Disclaimer:

I do not own the characters of Harry Potter, these belong to that wonderful author JK Rowling and the various publishing companies used to publish her works. I am however borrowing them, no not to make money but for fun and fun only. :)

Summary:

DH will be mostly canon compatible through to the epilogue: Severus Snape survives the bite of Nagini and though an unexpected and unwanted set of events he ends up in a place that he does not want to be and is kept prisoner in a strange land. Questions is will he survive here and create a new life or continue living the haunted half-life he has for the past sixteen years?...

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Chapter One: The Rescue of Severus Snape:

Hogwarts May 02 1998:

Severus Snape was a cold cruel man with all the looks of the storybook villain, no not the handsome sexy type of villain but rather the ugly haunted type. His raven black hair hung parted in the middle to his shoulders, it was greasy and lank and did nothing for his sallow skin. His thin face was dominated by his large hooked nose and deep black empty eyes. Those eyes were not ones any wanted to look in for long as they were so dead and looked as if they belonged in a corpse, not a living man. He wore only black, from his heavy woolen high collared buttoned robes to his heavy dragon skin boots. He was thin and tall but not skeletally thin and he had an aura of power about him, or he would have if he was not kneeling with head bowed before another powerful wizard at this very moment.

The wizard before him made him look like an angel in comparison. The man (if one could call him a man) was thin and clad like his servant in robes of black. The hood of his cloak was thrown back and his mutated face looked hideous in the light of the one lamp that lit the room. His chalk white head was hairless and his eyes, no full human had eyes like his. They were a dark nearly bloody red and his pupils were slits like a snake. His nose did not exist but for slits for nostrils and his mouth was nearly lipless. This was the evil wizard Lord Voldemort nee Tom Marvolo Riddle, once a promising student turned to full evil and darkness. What good had been in him (some said he was born evil) had long since vanished and left a shell filled with pure evil. He was pacing the room back and forth speaking to his servant holding a wand in his hands, a wand that was not working for him as it should.

Snape knew what was coming, he knew he was to die here but that did not stop him from trying to calm down his master. He looked from Voldemort to just over his head and saw Nagini curled up in her protective bubble. It was fitting really Snape thought he would die by her as he could read the monster before him quite well. He still begged for his life, really if he had not he would have raised the suspicions of Voldemort. Still he was so scared and he could not hide his fear even from Voldemort. Not that it mattered, he saw Voldemort raise his wand, apologize in his own way for what he did and levitated Nagini right over Snape. Snape looked up into the snake's eyes and watched as she came down and latched onto his neck. He was surprised it did not hurt as bad as he was expecting, but when he put his hand to his throat he felt his blood pulsing out.

He fell to the floor and his only regret was not telling Harry what he needed to know to stop Voldemort. He heard Voldemort leave and he was alone, but then, then the boy was there and please just let him do as he was told this once! Snape let out the memories the boy would need not caring anymore what the brat saw. The Granger girl caught the memories in a vial she conjured up and Snape in one last movement reached up and grabbed Harry by his robes. "Look at me" he rasped. Harry did and in the last moment of his life Snape realized how much, how very much Harry Potter was like his mother. His features so much softer than his father's his eyes behind round glasses, his expression of concern and care, so very like his mother. Snape's grip loosened and he remembered nothing more for a long time.

He woke slowly and felt someone pinch the bridge of his nose, he gasped and something was tipped down his throat. A hand closed his jaw forcing him to swallow what he knew to be a blood replenishing potion. The process was repeated and he felt someone undo the buttons of his robes and expose his neck. He felt two sharp stabs of pain and he gasped in shock, he felt a pad of cloth put at the wounds and his neck bandaged. He was given another potion this time a strengthening potion and he was helped to slowly sit up. He put a hand to the bridge of his nose then slowly opened his eyes and looked up at the hooded figure before him. He could not see the man's face and he had no idea who had rescued him or why he was still alive for that matter.

"Good thing I went by my hunch and came here." The man said and Snape knew that voice from his past but he could not place it now. "The dark lord tried to kill you with his snake."

"What do you want with me?" Snape said as he was drug to his feet.

"To get you out of here, it is not safe for you or I here." The man said.

"Leave me here, not worth saving." Snape said.

"You are and you are coming with me." The man said. "I did not travel this far and put myself in danger to leave you here!"

