This is a story about our beloved Half-Blood Prince, Severus Snape. Specifically, this is a story about a girl named Sophie who changes the fate of the Half-Blood Prince.
//TW: Language, Sexual Activity
She turned around to face someone she didn't expect to; the one most wizards feared: Tom. Marvolo. Riddle.
Sophie stood frozen in a surreal moment that seemed suspended between the realms of reality and a feverish dream. She had braced herself for danger, for the consequences of a hasty Apparition, but what stood before her defied every expectation she had formed.
Her heart raced at an erratic tempo, her emotions a wild tapestry of confusion, shock, and a thread of disbelief. It was Tom—Tom Riddle—but not the twisted, malevolent figure she had come to know through stories and history. This was a version of him she had never encountered, a youthful embodiment of what could have been.
He appeared to be in his early twenties, a time when the tendrils of youth still clung to him with delicate grace. His skin was flawless, bathed in a soft glow that seemed untouched by the darkness that would eventually consume him. His hair cascaded in sleek waves, a cascade of ebony-framed features that bore none of the scars of later choices.
A faint yet intoxicating fragrance lingered in the air around him, a scent that whispered of possibilities and futures untold. His eyes—piercing, alight with a fire that had not yet been tainted—met hers, and for a moment, Sophie felt as though he could see into the depths of her soul.
This was Tom Riddle as he might have been, unburdened by the malevolence that had driven him to split his soul and carve a path of darkness. It was as if a fragment of time had been plucked out of the continuum, a fragment where the shadows had yet to take root.
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Sophie's mind churned like a tempestuous sea, struggling to reconcile the reality before her with the facts she thought she knew. The dissonance was like a disorienting melody playing within her thoughts, and her eyes struggled to absorb the incongruity before them.
"How are you... pretty?" The words escaped her lips in a hushed manner as if voicing the question aloud would confirm or dispel the surreal sight before her. A subtle tremor betrayed her emotions as she instinctively stepped back, putting some space between herself and the enigmatic apparition.
"Pretty? Interesting way of putting it," his voice, as familiar as it was strange, resonated with amusement. He didn't look offended by her phrasing, almost as if he was accustomed to her peculiarity. "I'm here as a figment of your mind, I suppose. Well... I'm assuming you now have the Hufflepuff cup."
A flicker of realization ignited within Sophie. It was like a puzzle piece snapping into place, completing a picture she hadn't fully comprehended. This was not Tom Riddle as he had become—the malevolent, soul-split figure whose name inspired dread. This was a fragment, a whisper of the past locked within the vessel she had liberated.
"That doesn't explain how you look like this," Sophie's voice wavered with a mixture of astonishment and a touch of fear, her gaze locked onto him as if he held the answer to a question she had yet to form.
