clue me in on this…
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Originally Posted by shiningphoenix
