Severus Snape (Harry Potter)
Severus Snape found the world to be needlessly cruel.
Even his name - cruel, for seemingly no reason other than the fact it was.
Severus - to sever, to be harsh or stern.
Snape - 'to anger, dishonour, disgrace.'
A stern person quick to anger or a Severed disgrace.
It's incredibly telling about the kind of person his mother expected him to become one day. To be someone angry at everyone and everything ; just like his father - or to be someone who brought dishonour to his family and ended up disowned as a disgrace in the process ; just like his mother.
She effectively laid out two life paths for Severus, with just a name alone.
It's cruel, needlessly so. Who looks upon a baby, minutes after birth and thinks of the worst possible extremes? A pessimist who does nothing about the world and has no love left to give - really, it's the worst kind of person to parent a child.
Yet, no one seems to think the same.
Oh sure, Severus has an awful sob story - but really, there's always worse to be had. To the rest of the world - 'Severus Snape' is not a name that is needlessly cruel, it's simply a bit pitiful. The standards are so low for the rest of the world that - really, having such an awful name doesn't seem that big of a deal. Just a footnote really, in the end.
No one is going to be on their deathbed thinking "Oh, the world is so unfair, like what about Severus Snape's name? Isn't that just awful? Dreadful even?"
Ah well - he stands corrected, no sane person on their deathbed would have such thoughts.
So quite obviously, he was the outlier.
He always was an anomaly.
Now, Severus Snape has not died - do not get that confused.
Just- the person Severus Snape had once been, they had died.
That person was not especially significant. No true accomplishments to their name - really, the most interesting thing in their entire existence was their death. Quite morbid, really. They were never especially brave, but their death was a bit interesting - a young boy, maybe around Severus' age, he had been messing around in the river. Lots of people were around - yet he ended up going too far in, and that person recognized the boy might die before anyone else could reach him.
It wasn't a thoughtless action - no, that's reserved for the purely brave. It wasn't calculated either - that implies a level of control over the situation they did not have. Simply they looked and thought - "oh, that could have been me."
That person - they were reminded of a similar incident they had when young, one where instead of being saved they had to drag themselves to shore. This child - the young boy - he'd probably make it. People were already swimming out, he seemed to be quite the strong swimmer too even -
- But that person hadn't been thinking. They were looking at a ghost of a child in a much more deep and fast running river, one where a much worse swimmer got separated from their family and had to pull themselves to shore with their own lackluster upper strength and only managed to dodge freezing to death from the fact that it was the peak of summer alone.
So they swam, and they reached the child with quite an impressive show of adrenaline for them. They managed to get the child back to shore - but somehow, they died in that process. He thinks it might have been technical drowning , too much water in the lungs or something of the like - Severus isn't sure, the memories get patchy from there. There was an ambulance, and an emergency room - but in the end that person died.
They must have been on something because their thoughts got strangely distorted in the end.
Somehow - in death that person did not think of their heroic act. Not the life they lead, not the people they knew to be leaving behind - no. No - they thought of Severus Snape.
A rude potions professor from a popular book series was what occupied their final thoughts. Really, how utterly ridiculous. Dying, and thinking of such a mundane and obscure thing.
"I wonder, is this how it felt for him? Dying of venom? Not quite peacefully passing on - but - content maybe. Content to save at least - at least that boy? The boy of the man he hated, and the women he loved? The child he hated so harshly but he so fiercely protected?.. Ah maybe not, perhaps he was more relaxed - more content. Such an emotional connection - good or not - I'd imagine it was quite meaningful for him to finally settle."
Delirious - dying, unaware - all that person could think was ; "Ah but really, Severus Snape - such an awful name, isn't it? Really - what kind of mother leaves such a fate for a child, cursing them with such a dreadful name?"
That was the last thing they thought. It was always how it ended - everytime he revisited that memory.
Severus Snape always remembered that person. To him it was a fact of life - he was Severus Snape, someone who used to be someone else. Someone mediocre and somehow still equally unpredictable. Someone with a pitiful life that ended early. Someone who passively knew of a book series around Severus' future in the perspective of someone else.
It was odd, but it made sense. There was no room for questions - especially not when his mother and father seemed to believe in the existence of magic with their entire being. His father hated it, his mother despised it - but more importantly, they believed in it. Severus never had a reason to doubt magic - why doubt something so ingrained into the world?
Lily and Petunia Evans reinforced this opinion - if such girls existed, it was proof. His life - well, he knows it.
He knows the fate of Lily and Petunia Evans.
Therein lies his issue - what does he plan to do about that?
The world is cruel, but - but that person, that person who so strongly believed that - they never did anything about it. That person was a pessimist, one who did nothing about the cruelty of their world and had no love to give to people outside of words in pages - people who had no way of reincorporating, no way of rejecting.
That person, funnily enough - they remind him of his mother at times. Yet, they considered themselves better.
He thinks of his name - Severus Snape.
Severus Snape, with two paths ahead of him. The one of anger, the one of dishonour.
He thinks of his mother - and decides she's quite the hypocrite. If someone just like her can criticize her choices, and she can feel reassured of them in the same breath - she must be the strangest kind of person. The paradoxical kind - and not in a fun way.
He decides then and there, Severus Snape is not going to be a man that is angry, one with regrets, one that brings dishonour to his name - he will not be like his mother, his father, or that person from so long ago. He is Severus Snape, and he refuses to be idle in the way the world seems to be - to be needlessly cruel in indifference and apathy, to willfully ignore the world outside of his immediate view.
Severus Snape is a name that will bring some joy into this world - no matter how short lived. Severus Snape refuses to die thinking of only a boy he wronged more than he ever righted - he refuses to die for a small boy that had no business being unsupervised in a river - that is a promise.
Severus Snape was consistent in one thing - and that was he never was keen on breaking a promise once made.