Author's Note: I love Snarry, but most of the good ones seem to involve Severus being on the Light side. So this is my contribution of the Dark!Snarry genre. I do hope you enjoy.

OoC Warning: Voldemort is OoC in this fic. He is NOT a nice person, though he does a passable imitation of one under the right circumstances. He is a Slytherin, and good at being what he needs to be in order to earn fanatical loyalty from his followers. Severus is going to be somewhat OoC, though hopefully with good reason. Harry too. See the next paragraph for that.

****FYI: This is AU**** Though the same main events happened at Hogwarts up until the start of this story, Harry's life with the Dursleys was harsher than JK portrayed. While Harry acted mostly the same, his private thoughts on many matters DO NOT follow canon. You should begin to see the discrepancies fairly quickly.

WARNINGS: There will be mentions of extreme child abuse, and non-explicit non-con (rape) and extreme chan (very underage sexual relations) – these are BAD, but necessary to the backstory and plot. There will also be murder, torture, general violence, harsh language, and SLASH. If this bothers you, GO AWAY! I'm not making you read this!

Oh, and Harry's going to be an adult by wizarding standards (17) before anything *fun* happens with Severus. Just in case that squicks you.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything related to the series. I'm not making any money from this.

Memories of Freak

*/\/\*

Chapter 1

15 January 1996 - Monday

HPOV

"Legilimens!"

Harry stumbled back as the curse hit him, and…

Freak woke in the middle of the night, sweating and weeping from that same old nightmare of green light and fear and pain. He was terrified, and the cupboard was so dark, and something just crawled across his leg!

He screamed and wept and pounded on the door, desperate to get out. He couldn't breathe. "Please! Help me! Please! Let me out! Help!"

There was a rumbling, thumping from above him and his panicked mind couldn't figure out what it was. Terror spiked sharper and he started screaming incoherently.

Then, finally, the door was wrenched open and he sucked in a gasp of air at last.

The large figure didn't let him out though, and he didn't help him. He didn't comfort him. He yelled.

"SHUT UP, YOU WORTHLESS LITTLE FREAK! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

And then his hand snapped forward, so fast Freak barely saw it coming. Pain in his face, his ear. He screamed louder.

The sharp pain came again. Then again. Then again.

He finally collapsed, curling himself into a ball, quietly begging for it to stop.

"And you'd better stay quiet, Freak."

The door slammed shut.

Freak stayed curled up in a ball, struggling to breathe. His chest was heaving, but he couldn't seem to get enough air.

"Freak is sorry. Freak is sorry. Freak is sorry," he gasped over and over again, rocking his small body back and forth, back and forth, again and again, repeating the litany while he slowly regained his ability to breathe.

"Freak is sorry."

Harry landed hard on the floor in the Potions Master's office, his chest heaving, tears drying on his cheeks. Fuck, he hadn't thought about that night in so long…

He scrubbed his sleeve across his cheeks and glanced warily up at the professor. For once, Snape wasn't sneering at him. His face was even paler than normal, his eyes too wide. The rest of his face was utterly blank as he stared at Harry for a long moment.

Finally, he blinked and the moment had passed. "Again," he said slightly hoarsely.

Harry took a deep breath as he pulled himself up, struggling to prepare himself to experience another memory that he'd tried so hard to forget forever. There was no way in hell he was going to tell Snape that he needed a break, so he forced himself to look up and meet those expressionless black eyes.

"Legilimens!"

Better prepared this time, Harry met the attack and held for a split second before…

Freak's mouth opened in horror when he saw the plate he'd dropped freeze and hover in midair about an inch off the floor. He'd been so afraid of it getting broken, because then his uncle would be mad, but this was worse. This was much worse. This wasn't supposed to happen. He remembered what had happened the last time something unnatural had happened.

He reached for the plate, hoping to snatch it up before anyone noticed, but then Aunt Petunia screamed, and he knew it was too late.

His uncle stood up from the table – saw what had happened. His eyes widened. His face turned white, and then purple.

Freak gulped. He was terrified, but he wouldn't let something more happen. He couldn't handle it if something else unnatural happened. Uncle Vernon would kill him then. He knew it. So he cringed, but did nothing when his uncle kicked the plate away. It hit the wall and shattered. Then his uncle grabbed his arm and yanked.

He yelped quietly, but knew not to scream. Uncle hated it when he screamed. When he made any noise that wasn't in direct answer to a question.

Silent tears streamed down Freak's face as he was dragged out of the kitchen. Uncle threw him against the wall next to his cupboard. He hit his face hard, and a small "eep" escaped him before he cut it off.

"Fucking worthless Freak," Uncle was saying behind him, but Freak didn't dare move. He couldn't help that his whole body was trembling though. "Doing your freakish things in my house. I won't have it. Not in front of my son. You'll be the death of us all. After we took you in out of the kindness of our hearts. Taking the clothes off my son's back. The food out of my son's mouth. Worthless, good for nothing… Just like your disgusting parents.

