Anathema - A Person Or Thing Detested Or Loathed

Future of Mine

Things were blurry, he couldn't really tell where his body was, he felt weightless and limp. He was surrounded by a blurry gray. He felt exhausted and drained, even if he could move he wouldn't even try. He realized he was floating after the first few moments of gathering his thoughts.

"Where am I?" Severus began to look around him, as drained as he felt his eyes still worked. But there was nothing to be found but the same white gray smoke like room that surrounded him. He wasn't sure if you could call it a room though, the fog went off forever as if never ending.

"That won't do you any good boy." An unfamiliar voice rang through the room. Severus found his head snapping to his right, and he found a cloaked face far to close for comfort. They wore a black room obscuring their face, but their voice was deep and slow. Their presence was so familiar yet no matter how hard he tried, they just weren't recognizable.

"Who are you? Where am I?" His brows furrowed as he spoke becoming slightly angered at being so restricted when all of his alarms where going off. The person demeanor seemed unchanged.

"You are in the in between. A place people sometimes find themselves when they are between life and death...don't start sniveling now boy, there are worse things to come. Usually those who enter this plane don't stay for long and usually it means you're not going to die...yet." The person moved away giving Severus breathing room, the person then waved their hand and Severus' body moved in an upright position and lowered to the ground. Once his feet felt a surface he no longer felt his earlier exhaustion.

"Well how did I get here then? I was perfectly fine and suddenly I blacked out. You still haven't answered my question about who you are either. Are you Death?"

"No, Death does not reside in this place, and truthfully neither should I, this is your personal in between, everyone has one. I'm more or less an intruder... kind of. Follow me." He started off in a direction, I'm hesitant to follow but decide to take the chance.
As we walk it's like we warp through reality and suddenly I find myself in a very familiar bedroom.

"Why are we here?" For some reason I have to now look up to the person, it takes that for me to realize I'm now the size of a four year old child. "Why am I like this!!???" I look to the person for answers but they remain silent, they simply point.

Following his hand I watch as a scene plays before me, a dark and bitter memory I never want to think about again. The first time I had a torture session with father. I watch as the angry man drags a four year old Severus Snape out of the room, we move with the vision, and soon I'm watching myself be dragged down the stairs and to the basement. Then I'm tied to the wall the corse ropes, and stripped down to my underwear. Tobias pulls a box from under the floor and sets it on a cart in the corner. When opened three different sized whips can be seen. He picks the smallest one, when you look close you can see they were hand made with pieces of glass carefully tied to the thin string it's obvious that was added by Tobias. Then it begins.

He was whipped at least ten times all around his body. All while Tobias shouted the most vile things a person could think to say to a child. How he should've died, he would often describe all the ways he would brutally mutilate Severus ranging from ripping his organs out of his body and strangling him with it, to allowing groups of men rape him since that's all he would be good for. Being a witness to it now he can still recall the whips and the bloody scars he would always carry with him because of it.

"Why are you showing me this."

"Because you must see this to understand. Now follow me." He followed the person (who he had deemed to be male) again. This time he witnessed his first experience with the Marauders, and he was thankful it was them and not another happy childhood memory. But then it seemed every incident he had with them played. He had to relive every embarrassment, every humiliating second of Hogwarts with those four idiots. And every fight he had with Lily, and he could feel the humiliation and despair in his heart as if it had just happen to him. In those fights with Lily she would do the worse thing and yell at him, then leave. It would bring up the memories for his father and the basement and he remembered how he would run to a closet at the end of an empty hall that no one seemed to stumble into. It was his only real safe space, and every day he would worry that it would be taken from him too. He would sit in the silent cramped darkness of the room until the fear and panic faded.