Endnotes

He wrote his last will and testament when he was eighteen. There was a war on, after all.

His worldly possessions were few, and his instructions generally sardonic. He requested the demolition of Spinner's End, though it didn't technically belong to him at the time; he bequeathed his mortal remains, assuming there were any, to the winning side, to be disposed of as they pleased.

He wrote the dismal thing for one reason only – he wanted Lily to have his books.

He knew she would destroy a great many. Anything Dark would disgust her, and most were very Dark indeed. She would treat them like poison; she would read a few of his notes and be violently ill. She just might build a bonfire in her backyard, and treat his work as time would treat his body, leaving nothing but ashes and dust.

But once there was no darkness left to interfere, no life or thought except what he chose to leave and she chose to preserve, scrawled messily in margins, they would be even once again. They would be close, as mind to mind, and she would recognize him. He knew her excitement in discovery matched his own; he knew she would treasure these theories, these potions, this magic. He would tell her everything he knew, everything, and she could choose what to hear and believe, and it would be their childhood relived through ink and paper. She would see his skill, and she would find it impossible to despise his memory. He knew it in his bones; for his books' sake, in death, she would forgive him.

She ruined everything by dying first.

He didn't return to his will until he turned thirty, the year before Harry Potter arrived. He altered nothing except the one clause that mattered. He bequeathed his library to Albus Dumbledore.

He neglected to revise his terms in the year between Dumbledore's death and his own. Accordingly, Ministry officials invaded his home two weeks after his burial. After confiscating two-thirds of the collection on suspicion of illegal and dangerous content, his notes and 'respectable' volumes were packed into crates and prepared for delivery to Dumbledore's next-of-kin. Acting Headmistress McGonagall got wind of this at the last moment and forcibly intervened. Aberforth Dumbledore could have only one use for such a legacy, and she had no intention of standing idly by while he fed Snape's life work to his goats.

After an afternoon of physical and verbal obstruction, and a call to Aberforth – who waived his rights with a shrug – she returned to Hogwarts with an abstruse collection in tow. Glancing through a few volumes, she decided against giving Madame Pince a heart attack by exposing her to the erudite defacements on every page. After a few weeks of research, and one enlightening conversation with young Mr. Potter, she arranged for the Defense works to make their way to the Auror Training Division, while the Potions tomes found a place in Holland's renowned international archives.

Over the course of his career in magical law enforcement, Harry did not spend much time investigating the sources of the spells he used, though had anyone informed him, he would not have been surprised. The hospitals of Europe and the Commonwealth did not advertise the roots of their modified medicines, but that hardly mattered to the men and women who received them.

Severus Snape, slowly and inevitably, became a footnote in history.

If he'd had a moment to compose his epitaph, he'd no doubt have found a few things to say about that.