The Boy With Black Eyes

Before We Begin....

Before we truly begin...

This is not a fan fiction. There we go - I've put it out there. This is not me manipulating the characters within J. K. Rowling's universe, or writing the same story from a different point of view.

This is what I know as AU or Alternate Universe. I have read many of the stories and alternate universes and I am tired of Severus Snape being portrayed as the dark, greasy haired git, the over-loving almost soppy single father, or the worst - *shudders* a sexual predator. The man has a heart. Or did, once upon a time.

In this universe, Severus Tobias Snape was saved from the death that awaited him by forces unknown to this world. After a miraculous recovery, he was put through several trials by the Wizengamot, and again was saved from a less than noble death in Azkaban by Albus Dumbledore, via the Pensieve, Harry Potter and Co., and also several of his comrades-in-arms, who did not have the same fortune as he. After several years spent on the "down-low" in Vancouver, Canada, the Potions Master returned to Hogwarts on the request of Minerva McGonagal, the headmistress. Hogwarts was ready to be re-opened, and Horace Slughorn had retired, this time permanently.

The first time the job was offered, Snape declined, knowing all too well what rumors awaited him in the dusty, winding corridors of the dungeons. But when the job was offered to him again in the following September, he took it on. His teaching methods did not change, and once again he became the bat in the dungeons, easily angered and the most brutal marker many of the students would ever see.

Over time, the Golden Trio fell apart. Harry and Ron got into a vicious brawl over Christmas dinner at the Burrow, and never spoke to each other again. It has not been determined what started the row, only that it did not end well. Unfortunately, neither did the marriage between Ron and Hermione. He was found to be "a possessive jackass" and she to be "a buck-toothed know-it-all." She left with her four year-old daughter Rose Jean that night, seeking shelter in the Leaky Cauldron.

The courtship and winning of Hermione's hand is shrouded in secrecy. It has been noted, that Rose has a very strong, positive relationship with her step-father, perhaps - it may interest the reader - even stronger with that of her blood father. Severus, being a clever man, perhaps courted Hermione through her daughter. Small gifts to the child when he took her mother out for coffee, just something to amuse herself with while they were gone. Rose has revealed, to several accomplished and well-known authors, a silver locket she keeps on her person at all times. It is not a gift from her father, but a gift from her dad. 

The true story starts soon, I promise.

Severus was not quick to let go of some of his secrets. The time of his youth was rarely discussed, not even to Hermione would he speak of his late teens and early twenties. He was determined not to let the world know of promises long made, now broken, of lies that could kill, of truths that could have saved his life, of a fortune that lay in the deepest vault at Gringotts, a fortune beyond even the richest man's wildest dreams. Still a mysterious man, even lawfully wedded to a beautiful woman, and determined to keep it that way.

***************

Melissa, on the other hand, was different story. She had been very nervous to come to Hogwarts, knowing the European attitude toward her people and people like her.

Melissa Sauvage was not one of the target Hogwarts demographic. Her mother had been a member of the Cree Nation of the prairies, and her father a Frenchman. Her mother threw herself from a hoodoo when the tribe cast her and the child out. The shaman of the village, incidentally, Melissa's grandfather, saved the child from being ravaged by the elements, guided by the spirit of the Golden Eagle, whom he claimed, marked the child as one of it's own. Melissa was special, and he saw that.