I Am Severus Snape

Chapter Two

Finally I would be free of the abuse my parents inflicted on me, finally I could have friends, have a home. Hogwarts was going to be wonderful, and not just because Lily would be there with me.

At ten thirty on September first I arrived at Kings Cross Station. My mum , though she couldn't care less that I was leaving, had to come. I needed a ride.

Mum was a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who (to my disappointment) greatly resembled me.. Instead of conversing with her like the other children I was staring at a family of four a short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart from their parents. Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister.

"...I'm sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen - " She caught her sister's hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. "Maybe once I'm there - no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I'm there, I'll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!"

"I don't - want - to - go!" said Petunia, and she dragged her hand back out of her sister's grasp. "You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a - a..."

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners' arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

" - you think I want to be a - a freak?"

Lily's eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

"I'm not a freak," said Lily. "That's a horrible thing to say."

"That's where you're going," said Petunia with relish. "A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy...weirdos, that's what you two are. It's good you're being separated from normal people. It's for our safety."

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

"You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you."

Petunia turned scarlet.

"Beg? I didn't beg!"

"I saw his reply. It was very kind."

"You shouldn't have read - " whispered Petunia, "that was my private - how could you -?"

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where I stood nearby.

Petunia gasped.

"That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!"

"No - not sneaking - " Now Lily was on the defensive. "Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn't believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that's all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of - "

"Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!" said Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed. "Freak!" she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her parents stood...

Oh that Petunia really was an arse, making Lily sad like that; and how dare she insult us wizards! We were superior to Muggles , we could kill them with two words and enslave them with one! That is much more than what she can do!

Without glancing at my mum I boarded the train, not looking back. Ten minutes later we left the station and our journey to Hogwarts began.

Five minutes into the trip I decided that I better change out of my dreadful Muggle clothes. At least in the Hogwarts robes I would look like everyone else, no one would be able to guess where I was from. That I was ... poor.