worn and old robes, ancient books that thrummed with age and malice, faceless shapes in a sea of smoke, the cold steel of a dagger in the dark, and a long, thick cord stretched into a fogged distance, hanging over an abyss. on each side is the vast wall of a rocky mountain. the fall is steep and endless. balance is key.
Basics
name: Severus (Severed. Cut off.) Dynastes (Dynastic prince) Snape. Eileen was not subtle when naming her son. Even in such a matter she let her spite lead her way. Severed prince, indeed.
age: 24.
gender / orientation: cis male, demisexual, biromantic.
allegiance: unmarked Death Eater.
occupation: junior researcher at St. Mungos.
blood-status: halfblood.
house: slytherin.
Appearance
faceclaim: Richard Harmon.
eye & hair color: Black & black.
height: 5'9.5"
other notable features: thin, sallow face. silver earrings. all-black attire.
Magic
patronus: wolf. ( Associations : unchecked all-consuming hunger, violence, lone wolves, thriving in spite of the odds, a sense of community that comes hand in hand with a strict hierarchy. Wrongs done to and by. Pain endured and doled out. )
specialties: potions, mind arts, spellcrafting, warding, dark arts, defense, ancient runes.
Personality
Severus Snape has the personality of a sentient pack of razors and the looks to match. Everything he picked up since he was young he used as a weapon: his wit, his words, his mind, his spells, his potions, his silence, his secrets. He feels more at ease surrounded by enemies who think him an ally and who would set untold violence upon him should his true colors reveal themselves than he does surrounded by friends and family. He values his solitude and his privacy above all else and will defend it with great hostility. He is a liar and a cheat who holds himself to a high standard of dignity and honor.
His disposition never inspires friendliness, and hardly invites approach. He prefers being left to his books and his potions, unless there is a task to complete or a matter that requires his urgent attention. Snape is viciously clever, scrutinizing, observant, and patient. The full brunt of his focus is sharp and piercing and nigh unbearable. He has a scholar’s heart and the drive to follow it through to the end, wherever that end may be. He entered the race, as he sees it, late and heavily disadvantaged, and has thus operated and continues to operate with the understanding that he is the lowly underdog, that success only comes to those willing and ready to fight for it. And he fights, and he fights, and he fights.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Snape is loyal to a fault. His loyalty is difficult to earn, but impossible to lose. He has a thorough, comprehensive, all-or-nothing approach towards loyalty — you either have it or you don’t. All of him or none of him. He will give you his soul – his strength, his work, his honor, his dignity, his life, his word – or he will give you nothing. Thus far, the only one who has his true loyalty is Lily Evans.
The Snapes
Eileen Prince was a true daughter of her line, and carried the worst of the traits of her family with her: she was stubborn, proud, obstinate, and filled with such vicious spite there was hardly room for anything else within her.
Despite this, she loved her son. Yes, he was the reason her secret and exciting teenage dalliance turned to lifelong imprisonment, and that was enough reason for her to never look upon him with open affection. Yes, he was a halfblood, and not the proper sort with a good family name and upbringing good enough to overlook his blood status. But he was HER son, HER blood, and that mattered to her still. She watched the boy complete every task, from taking his first steps to tying his own shoes to skipping stones by the river, with all the intensity of focus and full-hearted diligence expected of a Prince. She watched the whelp pick fights with kids twice his size for perceived slights, watched him lose more fights than win and still go back to school the next day with his chin tipped up in defiance, back straight and eyes forward, ready to take on anything. She watched, and felt a wave of such fierce pride over this boy that was half a Prince, this boy that was her son.
She taught him everything he needed to know about magic. Everything he would need to know to fight the currents, knowing this life she gave him would be unkind, an uphill battle from the beginning to the end. She taught him the rules of their society, the names of the families that mattered and the families that didn’t. She taught him his spells and his potions, his letters and his numbers, his history. Her son, the half-blood whelp, will claw his way back up from where she’d fallen, she will see to it herself.
Tobias fought her on this, as he fought her on every other matter that had anything to do with magic. And she fought him just as hard: their shouts shook the walls of their little house on Spinner’s End, sent the neighbor’s lips aflutter with excited gossip, and sent their son scuttling beneath the bed or the table or out in the park until the shouting stopped. But she fought: her son would not meet the vipers unequipped.
Severus grew up knowing two things above all else: that he was less-than, and that he must earn the right to be treated with respect. These were the two overarching lessons of his childhood, but they were not the only ones: Nothing comes for free. No one will give you anything without expecting something in return. There’s no inherent value in someone that will grant them happiness, there’s simply luck, and lack thereof. There’s wanting things and taking them. You take what you want and you make your life better, or you don’t. You fight for your improvement or you take the punches laying down.
Severus never stayed down for long. He knew what he wanted — or thought he did — and what he wanted was to be better than everyone else. And that meant fighting for his place, and fighting to keep it. He wanted his mother to be proud of him — desperately, more than he dared to admit — and that meant drinking in her every word with rapt attention, and taking all her lessons to heart. And he did.
Eileen was the predominant influence in Severus’ childhood, but she was not the only one. Tobias Snape spent most of his days at work, or at the pub, or at a friend’s house: anything to keep him away from the trap that was his wife and his son. He made no secret of who he blamed for the unsatisfying course his life took, shouting it loud enough everyone in the neighborhood knew his every secret desire and every selfish thought: that he wanted an obedient wife, that he wanted a proper lad who played sports and worked the machines like a real man, that he was trapped in a marriage with a lying cheat and a useless son. The truth of the matter was that Tobias Snape felt inadequate: his wife was a witch who came from money and prestige and had to settle for a wretch like himself. She did not need him to provide for her or care for her, she did not depend on her husband like a wife should. His son, the wizard, who grew up in the same dirty clothes and sketchy neighborhood that his father did, looked down his nose at his father’s craft. Little pauper held himself like a little prince, like Tobias and Spinner’s End and honest work and playing ball and carrying tools was all beneath him, like this was all simply a prelude to a better life up ahead.
Severus knew since he was very young that he could never be enough for both of his parents. That pleasing one meant angering the other, that he had to choose whose approval he’d have to chase (and chase, and chase) and whose displeasure he’d weather for the rest of his life. It was not easy. But it was, in the end, a much simpler choice than some might expect.
