Weeks.
That was all I got.
Weeks.
They blurred together, stitched from the cries of other unwanted children and the strange lullabies of nursemaids too tired to care.
The walls of the orphanage slled of damp parchnt and boiled cabbage.
Its windows clung with condensation, even when charms were cast to keep them clear.
I was fed.
I was clothed.
I was rocked when the infants' ward grew too loud to ignore.
It was not love, not even close—but it was sothing.
In those early weeks, I almost convinced myself I could grow from it.
That this, grey and bare as it was, might be enough.
Then ca the papers.
The matron read them in her office, a boxy room with crooked portraits that pretended to sleep while listening in.
I rember the hush that fell as her lips pressed into a hard line.
She did not like what she read.
She liked it so little she read it twice, then a third ti, her fingers twitching as though tempted to burn the parchnt outright.
But rules were rules, and orders were orders.
The following night she lingered by my crib longer than usual.
Her eyes, usually sharp, seed dulled by sothing almost like pity.
She brushed a finger across my cheek.
"If it were up to …" she whispered.
But it wasn't.
It never was.
The next morning I was packed.
No fanfare, no tears.
Just folded into fresh cloth, tucked into a basket as though I were no different than laundry to be sent out.
I thought, dimly, we might be going to another wizarding ho.
Perhaps a smaller orphanage.
Perhaps sowhere closer to Diagon Alley, where magic humd in the air and made the world bright.
But the walls I was carried past grew quieter.
Less enchanted.
Lamps no longer floated but sat, crooked, in iron brackets.
Doors did not murmur when touched; they creaked on old hinges.
The air itself changed, growing heavier, thicker, until the last thread of magic I had been breathing since birth snapped away.
And then I knew.
This was not a transfer.
This was an exile.
They had stripped from my birthright before I had teeth.
The basket jolted as the carriage wheels hit uneven stones.
I wailed; the nursemaid said nothing.
She would not even look at .
Hours passed.
Roads changed from cobbled wizarding lanes to asphalt black as soot.
The air reeked of smoke and petrol, foreign and sharp in my nose.
At last, the carriage stopped.
I was carried out into a world that buzzed with electricity and machinery instead of magic.
The sign above the building was faded, its paint peeling.
St. Cuthbert's Ho for Children.
It did not feel like a ho.
Inside, the walls were yellowed and cracked, the air stale with dust and disinfectant.
The matron here did not wear robes but a stiff grey dress that looked as though it had been starched into obedience.
She glanced into my basket with all the warmth of soone inspecting spoiled at.
"No na?" she asked.
The nursemaid who brought shook her head quickly, almost shafully.
"No na."
"Figures," the muggle woman muttered. "We'll call him Boy for now. Until sothing sticks."
Boy.
That was it.
Not even a number.
Just Boy.
The handover was swift.
But it was not yet over, just before the matron turned to take inside, the nursemaid drew her wand, pointing it ever so slightly forward before mouthing the word
'Obliviate'
The nursemaid departed without a backward glance, and the door closed behind her with a thud that sounded like finality.
A strange thing happened then, while the spell definitely took effect its purpose failed almost entirely, as this body was inhabitted by two souls, one had weak ntal defense seeing that it was a newborn but the other, the other resisted the weakly casted spell, resulting in all the mories of our brief existence remaining intact albeit just a little bit fuzzy for a while.
I was no longer of their world.
The weeks that followed crawled.
St. Cuthbert's was not gentle.
Cribs were crowded, blankets scratchy, bottles left just warm enough not to scald.
The other infants wailed, their cries rising like a chorus in the night.
No charms hushed them here.
No enchanted mobiles danced above our heads.
Only peeling paint and shadows.
The caretakers ca in shifts, faces blurring into one another—hard hands, tired eyes, voices clipped by routine.
They fed us because it was their duty.
They cleaned us because it was their job.
But there was no softness, no pause, no smile that lasted longer than a flicker.
I was a body among bodies, my dark hair standing out against the pale and fair heads of the others.
Even as a newborn, I felt the glances linger on longer.
Suspicion.
Dislike.
Perhaps they saw in my face what Lily had seen: the shadow of a man they would have despised if they had known him.
One day, I heard two of the older boys whispering near the cribs. They were not much more than six, yet their words cut.
"Ugly little bugger, isn't he?"
"Looks like he's already scowling."
"Bet no one'll ever want him."
Their laughter was thin and sharp, like glass breaking.
I could not speak, but their words sank deep.
Thanks to mories of my previous life i could understand the language and everything that was going on around .
It was in the way caretakers sighed when they reached my crib, in the way other children's cries were hushed faster than mine, in the way even the shadows seed eager to swallow .
Ti passed strangely.
Days and nights were a cycle of hunger, cold, noise, and the aching absence of warmth.
But with all that ti and my mories intact, i could rest and think.
Think about my future, about my plans, about getting my revenge.
About righting all the wrongs the world had yet to discover.
But first off was to grant myself a fitting na.
One that would do my Father Severus proud!
For weeks i muddled on this issue, this as well as how my existence even ca into being at all.
And after concluding that Lily must have taken pity on Severus had lain with the man at least once before returning to her husband to do the sa resulting in a set of bi-paternal twins or more confusingly heteropaternal superfuecndations.
We would be twins yes, but ultimately as far as our genes themselves are concerned we would be more like half-sibling who just so happened to be born on the sa day.
As for my na i decided on one finally just when the first snows were starting to fall in October of 1980.
A na that would be known one day throughout the magical and muggle worlds!
Cassius Atreus Snape
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