He threw an invisibility cloak over them and half drug the half dead potions master from the shrieking shack. Outside all was quiet and Snape weakly looked up to see the damaged castle ahead of him. He wondered when he would see the castle again but he did not have much time to think as the man Apparated with him away from Hogwarts. It would be the last time Snape would see the castle for a long, long time though he did not know that now. Snape was so weak he blacked out before they came to their destination. The man gently laid him down on a soft cot and covered him with a blanket. The journey had just begun for Snape as there as a long way to go before he was even remotely safe…

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Yarrow Academy for Magical Education of Witches and Wizards May 3, 1998:

Thomas Martian Colton, headmaster of Yarrow Academy sat at his desk in his comfortable office reading The Magical Camera reading about the death of Lord Voldemort and the battle of Hogwarts. Headmaster Colton was a stern but fair man, he was a short stout man, his bald head was covered with a green cap trimmed in purple and his white goatee was carefully trimmed. His green eyes were startling in his olive skinned face and he was clad in simple high collared buttoned inner robes of green and outer robes of deep purple. Standing before him was his young Defense teacher Maryanne Rebecca Roberts nee Green. She was a tall slender woman with dark brown hair piled on top of her head. She had lightly tanned skin, sharp blue eyes and was clad in a gown of deep blue. She was quite young, only forty eight while Colton was well over one hundred years of age. Right now her cheeks were flushed with anger and Colton had an idea as to why.

"He has done it again!" Roberts said trying hard to control her anger.

"Who?" Colton asked putting the paper down, knowing full well this day would come and who she was talking about.

"Black! He went to England as requested and he brought back a death eater!" She said her small button nose twitching with anger. "Not any normal death eater no our dear boy went and got the faux headmaster of Hogwarts Severus Snape!"

"According to the papers he was acting on headmaster Dumbledore's orders." Colton said getting up. "I take it the boy is here?"

"Which one?" Roberts asked. "Stupid or the death eater?"

"The one you call the death eater, remember that Black was one too." Colton said. "Where is he?"

"Hospital wing headmaster." Roberts said. "Where I am going to permanently put Black when I am finished with him."

She followed the headmaster out of his office and down the long hall which had the offices of the teachers, they came to a set of doors they went through that lead them to an outside balcony that overlooked the large courtyard of the fort-like school. The school was five stories high on all four sides with a walkway at the very top with a wall that ran along the outside and a railing on the inside that looked over the concrete courtyard. Brickwork formed arches and the walls were thick and whitewashed against the elements. In fact it was built along the very same lines of many forts of the American Civil War era, of which only a handful remained. Students could be seen walking to classes clad in their dark green robes unaware that an infamous death eater was here among them at this time.

The headmaster and his defense teacher walked around the school and down to the second level where the hospital was located and walked in. They walked up to Doris Freemason, the nurse here at the school and she let them enter the room where Severus Snape was being healed up. Severus Snape lay naked and still on a table, only a cloth covering his groin. He was very thin, if not for the knotted muscles under his smooth ivory skin he would have been skeletal. It was clear he had been bathed as his hair was silky and soft and his skin looked more ivory than sallow. He had few scars Roberts could see on him and only the ugly mark on his arm that showed he was a death eater marred his near-perfect body. If only his face matched his well formed body he would have been a handsome man. A young man was working closely on the neck of the faux headmaster.

"What happened to him?" Roberts asked the young man.

"He was bit by a Nagini." The young man said.

"He should be dead then." Colton said. "Regulus how did you find him in time so he did not die?"

"I was coming back from the forbidden forest and on a hunch went to the shrieking shack and found him there. Lucky indeed I am a healer now."

"Yes it is." Colton said. "Will he survive though?"

"He will, I pumped enough anti-venom in him to save him and with the blood replenishing potion via IV it's up to him now."

Regulus was of course Regulus Black, dead to the Wizarding world at large. He was tall, lean and looked much like his brother but without the arrogance and ruined beauty of his brother. His dark nearly black hair was long and tied back and he had a tuff of hair on his chin. His eyes were blue not gray and he had a scar on his right cheek. He was clad in the lime green robes of a healer and had spent the last ten years as a healer here in America. He knew the headmaster and defense teacher had questions they wanted answered but he was tired, he had just spent a long muggle flight in a airplane from England keeping Snape alive with what limited resources he had. He wanted only to rest but knew the next few hours were critical for Snape, he would live or die in those hours and so he would spend his time with the former headmaster of Hogwarts and one time friend of his…

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The name of the school is indeed a flower, Yarrow is a white small flower in the wild and is edible. However the Yarrow I have in my yard is yellow, it can help fight colds and can stop bleeding. For this reason I believe it would be used in the blood replenishing potions used on many a wounded witch or wizard. A fitting name for a school indeed.

On another note of the school I got the idea of the layout from Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, it is an amazing structure and I felt that a castle for a school in America would be a bit strange as America is not known for castles of any kind (those buildings called castles here are not trust me, I have seen many of them and they are not true castles at all).

Apparation is limited, per cannon by the fact that Voldemort had to fly to a certain point before he could Apparate. This is why I had Regulus take a flight from England to America. As for where the school is located, where Regulus has been and why he was in England in time to save Snape will come the next chapter.