The Alpha Dynasty (Sequel to MARKED FOR DESTINY) (Book 2 of 2)

45. The Tears Of Severus Snape

Severus Tobias Snape had only ever cried once in his life, and that was at the death of Lily Potter. He had never known such heartache before losing her, not even at the way his own father had treated him. Which was with hate and disdain. Not many people knew this about Snape, but he himself had been abused. But not in the same way that Harry had been.

He had grown up poor, and his early childhood had been spent in a family home in Spinner's End. He often heard how people would laugh at him and belittle him especially for the way he was dressed. His clothes were ill fitting, and always miss-matched. The abuse that he had to endure was being neglected by his parents, who fought constantly with one another. He had hated his life until the day he saw a beautiful redhead girl.

He would hide behind the trees and watch as she would play with her sister, who was so stuck up, there were times that he wanted to punch her on the nose. With his greasy black hair falling down his face, he would stay hidden until one day, he just had to talk to the girl, whose name he had found out was Lily. She was the first person that didn't laugh at him. She was so friendly and so kind, and Snape didn't know it at the time, but the only true friend that he would ever have. Until he met Lucius Malfoy.

He had crossed a line one day when he had called her a mudblood, but to be fair, her other friends were taunting and teasing him. All Lily had done was hold her hand out to help him, and the humiliation was too much to bare, and so he had degraded her. Things had never been the same after that. He had lost what had never been his to begin with, and no matter how many times he tried to apologize, she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Which was weird, because Snape himself was a half blood. His mother a witch, and his pathetic father a muggle. And the day that he saw Lily kissing that Potter boy, James, his heart broke into a thousand pieces. He was the cause of all of Snape's sneers, and not even realizing it, would be the sole reason that his hatred for Harry Potter was on a massive scale. James and his friends had been the ones to humiliate him by casting Levicorpus on him - in front of the whole school, so yes he had his reasons to hate the man. Who would ever be able to live that down?

But life had gone on. He had graduated from Hogwarts, had seen some of his fellow Slytherins leave, some of them die, and some of them pledge their allegiance to the dark lord. And then he saw in the Daily Prophet that James Potter had asked Lily Evans to marry him. The date and venue was announced, and while he waited with baited breath, no invite ever came for him.

And so his hatred grew. Not for Lily though, never for Lily. It grew for James, and muggles and muggle borns, and when he had gone to the Hog's Head that night and heard part of a prophecy, he had rushed back to Voldemort, telling him what he knew would be the ultimate downfall of his enemy. But things hadn't gone according to plan. When he realized that the dark lord was going to kill the whole family, he begged for her life to be saved. Only it wasn't.

The only living thing that had emerged from that terrible night was their son, Harry Potter. When he had stumbled into the nursery and found Lily on the floor, all his pent up anger, hatred, and regret poured out of him like a waterfall. He grabbed hold of her lifeless body and cried tears of sorrow, saying how sorry he was. He cried tears of love that he had never had the courage to express while she had been alive. He cried at what he perceived, was his fault, and he didn't stop. Until he heard the sound of a motorbike.

He laid her back down on the carpet, took one final glance at her and then at her son, and vanished into the night. He remembered it like it was yesterday. The tears that he had shed for love and for pain and for sorrow, and he vowed that those were the last tears that he would ever cry. Nothing would ever come close to feeling like that again, nothing would ever be able to break him, the way the death of Lily Potter had. He was sure of it.

But now, sitting in his room at Hogwarts, he replayed the conversation that he had had earlier with the Headmaster. He had poured himself a glass of red wine, and pondered at what to do with the information. He had been asked - not sworn - to keep it to himself, but the more he had argued and said he needed to tell someone, the more he was told to stand down. The more he begged and pleaded, the more he was asked not to say anything, until the time was right.

But the time would never be right. Not as far as he was concerned. Was he loyal, yes. Was he faithful, also yes. Was he trustworthy, definitely. Was he torn, absolutely. He was loyal to many people, but right now, he had to figure out who would be the one to bear anger at him, and who would be the one to bear empathy and gratitude. He took a sip of his wine and savored the taste on his tongue. Putting his glass down, he choked out a sob, and hung his head in his hands.

His body, racking with sobs, he kept on crying, because he had to be done with this, right here right now, so no one would see him like this. After he had cried his heart out, he would not speak of it again, and he would make sure that no one ever found out, just how much of a softie he really was.

Let it be said again, that Severus Snape was not a man to show emotion, and the Headmaster knew this. He was the perfect confidant to bear this burden, but that didn't mean that he didn't know how to show hate, anger and disdain. Which is exactly the face he was going to put on, when he was next called to see the man.