"—Calling me a Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"
Severus blinked hard, the phantom agony of fangs tearing at his throat suddenly vanishing into thin air. Instead, he found himself staring into a pair of brilliant, blazing green eyes. But they weren't Harry Potter's.
She shot him a look of pure, agonizing contempt, turned on her heel, and climbed through the portrait hole. A heavy wooden canvas swung shut in his face, sealing the entrance.
In the painting, a plump woman yawned impatiently. "Off you go, now," the Fat Lady mumbled sleepily. "Students shouldn't be loitering in the corridors at this hour."
Wait... where am I?
A sharp spike of pain pierced Severus's skull, threatening to split it in two. His vision blurred and he swayed, collapsing to his knees on the cold stone floor, trembling violently as he braced himself with his elbows.
Chaotic memories tore through his mind in a violent hurricane: the squalor of Spinner's End, the blood-stained halls of Hogwarts, the blinding green flash of the Killing Curse, Nagini's venom, and Lily... always Lily.
As the blinding headache finally began to subside, Severus weakly lifted his head. The cold realization washed over him like a plunge into the Black Lake. He wasn't dead in the Shrieking Shack. He was outside Gryffindor Tower.
The girl who had just left was Lily Evans.
And he... he was sixteen years old again.
Sorting through the jumble of his older, war-hardened mind and his visceral teenage emotions, he pinpointed the exact moment he was trapped in. It was the summer of 1976. This afternoon, following their Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. exam, he had suffered the ultimate humiliation at the hands of James Potter. And in his blind, panicked rage, he had lashed out and called Lily that unforgivable word.
He had just been standing here, desperately trying to apologize. And just like the first time, he had failed. From this exact moment forward, the original timeline dictated that Severus Snape and Lily Evans would part ways forever.
"Lily..." Severus murmured, his voice cracking, devoid of its usual adult silkiness.
Two distinct lifetimes warred within his chest. The desperate teenager wanted to tear the portrait open, storm into the Gryffindor common room, and beg for her forgiveness until she listened. But the adult within him—the seasoned spy who had lived a lifetime of bitter regrets—knew better. Rushing in now would only push her further away.
For the moment, the image of those bright green eyes blurred in his mind. The lines of his past and his present were too close, too disorienting.
Bathed in the dim, flickering light of the corridor torches, Severus pushed himself up and stumbled toward the marble staircase. He bypassed the trick step automatically, sinking onto a staircase landing. He needed a moment to breathe. To think. How had this happened? Had his dying magic ripped a hole through time itself?
The heavy silence of the castle pressed down on him.
"Look on the bright side," he muttered—a dry, cynical habit from decades of war.
He reached into his robes and pulled out his wand. Ebony and dragon heartstring. It felt perfectly familiar, yet thrummed with a youthful, untainted energy. With a flick of his wrist, a narrow beam of light erupted from the tip.
Staring at the steady glow, Severus let out a long, shuddering breath. "If I am truly back... then starting today, the Prince plays by his own rules."
"Nox."
The light extinguished. He quickly shoved the left sleeve of his robes up his forearm. Pale, unblemished skin. No Dark Mark. A wave of profound relief crashed over him.
Severus descended deeper into the castle's dungeons, arriving at a stretch of bare, damp stone wall. He paused, his Occlumency shields automatically snapping into place as he sifted through his teenage memories for this week's password.
Always Pure.
Severus sneered at the empty wall. Always Pure? What a joke. Even the Dark Lord is a filthy half-blood. As he whispered the password, a concealed stone door slid open. He descended the tapestry-lined spiral staircase into the Slytherin common room. It was a long, low-ceilinged dungeon. Rough-hewn stone walls and ceilings framed round, greenish lamps hanging from chains. Even in summer, the chill of the earth seeped through the stones.
A crackling fire burned beneath an elaborately carved mantelpiece. The warm red of the flames and the eerie green of the lamps illuminated a few lingering students. Aside from a few first-years, Severus spotted one of his dorm-mates: Patrick Abbott.
Patrick sat alone, pouring over a massive, leather-bound copy of Advanced Rune Translation. Unlike their other dorm-mates, Mulciber and Avery, Patrick had never found their "jokes" against Muggle-borns amusing. In fact, he found them repulsive. Because of this, he rarely gave Severus the time of day, either. For a Sacred Twenty-Eight pureblood in Slytherin, Abbott's moral compass was surprisingly unclouded.
Ignoring the curious glances of the younger students, Severus bypassed the common area and headed straight into the boys' dormitories, slipping immediately into the bathroom.
The silver lamps in the bathroom cast the same sickly green glow. The waters of the lake gently lapped against the high windows, massive shadowy shapes occasionally swimming past the glass.
Severus braced his hands on the sink and stared at his "new" face in the mirror.
He was horribly thin, yet oddly wiry. His skin was sallow, like a plant grown entirely in the dark. His black hair was lank and greasy, hanging like curtains around a face dominated by a prominent, hooked nose.
Suddenly, the raw, visceral humiliation of the afternoon flared up in his chest. It wasn't just a distant memory anymore; his teenage hormones amplified it to a burning, humiliating rage. The beech tree... the stifling pink soap bubbles... his robes flying over his head... the roaring laughter of the crowd...
His breath hitched, his chest heaving as genuine fury flooded his dark eyes. The lines between the hardened Potions Master and the humiliated sixteen-year-old boy blurred into one dangerously volatile wizard.
Slowly, Severus raised his wand. With one hand, he gathered the lank, greasy curtain of his hair. With the other, he guided the wand tip across the strands like a razor, severing the dead weight. Clumps of black hair fell softly into the sink, leaving him with a shorter, sharper cut that no longer hid his face.
Staring into his own obsidian eyes, Severus lowered his wand.
"James Potter," he whispered, his voice dangerously soft. "Things will be very different this time."