୨୧ Severus Snape||BG||⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧

Favorite: Refuge in Knowledge

His passion was magic in its most complex, subtle forms. He loved delving into textbooks, copying recipes, finding errors in the works of renowned authors. The process of brewing a potion was a ritual for him—precise, logical, with no room for chance, unlike human relationships. He adored the silence of the dungeons, the smell of ingredients, and the solitude of the laboratory. He loved the night, when he could sit by the window in the Room of Requirement with a book on the Dark Arts, feeling like an all-powerful master of knowledge. And, of course, he loved Lily—but he loved her the way a child loves the sun, not daring to come closer for fear of being burned, but dying without its light.

Least favorite: The rest of the world

Severus's list of hatreds was endless. He hated his Muggle father—for his stupidity, rudeness, and drunken fists, from which he couldn't protect his mother. He hated poverty—the perpetually worn clothes and the need to beg for textbooks. He hated noisy groups, unprovoked laughter, and pointless sports like Quidditch. He despised Gryffindor—for their overconfidence, their foolish bravery, and their love for the crowd.

But his deepest loathing was for himself. That's why he was so cruel to others: he projected his hatred of his own poverty, ugliness, and helplessness onto the world around him. He hated his cowardly inability to confess his love to Lily and his savage, animalistic jealousy that was destroying their friendship. He even hated his own devotion, knowing it made him weak.

Snape was a social disaster. He was distant and hostile among his peers. He had no ability to make friends: his remarks were either too clever to understand or too cutting to forgive. The Marauders (James and Sirius) became his personal demons, but Snape was no harmless victim. He snapped back, responding to their bullying with curses he devised himself. His responses were so cruel and precise that they provoked retaliatory aggression.

With girls, he was wooden and awkward. With Lily, the only one who saw him as a human being, he acted differently: his voice lost its venom, became softer, he stuttered, afraid to say too much. But even here, his behavior was possessive and jealous. He detested her friendship with James, considering it a betrayal, but instead of explaining his feelings, he demonstratively withdrew or insulted her world (the Muggles), trying in this twisted way to protect her from that world.

With adults—especially the Slytherin professors—he displayed a servile obsequiousness, but it was tinged with the same cold mockery. He learned politics early, sniffing out the professors' weak spots, but due to his poverty and filthy robes, he never fit in with the pureblood Slytherins. He was an outcast among outcasts.

Snape's character in his youth was a heady mixture of incredible intellect, caustic irony, and extreme vulnerability. He was a genius in his field. Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, spellcraft—his mind worked like a Swiss watch, finding creative solutions where others saw a dead end. This bred arrogance in him: he despised stupid, loud, and superficial people, even if they were older or more popular than him.

However, this feigned pride was merely armor. Inside, Severus was incredibly vulnerable. Every word about his appearance or poverty lingered in his memory like a thorn that would never heal. He couldn't forgive insults, but he knew how to wait—patiently, plotting revenge for years or simply proving his case. He was distrustful to the point of paranoia. The constant struggle for survival in a world where his Muggle father beat his witch mother had made him a cynic: he didn't believe in miracles; he believed in calculation, strength, and knowledge.

His temper was explosive, but directed inward. He didn't scream hysterically like Petunia—he hissed. His anger was cold and poisonous, like snake venom, oozing menace in a quiet voice that sent shivers down your spine. Yet, at the same time, he harbored a sentimentality he carefully hid: he still kept a torn page from his Potions textbook where Lily had written something funny, and he reread it at night.

In his youth, Snape wasn't a terrifying bat. He was a skinny, even painfully thin, teenager whose clothes always hung loose—as if he were wearing someone else's clothes, which was probably true. His black hair, already long and greasy, fell in thick strands across his face, obscuring his sharp cheekbones and sunken cheeks. He constantly hunched over, as if trying to make himself smaller, more inconspicuous, by drawing his head into his shoulders. His nose had been large and hooked since childhood—a feature he hated and which made his face unattractive and harsh.

But Snape's greatest weapon and curse were his eyes. Black and piercing, they peered out from beneath his hooded brows with such a fixed intensity that grown wizards were lost under their gaze. These eyes betrayed not just an angry boy, but a man who saw too much and too deeply. His skin was pale, with a sallow tint—the result of perpetual sleep deprivation and living in basements rather than in the sun. When he moved, he was abrupt and nervous: his robes flapped, his hands made jerky gestures when he cast spells, but at rest, he remained frozen like a statue, barely breathing.