Prologue
Severus was awake. He didn’t know how or why, all he knew was that he was awake and in pain. It felt like he had been hit with one, no, a thousand of Bellatrix’s Crucios on top of Nagini’s venom. But Bellatrix wasn’t there when he was bitten in the Shrieking Shack. And even if she did hit him with a Crucio, it wouldn’t have been very effective on a dead body since he died while speaking to Harry… right? He was sure that he did. Because despite the searing hot pain he felt from Nagini’s venom, he felt it. The cold but gentle hands of death whisked him away from the land of the living, leading his soul to its final resting place.
And if that’s the case, then was that place hell? Was he now burning in hell for his sins, finally getting what he deserved after years of living like a selfish fool? A puppet on strings too afraid to make his own path, leaving it up to fate to declare his destiny for him. And only living to regret that choice. Or was he in purgatory? And these were his sins burning away so that he would be made anew? It was strange. He hadn’t had a thought process like that since he renounced his father’s faith at ten years old. And even before then, he was always a bit skeptical of it. But that isn’t what mattered at the moment. Right now he was in immeasurable pain and desperately wanted it to stop.
Without his permission, his mouth opened. And to both his surprise and utter horror, a blood-curling, gut-wrenching scream escaped his lips. But that wasn’t what horrified him. It was that the voice that escaped was not that of a grown man but a child.
His mind began to spiral. What happened to him? Where was he? Why was he a child? Why was he in so much pain? How could he make it stop? Could he?
The more his mind slipped, the more unbearable the pain became, forcing him to become more aware of the body he seemed to be now inhabiting. And it was on fire. His lungs burned. So much so that it hurts to breathe. His heart was beating too fast and it would probably burst at any second.m His limbs felt limp and heavy, unable to do anything, yet they spasmed painfully. His bones felt brittle and it hurt to open his eyes, but his hearing was amplified, and the sound of the falling rain, the creaking floorboards, his own voice, everything assaulted his ears and his head.
So when the door to his room was busted open, an unimaginable amount of pain coursed through his head had ripped to shreds any conscious thought he had in that moment. That had to be it, the end of Severus Snape. But it was really only the beginning of the hell that would be that night. And in turn, the rest of his formative years.
Severus cursed whatever spirit or being that brought him to this point.