"Well, I won't have it. I'll beat that freakishness right out of you. That's what I'll do."

Freak cringed when he heard the clinking of the belt buckle. Then the sharp snap of the leather being pulled taut.

"Hold still, you worthless Freak."

Freak tried to stop his trembling, but was only partially successful. Then the first blow fell across his back like a line of fire and he choked as he tried to hold in the scream. The first one was always the worst. Somehow, he was never quite expecting it to hurt as bad as it did.

A second blow.

A third.

He stopped bothering to count then. Counting didn't help. Nothing helped. All he could do was try to stay silent and he knew it would eventually be over.

It'll be over.

It will end.

He'll stop soon.

Don't cry out.

It will end.

Don't cry.

The words repeated over and over and over in his mind, in time with the lashes.

And then, like always, it stopped. Finally. His whole back was on fire now. His whole body felt like it was burning. His throat ached from trying not to scream and cry.

Uncle grabbed him by the hair and shoved him into his cupboard. He landed on his back on the coarse fabric of the dirty little mattress, and slid. His back cried out in agony and he felt his teeth sink into his lip as he struggled to keep the cry from getting out. Uncle would just hurt him more if he made noise.

The cupboard door slammed shut, plunging him into darkness.

Freak rolled onto his side and curled himself into a ball. Tears slid from his eyes and he felt like a great hole had opened up in his chest. It hurt so much, and not just his back. He hurt inside. He couldn't understand why these things kept happening to him. He didn't know how to make Aunt and Uncle happy. He always messed up. He tried so hard, but he could never get it right.

He never would.

Because the Freak would always be a worthless burden.

Tears continued to slide from his eyes until exhaustion finally overcame the pain.

Harry gasped and managed to steady himself on the back of a chair before his knees gave out. Fuck, that had been a bad one. They'd gotten better fairly soon after that. The accidental magic had started happening less often. And he learned to tolerate the punishments better. He learned to not let them hurt him so much – well, emotionally, anyway. Or maybe everything inside finally just got hard enough that he didn't feel it anymore.

Again, he was appalled to find tears on his cheeks. He scrubbed them away and looked up at the professor, too weary to feel embarrassed, or even defensive after what the man had just seen. He had no doubt that he'd be hearing about this soon enough, probably in class in front of everyone. He could almost hear it now, "What's the matter, Potter? Are you going to cry because I vanished your potion? From a Freak like you, we couldn't expect any better, could we?"

"Get out, Potter," Snape said, sounding as exhausted as Harry felt.

He couldn't even find it in himself to glare, so he just turned and walked out.

SPOV

Severus collapsed into the chair behind his desk and buried his face in his hands. Sweet mother of Merlin, how could he have been so wrong about that boy? How could Potter have gone through that? He was Harry bloody Potter for Salazar's sake! Hadn't Albus watched out for the boy at all?

And why the fuck was he now angry that the boy hadn't been a pampered prince?

Gods, by those two memories… If they were any indication of the boy's childhood in general… Potter's childhood had been worse than Severus' own. At least he'd had his mother. She'd tried to protect him, and she'd often succeeded. Potter hadn't had anyone. He'd seen very clearly in that second memory that Petunia and that swine of a boy had done nothing to protect Harry. They hadn't even seemed like they'd wanted to try to help. Indeed, they'd both looked like they thought he deserved it. A little boy, not more than four, had received at least thirty lashes with a leather belt for…

Severus stomach turned. For accidental magic.

He sighed heavily and found a bottle of firewhiskey in his desk. He tugged out the cork and took a long pull. He really couldn't decide if he hated Albus more for what had happened to the boy or for forcing Severus to give these accursed lessons that had made him aware of what had happened.

Fuck. Ignorance really had been bliss.

He had no idea what he was going to do now. Well, he was going to have a few more drinks and then go scream at Albus, yes, but after that… He didn't know if he could even look at the boy after this, much less continue to teach him, in the classroom or out of it. He felt like such an utter fool for the way he'd treated the boy these last five years. Not that he thought it would have surprised the boy. Potter was clearly very accustomed to being treated like scum and viciously slandered. No wonder the boy hated him. Severus had been doing a remarkable impression of Potter's disgusting muggle uncle.

And he just felt dirty to have made that comparison – to know that it was shamefully accurate, even if he'd never physically harmed the boy.

Fuck. If there was one emotion that Severus knew and hated above all others, it was remorse. And he'd just acquired an entirely new depth of it.

He gulped more firewhiskey, then summoned up those two memories and placed them into a small bottle. If he had to feel like shit about this, he was going to make damn sure that Albus was feeling it too. Imagining the headmaster's face when he realized exactly what he'd done putting the boy with his relatives finally brought a small, bitter smirk to his lips.